the innermost recesses of the worst part of London, in the dead of
the night - the house is crammed with notorious robbers and
ruffians - and not a man stirs. No, Bark. They know the weight of
the law, and they know Inspector Field and Co. too well.
We leave bully Bark to subside at leisure out of his passion and
his trousers, and, I dare say, to be inconveniently reminded of
this little brush before long. Black and Green do ordinary duty
here, and look serious.
As to White, who waits on Holborn Hill to show the courts that are
eaten out of Rotten Gray's Inn, Lane, where other lodging-houses
are, and where (in one blind alley) the Thieves' Kitchen and
Seminary for the teaching of the art to children is, the night has
so worn away, being now
almost at odds with morning, which is which,
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that they are quiet, and no light shines through the chinks in the
shutters. As undistinctive Death will come here, one day, sleep
comes now. The wicked cease from troubling sometimes, even in this
life.
DOWN WITH THE TIDE
A VERY dark night it was, and bitter cold; the east wind blowing
bleak, and bringing with it stinging particles from marsh, and
moor, and fen - from the Great Desert and Old Egypt, may be. Some
of the component parts of the sharp-edged vapour that came flying
up the Thames at London might be mummy-dust, dry atoms from the
Temple at Jerusalem, camels' foot-prints, crocodiles' hatchingplaces,
loosened grains of expression from the visages of bluntnosed
sphynxes, waifs and strays from caravans of turbaned
merchants, vegetation from jungles, frozen snow from the Himalayas.
O! It was very, very dark upon the Thames, and it was bitter,
bitter cold.
'And yet,' said the voice within the great pea-coat at my side,
'you'll have seen a good many rivers, too, I dare say?'
'Truly,' said I, 'when I come to think of it, not a few. From the
Niagara, downward to the mountain rivers of Italy, which are like
the national spirit - very tame, or chafing suddenly and bursting
bounds, only to dwindle away again. The Moselle, and the Rhine,
and the Rhone; and the Seine, and the Saone; and the St. Lawrence,
Mississippi, and Ohio; and the Tiber, the Po, and the Arno; and the
- '
Peacoat coughing as if he had had enough of that, I said no more.
I could have carried the catalogue on to a teasing length, though,
if I had been in the cruel mind.
'And after all,' said he, 'this looks so dismal?'
'So awful,' I returned, 'at night. The Seine at Paris is very
gloomy too, at such a time, and is probably the scene of far more
crime and greater wickedness; but this river looks so broad and
vast, so murky and silent, seems such an image of death in the
midst of the great city's life, that - '
That Peacoat coughed again. He COULD NOT stand my holding forth.
We were in a four-oared Thames Police Galley, lying on our oars in
the deep shadow of Southwark Bridge - under the corner arch on the
Surrey side - having come down with the tide from Vauxhall. We
were fain to hold on pretty tight, though close in shore, for the
river was swollen and the tide running down very strong. We were
watching certain water-rats of human growth, and lay in the deep
shade as quiet as mice; our light hidden and our scraps of
conversation carried on in whispers. Above us, the massive iron
girders of the arch were faintly visible, and below us its
ponderous shadow seemed to sink down to the bottom of the stream.
We had been lying here some half an hour. With our backs to the
wind, it is true; but the wind being in a determined temper blew
straight through us, and would not take the trouble to go round. I
would have boarded a fireship to get into action, and mildly
suggested as much to my friend Pea.
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tactics wouldn't do with us. River-thieves can always get rid of
stolen property in a moment by dropping it overboard. We want to
take them WITH the property, so we lurk about and come out upon 'em
sharp. If they see us or hear us, over it goes.'
Pea's wisdom being indisputable, there was nothing for it but to
sit there and be blown through, for another half-hour. The waterrats
thinking it wise to abscond at the end of that time without
commission of felony, we shot out, disappointed, with the tide.
'Grim they look, don't they?' said Pea, seeing me glance over my
shoulder at the lights upon the bridge, and downward at their long
crooked reflections in the river.
'Very,' said I, 'and make one think with a shudder of Suicides.
What a night for a dreadful leap from that parapet!'
'Aye, but Waterloo's the favourite bridge for making holes in the
water from,' returned Pea. 'By the bye - avast pulling, lads! -
would you like to speak to Waterloo on the subject?'
My face confessing a surprised desire to have some friendly
conversation with Waterloo Bridge, and my friend Pea being the most
obliging of men, we put about, pulled out of the force of the
stream, and in place of going at great speed with the tide, began
to strive against it, close in shore again. Every colour but black
seemed to have departed from the world. The air was black, the
water was black, the barges and hulks were black, the piles were
black, the buildings were black, the shadows were only a deeper
shade of black upon a black ground. Here and there, a coal fire in
an iron cresset blazed upon a wharf; but, one knew that it too had
been black a little while ago, and would be black again soon.
Uncomfortable rushes of water suggestive of gurgling and drowning,
ghostly rattlings of iron chains, dismal clankings of discordant
engines, formed the music that accompanied the dip of our oars and
their rattling in the rowlocks. Even the noises had a black sound
to me - as the trumpet sounded red to the blind man.
Our dexterous boat's crew made nothing of the tide, and pulled us
gallantly up to Waterloo Bridge. Here Pea and I disembarked,
passed under the black stone archway, and climbed the steep stone
steps. Within a few feet of their summit, Pea presented me to
Waterloo (or an eminent toll-taker representing that structure),
muffled up to the eyes in a thick shawl, and amply great-coated and
fur-capped.
Waterloo received us with cordiality, and observed of the night
that it was 'a Searcher.' He had been originally called the Strand
Bridge, he informed us, but had received his present name at the
suggestion of the proprietors, when Parliament had resolved to vote
three hundred thousand pound for the erection of a monument in
honour of the victory. Parliament took the hint (said Waterloo,
with the least flavour of misanthropy) and saved the money. Of
course the late Duke of Wellington was the first passenger, and of
c
ourse he paid his penny, and of course a noble lord preserved it
evermore. The treadle and index at the toll-house (a most
ingenious contrivance for rendering fraud impossible), were
invented by Mr. Lethbridge, then property-man at Drury Lane
Theatre.
Was it suicide, we wanted to know about? said Waterloo. Ha! Well,
he had seen a good deal of that work, he did assure us. He had
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prevented some. Why, one day a woman, poorish looking, came in
between the hatch, slapped down a penny, and wanted to go on
without the change! Waterloo suspected this, and says to his mate,
'give an eye to the gate,' and bolted after her. She had got to
the third seat between the piers, and was on the parapet just a
going over, when he caught her and gave her in charge. At the
police office next morning, she said it was along of trouble and a
bad husband.
'Likely enough,' observed Waterloo to Pea and myself, as he
adjusted his chin in his shawl. 'There's a deal of trouble about,
you see - and bad husbands too!'
Another time, a young woman at twelve o'clock in the open day, got
through, darted along; and, before Waterloo could come near her,
jumped upon the parapet, and shot herself over sideways. Alarm
given, watermen put off, lucky escape. - Clothes buoyed her up.
'This is where it is,' said Waterloo. 'If people jump off straight
forwards from the middle of the parapet of the bays of the bridge,
they are seldom killed by drowning, but are smashed, poor things;
that's what THEY are; they dash themselves upon the buttress of the
bridge. But you jump off,' said Waterloo to me, putting his forefinger
in a button-hole of my great-coat; 'you jump off from the
side of the bay, and you'll tumble, true, into the stream under the
arch. What you have got to do, is to mind how you jump in! There
was poor Tom Steele from Dublin. Didn't dive! Bless you, didn't
dive at all! Fell down so flat into the water, that he broke his
breast-bone, and lived two days!'
I asked Waterloo if there were a favourite side of his bridge for
this dreadful purpose? He reflected, and thought yes, there was.
He should say the Surrey side.
Three decent-looking men went through one day, soberly and quietly,
and went on abreast for about a dozen yards: when the middle one,
he sung out, all of a sudden, 'Here goes, Jack!' and was over in a
minute.
Body found? Well. Waterloo didn't rightly recollect about that.
They were compositors, THEY were.
He considered it astonishing how quick people were! Why, there was
a cab came up one Boxing-night, with a young woman in it, who
looked, according to Waterloo's opinion of her, a little the worse
for liquor; very handsome she was too - very handsome. She stopped
the cab at the gate, and said she'd pay the cabman then, which she
did, though there was a little hankering about the fare, because at
first she didn't seem quite to know where she wanted to be drove
to. However, she paid the man, and the toll too, and looking
Waterloo in the face (he thought she knew him, don't you see!)
said, 'I'll finish it somehow!' Well, the cab went off, leaving
Waterloo a little doubtful in his mind, and while it was going on
at full speed the young woman jumped out, never fell, hardly
staggered, ran along the bridge pavement a little way, passing
several people, and jumped over from the second opening. At the
inquest it was giv' in evidence that she had been quarrelling at
the Hero of Waterloo, and it was brought in jealousy. (One of the
results of Waterloo's experience was, that there was a deal of
jealousy about.)
'Do we ever get madmen?' said Waterloo, in answer to an inquiry of
mine. 'Well, we DO get madmen. Yes, we have had one or two;
escaped from 'Sylums, I suppose. One hadn't a halfpenny; and
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because I wouldn't let him through, he went back a little way,
stooped down, took a run, and butted at the hatch like a ram. He
smashed his hat rarely, but his head didn't seem no worse - in my
opinion on account of his being wrong in it afore. Sometimes
people haven't got a halfpenny. If they are really tired and poor
we give 'em one and let 'em through. Other people will leave
things - pocket-handkerchiefs mostly. I HAVE taken cravats and
gloves, pocket-knives, tooth-picks, studs, shirt-pins, rings
(generally from young gents, early in the morning), but
handkerchiefs is the general thing.'
'Regular customers?' said Waterloo. 'Lord, yes! We have regular
customers. One, such a worn-out, used-up old file as you can
scarcely picter, comes from the Surrey side as regular as ten
o'clock at night comes; and goes over, I think, to some flash house
on the Middlesex side. He comes back, he does, as reg'lar as the
clock strikes three in the morning, and then can hardly drag one of
his old legs after the other. He always turns down the waterstairs,
comes up again, and then goes on down the Waterloo Road.
He always does the same thing, and never varies a minute. Does it
every night - even Sundays.'
I asked Waterloo if he had given his mind to the possibility of
this particular customer going down the water-stairs at three
o'clock some morning, and never coming up again? He didn't think
THAT of him, he replied. In fact, it was Waterloo's opinion,
founded on his observation of that file, that he know'd a trick
worth two of it.
'There's another queer old customer,' said Waterloo, 'comes over,
as punctual as the almanack, at eleven o'clock on the sixth of
January, at eleven o'clock on the fifth of April, at eleven o'clock
on the sixth of July, at eleven o'clock on the tenth of October.
Drives a shaggy little, rough pony, in a sort of a rattle-trap armchair
sort of a thing. White hair he has, and white whiskers, and
muffles himself up with all manner of shawls. He comes back again
the same afternoon, and we never see more of him for three months.
He is a captain in the navy - retired - wery old - wery odd - and
served with Lord Nelson. He is particular about drawing his
pension at Somerset House afore the clock strikes twelve every
quarter. I HAVE heerd say that he thinks it wouldn't be according
to the Act of Parliament, if he didn't draw it afore twelve.'
Having related these anecdotes in a natural manner, which was the
best warranty in the world for their genuine nature, our friend
Waterloo was sinking deep into his shawl again, as having exhausted
his communicative powers and taken in enough east wind, when my
other friend Pea in a moment brought him to the surface by asking
whether he had not been occasionally the subject of assault and
battery in the execution of his duty? Waterloo recovering his
spirits, instantly dashed into a new branch of his subject. We
learnt how 'both these teeth' - here he pointed to the places where
two front teeth were not - wer
e knocked out by an ugly customer who
one night made a dash at him (Waterloo) while his (the ugly
customer's) pal and coadjutor made a dash at the toll-taking apron
where the money-pockets were; how Waterloo, letting the teeth go
(to Blazes, he observed indefinitely), grappled with the apronseizer,
permitting the ugly one to run away; and how he saved the
bank, and captured his man, and consigned him to fine and
imprisonment. Also how, on another night, 'a Cove' laid hold of
Waterloo, then presiding at the horse-gate of his bridge, and threw
him unceremoniously over his knee, having first cut his head open
with his whip. How Waterloo 'got right,' and started after the
Cove all down the Waterloo Road, through Stamford Street, and round
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to the foot of Blackfriars Bridge, where the Cove 'cut into' a
public-house. How Waterloo cut in too; but how an aider and
abettor of the Cove's, who happened to be taking a promiscuous
drain at the bar, stopped Waterloo; and the Cove cut out again, ran
across the road down Holland Street, and where not, and into a
beer-shop. How Waterloo breaking away from his detainer was close
upon the Cove's heels, attended by no end of people, who, seeing
him running with the blood streaming down his face, thought
something worse was 'up,' and roared Fire! and Murder! on the
hopeful chance of the matter in hand being one or both. How the
Cove was ignominiously taken, in a shed where he had run to hide,
and how at the Police Court they at first wanted to make a sessions
job of it; but eventually Waterloo was allowed to be 'spoke to,'
and the Cove made it square with Waterloo by paying his doctor's
bill (W. was laid up for a week) and giving him 'Three, ten.'
Likewise we learnt what we had faintly suspected before, that your
sporting amateur on the Derby day, albeit a captain, can be - 'if
he be,' as Captain Bobadil observes, 'so generously minded' -
anything but a man of honour and a gentleman; not sufficiently
gratifying his nice sense of humour by the witty scattering of
flour and rotten eggs on obtuse civilians, but requiring the
further excitement of 'bilking the toll,' and 'Pitching into'
Waterloo, and 'cutting him about the head with his whip;' finally
being, when called upon to answer for the assault, what Waterloo
described as 'Minus,' or, as I humbly conceived it, not to be