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_ Some years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, referable to a
distressing impression, caused me to walk about the streets all
night, for a series of several nights. The disorder might have
taken a long time to conquer, if it had been faintly experimented
on in bed; but, it was soon defeated by the brisk treatment of
getting up directly after lying down, and going out, and coming
home tired at sunrise.
In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a fair
amateur experience of houselessness. My principal object being to
get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me into
sympathetic relations with people who have no other object every
night in the year.
The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, and cold. The
sun not rising before half-past five, the night perspective looked
sufficiently long at half-past twelve: which was about my time for
confronting it.
The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles
and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first
entertainments offered to the contemplation of us houseless people.
It lasted about two hours. We lost a great deal of companionship
when the late public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the
potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards into the street; but
stray vehicles and stray people were left us, after that. If we
were very lucky, a policeman's rattle sprang and a fray turned up;
but, in general, surprisingly little of this diversion was
provided. Except in the Haymarket, which is the worst kept part of
London, and about Kent-street in the Borough, and along a portion
of the line of the Old Kent-road, the peace was seldom violently
broken. But, it was always the case that London, as if in
imitation of individual citizens belonging to it, had expiring fits
and starts of restlessness. After all seemed quiet, if one cab
rattled by, half-a-dozen would surely follow; and Houselessness
even observed that intoxicated people appeared to be magnetically
attracted towards each other; so that we knew when we saw one
drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, that
another drunken object would stagger up before five minutes were
out, to fraternise or fight with it. When we made a divergence
from the regular species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced,
leaden-lipped gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer specimen of a
more decent appearance, fifty to one but that specimen was dressed
in soiled mourning. As the street experience in the night, so the
street experience in the day; the common folk who come unexpectedly
into a little property, come unexpectedly into a deal of liquor.
At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn out--the
last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from some late pieman
or hot-potato man--and London would sink to rest. And then the
yearning of the houseless mind would be for any sign of company,
any lighted place, any movement, anything suggestive of any one
being up--nay, even so much as awake, for the houseless eye looked
out for lights in windows.
Walking the streets under the pattering rain, Houselessness would
walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing but the interminable tangle
of streets, save at a corner, here and there, two policemen in
conversation, or the sergeant or inspector looking after his men.
Now and then in the night--but rarely--Houselessness would become
aware of a furtive head peering out of a doorway a few yards before
him, and, coming up with the head, would find a man standing bolt
upright to keep within the doorway's shadow, and evidently intent
upon no particular service to society. Under a kind of
fascination, and in a ghostly silence suitable to the time,
Houselessness and this gentleman would eye one another from head to
foot, and so, without exchange of speech, part, mutually
suspicious. Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping, splash from
pipes and water-spouts, and by-and-by the houseless shadow would
fall upon the stones that pave the way to Waterloo-bridge; it being
in the houseless mind to have a halfpenny worth of excuse for
saying 'Good-night' to the toll-keeper, and catching a glimpse of
his fire. A good fire and a good great-coat and a good woollen
neck-shawl, were comfortable things to see in conjunction with the
toll-keeper; also his brisk wakefulness was excellent company when
he rattled the change of halfpence down upon that metal table of
his, like a man who defied the night, with all its sorrowful
thoughts, and didn't care for the coming of dawn. There was need
of encouragement on the threshold of the bridge, for the bridge was
dreary. The chopped-up murdered man, had not been lowered with a
rope over the parapet when those nights were; he was alive, and
slept then quietly enough most likely, and undisturbed by any dream
of where he was to come. But the river had an awful look, the
buildings on the banks were muffled in black shrouds, and the
reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the
spectres of suicides were holding them to show where they went
down. The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil
conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity
of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river.
Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there was but the
distance of a few hundred paces, so the theatres came next. Grim
and black within, at night, those great dry Wells, and lonesome to
imagine, with the rows of faces faded out, the lights extinguished,
and the seats all empty. One would think that nothing in them knew
itself at such a time but Yorick's skull. In one of my night
walks, as the church steeples were shaking the March winds and rain
with the strokes of Four, I passed the outer boundary of one of
these great deserts, and entered it. With a dim lantern in my
hand, I groped my well-known way to the stage and looked over the
orchestra--which was like a great grave dug for a time of
pestilence--into the void beyond. A dismal cavern of an immense
aspect, with the chandelier gone dead like everything else, and
nothing visible through mist and fog and space, but tiers of
winding-sheets. The ground at my feet where, when last there, I
had seen the peasantry of Naples dancing among the vines, reckless
of the burning mountain which threatened to overwhelm them, was now
in possession of a strong serpent of engine-hose, watchfully lying
in wait for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it showed
its forked tongue. A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint corpse
candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and flitted away.
Retiring within the proscenium, and holding my light above my head
towards the rolled-up curtain--green no more, but black as ebony--
my sight lost itself in a gloomy vault, showing faint indications
in it of a shipwreck of canvas and cordage. Methought I felt much
as a diver might, at the bottom of the sea.
In those small hours when there was no movement in the streets, it
afforded matter for reflection to take Newgate in the way, and,
touching its rough stone, to think of the prisoners in their sleep,
and then to glance in at the lodge over the spiked wicket, and see
the fire and light of the watching turnkeys, on the white wall.
Not an inappropriate time either, to linger by that wicked little
Debtors' Door--shutting tighter than any other door one ever saw--
which has been Death's Door to so many. In the days of the
uttering of forged one-pound notes by people tempted up from the
country, how many hundreds of wretched creatures of both sexes--
many quite innocent--swung out of a pitiless and inconsistent
world, with the tower of yonder Christian church of Saint Sepulchre
monstrously before their eyes! Is there any haunting of the Bank
Parlour, by the remorseful souls of old directors, in the nights of
these later days, I wonder, or is it as quiet as this degenerate
Aceldama of an Old Bailey?
To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times and bemoaning
the present evil period, would be an easy next step, so I would
take it, and would make my houseless circuit of the Bank, and give
a thought to the treasure within; likewise to the guard of soldiers
passing the night there, and nodding over the fire. Next, I went
to Billingsgate, in some hope of market-people, but it proving as
yet too early, crossed London-bridge and got down by the water-side
on the Surrey shore among the buildings of the great brewery.
There was plenty going on at the brewery; and the reek, and the
smell of grains, and the rattling of the plump dray horses at their
mangers, were capital company. Quite refreshed by having mingled
with this good society, I made a new start with a new heart,
setting the old King's Bench prison before me for my next object,
and resolving, when I should come to the wall, to think of poor
Horace Kinch, and the Dry Rot in men.
A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, and difficult to detect
the beginning of. It had carried Horace Kinch inside the wall of
the old King's Bench prison, and it had carried him out with his
feet foremost. He was a likely man to look at, in the prime of
life, well to do, as clever as he needed to be, and popular among
many friends. He was suitably married, and had healthy and pretty
children. But, like some fair-looking houses or fair-looking
ships, he took the Dry Rot. The first strong external revelation
of the Dry Rot in men, is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at
street-corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere
when met; to be about many places rather than at any; to do nothing
tangible, but to have an intention of performing a variety of
intangible duties to-morrow or the day after. When this
manifestation of the disease is observed, the observer will usually
connect it with a vague impression once formed or received, that
the patient was living a little too hard. He will scarcely have
had leisure to turn it over in his mind and form the terrible
suspicion 'Dry Rot,' when he will notice a change for the worse in
the patient's appearance: a certain slovenliness and
deterioration, which is not poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication,
nor ill-health, but simply Dry Rot. To this, succeeds a smell as
of strong waters, in the morning; to that, a looseness respecting
money; to that, a stronger smell as of strong waters, at all times;
to that, a looseness respecting everything; to that, a trembling of
the limbs, somnolency, misery, and crumbling to pieces. As it is
in wood, so it is in men. Dry Rot advances at a compound usury
quite incalculable. A plank is found infected with it, and the
whole structure is devoted. Thus it had been with the unhappy
Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small subscription. Those who
knew him had not nigh done saying, 'So well off, so comfortably
established, with such hope before him--and yet, it is feared, with
a slight touch of Dry Rot!' when lo! the man was all Dry Rot and
dust.
From the dead wall associated on those houseless nights with this
too common story, I chose next to wander by Bethlehem Hospital;
partly, because it lay on my road round to Westminster; partly,
because I had a night fancy in my head which could be best pursued
within sight of its walls and dome. And the fancy was this: Are
not the sane and the insane equal at night as the sane lie a
dreaming? Are not all of us outside this hospital, who dream, more
or less in the condition of those inside it, every night of our
lives? Are we not nightly persuaded, as they daily are, that we
associate preposterously with kings and queens, emperors and
empresses, and notabilities of all sorts? Do we not nightly jumble
events and personages and times and places, as these do daily? Are
we not sometimes troubled by our own sleeping inconsistencies, and
do we not vexedly try to account for them or excuse them, just as
these do sometimes in respect of their waking delusions? Said an
afflicted man to me, when I was last in a hospital like this, 'Sir,
I can frequently fly.' I was half ashamed to reflect that so could
I--by night. Said a woman to me on the same occasion, 'Queen
Victoria frequently comes to dine with me, and her Majesty and I
dine off peaches and maccaroni in our night-gowns, and his Royal
Highness the Prince Consort does us the honour to make a third on
horseback in a Field-Marshal's uniform.' Could I refrain from
reddening with consciousness when I remembered the amazing royal
parties I myself had given (at night), the unaccountable viands I
had put on table, and my extraordinary manner of conducting myself
on those distinguished occasions? I wonder that the great master
who knew everything, when he called Sleep the death of each day's
life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each day's sanity.
By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and was again
setting towards the river; and in a short breathing space I was on
Westminster-bridge, regaling my houseless eyes with the external
walls of the British Parliament--the perfection of a stupendous
institution, I know, and the admiration of all surrounding nations
and succeeding ages, I do not doubt, but perhaps a little the
better now and then for being pricked up to its work. Turning off
into Old Palace-yard, the Courts of Law kept me company for a
quarter of an hour; hinting in low whispers what numbers of people
they were keeping awake, and how intensely wretched and horrible
they were rendering the small hours to unfortunate suitors.
Westminster Abbey was fine gloomy society for another quarter of an
hour; suggesting a wonderful procession of its dead among the dark
arches and pillars, each century more amazed by the century
following it than by all the centuries going before. And indeed in
those houseless night walks--which even included cemeteries where
watchmen went round among the graves at stated times, and moved the
tell-tale handle of an index which recorded that they had touched
it at such an hour--it was a solemn consideration what enormous
hosts of dead belong to one old great city, and how, if they were
raised while the living slept, there would not be the space of a
pin's point in all the streets and ways for the living to come out
into. Not only that, but the vast armies of dead would overflow
the hills and valleys beyond the city, and would stretch away all
round it, God knows how far.
When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the dead of the
night, it may be at first mistaken for company and hailed as such.
But, as the spreading circles of vibration, which you may perceive
at such a time with great clearness, go opening out, for ever and
ever afterwards widening perhaps (as the philosopher has suggested)
in eternal space, the mistake is rectified and the sense of
loneliness is profounder. Once--it was after leaving the Abbey and
turning my face north--I came to the great steps of St. Martin's
church as the clock was striking Three. Suddenly, a thing that in
a moment more I should have trodden upon without seeing, rose up at
my feet with a cry of loneliness and houselessness, struck out of
it by the bell, the like of which I never heard. We then stood
face to face looking at one another, frightened by one another.
The creature was like a beetle-browed hair-lipped youth of twenty,
and it had a loose bundle of rags on, which it held together with
one of its hands. It shivered from head to foot, and its teeth
chattered, and as it stared at me--persecutor, devil, ghost,
whatever it thought me--it made with its whining mouth as if it
were snapping at me, like a worried dog. Intending to give this
ugly object money, I put out my hand to stay it--for it recoiled as
it whined and snapped--and laid my hand upon its shoulder.
Instantly, it twisted out of its garment, like the young man in the
New Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags in my
hands.
Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was wonderful
company. The great waggons of cabbages, with growers' men and boys
lying asleep under them, and with sharp dogs from market-garden
neighbourhoods looking after the whole, were as good as a party.
But one of the worst night sights I know in London, is to be found
in the children who prowl about this place; who sleep in the
baskets, fight for the offal, dart at any object they think they
can lay their their thieving hands on, dive under the carts and
barrows, dodge the constables, and are perpetually making a blunt
pattering on the pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their
naked feet. A painful and unnatural result comes of the comparison
one is forced to institute between the growth of corruption as
displayed in the so much improved and cared for fruits of the
earth, and the growth of corruption as displayed in these all
uncared for (except inasmuch as ever-hunted) savages.
There was early coffee to be got about Covent-garden Market, and
that was more company--warm company, too, which was better. Toast
of a very substantial quality, was likewise procurable: though the
towzled-headed man who made it, in an inner chamber within the
coffee-room, hadn't got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with
sleep that in every interval of toast and coffee he went off anew
behind the partition into complicated cross-roads of choke and
snore, and lost his way directly. Into one of these establishments
(among the earliest) near Bow-street, there came one morning as I
sat over my houseless cup, pondering where to go next, a man in a
high and long snuff-coloured coat, and shoes, and, to the best of
my belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out of his hat a large
cold meat pudding; a meat pudding so large that it was a very tight
fit, and brought the lining of the hat out with it. This
mysterious man was known by his pudding, for on his entering, the
man of sleep brought him a pint of hot tea, a small loaf, and a
large knife and fork and plate. Left to himself in his box, he
stood the pudding on the bare table, and, instead of cutting it,
stabbed it, overhand, with the knife, like a mortal enemy; then
took the knife out, wiped it on his sleeve, tore the pudding
asunder with his fingers, and ate it all up. The remembrance of
this man with the pudding remains with me as the remembrance of the
most spectral person my houselessness encountered. Twice only was
I in that establishment, and twice I saw him stalk in (as I should
say, just out of bed, and presently going back to bed), take out
his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the dagger, and eat his pudding
all up. He was a man whose figure promised cadaverousness, but who
had an excessively red face, though shaped like a horse's. On the
second occasion of my seeing him, he said huskily to the man of
sleep, 'Am I red to-night?' 'You are,' he uncompromisingly
answered. 'My mother,' said the spectre, 'was a red-faced woman
that liked drink, and I looked at her hard when she laid in her
coffin, and I took the complexion.' Somehow, the pudding seemed an
unwholesome pudding after that, and I put myself in its way no
more.
When there was no market, or when I wanted variety, a railway
terminus with the morning mails coming in, was remunerative
company. But like most of the company to be had in this world, it
lasted only a very short time. The station lamps would burst out
ablaze, the porters would emerge from places of concealment, the
cabs and trucks would rattle to their places (the post-office carts
were already in theirs), and, finally, the bell would strike up,
and the train would come banging in. But there were few passengers
and little luggage, and everything scuttled away with the greatest
expedition. The locomotive post-offices, with their great nets--as
if they had been dragging the country for bodies--would fly open as
to their doors, and would disgorge a smell of lamp, an exhausted
clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their bags of letters; the engine
would blow and heave and perspire, like an engine wiping its
forehead and saying what a run it had had; and within ten minutes
the lamps were out, and I was houseless and alone again.
But now, there were driven cattle on the high road near, wanting
(as cattle always do) to turn into the midst of stone walls, and
squeeze themselves through six inches' width of iron railing, and
getting their heads down (also as cattle always do) for tossing-
purchase at quite imaginary dogs, and giving themselves and every
devoted creature associated with them a most extraordinary amount
of unnecessary trouble. Now, too, the conscious gas began to grow
pale with the knowledge that daylight was coming, and straggling
workpeople were already in the streets, and, as waking life had
become extinguished with the last pieman's sparks, so it began to
be rekindled with the fires of the first street-corner breakfast-
sellers. And so by faster and faster degrees, until the last
degrees were very fast, the day came, and I was tired and could
sleep. And it is not, as I used to think, going home at such
times, the least wonderful thing in London, that in the real desert
region of the night, the houseless wanderer is alone there. I knew
well enough where to find Vice and Misfortune of all kinds, if I
had chosen; but they were put out of sight, and my houselessness
had many miles upon miles of streets in which it could, and did,
have its own solitary way. _
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