already waiting over in the region of Ratcliffe Highway, to show
the houses where the sailors dance.
I should like to know where Inspector Field was born. In Ratcliffe
Highway, I would have answered with confidence, but for his being
equally at home wherever we go. HE does not trouble his head as I
do, about the river at night. HE does not care for its creeping,
black and silent, on our right there, rushing through sluice-gates,
lapping at piles and posts and iron rings, hiding strange things in
its mud, running away with suicides and accidentally drowned bodies
faster than midnight funeral should, and acquiring such various
experience between its cradle and its grave. It has no mystery for
HIM. Is there not the Thames Police!
Accordingly, Williams leads the way. We are a little late, for
some of the houses are already closing. No matter. You show us
plenty. All the landlords know Inspector Field. All pass him,
freely and good-humouredly, wheresoever he wants to go. So
thoroughly are all these houses open to him and our local guide,
that, granting that sailors must be entertained in their own way –
as I suppose they must, and have a right to be – I hardly know how
such places could be better regulated. Not that I call the company
very select, or the dancing very graceful – even so graceful as
that of the German Sugar Bakers, whose assembly, by the Minories,
we stopped to visit – but there is watchful maintenance of order in
every house, and swift expulsion where need is. Even in the midst
of drunkenness, both of the lethargic kind and the lively, there is
sharp landlord supervision, and pockets are in less peril than out
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
of doors. These houses show, singularly, how much of the
picturesque and romantic there truly is in the sailor, requiring to
be especially addressed. All the songs (sung in a hailstorm of
halfpence, which are pitched at the singer without the least
tenderness for the time or tune – mostly from great rolls of copper
carried for the purpose – and which he occasionally dodges like
shot as they fly near his head) are of the sentimental sea sort.
All the rooms are decorated with nautical subjects. Wrecks,
engagements, ships on fire, ships passing lighthouses on iron-bound
coasts, ships blowing up, ships going down, ships running ashore,
men lying out upon the main-yard in a gale of wind, sailors and
ships in every variety of peril, constitute the illustrations of
fact. Nothing can be done in the fanciful way, without a thumping
boy upon a scaly dolphin.
How goes the night now? Past one. Black and Green are waiting in
Whitechapel to unveil the mysteries of Wentworth Street. Williams,
the best of friends must part. Adieu!
Are not Black and Green ready at the appointed place? O yes! They
glide out of shadow as we stop. Imperturbable Black opens the cabdoor;
Imperturbable Green takes a mental note of the driver. Both
Green and Black then open each his flaming eye, and marshal us the
way that we are going.
The lodging-house we want is hidden in a maze of streets and
courts. It is fast shut. We knock at the door, and stand hushed
looking up for a light at one or other of the begrimed old lattice
windows in its ugly front, when another constable comes up –
supposes that we want ‘to see the school.’ Detective Sergeant
meanwhile has got over a rail, opened a gate, dropped down an area,
overcome some other little obstacles, and tapped at a window. Now
returns. The landlord will send a deputy immediately.
Deputy is heard to stumble out of bed. Deputy lights a candle,
draws back a bolt or two, and appears at the door. Deputy is a
shivering shirt and trousers by no means clean, a yawning face, a
shock head much confused externally and internally. We want to
look for some one. You may go up with the light, and take ’em all,
if you like, says Deputy, resigning it, and sitting down upon a
bench in the kitchen with his ten fingers sleepily twisting in his