|
From Dickens, American Notes (1842) Let us go on again;
and passing this wilderness of an hotel with stores about its base, like some
continental theatre, or the London Opera House shorn of its colonnade, plunge
into the Five Points. But it is needful, first,
that we take as our escort these two heads of the police, whom you would know
for sharp and well-trained officers if you met them in the Great Desert. So
true it is that certain pursuits, wherever carried on, will stamp men with
the same character. These two might have been begotten, born, and bred in Bow
Street. We have seen no
beggars in the streets by night or day; but of other kinds of strollers
plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, and vice are rife enough where we are going
now. This is the place,
these narrow ways, diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere
with dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here, bear
the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors
have counterparts at home, and all the wide
world over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the
rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem
to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of those
pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright in lieu of
going on all-fours? andwhy
they talk instead of grunting? Page 102
What place is this, to
which the squalid street conducts us? A kind of square of leprous houses,
some of which are attainable only by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies
beyond this tottering flight of steps, that creak
beneath our tread? -- A miserable room, lighted by one dim candle, and
destitute of all comfort, save that which
may be hidden in a wretched bed. Beside it sits a man: his elbows on his
knees: his forehead hidden in his hands. "What ails that man?" asks
the foremost officer. "Fever," he sullenly replies, without looking
up. Conceive the fancies of a fevered brain in such a place as this! Ascend these
pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on the trembling boards, and
grope your way with me into this wolfish den, where neither ray of light nor
breath of air appears to come. A negro lad, startled from his sleep by the
officer's voice -- he knows it well -- but comforted by his assurance that he
has not come on business, officiously bestirs himself to light a candle. The
match flickers for a moment, and shows great mounds of dusky rags upon the
ground; then dies away and leaves a denser darkness than before, if there can
be degrees in such extremes. He stumbles down the stairs, and presently comes
back, shading a flaring taper with his hand. Then the mounds of rags are seen
to be astir, and rise slowly up, and the floor is covered Page 103
Mount up these other
stairs with no less caution (there are traps and pitfalls here for those who
are not so well escorted as ourselves) into the housetop; where the bare
beams and rafters meet overhead, and calm night looks down through the
crevices in the roof. Open the door of one of these cramped hutches full of
sleeping negroes. Pah! They have a charcoal
fire within; there is a smell of singeing clothes, or flesh, so close they
gather round the brazier; and vapours issue forth that blind and suffocate.
From every corner, as you glance about you in these dark retreats, some
figure crawls half awakened, as if the judgment hour were near at hand, and
every obscene grave were giving up its dead. Where dogs would howl to lie,
women, and men, and boys slink off to sleep, forcing the dislodged rats to
move away in quest of better lodgings. Here, too, are lanes
and alleys, paved with mud knee deep: underground chambers, where they dance
and game; the walls bedecked with rough designs of ships, and forts, and
flags, and American Eagles out of number: ruined houses, open to the street,
whence, through wide gaps in the walls, other ruins loom upon the eye, as
though the world of vice and misery had nothing else to show: hideous
tenements which take their name from robbery and murder; all that is
loathsome, drooping, and decayed is here. Our leader has his
hand upon the latch of "Almack's," and
calls to us from the bottom of the steps; for the assembly-room of the
Five-Point fashionables is approached by a descent. Shall we go in? It is but
a moment. 11 Page 104
blue jacket, like a ship's steward, with a thick
gold ring upon his little finger, and round his neck a gleaming, golden
watch-guard. How glad he is to see us! What will we please
to call for? A dance? It shall be done directly, sir: "a regular
break-down." The corpulent black
fiddler, and his friend who plays the tambourine, stamp upon the boarding of
the small raised orchestra in which they sit, and play a lively measure. Five
or six couple come upon the floor, marshalled by a lively young negro, who is the wit
of the assembly, and the greatest dancer known. 12 He never leaves off making
queer faces, and is the delight of all the rest, who grin from ear to ear
incessantly. Among the dancers are two young mulatto girls, with large,
black, drooping eyes, and head-gear after the fashion of the hostess, who are
as shy, or feign to be, as though they never danced before, and so look down
before the visitors, that their partners can see nothing but the long fringed
lashes. But the dance
commences. Every gentleman sets as long as he likes to the opposite lady, and
the opposite lady to him, and all are so long about it that the sport begins
to languish, when suddenly the lively hero dashes in to the rescue. Instantly
the fiddler grins, and goes at it tooth and nail; there is new energy in the
tambourine; new laughter in the dancers; new smiles in the landlady; new
confidence in the landlord; new brightness in the very candles. Single
shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-cut: snapping his fingers, rolling his
eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front,
spinning about on his toes and heels like nothing but the man's fingers on
the tambourine; dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two wooden legs,
two wire legs, two spring legs -- all sorts of legs and no legs -- what is
this to him? And in what walk of life, or dance of life, does man ever get
such stimulating applause as thunders about him, when, having danced his
partner off her feet, and himself too, he finishes by leaping gloriously on
the bar-counter, and calling for something to drink, with the chuckle of a
million of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one inimitable sound? Page 105 The air, even in these
distempered parts, is fresh after the stifling atmosphere of the houses; and
now, as we emerge into a broader street, it blows upon us with a purer
breath, and the stars look bright again. Here are The Tombs once more. The
city watch-house is a part of the building. It follows naturally on the sights
we have just left. Let us see that, and then to bed. What! do you thrust your
common offenders against the police discipline of the town into such holes as
these? Do men and women, against whom no crime is proved, lie here all night
in perfect darkness, surrounded by the noisome vapours which encircle that
flagging lamp you light us with, and breathing this filthy and offensive
stench? Why, such indecent and disgusting dungeons as these cells would bring
disgrace upon the most despotic empire in the world! Look at them, man --
you, who see them every night, and keep the keys. Do you see what they are?
Do you know how drains are made below the streets, and wherein these human
sewers differ, except in being always stagnant? Well, he don't know. He has had five-and-twenty young women
locked up in this very cell at one time, and you'd hardly realise what handsome faces there were among 'em. In God's name! shut the door upon the wretched creature who is in it
now, and put its screen before a place quite unsurpassed in all the vice,
neglect, and devilry of the worst old town in Europe. Are people really left
all night, untried, in those black sties? -- Every night. The watch is set at
seven in the evening. The magistrate opens his court at five in the morning.
That is the earliest hour at which the first prisoner can be released; and if
an officer appear against him, he is not taken out till nine o'clock or ten.
-- But if any one among them die in the interval, as one man did not long
ago? Then he is half eaten by the rats in an hour's time, as that man
was; and there an end. Page 106
What is this
intolerable tolling of great bells, and crashing of wheels, and shouting in
the distance? A fire. And what that deep red light in the opposite direction?
Another fire. And what these charred and blackened walls we stand before? A
dwelling where a fire has been. It was more than hinted, in an official
report, not long ago, that some of these conflagrations were not wholly
accidental, and that speculation and enterprise found a field of exertion,
even in flames: but, be this as it may, there was a fire last night, there
are two to-night, and you may lay an even wager there will be at least one
to-morrow. So, carrying that with us for our comfort, let us say, Good night,
and climb up-stairs to bed. |