Chapter Thirty One.
A Weird Place.
Wondering whether Molly told the truth when she declared that she had never been false since the last parting at Wapping Old Stairs, and forming our own opinion upon the matter in a way decidedly unfavourable towards the trowsers washing, grog-making lady, in consequence of comparisons made with the feline damsels lurking at the corners of the courts, I came to an open door. Then without pausing to think that comparisons are odious, I confronted a pluffy-looking old gentleman busily engaged in building leaning Towers of Pisa with the bronze coinage of our realm. He was a gentleman of a subdued jovial expression of countenance, evidently not overburdened with toil, from the jaunty way in which he shifted from his left to his right foot, took my penny and allowed the turnstile to give its “click, click;” when passing through a pair of swing doors, I stood in a sort of dirty-looking whispering gallery, gazing down upon what appeared to be a sham chalet, minus the stones upon the roof. Right, left, and in front were painted views of sea-ports and landscapes, all looking like the dark half of that portrait exhibited by the gentleman who cleans and restores paintings; while assailing the nostrils was a peculiar odour something like the essence of stale theatre bottled and buried for many years in a damp cellar.
But there were stairs innumerable to descend before I could enter the famed tunnel of the Thames; and then, after a rat like progress, re-appear in Rotherhithe.
Lower, lower, lower, with a sense of depression attacking one at every step, I persevered till I reached the bottom, to be assailed by a loud man sitting in the gas-lit chalet, which displayed the well-known lens of the popular penny peep-show of our youth. And ’twas even so, for in a wild crescendo, which rose to a roar when refusing to listen to the voice of the charmer I passed on, the land man called upon me to come and see “all these beautiful views” for the low charge of one penny.
And I wouldn’t.
No; though his appeal ended with a regular snap, and came after me like the voice of the giant from his cave when longing for John Bunyan’s pilgrims—I would not; but entered the cellar-like tunnel, and stood gazing along the gloomy, doleful vista, made doubly depressing by the stringent order that no smoking was allowed. Why it would have been a blessing to the place; and done a little at all events to take off the cellary flavour which greeted the palate. For the place was decidedly cellary, and looked as if a poor tenant had just quitted the house above, leaving nothing but a cleanly-swept place without vestige of wine or coal.
Dull, echoing, and gloomy, a place where the suction power of a pneumatic engine would be a blessing, it was melancholy to peer through arch after arch at the side tunnel, now turned into a large lumber room; while at about every second or third arch there was a gas-lit stall, where melancholy, saddened people presided over divers subfluvial ornaments, ranged in rows with a few dreary toys—evidently things which nobody ever bought, for their aspect was enough to startle any well-regulated child. They seemed the buried remains of playthings and chimney ornaments of the past—the very fossils of a Camberwell fair stall. Upon one gloomy pillar was inscribed “Temple of Amusement;” but no amusement was there; while, if the words had announced that it was the chamber of torture, less surprise would have been excited. Amusement! in a place that actually smelt of racks, thumbscrews, and scavenger’s daughters; ay! and of the parent scavenger as well.
At every gas-lit spot one expected to see coffins, from the crypt-like pillars and smells; but, no; where there was not a dreary, whitewashed blank, appeared another stall. On one appeared the notice, “Hier spricht man Deutsche.” Yes, it was a fact, “Deutsche,” and not a ventriloquistal tongue, a bowels of the earth speech, as gnomish.
On still, till there was a cellar vista front and rear, and a sensation upon one of having been in a railway accident, and escaped into the tunnel, while with a shiver one listened for the noise of the approaching trains, and paused to see whether of the lines, up or down, ’twas on. And now an oasis in the great desert. “Refreshments!” a real refreshment room in the long cellar. The first refreshment was for the eye, and that organ rested upon funereal yew decorating the vault-like aisle, while paper roses starred its gloomy green. And the refreshments for the internal economy? There were cards with names of wines upon them, and a melancholy person, most un-Ganymedean of aspect; but who could eat or drink in so depressing a spot, without forced in such a nether region to partake of a diabolical dish presented hot by a tailed imp, and consisting of brimstone, sans treacle?
Again onward, and more refreshments: a coffee room where coffee was not, and the place savouring of mushroom spawn. And again onward, to be startled by an apparition, back from his arch, a very gnome, busy at some fiery task—of what? Glassblowing, and spinning strange silky skeins from his glowing light.
More stalls, more Tunbridge and alabaster fossils, more echoes, more commands not to smoke, more gas light, and more desolate-looking people. Had I an enemy I would delude him into speculating in a stall below there; and then laugh in triumph at the wreck he would soon become, for this must be the home of melancholy mania. And now I stood at last in the southern approach, almost a fac-simile of its Wapping brother: the same smell, the same staircases, the same pictures, but no chalet. So back I turned to make my escape at the other end, which I reached in safety, passed the giant in his cave, a monster who lives upon the bronze extracted from unwary passers-by; and then reaching the top of the many stairs I stood once more gazing at the mouldy pictures, and the foul, fungus-furred wall. Fancy the pictures of the four seasons facing you in an atmosphere which resembled the whole four boiled down, and then served up skimmed, while the pot has boiled over furiously, so as to mingle hydrogen in excess with the smell.
Then with the shout of the chalet giant lingering in my ears, and a sensation as though I were an English Tam O’ Shanter on foot, with the ghosts of all the poor wretches drowned while making the ghastly bore in full pursuit, I passed through the moving doors which said “way out;” composed myself; and walked calmly through the egress turnstile, though the pluffy man looked at me as if he thought I had burglarious intentions, and ought to be searched for fossil pincushions; and then I stood once more in the full light of day.
Of course if ever I travel by East London Line in days to come, I must resign myself to fate, and allow my person to be whistled and shrieked through; but saving such an occasion as that, in the words of Jerry Cruncher, I say—“Never no more—never no more,” will I venture through the melancholy cellar; while in my own I say, that I’ll wager that no man dare walk through at the stilly midnight hour, with the gas extinguished, and none to hear him while he hurries his echoing steps—at least I’m sure that I would not.