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.