“The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear with hearing.”
CETTE
A pure stretch of sky; a flat sweep of sea; cobalt-blue, rich and opaque, pervading all things. In the harbour, battered, blue-painted barges, their decks loaded with oranges; bargemen in blue blouses, asleep across the glaring pavement; and along the quay, indefinitely, as far as the eye can reach, row upon row of barrels, repeating from their up-turned ends the same stifling note of colour.... The sea licks the jetty wall, lazily, rhythmically: everywhere a sensation of listless oppression, of lifeless torpor....
ON CHELSEA EMBANKMENT
I have sat there, and seen the winter days finish their short-spanned lives, and all the globes of light, crimson, emerald, and pallid yellow, start, one by one, out of the russet fog that creeps up the river.
But I like the place best on these hot summer nights, when the sky hangs thick with stifled colour, and the stars shine small and shyly, for then the pulse of the city is hushed, and the scales of the water flicker golden and oily under the watching regiment of lamps. The bridge clasps its gaunt arms tight from bank to bank, and the shuffle of a retreating figure sounds loud and alone in the quiet....
There, if you wait long enough, you may hear the long wail of the siren, that seems to tell of the anguish of London, till a train hurries to throttle its dying note, roaring and rushing, thundering and blazing through the night, tossing its white crest of smoke, charging across the bridge, into the dark country beyond....
PLEASANT COURT
It is known only to the inhabitants of the quarter. To find it, you must penetrate a winding passage, wedged between high walls of dismal brick. Turn to the right by the blue-lettered advertisement of Kop’s Ale, and again to the left through the two posts, and you come to Pleasant-court. And when you are there, you can go no farther; for at the far end there is no way out.