East London

by Walter Besant

Not much of Wapping survives. The London docks cut out a huge cantle of the parish; the place has since been still further curtailed by the creation of a large recreation ground of the newest type. Some of the remaining streets retain in their name the memory of the gardens and fields of the early settlements; there is Wapping Wall, Green Bank, Rose Lane, Crabtree Lane, Old Gravel Lane, Hermitage Street, Love Lane,—no London suburb is complete without a Love Lane or a Lovers’ Walk,—Cinnamon Street: does this name recall the time of the wooden nutmegs?

The Turn of the Tide on the Lower Thames.

Let me, at this point, introduce you to Raine’s Charity. Did you know that in our East London, as well as in the French village, we have our Rosière? The excellent Raine, who flourished during the last century, built and endowed a school for girls who were trained for domestic service; he also left money for giving, once a year, a purse containing a hundred golden sovereigns, upon her wedding day, to a girl coming from his own school who could show four years’ domestic service with unblemished character. On the occasion when I assisted at this function there was observed—I do not think that the custom has since been abolished—a quaint little ceremony. The wedding was held in the church of St. George’s-in-the-East. This church, a massive structure of stone, built a hundred and fifty years ago, stands a little off a certain famous street once called Ratcliffe Highway. They have changed its name, and shamed it into better ways. When the marriage was celebrated the church was crowded with all the girls, children, and women of the quarter. This spontaneous tribute to the domestic virtues, in a place of which so many cruel things have been alleged, caused a glow in the bosom of the stranger. Indeed, it was a curious spectacle, this intense interest in the reward of the Rosière. The women crowded the seats and filled the galleries; they thronged the great stone porch; they made a lane outside for the passage of the bridal party; they whispered eagerly, without the least sign of scoffing. When the bride, in her white dress, walked through them they gasped, they trembled, the tears came into their eyes. What did they mean—those tears?

After the service the clergyman, with the vestrymen, the bridal party, and the invited guests, marched in procession from the church through the broad churchyard at the back to the vestry hall. With the procession walked the church choir in their surplices. Arrived at the vestry hall, the choir sang an anthem composed in the last century especially for this occasion. The rector of St. George’s then delivered a short oration, congratulating the bride and exhorting the bridegroom; he then placed in the hands of the bridegroom an old-fashioned, long silk purse containing fifty sovereigns at each end. This done, cake and wine were passed round, and we drank to the health of the bride and her bridegroom. The bride, I remember, was a blushing, rosy maiden of two and twenty or so; it was a great day for her,—the one day of all her life,—but she carried herself with a becoming modesty; the bridegroom, a goodly youth, about the same age, was proposing, we understood, something creditable, something superior, in the profession of carter or carman. It is more than ten years ago. I hope that the gift of the incomparable Raine—the anthem said that he was incomparable—has brought good luck to this London Rosière and her bridegroom.

The church of St. George’s-in-the-East stands, as I have said, beside the once infamous street called the Ratcliffe Highway. It was formerly the home of Mercantile Jack when his ship was paid off. Here, where every other house was a drinking den, where there was not the slightest attempt to preserve even a show of deference to respectability, Jack and his friends drank and sang and danced and fought. Portugal Jack and Italy Jack and Lascar Jack have always been very handy with their knives, while no one interfered, and the police could only walk about in little companies of three and four. Within these houses, these windows, these doors, their fronts stained and discolored like a drunkard’s face, there lay men stark and dead after one of these affrays—the river would be their churchyard; there lay men sick unto death, with no one to look after them; and all the time, day and night, the noise of the revelry went on—for what matter a few more sick or dead? The fiddler kept it up, Jack footed it, one Jack after the other, heel and toe with folded arms, to the sailors’ hornpipe; there were girls who could dance him down, there was delectable singing, and the individual thirst was like unto the thirst of Gargantua.

The street, I say, is changed; it has now assumed a countenance of respectability, though it has not yet arrived at the full rigors, so to speak, of virtue. Still the fiddle may be heard from the frequent public house; still Mercantile Jack keeps it up, heel and toe, while his money lasts; still there are harmonic evenings and festive days, but there are changes; one may frequently, such is the degeneracy, walk down the street, now called St. George’s, without seeing a single fight, without being hustled or assaulted, without coming across a man too drunk to lift himself from the kerb. It is a lively, cheerful street, with points which an artist might find picturesque; it is growing in respectability, but it is not yet by any means so clean as it might be, and there are fragrances and perfumes lingering about its open doors and courts which other parts of London will not admit within their boundaries.

There are two squares lying north of this street; in one of them is the Swedish church, where, on a Sunday morning, you may see rows of light-haired, blue-eyed mariners listening to the sermon in their own tongue. In a corner, if you look about, you may come upon the quaintest little Jewish settlement you can possibly imagine; it is an almshouse, with a synagogue and all complete; if you are lucky you will find one of the old bedesmen to show you the place. St. George’s Street, also, rejoices in a large public garden; no street ever wanted one so badly; it is made out of the great churchyard, where dead sailors and dead bargemen and dead roysterers lie by the hundred thousand. And one must never forget Jamrack’s. This world-wide merchant imports wild beasts; in his place—call it not shop or warehouse—you will find pumas and wildcats of all kinds, jackals, foxes, wolves, and wolverines. It is a veritable Ark of Noah.

In the very heart of Wapping stands a group of early eighteenth century buildings, with which every right-minded visitor straightway falls in love; they consist of schools and a church; to these may be added the churchyard—I suppose we may say that a churchyard is built, when it is full of tombs. This sacred area is separated from the church by the road; it is surrounded by an iron railing, and within there is a little coppice of lilac, laburnum, and other shrubs and trees which have grown up between the tombs, so that in the spring and summer the monuments become half-revealed and half-concealed; the sunshine, falling on them, quivering and shifting through the light leaves and blossoms, glorifies the memorials of these dead mariners. The schools are adorned with wooden effigies of boy and girl—stiff and formal in their ancient garb; the church is not without a quiet dignity of its own, such a dignity as I have observed in the simple meeting-house of an American town. In some unexplained manner it seems exactly the sort of church which should have been built for captains, mates, quartermasters, and bo’s’uns of the mercantile marine in the days when captains wore full wigs and waistcoats down to their knees. The master boat-builder and master craftsman, in all the arts and mysteries pertaining to ships and boats, their provision and their gear, were also admitted within these holy walls. The church seems to have been built only for persons of authority; nothing under the rank of quartermaster would sit within these dignified walls. You can see the tombs of former congregations; they are solid piles of stone, signifying rank in the mercantile marine. The tombs are in the churchyard around the church, and in the churchyard on the other side of the road. As you look upon the old-fashioned church, this Georgian church, time runs back; the ancient days return: there stands in the pulpit the clergyman, in his full wig, reading his learned and doctrinal discourse in a full, rich monotone; below him sit the captains and the mates and the quartermasters, with them the master craftsman, all with wigs; the three-cornered hat is hanging on the door of the high pew; for better concentration of thought, the eyes of the honest gentlemen are closed. The ladies, however, sit upright, conscious of the Sunday best; besides, one might, in falling asleep, derange the nice balance of the “head.” When the sermon is over they all walk home in neighborly conversation to the Sunday dinner and the after-dinner bottle of port. The tombs in the churchyard belong to the time when a part of Wapping was occupied by this better class, which has long since vanished, though one or two of the houses remain. Of the baser sort who crowded all the lanes I have spoken already. They did not go to church; always on Sunday the doors stood wide open to them if they would come in, but they did not accept the invitation; they stayed outside; the church received them three times—for the christening, for the wedding, for the burial; whatever their lives have been, the church receives all alike for the funeral service, and asks no questions. After this brief term of yielding to all temptations, after their sprightly course along the primrose path, they are promised, if in the coffin one can hear, a sure and certain hope.