IV
THE WALL
IV
THE WALL
I DO not mean the old wall of London, that which was built by the Romans, was rebuilt by Alfred, was repaired and maintained at great cost until the sixteenth century, when it began to be neglected, as it was no longer of any use in the defense of the City. For two hundred years more the gates still stood, but the wall was pulled down and built upon, no one interfering. That wall is gone, save for fragments here and there. I speak of another wall, and one of even greater importance.
No one knows when this other wall was first built. It was so early that all record of its building has been lost. It is the wall by which the low-lying marshes of the Thames, once overflowed by every high tide, were protected from the river and converted into pastures and meadow-land and plow-land. It is the wall which runs all along the north bank of the river and is carried round the marshy Essex shores and round those Essex islands which were once broad expanses of mud at low tide, and at high tide shallow and useless stretches of water. It protects also the south bank wherever the marsh prevails. It has been a work of the highest importance, to London first, and to the country next. It has converted a vast malarious belt of land into a fertile country, and it has made East London possible, because a great part of East London is built upon the reclaimed marsh, now drained and dry. In order to understand what the wall means, what it is, what it has done, and what it is doing, we must get beyond the houses and consider it as it runs along the riverside, with fields on the left hand and the flowing water many feet higher than the fields on the right.
In order to get at the wall, then, we must take the train to Barking, about eight miles from London Bridge. This ancient village, once the seat of a rich nunnery, some remains of which you may still see there, is on the little river Roding; we walk down its banks to its confluence with the Thames. There, after suffering a while from the fumes of certain chemical works, we find ourselves on the wall, with no houses before us; we leave the works behind us, and we step out upon the most curious walk that one may find within the four seas that encompass our island.
No one ever walks upon this wall; once beyond the chemical works we are in the most lonely spot in the whole of England; no one is curious about it; no one seems to know that this remarkable construction, extending for about a hundred and fifty miles, even exists; you will see no one in the meadows that lie protected by the wall; you may walk mile after mile along it in a solitude most strange and most mysterious. Even the steamer which works her noisy way up the broad river, even the barge with its brown sail, crawling slowly up the stream with the flowing tide, does not destroy the sense of silence or that of solitude. We seem not to hear the screw of the steamer or even the scream of the siren; overhead the lark sings; there are no other birds visible about the treeless fields; the tinkle of a sheep-bell reminds one of Dartmoor and its silent hillsides.
Presently there falls upon the pilgrim a strange feeling of mystery. The wall belongs to all the centuries which have known London; it is a part of the dead past; it speaks to him of things that have been; it reminds him of the Vikings and the Danes when they came sweeping up the river in their long, light ships, the shields hanging outside, the fair-haired, blue-eyed fighting men thirsting for the joy of battle; they are on their way to besiege London; they will pull down part of the bridge, but they will not take the City. The fresh breeze that follows with the flood reminds him of the pageant and procession, the splendid pageant, the never-ending procession, of the trade which is the strength and the pride and the wealth of London, which has been passing before this wall for all these centuries, and always, as it passes now, unseen and unregarded, because no one ever stands upon the wall to see it.