Reprinted Pieces

by Dickens, Charles

  the innermost recesses of the worst part of London, in the dead of

  the night - the house is crammed with notorious robbers and

  ruffians - and not a man stirs. No, Bark. They know the weight of

  the law, and they know Inspector Field and Co. too well.

  We leave bully Bark to subside at leisure out of his passion and

  his trousers, and, I dare say, to be inconveniently reminded of

  this little brush before long. Black and Green do ordinary duty

  here, and look serious.

  As to White, who waits on Holborn Hill to show the courts that are

  eaten out of Rotten Gray's Inn, Lane, where other lodging-houses

  are, and where (in one blind alley) the Thieves' Kitchen and

  Seminary for the teaching of the art to children is, the night has

  so worn away, being now

  almost at odds with morning, which is which,

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  that they are quiet, and no light shines through the chinks in the

  shutters. As undistinctive Death will come here, one day, sleep

  comes now. The wicked cease from troubling sometimes, even in this

  life.

  DOWN WITH THE TIDE

  A VERY dark night it was, and bitter cold; the east wind blowing

  bleak, and bringing with it stinging particles from marsh, and

  moor, and fen - from the Great Desert and Old Egypt, may be. Some

  of the component parts of the sharp-edged vapour that came flying

  up the Thames at London might be mummy-dust, dry atoms from the

  Temple at Jerusalem, camels' foot-prints, crocodiles' hatchingplaces,

  loosened grains of expression from the visages of bluntnosed

  sphynxes, waifs and strays from caravans of turbaned

  merchants, vegetation from jungles, frozen snow from the Himalayas.

  O! It was very, very dark upon the Thames, and it was bitter,

  bitter cold.

  'And yet,' said the voice within the great pea-coat at my side,

  'you'll have seen a good many rivers, too, I dare say?'

  'Truly,' said I, 'when I come to think of it, not a few. From the

  Niagara, downward to the mountain rivers of Italy, which are like

  the national spirit - very tame, or chafing suddenly and bursting

  bounds, only to dwindle away again. The Moselle, and the Rhine,

  and the Rhone; and the Seine, and the Saone; and the St. Lawrence,

  Mississippi, and Ohio; and the Tiber, the Po, and the Arno; and the

  - '

  Peacoat coughing as if he had had enough of that, I said no more.

  I could have carried the catalogue on to a teasing length, though,

  if I had been in the cruel mind.

  'And after all,' said he, 'this looks so dismal?'

  'So awful,' I returned, 'at night. The Seine at Paris is very

  gloomy too, at such a time, and is probably the scene of far more

  crime and greater wickedness; but this river looks so broad and

  vast, so murky and silent, seems such an image of death in the

  midst of the great city's life, that - '

  That Peacoat coughed again. He COULD NOT stand my holding forth.

  We were in a four-oared Thames Police Galley, lying on our oars in

  the deep shadow of Southwark Bridge - under the corner arch on the

  Surrey side - having come down with the tide from Vauxhall. We

  were fain to hold on pretty tight, though close in shore, for the

  river was swollen and the tide running down very strong. We were

  watching certain water-rats of human growth, and lay in the deep

  shade as quiet as mice; our light hidden and our scraps of

  conversation carried on in whispers. Above us, the massive iron

  girders of the arch were faintly visible, and below us its

  ponderous shadow seemed to sink down to the bottom of the stream.

  We had been lying here some half an hour. With our backs to the

  wind, it is true; but the wind being in a determined temper blew

  straight through us, and would not take the trouble to go round. I

  would have boarded a fireship to get into action, and mildly

  suggested as much to my friend Pea.

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  'No doubt,' says he as patiently as possible; 'but shore-going

  tactics wouldn't do with us. River-thieves can always get rid of

  stolen property in a moment by dropping it overboard. We want to

  take them WITH the property, so we lurk about and come out upon 'em

  sharp. If they see us or hear us, over it goes.'

  Pea's wisdom being indisputable, there was nothing for it but to

  sit there and be blown through, for another half-hour. The waterrats

  thinking it wise to abscond at the end of that time without

  commission of felony, we shot out, disappointed, with the tide.

  'Grim they look, don't they?' said Pea, seeing me glance over my

  shoulder at the lights upon the bridge, and downward at their long

  crooked reflections in the river.

  'Very,' said I, 'and make one think with a shudder of Suicides.

  What a night for a dreadful leap from that parapet!'

  'Aye, but Waterloo's the favourite bridge for making holes in the

  water from,' returned Pea. 'By the bye - avast pulling, lads! -

  would you like to speak to Waterloo on the subject?'

  My face confessing a surprised desire to have some friendly

  conversation with Waterloo Bridge, and my friend Pea being the most

  obliging of men, we put about, pulled out of the force of the

  stream, and in place of going at great speed with the tide, began

  to strive against it, close in shore again. Every colour but black

  seemed to have departed from the world. The air was black, the

  water was black, the barges and hulks were black, the piles were

  black, the buildings were black, the shadows were only a deeper

  shade of black upon a black ground. Here and there, a coal fire in

  an iron cresset blazed upon a wharf; but, one knew that it too had

  been black a little while ago, and would be black again soon.

  Uncomfortable rushes of water suggestive of gurgling and drowning,

  ghostly rattlings of iron chains, dismal clankings of discordant

  engines, formed the music that accompanied the dip of our oars and

  their rattling in the rowlocks. Even the noises had a black sound

  to me - as the trumpet sounded red to the blind man.

  Our dexterous boat's crew made nothing of the tide, and pulled us

  gallantly up to Waterloo Bridge. Here Pea and I disembarked,

  passed under the black stone archway, and climbed the steep stone

  steps. Within a few feet of their summit, Pea presented me to

  Waterloo (or an eminent toll-taker representing that structure),

  muffled up to the eyes in a thick shawl, and amply great-coated and

  fur-capped.

  Waterloo received us with cordiality, and observed of the night

  that it was 'a Searcher.' He had been originally called the Strand

  Bridge, he informed us, but had received his present name at the

  suggestion of the proprietors, when Parliament had resolved to vote

  three hundred thousand pound for the erection of a monument in

  honour of the victory. Parliament took the hint (said Waterloo,

  with the least flavour of misanthropy) and saved the money. Of

  course the late Duke of Wellington was the first passenger, and of

  c
ourse he paid his penny, and of course a noble lord preserved it

  evermore. The treadle and index at the toll-house (a most

  ingenious contrivance for rendering fraud impossible), were

  invented by Mr. Lethbridge, then property-man at Drury Lane

  Theatre.

  Was it suicide, we wanted to know about? said Waterloo. Ha! Well,

  he had seen a good deal of that work, he did assure us. He had

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  prevented some. Why, one day a woman, poorish looking, came in

  between the hatch, slapped down a penny, and wanted to go on

  without the change! Waterloo suspected this, and says to his mate,

  'give an eye to the gate,' and bolted after her. She had got to

  the third seat between the piers, and was on the parapet just a

  going over, when he caught her and gave her in charge. At the

  police office next morning, she said it was along of trouble and a

  bad husband.

  'Likely enough,' observed Waterloo to Pea and myself, as he

  adjusted his chin in his shawl. 'There's a deal of trouble about,

  you see - and bad husbands too!'

  Another time, a young woman at twelve o'clock in the open day, got

  through, darted along; and, before Waterloo could come near her,

  jumped upon the parapet, and shot herself over sideways. Alarm

  given, watermen put off, lucky escape. - Clothes buoyed her up.

  'This is where it is,' said Waterloo. 'If people jump off straight

  forwards from the middle of the parapet of the bays of the bridge,

  they are seldom killed by drowning, but are smashed, poor things;

  that's what THEY are; they dash themselves upon the buttress of the

  bridge. But you jump off,' said Waterloo to me, putting his forefinger

  in a button-hole of my great-coat; 'you jump off from the

  side of the bay, and you'll tumble, true, into the stream under the

  arch. What you have got to do, is to mind how you jump in! There

  was poor Tom Steele from Dublin. Didn't dive! Bless you, didn't

  dive at all! Fell down so flat into the water, that he broke his

  breast-bone, and lived two days!'

  I asked Waterloo if there were a favourite side of his bridge for

  this dreadful purpose? He reflected, and thought yes, there was.

  He should say the Surrey side.

  Three decent-looking men went through one day, soberly and quietly,

  and went on abreast for about a dozen yards: when the middle one,

  he sung out, all of a sudden, 'Here goes, Jack!' and was over in a

  minute.

  Body found? Well. Waterloo didn't rightly recollect about that.

  They were compositors, THEY were.

  He considered it astonishing how quick people were! Why, there was

  a cab came up one Boxing-night, with a young woman in it, who

  looked, according to Waterloo's opinion of her, a little the worse

  for liquor; very handsome she was too - very handsome. She stopped

  the cab at the gate, and said she'd pay the cabman then, which she

  did, though there was a little hankering about the fare, because at

  first she didn't seem quite to know where she wanted to be drove

  to. However, she paid the man, and the toll too, and looking

  Waterloo in the face (he thought she knew him, don't you see!)

  said, 'I'll finish it somehow!' Well, the cab went off, leaving

  Waterloo a little doubtful in his mind, and while it was going on

  at full speed the young woman jumped out, never fell, hardly

  staggered, ran along the bridge pavement a little way, passing

  several people, and jumped over from the second opening. At the

  inquest it was giv' in evidence that she had been quarrelling at

  the Hero of Waterloo, and it was brought in jealousy. (One of the

  results of Waterloo's experience was, that there was a deal of

  jealousy about.)

  'Do we ever get madmen?' said Waterloo, in answer to an inquiry of

  mine. 'Well, we DO get madmen. Yes, we have had one or two;

  escaped from 'Sylums, I suppose. One hadn't a halfpenny; and

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  because I wouldn't let him through, he went back a little way,

  stooped down, took a run, and butted at the hatch like a ram. He

  smashed his hat rarely, but his head didn't seem no worse - in my

  opinion on account of his being wrong in it afore. Sometimes

  people haven't got a halfpenny. If they are really tired and poor

  we give 'em one and let 'em through. Other people will leave

  things - pocket-handkerchiefs mostly. I HAVE taken cravats and

  gloves, pocket-knives, tooth-picks, studs, shirt-pins, rings

  (generally from young gents, early in the morning), but

  handkerchiefs is the general thing.'

  'Regular customers?' said Waterloo. 'Lord, yes! We have regular

  customers. One, such a worn-out, used-up old file as you can

  scarcely picter, comes from the Surrey side as regular as ten

  o'clock at night comes; and goes over, I think, to some flash house

  on the Middlesex side. He comes back, he does, as reg'lar as the

  clock strikes three in the morning, and then can hardly drag one of

  his old legs after the other. He always turns down the waterstairs,

  comes up again, and then goes on down the Waterloo Road.

  He always does the same thing, and never varies a minute. Does it

  every night - even Sundays.'

  I asked Waterloo if he had given his mind to the possibility of

  this particular customer going down the water-stairs at three

  o'clock some morning, and never coming up again? He didn't think

  THAT of him, he replied. In fact, it was Waterloo's opinion,

  founded on his observation of that file, that he know'd a trick

  worth two of it.

  'There's another queer old customer,' said Waterloo, 'comes over,

  as punctual as the almanack, at eleven o'clock on the sixth of

  January, at eleven o'clock on the fifth of April, at eleven o'clock

  on the sixth of July, at eleven o'clock on the tenth of October.

  Drives a shaggy little, rough pony, in a sort of a rattle-trap armchair

  sort of a thing. White hair he has, and white whiskers, and

  muffles himself up with all manner of shawls. He comes back again

  the same afternoon, and we never see more of him for three months.

  He is a captain in the navy - retired - wery old - wery odd - and

  served with Lord Nelson. He is particular about drawing his

  pension at Somerset House afore the clock strikes twelve every

  quarter. I HAVE heerd say that he thinks it wouldn't be according

  to the Act of Parliament, if he didn't draw it afore twelve.'

  Having related these anecdotes in a natural manner, which was the

  best warranty in the world for their genuine nature, our friend

  Waterloo was sinking deep into his shawl again, as having exhausted

  his communicative powers and taken in enough east wind, when my

  other friend Pea in a moment brought him to the surface by asking

  whether he had not been occasionally the subject of assault and

  battery in the execution of his duty? Waterloo recovering his

  spirits, instantly dashed into a new branch of his subject. We

  learnt how 'both these teeth' - here he pointed to the places where

  two front teeth were not - wer
e knocked out by an ugly customer who

  one night made a dash at him (Waterloo) while his (the ugly

  customer's) pal and coadjutor made a dash at the toll-taking apron

  where the money-pockets were; how Waterloo, letting the teeth go

  (to Blazes, he observed indefinitely), grappled with the apronseizer,

  permitting the ugly one to run away; and how he saved the

  bank, and captured his man, and consigned him to fine and

  imprisonment. Also how, on another night, 'a Cove' laid hold of

  Waterloo, then presiding at the horse-gate of his bridge, and threw

  him unceremoniously over his knee, having first cut his head open

  with his whip. How Waterloo 'got right,' and started after the

  Cove all down the Waterloo Road, through Stamford Street, and round

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  to the foot of Blackfriars Bridge, where the Cove 'cut into' a

  public-house. How Waterloo cut in too; but how an aider and

  abettor of the Cove's, who happened to be taking a promiscuous

  drain at the bar, stopped Waterloo; and the Cove cut out again, ran

  across the road down Holland Street, and where not, and into a

  beer-shop. How Waterloo breaking away from his detainer was close

  upon the Cove's heels, attended by no end of people, who, seeing

  him running with the blood streaming down his face, thought

  something worse was 'up,' and roared Fire! and Murder! on the

  hopeful chance of the matter in hand being one or both. How the

  Cove was ignominiously taken, in a shed where he had run to hide,

  and how at the Police Court they at first wanted to make a sessions

  job of it; but eventually Waterloo was allowed to be 'spoke to,'

  and the Cove made it square with Waterloo by paying his doctor's

  bill (W. was laid up for a week) and giving him 'Three, ten.'

  Likewise we learnt what we had faintly suspected before, that your

  sporting amateur on the Derby day, albeit a captain, can be - 'if

  he be,' as Captain Bobadil observes, 'so generously minded' -

  anything but a man of honour and a gentleman; not sufficiently

  gratifying his nice sense of humour by the witty scattering of

  flour and rotten eggs on obtuse civilians, but requiring the

  further excitement of 'bilking the toll,' and 'Pitching into'

  Waterloo, and 'cutting him about the head with his whip;' finally

  being, when called upon to answer for the assault, what Waterloo

  described as 'Minus,' or, as I humbly conceived it, not to be