THE GATE OF LONDON
By J. S. COLLIS
fiNLY when a great fire breaks out in the Docks kJ are Londoners reminded of the existence of that portion of the Thames which provides the onlooker at any hour of the day or night with the most fascinating spectacle he will ever see. Nothing holds the attention quite so much : I say that coldly and with deliberation, having once observed it, not as an inhabitant, but as an outsider, for sixteen months from the back of a public- house in Rotherhithe Street.
My window opened straight on to the river, the water flowing about twenty feet below the level of the sill. Opposite were the high, unnatural cliffs of Wapping. Far to the West stood Tower Bridge blackened by the sunset and brightened by the dawn. Not for one hour was my view the same. I saw it under the incoming light of day, I knew it in the pause and hush of midnight. I saw it in the dusk : at which hour I wondered most. It was then that the warehouses across the water were turned into cliffs, and doubling their height as they darkened, 'became the inky coastline of another Albion. Then rose the scattered artificial lights in the misty blue of evening. This was the magic moment : when the light of heaven and the light of man first met upon th water. In turn, the blue, the darker blue, the dark. the deeper dark, the, night—while each lamp dreW forth its shining liquid path. Informing the scene with another movement and another life barges, tugs, and big vessels with green, red, and yellow lights- (sometimes hanging high up on their masts), went by : the purir and the throb of their engines, and the noise of the water washing whitely against their prows, were emotional Sounds.
At low tide the river was quietly. deserted ; but as it widened with the rising water; then life began. Crazies; like super-fishing rods thrown from the 'warehouses,' hooked their goods. There was much hammering and chain-rattling. Tower Bridge would begin to open and shut its arms to admit or release the big ships. Barge4- were continuously tugged up and down. Ferries crossed: From time to time through the middle of this traffic old sailing-boats with enormous brown sails would tack their way. How they matched their surroundingS ! How they belonged to the flowerless, man-built banks"! Ancient mothers of all craft, how much more beautiful than any racing yacht. They' are not clean.' They are not poised ' and perfect. They have no speed. See that one over there ! its red-brown sheet patched with the breeches of the man at the tiller. See that one fUrther off ! its sail soot-coloured, its body gnarled and blackened with age and struggle, the water nearly flowing over its side into the cabin. Why so lovely ? What then is loveliness ? Water, wood, and canvas, movement and toil—arc these thy most gorgeous robes, goddess of Beauty ?
One very foggy evening, on entering my room I stood still, startled—and did not turn on the light. I conk! no longer look out on to the river. All was gone. From the dark seclusion of the strange den where I stood in stillness, I saw no Thames. I saw the Styx. I saw the nameless land. The window opened on to the deepest, densest fog, a yellow wall with the suspicion of water somewhere in the' gloom. It stood against the glass, an insubstantial block. As I watched, I saw three lights, red, green, and yellow, moving through that land— attached to nothing, hanging to nothing, belonging to nothing. There was no suggestion of any substance that the hand of flesh. could touch.. As I gazed at them, slowly the green light faded, slowly the red light went out, till only the yellow one remained, getting fainter and fainter as it receded in the mist, until at last its tiny speck faltered, and was lost.
On the other side of the house flowed Rotherhithe Street. It is One of the longest- streets in London.. It margins the Thames for many miles, though one seldom sees the river owing to the warehouse precipices on each side. Sudden clefts, however, divide them at intervals, through which the water can be seen—clefts ending in steps down to the bottom. Tributary lanes continually run into it from the other side—thin, high- walled alleys. In the evening the solitary lamp-posts give these walls their opportunity, and beauty interferes at every turn, and the damp stones glisten in the reeking air. Very few pass through the long street then : there is a hush over everything : there are no stray visitors in this laud : it lives alone. A step is easily heard and will echo down this lost street that has no houses. But the :tributary paths overflow with life. Boys of uncertain age shout loudly ; older girls cling and swing together as they walk singing without a song ; a small girl shrieks Eddieeeeeeeeeeeee ! and is not answered ; other voices in the distance are raised in chorus, without a tune. . Life froths round the innumerable pubs. It is not known when the children go to bed. I was particularly attracted by one playground. It was at the end of an inhabited gulley called Elephant Lane (perhaps because it was just wide enough for an elephant to walk through). It was quite a large opening with a pub. at one end, and heaven knows what ghostly walls around. It made a, space of black clay about the size of a tennis-lawn. Here no shaft of sun ever pierced, nor flower bloomed, nor one seed of grass grew up. On this piece of black putty the children played and shrieked merrily as on a summer beach.
Rotherhithe Street ! street of warehouses, of recurring pubs. and watery glimpses, unearthly street ! Silent, empty, cobbled, cuffed-in path, by day : by night a greater silence on the gleaming filthy stones, an echoing chasm where no mountains are—a gorge lit up by lamp-posts.
One evening I turned off from the street and went through a cleft that led to steps going down to the river bed. The tide was out. I stood on the shore. All was silent. The moon shone on the quiet water. No steamer moved. The lights were still. Black, weathered shapes lay fixed in darkness. Everything was old and tried. Here a promise had been fulfilled. Here was reality and peace.
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