tip. He doffed his cap and strode off with his trolley to find another customer. In the gentlemen’s conveniences I changed, swapping my tailored suit for a pair of rough workmen’s trousers, an old collarless shirt, a flat cap and steel-tipped boots. Folding my smart clothes into one of my cases, I removed a ripped canvas bag and stuffed it with a few essentials. I also removed a black leather bag which contained my paints and materials as well as a collection of knives and a newly sharpened saw. After putting my two cases into storage, I headed out through the main doors on to the busy street.
It was hot and sticky still, the air heavy and cloying. A storm was brewing. I went to hail a cab and found myself discombobulated. The cab slowed, but then the driver took one look at me and whipped on his horse. I had to smile at the efficacy of my own disguise. Turning, I walked a few yards back along the road and found another hansom waiting for passengers from the station. When I approached the cab driver and told him where I wanted to go, he gave me a puzzled look and was about to pull away without a reply when I told him I would pay double in advance.
‘Show us it then, matey boy,’ he said.
I pulled out half a crown and handed it to him. ‘Righty-ho, sir,’ he said. ‘Jump in.’ He flicked his whip and we were away.
I sat back as the cab wove a course through the busy streets, and simply soaked up the atmosphere of this incomparable place. London … the greatest city in the world by far. This was a city the Emperors of Rome would have envied. I know, dear lady, that you have yourself been to London many times. Your husband told me this. But I also know that you have led a rather cloistered life in the Berkshire countryside, so you must indulge me in my recollections of my sense of rapture upon finding myself here a free agent at last. Here I was, newly graduated from Oxford, a young man with very clear ideas of what he was about to do. No wonder I was excited.
The storm broke as the cab bounced over the cobblestones of Tottenham Court Road. From inside my cab, I could see pedestrians scatter for cover as thunder hammered overhead and lightning ripped open the sky. I heard the driver seated on his box behind me yelling at the horse and then his whip crack above the beast’s rump.
The journey seemed interminable. Even my enthusiasm for the place began to wear thin. I had arranged my accommodation already, contacting a landlord through an advertisement in the
My new lodgings were on Wentworth Street. I rented a single room above a corn-chandler’s shop. The shopkeeper, a Mr Girthwright, owned the building. His shop was crammed full of bird cages, broody hens, baskets of eggs, seed and corn. It was more farm than shop, and the stink of bird excrement and rotting straw seeped through the ceiling into the rooms above.
The room itself was wonderfully squalid. Just what I was looking for. I needed to soak up the atmosphere, melt into the crowd, become part of the local landscape. I was priming myself, making ready for my project, my grand work, the one that would make my name immortal.
It was a mean room, a low ceiling surmounting brown walls that had been papered last when Victoria was a young woman. The floor was of bare boards. There was a narrow bed, a rusted gas mantle, no form of heating. A single ornament hung on the wall above the bed: a crucifix. But, as crude and unprepossessing a place as this was, I knew from my studies of the area that this house was one of the better lodgings to be found here. It was not uncommon for four families to share a place this size, and the exorbitant price demanded for it — three shillings a week — was justified if I were to have my privacy. That was the last thing I could afford to sacrifice. I dropped my bag to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed, looking around my new home, feeling immensely pleased with myself.
By the time I left the building, the sky had turned russet, casting a striking light across the buildings and the still-wet streets. The rain had passed and the stink of the place was reasserting itself. It was a smell I had never before experienced, a blend of so many odours: soot, tar, rotten food and human waste. There was also a salty tang to the air, the southerly breeze wafting into the narrow streets the stench of the river.
I had not visited a place even remotely like this, and it thrilled me inordinately. I knew all the stories about this part of London. How the poor had been expelled from the Rookeries around St Giles to the west of the City, their old slums razed. The countless, faceless hordes of bedraggled humanity had swept eastward just a few miles and turned the East End of London into the cesspit it now was. It was, dear lady, Hell on Earth, a place Londoners refer to as ‘the Stew’, and I loved it immediately.
How do I begin to express its unique atmosphere, especially to one so well bred and closeted as your good self? I’ve tried to convey the smell, but really this was just one element in the overall experience. Indeed, one could almost describe the process of walking out of my lodgings and on to the street as something of an overloading of the senses, for everything about it piqued and challenged my perceptions.
Immediately outside the door to my lodgings, a pieman had set up. He had placed a small box-shaped container on short metal legs on the cobblestones. On top of this lay a row of meat pies kept warm by a small fire burning inside the box. The pieman wore a short jacket and a dirty kerchief. His top hat was pushed back at a rakish angle and he wore a brown-smeared apron about his waist. A woman stood beside him. She looked ill, with pinched cheeks and dark hollows beneath her eyes. Immediately in front of the pie stand stood a young boy in a cloth cap, calling for customers. He was crouching on one knee and held a pair of coins in his hand which he tossed into the air. ‘Toss and buy,’ he called, inviting customers to have a turn at guessing which way the coins fell while they waited for their pie.
It was the time of the evening when the streets were beginning to fill. The few residents who had jobs were returning from their labours, and others, the prostitutes or ‘brides’ as I knew they were called by the locals, were just about to start their evening’s work.
The workmen looked particularly bedraggled. I saw a young man, his face as pale as death, hair already thinning, eyes hollow. He almost knocked my shoulder as he swayed, half-drunk, along the narrow pavement. I caught the stench of him, fish and brine, and I knew that he was a waterman, one of those who pulled corpses from the Thames in the hope of finding something valuable, be it a farthing sewn into a seam or a gold tooth pulled from a corpse.
Crossing a lane that led on to Whitechapel Road, a group of four exhausted figures passed by. These were paupers on their way from the labour yard where those without any gainful employment spent twelve hours a day breaking stones and rocks for a few pennies. Then a more colourful sight: a ‘budgerigar man’, a slight fellow in an off-white top hat standing behind a hastily erected table covered with a frayed cloth. Four budgerigars perched along his outstretched arm. On the table top lay four cards. ‘Guess the card and win yourself a night out!’ the man called as I approached. I ignored him, but watched fascinated as a young couple stepped up.
The girl was giggling as her male friend offered the budgerigar man a farthing. ‘Which one would the lady like to choose?’ the man behind the table quizzed, ogling her. ‘Could be your lucky night, my darlin’.’ The girl tittered stupidly and nuzzled up to her beau. The young man chose for her, second from the left. The budgerigar man pocketed the money and lowered his arm to allow one of the birds to hop on to the table. The budgerigar paraded importantly up and down next to the cards, then stopped and pecked at one of them: the second from the left. The woman squealed and threw her hands to her mouth. I walked on, wondering how many times the budgerigar man would let the couple win before he turned the tables on them.
Now, dear lady, you must not think me a completely idle fellow because this little exploratory trip was serving a definite purpose. I was heading somewhere and I knew exactly where it was. My destination was the Pavilion, or the ‘Pav’ as the locals preferred, a music hall of the most wretchedly sordid kind, but an entirely suitable place of entertainment for the residents of Hell.
How do I begin to conjure up a clear portrayal of the Pav? It would be much easier for me to paint the place. But I will try. I want you to have every detail.
The front of the building gave no clue as to what went on inside. It looked like a simple, decent theatre. But beyond the doors, the place was a haven for the lower orders. Great rough wooden tables ran the entire length of the main hall, and upon either side of these stretched benches. By nine each evening every single space on the benches was taken, beer mugs were constantly refilled with cheap, watered-down ale, and the venue burst into
