Welcome to the second post in my blog series on Fir-Flower Tablets: Poems Translated from the Chinese by Florence Ayscough and American poet Amy Lowell. In this post, I’ve continued to excerpt from Ayscough’s excellent introduction to the poems.
It will be observed that I have said practically nothing about religion. The reason is partly that the three principal religions practised by the Chinese are either so well known, as Buddhism, for example, or so difficult to describe, as Taoism and the ancient religion of China now merged in the teachings of Confucius; partly that none of them could be profitably compressed into the scope of this introduction; but chiefly because the subject of religion, in the poems here translated, is generally referred to in its superstitious aspects alone. The superstitions which have grown up about Taoism particularly are innumerable. I have dealt with a number of these in the notes to the poems in which they appear.
Certain supernatural personages, without a knowledge of whom much of the poetry would be unintelligible, I have set down in the following list:
Hsien Immortals who live in the Taoist Paradises. Human beings may attain “Hsien-ship,” or Immortality, by living a life of contemplation in the hills. In translating the term, we have used the word “Immortals.”
Shên Beneficent beings who inhabit the higher regions. They are kept extremely busy attending to their duties as tutelary deities of the roads, hills, rivers, etc., and it is also their function to intervene and rescue deserving people from the attacks of their enemies.
Kuei A proportion of the souls of the departed who inhabit the “World of Shades,” a region resembling this world, which is the “World of Light,” in every particular, with the important exception that it has no sunshine. Kindly kuei are known, but the influence generally suggested is an evil one. They may only return to the World of Light between sunset and sunrise, except upon the fifth day of the Fifth Month (June), when they are free to come during the time known as the “hour of the horse,” from eleven a.m. to one p.m.
Yao Kuai A class of fierce demons who live in the wild regions of the Southwest and delight in eating the flesh of human beings.
There are also supernatural creatures whose names carry a symbolical meaning. A few of them are:
Ch’i Lin A composite animal, somewhat resembling the fabulous unicorn, whose arrival is a good omen. He appears when sages are born.
Dragon A symbol of the forces of Heaven, also the emblem of Imperial power. Continually referred to in poetry as the steed which transports a philosopher who has attained Immortality to his home in the Western Paradise.
Fêng Huang A glorious bird, symbol of the Empress, therefore often associated with the dragon. The conception of this bird is probably based on the Argus pheasant. It is described as possessing every grace and beauty. A Chinese author, quoted by F. W. Williams in “The Middle Kingdom,” writes: “It resembles a wild swan before and a unicorn behind; it has the throat of a swallow, the bill of a cock, the neck of a snake, the tail of a fish, the forehead of a crane, the crown of a mandarin drake, the stripes of a dragon, and the vaulted back of a tortoise. The feathers have five colours which are named after the five cardinal virtues, and it is five cubits in height; the tail is graduated like the pipes of a gourd-organ, and its song resembles the music of the instrument, having five modulations.” Properly speaking, the female is Fêng, the male Huang, but the two words are usually given in combination to denote the species. Someone, probably in desperation, once translated the combined words as “phœnix,” and this term has been employed ever since. It conveys, however, an entirely wrong impression of the creature. To Western readers, the word “phœnix” suggests a bird which, being consumed by fire, rises in a new birth from its own ashes. The Fêng Huang has no such power, it is no symbol of hope or resurrection, but suggests friendship and affection of all sorts. Miss Lowell and I have translated the name as “crested love-pheasant,” which seems to us to convey a better idea of the beautiful Fêng Huang, the bird which brings happiness.
Luan A supernatural bird sometimes confused with the above. It is a sacred creature, connected with fire, and a symbol of love and passion, of the relation between men and women.
Chien The “paired-wings bird,” described in Chinese books as having but one wing and one eye, for which reason two must unite for either of them to fly. It is often referred to as suggesting undying affection.
Real birds and animals also have symbolical attributes. I give only three:
Crane Represents longevity, and is employed, as is the dragon, to transport those who have attained to Immortality to the Heavens.
Yuan Yang The exquisite little mandarin ducks, an unvarying symbol of conjugal fidelity. Li T’ai-po often alludes to them and declares that, rather than be separated, they would “prefer to die ten thousand deaths, and have their gauze-like wings torn to fragments.”
Wild Geese Symbols of direct purpose, their flight being always in a straight line. As they follow the sun’s course, allusions to their departure suggest Spring, to their arrival, Autumn.
A complete list of the trees and plants endowed with symbolical meanings would be almost endless. Those most commonly employed in poetry in a suggestive sense are:
Ch’ang P’u A plant growing in the Taoist Paradise and much admired by the Immortals, who are the only beings able to see its purple blossoms. On earth, it is known as the sweet flag, and has the peculiarity of never blossoming. It is hung on the lintels of doors on the fifth day of the Fifth Month to ward off the evil influences which may be brought by the kuei on their return to this world during the “hour of the horse.”
Peony Riches and prosperity.
Lotus Purity. Although it rises from the mud, it is bright and spotless.
Plum-blossom Literally “the first,” it being the first of the “hundred flowers” to open. It suggests the beginnings of things, and is also one of the “three friends” who do not fear the Winter cold, the other two being the pine and the bamboo.
Lan A small epidendrum, translated in this book as “spear-orchid.” It is a symbol for noble men and beautiful, refined women. Confucius compared the Chün Tzŭ, Princely or Superior Man, to this little orchid with its delightful scent. In poetry, it is also used in reference to the Women’s Apartments and everything connected with them, suggesting, as it does, the extreme of refinement.
Chrysanthemum Fidelity and constancy. In spite of frost, its flowers continue to bloom.
Ling Chih Longevity. This fungus, which grows at the roots of trees, is very durable when dried.
Pine Longevity, immutability, steadfastness.
Bamboo This plant has as many virtues as it has uses, the principal ones are modesty, protection from defilement, unchangeableness.
Wu-t’ung A tree whose botanical name is sterculia platanifolia. Its only English name seems to be “umbrella-tree,” which has proved so unattractive in its context in the poems that we have left it untranslated. It is a symbol for integrity, high principles, great sensibility. When “Autumn stands,” on August seventh, although it is still to all intents and purposes Summer, the wu-t’ung tree drops one leaf. Its wood, which is white, easy to cut, and very light, is the only kind suitable for making that intimate instrument which quickly betrays the least emotion of the person playing upon it—the ch’in, or table-lute.
Willow A prostitute, or any very frivolous person. Concubines writing to their lords often refer to themselves under this figure, in the same spirit of self-depreciation which prompts them to employ the euphemism, “Unworthy One,” instead of the personal pronoun. Because of its lightness and pliability, it conveys also the idea of extreme vitality.
Peach-blossom Beautiful women and ill-success in life. The first suggestion, on account of the exquisite colour of the flower; the second, because of its perishability.
Picture of Peach Blossoms by Giuseppe Castiglione / Láng Shìníng. See my previous post about his work.
Peach-tree Longevity. This fruit is supposed to ripen once every three thousand years on the trees of Paradise, and those who eat of this celestial species never die.
Mulberry Utility. Also suggests a peaceful hamlet. Its wood is used in the making of bows and the kind of temple-drums called mo yü—wooden fish. Its leaves feed the silk-worms.
Plantain Sadness and grief. It is symbolical of a heart which is not “flat” or “level,” as the Chinese say, not open or care-free, but of one which is “tightly rolled.” The sound of rain on its leaves is very mournful, therefore an allusion to the plantain always means sorrow. Planted outside windows already glazed with silk, its heavy green leaves soften the glaring light of Summer, and it is often used for this purpose.
***
Nothing has been more of a stumbling-block to translators than the fact that the Chinese year—which is strictly lunar, with an intercalary month added at certain intervals—begins a month later than ours; or, to be more exact, it is calculated from the first new moon after the sun enters Aquarius, which brings the New Year at varying times from the end of January to the middle of February. For translation purposes, however, it is safe to count the Chinese months as always one later by our calendar than the number given would seem to imply. By this calculation the “First Month” is February, and so on throughout the year.
The day is divided into twelve periods of two hours each beginning at eleven p.m. and each of these periods is called by the name of an animal—horse, deer, snake, bat, etc. As these names are not duplicated, the use of them tells at once whether the hour is day or night. Ancient China’s method of telling time was by means of slow and evenly burning sticks made of a composition of clay and sawdust, or by the clepsydra, or water-clock. Water-clocks are mentioned several times in these poems.
The clepsydra, or water-clock, has been used by the Chinese for many centuries, one can still be seen in the North Worshipping Tower in Canton, and another in the “Forbidden” portion of the Peking Palace, where the dethroned Manchu Emperor lives. The following account of the one in Canton is taken from the “Chinese Repository,” Volume XX, Page 430: “The clepsydra is called the ‘copper-jar water-dropper.’ There are four covered jars standing on a brickwork stairway, the top of each of which is level with the bottom of the one above it. The largest measures twenty-three inches high and broad and contains seventy catties or ninety-seven and a half pints of water; the second is twenty-two inches high and twenty-one inches broad; the third, twenty-one inches high and twenty broad; and the lowest, twenty-three inches high and nineteen inches broad. Each is connected with the other by an open trough along which the water trickles. The wooden index in the lowest jar is set every morning and afternoon at five o’clock, by placing the mark on it for these hours even with the cover through which it rises and indicates the time. The water is dipped out and poured back into the top jar when the index shows the completion of the half day, and the water is renewed every quarter.”
***
The points of the compass are governed by colours, elements, mythological beasts, and seasons, thus:
East: Green. Wood. The Blue-green Dragon. Spring. South: Red. Fire. The Vermilion Bird. Summer. West: White. Metal. The White Tiger. Autumn. North: Black. Water. The Black Warrior. Winter. Centre: Yellow. Earth.
My last post was all sappy messages of love with pictures of pretty flowers and adorable children and adorable children holding pretty flowers. So, in the words of Monty Python, “And now for something completely different.” This time I’m taking a journey into the dark, smelly, watery underbelly of Victorian London: the sewer.
I couldn’t find many images of Victorian London sewers, so I’m using this eerie image “The Silent Highway Man” from Punch in 1858. It depicts Death rowing on the polluted Thames River.
On applying to the proper
authorities, I was obligingly told that they had not the slightest objection to
gratify what they evidently thought a very singular taste. I was even asked to
name my sewer. They could favour me with
an extensive choice. I might choose
from about one hundred and seventy miles of legally constituted
“main” sewers, running through some hundred and eighty outlets into
the Thames; or, if I liked to trespass upon “district” and
“private” sewers, they could put me through
about sixteen hundred miles of such underground tunnels. They had
blood-sewers—a delicate article—running
underneath meat markets, like Newport-market, where you could wade in the vital
fluid of sheep and oxen; they had boiling sewers, fed by sugar-bakeries, where
the steam forced its way through the gratings in the roadway like the vapour from the hot springs in Iceland, and where the sewer-cleansers get Turkish baths
at the expense of the rate pavers. They
had sewers of various orders of construction—egg-shaped, barrel-shaped, arched,
and almost square; and they had sewers of
different degrees of rcpulsiveness, such as those where
manufacturing chemists and soap and candlemakers most do congregate. They had
open rural sewers that were fruitful in watercresses; and closed town sewers whose roofs are
thickly clustered with what our scientific friends call “edible
fungi.” The choice was so varied that it was a long time before I could
make up my mind, and I decided, at last, upon exploring the King’s Scholars’ Pond
Sewer, which commences in the Finchley New Road,
and ends in the Thames a little above Vauxhall-bridge.
If the literary executors
of the late Mr. Leigh Hunt had not cut the ground from under me in the title of
a book just published, I might possibly have called this chapter A saunter through
the West-End. We have all our different ways of looking at London. The late Mr.
Crofton Croker had his way, as he has shown in his Walk from London to Fulham; and I have mine.
Sewer-cleansers are a
class of workmen who seldom come prominently before the public. They have never
made any particular noise in the world, although they receive in London every
year about five and twenty thousand pounds sterling of public money. Their
wages, individually, may average a pound a week. They have never distinguished
themselves by producing any remarkable “self-made men;” any Lord
Chancellors, or even Lord Mayors; and have never attempted, as a class, to
raise themselves in the social scale.” They are good, honest, hard-working
underground labourers, who often meet
extreme danger in the shape of foul gases, and sometimes die at their posts—as
we saw the other day in the Fleet-lane sewer.
Some half-dozen of these
men, with a foreman of flushers, attended me on the day I selected for my
underground survey. They were not lean yellow men, with backs bent by much
stooping, and hollow coughs produced by breathing much foul air. Their
appearance was robust; and, as I measured bulk with one or two of them, I had
no reason to be proud of any superior training.
There seems to be only
one costume for underground or underwater work, and the armour necessary for
sewer-inspecting will do for lobster catching on the coast, or for descending
in a sea diving-bell. The thick worsted stockings coming up to the waist, the
heavy long greased boots of the seven league character, the loose blue shirt,
and the fan-tailed hat, may be very hot and stifling to wear, but no sewer inspector
is considered properly fortified without them.
There is a fatal
fascination about sewers; and, whenever a trap-door side entrance is opened, a
crowd is sure to gather about the spot. The entrance to the King’s Scholars’
Pond Main Sewer, that I decided to go down by, is close to the cab-stand at St.
John’s-wood Chapel, and twenty cabmen were so much interested in seeing me
descend with my guides, that the offer of a fare would have been resented as an
annoying interruption.
“Rather him than me;
eh, Bill ?” said one.
“That beats
cab-drivin’,” said another.
The side entrance is a
square brick-built shaft, having a few iron rings driven into two of its sides.
These rings form the steps by which you ascend and descend, putting your foot on
one as you seize another. I felt like a bear in the pit at the Zoological
Gardens, as I descended in this fashion; and I dare say many respectable
members of parochial-sewer-eommittees have gone through the same labour, and
have experienced the same feeling. Before the iron trap-door over us was closed
by the two men left to follow our course above ground, I caught a glimpse of a
butcher’s boy looking down the shaft, with his mouth wide open. When the
daylight was shut out, a closed lantern was put in my hand. I was led stooping
along a short yellow-bricked passage, and down a few steps, as if going into a
wine-cellar, until I found myself standing knee-deep in the flowing sewer.
The tunnel here is about
four feet high, and six feet broad; being smaller higher up towards the Finchley
New Road,and growing gradually larger as it descends in a winding course
towards the Thames. All main sewers may be described roughly, as funnel-shaped;
the narrow end being at the source in the hills; the broad end being in the
valley, where it discharges into the river. The velocity of their currents
varies from one to three miles an hour. The most important of them discharge,
at periods of the day, in dry weather, from one thousand to two thousand cubic
feet of sewage per minute, the greatest height being generally maintained
during the hours between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon. At
other periods of the day the same sewers rarely discharge more than one-fourth
of this quantity. The sizes of these underground tunnels, at different points
of their course, are constructed so that they may convey the waters flowing
through them with no prospect of floods and consequent bursting, and yet with
no unnecessary waste of tunnelling. Here it is that the science of hydraulic
engineering is required.
Turning our face towards
the Thames, we waded for some time, in a stooping posture, through the sewer;
three of my guides going on first with lanterns, and two following me. We
passed through an iron tube, which conveys the sewage over the Regent’s Canal;
and it was not until we got into some lower levels, towards Baker-street, that
the sewer became sufficiently large to allow us to stand upright.
Before we arrived at this
point, I had experienced a new sensation. I had had an opportunity of
inspecting the earthenware pipe drain—I am bound to say, the very defective
pipe drainage—of a house that once owned me as a landlord. I felt as if the
power had been granted me of opening a trap-door in my chest, to look upon the
long-hidden machinery of my mysterious body.
When we got into a
loftier and broader part of the tunnel, my chief guide offered me his arm: an
assistance I was glad to accept, because the downward flood pressed rather
heavily against the back of my legs, and the bottom was ragged and uncertain. I
could not deny myself the pleasure of calling this chief guide, Agrippa,
because Agrippa is a Roman name, and the Romans have earned an immortality in
connexion with sewers. Whatever doubts the sceptical school of historians may
throw upon the legends of Roman history, they cannot shake the foundations of
the Roman sewers. Roman London means a small town, bounded on the East by
Walbrook, and on the West by the Fleet. You cannot touch upon sewers without
coming upon traces of the Romans; you cannot touch upon the Romans without
meeting with traces of sewers. The most devoted disciple of Niebuhr must be
dumb before such facts as these, and must admit that these ancient people were
great scavengers, as well as great heroes.
Agrippa took a real
pleasure in pointing out to me the different drains, private sewers, and
district sewers, which at intervals of a few yards opened into our channel
through the walls on either side.
“We’ve nothin’ to do
with the gover’ment of any of these,” he said; “they are looked
after, or had ought to be looked after, by the paroch’al boards.”
“You look after
branches?” I replied.
“Only when they’re
branches of prop’ly construed main sewers. We,” he continued, and he spoke
like a chairman, “are the Metropolitan Board of Works, and we should have
enough to do if we looked after every drain-pipe in London.”
“What’s the length
of those drain-pipes all over London,” I asked, “leaving out the
sewers?”
“No one knows,”
he said. “They do tell me somewhere about four thousand miles, and I
should say they were all that.”
We went tottering on a
little further, with the carriages rumbling on the roadway over our heads. The
splashing of the water before and behind us, as it was washed from side to side
by the heavy boots of all our party, added to the noise; and when our above
around followers let the trap-door of some side entrance fall, a loud booming
sound went through the tunnel, as if a cannon had been fired. The yellow lights
of the lanterns danced before us, and when we caught a glimpse of the water we
were wading in above our knees, we saw that it was as black as ink. The smell
was not at all offensive, and Agrippa told me that no man, during his
experience in the London sewers, had ever complained of feeling faint while he
moved about or worked in the flood; the danger was found to consist in standing
still. For all this assurance of perfect comfort and safety, however, my guides
kept pretty close to me; and I found out afterwards that they were thus
numerous and attentive because the “amateur” sewer inspector was
considered likely to drop.
“There,” said
Agrippa, pointing to a hole at the side, down which a quantity of road sand had
been washed, “ that’s a gully-trap. People get a notion that heavy rains pour
down the gutters and flush the sewers; for my part, I think they bring quite as
much rubbish as they clear away.”
At different parts of our
course we passed through the blue rays of light, like moonlight, that came down
from the ventilator gratings in the highway above. While under one of these we
heard a boy whistling in the road, and I felt like Baron Trenck escaping from
prison. Some of these gratings over our heads were stopped up with road
rubbish; and Agrippa, who carried a steel gauging-rod, like a sword, in his
hand, pierced the earth above us, and let in the outer light and air.
“They’re nice
things,” he said, alluding to the ventilating gratings, generally set in
the top of a shaft-hole cut in the crown of the arch.
“I remember the time
when we’d none of those improvements; no side entrances, no nothing When we
wanted to get down to cleanse or look at a sewer, we had to dig a hole in the
roadway, and sometimes the men used to get down and up the gully-holes to save
trouble.”
“You must have had
many accidents in those days?”
“Hundreds, sir, were
suffocated or killed by the gas; but since Mr. Roe* (*The late Mr. Rose, for
many years surveyor to the Holborn and Finsbury Commissioners of Sewers.)
brought about these improvements, and made the sewers curve instead of running
zigzag, we’ve been pretty safe.”
The “gas”
alluded to by Agrippa includes carburetted hydrogen, sulphuretted hydrogen, and
carbonic acid gas. The first is highly inflammable, easily explodes, and has
frequently caused serious accidents. The second is the gaseous product of
putrid decomposition; it is slightly inflammable, and its inhalation, when it
is strong, will cause sudden death. The third is the choke damp of mines and
sewers, and its inhalation will cause a man to drop as if shot dead. These are
the unseen enemies which Agrippa and his fellows have constantly to contend
against, more or less.
As we staggered further
down the stream, it was evident that Agrippa had his favourites among the
district sewers. Some he considered to be “pretty” sewers; others he
looked upon as choked winding channels, not fit to send a rat up to cleanse,
much less a Christian man. Looking up some of these narrow openings with their
abrupt turns, low roofs, and pitch-black darkness, it certainly did seem as if
sewer-cleansing must be a fearful trade. The sewer rats, much talked of
aboveground, were not to be seen; and their existence in most of the main
sewers is a tradition handed down from the last century. Since the improved
supply of water, which is said to give to every dweller in London, man, woman,
and child, a daily allowance of forty gallons per head, the rats have been
washed away by the increased flood.
Although underground, we
passed over the metropolitan railway in the New-road, and then along the line
of Baker-street, under Oxford-street, and through Berkeley-square. This
aristocratic neighbourhood was loudly announced to us by our aboveground
followers, down an open “man-hole ;” but there was nothing in the
construction of our main sewer, or in the quality of our black flood, to tell
us that we were so near the abodes of the blest. Looking up the “man-hole,”
an opening in the road, not unlike the inside of a tile-kiln chimney, down
which some workmen had brought a flushing-gate, I saw another butcher’s boy
gazing down upon his mouth wide open.
The flushing-gate was an
iron structure, the exact width of the sewer, and about half its height. These
gates are fixed on hinges at at the sides of the all the main sewers at certain
distances from each other; and when they are closed by machinery, they dam up
the stream, producing an artificial fall of water, and so scouring the bed of
the sewer.
As we got lower down our
great underground channel, the roof became higher and higher, and the sides
broader and broader; but the flooring, I am sorry to say, became more jagged
and uneven. The lower bricks had been washed out, leaving great holes, down
which one or other of my legs kept slipping at the hazard of my balance and my
bones. We peeped up an old red-bricked long-disused branch sewer, under some
part of Mayfair, that was almost blocked up to the roof with mountains of black
dry earthy deposit. Not even here did we see any traces of rats, although the
sewer was above the level of the water in our main channel. The King’s
Scholars’ Pond (so Agrippa told me) has had five feet of water in it, at this
point, during storms; but this was not its condition then, or we should hardly
have been found wading there. The bricks in this old Mayfair sewer were as
rotten as gingerbread; you could have scooped them out with a teaspoon.
In Piccadilly wo went up
the side entrance, to get a mouthful of fresh air and a glimpse of the Green
Park, and then went down again to finish our journey. I scarcely expect to be
believed, but I must remark that another butcher’s boy was waiting with open
mouth, watching every movement we made, with intense interest.
We had not proceeded much
further in our downward course, when Agrippa and the rest of the guides
suddenly stopped short, and asked me where I supposed I was now?
“I give it up,” I replied.
“Well, under
Buckingham Palace,” was the answer.
Of course my loyalty was
at once excited, and taking off my fan-tailed cap, I led the way with the
National Anthem, insisting that my guides should join in chorus. Who knows but
what, through some untrapped drain, that rude underground melody found its way
into some inner wainscoting of the palace, disturbing some dozing maid of
honour with its mysterious sounds, and making her dream of Guy Fawkes and many
other subterranean villains?
Before I leave this
deeply-interesting part of the King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer, I may as well say
that I am fully alive to its importance as the theatre of a thrilling romance.
That no writer of fiction may poach, upon preserves which I have made my own, I
will state exactly what kind of story I intend to write, as soon as I have got
rid of a row of statistics that are beckoning to me in the distance. My hero
will run away with one of the Royal Princesses, down this sewer, having first
hewn a passage up into the palace through its walls. The German Prince, who is
always going to marry the Royal Princess, whether she likes him or not, will be
murdered in mistake by a jealous sewer-flusher, the villain of the story; and
the hero having married the Princess at some bankside church, will live happily
with her ever afterwards, as a superintendent of one of the outfall sewers. If
this story should meet with the success I anticipate, I promise to raise some
memorial tablet in the sewer under the palace, to mark my gratitude and the
royalty of the channel. If any reader think the mechanical part of this story
impossible, let me tell him that two friends of mine once got into the vaults
of the House of Commons through the sewers.
Soon after we left this
spot, we came upon a punt that had been poled thus far up the stream to meet
us, and carry us down to the Thames. I took my seat with Agrippa, while the
other guides pushed at the sides and stern of the boat, and I thought this was
a good time to put a few
questions to the men
about the treasures usually found in the sewers. The journey was wanting in
that calmness, light, and freshness, which generally characterise boat voyages;
and while there was a good deal of Styx and Charon about it in imagination,
there was a close unpleasant steam about it in reality. Still, for all this, it
furnished an opportunity not to be thrown away, and I at once addressed
Agrippa.
“Well,” he
said, “the most awful things we ever find in the sewers is dead children.
We’ve found at least four of ’em at different times; one, somewhere under
Notting-hill; another, somewhere under Mary’bone; another, at Paddington; and
another at the Broadway, Westminster.”
“We once found a
dead seal,” struck in one of the men pushing the boat.
“Ah,” continued
Agrippa, “so we did. That was in one of the Westminster sewers—the
Horseferry-road outlet, I think, and they said it had been shot at Barnes or
Mortlake, and had drifted down with the tide. We find mushrooms in great
quantities on the roof, and icicles as well growing amongst ’em.”
“Icicles!”
Isaid; “why, the sewers are warm in winter. How do you account for
that?”
“I don’t mean
what you call icicles,” he replied. “I mean those
white greasy-looking things, like spikes of tallow.”
“Oh, stalactites,”
I said.
“Yes,” he
answered, “that’s the word. We sometimes find live cats and dogs that have
got down untrapped drains after house-rats; but these animals, when we pick ’em
up, are more often dead ones.”
“They once found a
live hedgehog in Westminster,” said another of the men. “I’ve heard
tell on it, but I didn’t see it myself.”
“Of course,”
continued Agrippa, confidentially, “a good deal may be found that we never
hear of, but there’s lots of little things picked up, and taken to the office. We’ve
found lots of German silver and metal spoons; iron tobacco-boxes; nails, and
pins; bones of various animals; bits of lead; boys’ marbles, buttons, bits of
silk, scrubbing-brushes, empty-purses; penny-pieces, and bad half-crowns, very
likely thrown down the gullies on purpose.”
“We’ve found false
teeth—whole sets at a time,” said one of the men, “‘specially in some of the West-end shores.”
“Ah,” continued
Agrippa, ” and corks; how about corks? I never see such a flood of corks,
of all kinds and sizes, as sometimes pours out of this sewer into the Thames.
Of course we find bits of soap,
candle-ends, rags, seeds, dead rats and mice, and a lot of other rubbish. We
enter these things in our books, now and then, but we’re never asked to bring’ em
afore the Board.”
“Do any thieves, or
wanderers, get into the sewers,” 1 asked, “and try to deprive yon of these treasures?”
“Very few, now-a-days,” he replied. “Some of ’em
creep down the side entrances where the
doors are unlocked, or get up some of the sewers on this side when the tide is
low, under the idea that they’re going to pick up no end of silver spoons. They
soon find out their mistake; and then
they take to stealing the iron traps off the drains.”
By this time our bark had
floated out of the broad archway of the sewer—an arch as wide as any
bridge-arch on the Regent’s Canal, and we were anchored in that
pea-soup-looking open creek that runs for some distance along the side of the
Equitable Gas Works at Pimlico. The end of this creek, where it enters the
Thames, is closed with tidal gates which are
watched by a kind of sewer lock-keeper who lives in a cottage immediately over
the sewer. He cultivates flowers and vegetables at the side of the channel, and
his little dwelling is a model of cleanliness and tasteful arrangement. His
health is good, and he seems satisfied with his peculiar position; for, instead
of reading pamphlets on sewers and sewage-poison in the intervals of business,
he cultivates game-cocks, and stuffs dead
animals in a very creditable manner:
He dwells amongst the untrodden ways
Beside the spring of Dove—
A spring that very few can praise,
And not a soul can love!
Let us hope that the sewer-doctors and their theories will never reach him, or they might painfully disturb his mind.
Still I asked for more. I wished to see one of
lie oldest working hands on the sewer establishment; a hoary mudlark who had
been seasoned by nearly half a century’s training, and who might fairly be
regarded as a hermit of the sewers.
With some little difficulty, an old workman was
found, who was not, surprised to hear that I had been down various sewers, and
took a deep interest in them. Nothing appeared to him more natural than that
people should like to go down sewers, and to talk about them for hours
together.
My companion, encouraged from time to time by
my questions, began to unfold his fifty years’ experiences. He was a stout,
healthy-looking old man, with a face not unlike a large red potato. He was
good-tempered, and proud of his special knowledge; but not presuming. In this
be differed from one or two other workmen whom I had met, who seemed to wish me
to understand that they, and they alone, knew all about the London sewerage
system. His language was frequently rather misty; but a very little grammar
will go a long way in the sewers, and working men have something else to think
of beyond aspirating the letter H.
“They was like warrens,” he said,
alluding to the old south-side sewers ; ” you never see such shores
(sewers). Some on ’em was open; some was shut; an’ some was covered over with
wooden platforms, so’s to make the gardings all the larger. Some o’ the shores
was made o’ wood, spesh’ly about Roderide; an’ at S’uth’ark the people used to
dip their pails in ’em for water. They made boles in ’em, so’s to get at the
water when the tide was up, an’ I’ve
seen ’em dippin’ often nigh Backley and Puckins’s.”
“Did you ever meet with any accident,”
I asked, “during the long time you have worked in the sewers?”
“Oh yes,” he said; “I’ve bin
knocked down a dozen times by the gas; spesh’ly nigh the dead ends o’ shores,
an’ I’ve bin burnt over an’ over agen. When your light goes out, you may know
summat is wrong, but the less you stirs about the muck the better. I’ve carried
a man as ‘as bin knocked down, nigh a mile on my lines [loins] in the old days
afore we could get to the man-hole. It’s pretty stuff, too, the gas, if you can
only lay on your back when it goes ‘whish,’ an’ see it runnin’ all a-fire along
the crown o’ the arch.”
“I dare say,” I said; “but
sewers are quite bad enough to walk in, without such illuminations.”
“Shores is all right,” lie returned,
rather pettishly ; “it’s the people as uses ’em that don’t know how to
treat ’em. There’s the naptchamakers, an’ those picklin’ yards where they soaks
iron in some stuff to make it tough; they’re nice places, they ar, an’ nice
messes they makes the shores in, at t imes. Then there’s can’le an’ soap-manyfact’rers,
which sends out a licker, that strong, that it will even decay i’on an’
brickwork, Then there’s gas-tar-manyl’act’rers agen. We’re ‘bliged to go to all
o’ these people afore we goes down the shore, an’ ask ’em to ‘old ‘ard. If we
didn’t do that, there’d be more on us killed than is.”
“I suppose,” I said—of course with a
view of getting information—” the sewers you go up are often very
small?”
“Some is two foot shores,” he
replied, “an’ they’re tighteners; others is three foot barrels; an’ others
is larger.”
“Did you ever hear of any murder being
committed in the sewers?” I asked, not being willing to give up the chance
of a romantic story without a struggle.
“There was one open shore,” he said,
“that some o’ the foremen used to call ‘old Grinacre,’ in the S’uth’ark
districk, but that’s bin covered over many years.”
“What about that ?” I asked, eagerly.
“Well,” he said, “it used to
bother us a good deal. One mornin’, when the tide was all right, we goes down
to work, an’ picks up a leg !”
“A human leg?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “all that,
an’not a wooden one neither. Another night, when the tide was all right agen,
we goes down, an’ we finds another leg!”
“Another human leg?” I asked, in
astonishment.
“Ev’ry inch on it,” he returned,
“an’ that ain’t all. Another time we goes into the same shore, an’ we
finds a arm, an’ another time we goes down, an’ we finds another arm.”
It seemed very annoying to me that my companion
was compelled to sneeze and cough at this point of his story for about five
minutes.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, “the foreman put
‘cm down in his book, an’ they went afore the Board, an’ it was a long time
afore the Board could make anythin’ of ’em. They
sent a hinspector down, an’ we found a few more legs,—ah, an’ even ‘eads, to
show ‘im.”
“What was the solution of
the mystery?” I said, getting impatient.
“Well,” he replied, “the cat
came out o’ the bag, at last. It was body-snatchers an’ med’cal studen’s. When
the gen’elmcn at the hospital ‘ad clone cutting up the bodies, they gets rid o’
the limbs by pitchin’ ’em into the open shore.”
In my inquiries among that curious body of men, the “Sewer Hunters,” I found them make light of any danger, their principal fear being from the attacks of rats in case they became isolated from the gang with whom they searched in common, while they represented the odour as a mere nothing in the way of unpleasantness. But these men pursued only known and (by them) beaten tracks at low water, avoiding any deviation, and so becoming but partially acquainted with the character and direction of the sewers. And had it been otherwise, they are not a class competent to describe what they saw, however keen-eyed after silver spoons.
The following account is derived chiefly from official sources.
I may premise that where the deposit is found the greatest, the sewer is in the
worst state. This deposit, I find it repeatedly stated, is of a most
miscellaneous character. Some of the sewers, indeed, are represented as the
dust-bins and dung-hills of the immediate neighbourhood. The deposit has been
found to comprise all the ingredients from the breweries, the gas-works, and
the several chemical and mineral manufactories; dead dogs, cats, kittens, and
rats; offal from slaughter-houses, sometimes even including the entrails of the
animals; street-pavement dirt of every variety; vegetable refuse; stable-dung;
the refuse of pig-styes; night-soil; ashes; tin kettles and pans (pansherds);
broken stoneware, as jars, pitchers, flower-pots, &c.; bricks; pieces of
wood; rotten mortar and rubbish of different kinds; and even rags. Our criminal
annals of the previous century show that often enough the bodies of murdered
men were thrown into the Fleet and other ditches, then the open sewers of the
metropolis, and if found washed into the Thames, they were so stained and
disfigured by the foulness of the contents of these ditches, that recognition was
often impossible, so that there could be but one verdict returned—” Found
drowned.” Clothes stripped from a murdered person have been, it was
authenticated on several occasions in Old Bailey evidence, thrown into the open
sewer ditches, when torn and defaced, so that they might not supply evidence of
identity. So close is the connection between physical filthiness in public
matters and moral wickedness.
The following particulars show the characteristics of the
underground London of the sewers. The subterranean surveys were made after the
commissions were consolidated.
“An old sewer, running
between Great Smithstreet and St. Ann-street (Westminster), is a curiosity
among sewers, although it is probably only one instance out of many similar
constructions that will be discovered in the course of the subterranean survey.
The bottom is formed of planks laid upon transverse timbers, 6 inches by 6
inches, about 3 feet apart. The size of the sewer varies in width from 2 to 6
feet, and from 4 to 5 feet in height. The inclination to the bottom is very
irregular: there are jumps up at two or three places, and it contains a deposit
of filth averaging 9 inches in depth, the sickening smell from which escapes
into the houses and yards that drain into it. In many places the side walls
have given way for lengths of 10 and 15 feet. Across this sewer timbers have
been laid, upon which the external wall of a workshop has been built; the
timbers are in a decaying state, and should they give way, the wall will fall
into the sewer.”
Susanna’s note: You can find out more about sewer thieves in this Smithsonian article including additional excerpts from Mayhew.
