THE EDGE OF THE CROWD

Ross Gilfillan

Dedication

For my wife Lisa,

Fae, Tom and Alice

and

Dorothy Gilfillan

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

1 Wet Collodion

2 Over-exposure

3 ‘Sixpunny Portraits’

4 An Imperfect Image

5 Developments

6 Illuminations

7 An Aerial View

8 High and Low

9 Positive and Negative

10 Interlude: Florence, 1850

11 The Subject is Foxed

12 A Seascape

13 Calotypes

14 High Art

15 The Final Frame

Acknowledgements

Previous Praise for Ross Gilfillan:

Other Works

Copyright

About the Publisher

1 Wet Collodion

Hyde Park Corner, late in the morning of July 14th, 1851, would try the patience of angels. That, anyway, is the unshakeable opinion of Cornelius Touchfarthing, as he sharply detaches sweat-fastened buttocks from the wagon’s dampened leather seat and climbs up on the chest of chemicals that has been stored behind him. Once aloft, he sways dangerously like a mast-top sailor as he searches ahead for the latest impediment to his progress and attracts the disdainful glance of a liveried footman upon a carriage and the interested attention of two sporting gentlemen in a fly. ‘What the deuce is it this time?’ asks one of them.

Touchfarthing shades his brow and squints into the middle-distance. ‘They’re letting traffic across the street,’ he reports. ‘Carriages. Lords and ladies, it looks like. And a squadron of dragoons. Well, it makes a fine picture!’

‘Picture be damned!’ says one of the passengers in the fly and takes up his newspaper while Touchfarthing, looming above, uses his hands to shape a scene beyond the crush of carriages and broughams, laden wagons and packed omnibuses. Fleshy thumbs crop pavements closely-cobbled with hats and bare heads, making them a variegated living border for a square of scarlet coats, sleekly-groomed horses and glittering carriages. ‘A very fine picture indeed!’ repeats Touchfarthing to himself.

Shaded by Touchfarthing’s corpulence is the slighter figure of John Rankin, who flicks limp reins against his knee as he chats to a lava-haired street-sweeper who has been performing ‘cat’un-wheels, ha-penny a tumble!’ between the wagon and the stationary carriage alongside. The boy doffs his cap and thanks Rankin for his penny. ‘Oh, that an’t nothing at all,’ Rankin says, jerking his thumb upwards. ‘Least, not for a cove what’s in the employ of Admiral bloody Nelson!’

‘What was that?’ Touchfarthing demands and sits down so heavily that the springs bounce and the bottles of chemicals chink loudly in the box.

‘Admiral Nelson,’ says Rankin. ‘I was just saying that Admiral Nelson lived in that there house.’

The bigger man sighs loudly as he swabs his thick neck with a damp and discoloured handkerchief. ‘Apsley House is the residence of the Duke of Wellington.’

‘That’s the fellow,’ says Rankin, and turns to wink at the boy who is already ducking under the horse’s head and causing Touchfarthing to catch his breath as he slips between the enormous wheels of a great wagon loaded with slate. The driver takes up his whip and for a dreadful moment Touchfarthing fears that the vehicle will move off and that the child will be crushed but the boy reappears among the shuffling crowds on the far pavement, biting his coin before a company of unshod ragamuffins.

Touchfarthing stares in awe at the multitude of street hawkers: the sellers of oranges and thinly cut ham sandwiches, baked potatoes and bottles of ginger beer. Then his attention is drawn towards the long lines of costermongers with their barrows and to the many hawkers of shiny commemorative medals. He considers the fact that this small army is there only to service a much greater force, whose ranks stand four and five deep by the Park rails.

Touchfarthing watches the world go by: young men with beribboned sweethearts; gangs of loudly-singing apprentices; immaculately turned-out recruiting sergeants; a sprinkling of shabby-genteel half-pay officers; two elderly widows in bombazine complaining of the heat; the many-hued faces of foreign visitors; and the walking advertisements whose signboards offer ‘cheap beds tonight’. A fascination of individuals now intrudes itself upon his attention: a small portly gentleman with glinting glasses and apoplectic colour prattling with a gaunt cleric whose frock-coat is out at the elbows; a plump and rubescent matron swiping at unruly children with a furled umbrella; and a lean man in black with green-tinted spectacles who stands against a lamppost unmoving, like a rock in a flowing stream.

‘I never saw so many people here in my life,’ Touchfarthing mutters to himself. ‘Just look at that mob,’ he says, louder this time, indicating this swell to his assistant. ‘And it’s not even a cheap shilling day …’

‘That mob’s our bread and butter,’ Rankin says. ‘It’s their sixpunny portraits what puts meat on our table.’

‘For the moment, yes,’ Touchfarthing sighs, noting the strange admixture of the crowds, the well-turned-out families lining up with dusty travellers, the quality coalescing in the crush with shopkeepers and tradesmen. ‘Perhaps, unlike myself, you don’t find it distasteful, all that … mingling?’ He is overwhelmed, perhaps appalled, by this unnatural colliding of the classes.

Rankin rolls his eyes. ‘You know what you’ve become, Mr Touchfarthing?’ he says. ‘A stunning snob, that’s what.’

Touchfarthing is too hot and too tired to rise to Rankin’s bait. They have been stopped outside Apsley House a full half hour but no one has made better headway today: crested carriage has had no more advantage over laden wagon than hansom cab over four-wheeled growler. All have been stilled under the grilling sun as drivers curse and passengers fan away flies drawn by mounting piles of horse dung.

The petrifying spell is broken by a passenger in a hansom. ‘Devil take it, I shall walk!’ he says and pays off his driver. As if this is the signal that all have awaited, the traffic begins to move again. Rankin shakes the reins and the wagon trundles forward.

Progress is slow. A piece of orange peel crushed on a front wheel takes almost a whole minute to come again to the top. But no matter how slowly they are moving, at last and up ahead vehicles can be seen turning into Hyde Park through the Prince of Wales’ Gate, where they are illuminated by sunbeams glancing off the thousands of glass panes housing the Great Exhibition.

II

Rankin does all the work. It is Rankin who unhitches and tethers the horse and Rankin who brings their operation to such a state of readiness that a crowd has already gathered and has begun to hinder preparations with numerous enquiries about the pricing of premium-quality souvenir photographs. A handful of mismatched dining chairs are taken from the wagon and arranged upon the grass where the subjects will sit. The camera nestles upon its tripod sufficiently distant from the Exhibition that a portion of the building may serve as a recognisable background and the angle of view has been adjusted so that the lines of abandoned carriages and other conveyances will be excluded. Even so, Rankin frowns as he emerges from under the black cloth, dissatisfied with the picture on the ground-glass screen.

For once, backgrounding is important. His customers will pay today’s high rate only if the photograph associates them with the fabulous edifice. But between the lens and the all-important background are desultory strollers, boys with hoops and vendors of various comestibles. He wishes them vanished. Rankin would also prefer that the visitors examining the exhibits outside the building – a monolithic slab of coal, an assortment of heaped raw materials for use in industry and the biggest ship’s anchor Rankin has seen – would take themselves inside. But humankind is not to be avoided today: all about are people of every station and exotic tint. It is hard to remember, and at this moment even more difficult to believe, that a two-minute exposure will entirely eliminate from the scene everything that is in motion.

Rankin pitches the dark-tent under an elm tree and into this he installs a brass-cornered and felt-lined box of lenses. Beside the box he places his dishes, scales, weights, funnels, glass measures and a large supply of glass plates. He sends a boy to fill a pail from the Serpentine and now needs only the heavy chest, in which are contained bottles of chemicals for coating, sensitising, developing and fixing of the glass negatives. He exits the tent and begins to drag the trunk towards the tailboard of the wagon. ‘I ain’t shifting the chemicals by myself,’ he calls to Touchfarthing, who stands shaded by the great elm. ‘I shan’t answer if the box gets dropped.’

Touchfarthing, sipping from a bottle of ginger beer and watching riders upon Rotten Row, makes no reply.

‘What you’ll have is a box of broken glass and spilt chemicals,’ says Rankin, louder. ‘And it won’t be my fault.’

But Touchfarthing only indicates a pair of riders who have broken into a dangerous canter, sending a small boy and girl fleeing from their path. ‘Look there,’ he says. ‘That’s Lord Montague mounted on the roan. With Arthur Vavasour. Well, well! Do you know that when last I saw them they were hardly speaking?’

‘No, I didn’t know that,’ says Rankin, shortly. He purses his lips and drums his fingers on the chest containing chemicals.

‘I had their acquaintance at Sibthorpe, you know,’ Touchfarthing says, complacently.

Rankin whistles through his teeth and rolls his blue eyes. ‘When you’re ready, guv’nor,’ he says, managing with some difficulty to move the box unaided by the other man.

Touchfarthing approaches the camera as a maestro his piano forte. By separating himself from Rankin and the labours of preparation, it has been made clear to onlookers that it is Touchfarthing who is the artist; and Rankin who is very much ‘school of’.

Touchfarthing signals with a ringed finger and Rankin invites the first subject, a well-fed gentleman with a single bushy eyebrow and luxuriant red whiskers, to sit upon a chair. As discreetly as possible, he quietly points out the advantages of a larger photograph frame, of additional prints or of a special patent backing which is guaranteed to prevent fading, before he solicits a shilling and retires to the rope, beyond which interested onlookers have now formed themselves into an orderly queue. Touchfarthing, shrouded by the great black cloth, removes the lens cover and raises his right arm. Eyebrow and whiskers are still as death and eternity seems to pass before the photographer drops his hand and re-covers the lens. The business of the day has commenced.

Rankin must now confine himself to the dark-tent, the conjuror’s cloak under which some magic must be performed before the sorcerer’s apprentice can re-emerge with his subjects’ captured and framed likenesses on the day they visited the Great Exhibition. And it might as well be alchemy to Touchfarthing too. This collodion process is so new that Rankin alone has attempted its mastery and even he has doubts concerning its use on such an important occasion. But Touchfarthing has proved intransigent, insisting that only the very latest method is appropriate for use at the Great Exhibition of All Nations.

With Rankin engaged, Touchfarthing is obliged to attend to the subjects. Before he carefully constrains them in their chairs he will compliment and flatter them or bamboozle them with the science of photography. This, he hopes, will divert attention from the transaction itself, the part of the business Touchfarthing loathes. It is, after all, the transfer of cash that distinguishes the grubbing tradesman from the pioneering amateur.

The ordeal over, he again addresses the camera into which Rankin has inserted a new wet plate and under whose black cloth he buries his head from view. Flattened into two dimensions is how Touchfarthing prefers to view his run-of-the-mill clients. On the ground-glass screen their hats and their ‘physogs’, their arms and their torsos become mere compositional elements to be arranged in the most pleasing and aesthetic manner. By correcting poor posture, rearranging slack attire and encouraging a sober expression, Touchfarthing considers that he improves on life.

The afternoon passes away. Never has either man worked so hard at the business of photography nor encompassed such a bewildering variety of subjects from every place and of every station: couples from Clapham; families up from Kent; Midlands industrialists; richly-attired visitors from the sub-continent; a fidgeting band of Neapolitan musicians; mechanics and farmers; curates and choristers; sailors on shore leave; the recruiting sergeants, now merrily drunk; Etonians and Harrovians and a class of National school children, the eyes of whose teacher pierce the lens so fiercely that Touchfarthing almost trembles.

The photographer finds this multiplicity repellent: skilled physician follows lowly apothecary as if there were no order in the world. And perhaps this is a singular occasion but no one seems to take offence at such an unnatural commingling of society. Touchfarthing whispers to the busy Rankin, ‘Dear me, where is the quality here?’

Touchfarthing would rather maintain distance from the common man and upstart alike. This last taxonomy he most detests. Rankin has tired long ago of Touchfarthing’s declamations on these ‘self-made counter-jumpers’ who ‘dress like kings and talk like coal-heavers’, but the process is slow and while Rankin is in and out of the dark-tent changing and processing plates, there is little that Touchfarthing can do to avoid unwanted intimacy with hoi polloi and he is further dismayed to discover among his sitters a tendency towards self-publicity.

Mr Hector Trundle, as he tolerates Touchfarthing fussing about his disarrayed neck-wear, announces that he might buy up any of the exotic exhibits he has seen displayed within ‘they great glass walls’. He might load up a caravan with power looms and steam hammers and such practical improvements; he might choose the finest satins and silks for his wife (for whom he had a handkerchief passed through the fountain of Eau de Cologne); and should he so desire, it would be within his power to buy up a whole array of novelties: the eighty-bladed pen-knife, the stiletto umbrella, the tableaux of small and expertly stuffed animals. With the possible exception of that Koh-i-Noor diamond, he might slap cash on the table and haul the whole lot back to Salford, Lancashire. In fact, he might do anything he likes except that which this minute he desires most in all the world and that is to scratch his nose.

Jasper Munro considers the Great Exhibition ‘a damnable mess’. He sits erect, his hands folded over a silver-topped cane that he has pegged into the earth while Touchfarthing fastens a collar stud and brushes dust from his shoulders. ‘Poor classifying, that’s what it is,’ he is saying. ‘No idea of proper categorisation. I saw how it would be from the start, when the Prince announced his intentions. How can you “wed high art with mechanical skill” and avoid an unholy mess? Crystal and fine porcelain here, greasy, thumping steam engines there. It’s a fiasco.’

But by no means all those who share their views with Touchfarthing are dissenters. Most, in fact, are evidently impressed by the varied marvels of the Exhibition or simply by the novel experience of entering a structure so vast that it can and does contain fully grown trees. The glass and steel edifice itself is the source of infinite wonder to many more. Mr Colin Caldicott, an engineer ‘from Brummagem’, informs Touchfarthing that the Crystal Palace is ‘a modern marvel’. Touchfarthing nods and prepares to duck under his cloth, but Caldicott holds his arm. ‘It’s one thousand, eight hundred and forty-eight feet in length. Four hundred and eight feet in height. An area six times that of St Paul’s Cathedral!’

‘I can well believe it,’ says Touchfarthing.

Caldicott shakes his head as he reads in a flat tone from a catalogue on his lap. ‘Five hundred and fifty tons of wrought iron. Three thousand, five hundred tons of cast iron. Nine hundred thousand feet of glass. Six hundred thousand feet of wooden planking. Two hundred and two miles of sash bars. Thirty miles of guttering.’

Touchfarthing makes a show of producing and checking the face of his silver pocket-watch but another long minute passes before the sitter folds his catalogue and allows Touchfarthing to execute his shilling commission. For the next three hours the performance is the same – a cast of changing faces, a succession of to-ings and fro-ings between the front-of-house chairs and the backstage dark-tent – and it is late afternoon before the last customer, an impatient young hussar, pockets a dried, framed and wrapped photograph and strides quickly across the Park in the direction of Gore House.

The sun has begun to dip towards the western roofscapes; visitors on foot and on wheels are leaving the Park by every exit. Rankin is squatting by his box, funnelling chemicals into bottles. Touchfarthing is uncomfortably close. ‘I feel filthy,’ he says. ‘Like a wretched tradesman.’

‘That was good business we done there,’ says Rankin, jingling the purse. ‘And I’ve the one plate left, if you can find a customer.’

‘No, that’s enough of the mob for one day,’ says Touchfarthing. ‘That plate is saved for Art. The Exhibition by itself will make a very fine picture, I think.’

‘And sell like hot plum-dough,’ Rankin agrees. ‘But I suppose we’ll have to shift everything back to the Gate.’

‘You’ll do that, will you?’ says Touchfarthing. ‘While I calculate the longer exposure. Just take the essentials – it’s only one picture.’

‘And have some vagabond lift everything else? You’d best help out, that’s my belief, guv’nor,’ says Rankin and prepares to lift the camera from its tripod. He hesitates and nudges the other man. ‘Do you suppose that cove got up like an undertaker is waiting his turn?’ To Touchfarthing’s questioning glance, Rankin indicates a lean, pale-faced man dressed wholly in black. The dark and curling locks which depend from the brim of his hat are longer than fashion allows and he wears a pair of green-tinted spectacles. ‘I’ve caught him watching our goings on earlier,’ says Rankin. ‘What’s ’is lay, do you think?’

‘I’m sure he only wants his photograph taken, as do the world and his wife today.’

Touchfarthing’s eyebrows interrogate the man, but he makes no move towards the chairs, only looks a little longer upon the scene before straightening a louche pose and strolling towards the trees, where he becomes a part of a crowd that surrounds the fire-eater whose loud patter and sooty explosions have drawn away the last of Touchfarthing’s trade. ‘Rum fellow,’ Touchfarthing says, frowning as he takes hold of a rope handle. There is a tinkling of glass as the two men swing the great box aboard the wagon.

III

By the Park gates, Rankin fits a new lens upon the camera, into which is inserted the last of the wet collodion plates. They have been ready for the past quarter hour and Rankin is impatient to quit the Park and fill his belly at Simpson’s chop-house. He observes that ‘Simpson’s is very good for their cutlets’ and that ‘their pies is full of meat with no rubbish’, hoping that Touchfarthing will perceive the wisdom of patronising a place of ‘unbeatable value’ and not squander the day’s takings at Alexis Soyer’s grand new establishment at Gore House, the wonders of which the hussar has left ringing in their ears. ‘Now that’s the sort of place we might make useful connections,’ Touchfarthing had said. ‘It’s the sort of place we might waste a lot of money,’ Rankin had replied.

A vendor is crying his wares by the Park gates: ‘Potatoes, all ’ot!!’ and Rankin is debating with himself whether a further economy might be made by expending a couple of pennies there rather than at Simpson’s, when Touchfarthing claps his hands and exclaims, ‘There, we have it now!’ and points towards his magnificent subject. Even Rankin is forced to admit the beauty of the scene before them. Oblique sunlight lends fleeting solidity and sharply defines a thousand sash bars and gracefully curving flights of iron. The roof-lined flags of all nations which fluttered gaily in the morning breeze now hang heavy in the still evening air and nothing distracts from the audacious simplicity of Paxton’s ingenious design.

‘A pity about all those folk cluttering the middle ground,’ Rankin says. ‘Ain’t they got no homes?’

‘They won’t register on the photograph,’ says Touchfarthing. ‘Not so long as they keep moving. Now then, I shall have to lengthen the exposure in this light.’

Touchfarthing removes the lens cover and hold up his pocket-watch, timing the exposure while impressively signalling to all about that here is a photographist going about his work. And indeed, in the ground between lens and Exhibition are many careless strollers who appear to take notice and who, perhaps in their ignorance, believe that their presence at the Great Exhibition is being recorded on a photograph.

‘I think that will suffice,’ Touchfarthing says as he re-covers the lens. ‘Take care with your process, Rankin. I think I shall be pleased with this picture.’

‘Well, let’s ’ave that plate quickly, then,’ says Rankin, ‘while there’s still enough light to make a print.’ Rankin disappears inside his dark-tent while Touchfarthing, succumbing to the fatigue of a long and busy day, climbs upon the wagon and settles himself in the largest of the assortment of chairs. He begins to doze, his heavy jowl supported by a hefty hand, and would at any moment have given himself up to a deep and languorous sleep, had not Rankin shaken his knee. ‘Guv’nor, you an’t going to like this!’ he says, pulling the torpid Touchfarthing from his seat. He follows Rankin to his bottles and dishes and from one of these Rankin extracts a square of paper which drips a new pattern of stains upon his already particoloured unmentionables.

‘Well, what is it?’ asks Touchfarthing irritably. His sleep-bleared eyes descry the unmistakeable shape of the great glasshouse before them. ‘It looks all right?’

‘It ain’t quite there yet. But watch here, by the tree.’ Rankin holds the developing photograph towards the sunlight and before their eyes the gauzy facsimile darkens and sharpens and detail begins to show: the crazing of the bark on an elm bough, individual panes of glinting glass, the folds of a Union flag.

‘What’s that?’ Touchfarthing explodes. He takes himself and the photograph from the dark-tent, the better to examine it by the last rays of the sun. ‘Ruined!’ he says, his focus fixed upon an unexpected element in his composition. In the bottom corner, separating and becoming distinct from the trunk of a great tree, stands the man in the green-tinted spectacles and funereal clothing. Long exposure has, as the photographer predicted, erased every other idler and stroller from the scene. But this one remains. The subject of the photograph now seems not to be the Great Exhibition but rather a wealthy country gentleman showing off his estate.

It is only a photograph. The Great Exhibition is not disappearing tomorrow, when Touchfarthing might, with some inconvenience to himself, return and take another picture. But there is that about the man’s expression, an ironical smile, which seems directed at Touchfarthing himself, that enrages and impels him towards the tree where the man had stood.

‘Watch yourself, guv’nor. It an’t worth getting the apoplexy for,’ Rankin says, as Touchfarthing circumnavigates the tree trunk and scans the vistas beyond for any signs of his uninvited subject. Hot and bothered, he fans himself with the photograph as they walk back to the wagon. ‘What kind of fellow is it, do you think, that stands absolutely stock still in the middle of a park for three minutes? Answer me that, John.’

‘A very peculiar one,’ says Rankin, and looks again at the paper, whose unfixed and evanescent image is disappearing before their eyes, fading away until nothing remains of man, tree or the Great Exhibition itself.

2 Over-exposure

Ten and sometimes twenty yards ahead, a small knife-thin figure in threadbare fustian led Henry Hilditch past the fish merchants and marine insurance offices of Lower Thames Street. They had walked, one before the other, from the West End and the guide showed no sign of slackening his brisk pace nor of indicating proximity to their destination.

Hilditch’s footsteps clacked loudly on flint-dry cobblestones. A flaring street lamp briefly distinguished a pale face and hands from uniformly black apparel and showed him to be young. His voice, however, choked with the irritation of dissatisfied middle age. ‘A guinea for a bit of mutton and some dressed crab!’ he snorted. ‘A guinea!’ and shook his head as he increased his pace to match that of the small creature scuttling ahead. The decision had been his own and so the folly keener felt.

A temptation to brush buttons with society had lured him from the free and fresh air of Hyde Park to the over-priced and over-decorated restaurant rooms in which he had found himself among a crush of excursionists, the disengorgings of special trains from the Midlands and the North. Gore House, despite its finery and the presence in the kitchens of the remarkable Alexis Soyer, was clearly only another conduit for Exhibition cash.

Conceivably, he could have rescued something from the occasion. He knew that he might have furthered his observations of the London poor by talking to the pot boys, the cellar men, the grooms and the footmen, the under-cooks and scullery maids, to the mob of hungry men and women assembled in hope by the kitchen doors.

The singular occasion of the Great Exhibition was already furnishing unique and significant information. Henry Mayhew, whose startling publications on London’s poor were opening wide the eyes of their more affluent neighbours, had himself acknowledged this much. And now, Henry Hilditch, engaged by a rival newspaper to exploit Mayhew’s success, had also found much to interest him and much more to provide sensational copy for the readers of the Morning Messenger. Mayhew’s reporting of the Exhibition would be sensible, worthy and full of facts but it would lack the drama that Henry’s editor always insisted upon and which Henry always provided.

As an entrée to the evening’s investigations, Hilditch had found himself exchanging banalities with his countryfolk: among the outpourings of Lancashire, the Potteries and the Black Country he encountered a house-builder from York, a confectioner from Pontefract and a landowner he knew by sight from Whitby, men he might have met at any time, in a past life. There was no profit in this nor in the substance of the intercourse itself. Half a mile from the Exhibition, Paxton’s glasshouse and its cornucopia of invention was the main course of all conversations.

Enfin, Hilditch admitted, the most valuable contact he had made the whole evening had been with a waiter, whose own personal history Hilditch had quickly dismissed as trite but who had hired out the kitchen boy as his guide for preliminary explorations of London’s East End. He had intended to go from Hyde Park directly to an address at which he had been advised he would find the poor at play and material sufficiently interesting for inclusion in his own survey of London’s lower classes. Not only would this satisfy the curiosity of his readers but it would go some way towards answering a need of another sort that was lodged deep in the heart of the young man himself.

The waiter had confidently asserted that boy Daniel knew just the place to interest the gentleman and so it proved, but only after the waiter had consented to take a shilling and Daniel himself had pocketed a shiny sixpence.

Now, digested by black anonymous streets and cuts in which one soot-blackened tenement back was the same as the next, Hilditch found himself unwilling host to an insidious and unreasonable dread that had been welling slowly since they had left the West End. The last rays of the sun that had scorched Hilditch’s neck all afternoon in Hyde Park had glanced off the dome of Wylde’s Monster Globe as they crossed Leicester Square and now it was only when moonlight found access and lit up the name of a street or the sign above a shop or lodging house that he dispelled the fantastical notion that he had wandered down some abysmal path to blackest Hell, and was still in the overworld. In these slums and rookeries were the very subjects of his investigations; he had realised that meeting London’s poor on his West End ground was insufficient; that he must eventually follow them to their homes. But now, on his first visit to the deeper reaches of the East End at night, he found himself breathing hard and stumbling to keep up with the boy in a labyrinth of nameless passages. Then, when the inclination to run hell-for-leather until he found a main thoroughfare and a passing cab was strongest upon him, just up ahead he saw light and heard a commotion.

‘Whitechapel!’ the boy exclaimed, and Hilditch berated himself for his foolishness as he hurried out of the empty by-way into streams of pedestrians. But no sooner had he stepped upon a wide and well-lit street than Hilditch again lost sight of his companion among crowds gathered about line upon line of costermongers’ barrows and fish-fryers’ stoves. Hilditch held fast his purse and called out, but his ‘Halloa, boy!’ was lost among a dissonant chorus of street-cries, the braying of donkeys, the sizzling of frying fish and the hubbub of Londoners out on a Saturday spree. He pushed past faces made hellish by burning braziers or jaundiced by grease lamps and candles; knocked down a uniformed beggar outside the Three Tuns; had his coat seared by a fire-eater outside the Alhambra’s noisy dancing rooms and roughly apprehended the wrong boy among a crowd of young people leaving the shabby premises of a penny gaff theatre.

‘What’s your game, guv’nor?’ the boy demanded, shaking free of Hilditch’s grasp and showing a face pock-marked with disease.

‘A mistake only,’ said Hilditch. ‘See here, I am looking for a boy.’

‘I might be that boy. A lot of toffs wants boys here. Depends on your price and what you wants.’

‘No, that boy – there!’ said Hilditch as he remarked his guide, stroking a small dog clasped by a boy of about his own age. ‘Over here, boy, over here!’ Hilditch gestured while the pock-marked boy bowed ostentatiously to the other.

‘Your ’umble pardon, Dan’l! I didn’t know this gent was engaged with you.’

‘None o’ that, Pineapple Joe,’ said Hilditch’s boy. ‘I’m a respectable fellow in regular employ.’

‘Wiv no time for your old pals, is that it?’

‘I ha’n’t got time for no one tonight,’ said the other. ‘My old un’ll skin me if I ain’t home at the soonest.’

‘You’ll be back, Dan’l Saggers, when he turns on you agin. And then you can ’ave your old spot by the Three Tuns.’

The boy frowned and rejoined Hilditch. Cutting between the premises of a tallow chandler and a sponge merchant they plunged once more into backstreets and alleys. ‘That’s put us behind and I’m sorry for it,’ the boy said. ‘But I was ’opin to get the loan of a good dog. A nice little dog might have put my old man in a ’menable mood. But no money no dog, says he. Well, such is life. And now we’ll have to be double quick.’

‘It must be after eleven now,’ Hilditch said. ‘Are we not too late already?’

‘Wiv luck we ain’t, sir. They don’t like to start until arter the drinkin when the folks is more free with their money.’

The boy now fairly clipped along, leaping foul gutters and pulling Hilditch through murky alleys which seemed to him a succession of convergences, where buildings staggered ever closer together and each street was narrower and meaner and darker than the last. Black shapes glanced by with rustles of petticoats or rough imprecations. Unbidden, the mind of Hilditch flashed with the memory of a reported murder of a young girl in just such a place and of what perils might beset not only himself but another who might be lost upon these very streets. ‘Daniel!’ he called out, failing to master a tremor in his voice. ‘Where am I?’

Small fingers squeezed his own. ‘You’re all right, sir. Not far now.’ Hilditch took a deep breath and kept the boy’s hand as they crossed the entrance to a malodorous court and splashed through water or nightsoil before coming upon a broader and less gloomy street and then a gap in a crumbling brick wall. ‘Here we are, safe and sarn!’ said the boy and then snatched at Hilditch’s sleeve. ‘Stop, sir, stop! Mind the steps or you’ll break your neck!’

Hilditch took a careful step forwards and discovered that beyond the gap and lit faintly by lights he could not see was a long and precipitous flight of wooden stairs, connecting the road above with a deep railway cutting below. He caught his breath and let the boy go down first. When Hilditch had descended with measured tread to the first of two small landings, he found himself a little above the first-floor windows of a ramshackle and venerable building which was supported on two sides by stout oak buttresses, like a collapsing drunk held up by constables. Below the first-storey windows, from which gaslight glared and illuminated men busy at some work, depended a heavy wooden sign on which might faintly be discerned the image of a grey swan. Under this, two lean men stood behind stacked barrels. These men were engaged in earnest argument with a fatter, much larger third, who was shaking his head vigorously. The exchange was heated and voices raised sufficiently for Hilditch to comprehend.

‘There it is. It’s a fair offer. You won’t do better tonight,’ the fat man was saying.

‘The agreed price was two guinea. I can’t take less’n that, Villum!’

The fat man spat and yanked a string from the other’s hand, winding in a large, stocky dog.

‘Ten bob’s your lot, you thieving gypsy. And you’ll still be turning a handsome profit, I’ve no doubt.’

The man cursed but was dissuaded from further remonstration by the whispered advice of his friend. He pocketed a handful of coins and started up the stairs, querying Hilditch with a glance before disappearing into the gloom. Below, the fat man was stooping to inspect his purchase when he saw the boy, immobile in a pool of sickly window-light.

‘Just in time, Dan’l,’ he said. ‘Now let’s be having the money. I’m lucky tonight, I know it!’

The boy made some reply too faint for Hilditch’s ears.

‘What? You done what?’ the fat man roared. ‘My ears is bad, Dan’l, you’ll have to repeat that ’un for me!’

But without awaiting the reply, he seized at ragged clothing and severely shook the boy’s flimsy frame. The fat man looked about him, as if seeking some place to dispose of unwanted rubbish. ‘Wait, wait!’ the boy cried, but the man was already hurling him off his feet, smashing him against the door post of the inn and causing a big man in an apron to look out from the doorway. ‘There’ll be time to knock some respect into the villain later, Bill,’ he said. ‘They’re wanting you up my two pair of stairs now.’

But the fat man picked up the boy and struck the side of his head with sufficient force to send him reeling backwards where he lost his balance and tumbled noisily over an empty barrel. Now Hilditch could hear the boy as he protested to his antagonist. ‘It weren’t my fault, guv’nor! I tole you them rich folk wan’t to be trusted!’

The man snatched up the boy and pressed his own fist against a hollow cheek. Hilditch heard a low and menacing rumble like the approach of a distant train.

‘Trusted?’ the fat man snarled. ‘You gets a place hard by the Shibition itself and can’t make no money? Don’t give me that barrikin. And where’s the silver I told you to bone? Don’t tell me nothing stuck to you? You’re either the laziest boy in London or a stunning imbecile. Look at this – I’ve got Carver’s dog at last and nothing to bet. Curse you, the only money I’ll make on it tonight is when I sell it!’ He seized a stave of wood and hoisted it above his head.

The boy looked about wildly for some defence and at the same moment footsteps on creaking stairs alerted his assailant to Hilditch’s approach. ‘Who’s that?’ the fat man hissed and laid down the wood. He lifted the boy to his feet. ‘Is ’e with you, Dan’l?’

The boy nodded and passed a sixpence to the man. ‘And he give me this jest fer walking him across town.’

The man looked more carefully at the stranger. ‘Did ’e truly? Well, well, that was handsome.’ He appraised Hilditch with a top to toe glance, threw him a quick smile and ducked inside the public house.

Hilditch descended the last few steps and regarded the boy. ‘I suppose you are hurt?’

The boy dusted off his thin clothes and shrugged. ‘That wasn’t hardly nothing. I’ve had wuss’n that. It’s all over anywise. I won’t remember this once it starts upstairs.’

They pushed past the men at the doorway and others who lined a cramped corridor and entered a packed bar room in which was a crush of bodies and a fug of tobacco smoke, stale beer and unwashed linen. Glasses toppled from slops-laden tables as Henry Hilditch was drawn through a mangle of sandy corduroy, scarlet uniform and spittle conversations.

‘Is this the singular spectacle we have come far to see? These people, this pandemonium?’ Hilditch shouted, for the bar room was loud with cursing and laughter, soldiers’ songs and the insistent barking of dogs.

‘Just you foller me and you’ll see,’ the boy called back as he held open a door.

They mounted a narrow staircase and entered an upper chamber whose area had been greatly enlarged by the removal of a central wall, which arrangement obliged those passing the length of the room to step nimbly through the surviving uprights of a timber frame. Old doors and timbers mounted upon barrels served as tables, and on rough-hewn chairs and makeshift settles were already installed some thirty-five or forty patrons all contributing to a bedlam of chatter and contention. Beyond the timber wall-frame was a room in which more men were grouped about a cleared area of better illumination.

The boy showed Hilditch to a table where an army officer in an unbuttoned tunic sat already and on which there seemed little room for anything more than the Staffordshire bull terrier which stood upon it. The soldier, prising open its jaws so that its saliva pooled on the table, acknowledged Hilditch’s arrival with a curt nod as he conversed with a smock-coated man who held his hat doffed beneath his arm.

‘Strong teeth, you’ll agree, Cap’n?’ He parted the dog’s legs and cupped pendulous testicles in his hands. ‘Two onions in a string bag, eh? He’s all dog, Cap’n, just what you want for the fancy!’

The soldier, applying a flaring Lucifer to his pipe of tobacco, kicked the dog from the table and rested polished boots in its place. He removed the pipe and spat out a shred of tobacco. ‘Teeth and testicles are very well, but many’s the good-looking cur that hasn’t earned his meat when set to it.’ He turned to Hilditch. ‘What say you, sir?’

Henry Hilditch struggled to sort and arrange the loud tumult of strange sights and sounds: the shifting curtain of corduroy, fustian and bombazine; the children appearing with tankards of ale and disappearing with pots and coins; the abnormal number of dogs straining on strings or held in their owners’ arms, or peering out from under coats, whose apparent ancestors – petrified in a full range of aggressive poses – were preserved and displayed in glass cases on shelves above.

The soldier nudged Hilditch. ‘Well, sir, what say you? Which is the top dog tonight?’

‘I couldn’t say, I’m sure,’ said Hilditch, as if he would much rather avoid conversation and be left to himself.

The boy, who had been awaiting a convenient moment to speak, now held out a hand to Hilditch. ‘You’ll feel more yourself with a drink inside you. A gent like you would take some port, I ’spect? Or maybe some French brandy? Give me a bob or two and I’ll see to it.’

The soldier’s moustache brushed Hilditch’s ear. ‘You keep close, is that it? Well, that might be the wisest course.’

The boy was tugging upon Hilditch’s sleeve like a restless puppy. ‘Drink, sir? There’s champagne, I believe.’

‘Champagne, that’s the ticket, eh!’ said the officer. ‘No beer and porter for us, eh, sir?’

‘What will it be, sir, brandy or champagne?’ said the boy, extending again his small hand.

‘No drink,’ said Hilditch. ‘Not while I am about my business.’

‘What’s that? You’ll not take a drink with Jack Ratcliffe of the Life Guards?’

‘No drink, thank you,’ said Hilditch, and in retreating behind his coloured spectacles provoked the soldier to swear and then to rise unsteadily.

‘Rum sort of fellow you are, sir,’ he said and stepped through the frame and into the area beyond, in which someone was ringing a bell. The boy remained at Hilditch’s side and sighed theatrically. ‘It is conventional to take a drink first,’ he declared. ‘You must have the drink, you know.’

‘This has been a mistake,’ Hilditch was saying as the noisy crowds about him pressed into the adjoining chamber. Some peered at him closely as they passed and others laughed at remarks made by the captain which evidently had concerned the newcomer. Even when abroad, Henry Hilditch had never felt such a stranger. He realised that he had been unprepared for such an Odyssey and wished for nothing more than to be safely returned to the West End. When he had first taken in this room, he had been delighted at the abundance of exotic subjects, any one of whom would most likely make a memorable portrait for the Messenger. Thoughts of over-leaping Henry Mayhew had raced through his mind. He saw An Entomology of the Working Classes, by Henry Hilditch. And if just one of these denizens of the streets and alleys of the East End had noticed a strange girl newly come among them … But as quickly as these thoughts fled had come the unsettling fear that he had crossed some invisible line and that his presence here was suspected and unwelcomed by all about.

‘If you will just see me back upon the high road …’ he said to Daniel, but immediately he was swept up by the tide of men and women who were crowding through one room and into the other, where, guided by the boy, he now found himself pushed and pulled until he was pressed hard up against the wooden siding of a circular pit about twelve feet in diameter. The pit was empty, though about its walls men were wedged tightly and behind them were others, pushing, shuffling and arranging themselves into positions of better vantage. The larger part of the audience stood upon furniture, sat upon a billiard table or swung their legs from the sills of high windows. Hilditch, hot about the collar, feeling not only the discomfort of his own strangeness, was nauseous too as he breathed the cloying atmosphere of decaying teeth, poor ale and dogs. As he became more accustomed to the scene he perceived that the only object of any interest at that moment to those other spectators whose pipes and elbows hung over the siding was himself.

‘’E won’t see much with ’is blinkers on!’ commented a stout woman as someone at Hilditch’s back ran a hand over the pile of his coat and observed that it must have cost a bob or two. It was unbearable to be the focus of such attention and to feel like a bug under glass and yet, Hilditch mused, perhaps, in their own way, these people were admiring him. They had already marked him as different. Conceivably, they might think him a princely stranger come among them for a mysterious purpose. Preoccupied in this way, a sudden blow to his shoulder took him unawares.

‘Mind yer back!’

Unnoticed by Hilditch, a man carrying another, larger dog had made his way through the crowd behind and now knocked him roughly as he passed. The dog was offered over the barrier and dropped into the pit.

‘Here’s a capital dog for someone,’ said William Saggers as he stood in the centre of the ring, which was lit from above. He uncoiled a length of rope and threw it over an oak beam, from which depended a great iron fitting with six flaring flames. No sooner was the rope tied off than the animal broke free, leapt into the pit and seized the rope’s end, locking its teeth upon a great knot.

‘That’s the style, Nipper!’

The rope was pulled hard and the dog launched into the air. Flexing the muscles of its neck, it swung from side to side, frantically arranging a better hold for its teeth. These struggles and contortions were observed with keen interest by all about the pit. Saggers stood back and waved a hand at the gyrating animal. ‘Did you ever see a stronger dog? Here’s more muscles than Billingsgate! Who’ll have him? Who’ll make me a decent offer?’

The dog gave out joyous, slobbering growls as it arced wildly, but then, unable to unfix its teeth from thick hemp, it started to choke on its own saliva.

‘He’s had his fill already, Willum,’ observed a man. ‘What’s wanted is a dog with tenacity!’

‘I’ll show you that!’ said the other and before the animal could extricate itself and drop to the floor, William Saggers had taken a guttering candle from a table and slipped it directly beneath the beam. Now whenever the dog passed over the source of heat, it convulsed and thrashed wildly as it tried to remove itself from the source of pain. It swung high but, inevitably, its pendulum course returned it to the flame where it shuddered and flailed with increased violence. The mob cheered with one voice as the squealing dog was scorched again and roundly condemned the soldier Ratcliffe when he stepped into the pit and kicked away the candle. ‘Enough, you half-wit, Saggers, I want some dog left, don’t I?’

‘You’ll ’ave ’im, then, Captain? A reg’lar bargain he is, at five guineas.’

‘You’ll get your money afterwards,’ said Ratcliffe. ‘Anyone can hang on a rope and no doubt some of us will. I’ll see the dog going about his business first.’

The soldier quietened the quaking dog and quit the ring as William Saggers said, ‘Bet now, gentlemen, and remember that this fine dog is for sale arterwards to the highest bidder. Never mind that the captain’s set ‘is expert eye on him.’

Saggers climbed from the pit and stepped up to his chair, an old Windsor carver which was elevated upon some unseen dais and situated at one side of Hilditch. Thus enthroned, he began taking money, giving change and marking slips of paper presented by those about. A shadowy figure without the inn, the ring of gas flames above showed Saggers to be a figure worthy of more particular notice. His face was jowly, his eyes squinty and the line of his mouth thin. Beneath his eyes, below his forehead and lip, shadows had formed that exaggerated the lines of his middle age and his foreshortened visage looked as if it had been sat upon and crumpled, like a mislaid hat. His head weighed upon his shoulders like a cannon ball on a soft cushion, folding into his flabby blue-chinned neck which was squeezed so tightly into its collar that folds of flesh spilled over the top. Neither his waistcoat nor his overcoat were buttoned and nor did it seem possible that the two sides of his apparel could ever be caused to meet.

With the attentions of all fastened upon this individual, Hilditch allowed his terror to subside and to become interested himself. This singularly repulsive specimen was worthy of further study. He would relish introducing him into the well-upholstered homes of the Morning Messenger’s readers. The subject of Hilditch’s meditations spat and called out, impatiently, ‘All finished, jintlemin? Then let’s have ’em in, Jack!’

Heavy boots clomped upon the stairs and the crowd parted to allow the passage of a sharp-nosed, wiry man who carried some heavy burden. As he came closer, Hilditch saw that it was a cage and within the mesh a dark mass appeared to move. For an instant Hilditch thought that here was some small caged bear but then flaring gas sparked in a hundred tiny eyes and as the cage was jolted against the pit wall, the amorphous shape split apart and rearranged itself at either end and upon the roof of the cage. Tails flicked from the grill like the tongues of lizards; Hilditch heard now the squealing and saw that in the cage was a great mass of brown rats. The man deposited the cage on the floor of the pit. He bent to tie two pieces of string about the bottoms of his trousers, observing that he ‘could do wivart rats up there!’ and untwisted the loop of wire that fastened the cage.

II

The cage door being let open, the rats – so quick do they move that Hilditch can only roughly estimate that their number is around fifty – pour out on the boards and scatter this way and that, around and about the pit, nosing in crevices and searching for an egress, of which there is none. By Hilditch’s side, Captain Ratcliffe struggles to hold back the salivating and growling terrier as it strains and fights to be let go. The rats, sensing extreme danger, pile themselves at the opposing side of the pit, scrambling one upon the other in pyramids of fur and whiskers, screeching and tearing at each other, the topmost jumping hopelessly for the rim of the pit, where a man flashes an amber-toothed grin as he swipes at them with a club.

‘All ready, sirs?’ calls the wiry man as he shakes free a rat that has fixed itself upon the cloth of his trousers. He climbs from the pit and winks at Ratcliffe. ‘Then we’ll let the fancy commence!’

The soldier leans forward and drops the dog into the pit. It pauses a moment to size up the situation and then plunges into the largest pile of rodents, snuffling deep among the shrieking, squirming pile until it extracts a fat brown rat on which it fixes its teeth so hard that dark specks of blood appear on the rat’s neck. The dog shakes its prey as violently as it was itself shaken upon the rope. It bites harder, forcing more blood from the throat of its victim and then throws the rat upon the floor, where it lies convulsing in its death throes.

The dog darts again at the pile and pulls out another, smaller rat and, making an excited misjudgement, crushes the head in its jaws. It spits out the mutilated animal and despatches three more rats with greater efficiency. Now it has the measure of the job in hand it wags its tail and takes its time, plucking a rat from here, a rat from there; it is content to allow others to race between its legs as it breaks another small neck. So complacent is the dog that an unexpected reversal is all the more alarming.

Once more rushing a number of rats, the dog suddenly withdraws its snout, throws back its head and yelps. A rat hangs heavily from the dog’s jowls, its teeth firmly fixed in the soft skin. The dog attempts to shake free the rat and in so doing tears its own flesh. It squeals and backs away from the pain. Injured and confused, the dog turns on the remaining rats with renewed vigour and, loudly encouraged by the spectators who hang over the pit sides and sometimes beat the rats from the walls with sticks, kills one after another in quick succession. The number of dead steadily grows until more are laid stopped upon the floor than are still scattering about the ring.

A man close to Hilditch points to his pocket-watch. ‘I count thirty-eight dead or dying. Another twelve in three minutes, my beauty, another twelve!’

‘Don’t reckon your pot yet,’ Captain Ratcliffe says. ‘That dog is tiring of the game.’

No sooner has the other replied, ‘Says the expert?’ than he too sees that the dog’s attention is wavering. The gash in its cheek still bleeds and though the number of scuttling rats continues to drop, the dog is dealing out death in a most desultory fashion. The rats themselves appear to sense the change and are becoming bolder. One sits on its hind legs, rubbing its whiskers with tiny paws. Small black eyes glint in the gaslight and Hilditch is seduced by the absurd idea that the thing is praying to him, as some omnipotence holding the gift of life or death, when the dog flies at it, pinning its torso to the floor with sharp claws as it tears off the head with its teeth.

This final violence has thoroughly sated the dog and, pausing to cock its leg and piss against the pile of matted fur near the centre, it sees its present owner and jumps its paws on to the rim of the pit, where its ears are scratched. Unmolested, the last few rats traverse the floor without purpose.

The match over, money changes hands. ‘Well, Captain,’ William Saggers says when the bets are settled. ‘I’ll accept your money and then I’ll have a little bet myself. We agreed ’pon five guinea, I think?’

Captain Ratcliffe laughs dismissively. ‘A farmer might give you a few shillings. That’s no sporting dog.’

Saggers’ voice falls to a low whisper. ‘Don’t make a fool of me, Ratcliffe. I must get staked. There’s money here tonight, I can smell it!’

‘Then sniff it out, by all means,’ says Ratcliffe, turning away. ‘Just keep your nose out of my pockets.’

Saggers forces a smile but his brow appears to record the passing of darker thoughts. His eyes roam about the room but his gaze is unmet. A man whose attention is engaged before he can avert his eyes, listens to whispers and shakes his head. Saggers raises his voice. ‘What? Only five shillings, Bob? And my firm promise that you’ll have six on Saturday next? This ain’t worthy of you, Bob!’

‘Mr Willum, you know I’d never refuse you. But my last tanner went on that dog and I’ll go wivart my lunch tomorrow.’ Saggers grunts and watches blankly as a new dog sets about his rats. The small carcases are being dropped into a sack when Saggers seizes the boy Daniel and grips him by the neck. ‘This is your fault, Dan’l, you’ve brought me to this! What’s a betting man without his capital?’

Hilditch follows the altercation between father and son with interest. He is fascinated by this Saggers, who is clearly a pivotal figure in this alien world and may even, Hilditch thinks, provide him with some vital intelligence. It does not seem unlikely. Just as Hilditch himself has been identified instantly as a stranger, so too would a well-spoken and striking woman appearing suddenly in these parts. It is this woman whose memory has drawn him after her, into the East End of London, and she who impels him into such strange places as this. Engrossed in such thoughts, Hilditch fails to notice that Saggers’ eyes are fixed upon him.

‘Well, stranger! Dan’l says you’ve come a long way to see the fancy tonight. But you’ve yet to make a wager?’

Hilditch is non-committal and only shrugs, in the French fashion.

Saggers says, ‘Well, if you’re new to the fancy you’re wise to watch how it goes first. A man needs to know what he’s doing. And know something about dogs, too, eh?’

He leans over his chair and lowers his voice. ‘Lucky for you, I’m the ’knowledged expert on matters of a canine nature. Ain’t that so, Ned?’

‘’E’s that, all right,’ says a man in a garish waistcoat.

‘What I propose,’ Saggers confides, ‘is that I larns you something about the fancy, in return for a small consideration. Through the fault of others, I find myself short. But a gent like you would hardly come out without his tin, eh? Now, to begin, shall we stake five shilling?’

‘No, I think not,’ Hilditch replies.

‘Three, then? Or a round half crown?’ Hilditch shakes his head and Saggers frowns. ‘I knows my dogs, I tell you. And if we don’t win I don’t take my consideration. How much fairer can a man be? Give me a shilling and I’ll lay it down.’

‘No, I really think not,’ Hilditch says and turns away. He affects to observe the spectators about the pit, who have resumed their drinking and chatter and are, Hilditch thinks, at least as interesting as the spectacle in the pit. Now that the arena is being cleared once more of dead rats, those gathered about it are talking loudly. Nattily dressed salesmen puff cigars at the side of costermongers who pull on yellow-stemmed pipes and expectorate into the pit. Other fanciers point at dogs in the glass cases, shaking their heads with the gravitas of Oxford dons. One or two nearby have been paying heed to the exchange between the stranger and Saggers, whose brow now furrows as his head inclines quizzically.

‘Am I mistaken?’ he says, loudly enough for all about to hear should they so wish. Saggers addresses himself to the ceiling. ‘Am I under a mishapprehension?’ He peers directly into the dark glass of Hilditch’s spectacles. ‘You is here to enjoy our ’umble entertainment, isn’t you?’

Saggers snatches at Daniel who has remained at his side and pulls him closer. ‘Dan’l! The gent is here to bet, ain’t he?’

Daniel looks about himself, to the door, but interested crowds have stopped up the way of escape. ‘No, he an’t here to bet.’

‘Not here to bet?’ announces Saggers, astounded. And then claps his hand to his forehead. ‘Hang me for a fool! O’course, that’s it, he’s here to buy, then!’

‘No, he don’t want a dog neither.’

‘What, then, Dan’l?’ says Saggers.

‘He said he just wanted to watch.’

Saggers makes his eyes bulge in mock-astonishment but real annoyance prevents further mummery and he booms out, ‘To hob-serve? What’s the good of that? Who is he, Dan’l? Is he a spy, a Customs sneak maybe?’

Eyes swivel to Hilditch like so many great guns. ‘We don’t turn away strangers here, sir,’ Saggers says. ‘We welcomes ’em, takes ’em into our fold. We treats a stranger like our own, so long as they loves the entertainment we provides. And you don’t give the appearance of doing that, sir! P’raps you’ll explain yourself?’

To those across the pit the stranger appears composed but some who stand closer may observe the sheen upon his lip.

‘I’m not a sporting man. I only want to see what goes on here.’

Saggers pauses, weighs up the answer like an Assize judge after a heavy lunch.

‘What kind of cove are you, sir? What doesn’t get involved?’

‘I only want to be a spectator,’ says Hilditch. ‘I get no pleasure from gambling. I wish only to stand here quietly and watch. But, if that is not permissible, then I will go.’

‘No, no, you interest me, sir, and you shall stay,’ Saggers says. ‘I would like to know what kind of a man is it that can keep isself separate from all others though he stands beside ’em and accepts their ’ospitality.’

‘I have no wish to insult you,’ says Hilditch. ‘You will forgive me if I seem impolite.’

‘You’re like the missionaries and the meddlers that come about us, all wanting something for nothing.’ He shakes his head as he scrutinises the novelty before him. ‘What a pale and lifeless thing you are! Do you have no blood in you? Can’t you afford no meat? I can hear you’ve an education. A man can go far with one o’ them, they say. But it seems he can’t get fat!’

William Saggers slaps his own ample haunches, and looks about for the endorsement of the crowd.

‘If you will excuse me, now,’ Hilditch begins, but Saggers holds him back.

‘I think you care for nothing, sir. I think you are a cold creetur that can worm its way in anywhere, observe and go away again.’ He turns again to the silent crowd and receives nods and murmurs of assent before he starts to address Hilditch again. ‘Maybe I’ve seen you at a hanging? We’ve all observed at hangings, ain’t we, mates? But we ain’t like fish watching wi’out blinking as some cove dies. We cheers if he’s a bad ’un or we cries if he’s a pal. But we gets involved, that’s for sartain.’

Hilditch, pale as candlewax, fights to keep control of his trembling voice. ‘I don’t have a lot of money, but I can loan you a shilling, to make your bet,’ he says. ‘If you will only allow me to watch without further molestation.’

‘I shouldn’t like to involve you when you didn’t want to be involved,’ says Saggers, ‘when arter all you had only come here to observe.’

Saggers pushes Daniel before Hilditch, blocking his path. ‘You know my boy Dan’l?’

Hilditch meets the wide eyes of the child and nods. Saggers holds the boy’s arm with one hand and with his other hand he strokes his face.

‘He’s a good boy, ain’t he?’

‘That depends on the purpose for which he guided me here. But I’m persuaded he is.’

‘You got here safe, didn’t you?’

Saggers speaks loudly, so his voice can be heard above the preparations for the next match. Rats scratch against the boards by which Hilditch stands, confronted by Saggers, while in the periphery of his vision they run pell mell about the pit. A small, sharp-eared terrier yaps excitedly in its owner’s arms.

‘Drop the little feller in,’ somebody calls. ‘He looks ready for ’en!’

‘Wait!’ The voice of William Saggers is loud enough to brook further chatter. ‘Hold your dog, Isaac. He can have his turn after the diversion.’

News of this diversion daisy-chains about the pit and Hilditch has every man’s attention as he turns Daniel about and, with a dog’s rope, pinions his arms behind his back. ‘Jes’ so you isn’t tempted to cheat,’ he says.

The boy, with a face that is a mixing of shock and rage, protests loudly. ‘You promised I shouldn’t do this again!’

‘And you promised to bring home your money,’ his father replies, as he helps the boy up upon a pit-side table. ‘Now go on, give the gentlemen their entertainment and there might be something in it for you.’

Daniel stands above the crowd. At first Hilditch thinks the boy’s trembling is caused by his precarious perch – the table rocks upon a shortened leg – but then he sees the dark streak upon the boy’s trousers and the new puddling upon the tabletop. The boy whimpers softly.

‘No good looking at that particular jintleman,’ Saggers says. ‘He’s only a observer! Now, into the pit, Dan’l, or it’ll go the worse for you.’

The boy hesitates. He looks again at Hilditch, as if he might penetrate the opaqueness of his disguise. Saggers moves towards him and raises his stick. ‘’E jest needs a little poke,’ he tells the crowd, but before Saggers can follow through, the boy jumps to the floor of the pit. He lands hard upon the boards but loses his balance and crashes to the floor. His tied hands are trapped beneath him and for some moments he is unable to rise or to prevent the rats swarming over his legs and chest. Daniel struggles but is at last upon his feet, crying petulantly, ‘I ain’t doing this again!’

‘A half dozen rats in five minutes, Daniel – that ain’t asking much, I think, of a dutiful son.’

‘I only done two last time,’ the boy complains.

Saggers’ stick prods the boy towards the largest piling of rats. ‘Every one on ’em, Dan’l, or you’ll bed in the gutter tonight. I’ve had my fill of you.’

Tears of anger and frustration flash in the boy’s eyes as he crosses the pit and swings a ferocious kick at the writhing mound. As the rats disperse, he stamps hard and crushes the head of one and immediately receives a crack across his own skull from his father’s stick. ‘None of that, none of that! You bite ’em, same as the dogs!’

Around the ring, bets are being made by the sanguinary men who cheer noisily as the stick flails and Daniel ducks to avoid another knock on the head. The boy resigns himself to his circumstances and falls to his knees before the rats. Screwing tight his eyes, he darts his head among them in the manner of the dogs before him. The topmost creatures escape his incursion by scrabbling over the boy’s head, matting his hair and scratching his scalp before they run off down his back. Others dart out from between his legs and around his sides. The boy shuffles about, his head bobs up and down and then he straightens his back and turns about. Blood streams from lacerations to his cheeks, nose and forehead. He has a rat between his teeth, which he quickly traps against the wall while he bites its neck. The rat scratches, fights and squeals as the boy traps it against the wood while he finds a place to make a fatal nip.

‘That’s the style, boy, that’s the style!’ Saggers calls.

The boy drops the rat and spits out a piece of its fur. ‘Let me go, I’ll get you money if you’ll let me go,’ he implores, but Saggers will hear none of this and shouts, ‘Another varmint, lad, go to it!’

Reluctantly, the boy again addresses the quivering rats. This time his small mouth can find no purchase and each time he delves among the animals he receives additional wounding. Not all who cheered before are cheering now. A pop-eyed, florid-faced man urges on the sobbing boy, waving his stick and shouting, ‘Kill ’en, Dan’l! Kill ’en, boy!’ but Daniel withdraws himself from his quarry and sits back upon his heels with glazed countenance.

Saggers, for all that he seems intent upon the boy, has Hilditch in his gaze. His thin smile is enquiring. ‘How do you like our sport now, sir?’

Blood wells in the boy’s eyes, drops heavily from a split lip and dapples his shirt front. Wherever bare skin shows, it is crazed with the scratches of sharp claws.

‘This is the most damnable thing I ever saw,’ Hilditch says.

Saggers prods the boy with his stick. ‘Don’t stop now! Another rat, damn you!’ He begins to push Daniel towards the seething, blood-speckled heap of animation.

Hilditch, who is so close to Saggers that he seems complicit in his every action, clears his throat.

‘What’s that?’ Saggers says.

‘That’s enough!’ says Hilditch.

Saggers affects surprise and cups his ear as he speaks to the assembly at large. ‘You ain’t about to interfere? Ho, no, I couldn’t have heard that!’ He leans forward and pokes his stick in the back of the boy’s neck. ‘Get along, boy, you ain’t finished yet!’

Hilditch lays his hand upon the arm that is raising the stick. ‘You must stop this. You must have his wounds seen to now!’

‘Must I, indeed? This is your opinion?’

‘It’s the opinion of anyone with an ounce of sanity,’ says Hilditch.

‘You keep out of this. Can’t you do like you said? He’ll be taken care of, jest as soon as he’s finished.’

‘He’s finished now, man. Look at him!’

Saggers spits at Hilditch, ‘If he leaves that pit now, he leaves this house for ever and ever, Amen. A boy what can’t make money is no good to me. Well? Will he leave with you, sir? Will you take him?’

Hilditch hesitates. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘I thought as much,’ he says, and turns away. ‘Finish them rats, Dan’l. It’s like you said. The gent’s only here to watch.’

Daniel shuffles towards the rats once more. Saggers throws a halfpenny into the pit and someone else throws a second. Daniel is encouraged by the men about the pit, whose calls are now sympathetic, some even kindly. ‘Go on, son,’ someone says. ‘You’re doing stunning.’ Over his shoulder, Saggers says, ‘You’ll recall the way out, sir.’

The crowd makes way before him, and before he knows it, Henry Hilditch is once more outside in the cool night air of the London streets.

3 ‘Sixpunny Portraits’

At the wrong end of a small tributary off Oxford Street, in an area where strugglers of some ambition might claim a West End address, but others might feel keenly their proximity to the rookeries of St Giles; where spider and web fought dustpan and brush, and the occasional tottering pile of crumbling masonry and broken windows was like an ebony piano key on an otherwise ivory board; and where the owners of flower boxes and neat little shops hoped to raise their neighbours by example alone, a smart black equipage was pulled by four beautifully turned-out horses the full length of the street before it was brought to a halt outside a place of business situated on a corner.

The upper two storeys of this house were much like its neighbours – soot-stained bricks punctured by a double row of three sash windows, all nearly opaque with grime. Below these upper windows appeared the still-white lettering, Touchfarthing. Photographer. The ground-floor sashes had been removed and replaced with a large plate-glass window, behind which were displayed line upon line of assorted photographs framed in tin and silver and representing generations of people of all stations, although those of more obvious standing were allowed their right of precedence and stood to the front of the window, while anonymous fishwives and porters, costermongers and men with dogs lurked in obscurity at the rear.

Dwarfing these were larger portraits framed in wood and gilt depicting whiskery men of business in shiny hats; young, newly-commissioned officers; robust matrons restraining fidgeting infants and there were also the records of young ladies and gentlemen at various stages of their development. Two removable glazed panels of sample pictures and frames stood propped in opposite corners. Beneath the window, for anyone sufficiently interested to stoop, was the information:

Cornelius Touchfarthing, Photographer. Exact Likenesses taken for as little as 6d, frame included. Miniature and Large sized Photographs taken at Three-quarters or Full length. Reduced Prices for Whole Families and Groups. Personal Visits undertaken to the Homes of Ladies and Gentlemen. Enquire within about our Morocco cases, brooches and lockets.

The window display was rarely without its cluster of admirers and was treated by much pavement traffic as a free gallery and by the proprietor with mixed feelings. If one half of those who gathered about his window would enter the shop and have their likenesses taken he might be well-pleased, and he was buoyed only by the hope that some who peered into his window told others and these might some day be his customers. In the meantime, he admitted with some reluctance, he would have to resort to more go-ahead methods if he were to keep his head above water.

On this morning a smartly-dressed family stood before his window admiring another family, whose perfect likeness made the attractive centre-piece of the window display. A great gilt frame, such as might have been employed almost without shame at the Royal Academy, encompassed a scene of domestic perfection. The tall, mustachioed patriarch of the group stood sternly to one side with a hand resting heavily on the shoulder of his seated wife, a model of simple chastity. Sitting on a chaise-longue beside her were three children, groomed, scrubbed and stiffly resplendent in their Sunday best. The bases of posing stands, showing between the polished shoes of the boy and the laced-up boots of the elder girl, suggested that this perfect poise had not been achieved without a little ingenuity.

The admirers of this picture turned as one when the sounds of hooves and harnesses alerted them to the arrival of horses and carriage. The conveyance was not a grand affair, but smart and compact and in the best order. Soon the bright crest upon the door was holding the interest of the window-gazers and was very quickly attracting the attention of more pavement traffic, a handful of shopkeepers and one or two street sellers. They gathered about to decipher the emblem and the motto below, waiting for a glimpse of the august occupant, whose identity was protected by a lowered blind. The driver, the collar of his great-coat raised, the brim of his hat pulled low so that he was altogether muffled too well against the clement weather, took all the time in the world descending from his perch and in giving the reins to a crossing sweeper. ‘His lordship will not detain you long,’ he said loudly, and gave the boy a shiny sixpence. Anticipation rippled through the crowd as the driver tapped upon the carriage door. The blind was let up and from within sounded a stentorian voice. ‘We’re arrived are we?’

The crowd clustered about the vehicle as the driver opened the door and let down the steps. ‘This is the establishment as was recommended, sir,’ he said.

‘This person is good, is he?’ demanded the resounding voice.

‘The very best in London, I’m assured,’ said the driver.

‘And you are certain that he is properly patronised?’

‘I’m told the Duke himself calls for Mr Touchfarthing.’

‘Well, I hope he’s quick. I’m a busy man.’

‘I understand told that the whole process is accomplished in five minutes,’ said the driver. ‘He’s also uncommonly cheap.’

‘Pshaw!’ said the voice within. ‘If it’s quality I want, I think I can pay for it! Help me out!’

The crowd gathered close about the carriage as the driver extricated from the small cabin a large man in beautiful yet curiously ill-fitting garments. One or two of the shopkeepers touched their forelocks as the driver, crying out ‘Make way for his lordship, there!’, hurriedly assisted his passenger across the pavement and into the shop doorway. The door opened and closed and its bolt was shot. The crowd pressed against the window, where, above the brass rail of a half-curtain, the party just entered might be seen making its way to the rear of the premises.

‘Gorn to have ’is photograph made!’ hissed a bent and toothless cress-seller. The two young crossing sweepers who had wormed their way to the front of the crowd now extricated themselves with the same ease. ‘You’n see’t all at the back!’ said one and those with sufficient curiosity shuffled after the sweepers, who had scampered around the corner where a rickety fence enclosed an unusual addition to the photographer’s premises. This great glasshouse, the oasis of some forgotten city horticulturist, was now in poor repair, the branches of an apple tree having broken through one corner, and with many of the panes now whitewashed or stuffed with waxed paper and cloth, the annexe was a poor adjunct to the property for anyone but a photographer of limited means, for whom its abundance of northern light made it a perfectly serviceable and capacious studio. Through knots and gaps in the surrounding fence, the boys were commenting on the proceedings within.

‘’Is lordship’s stood agin a great pile of books an’ a bit of a pillar, it looks like. There’s a door behind ’im and trees and the sea.’

‘Sea? In the middle o’ London? Shift over an’ let me look!’

‘It’s a pitcher, I mean – what looks like the sea.’

‘And don’ ’e look savage?’ The boy rapped on the glass. ‘Like a reg’lar statchoo, aintcha, old feller?’ He knocked again and contorted his features so that his eyes bulged and his nose was flattened against the glass. The sitter, sensible of his audience, struggled to maintain his composure. He adjusted his pose, lifting his chin and stroking his luxuriant moustache before fixing his gaze in the far distance.

Shortly afterwards, the muffled driver opened the door of the shop and escorted the noble personage back into his carriage. As soon as the door was closed, he mounted his seat and flicked his whip. The carriage drew away. It turned a corner and then another and then it stopped. The door opened and its passenger alighted and hurried into a tradesmen’s entrance behind the glasshouse. The carriage itself turned into the yards of a livery stable where the driver jumped down.

After the great stable doors had been opened and the coach had been wheeled inside and the doors once more closed and locked, a sum of money passed from the hands of the driver into those of a cheerful man in a checked waistcoat and top boots.

The passenger meanwhile had hurried across a yard, through the glasshouse and into the kitchen door of the photographer’s premises. Throwing off his jacket in the partitioned kitchen that served also as dark-room, he prised off his shoes and pulled on his familiar stained jacket and trousers. Once reattired and having paused just long enough to catch his breath, he strode over to the front door. Here he stopped suddenly as if struck by an idea. Carefully, he stripped the moustache from under his nose and slipped it into a pocket of his trousers before opening wide the street door.

‘A good afternoon to you,’ he said to the still curious and bemused throng without. ‘I hope I haven’t kept anyone waiting. I was obliged to prepare a photograph for a most important client. But I am free now – I can see the first sitter in just a moment. Photographs can be made by my assistant Mr Rankin for sixpence or for only twopence more you can elect to be photographed by myself in person. Now, who will be first today? This little fellow’ – he addressed a woman with a baby wrapped in her shawl – ‘will make a charming picture. If his fortunate mother would like to take him through to the studio at the rear?’

II

Cornelius Touchfarthing, recumbent in the chair that had been warmed by a succession of sitters that afternoon, accepted the cup of tea that had been placed in his hand by John Rankin, without any sign of acknowledgement. ‘What a shabby business, John,’ he sighed. ‘I am defiled.’

Rankin drew up a stool and placed a plate of buttered toast on the box of chemicals that was between them. ‘Well, it ain’t as straight as I could want but it’s taken care of the rent.’

‘But the indignity of it all, John. I felt like a player in a pantomime.’

‘There ain’t no reason we have to do it regular. It won’t work for us if we do. But something like that will get us known. It’s you what said we needed the patronage of the nobs.’

‘Upon my word, we do, John.’

When the cups had been emptied, Rankin refilled them, fussing about a little spilt milk upon the tray and pouring the tea from the leaky pot with all the daintiness of a lady’s maid. ‘That’s all well and good if we gets enough of ’em to make a go of it. But as it is we’ve got a roaring trade in sixpunny portraits. We might get set up in that line alone.’

‘But do you look at our subjects, John. Shopkeepers. School-teachers. A chimney sweep and his family, for goodness’ sake! If we keep on in this way we’ll drive off the better customers. There will be no more well-to-do families, army officers and distinguished businessmen then.’

‘There ain’t any now. Or ’ave you forgot how you bought them pictures in the window?’

‘Only to encourage respectable business of our own, John. I didn’t set up here to produce penny keepsakes. We must establish ourselves in the right circles as quickly as we can. There are not more than a dozen commercial photographers in London today but in only a few months it will all have changed, mark my words. I can see them coming now, swarms of little men with their cheap cameras and poor pictures. And by the time they are here we must be the concern that society connects with the art of photography.’

‘Art?’ Rankin snorted. ‘What’s art to do with it? This here’s a new trade and one what’s alive with opportunities.’

‘Trade? Heaven forbid, Mr Rankin! We might as well be scissors and card men making silhouettes. Do you know what they’ve called photography, John? Painting with light. A skilled photographist is not a tradesman but an artist. And his aims must be the same as other artists – that’s the only way he’ll achieve a similar standing.

‘In its ideal form,’ the older man continued, as John Rankin knelt before him and tugged off a shoe, ‘photography should aim at the grand style. I can see no reason why what has been achieved by Rubens and Titian with paint cannot be made with modern methods. That’s the stuff to put photography on its proper footing.’

‘If that’s all we’re about we might as well sell the camera and buy brushes and paint,’ Rankin said. ‘Ain’t it obvious that cameras should be doing all that brushes can’t? Anything else would be a wasted opportunity.’

‘To occupy the position of a modern Reynolds would hardly be that, John.’

‘Well, I’m blessed if I can see the point of it all,’ Rankin muttered. ‘Here we are using painted backcloths and properties to photograph what’s outside for free. It ain’t natural.’

‘You are a good fellow, John, but ill-equipped to follow an argument such as this. Art isn’t a mere representation of life. It ennobles and elevates. And that is what will distinguish us from the common picture-taker.’

‘Pardon me,’ Rankin said, as he suppressed his irritation, ‘but that’s a waste of time and a waste of a fair chance. You might do things with a camera your artists never dreamed of. Why, what if you was to take a camera to the cuts and courts I grew up in down Seven Dials – not a mile from here, in fact, but where the gents and their ladies never sets a foot? And then how would it be if you was to show such photographs in places they might be seen by them as knows nothing about how the poor has to live in London? It’s my thinking that if the charities and the other do-gooders was to see what was happening on their own doorsteps they’d find better uses for their cash than sending it to the pygmies.’

‘Pie-in-the-sky rubbish!’ pronounced Touchfarthing. ‘Respectable people don’t want that filth thrust in their faces.’

‘Mr Touchfarthing, I believe I am a partner in this here business?’

‘You are an essential cog in the machine, you know that. But there’s more for you to learn, John, before you can have your name written after mine.’

‘I sunk thirty pound in this business,’ Rankin said. ‘And as your partner I say I’ve no objection to you going all out to get the nobs’ business, so long as we keeps our feet on the ground and a roof above our heads with the regular trade. But if you’ve got plans to be doing other things on top of that, then I’ll expect the same consideration.’

‘You might do anything except drag photography into the gutter, John. If it’s only a matter of using our calling in the service of others, you might assist me.’

‘With what?’

‘I have my own plans, John. Plans for a series of moral photographs, instructional images which will provide examples for those in need of guidance. Some simple, Biblical scenes. They can all be executed quite easily here in the studio, with only a few properties and the services of one or two persons of suitable appearance.’

‘Poor folk don’t want moral guidance!’ Rankin exploded. ‘They want houses wivart holes in their roofs and a hot meal now and then, not framed photies of the baby Jesus.’

‘But don’t you think that with the right examples before them they would not fall so low as to require the support of others?’

‘No, I don’t. Pardon me, guv’nor, but if anything sounds like wasting tin, it’s this. Properties cost money – and I suppose there would be costumes, and all?’

‘I thought, John, that as you are so handy at sewing, we might save …’

‘Oh, your needle-woman as well, am I? And then we’re to frame these pictures and give ’em away to folk who will pop ’em to uncle the first chance they has, I suppose?’

‘They will not be pawned, they will be treasured, John. My Accurate Scenes from the Bible – I think I shall call them that – will have threefold advantages. Firstly, they will be morally efficacious. Secondly, the use of property and costume will be excellent preparation for the grander projects I have in mind. And thirdly – and most importantly from your point of view, it seems – they will make us money.’

‘I don’t believe it, guv’nor.’

‘Mr Rutter assures me it will be so.’

‘What’s Holy Harry to do with this? That villain ain’t settled his account yet and after I was half a day getting a picture of hisself as he liked. And ’is good Lord knows how many prints we did for his congregation.’

‘Mr Rutter was admiring the study I did of Mrs Langham, the actress. He remarked how like Jezebel she appeared to him. It was the inspiration for the improving photographs we shall produce. Mr Rutter will provide the themes and the market. If we must continually talk of money, you might see this as a sound investment, John. Safer than reg’lar investments such as the 3d Consols.’

‘And what’s Mr Rutter want ’em for?’

‘He may display them in his meeting house for the edification of his congregation. Or they might be employed as aids to his teaching. There is no saying with a non-conformist. But he has all but promised to buy whatever I can produce. That is the difference. These pictures are already sold. They will not drain our resources which, I regret, would very much be the case if I allowed you to pursue your own plans.’

‘Allowed me? To do what I want in my own time, using only as much paper and chemicals as wouldn’t be missed?’

‘It isn’t the sort of thing that the firm of Touchfarthing, Photographer, should be involved with. Not if it’s to be Touchfarthing and Partner.’

‘And that’s flat, is it?’

‘That is as it must be, John. It will be best if you learn to accept my guidance in these matters.’

‘I may very well have to review the nature of our relationship, Mr Touchfarthing,’ said John Rankin, picking up the tray of tea things. ‘And you can warm the bed as best you can tonight, for I’m going to sleep in the shop. I bid you a very good night.’

Rankin picked up and dusted off the costume worn by Touchfarthing that day. In the back of the house, he wrapped it in a parcel of brown paper which he tied up with string. When Touchfarthing was heard to mount the stairs, he returned to the studio and carried away the tray of tea things, which he washed up at the scullery sink. He lifted a great grey cat from a chair and deposited it beyond the back door, where he stood, allowing the cool evening air to calm his mood. He took his pipe from the deep recess of his coat pocket and stuffed the bowl with a little coarse tobacco. The sun had set but a thin grey light persisted. Nearby, hooves clattered and wheels squeaked as broughams and cabs ran up by the house in order to avoid the congestion of Oxford Street. Hard by the back wall, footsteps and laughter were abruptly stilled by the closing of a door. Further off, from the direction of St Giles, a child or a woman screamed and a man shouted a drunken oath. Rankin smoked his pipe, and listened.

When he had finished, he knocked the bowl against the heel of his shoe, muttered, ‘Blow you, Mr T.,’ and went back inside. He bolted the back door top and bottom and lit the candle that was kept upon the greasy dresser before making his way to the front of the house. From the room above came the creaking of bedsprings as Cornelius Touchfarthing prepared himself for sleep. He checked the lock of the front door and peered over the half-curtain at the arrangement of framed photographs in the shop window. The door, warped in its frame, required a sharp shove to open and it was not unusual for this sudden vibration to topple the lines of matrons and children and clerks and ministers like so many tin soldiers. This evening his regiment was all stood to attention and Rankin was turning towards his makeshift bed behind the counter, a frequent place of resort after a difference with his partner, when his attention was taken by a person beyond the glass, on the far side of the street. The person in question had stopped, retraced his steps and turned to look directly at the shop. He might have been staring directly at Rankin himself had the photographer’s assistant not known that he was as shrouded in shadows as the man’s eyes were hidden by tinted spectacles. For a moment Rankin was perplexed. He thought he might know the man, though from quite where he couldn’t say. Then he snapped his fingers.

‘’Ullo, old chap. I recall you now, I do,’ he murmured. ‘And just what is it that you might be arter, I wonder?’

4 An Imperfect Image

The Times, London. August 10th, 1851. Last evening, the bridge at Vauxhall being made an impassable beargarden by a collision between a brick-maker’s wagon and that of a corn factor, and this mishap causing a knife-board bus to overturn and spill its passengers, revellers were obliged to look about for some other means of traversing the River. Not only was the bridge blocked to wheeled traffic: the overturned bus, a dying horse and returning Exhibition hordes tramping over a carpet of fresh grain had stopped access from the Surrey shore for everyone, not excepting some medical men called to attend to the injured passengers.

Great millstones of cloud had been rolling across the heavens since late afternoon, presaging the rain that now fell in glass shards and making the scene by the Thames more akin to a November’s night than a late summer’s eve. The deep gloom was relieved only by a luminescence emanating from the environs of the Crystal Palace, which reflected faintly upon the river and also on the darkened spectacles of Henry Hilditch.

The day had not been used well. Had he visited Vauxhall Gardens only yesterday instead, he might have arrived at the river in better humour. From a journalist’s point of view the expedition should have been a successful one. It should have been no less so from a scientist’s: the information that Henry turned into spirited prose for the Morning Messenger he prepared in more objective form for his ambitious work-in-progress, an entomological study of the working classes. At Vauxhall there had been sufficient data to satisfy the needs of either case.

Here at noon he had found the army of waiters and workmen who nightly serviced the raffish crowds in their supper boxes or brought watered negus to those who danced. Hard-worked and poorly paid, the views of these men would make compelling fare for a readership whose letters to the editor already betrayed its fear of the volatile mob. But as Henry had sauntered the length of the South Walk beneath unlit lanterns hung from trees, in the wake of a young couple who walked arm in arm, he could not help thinking of the vacancy in his own heart. Once again he had the impression that, for a little while not so long ago, he had been a different man.

He spoke to no one and made no notes. The afternoon had been wasted and, annoyed at his laxity, he wished only to return to his lodgings with all speed. Vexed at the sudden obstruction of his route and ill-prepared for the sudden change in the weather, Hilditch hailed a ferryman whose craft he had spied tethered beneath the iron supports of the bridge.

This broad-shouldered fellow was being addressed by a tall and well-made man, buttoned into a dark uniform. Hilditch explained himself and tendered the ferryman sixpence, more than the fare he might expect and which he offered in the certain knowledge that other frustrated travellers would soon be competing for his custom. The man shook his head and nodded to the gentleman with him. ‘I am already commissioned,’ he said, shielding a match set to his short pipe.

Hilditch looked upwards to the bank and saw the crowds on foot and heard drivers cracking their whips and yelling at teams of horses as they strove to extricate themselves from the tangle of traffic and turn about. Cold, wet and quite fatigued, he was in no humour to be carried along as part of a swollen mob that flowed like a second river towards the bridge at Westminster and decided instead to wait beneath the arches until the confusion above had been cleared or he could secure a place aboard some river craft. The ferryman offered no further conversation but the man in uniform turned to him and said, ‘It ain’t that there’s no room, sir, but I’ve a van full of prisoners bound for the Tench stuck in the traffic half a mile back. I’d as soon get ’en safe across before the alarm is raised, so I’m come ahead to secure a boat. However, if you don’t object to such company I’m sure Charlie will take your tanner.’

‘If it pleases the gentleman,’ grunted the other.

Soaked to the bone by the enfilading volleys of wind-blown rain, they awaited the arrival of the prisoners with their own heads hung like the Calais martyrs. The sky was now shrouded in the most dismal grey, the advance guard of a summer storm which was quickly upon them. Now, instants of dazzling illumination relieved the obscurity, flashing upon the turbulent waters and petrifying all movement. Here was a rearing horse ossified as equestrian art; there, by the Middlesex shore and dramatically delineated, a keeling sailboat stopped dead before a many-towered and brooding fortress. A blinding blue streak fixed the ferryman with his pipe pulled from his mouth, his thin lips open as if he were about to deliver himself of some profound observation regarding the river and its part in the lives of men.

Not knowing how long he might have to wait in this miserable condition, Hilditch again attempted to engage the ferryman in conversation. Among the reports already published in the Morning Messenger he had several accounts of interviews with those who earn their bread on, or beside, canal and river. He had noted the particulars of lightermen, coal-heavers, bargees and lock-keepers and transcribed the prattle of the scavenging mudlarks who waded in filth as they hunted for scraps of coal and rope, iron and ships’ nails or any water-borne refuse with which they might turn a penny.

Recently, the river had invaded his dreams and disturbed his sleep. In a dismal shed by the Limehouse stairs he had seen the ravages it had wreaked on the body of a woman of indeterminate age and appearance. The lighterman who had recovered the cadaver and who was now awaiting its collection and his own small reward had recounted tales of other luckless souls plucked from the depths or discovered caught among tangles of rubbish by the banks. A young boy in gentleman’s clothes; a woman tied to her two children; such a number of young girls, most likely ruined, who had come to the river to find their release. Henry Hilditch would as soon leave behind this river and the disturbing thoughts that it provoked.

His eyes were raised towards the Middlesex shore but his mind was in his lodgings at Somers Town, to which he would now repair. He was thinking that he would certainly allow himself a reviving glass of brandy, when the gaoler spoke.

‘A fellow might take it for a French fortress,’ he observed. ‘For I’ve seen such when I was working the steam packets.’ He extended a braided cuff and pointed across the river at the low and massive shape of the Millbank Penitentiary. The Tench squatted by the shore, faint gleams showing in its conical towers which rose from corners like candles on a cake. ‘You can’t get the compass of it at this vantage,’ said the gaoler, ‘but there’s a thousand cells within those walls. They do say there are three miles of corridors and I believe it. I’m up and down them all day long. Working the Tench goes terrible hard on the feet.’

‘I’m sure it does,’ Hilditch said. ‘It’s not a job I should care to do. Nor one that I suppose any man could?’

‘Never a truer word spoken, sir,’ said the gaoler, with enthusiasm. ‘The management of miscreants isn’t a calling that suits everybody. It’s my opinion that you must be born to it.’

‘I wonder how you came to be doing such a thing,’ Hilditch remarked, innocently, thinking that he could yet salvage something of this night.

‘Ah, sir, now, there lies a story,’ he said.

‘I should be interested to hear it,’ Hilditch said, quickly. The gaoler offered his hand and gave his name as Farrel. Hilditch explained the nature of his own business and Farrel said that he would be happy to oblige him with a full account if Hilditch thought it might be useful. He listened with unfeigned attention as Farrel began to explain the origins of his employment with the National Penitentiary at Millbank.

‘I used to think I arrived there by a curious route but now I wonder if it wasn’t the most direct. My father was a debtor – never out of debt, nor often out of the Fleet or the Marshalsea gaols. He was an imprudent man, my father, a city broker’s clerk who acquired tastes above his station and paid for them every so often in quod.

‘He was in and out of gaol like a thief in a pocket. Somehow we got by, but at last he acquired a debt that we couldn’t pay off if we lived to be old. He had borrowed a large sum and gambled it upon a very uncertain venture. After that, there seemed no end to our struggling. My mother had been a Herefordshire farm girl before she met my father and wasn’t suited for such occupations as might be found here. She took to the drink. She couldn’t cope, not at all.

‘She beseeched my father to do something. Had he no friends in the city and what about his relations in Northumberland? It seemed that something might still be done for him but the trouble, as even I could see, lay with my father. Once behind a turned key he had no cares nor responsibilities, no need to hide from dunning bailiffs and creditors. You could say that being in prison freed him – all he needed were a few pennies for a glass of grog and he was a happy man.

‘He appeared not to care that his family were now in poor straits and there was never enough on the table to feed me and my sister Margaret. My mother ate less as she drank more. We sold everything. Best clothes, second best. Shoes, coats, cooking pots, knives and forks. My mother was the pawnbroker’s best customer. One day she went to pop the kitchen chairs and didn’t come back.

‘I never told no one she was gone. For one thing, I always thought she would come back, but also I was fearful we might be sent to the workhouse, where Mo would go to one place and me to another. So I kept quiet and took it upon myself to bring my sister up. For a half year or so we got by. I fell in with a band of street arabs who scavenged Covent Garden when the costers were setting up their stalls and garden produce was falling from the wagons. We were always chased and sometimes beaten but I generally came home with a cabbage for the pot. Other days Mo and I took potato sacks and went foraging for fuel on the dust heaps. In all this time I never visited my father. I couldn’t gauge what he might do – he might report us for our own good. We left the house when the quarterly rent became due and for a while we had a decent enough crib in the basement of a collapsed warehouse. The cellar itself was still sound and it was dry if it wasn’t warm.

‘However, someone found us out and moved us on. We spent the next few nights under the arches and sleeping in doorways. Mo come down with the ’flu and out of desperation, I resolved to visit my father and to find out the true state of his case. If there was indeed no hope of his release then I would have to set about something more than stealing cabbages.

‘I found him in the prison snuggery, drunkenly regaling the inmates with song. He would have made a fine street patterer because he could talk and sing well enough to keep himself in lush, even in prison. On that first visit his mind was dulled to everything but the promise of another glass of rum. I went again and this time I took with me little Mo, hoping that the sight of his youngest child might stir him to his senses, but he quickly disabused me of this hope.

‘It was clear he neither expected to be quickly released nor could be counted on for aid. However, as on the last occasion of our visit, he found us a little something to eat and a place by the fire. The company may have been disreputable but it was convivial. There were coiners and embezzlers and men who had never even considered pursuing an honest occupation but there were also those who, like my father, had found themselves in gaol by their own ineptitude. We sat among them as they toasted bread on the fire and passed about a tin jug of rum and water.

‘With nourishment and warmth Mo recovered quite quickly. The Marshalsea came to mean food and company and we were regular visitors, well known among the prisoners. The prison was also the source of a scanty income. I earned first one penny and then another running errands for the prisoners. Some of the turnkeys took small bribes and others liked me well enough to turn a blind eye when I slipped out to the cookshop for pies and plum-dough or to the taproom for a quartern of gin, or ran with messages to attorneys and creditors. I began to feel at home in prison and so we came to be oftener inside than out. I believe we might have grown up there had not fate taken a hand. My father, whose health had been frail ever since he had once taken a severe chill in his damp room, now became ill and within a few weeks had got worse and finally died.

‘I was fourteen years old and still without proper employment. I could no longer go to the prison and make my living running errands. Instead I had to cast about for other employ. For a while I returned to stealing potatoes and cabbages, but they were wise to us now and those boys still working the Market were being taken up daily. That first summer, Mo and I walked to Kent with the hoppers. That was well for as long as it lasted but when the season was over we were back in London, facing a winter on the streets. Little Mo was rising eleven when we saved a few bob and I bought her a tray of things to sell in the street – laces and ribbons and buttons mainly. We found her a pitch on the Strand and she might come home after standing there all day with only five or six pence to show for it.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.