"Starrrrrb'd yer Helllllllm!" or "Ease 'er!" or "Man the tops'l!" or
whatever they do and say on Scandinavian boats. You may see these boats
in the Pool any night; timber boats they are, for the most part; squat,
low-lying affairs, but curiously picturesque when massed close with
other shipping, steam or sail. One of our London songsters has recorded
that "there's always something doing by the seaside"; and that is
equally true of down Thames-side. London River is always alive with
beauty, splendid with stress and the sweat of human hands. There is
something infinitely saddening in watching the casual, business-like
departure of one of these big boats. As she swings away and drops
downstream, her crew, idling, lean over the side, and spit, smoking
their long Swedish pipes, and looking curiously unearthly as the dock
lights fall, now on one, now on the other. I always want to plunge into
the water and follow them through that infinitude of travel which is
suggested by the dim outline of Greenwich.

The lamps in Shadwell High Street and what was once Ratcliff Highway are
few and very pale; and each one, welcome as it is, flings shapes of fear
across your path as you leave its radius and step into darkness more
utter. The quality of the darkness is nasty. That is the only word for
it. It is indefinite, leering. It says nothing to you. It is reticent
with the reticence of Evil. It is not black and frightful, like the
darkness of Hoxton or Spitalfields. It is not pleasant, like the
darkness of Chinatown. It is not matey, like the darkness of Hackney
Marshes. It is ... nasty. At every ten paces there is the black mouth of
an alley with just space enough for the passage of one person. Within
the jaws of each alley is a lounging figure--man, woman, or child,
Londoner or foreigner, you cannot discern. But it is there, silent,
watchful, expectant. And if you choose to venture, you may examine more
closely. You may note that the faces that peer at you are faces such as
one only sees elsewhere in the picture of Felicien Rops. Sometimes it is
a curl-sweet little girl who greets you with a smile strangely cold.
Sometimes the mouth of the alley will appear to open and will spit at
you, apparently by chance. If it hits you, the alley swears at you: a
deep, frightfully foreign oath. Sudden doors flap, and gusts of brutal
jollity sweep up the street.

In the old days, Shadwell embraced the Oriental quarter, and times, in
the 'seventie