Dickens describes the scenery along the road Nell and her grandfather take
on their way out of London borrowed from David Perdue's Charles Dickens' Page
Damp rotten houses, many to let, many yet building,
many half-built and mouldering away- lodgings, where it would be hard to
tell which needed pity most, those who let or those who came to take-children,
scantily fed and clothed, spread over every street, and sprawling in the
dust- scolding mothers, stamping their slipshod feet with noisy threats
upon the pavement-shabby fathers, hurrying with dispirited looks to the
occupation which brought them 'daily bread' and little more-mangling-women,
washer-women, cobblers, tailors, chandlers, driving their trades in parlours
and kitchens and back room and garrets, and sometimes all of them under
the same roof-brick-fields skirting gardens paled with staves of old casks,
or timber pillaged from houses burnt down, and blackened and blistered by
the flames-mounds of dock-weed, nettles, coarse grass and oyster-shells,
heaped in rank confusion-small dissenting chapels to teach, with no lack
of illustration, the miseries of Earth, and plenty of new churches, erected
with a little superfluous wealth, to show the way to Heaven.
At length these streets becoming more straggling yet, dwindled and dwindled away, until there were only small garden patches bordering the road, with many a summer house innocent of paint and built of old timber or some fragments of a boat, green as the tough cabbage-stalks that grew about it, and grottoed at the seams with toad-stools and tight-sticking snails. To these succeeded pert cottages, two and two with plots of ground in front, laid out in angular beds with stiff box borders and narrow paths between, where footstep never strayed to make the gravel rough.
Then came the public-house, freshly painted in green and white, with tea-gardens and a bowling green, spurning its old neighbour with the horse-trough where the waggons stopped; then, fields; and then, some houses, one by one, of goodly size with lawns, some even with a lodge where dwelt a porter and his wife. Then came a turnpike; then fields again with trees and hay-stacks; then, a hill, and on the top of that, the traveller might stop, and-looking back at old Saint Paul's looming through the smoke, its cross peeping above the cloud (if the day were clear), and glittering in the sun; and casting his eyes upon the Babel out of which it grew until he traced it down to the furthest outposts of the invading army of bricks and mortar whose station lay for the present nearly at his feet-might feel at last that he was clear of London.
Damp rotten houses, many to let, many yet building,
many half-built and mouldering away- lodgings, where it would be hard to
tell which needed pity most, those who let or those who came to take-children,
scantily fed and clothed, spread over every street, and sprawling in the
dust- scolding mothers, stamping their slipshod feet with noisy threats
upon the pavement-shabby fathers, hurrying with dispirited looks to the
occupation which brought them 'daily bread' and little more-mangling-women,
washer-women, cobblers, tailors, chandlers, driving their trades in parlours
and kitchens and back room and garrets, and sometimes all of them under
the same roof-brick-fields skirting gardens paled with staves of old casks,
or timber pillaged from houses burnt down, and blackened and blistered by
the flames-mounds of dock-weed, nettles, coarse grass and oyster-shells,
heaped in rank confusion-small dissenting chapels to teach, with no lack
of illustration, the miseries of Earth, and plenty of new churches, erected
with a little superfluous wealth, to show the way to Heaven.At length these streets becoming more straggling yet, dwindled and dwindled away, until there were only small garden patches bordering the road, with many a summer house innocent of paint and built of old timber or some fragments of a boat, green as the tough cabbage-stalks that grew about it, and grottoed at the seams with toad-stools and tight-sticking snails. To these succeeded pert cottages, two and two with plots of ground in front, laid out in angular beds with stiff box borders and narrow paths between, where footstep never strayed to make the gravel rough.
Then came the public-house, freshly painted in green and white, with tea-gardens and a bowling green, spurning its old neighbour with the horse-trough where the waggons stopped; then, fields; and then, some houses, one by one, of goodly size with lawns, some even with a lodge where dwelt a porter and his wife. Then came a turnpike; then fields again with trees and hay-stacks; then, a hill, and on the top of that, the traveller might stop, and-looking back at old Saint Paul's looming through the smoke, its cross peeping above the cloud (if the day were clear), and glittering in the sun; and casting his eyes upon the Babel out of which it grew until he traced it down to the furthest outposts of the invading army of bricks and mortar whose station lay for the present nearly at his feet-might feel at last that he was clear of London.
No comments:
Post a Comment