Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/235

 of one or two particularly frowsy alleys forced themselves upon the eye and nose of the passers-by, they were treated with the indifference usually accorded to such places by Londoners, and the miserable dens behind were ignored or forgotten. One of the many original eel pie shops; the establishment of the philanthropist, always anxious to supply the colonies with second-hand clothing, and who loudly proclaimed his readiness to pay a larger price than any other dealer; the emporium of the ingenious gentleman who sold the magic donkeys, which jerked convulsively in the shop window at intervals from ten to four; several eating-houses, with all the contents of the larder displayed in the window; a mysterious dark-looking house, suggestive of the old Star Chamber, approached by a long flight of steps, standing back from the Strand, and forming one side of a little open square, one corner of which was occupied by the proprietor of a stall for the sale of curious and unpleasant looking shell-fish, with clutching claws like the Income Tax collectors of the deep; the shop of the high priest of pills; the large printers' and newspaper office close by; these were the chief objects of interest between Temple-bar and St. Clement's church. Turning to the right and passing through the archway—a task usually rendered difficult by the crowd of wretched boys, who swarmed and hovered there, like wasps round the entrance of a nest—two ways were open. The road to the left led into Clement's-inn; that to the right into some of the worst slums in all this part of London. A glance at the ruffians loitering about the doors of the miserable gin shops; at the women, but one degree less ruffiantly and repulsive than the men; at the youths in the inevitable greasy caps, and with the furtive sidelong looks, slinking walk, and close cut hair, of the genuine London thief, was enough to warn the passenger that it would be well for him to walk, if he must needs go that way, warily and swiftly, and with a careful eye to any articles of value in his pockets. But, as the circuit of the commissioners' land might be made by another way, the traveller would probably avoid the narrow fetid streets—filthy beyond description or belief, considering that they were allowed to exist in a civilised metropolis—where the crazy houses themselves had a guilty, police-fearing look, not unlike the wretched creatures who swarmed about their squalid thresholds, and from their over-crowded rooms showered fever and cholera broadcast through the town. Clement's-inn (though perhaps not the most desirable place of abode in the world) enjoys the advantage of light and air, and offered for a time a welcome refuge from the filth and squalor outside. Once through the inn, however, matters were as bad as ever. The poor little beetle-browed shops of Clare-market, and the poverty-stricken customers cheapening stale meat and rotten vegetables (refuse of other markets) in the narrow gutter, were but little better than the disgraceful neighbourhood on the east of Clement's-inn; to reach Carey-street it was necessary to pass a network of streets, where all the evidences of misery and squalor, destitution and crime, were repeated at every step. Once round the corner, by King's College Hospital, which rose suddenly before the adventurous traveller like some great lighthouse of beneficence and hope, and safely in Carey-street, civilisation was again approached. For, if many shady businesses were transacted thereabout, and if a good many very queer customers were to be found in the upper storeys of some of the Carey-street houses, the influences of neighbouring Lincoln's-inn were strong upon it, and the odour of law calf and clean new books fresh from the printer's, took the place of the complicated variety of evil smells prominent in the regions left behind. The solid volumes in the law publishers' windows; the legal wig-makers, with puisne judges, and even chief justices' wigs displayed temptingly in the window, exciting secret hopes in the hearts of sanguine juniors, but looked upon more coldly by disappointed seniors; these, and the passing fat red bags full of anything but faggot briefs, diffused an air of respectability and peace highly soothing to the casual passer-by—unless, indeed, he happened to have legal business of his own to transact in the neighbourhood. So, a sense of something legal in the air was noticeable in Bell-yard, albeit the law publishers in that precinct were to be found in the low company of newspaper vendors, coffee houses, cobblers, oyster shops, and all those smaller trades that seem to flourish in narrow, airless streets. Bell-yard was a great resort also of furniture brokers; and the stimulating aroma of fresh varnish flavoured the yard. Although the furniture displayed was chiefly of a business nature—office stools and desks, writing tables and bookshelves, being the chief articles in stock—it was generally supposed that any furniture dealer in Bell-yard could furnish a house, large or small, in the first style of fashion in half an hour. So, under the arch by the pawnbroker's, the wanderer from New Zealand or elsewhere, came out into the busy tide of Fleet-street. And at the little barber's shop on the north side of Temple-bar, the circuit of the Carey-street site was completed.

No time was lost in commencing the work of demolition. The Strand front went first. Lot 1, Lot 2, and so on, soon took the places of the names of the old occupiers. Windows disappeared, doors vanished, fittings of all kinds were cleared off, and then adventurous men were seen balancing their bodies far up on tottering walls, and apparently bent on pickaxing their very foothold from under themselves. Lot 1 and the rest of the lots were carted off as old building materials; foot passengers were rather inclined to give that portion of the Strand a wide berth to avoid the clouds of dust and mortar, and the falling bricks that came rattling down like hail, and occasionally shot over the protecting hoarding on to the