Reading Jeanette Winterson’s Battle of the Sun reminded me of Dickens’ river writing in GE and OMF – I liked it that much! “And this is the life of London rolled out like a carpet and played like a tune…’ (JW, 2009, 212). Beautifully and intricately rigged and fitted out writing…
‘…At that time [1820-ish?], the steam traffic on the Thames was far below its present extent, and watermen’s boats were far more numerous. Of barges, sailing colliers, and coasting traders, there were perhaps as many as now, but, of steam-ships, great and small, not a tithe or a twentieth part so many. Early as it was, there were plenty of scullers going here and there that morning, and plenty of barges dropping down with the tide; the navigation of the river between bridges, in an open boat, was a much easier and commoner matter in those days that it was in these; and we went ahead among many skiffs and wherries, briskly.
Old London Bridge was soon passed, and old Billingsgate market with its oyster boats and Dutchmen, and the White Tower and Traitors’ Gate, and were were in among the tiers of shipping. Here were the Leith, Aberdeen and Glasgow steamers, loading and unloading goods, and looking immensely high out of the water as we passed alongshide; here were colliers by the score and score, with the coal-whippers plunging off stages on deck, as counterweights to measures of coal swinging up, which were then rattled over the side into barges; here at her moorings was to-morrow’s for Hamburg…
‘Is he there?’ said Herbert…
‘Now I see him! Pull both. Easy, Herbert. Oars!’
We touched the stairs lightly for a single moment, and he was on board and we were off again…Again among the tiers of shipping, in and out, avoiding rusty chain-cables, frayed hempen hawsers and bobbing buoys, sinking for the moment floating broken baskets, scattering floating chips of wood and shaving, cleaving floating scum of coal, in and out, under the figurehead of the John of Sunderland making a speech to the winds (as is done by many Johns), and the Betsy of Yarmouth with a firm formality of bosom and her knobby eyes starting two inches out of her head, in and out, hammers going in ship-builders’ yards, saws going at timber, clashing engines going at things unknown, pumps going in leaky ships, capstans going, ships going out to sea, and unintelligible sea-creatures roaring curses over the bulwarks at respondent lightermen, in and out – out at last upon the clearer river where the ships boys might take their fenders in, no longer fishing in the troubled waters with them over the side and where the festooned sails might fly out to the wind…’ (CD, 1861, GE, vol3, ChXV, p397-8)
‘…In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark Bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone [ages], as an autumn evening was closing in.
The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with ragged grizzled hair and a sun-browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or twenty, sufficiently like him to be recognisable as his daughter. The girl rowed, pulling a pair of sculls very easily; the man, with his rudder lines slack in his hands, and his hands loose in his waistband, kept an eager look out. He had no net, hook or line, and he could not be a fisherman; his boat had no cushion for a sitter, no paint, no inscription, no appliance beyond a rusty boat hook and a coil of rope, and he could not be a waterman; his boat was too crazy and too small to take in a cargo for delivery, and he could not be a lighterman or river-carrier; there was no clue to what he looked for, but he looked for something, with a most intent and searching gaze. The tide which had turned an hour before was running down, and his eyes watched every little race and eddy in its broad sweep, as the boat made slight headway against it, or drove stern foremost before it, according as he directed his daughter by a movement of his head. She watched his face as earnestly as she watched the river. But in the intensity of her look there was a touch of dread or horror…’ (CD (1867) OMF, p1)
