Redburn: Chapter 39

Chapter 39

THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN

The same sights that are to be met with along the dock walls at noon, in
a less degree, though diversified with other scenes, are continually
encountered in the narrow streets where the sailor boarding-houses are
kept.

In the evening, especially when the sailors are gathered in great
numbers, these streets present a most singular spectacle, the entire
population of the vicinity being seemingly turned into them. Hand-
organs, fiddles, and cymbals, plied by strolling musicians, mix with
the songs of the seamen, the babble of women and children, and the
groaning and whining of beggars. From the various boarding-houses, each
distinguished by gilded emblems outside--an anchor, a crown, a ship, a
windlass, or a dolphin--proceeds the noise of revelry and dancing; and
from the open casements lean young girls and old women, chattering and
laughing with the crowds in the middle of the street. Every moment
strange greetings are exchanged between old sailors who chance to
stumble upon a shipmate, last seen in Calcutta or Savannah; and the
invariable courtesy that takes place upon these occasions, is to go to
the next spirit-vault, and drink each other's health.

There are particular paupers who frequent particular sections of these
streets, and who, I was told, resented the intrusion of mendicants from
other parts of the town.

Chief among them was a white-haired old man, stone-blind; who was led up
and down through the long tumult by a woman holding a little saucer to
receive contributions. This old man sang, or rather chanted, certain
words in a peculiarly long-drawn, guttural manner, throwing back his
head, and turning up his sightless eyeballs to the sky. His chant was a
lamentation upon his infirmity; and at the time it produced the same
effect upon me, that my first reading of Milton's Invocation to the Sun
did, years afterward. I can not recall it all; but it was something like
this, drawn out in an endless groan--

"Here goes the blind old man; blind, blind, blind; no more will he see
sun nor moon--no more see sun nor moon!" And thus would he pass through
the middle of the street; the woman going on in advance, holding his
hand, and dragging him through all obstructions; now and then leaving
him standing, while she went among the crowd soliciting coppers.

But one of the most curious features of the scene is the number of
sailor ballad-singers, who, after singing their verses, hand you a
printed copy, and beg you to buy. One of these persons, dressed like a
man-of-war's-man, I observed every day standing at a corner in the
middle of the street. He had a full, noble voice, like a church-organ;
and his notes rose high above the surrounding din. But the remarkable
thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms, which, while
singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in the air, as if
it revolved on a pivot. The feat was unnaturally unaccountable; and he
performed it with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that in
falling from a frigate's mast-head to the deck, he had met with an
injury, which had resulted in making his wonderful arm what it was.

I made the acquaintance of this man, and found him no common character.
He was full of marvelous adventures, and abounded in terrific stories of
pirates and sea murders, and all sorts of nautical enormities. He was a
monomaniac upon these subjects; he was a Newgate Calendar of the
robberies and assassinations of the day, happening in the sailor
quarters of the town; and most of his ballads were upon kindred
subjects. He composed many of his own verses, and had them printed for
sale on his own account. To show how expeditious he was at this
business, it may be mentioned, that one evening on leaving the dock to
go to supper, I perceived a crowd gathered about the Old Fort Tavern;
and mingling with the rest, I learned that a woman of the town had just
been killed at the bar by a drunken Spanish sailor from Cadiz. The
murderer was carried off by the police before my eyes, and the very next
morning the ballad-singer with the miraculous arm, was singing the
tragedy in front of the boarding-houses, and handing round printed
copies of the song, which, of course, were eagerly bought up by the
seamen.

This passing allusion to the murder will convey some idea of the events
which take place in the lowest and most abandoned neighborhoods
frequented by sailors in Liverpool. The pestilent lanes and alleys
which, in their vocabulary, go by the names of Rotten-row,
Gibraltar-place, and Booble-alley, are putrid with vice and crime; to
which, perhaps, the round globe does not furnish a parallel. The sooty
and begrimed bricks of the very houses have a reeking, Sodomlike, and
murderous look; and well may the shroud of coal-smoke, which hangs over
this part of the town, more than any other, attempt to hide the
enormities here practiced. These are the haunts from which sailors
sometimes disappear forever; or issue in the morning, robbed naked, from
the broken doorways. These are the haunts in which cursing, gambling,
pickpocketing, and common iniquities, are virtues too lofty for the
infected gorgons and hydras to practice. Propriety forbids that I should
enter into details; but kidnappers, burkers, and resurrectionists are
almost saints and angels to them. They seem leagued together, a company
of miscreant misanthropes, bent upon doing all the malice to mankind in
their power. With sulphur and brimstone they ought to be burned out of
their arches like vermin.

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