Tiles and tile roofs have a curious way of tumbling to pieces in an
irregular and eye-pleasing manner. The roof-tree bends, bows a little
under the weight, curves in, and yet preserves a sharpness at each end.
The Chinese exaggerate this curve of set purpose. Our English curve is
softer, being the product of time, which always works in true taste.
The mystery of tile-laying is not known to every one; for to all
appearance tiles seem to be put on over a thin bed of hay or hay-like
stuff. Lately they have begun to use some sort of tarpaulin or a coarse
material of that kind; but the old tiles, I fancy, were comfortably
placed on a shake-down of hay. When one slips off, little bits of hay
stick up; and to these the sparrows come, removing it bit by bit to
line their nests. If they can find a gap they get in, and a fresh
couple is started in life. By-and-by a chimney is overthrown during a
twist of the wind, and half a dozen tiles are shattered. Time passes;
and at last the tiler arrives to mend the mischief. His labour leaves a
light red patch on the dark dull red of the breadth about it. After
another while the leaks along the ridge need plastering: mortar is laid
on to stay the inroad of wet, adding a dull white and forming a rough,
uncertain undulation along the general drooping curve. Yellow edgings
of straw project under the eaves--the work of the sparrows. A cluster
of blue-tinted pigeons gathers about the chimney-side; the smoke that
comes out of the stack droops and floats sideways, downwards, as if the
chimney enjoyed the smother as a man enjoys his pipe. Shattered here
and cracked yonder, some missing, some overlapping in curves, the tiles
have an aspect of irregular existence. They are not fixed, like slates,
as it were for ever: they have a newness, and then a middle-age, and a
time of decay like human beings.
One roof is not much; but it is often a study. Put a thousand roofs,
say rather thousands of red-tiled roofs, and overlook them--not at a
great altitude but at a pleasant easy angle--and then you have the
groundwork of the first view of London over Bermondsey from the
railway. I say groundwork, because the roofs seem the level and surface
of the earth, while the glimpses of streets are glimpses of catacombs.
A city--as something to look at--depends very much on its roofs. If a
city have no character in its roofs it stirs neither heart nor thought.
These red-tiled roofs of Bermondsey, stretching away mile upon mile,
and brought up at the extremity with thin masts rising above the
mist--these red-tiled roofs have a distinctiveness, a character; they
are something to think about. Nowhere else is there an entrance to a
city like this. The roads by which you approach them give you distant
aspects--minarets, perhaps, in the East, domes in Italy; but, coming
nearer, the highway somehow plunges into houses, confounding you with
facades, and the real place is hidden. Here from the railway you see at
once the vastness of London. Roof-tree behind roof-tree, ridge behind
ridge, is drawn along in succession, line behind line till they become
as close together as the test-lines used for microscopes. Under this
surface of roofs what a profundity of life there is! Just as the great
horses in the waggons of London streets convey the idea of strength, so
the endlessness of the view conveys the idea of a mass of life. Life
converges from every quarter. The iron way has many ruts: the rails are
its ruts; and by each of these a ceaseless stream of men and women
pours over the tiled roofs into London. They come from the populous
suburbs, from far-away towns and quiet villages, and from over sea.
Glance down as you pass into the excavations, the streets, beneath the
red surface: you catch a glimpse of men and women hastening to and fro,
of vehicles, of horses struggling with mighty loads, of groups at the
corners, and fragments, as it were, of crowds. Busy life everywhere: no
stillness, no quiet, no repose. Life crowded and crushed together; life
that has hardly room to live. If the train slackens, look in at the
open windows of the houses level with the line--they are always open
for air, smoke-laden as it is--and see women and children with scarce
room to move, the bed and the dining-table in the same apartment. For
they dine and sleep and work and play all at the same time. A man works
at night and sleeps by day: he lies yonder as calmly as if in a quiet
country cottage. The children have no place to play in but the
living-room or the street. It is not squalor--it is crowded life. The
people are pushed together by the necessities of existence. These
people have no dislike to it at all: it is right enough to them, and so
long as business is brisk they are happy. The man who lies sleeping so
calmly seems to me to indicate the immensity of the life around more
than all the rest. He is oblivious of it all; it does not make him
nervous or wakeful; he is so used to it, and bred to it, that it seems
to him nothing. When he is awake lie does not see it; now he sleeps he
does not hear it. It is only in great woods that you cannot see the
trees. He is like a leaf in a forest--he is not conscious of it. Long
hours of work have given him slumber; and as he sleeps he seems to
express by contrast the immensity and endlessness of the life around
him.
Sometimes a floating haze, now thicker here, and now lit up yonder by
the sunshine, brings out objects more distinctly than a clear
atmosphere. Away there tall thin masts stand out, rising straight up
above the red roofs. There is a faint colour on them; the yards are
dark--being inclined, they do not reflect the light at an angle to
reach us. Half-furled canvas droops in folds, now swelling a little as
the wind blows, now heavily sinking. One white sail is set and gleams
alone among the dusky folds; for the canvas at large is dark with
coal-dust, with smoke, with the grime that settles everywhere where men
labour with bare arms and chests. Still and quiet as trees the masts
rise into the hazy air; who would think, merely to look at them, of the
endless labour they mean? The labour to load, and the labour to unload;
the labour at sea, and the long hours of ploughing the waves by night;
the labour at the warehouses; the labour in the fields, the mines, the
mountains; the labour in the factories. Ever and again the sunshine
gleams now on this group of masts, now on that; for they stand in
groups as trees often grow, a thicket here and a thicket yonder. Labour
to obtain the material, labour to bring it hither, labour to force it
into shape--work without end. Masts are always dreamy to look at: they
speak a romance of the sea; of unknown lands; of distant forests aglow
with tropical colours and abounding with strange forms of life. In the
hearts of most of us there is always a desire for something beyond
experience. Hardly any of us but have thought, Some day I will go on a
long voyage; but the years go by, and still we have not sailed.