Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City (British Library Tales of the Weird Book 16) by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2020-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

II

Let it be noted that the glasses in question held no great quantity of the hot liquor. Indeed, they were what used to be called rummers; round, and of a bloated aspect, but of comparatively small capacity. Therefore, nothing injurious to the clearness of those old heads is to be inferred, when it is said that between the third and fourth filling, the talk drew away from central London and the lost, beloved Strand and began to go farther afield, into stranger, less-known territories. Perrott began it, by tracing a curious passage he had once made northward, dodging by the Globe and the Olympic theatres into the dark labyrinth of Clare Market, under arches and by alleys, till he came into Great Queen Street, near the Freemason’s Tavern and Inigo Jones’s red pilasters. Another took up the tale, and drifting into Holborn by Whetstone’s Park, and going astray a little to visit Kingsgate Street—“just like Phiz’s plate: mean, low, deplorable; but I wish they hadn’t pulled it down”—finally reached Theobald’s Road. There, they delayed a little, to consider curiously decorated leaden water-cisterns that were once to be seen in the areas of a few of the older houses, and also to speculate on the legend that an ancient galleried inn, now used as a warehouse, had survived till quite lately at the back of Tibbles Road—for so they called it. And thence, northward and eastward, up the Gray’s Inn Road, crossing the King’s Cross Road, and going up the hill.

“And here,” said Arnold, “we begin to touch on the conjectured. We have left the known world behind us.”

Indeed, it was he who now had the party in charge.

“Do you know,” said Perrott, “that sounds awful rot, but it’s true; at least so far as I am concerned. I don’t think I ever went beyond Holborn Town Hall, as it used to be—I mean walking. Of course, I’ve driven in a hansom to King’s Cross Railway Station, and I went once or twice to the Military Tournament, when it was at the Agricultural Hall, in Islington; but I don’t remember how I got there.”

Harliss said he had been brought up in North London, but much farther north—Stoke Newington way.

“I once knew a man,” said Perrott, “who knew all about Stoke Newington; at least he ought to have known about it. He was a Poe enthusiast, and he wanted to find out whether the school where Poe boarded when he was a little boy was still standing. He went again and again; and the odd thing is that, in spite of his interest in the matter, he didn’t seem to know whether the school was still there, or whether he had seen it. He spoke of certain survivals of the Stoke Newington that Poe indicates in a phrase or two in ‘William Wilson’: the dreamy village, the misty trees, the old rambling red-brick houses, standing in their gardens, with high walls all about them. But though he declared that he had gone

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.