The Limehouse Golem by Peter Ackroyd

Author:Peter Ackroyd [Ackroyd, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-81623-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

He was released the following morning, after the policeman had confirmed that he had indeed sat in the Berners Street chophouse until after midnight. Vincent, the young waiter, had been particularly forceful; he alluded to Gissing sitting there “all the bleeding night” while doing nothing but “doodling,” and accused him of being “stuck up” despite the fact that “he don’t have sixpence.” A customer also remembered seeing him that evening, and corroborated Vincent’s other testimony by describing Gissing as “shabby genteel.” This was a popular expression but one less than just to the novelist; he always tried to dress well, and his gentility was not of manner but of mind.

He came out of the courtyard of the police office, and stood uncertainly in the Limehouse air. He had resigned himself to a long process of investigation and humiliation, but his unexpected release did not afford him any real sense of freedom. Certainly he had experienced an exhilarating moment of relief when he finally left the building of dull yellow brick, but that was followed by a more persistent sense of threat. His whole existence in the world had been suddenly and quickly called into question. If he had not visited the chophouse he might well have been convicted and executed; it was as if his life were now revealed as a paltry and tenuous thing which the slightest misfortune might destroy. He blamed his wife for his situation, as we have seen, but up to this time she had never threatened his very survival. That was a new consideration. His night in the cell had revealed to him that he had no real protection against her, or against the world.

He walked home by way of Whitechapel and the City, although he knew well enough that he was returning to no “home” at all. He was like a condemned man going back to his cell. He could hear the argument as soon as he turned into Hanway Street: Nell was leaning down from the first-floor window and screaming at the landlady who stood in the street below. “Such things,” Mrs. Irving was shouting, “such as should not happen in this ’ere ’ouse.” Nell replied with a volley of foul words, at which the landlady accused her of being a “dirty ’ore.” His wife disappeared for a moment and then returned with a chamber pot, the contents of which she directed at Mrs. Irving’s head. Gissing could bear no more of this. Neither woman had seen him, so he retreated quickly down the Tottenham Court Road and made his way to the British Museum. If there was to be rest for him anywhere in this world, it was among his books.

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