Steve Beard is the author of the ambient novel Digital
Leatherette (Codex, 1999). A selection of his essays and
journalism is available as Logic Bomb (Serpent's Tail,
1999). On-line resources relating to Steve Beard's work can be found at www.codexbooks.co.uk and bookworks.org.uk A new collaborative project by Steve Beard and Jeff Noon will be published in April at mappalujo.com |
On December 22 1859 at the height of his fame Charles Dickens gave
a rousing speech to supporters of the Commercial Travellers' Schools
at the London Tavern. He was attracted to the idea of the travelling
salesman or "bagman" as a commonplace figure of the poetic wanderer,
the flaneur, the C18th century bachelor essayist. At the same time, he
was a fierce political opponent of the Manchester school of free trade
liberalism as symbolised by the notorious Commercial Treaty of January
1860. The ambivalent persona of the "Uncommercial Traveller" was duly
invented in January 1860 as a vehicle for Dickens to combine his twin
passions of walking and writing and employed over the next nine years
to produce 36 separate pieces of journalism.
Dickens had already invented
the persona "Boz" for himself in the 1830s when he used his
journalistic skills to produce bourgeois-bohemian "sketches" of
everyday street life with their picturesque scenes and characters. His
"noctambuliste" habits of wandering London and its environs at night
is vividly captured in the "Boz" sketches "The Streets - Morning" and
"The Streets - Night" while as "The Uncommercial Traveller" he wrote
"Shy Neighbourhoods" ("my walking is... objectless, loitering, and
purely vagabond"), "Tramps" ("a tramp... has no object whatever in
going anywhere"), "Night Walks" ("us houseless people... [have] a
tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street-corners without
intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many
places rather than at any; to do nothing tangible").
It is my intention to use the
techniques of poetic remixology recommended by the 2000
Anthropofferjism Manifesto [i] to extract a
post-colonial Anglocentrifugalist narrative from various text samples
of
"The Uncommercial Traveller".
Here is the diagram of my procedure:
INPUT: "Wapping Workhouse" (1860) by "The Uncommercial Traveller"
(a.k.a Charles Dickens)
RUN: Anthropofferjism technique Allegorization: the transformation of
a situation into a symbolic narrative
RUN: Anthropofferjism technique Abjectification: the promotion of
symbolically degraded material as a foundation for counter-hegemonic
cultural construction
INPUT: stanza from ballad "Wapping Old Stairs" [ii]
RUN: Anthropofferjism technique Transculturation: The transference of
cultural percepts between the centre and margin of an institution
INPUT: First 34 paragraphs of "Poor Mercantile Jack" (1860) by "The
Uncommercial Traveller" (a.k.a Charles Dickens)
RUN: Anthropofferjism technique Anti-exoticization: the removal of
projected connotations of otherness from foreign markers of cultural
filiation
RUN: Anthropofferjism technique Vagrant Cartographization: the
construction of counter-hegemonic maps of common ground according to
psychogeographical principles
INPUT: information on the 1831/2 anti-colonial Baptist War in
Jamaica [iii]
RUN: Anthropofferjism technique Oralization: the restoration of
phonetic spelling to marginal variants of English combined with the
overthrow of the repressive apparatus of diacritical marks
RUN: Anthropofferjism technique Abrogation: the rejection of the
universal claims of normative English and corresponding promotion of
its marginal variants
OUTPUT: "Wapping Ghost Ship" by the "Mass Transit Lounger" (a.k.a
Steve Beard)
Her night's business beckoning her to the East End of London, Molly
had turned her face to that point of the urban compass on leaving her
common lodging house in Flower & Dean Street and had got past the
Turk's Head (with an ignominious rash of fly-posters disfiguring his
dark countenance), and had strolled up the empty yard of his ancient
neighbour the Blue Boar, who departed this life she didn't know when,
and whose coaches are all gone she didn't know where; and Molly had
come out again into the age of railways, and had got past Whitechapel
Church, and was - rather usually for a street-walker - in the
Commercial Road.
Picking her way through the
abundant mud of that thoroughfare, and greatly defeated by the huge
piles of building belonging to the sugar refiners, the little masts
and vanes in small back gardens in back streets, the neighbouring
canals and docks, the West India vans lumbering along their stone
tramway, and the pawnbrokers' shops where hard-up merchant seamen had
pawned so many sextants and quadrants, that she should have bought a
few cheap if she had the least notion how to afford them, Molly at
last began to file off to the right, towards Wapping.
Now, Molly was going to Wapping,
because an Atlantic story-teller had whispered, through the previous
night's pub haze, that there was a ghost-ship at the Wapping quayside
and that it was a curse and a blessing, and divers other mixed signs,
and because she wished to see how the fact really stood. For, that the
story-tellers are not always the most foolish men of the Atlantic, may
be inferred from their course of procedure respecting the Baptist War
in Jamaica: which had been, to discuss the matter at issue, in a state
of mind betokening the weakest drunkenness, with all parties concerned
and unconcerned, and, for a final expedient, to consult the rebel as
to what he thought ought to be done with the plantation owner, and
never take the plantation owner's opinion as to what he would
recommend to be done with the rebel.
The Atlantic story-teller had
knocked at the gate of Big Daddy Sharpe's Baptist church in St James'
parish and had found it to be an establishment highly creditable to
those parts, and thoroughly well administered by a most intelligent
minister. He remarked in his hanging, an instance of the collateral
harm that obstinate cruelty and injustice can do.
Long before Molly reached Wapping,
she gave herself up as having lost her way, and, abandoning herself to
the narrow streets in an Irish frame of mind, relied on her pixy to
bring her somehow or other to the place she wanted if she were ever to
get there.
It made her heart ache to
experience all the miserable trifling she did in the streets of a
district where every passing sailor seemed to call to her, as she
walked along, 'Turn this way, woman, and see what needs to be
fucked!'
There were merchant seamen girded
to ships' masts and funnels of steamers, like foresters to great oaks,
scraping and painting. There was a seaman lying out on yards, furling
sails that tried to beat him off; a seaman was dimly discernible up in
a world of giant cobwebs, reefing and splicing; a seaman was faintly
audible down in holds, stowing and unshipping cargo; a seaman was
winding round and round at capstans melodious, monotonous, and drunk;
a seaman was black with coaling for Australasia; a seaman was washing
decks barefoot, with the breast of his red shirt open to the blast,
though it was sharper than the knife in his leathern girdle; a seaman
was looking over bulwarks, all eyes and hair; a seaman was standing by
at the shoot of a little steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks in
trade of several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured down
into the ice-house. There were seamen coming aboard other vessels,
each with their kit in a tarpaulin bag.
There were seamen everywhere! So
Molly's pixy decoyed her into another train of thought to ease her
heart. But, Molly didn't know that she did it, for she had been so
full of various sailors, that it was, after all, only a change to a
single seaman, who took possession of her remembrance instead of a
thousand.
As she walked the dock-quays at
Wapping, keeping watch on turmoil, she began looking for her sea-going
lover Tom. There was a rattling of wheels, a clattering of hoofs, a
clashing of iron, a jolting of cotton and hides and casks and timber,
an incessant deafening disturbance on the quays, that was the very
madness of sound.
When Molly had ceased for an hour
or so to take any trouble about the matter, she found herself on some
old stairs looking into some dirty water (baited with a scum that was
like the soapy rinsing of sooty chimneys). Over against her, stood a
creature remotely in the likeness of her young man, with a puffed
sallow face, and a figure all dirty and shiny and slimy, who may have
been the youngest son of his filthy old father, Thames, or the hanged
man about whom there was a placard on the granite post like a large
thimble, that stood between them.
Molly asked the apparition what he
called the place? Unto which, he replied, with a ghastly grin and a
sound like gurgling water in his throat: 'Wapping Old Stairs.'
As it is a point of great
sensitiveness with her on such occasions to be equal to the
intellectual pressure of the conversation, Molly deeply considered the
meaning of this speech, while she eyed the apparition - then engaged
in hugging and sucking the post at the top of the stairs.
Experience indicated to her that
there was a Marine Police Force in that neighbourhood.
'A common place for homicide,'
said Molly, looking down at the water.
'Homi?' returned the ghost, with a
stare. 'Yes! And Rai. Likewise Sam. And Edogo. And Obika;' he sucked
the post between each name; 'and all the other river pirates. Ketches
off their caps or neckerchiefs, takes a swing, and headers down here,
they doos. Always a headerin down here, they is. Like one a clock.'
'And at about that hour of the
afternoon, I suppose?'
'Ah!' said the apparition. 'THEY
aint partickler. Two ull do for THEM. Three. All times a day. Onie
mind you!' Here the apparition rested his profile on the post, and
gurgled in a sarcastic manner. 'There must be somebody watchin. They
dohnt go a headerin down here, wen there aint no copper nor genral
cunt, fur to see the drop.'
According to her interpretation of
these words, Molly was herself a general cunt, or member of the
miscellaneous shore-going public. In which abject character she
remarked: 'They are sometimes taken away, are they not, and rescued?'
'I dunno about rescued,' said the
apparition, who, for some occult reason, very much objected to that
word; 'theyre carried into the ship Beelzebub and put into a ot bath,
and brought round. But I dunno about rescued,' said the apparition;
'blow THAT!' - and vanished.
As it had shown a desire to become
offensive, Molly was not sorry to find herself alone, especially as
the infernal craft it had indicated with a twist of its matted head,
was close at hand.
In the space of a flash of
lightning, the brig Beelzebub was at the quayside. The mighty big
angel who sits crying aloft in the rigging is commissioned to take
charge of dead sailors. He keeps watch on every merchant seaman who
has been ground under the iron boot-heel of the first officer, every
sailor who has been hanged or had his brains slowly knocked out by
penny-weights or had his dying body towed overboard in the ship's
wake, while the cruel wounds in it do the multitudinous seas
incarnadine. Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that such
vigilant angel would not, with a winged sword, have the heads of all
those destructive first officers if there were ever so vociferous an
invocation?
Molly made bold to address the
angel at the gang-plank, where she was wholly unexpected and quite
unknown.
'I beg your pardon, sir,' Molly
said, in a confidential manner, taking the angel aside; 'but I shall
see better days.'
'I am very glad to hear it,
madame.'
'Sir, I have a complaint to make
against the masters.'
'Madame, I have no power over
shore-going existence, I assure you. And if I had - '
'But, allow me, sir, to mention
it, as between yourself and a woman who shall see better days,
sir.'
Molly and the angel were both
Atlantic masons. She had made him the sign and he had given her the
counter-sign!
'This is the brig where those dead
sailors, drowned and hanged, one of whom I have just seen, meet for
the Church service, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
'Do they sing the Psalms to any
instrument?'
'They would like to, very much;
they would have an extraordinary interest in doing so.'
'And could none be got?'
'Well, a rifle could even have
been got for nothing as a result of the odd riot. It was far better
according to Big Daddy Sharpe to let the congregation join the
multitude to plunder for themselves. You should know better than I,
but I think I was told that they did so, once in 1831, and that when
the Black Regiment had defeated the militia of the plantation owners,
Big Daddy Sharpe - in a beautiful new white suit - went up to Mount
Zion.'
The very bright and nimble angel,
with a winged sword in his hand, responded to Molly's request to see
the brig. Molly began to believe the Atlantic story-teller was quite
right in his facts, when she noticed the angel's quick, active figure
and his intelligent eyes. The street walker, the angel intimated,
should see the smoking room first and last. She was welcome to see
everyone in it. Such as they were, there they all were.
There was the English sailor Jack,
a little high and sleepy, lolling over his empty pipe, as if he were
trying to read his fortune at the bottom; there was the Native
American sailor Cabbage-Leaf Hat, rather a promising customer, with
his long nose, lank cheek, high cheek-bones, and nothing soft about
him; there was the Spanish sailor Jose, with curls of black hair,
rings in his ears, and a knife not far from his hand, if you got into
trouble with some assailant; there were Maltese sailors, and Swedish
sailors, and Finnish sailors, looming through the smoke of their
pipes, and turning faces that looked as if they were carved out of
dark wood, towards Molly who found the smoking room so exceedingly
close for her, that she had a nervous expectation of seeing herself,
in the backward steps, disappear through a port-hole. Still, if all
hands had been got together, they would not have more than half-filled
the room.
There was no disappointment in the
matter of Afro-Caribbean sailors. There, in a stiflingly smokey
atmosphere, they were sitting against the wall all round the
room. Beyond that, it was to be Molly's heartbreaking responsibility
to search their company that night for signs, both moral and physical,
of her sea-going lover Tom. As a fiddle and tambourine band were
sitting among the company, she suggested why not strike up?
'Ah, lads!' said the angel, who
was now sitting by the door, 'gib the lady a darnse. Tak yah pardler,
jebblem, for um QUAD-rill.' As master of the ceremonies, he called all
the figures very loudly, and occasionally addressed himself
parenthetically, after this manner:
'Now den! Hoy! ONE. Right and
left. (Put a steam on, gib um powder.)
LA-dy's chail.
BAL-loon say. Lemonade!
TWO. AD- warnse and go back (gib
ell a breakdown, shake it out a yerselbs, keep a
movil). SWING-corners, BAL-loon say, and Lemonade! (Hoy!)
THREE. GENT come forard with da
lady and go back, hoppersite come forard and do what yer
can. (Aeiohoy!)
BAL-loon say, and leetle
lemonade. (Dat hair nigga by um fireplace hind a time, shake it out a
yerselbs, gib ell a breakdown.)
Now den! Hoy! FOUR! Lemonade.
BAL-loon say, and swing. Da lady
dances in um middle, FOUR gents goes rounder lady, FOUR gents passes
out under da lady's arms, SWING - and Lemonade till a moosic cant play
no more! (Hoy, Hoy!)'
The male dancers were all black,
and one was an unusually powerful man of six feet three or four, in an
Irish cap, and a dress half Jamaican and half English. The sound of
his flat feet on the floor was as like the sound of Tom's feet as his
face was like Tom's face. Together he and Molly toed and heeled,
shuffled, double-shuffled, double-double-shuffled, covered the buckle,
and beat the time out, rarely, dancing with a great show of pride, and
with a physical good-humoured enjoyment that was very prepossessing.
They had generally kept together,
she and Tom, thought Molly, because they were at a disadvantage
singly, and liable to slights in the neighbouring streets. She had
been very slow to interfere naughtily with him, for, whenever she had
had to do with him she had found him a sweet and a gentle
fellow. Bearing this in mind, she asked his friendly permission to
leave him restoration of weed, in wishing him goodbye, and thus it
fell out that the last words she heard him say as she blundered out of
the ship, were, 'Jebblem's elth! Fresh Moll smokes best!'
As Molly shook hands again with
the nimble angel at the gang-plank, she told him that she thought
popular sovereignty had commissioned him very well, and that the wise
men of the Atlantic were infallible. Tom's ghost had indeed taken boat
at Wapping Old Stairs and was going to depart from the locality.
The object of her journey was
accomplished when Molly had blown one last kiss to her sea-going lover
at Wapping Old Stairs.
Now Molly was not afraid she had
got the worst of this encounter and been frightfully taken in; and
that was because she believed in the constancy of the young man who
had once told her, to such a beautiful old tune at Wapping Old Stairs,
that he would ever continue the same, since she gave him the
baccer-box marked with her name.
And as, in the midst of it, he
hung swaying about, with his hair blown all manner of wild ways,
rather crazedly giving up the ghost, all the rigging in Beelzebub was
shrill in the wind, and every little steamer coming and going across
the Thames was sharp in its blowing off, and every buoy in the river
bobbed painfully up and down, as if there were a general joyful chorus
of 'Come along, Tom! Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed,
entrapped, anticipated, cleaned out. Come along, poor Tom, and be
tempest-tossed till you reach Mount Zion!'
[ii]
Your Molly has never been false, she declares,
Since the last time
we parted at Wapping Old Stairs:
When I said that I still would
continue the same
And gave you the bacco box marked with my
name
When I pass'd a whole fortnight between decks with you,
Did I e'er give a kiss, Tom, to one of your crew?
[iii] In 1831/32 the anti-colonial Baptist War in Jamaica occurred when the Baptist minister and Afro-Carribean orator Samuel "Daddy" Sharpe mobilized a local population of slaves into a Black Regiment which defeated the colonial island militia before being taken apart by the British Army. Sharpe was one of the hundreds of rebels who were hanged. He went proudly to his death on the scaffold in a new white suit.