Orange Court – Drury Lane details

On our way to the City on the tide of Labor we light upon places in which the day is never aired: only the high points of which the sun ever hits. Rents spread with rags, swarming with the children of mothers forever greasing the walls with their shoulders; where there is an angry hopelessness and carelessness painted upon the face of every man and woman, and the oaths are loud, and the crime is continuous; and the few who do work with something like system are the ne’erdo-weels of the great army. As the sun rises the court swarms at once: for here there are no ablutions to perform, no toilets to make-neither brush nor comb delays the outpouring of babes and sucklings from the cellars and garrets. And yet in the midst of such a scene as this we cannot miss touches of human goodness, and of honorable instinct making a tooth-and-nail fight against adverse circumstances. market, where they buy their flowers for the day’s huckstering in the City. They are to be seen selling roses and camellias, along the curb by the Bank, to dapper clerks. (pp. 127 ff.)