been through the abominations of the harbours at Marseilles and Palermo. The streets are very unsightly with their filthy cobbles, with their swarms of children on the pavement, with their queer Chinese types who flit like shadows past shops which are still queerer, with their drunken seamen, with their Philanthropic Shelters, with their battered-looking youths, and with their stench of scorched rags; yet I have seen worse places, flaunting misery, filthy and virulent as an ulcer, unutterable stenches and haunts viler than a wolf’s den. But it is not that, it is not that. The horrible thing in East London is not what can be seen and smelt, but its unbounded and unredeemable extent. Elsewhere poverty and ugliness exist merely as a rubbish-heap between two houses, like an unsavoury nook, a cesspool or unclean offal; but here are miles and miles of grimy houses, hopeless streets. Jewish shops, a superfluity of children, gin palaces and Christian shelters. Miles and miles, from Peckham to Hackney, from Walworth to
74
