Digitized by Robert Bamford. Further proofreading and formatting by Andrew
Sly.
A Novel
by
ERNEST DOWSON and ARTHUR MOORE
1893
In that intricate and obscure locality, which stretches between theTower and Poplar, a tarry region, scarcely suspected by the majorityof Londoners, to whom the "Port of London" is an expression purelygeographical, there is, or was not many years ago, to be found acertain dry dock called Blackpool, but better known from timeimmemorial to skippers and longshoremen, and all who go down to thesea in ships, as "Rainham's Dock."
Many years ago, in the days of the first Rainham and of woodenships, it had been no doubt a flourishing ship-yard; and, indeed,models of wooden leviathans of the period, which had been turnedout, not a few, in those palmy days, were still dusty ornaments ofits somewhat antique office. But as time went on, and the age ofiron intervened, and the advance on the Clyde and the Tyne had madeThames ship-building a thing of the past, Blackpool Dock had ceasedto be of commercial importance. No more ships were built there, andfewer ships put in to be overhauled and painted; while even thesewere for the most part of a class viewed at Lloyd's with scantfavour, which seemed, like the yard itself, to have fallen somewhatbehind the day. The original Rainham had not bequeathed his energyalong with his hoards to his descendants; and, indeed, the last ofthese, Philip Rainham, a man of weak health, original Rainham hadnot bequeathed his energy along with his hoards to his descendants;and, indeed, the last of these, Philip Rainham, a man of weakhealth, whose tastes, although these were veiled in obscurity, weresupposed to trench little upon shipping, let the business jog alongso much after its own fashion, that the popular view hinted at itsimminent dissolution. A dignified, scarcely prosperous quiet seemedthe normal air of Blackpool Dock, so that even when it was busiest—and work still came in, almost by tradition, with a certainsteadiness—when the hammers of the riveters and the shipwrightsawoke the echoes from sunrise to sunset, with a ferocious regularitywhich the present proprietor could almost deplore, there was still asuggestion of mildewed antiquity about it all that was, at least tothe nostrils of the outsider, not unpleasing. And when the shipswere painted, and had departed, it resumed very easily its moreregular aspect of picturesque dilapidation. For in spite of itssordid surroundings and its occasional lapses into bustle, BlackpoolDock, as Rainham would sometimes remind himself, when its commercialmotive was pressed upon him too forcibly, was deeply permeated bythe spirit of the picturesque.
Certainly Mr. Richard Lightmark, a young artist, in whose work someexcellent judges were beginning already to discern, if not the handof the master, at least a touch remarkably happy, was inclined toplume himself on having discovered, in his search after originality,the artistic points of a dockyard.
It was on his first visit to Rainham, whom he had met abroad someyears before, and with whom he had contracted an alliance thatpromised to be permanent, that Lightmark had decided his studyshould certainly be the river. Rainham had a set of rooms in thehouse of his foreman, an eighteenth-century house, full of carvedoak mantels and curious alcoves, a ramshackle structure within thedock-gates, with a quaint balcony staircase, like the approach to aSwiss chalet, leading down into the yard. In London these apartmentswere