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- 7745
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.883Z
- extracted_by
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- start_line
- 7676
- text
- boarding-houses of the operatives. A snow-white hamlet amidst the snows.
Various rude, irregular squares and courts resulted from the somewhat
picturesque clusterings of these buildings, owing to the broken, rocky
nature of the ground, which forbade all method in their relative
arrangement. Several narrow lanes and alleys, too, partly blocked with
snow fallen from the roof, cut up the hamlet in all directions.
When, turning from the travelled highway, jingling with bells of
numerous farmers--who, availing themselves of the fine sleighing, were
dragging their wood to market--and frequently diversified with swift
cutters dashing from inn to inn of the scattered villages--when, I say,
turning from that bustling main-road, I by degrees wound into the Mad
Maid’s Bellows’-pipe, and saw the grim Black Notch beyond, then
something latent, as well as something obvious in the time and scene,
strangely brought back to my mind my first sight of dark and grimy
Temple Bar. And when Black, my horse, went darting through the Notch,
perilously grazing its rocky wall, I remembered being in a runaway
London omnibus, which in much the same sort of style, though by no means
at an equal rate, dashed through the ancient arch of Wren. Though the
two objects did by no means completely correspond, yet this partial
inadequacy but served to tinge the similitude not less with the
vividness than the disorder of a dream. So that, when upon reining up at
the protruding rock I at last caught sight of the quaint groupings of
the factory-buildings, and with the travelled highway and the Notch
behind, found myself all alone, silently and privily stealing through
deep-cloven passages into this sequestered spot, and saw the long,
high-gabled main factory edifice, with a rude tower--for hoisting heavy
boxes--at one end, standing among its crowded outbuildings and
boarding-houses, as the Temple Church amidst the surrounding offices and
dormitories, and when the marvellous retirement of this mysterious
mountain nook fastened its whole spell upon me, then, what memory
lacked, all tributary imagination furnished, and I said to myself, ‘This
is the very counterpart of the Paradise of Bachelors, but snowed upon,
and frost-painted to a sepulchre.’
Dismounting, and warily picking my way down the dangerous
declivity--horse and man both sliding now and then upon the icy
ledges--at length I drove, or the blast drove me, into the largest
square, before one side of the main edifice. Piercingly and shrilly the
shotted blast blew by the corner; and redly and demoniacally boiled
Blood River at one side. A long wood-pile, of many scores of cords, all
glittering in mail of crusted ice, stood crosswise in the square. A row
of horse-posts, their north sides plastered with adhesive snow, flanked
the factory wall. The bleak frost packed and paved the square as with
some ringing metal.
The inverted similitude recurred--‘The sweet, tranquil Temple garden,
with the Thames bordering its green beds,’ strangely meditated I.
But where are the gay bachelors?
Then, as I and my horse stood shivering in the wind-spray, a girl ran
from a neighbouring dormitory door, and throwing her thin apron over her
bare head, made for the opposite building.
‘One moment, my girl; is there no shed hereabouts which I may drive
into?’
Pausing, she turned upon me a face pale with work, and blue with cold;
an eye supernatural with unrelated misery.
‘Nay,’ faltered I, ‘I mistook you. Go on; I want nothing.’
Leading my horse close to the door from which she had come, I knocked.
Another pale, blue girl appeared, shivering in the doorway as, to
prevent the blast, she jealously held the door ajar.
‘Nay, I mistake again. In God’s name shut the door. But hold, is there
no man about?’
- title
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