For here are many thousands of homes, and where a thousand homes are gathered together there shall you find prayer and beauty. Yes, my genteel lambs of Kensington, in this region of ashpits and waterways and broken ships and dry canals are girls and garlands and all the old lovely things that help the human heart to float and flow along its winding courses. If you inform the palate of the mind by flavours, then life in Queen's Gate must be a round of labour and lassitude, and, from the rich faces that pass you in the Isle of Dogs, you know that it must always be the time of roses there. Stand by the crazy bridge at the gates of West India Dock, at six o'clock, when, through the lilac dusks, comes that flock of chattering magpies--the little work-girls--and see if I am not right.
And the colour.... There is nothing in the world like it for depth and glamour. I know no evenings so tender as those that gather about the Island: at once heartsome and subdued. The colour of street and sky and water, sprinkled with a million timid stars, is an ecstasy. You cannot name it. You see it first as blue, then as purple, then lilac, rose, silver. The clouds that flank the high-shouldered buildings and chimneys share in these subtle changes, and shift and shift from definite hues to some haunting scheme that was never seen in any colourman's catalogue.
On the night when I took Georgie round the Island a hard, clear frost was abroad. The skies glittered with steady stars. The streets seemed strangely wide and frank, clear-cut, and definite. A fat-faced moon lighted them. The waters were swift and limpid, flecked with bold light. The gay public-house at the Dock gates shone sharp, like a cut gem. Georgie had never toured the Island before, and he enjoyed it thoroughly. As we stood on the shuddering bridge the clear night spread such a stillness over the place that you could almost hear a goods train shunt; and we stood there watching the berthing of a big P. & O. for many pensive minutes.
By the way, you ought to know Georgie; he is a London character. Perhaps you do, for he has thousands of acquaintances. He knows all that there is to know about London--or, at least, the real London, by which phrase I exclude the foreign quarters and the Isle of Dogs. These he does not regard as part of London. His acquaintance among waiters alone is a matter for wonder. At odd times you may meet him in a bar with a stranger, an impressive-looking personage who, you conjecture, is an attaché of a foreign Embassy. But no; you do him an injustice; he is greater than that. Georgie introduces you with a histrionic flourish--