Woolwich

“ Originally a small fishing-village, the site of which is supposed to have been once occupied by a Roman camp, Woolwich, now one of the most important eastern suburbs of London, owes its prosperity {86} chiefly to its having been chosen by Henry VIII. as his chief naval station. ”

“ To that centre on the Thames, three and a half miles by two and a half, with its numberless workshops, its endless avenues, and its hundred and twenty miles of internal railway, there radiate the activities of scores of associate factories round about, so that thirty thousand workers more, chiefly women (ninety-seven thousand in all) , are feeding this almost fathomless reservoir. Woolwich is a great mechanical octopus, with arms that reach over, across and around London and the country about it.
Has the world ever witnessed a mightier example of human force? ”

“ Throughout the whole of the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth century, when wars and rumours of wars kept up a constant demand for new battleships, additions continued to be made to the great dockyard of Woolwich, which reached the zenith of its prosperity under the gifted engineers, Sir John Rennie and his son, who created a large reservoir, built a strong river wall, and proved themselves equal to meeting every emergency that arose. ”

“ Woolwich faces the expanse of originally flooded soil between the Lea and the Roding, with the most of which even the economic forces making for the expansion of London have been able to do nothing, and of which so unpleasant a relic of its original condition is left in Plaistow Marshes to-day; while opposite Greenwich and Deptford lay that perfectly impossible morass, which, though turned into water meadows by a river wall many centuries ago, is still perhaps the worst building ground within the London area. ”

“ Founded in the closing years of the eighteenth century, the modern Arsenal of Woolwich is one of the most extensive and interesting institutions of the {89} kind in the world. Exclusive of the outlying powder magazines in the marshes, the present buildings cover considerably more than three hundred acres, the ordinary staff of workpeople numbers some ten thousand, that is increased to forty thousand or fifty thousand in time of war. ”

“ Strangers (if not foreigners) are admitted to the arsenal only by a written order from the War Office. The number of government establishments in and near Woolwich is very large; and there is generally something or other going on which a stranger would be interested in seeing.
p. 161Below Woolwich.—Numerous steamers during the day, trains on the Tilbury Railway, and others on the North Kent Railway, give easy access to a number of pleasant places lower down the river than Woolwich. On the Essex side are Rainham, near which onion gardens are kept up ”

“ For a time he resumed his old trade of bootmaker, opening a shop in Artillery Place, Woolwich (No. 8) . Here, during his leisure time, he taught himself turning and lithography, and devoted a good deal of attention to the construction of scientific apparatus. He supplemented his income by lecturing to schools and teaching officers' families. He also began to contribute to the scientific press, especially the ‘London Philosophical Magazine,’ and in 1822 took a prominent part in founding the Woolwich ‘Literary Society,’ among the original members being the chemist James Marsh [q. v.] ”

“ Oh, the misery of those terms at Woolwich! I hated the work, the drill, the gym and even the riding school. I hated the officers, and above all I hated the spirit of the place. As far as I remember, the one eternal topic of conversation and subject of "wit" was the sexual relation. Of course the boys had never been taught sensibly anything about it. Consequently the place was continually circulated with filthy books, pictures, stories, etc. When I went there I was extraordinarily innocent, and devoid of curiosity. I had been recently the more disposed to purity through the death of my mother. ”

“ If there is any man in London who can pass through the workshops of Woolwich without thinking he has been looking at some thousands of the best-looking young women in the world, it is certainly not the present writer. ”

“ He snuggled down in his armchair. "Now, Watson, let us have the facts."
"The man's name was Arthur Cadogan West. He was twenty-seven years of age, unmarried, and a clerk at Woolwich Arsenal."
"Government employ. Behold the link with Brother Mycroft!"
"He left Woolwich suddenly on Monday night. Was last seen by his fiancee, Miss Violet Westbury, whom he left abruptly in the fog about 7:30 that evening. There was no quarrel between them and she can give no motive for his action. ”

“ To foreigners visiting this country, there are no more interesting sights than the camps of Aldershot and the Curragh; and the arsenal at Woolwich has been visited by thousands of distinguished individuals from every country and clime. ”

“ On the 9th of June we left Woolwich, in tow of H.M. Steamer Boxer, furnished with every comfort and necessary (by the Lords of the Admiralty) which our own experience, or the kind interest of Captain Beaufort could suggest. ”

“ Woolwich is still an open depot, liable to be taken by a single regiment; there is not a bastion at Weedon; there is not a defensible post in the environs of London; Chatham, Sheerness, and Deptford are entirely open on the land side; and although Portsmouth and Plymouth are fortified, and may be pronounced impregnable against a naval assault, they are far from being so against a land force. ”

“ Rotherhithe is Saxon for red haven, alluding to the colour of the soil. The name of Deptford indicates the deep ford over the Ravensbourne, [161] which is now spanned by a bridge. Greenwich means the green town, or, more precisely, the verdant settlement beside the wick, or reach of the river [see Chiswick] ; whereas Woolwich was originally Hylwich, i.e., hill town. The Isle of Dogs is a corruption of “Isle of Ducks,” so described in ancient documents on account of the number of wild-fowl always to be found there. ”

“ Woolwich (40) , a town in Kent, on the S. bank of the Thames, 9 m. below London; is the chief military arsenal in the country; contains a gun factory, ammunition factory, laboratory, &c., which employ 12,000 men, besides barracks for artillery, engineers, &c., covering an area 4 m. in circumference.
Worcester (42) , the county town of Worcestershire, on the left bank of the Severn, 26 m. SE. of Birmingham; a very ancient place, and a handsome city, with a noble old Gothic cathedral; is famous for its blue porcelain ware and other industries, particularly glove-making ”

“ In the little English church, which stands amid its roses and vines in the new quarter, is a wall tablet of red and white marble—the memorial of a great Englishman. It bears the following inscription: "In memory of Major-General Charles George Gordon, C.B. Born at Woolwich, Jan. ”

“ Old and new, quiet repose and the bustling conduct of business, mingle strangely here, for within sight of Wool railway station, and within hearing of the clashing of the heavy consignments of milk-churns, driven up to it, to be placed on the rail and sent to qualify the tea of London’s great populations, stands the great, mellowed, Elizabethan, red brick grange or mansion known as Woolbridge House, romantically placed on the borders of the rushy river Frome. ”

“ The next day was Saturday; therefore both William and Ralph were free to devote the whole afternoon to an expedition to Greenwich, which Cassandra had never seen, and Katharine confused with Dulwich. On this occasion Ralph was their guide. He brought them without accident to Greenwich.
What exigencies of state or fantasies of imagination first gave birth to the cluster of pleasant places by which London is surrounded is matter of indifference now that they have adapted themselves so admirably to the needs of people between the ages of twenty and thirty with Saturday afternoons to spend. ”

“ England has been too modest in the matter of Wellington. To make Wellington so great is to belittle England. Wellington is nothing but a hero like many another. Those Scotch Grays, those Horse Guards, those regiments of Maitland and of Mitchell, that infantry of Pack and Kempt, that cavalry of Ponsonby and Somerset, those Highlanders playing the pibroch under the shower of grape-shot, those battalions of Rylandt, those utterly raw recruits, who hardly knew how to handle a musket holding their own against Essling’s and Rivoli’s old troops,—that is what was grand. ”

“ When I left England he was very sad about his tame magpie. He suspected that a man had poisoned it. And then Russell lives on the next staircase. I think you'd like him. He's a passion for Handel. Well, Rachel," he concluded, dismissing the vision of London, "we shall be doing that together in six weeks' time, and it'll be the middle of June then,—and June in London—my God! how pleasant it all is!"
"And we're certain to have it too," she said. "It isn't as if we were expecting a great deal—only to walk about and look at things." ”

“ And did Elizabeth give one thought to poor Miss Kilman who loved her without jealousy, to whom she had been a fawn in the open, a moon in a glade? She was delighted to be free. The fresh air was so delicious. It had been so stuffy in the Army and Navy Stores. And now it was like riding, to be rushing up Whitehall; and to each movement of the omnibus the beautiful body in the fawn-coloured coat responded freely like a rider, like the figure-head of a ship, for the breeze slightly disarrayed her; the heat gave her cheeks the pallor of white painted wood ”

“ Even at tea the floor rose beneath their feet and pitched too low again, and at dinner the ship seemed to groan and strain as though a lash were descending. She who had been a broad-backed dray-horse, upon whose hind-quarters pierrots might waltz, became a colt in a field. The plates slanted away from the knives, and Mrs. Dalloway's face blanched for a second as she helped herself and saw the potatoes roll this way and that. Willoughby, of course, extolled the virtues of his ship, and quoted what had been said of her by experts and distinguished passengers, for he loved his own possessions. ”

“ That was Wellington’s last victory—bloodless, and, therefore, since the enemy would have been his own countrymen, all the more glorious for that.
In the article on Nelson, I mentioned the well-known fact that the greatest soldier and the greatest sailor of their age met but once, and that Wellington so far gauged the character of the hero of Trafalgar as to describe him as “a very superior person.” In the spirit they not only met again, but they will live together in everlasting honour in the memory of the British people. ”

“ The morning was clear when we sailed into Wellington harbour and cast anchor before the capital city of the island dominion. On going ashore I found Wellington rather like an American than a British town. It has more than one hundred thousand people and is growing like a green bay tree. The city lies in a nest in the hills, with its business streets round the harbour, some of them built upon land reclaimed from the sea. The houses are mostly of wood, and one of the government buildings is said to be the biggest wooden structure in the world. ”

“ We pass through Waterloo, and leave behind the bright fields of Wellington’s fame,—our army’s future glory and England’s pride. Quatre Bras appears in view; the frightened peasantry come running breathless and panting along the way. We move off to the left of the road, behind a gently rising eminence; form column of companies, regardless of the growing crop, and ascend the rising ground: a beautiful plain appears in view, surrounded with belts of wood, and the main road from Brussels runs through it. ”

“ The greatest difficulties could neither embarrass nor intimidate Wellington; his energy invariably rising in proportion to the obstacles to be surmounted. The patience, the firmness, the resolution, with which he bore through the maddening vexations and gigantic difficulties of the Peninsular campaigns, is, perhaps, one of the sublimest things to be found in history. In Spain, Wellington not only exhibited the genius of the general, but the comprehensive wisdom of the statesman. ”

“ Woolf that he came to ask shelter for a gentleman who was wishing to get into Wales, and who could not safely travel by day. Mr. Woolf hesitated, and began to ask for further information in respect to the stranger. Richard said that he was an officer who had made his escape from the battle of Worcester, "Then," said Mr. Woolf, "I should hazard my life by concealing him, which I should not be willing to do for any body, unless it were the king." Richard then told him that it was his majesty. ”

“ But though the writer spoke up for Wellington to a certain extent when he was shamefully underrated, and once struck a blow for him when he was about being hustled, he is not going to join in the loathsome sycophantic nonsense which it has been the fashion to use with respect to Wellington these last twenty years. Now what have those years been to England! Why the years of ultra-gentility, everybody in England having gone gentility mad during the last twenty years, and no people more so than your pseudo-Radicals. ”

“ Along quite early in the mornin', before the show commenced, I went in to see Wellington.
He lay there calm and peaceful, with a look on his face as if he had got away at last from a atmosphere of show and sham, and had got into the great Reality of life. ”

“ Then the motor car in front jerks forward, and the tombstones pass too quick for you to read more. All the time the stream of people never ceases passing from the Surrey side to the Strand; from the Strand to the Surrey side. It seems as if the poor had gone raiding the town, and now trapesed back to their own quarters, like beetles scurrying to their holes, for that old woman fairly hobbles towards Waterloo, grasping a shiny bag, as if she had been out into the light and now made off with some scraped chicken bones to her hovel underground. ”