William Somerset Maugham
Liza of Lambeth
language
( Feb. 27, 2012)
Liza of Lambeth
Chapter One
IT was the first Saturday afternoon in Au-
gust ; it had been broiling hot all day, with
a cloudless sky, and the sun had been beating
down on the houses so that the top rooms were
like ovens ; but now with the approach of eve-
ning it was cooler, and every one in Vere
Street was out-of-doors.
Vere Street, Lambeth, is a short, straight
street leading out of the Westminster Bridge
Road; it has forty houses on one side and
forty houses on the other, and these eighty
houses are very much more like one another
than ever peas are like peas, or young ladies
like young ladies. They are newish, three-
storied buildings of dingy grey brick with slate
roofs, and they are perfectly flat, without a
bow-window or even a projecting cornice or
8 Liza of Lambeth
window-sill to break the straightness of the
line from one end of the street to the other.
This Saturday afternoon the street was full
of life: no traffic came down Vere Street, and
the cemented space between the pavements was
given up to children. Several games of cricket
were being played by wildly excited boys,
using coats for wickets, an old tennis-ball or a
bundle of rags tied together for a ball, and,
generally, an old broomstick for bat. The
wicket was so large and the bat so small that
the man in was always getting bowled, when
heated quarrels would arise, the batter abso-
lutely refusing to go out and the bowler ab-
solutely insisting on going in. The girls were
more peaceable ; they were chiefly employed in
skipping, and only abused one another mildly
when the rope was not properly turned or the
skipper did not jump sufficiently high. Worst
off of all were the very young children, for
there had been no rain for weeks, and the street
was as dry and clean as a covered court, and,
in the lack of mud to wallow in, they sat about
the road, disconsolate as poets. The number
of babies was prodigious ; they sprawled about
Liza of Lambeth
everywhere, on the pavement, round the doors,
and about their mothers' skirts. The grown-
ups were gathered round the open doors ; there
were usually two women squatting on the
doorstep, and two or three more seated on
either side on chairs ; they were invariably nurs-
ing babies, and most of them showed clear
signs that the present object of the maternal
care would be soon ousted by a new arrival.
Men were less numerous, but such as there
were leant against the walls, smoking, or sat
on the sills of the ground-floor windows. It
was the dead season in Vere Street as much
as in Belgravia, and really if it had not been
for babies just come or just about to come,
and an opportune murder in a neighbouring
doss-house, there would have been nothing
whatever to talk about. As it was, the little
groups talked quietly, discussing the atrocity
or the merits of the local midwives, compar-
ing the circumstances of their various confine-
ments.
"You'll be 'avin' your little trouble soon, eh,
Polly?" asked one good lady of another.
Chapter One
IT was the first Saturday afternoon in Au-
gust ; it had been broiling hot all day, with
a cloudless sky, and the sun had been beating
down on the houses so that the top rooms were
like ovens ; but now with the approach of eve-
ning it was cooler, and every one in Vere
Street was out-of-doors.
Vere Street, Lambeth, is a short, straight
street leading out of the Westminster Bridge
Road; it has forty houses on one side and
forty houses on the other, and these eighty
houses are very much more like one another
than ever peas are like peas, or young ladies
like young ladies. They are newish, three-
storied buildings of dingy grey brick with slate
roofs, and they are perfectly flat, without a
bow-window or even a projecting cornice or
8 Liza of Lambeth
window-sill to break the straightness of the
line from one end of the street to the other.
This Saturday afternoon the street was full
of life: no traffic came down Vere Street, and
the cemented space between the pavements was
given up to children. Several games of cricket
were being played by wildly excited boys,
using coats for wickets, an old tennis-ball or a
bundle of rags tied together for a ball, and,
generally, an old broomstick for bat. The
wicket was so large and the bat so small that
the man in was always getting bowled, when
heated quarrels would arise, the batter abso-
lutely refusing to go out and the bowler ab-
solutely insisting on going in. The girls were
more peaceable ; they were chiefly employed in
skipping, and only abused one another mildly
when the rope was not properly turned or the
skipper did not jump sufficiently high. Worst
off of all were the very young children, for
there had been no rain for weeks, and the street
was as dry and clean as a covered court, and,
in the lack of mud to wallow in, they sat about
the road, disconsolate as poets. The number
of babies was prodigious ; they sprawled about
Liza of Lambeth
everywhere, on the pavement, round the doors,
and about their mothers' skirts. The grown-
ups were gathered round the open doors ; there
were usually two women squatting on the
doorstep, and two or three more seated on
either side on chairs ; they were invariably nurs-
ing babies, and most of them showed clear
signs that the present object of the maternal
care would be soon ousted by a new arrival.
Men were less numerous, but such as there
were leant against the walls, smoking, or sat
on the sills of the ground-floor windows. It
was the dead season in Vere Street as much
as in Belgravia, and really if it had not been
for babies just come or just about to come,
and an opportune murder in a neighbouring
doss-house, there would have been nothing
whatever to talk about. As it was, the little
groups talked quietly, discussing the atrocity
or the merits of the local midwives, compar-
ing the circumstances of their various confine-
ments.
"You'll be 'avin' your little trouble soon, eh,
Polly?" asked one good lady of another.
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