Tucked behind the crisscross of commuters entering and exiting Russell Square Station there’s an old cobblestone alleyway I became very familiar with during my week in London. If I had a little time, and nothing to do with it, I’d wander over and sit on a bench by a row of sunflower stalks to get some peace from the crowds of car horns and tourists. The alley, like many London streets, is so narrow enough to see and hear dozens of people within a ten foot radius.
I love to people-watch. While reading A Tale of Two Cities I could imagine that Charles Dickens shared my invasive hobby. Once in a while, Dickens takes a moment to indulge in representing seemingly unimportant interactions of passerby on the streets and public spaces of London and Paris. There’s the rowdy spectacle and rumor of a crowd during a funeral procession, pseudonymous revolutionaries in a wine shop, a bureaucratic interaction with a clerk, to name a few examples.
Places like these make me think that those bits of chatter is just as much an accurate representation of London public spaces as it is a stylistic choice. There are voices everywhere. But aside from snippets of dialogue Dickens’ narrative decision to wildly change perspective across social standing and values from chapter to chapter from a French Marquis, to a shady body snatcher, to a mild mannered corporate drone feels similar to this street where so many different people are unintentionally in association with each other. In the book it’s through sharing narrative space. Here it’s literal space.
This effect seems to be created by London'‘s infrastructure. Our group visited the old streets in the original City of London where Dickens would have walked and many of those seemed like only a few people could stand in them side-by side. You could imagine that Dickens would’ve had to squeeze past many conversations to get to the pub for a drink. It appears that through the years they didn’t get much wider. Streets like this are too narrow for more than one car to pass through so they often don’t bother. Instead there are people. Every corner appears to overlap and bend in towards each other. Voices bounce every direction off the close brick walls.
A each other’s doorsteps, there were three businesses in this alley:
A standard English pub. Plastic wisteria falls over the windows. The middle aged American tourists and weary corporate workers who couldn’t get a seat drink in groups outside.
A no-frills artisan bakery with a line down the block of hipsters showing off, giddy teenagers talking smack about their classmates, and pastry enthusiasts such as myself.
A windowless experimental art gallery/possibly nightclub behind a freshly painted, heavily locked warehouse door (“INVITATION ONLY”).
If this was in Los Angeles, these places would be separated by at least a few lanes of traffic, some sidewalks, and a fair amount of space between walls. The finance worker and the alternative gallery curator would never have to know the other existed. But here the businesses and clients in them all spill out over each other. There’s no other choice.
A couple on first date couldn’t find a bench of their own so sat on mine. Over a cream puff, the scruffy-looking man recalled his experience growing up in state schools and recalled the anxiety of not feeling assimilated into the elite circles at his university.
“Wait, you went to state school too, right?” he said. “‘Cause it would be awkward if I just complained about all those people from those fancy schools and you ended up being one of them.”
If you turned behind the bench, a small construction crew installed a brand new door into someone’s flat. One of them told a joke, at least that’s what it seemed like, in Hungarian which inspired another to go off on an enthusiastic tangent I couldn’t understand.
A group of young blue-collar workers in extremely expensive dry cleaned suits, holding beers compared notes on work and the economy “You never know what’s gonna happen these days.” one mused.
A neat man with his fingers dripping in silver rings glances over his shoulder as he turns the key to the gallery before he slinks in. He’s careful to only let the door open a crack in order to maintain the advertised secrecy.
These little streets appear remarkably Democratic, everyone regardless of class or identity or personality has no choice but to share a space. Each of these people were in the alleyway for mismatched reasons at mismatched establishments. They were from different economic backgrounds, used different slang, loved and judged the opposite things. And yet, I did not have to move an inch to observe all of this at once.
It seems inevitable that one would overhear personal intimate conversations of people who they will never actually speak to, who they maybe dislike or disagree with, or don’t care about. It’s a remarkable thing that London’s antiquated infrastructure forced them all to stand within steps of each other. I don’t know what effect this has on London culture. It certainly doesn't stop division and resentment here. But perhaps it helps a little.
What I do know from experience is that hearing daily conversation is great insight to how someone experiences life. Even a mundane conversation about a pastry or a lunch break says a lot about what people are afraid of, or excited about, or what they value. And hearing others’ voices, especially unfamiliar ones, is a powerful reminder of people’s humanity. I think that’s why Dickens includes so many people in the narrative with such care so that the reader can “eavesdrop” on so many important lives.
To sit on a bench in a narrow London street is a lesson in the multiplicity of a city and a culture. The seemingly singular identity “Londoner” means endless things. I think this is why Dickens takes care to include a wide range of perspectives and seemingly trivial voices from his novel to represent a city. I could imagine that any of his characters might be sitting right by me all at once before they go home to opposite sides of town.