Liza of Lambeth

Liza of Lambeth, by W. Somerset
Maugham

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Title: Liza of Lambeth
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Release Date: August 12, 2005 [EBook #16517]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Liza of Lambeth

SOMERSET MAUGHAM

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann Ltd 1897

1
It was the first Saturday afternoon in August; 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 evening it was cooler, and everyone 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 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
absolutely refusing to go out and the bowler absolutely 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
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 nursing 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, comparing the circumstances of their
various confinements.
'You'll be 'avin' your little trouble soon, eh, Polly?' asked one good lady
of another.
'Oh, I reckon I've got another two months ter go yet,' answered Polly.
'Well,' said a third. 'I wouldn't 'ave thought you'd go so long by the look
of yer!'
'I 'ope you'll have it easier this time, my dear,' said a very stout old
person, a woman of great importance.
'She said she wasn't goin' to 'ave no more, when the last one come.'
This remark came from Polly's husband.
'Ah,' said the stout old lady, who was in the business, and boasted vast
experience. 'That's wot they all says; but, Lor' bless yer, they don't
mean it.'

'Well, I've got three, and I'm not goin' to 'ave no more bli'me if I will;
'tain't good enough--that's wot I says.'
'You're abaht right there, ole gal,' said Polly, 'My word, 'Arry, if you
'ave any more I'll git a divorce, that I will.'
At that moment an organ-grinder turned