Lowest of the Low

What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low.

Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets, E1

All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.

Highgate Hill, Archway, Islington, N19

That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.

Seville Place, Dublin, Dublin 1

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.

Caroline Street, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, E1

I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners.

Long Street, Shoreditch, Hackney, E2

And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

Dock Road, Brentford, TW8

Vincent van Gogh’s Letter to Theo (1882)

Nicholas Hawksmoor

For when I trace back the years I have liv’d, gathering them up in my Memory…

Nichoas Hawksmoor's Christchurch Spitalfields, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

… I see what a chequer’d Work Of Nature my life has been.

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, City of London, EC3V

If I were now to inscribe my own History with its unparalleled Sufferings and surprizing Adventures (as the Booksellers might indite it)…

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St Anne's Limehouse, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, E14

… I know that the great Part of the World would not believe the Passages there related, by reason of the Strangeness of them…

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St George-in-the-East, Shadwell, Tower Hamlets, E1

… but I cannot help their Unbelief…

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St George's Bloomsbury, Little Russell Street, Camden, WC1A

… and if the Reader considers them to be but dark Conceits, then let him bethink himself that Humane life is quite out of the Light and that we are all Creatures of Darknesse.

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St Alfege, St Alfege Passage, Greenwich, SE10

From Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor (1985)

The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu

The mantle of dusk had closed about the squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination.

Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu, Limehouse Basin, Tower Hamlets, E14

Aliens of every shade and color were about us now, emerging from the burrow-like alleys into the glare of the lamps upon the main road.

From Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu (1913)