Back Greens Quotes

“...how can I describe Endrick Street to anyone who has never been in it? 'Ugly' is not the word that describes it. it is just one of those desperate streets which we have here and there in Glasgow and, so far as I have seen, you have not at all in London. It is long and black and melancholy as a stone chasm. All hope abandons you as you enter it. From morning till night there is the sound of worn carpets being beaten, and of stone steps being scrubbed by landladies in Hinde's curlers. The great windows are always left dirty, the broken black railings are never repaired, and there is a smell of soot as if a chimney had just been on fire. Nothing seems to thrive in the back greens but soot and cats. I have never once walked down it but there has been a half empty coal-cart on the roadway with a man standing up in it his hand to his mouth, wailing the words 'Coal briquettes!”
― Catherine Carswell, The Camomile