The city is a dark place for those lost and forgotten.
Pages 161-162
“Door came back down the carriage toward them. She was smiling. “The earl’s agreed to help us,” she said. “Come on. He’s meeting us in the library.” Richard began to follow, as he realized that the question What library? had not risen to his lips. The longer he was here, the more he took at face value. Instead, he followed Door toward the earl’s empty throne, and round the back of it, and through the connecting door behind it, and into the library. It was a huge stone room, with a high wooden ceiling. Each wall was covered with shelves. Each shelf was laden with objects: there were books, yes. But the shelves were filled with a host of other things: tennis rackets, hockey sticks, umbrellas, a spade, a notebook computer, a wooden leg, several mugs, dozens of shoes, pairs of binoculars, a small log, six glove puppets, a lava lamp, various CDs, records (LPs, 45s, and 78s), cassette tapes and eight-tracks, dice, toy cars, assorted pairs of dentures, watches, flashlights, four garden gnomes of assorted sizes (two fishing, one of them mooning, the last smoking a cigar), piles of newspapers, magazines, grimoires, three-legged stools, a box of cigars, a plastic nodding-head Alsatian, socks…the room was a tiny empire of lost property.
“This is his real domain,” muttered Hunter. “Things lost. Things forgotten.”
This passage, while a list of lost trinkets collected by the old senile earl, also reveals an important aspect of the nature of London Below. From Hunter’s commentary, lost and forgotten objects appear to become collected together in London Below, becoming part of the Earl’s domain as they are left behind on trains and in the underground train system. This element of lost is significant, as mentioned earlier by the Marquis, this version of London is one full of people who have “fallen through the cracks”. Richard himself becomes one of those who fall through, suddenly forgotten or only vaguely remembered by the people who used to be part of his life in London Above. There appears to be no real rhyme or reason as to why certain people fall through the cracks, visually portrayed just as all these forgotten items are both distinct yet completely random. This passage, with its strange and varied collection of items unified only by their lost nature, thus makes reference to a larger “empire of lost property”, London Below itself. Likewise, it acts as commentary on the “normal” and “real” London Above it darkly mirrors. From this juxtaposition and presentation of hidden world of lost items and people, it invites reflection upon our own society. Readers are forced to think about the lost people who have “fallen through the cracks” in our neighborhoods and communities, those hidden, unseen, or who find themselves on bottom rung of the social ladder—such as the numberless homeless, missing children, and runaways from abusive homes like Anesthesia.
“This is his real domain,” muttered Hunter. “Things lost. Things forgotten.”
This passage, while a list of lost trinkets collected by the old senile earl, also reveals an important aspect of the nature of London Below. From Hunter’s commentary, lost and forgotten objects appear to become collected together in London Below, becoming part of the Earl’s domain as they are left behind on trains and in the underground train system. This element of lost is significant, as mentioned earlier by the Marquis, this version of London is one full of people who have “fallen through the cracks”. Richard himself becomes one of those who fall through, suddenly forgotten or only vaguely remembered by the people who used to be part of his life in London Above. There appears to be no real rhyme or reason as to why certain people fall through the cracks, visually portrayed just as all these forgotten items are both distinct yet completely random. This passage, with its strange and varied collection of items unified only by their lost nature, thus makes reference to a larger “empire of lost property”, London Below itself. Likewise, it acts as commentary on the “normal” and “real” London Above it darkly mirrors. From this juxtaposition and presentation of hidden world of lost items and people, it invites reflection upon our own society. Readers are forced to think about the lost people who have “fallen through the cracks” in our neighborhoods and communities, those hidden, unseen, or who find themselves on bottom rung of the social ladder—such as the numberless homeless, missing children, and runaways from abusive homes like Anesthesia.
