IT was in Paris, many years ago, that I fell by chance into this habit of
early rising. My night—by reasons that I need not enter into—had been a
troubled one. Tired of the hot bed that gave no sleep, I rose and
dressed myself, crept down the creaking stairs, experiencing the
sensations of a burglar new to his profession, unbolted the great door of
the hotel, and passed out into an unknown, silent city, bathed in a
mysterious soft light. Since then, this strange sweet city of the dawn
has never ceased to call to me. It may be in London, in Paris again, in
Brussels, Berlin, Vienna, that I have gone to sleep, but if perchance I
wake before the returning tide of human life has dimmed its glories with
the mists and vapours of the noisy day, I know that beyond my window
blind the fairy city, as I saw it first so many years ago—this city that
knows no tears, no sorrow, through which there creeps no evil thing; this
city of quiet vistas, fading into hope; this city of far-off voices
whispering peace; this city of the dawn that still is young—invites me to
talk with it awhile before the waking hours drive it before them, and
with a sigh it passes whence it came.
It is the great city’s one hour of purity, of dignity. The very
rag-picker, groping with her filthy hands among the ashes, instead of an
object of contempt, moves from door to door an accusing Figure, her thin
soiled garments, her bent body, her scarred face, hideous with the wounds
of poverty, an eloquent indictment of smug Injustice, sleeping behind its
deaf shutters. Yet even into her dim brain has sunk the peace that fills
for this brief hour the city. This, too, shall have its end, my sister!
Men and women were not born to live on the husks that fill the pails
outside the rich man’s door. Courage a little while longer, you and
yours. Your rheumy eyes once were bright, your thin locks once soft and
wavy, your poor bent back once straight; and maybe, as they tell you in
their gilded churches, this bulging sack shall be lifted from your weary
shoulders, your misshapen limbs be straight again. You pass not
altogether unheeded through these empty streets. Not all the eyes of the
universe are sleeping.
The little seamstress, hurrying to her early work! A little later she
will be one of the foolish crowd, joining in the foolish laughter, in the
coarse jests of the work-room: but as yet the hot day has not claimed
her. The work-room is far beyond, the home of mean cares and sordid
struggles far behind. To her, also, in this moment are the sweet
thoughts of womanhood. She puts down her bag, rests herself upon a seat.
If all the day were dawn, this city of the morning always with us! A
neighbouring clock chimes forth the hour. She starts up from her dream
and hurries on—to the noisy work-room.
A pair of lovers cross the park, holding each other’s hands. They will
return later in the day, but there will be another expression in their
eyes, another meaning in the pressure of their hands. Now the purity of
the morning is with them.
Some fat, middle-aged clerk comes puffing into view: his ridiculous
little figure very podgy. He stops to take off his hat and mop his bald
head with his handkerchief: even to him the morning lends romance. His
fleshy face changes almost as one looks at him. One sees again the lad
with his vague hopes, his absurd ambitions.
There is a statue of Aphrodite in one of the smaller Paris parks. Twice
in the same week, without particularly meaning it, I found myself early
in the morning standing in front of this statue gazing listlessly at it,
as one does when in dreamy mood; and on both occasions, turning to go, I
encountered the same man, also gazing at it with, apparently, listless
eyes. He was an uninteresting looking man—possibly he thought the same
of me. From his dress he might have been a well-to-do tradesman, a minor
Government official, doctor, or lawyer. Quite ten years later I paid my
third visit to the same statue at about the same hour. This time he was
there before me. I was hidden from him by some bushes. He glanced round
but did not see me; and then he did a curious thing. Placing his hands
on the top of the pedestal, which may have been some seven feet in
height, he drew himself up, and kissed very gently, almost reverentially,
the foot of the statue, begrimed though it was with the city’s dirt. Had
he been some long-haired student of the Latin Quarter one would not have
been so astonished. But he was such a very commonplace, quite
respectable looking man. Afterwards he drew a pipe from his pocket,
carefully filled and lighted it, took his umbrella from the seat where it
had been lying, and walked away.
Had it been their meeting-place long ago? Had he been wont to tell her,
gazing at her with lover’s eyes, how like she was to the statue? The
French sculptor has not to consider Mrs. Grundy. Maybe, the lady,
raising her eyes, had been confused; perhaps for a moment angry—some
little milliner or governess, one supposes. In France the _jeune fille_
of good family does not meet her lover unattended. What had happened?
Or was it but the vagrant fancy of a middle-aged bourgeois seeking in
imagination the romance that reality so rarely gives us, weaving his love
dream round his changeless statue?
In one of Ibsen’s bitter comedies the lovers agree to part while they are
still young, never to see each other in the flesh again. Into the future
each will bear away the image of the other, godlike, radiant with the
glory of youth and love; each will cherish the memory of a loved one who
shall be beautiful always. That their parting may not appear such wild
nonsense as at first it strikes us, Ibsen shows us other lovers who have
married in the orthodox fashion. She was all that a mistress should be.
They speak of her as they first knew her fifteen years ago, when every
man was at her feet. He then was a young student, burning with fine
ideals, with enthusiasm for all the humanities.
They enter.
What did you expect? Fifteen years have passed—fifteen years of struggle
with the grim realities. He is fat and bald. Eleven children have to be
provided for. High ideals will not even pay the bootmaker. To exist you
have to fight for mean ends with mean weapons. And the sweet girl
heroine! Now the worried mother of eleven brats! One rings down the
curtain amid Satanic laughter.
That is why, for one reason among so many, I love this mystic morning
light. It has a strange power of revealing the beauty that is hidden
from us by the coarser beams of the full day. These worn men and women,
grown so foolish looking, so unromantic; these artisans and petty clerks
plodding to their monotonous day’s work; these dull-eyed women of the
people on their way to market to haggle over _sous_, to argue and contend
over paltry handfuls of food. In this magic morning light the disguising
body becomes transparent. They have grown beautiful, not ugly, with the
years of toil and hardship; these lives, lived so patiently, are
consecrated to the service of the world. Joy, hope, pleasure—they have
done with all such, life for them is over. Yet they labour, ceaselessly,
uncomplainingly. It is for the children.
One morning, near Brussels, I encountered a cart of faggots, drawn by a
hound so lean that stroking him might have hurt a dainty hand. I was
shocked—angry, till I noticed his fellow beast of burden pushing the cart
from behind. Such a scarecrow of an old woman! There was little to
choose between them. I walked with them a little way. She lived near
Waterloo. All day she gathered wood in the great forest, and starting at
three o’clock each morning, the two lean creatures between them dragged
the cart nine miles to Brussels, returning when they had sold their load.
With luck she might reckon on a couple of francs. I asked her if she
could not find something else to do.
Yes, it was possible, but for the little one, her grandchild. Folks will
not employ old women burdened with grandchildren.
You fair, dainty ladies, who would never know it was morning if somebody
did not enter to pull up the blind and tell you so! You do well not to
venture out in this magic morning light. You would look so plain—almost
ugly, by the side of these beautiful women.
It is curious the attraction the Church has always possessed for the
marketing classes. Christ drove them from the Temple, but still, in
every continental city, they cluster round its outer walls. It makes a
charming picture on a sunny morning, the great cathedral with its massive
shadow forming the background; splashed about its feet, like a parterre
of gay flowers around the trunk of some old tree, the women, young girls
in their many coloured costumes, sitting before their piled-up baskets of
green vegetables, of shining fruits.
In Brussels the chief market is held on the Grande Place. The great
gilded houses have looked down upon much the same scene every morning
these four hundred years. In summer time it commences about half-past
four; by five o’clock it is a roaring hive, the great city round about
still sleeping.
Here comes the thrifty housewife of the poor, to whom the difference of a
tenth of a penny in the price of a cabbage is all-important, and the much
harassed keeper of the petty _pension_. There are houses in Brussels
where they will feed you, light you, sleep you, wait on you, for two
francs a day. Withered old ladies, ancient governesses, who will teach
you for forty centimes an hour, gather round these ricketty tables, wolf
up the thin soup, grumble at the watery coffee, help themselves with
unladylike greediness to the potato pie. It must need careful
housewifery to keep these poor creatures on two francs a day and make a
profit for yourself. So “Madame,” the much-grumbled-at, who has gone to
bed about twelve, rises a little before five, makes her way down with her
basket. Thus a few _sous_ may be saved upon the day’s economies.
Sometimes it is a mere child who is the little housekeeper. One thinks
that perhaps this early training in the art of haggling may not be good
for her. Already there is a hard expression in the childish eyes, mean
lines about the little mouth. The finer qualities of humanity are
expensive luxuries, not to be afforded by the poor.
They overwork their patient dogs, and underfeed them. During the two
hours’ market the poor beasts, still fastened to their little “chariots,”
rest in the open space about the neighbouring Bourse. They snatch at
what you throw them; they do not even thank you with a wag of the tail.
Gratitude! Politeness! What mean you? We have not heard of such. We
only work. Some of them amid all the din lie sleeping between their
shafts. Some are licking one another’s sores. One would they were
better treated; alas! their owners, likewise, are overworked and
underfed, housed in kennels no better. But if the majority in every
society were not overworked and underfed and meanly housed, why, then the
minority could not be underworked and overfed and housed luxuriously.
But this is talk to which no respectable reader can be expected to
listen.
They are one babel of bargaining, these markets. The purchaser selects a
cauliflower. Fortunately, cauliflowers have no feelings, or probably it
would burst into tears at the expression with which it is regarded. It
is impossible that any lady should desire such a cauliflower. Still, out
of mere curiosity, she would know the price—that is, if the owner of the
cauliflower is not too much ashamed of it to name a price.
The owner of the cauliflower suggests six _sous_. The thing is too
ridiculous for argument. The purchaser breaks into a laugh.
The owner of the cauliflower is stung. She points out the beauties of
that cauliflower. Apparently it is the cauliflower out of all her stock
she loves the best; a better cauliflower never lived; if there were more
cauliflowers in the world like this particular cauliflower things might
be different. She gives a sketch of the cauliflower’s career, from its
youth upwards. Hard enough it will be for her when the hour for parting
from it comes. If the other lady has not sufficient knowledge of
cauliflowers to appreciate it, will she kindly not paw it about, but put
it down and go away, and never let the owner of the cauliflower see her
again.
The other lady, more as a friend than as a purchaser, points out the
cauliflower’s defects. She wishes well to the owner of the cauliflower,
and would like to teach her something about her business. A lady who
thinks such a cauliflower worth six _sous_ can never hope to succeed as a
cauliflower vendor. Has she really taken the trouble to examine the
cauliflower for herself, or has love made her blind to its shortcomings?
The owner of the cauliflower is too indignant to reply. She snatches it
away, appears to be comforting it, replaces it in the basket. The other
lady is grieved at human obstinacy and stupidity in general. If the
owner of the cauliflower had had any sense she would have asked four
_sous_. Eventually business is done at five.
It is the custom everywhere abroad—asking the price of a thing is simply
opening conversation. A lady told me that, the first day she began
housekeeping in Florence, she handed over to a poulterer for a chicken
the price he had demanded—with protestations that he was losing on the
transaction, but wanted, for family reasons, apparently, to get rid of
the chicken. He stood for half a minute staring at her, and then, being
an honest sort of man, threw in a pigeon.
Foreign housekeepers starting business in London appear hurt when our
tradesmen decline to accept half-a-crown for articles marked
three-and-six.
“Then why mark it only three-and-sixpence?” is the foreign housekeeper’s
argument.