"There's nob'dy but the Lord an' me
That knows what I've to bide."
--NATTERIN NAN.
The slipshod old tailor shuffled after us to the door, talking about
the signs of the times. His frame was bowed with age and labour, and
his shoulders drooped away. It was drawing near the time when the
grasshopper would be a burden to him. A hard life had silently
engraved its faithful records upon that furrowed face; but there was
a cheerful ring in his voice which told of a hopeful spirit within
him still. The old man's nostrils were dusty with snuff, and his
poor garments hung about his shrunken form in the careless ease
which is common to the tailor's shopboard. I could not help admiring
the brave old wrinkled workman as he stood in the doorway talking
about his secondhand trade, whilst the gusty wind fondled about in
his thin gray hair. I took a friendly pinch from his little wooden
box at parting, and left him to go on struggling with his
troublesome family to "keep above the flood," by translating old
clothes into new. We called at some other houses, where the features
of life were so much the same that it is not necessary to say more
than that the inhabitants were all workless, or nearly so, and all
living upon the charitable provision which is the only thin plank
between so many people and death, just now. In one house, where the
furniture had been sold, the poor souls had brought a great stone
into the place, and this was their only seat. In Cunliffe Street, we
passed the cottage of a boilermaker, whom I had heard of before. His
family was four in number. This was one of those cases of wholesome
pride in which the family had struggled with extreme penury, seeking
for work in vain, but never asking for charity, until their own poor
neighbours were at last so moved with pity for their condition, that
they drew the attention of the Relief Committee to it. The man
accepted relief for one week, but after that, he declined receiving
it any longer, because he had met with a promise of employment. But
the promise failed him when the time came. The employer, who had
promised, was himself disappointed of the expected work. After this;
the boilermaker's family was compelled to fall back upon the Relief
Committee's allowance. He who has never gone hungry about the world,
with a strong love of independence in his heart, seeking eagerly for
work from day to day, and coming home night after night to a
foodless, fireless house, and a starving family, disappointed and
desponding, with the gloom of destitution deepening around him, can
never fully realise what the feelings of such a man may be from
anything that mere words can tell.
In Park Road, we called at the house of a hand-loom weaver. I
learnt, before we went in, that two families lived here, numbering
together eight persons; and, though it was well known to the
committee that they had suffered as severely as any on the relief
list, yet their sufferings had been increased by the anonymous
slanders of some ill-disposed neighbours. They were quiet, well-
conducted working people; and these slanders had grieved them very
much. I found the poor weaver's wife very sensitive on this subject.
Man's inhumanity to man may be found among the poor sometimes. It is
not every one who suffers that learns mercy from that suffering. As
I have said before, the husband was a calico weaver on the hand-
loom. He had to weave about seventy-three yards of a kind of check
for 3s., and a full week's work rarely brought him more than 5s. It
seems astonishing that a man should stick year after year to such
labour as this. But there is a strong adhesiveness, mingled with
timidity, in some men, which helps to keep them down. In the front
room of the cottage there was not a single article of furniture
left, so far as I can remember. The weaver's wife was in the little
kitchen, and, knowing the gentleman who was with me, she invited us
forward. She was a wan woman, with sunken eyes, and she was not much
under fifty years of age. Her scanty clothing was whole and clean.
She must have been a very good-looking woman sometime, though she
seemed to me as if long years of hard work and poor diet had sapped
the foundations of her constitution; and there was a curious
changeful blending of pallor and feverish flush upon that worn face.
But, even in the physical ruins of her countenance, a pleasing
expression lingered still. She was timid and quiet in her manner at
first, as if wondering what we had come for; but she asked me to sit
down. There was no seat for my friend, and he stood leaning against
the wall, trying to get her into easy conversation. The little
kitchen looked so cheerless and bare that dull morning that it
reminded me again of a passage in that rude, racy song of the
Lancashire weaver, "Jone o' Greenfeelt"--
"Owd Bill o' Dan's sent us th' baillies one day,
For a shop-score aw owed him, at aw couldn't pay;
But, he were too lat, for owd Billy at th' Bent
Had sent th' tit an' cart, an' taen th' goods off for rent,--
They laft nought but th' owd stoo;
It were seats for us two,
An' on it keawr't Margit an' me.
"Then, th' baillies looked reawnd 'em as sly as a meawse,
When they see'd at o'th goods had bin taen eawt o' th' heawse;
Says tone chap to tother, 'O's gone,--thae may see,'--
Says aw, 'Lads, ne'er fret, for yo're welcome to me!'
Then they made no moor do,
But nipt up wi' owd stoo,
An' we both letten thwack upo' th' flags.
"Then aw said to eawr Margit, while we're upo' the floor,
'We's never be lower i' this world, aw'm sure;
Iv ever things awtern they're likely to mend,
For aw think i' my heart that we're both at th' fur end;
For meight we ban noan,
Nor no looms to weighve on,
An' egad, they're as good lost as fund.'"
We had something to do to get the weaver's wife to talk to us
freely, and I believe the reason was, that, after the slanders they
had been subject to, she harboured a sensitive fear lest anything
like doubt should be cast upon her story. "Well, Mrs," said my
friend, "let's see; how many are you altogether in this house?"
"We're two families, yo know," replied she; "there's eight on us all
altogether." "Well," continued he,"and how much have you coming in,
now?" He had asked this question so oft before, and had so often
received the same answer, that the poor soul began to wonder what
was the meaning of it all. She looked at us silently, her wan face
flushed, and then, with tears rising in her eyes, she said,
tremulously, "Well, iv yo' cannot believe folk--" My friend stopped
her at once, and said, "Nay, Mrs_, you must not think that I doubt
your story. I know all about it; but my friend wanted me to let you
tell it your own way. We have come here to do you good, if possible,
and no harm. You don't need to fear that." "Oh, well," said she,
slowly wiping her moist forehead, and looking relieved," but yo
know, aw was very much put about o'er th' ill-natur't talk as
somebody set eawt." "Take no notice of them," said my friend; "take
no notice. I meet with such things every day." "Well," continued
she," yo know heaw we're situated. We were nine months an' hesn't a
stroke o' wark. Eawr wenches are gettin' a day for t' sick, neaw and
then, but that's all. There's a brother o' mine lives with us,--he'd
a been clemmed into th' grave but for th' relief; an' aw've been
many a time an' hesn't put a bit i' my meawth fro mornin' to mornin'
again. We've bin married twenty-four year; an' aw don't think at him
an' me together has spent a shillin' i' drink all that time. Why, to
tell yo truth, we never had nought to stir on. My husband does bod
get varra little upo th' hand-loom i' th' best o' times--5s. a week
or so. He weighves a sort o' check--seventy-three yards for 3s." The
back door opened into a little damp yard, hemmed in by brick walls.
Over in the next yard we could see a man bustling about, and singing
in a loud voice, "Hard times come again no more." "Yon fellow
doesn't care much about th' hard times, I think," said I. "Eh, naw,"
replied she. "He'll live where mony a one would dee, will yon. He
has that little shop, next dur; an' he keeps sellin' a bit o' toffy,
an' then singin' a bit, an' then sellin' a bit moor toffy,--an' he's
as happy as a pig amung slutch."
Leaving the weaver's cottage, the rain came on, and we sat a few
minutes with a young shoemaker, who was busy at his bench, doing a
cobbling job. His wife was lying ill upstairs. He had been so short
of work for some time past that he had been compelled to apply for
relief. He complained that the cheap gutta percha shoes were hurting
his trade. He said a pair of men's gutta percha shoes could be
bought for 5s. 6d., whilst it would cost him 7s. 6d. for the
materials alone to make a pair of men's shoes of. When the rain was
over, we left his house, and as we went along I saw in a cottage
window a printed paper containing these words, "Bitter beer. This
beer is made of herbs and roots of the native country." I know that
there are many poor people yet in Lancashire who use decoctions of
herbs instead of tea--mint and balm are the favourite herbs for this
purpose; but I could not imagine what this herb beer could be, at a
halfpenny a bottle, unless it was made of nettles. At the cottage
door there was about four-pennyworth of mauled garden stuff upon an
old tray. There was nobody inside but a little ragged lass, who
could not tell us what the beer was made of. She had only one
drinking glass in the place, and that had a snip out of the rim. The
beer was exceedingly bitter. We drank as we could, and then went
into Pump Street, to the house of a "core-maker," a kind of labourer
for moulders. The core-maker's wife was in. They had four children.
The whole six had lived for thirteen weeks on 3s. 6d. a week. When
work first began to fall off, the husband told the visitors who came
to inquire into their condition, that he had a little money saved
up, and he could manage a while. The family lived upon their savings
as long as they lasted, and then were compelled to apply for relief,
or "clem." It was not quite noon when we left this house, and my
friend proposed that before we went farther we should call upon Mrs
G_, an interesting old woman, in Cunliffe Street. We turned back to
the place, and there we found
"In lowly shed, and mean attire,
A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name,
Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame."
In a small room fronting the street, the mild old woman sat, with
her bed in one corner, and her simple vassals ranged upon the forms
around. Here, "with quaint arts," she swayed the giddy crowd of
little imprisoned elves, whilst they fretted away their irksome
schooltime, and unconsciously played their innocent prelude to the
serious drama of life. As we approach the open door--
"The noises intermix'd, which thence resound,
Do learning's little tenement betray;
Where sits the dame disguised in look profound,
And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around."
The venerable little woman had lived in this house fourteen years.
She was seventy-three years of age, and a native of Limerick. She
was educated at St Ann's School, in Dublin, and she had lived
fourteen years in the service of a lady in that city. The old dame
made an effort to raise her feeble form when we entered, and she
received us as courteously as the finest lady in the land could have
done. She told us that she charged only a penny a-week for her
teaching; but, said she, "some of them can't pay it." "There's a
poor child," continued she, "his father has been out of work eleven
months, and they are starving but for the relief. Still, I do get a
little, and I like to have the children about me. Oh, my case is not
the worst, I know. I have people lodging in the house who are not so
well off as me. I have three families living here. One is a family
of four; they have only 3s. a-week to live upon. Another is a family
of three; they have 6s. a-week from a club, but they pay me 2s. a-
week. for rent out of that. . . . . I am very much troubled with my
eyes; my sight is failing fast. If I drop a stitch when I'm
knitting, I can't see to take it up again. If I could buy a pair of
spectacles, they would help me a good dale; but I cannot afford till
times are better." I could not help thinking how many kind souls
there are in the world who would be glad to give the old woman a
pair of spectacles, if they knew her.