CHAPTER XXXVII. A Plea for Total Abstinence

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

_Time and his Wife_

_A Cheap Theatre_

_The City Personage_

_Titbull’s Alms-Houses_

I

HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS

ALLOW me to introduce myself—first negatively.

No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid loves me, no waiter

worships me, no boots admires and envies me. No round of beef or tongue

or ham is expressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially made for

me, no hotel-advertisement is personally addressed to me, no hotel-room

tapestried with great-coats and railway wrappers is set apart for me, no

house of public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my

opinion of its brandy or sherry. When I go upon my journeys, I am not

usually rated at a low figure in the bill; when I come home from my

journeys, I never get any commission. I know nothing about prices, and

should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man into

ordering something he doesn’t want. As a town traveller, I am never to

be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young and volatile pianoforte

van, and internally like an oven in which a number of flat boxes are

baking in layers. As a country traveller, I am rarely to be found in a

gig, and am never to be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on the

platform of a branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of a light

Stonehenge of samples.

And yet—proceeding now, to introduce myself positively—I am both a town

traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the road.

Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest

Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way.

Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in

Covent-garden, London—now about the city streets: now, about the country

by-roads—seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because

they interest me, I think may interest others.

These are my chief credentials as the Uncommercial Traveller.

II

THE SHIPWRECK

NEVER had I seen a year going out, or going on, under quieter

circumstances. Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine had but another day to

live, and truly its end was Peace on that sea-shore that morning.

So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the bright light of the

sun and under the transparent shadows of the clouds, that it was hard to

imagine the bay otherwise, for years past or to come, than it was that

very day. The Tug-steamer lying a little off the shore, the Lighter

lying still nearer to the shore, the boat alongside the Lighter, the

regularly-turning windlass aboard the Lighter, the methodical figures at

work, all slowly and regularly heaving up and down with the breathing of

the sea, all seemed as much a part of the nature of the place as the tide

itself. The tide was on the flow, and had been for some two hours and a

half; there was a slight obstruction in the sea within a few yards of my

feet: as if the stump of a tree, with earth enough about it to keep it

from lying horizontally on the water, had slipped a little from the

land—and as I stood upon the beach and observed it dimpling the light

swell that was coming in, I cast a stone over it.

So orderly, so quiet, so regular—the rising and falling of the

Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat—the turning of the windlass—the

coming in of the tide—that I myself seemed, to my own thinking, anything

but new to the spot. Yet, I had never seen it in my life, a minute

before, and had traversed two hundred miles to get at it. That very

morning I had come bowling down, and struggling up, hill-country roads;

looking back at snowy summits; meeting courteous peasants well to do,

driving fat pigs and cattle to market: noting the neat and thrifty

dwellings, with their unusual quantity of clean white linen, drying on

the bushes; having windy weather suggested by every cotter’s little rick,

with its thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged into overlapping

compartments like the back of a rhinoceros. Had I not given a lift of

fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who was coming to

his spell of duty there, and had we not just now parted company? So it

was; but the journey seemed to glide down into the placid sea, with other

chafe and trouble, and for the moment nothing was so calmly and

monotonously real under the sunlight as the gentle rising and falling of

the water with its freight, the regular turning of the windlass aboard

the Lighter, and the slight obstruction so very near my feet.

O reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at Home, and hearing

the night wind rumble in the chimney, that slight obstruction was the

uppermost fragment of the Wreck of the Royal Charter, Australian trader

and passenger ship, Homeward bound, that struck here on the terrible

morning of the twenty-sixth of this October, broke into three parts, went

down with her treasure of at least five hundred human lives, and has

never stirred since!

From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, stern foremost; on

which side, or on which, she passed the little Island in the bay, for

ages henceforth to be aground certain yards outside her; these are

rendered bootless questions by the darkness of that night and the

darkness of death. Here she went down.

Even as I stood on the beach with the words ‘Here she went down!’ in my

ears, a diver in his grotesque dress, dipped heavily over the side of the

boat alongside the Lighter, and dropped to the bottom. On the shore by

the water’s edge, was a rough tent, made of fragments of wreck, where

other divers and workmen sheltered themselves, and where they had kept

Christmas-day with rum and roast beef, to the destruction of their frail

chimney. Cast up among the stones and boulders of the beach, were great

spars of the lost vessel, and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the

sea into the strangest forms. The timber was already bleached and iron

rusted, and even these objects did no violence to the prevailing air the

whole scene wore, of having been exactly the same for years and years.

Yet, only two short months had gone, since a man, living on the nearest

hill-top overlooking the sea, being blown out of bed at about daybreak by

the wind that had begun to strip his roof off, and getting upon a ladder

with his nearest neighbour to construct some temporary device for keeping

his house over his head, saw from the ladder’s elevation as he looked

down by chance towards the shore, some dark troubled object close in with

the land. And he and the other, descending to the beach, and finding the

sea mercilessly beating over a great broken ship, had clambered up the

stony ways, like staircases without stairs, on which the wild village

hangs in little clusters, as fruit hangs on boughs, and had given the

alarm. And so, over the hill-slopes, and past the waterfall, and down

the gullies where the land drains off into the ocean, the scattered

quarrymen and fishermen inhabiting that part of Wales had come running to

the dismal sight—their clergyman among them. And as they stood in the

leaden morning, stricken with pity, leaning hard against the wind, their

breath and vision often failing as the sleet and spray rushed at them

from the ever forming and dissolving mountains of sea, and as the wool

which was a part of the vessel’s cargo blew in with the salt foam and

remained upon the land when the foam melted, they saw the ship’s

life-boat put off from one of the heaps of wreck; and first, there were

three men in her, and in a moment she capsized, and there were but two;

and again, she was struck by a vast mass of water, and there was but one;

and again, she was thrown bottom upward, and that one, with his arm

struck through the broken planks and waving as if for the help that could

never reach him, went down into the deep.

It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, while I stood on the

shore, looking in his kind wholesome face as it turned to the spot where

the boat had been. The divers were down then, and busy. They were

‘lifting’ to-day the gold found yesterday—some five-and-twenty thousand

pounds. Of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds’ worth of gold, three

hundred thousand pounds’ worth, in round numbers, was at that time

recovered. The great bulk of the remainder was surely and steadily

coming up. Some loss of sovereigns there would be, of course; indeed, at

first sovereigns had drifted in with the sand, and been scattered far and

wide over the beach, like sea-shells; but most other golden treasure

would be found. As it was brought up, it went aboard the Tug-steamer,

where good account was taken of it. So tremendous had the force of the

sea been when it broke the ship, that it had beaten one great ingot of

gold, deep into a strong and heavy piece of her solid iron-work: in

which, also, several loose sovereigns that the ingot had swept in before

it, had been found, as firmly embedded as though the iron had been liquid

when they were forced there. It had been remarked of such bodies come

ashore, too, as had been seen by scientific men, that they had been

stunned to death, and not suffocated. Observation, both of the internal

change that had been wrought in them, and of their external expression,

showed death to have been thus merciful and easy. The report was

brought, while I was holding such discourse on the beach, that no more

bodies had come ashore since last night. It began to be very doubtful

whether many more would be thrown up, until the north-east winds of the

early spring set in. Moreover, a great number of the passengers, and

particularly the second-class women-passengers, were known to have been

in the middle of the ship when she parted, and thus the collapsing wreck

would have fallen upon them after yawning open, and would keep them down.

A diver made known, even then, that he had come upon the body of a man,

and had sought to release it from a great superincumbent weight; but

that, finding he could not do so without mutilating the remains, he had

left it where it was.

It was the kind and wholesome face I have made mention of as being then

beside me, that I had purposed to myself to see, when I left home for

Wales. I had heard of that clergyman, as having buried many scores of

the shipwrecked people; of his having opened his house and heart to their

agonised friends; of his having used a most sweet and patient diligence

for weeks and weeks, in the performance of the forlornest offices that

Man can render to his kind; of his having most tenderly and thoroughly

devoted himself to the dead, and to those who were sorrowing for the

dead. I had said to myself, ‘In the Christmas season of the year, I

should like to see that man!’ And he had swung the gate of his little

garden in coming out to meet me, not half an hour ago.

So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true practical

Christianity ever is! I read more of the New Testament in the fresh

frank face going up the village beside me, in five minutes, than I have

read in anathematising discourses (albeit put to press with enormous

flourishing of trumpets), in all my life. I heard more of the Sacred

Book in the cordial voice that had nothing to say about its owner, than

in all the would-be celestial pairs of bellows that have ever blown

conceit at me.

We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery pace, among the loose

stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse grass, the outlying water, and other

obstructions from which frost and snow had lately thawed. It was a

mistake (my friend was glad to tell me, on the way) to suppose that the

peasantry had shown any superstitious avoidance of the drowned; on the

whole, they had done very well, and had assisted readily. Ten shillings

had been paid for the bringing of each body up to the church, but the way

was steep, and a horse and cart (in which it was wrapped in a sheet) were

necessary, and three or four men, and, all things considered, it was not

a great price. The people were none the richer for the wreck, for it was

the season of the herring-shoal—and who could cast nets for fish, and

find dead men and women in the draught?

He had the church keys in his hand, and opened the churchyard gate, and

opened the church door; and we went in.

It is a little church of great antiquity; there is reason to believe that

some church has occupied the spot, these thousand years or more. The

pulpit was gone, and other things usually belonging to the church were

gone, owing to its living congregation having deserted it for the

neighbouring school-room, and yielded it up to the dead. The very

Commandments had been shouldered out of their places, in the bringing in

of the dead; the black wooden tables on which they were painted, were

askew, and on the stone pavement below them, and on the stone pavement

all over the church, were the marks and stains where the drowned had been

laid down. The eye, with little or no aid from the imagination, could

yet see how the bodies had been turned, and where the head had been and

where the feet. Some faded traces of the wreck of the Australian ship

may be discernible on the stone pavement of this little church, hundreds

of years hence, when the digging for gold in Australia shall have long

and long ceased out of the land.

Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at one time, awaiting

burial. Here, with weeping and wailing in every room of his house, my

companion worked alone for hours, solemnly surrounded by eyes that could

not see him, and by lips that could not speak to him, patiently examining

the tattered clothing, cutting off buttons, hair, marks from linen,

anything that might lead to subsequent identification, studying faces,

looking for a scar, a bent finger, a crooked toe, comparing letters sent

to him with the ruin about him. ‘My dearest brother had bright grey eyes

and a pleasant smile,’ one sister wrote. O poor sister! well for you to

be far from here, and keep that as your last remembrance of him!

The ladies of the clergyman’s family, his wife and two sisters-in-law,

came in among the bodies often. It grew to be the business of their

lives to do so. Any new arrival of a bereaved woman would stimulate

their pity to compare the description brought, with the dread realities.

Sometimes, they would go back able to say, ‘I have found him,’ or, ‘I

think she lies there.’ Perhaps, the mourner, unable to bear the sight of

all that lay in the church, would be led in blindfold. Conducted to the

spot with many compassionate words, and encouraged to look, she would

say, with a piercing cry, ‘This is my boy!’ and drop insensible on the

insensible figure.

He soon observed that in some cases of women, the identification of

persons, though complete, was quite at variance with the marks upon the

linen; this led him to notice that even the marks upon the linen were

sometimes inconsistent with one another; and thus he came to understand

that they had dressed in great haste and agitation, and that their

clothes had become mixed together. The identification of men by their

dress, was rendered extremely difficult, in consequence of a large

proportion of them being dressed alike—in clothes of one kind, that is to

say, supplied by slopsellers and outfitters, and not made by single

garments but by hundreds. Many of the men were bringing over parrots,

and had receipts upon them for the price of the birds; others had bills

of exchange in their pockets, or in belts. Some of these documents,

carefully unwrinkled and dried, were little less fresh in appearance that

day, than the present page will be under ordinary circumstances, after

having been opened three or four times.

In that lonely place, it had not been easy to obtain even such common

commodities in towns, as ordinary disinfectants. Pitch had been burnt in

the church, as the readiest thing at hand, and the frying-pan in which it

had bubbled over a brazier of coals was still there, with its ashes.

Hard by the Communion-Table, were some boots that had been taken off the

drowned and preserved—a gold-digger’s boot, cut down the leg for its

removal—a trodden-down man’s ankle-boot with a buff cloth top—and

others—soaked and sandy, weedy and salt.

From the church, we passed out into the churchyard. Here, there lay, at

that time, one hundred and forty-five bodies, that had come ashore from

the wreck. He had buried them, when not identified, in graves containing

four each. He had numbered each body in a register describing it, and

had placed a corresponding number on each coffin, and over each grave.

Identified bodies he had buried singly, in private graves, in another

part of the church-yard. Several bodies had been exhumed from the graves

of four, as relatives had come from a distance and seen his register;

and, when recognised, these have been reburied in private graves, so that

the mourners might erect separate headstones over the remains. In all

such cases he had performed the funeral service a second time, and the

ladies of his house had attended. There had been no offence in the poor

ashes when they were brought again to the light of day; the beneficent

Earth had already absorbed it. The drowned were buried in their clothes.

To supply the great sudden demand for coffins, he had got all the

neighbouring people handy at tools, to work the livelong day, and Sunday

likewise. The coffins were neatly formed;—I had seen two, waiting for

occupants, under the lee of the ruined walls of a stone hut on the beach,

within call of the tent where the Christmas Feast was held. Similarly,

one of the graves for four was lying open and ready, here, in the

churchyard. So much of the scanty space was already devoted to the

wrecked people, that the villagers had begun to express uneasy doubts

whether they themselves could lie in their own ground, with their

forefathers and descendants, by-and-by. The churchyard being but a step

from the clergyman’s dwelling-house, we crossed to the latter; the white

surplice was hanging up near the door ready to be put on at any time, for

a funeral service.

The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian minister was as

consolatory, as the circumstances out of which it shone were sad. I

never have seen anything more delightfully genuine than the calm

dismissal by himself and his household of all they had undergone, as a

simple duty that was quietly done and ended. In speaking of it, they

spoke of it with great compassion for the bereaved; but laid no stress

upon their own hard share in those weary weeks, except as it had attached

many people to them as friends, and elicited many touching expressions of

gratitude. This clergyman’s brother—himself the clergyman of two

adjoining parishes, who had buried thirty-four of the bodies in his own

churchyard, and who had done to them all that his brother had done as to

the larger number—must be understood as included in the family. He was

there, with his neatly arranged papers, and made no more account of his

trouble than anybody else did. Down to yesterday’s post outward, my

clergyman alone had written one thousand and seventy-five letters to

relatives and friends of the lost people. In the absence of

self-assertion, it was only through my now and then delicately putting a

question as the occasion arose, that I became informed of these things.

It was only when I had remarked again and again, in the church, on the

awful nature of the scene of death he had been required so closely to

familiarise himself with for the soothing of the living, that he had

casually said, without the least abatement of his cheerfulness, ‘indeed,

it had rendered him unable for a time to eat or drink more than a little

coffee now and then, and a piece of bread.’

In this noble modesty, in this beautiful simplicity, in this serene

avoidance of the least attempt to ‘improve’ an occasion which might be

supposed to have sunk of its own weight into my heart, I seemed to have

happily come, in a few steps, from the churchyard with its open grave,

which was the type of Death, to the Christian dwelling side by side with

it, which was the type of Resurrection. I never shall think of the

former, without the latter. The two will always rest side by side in my

memory. If I had lost any one dear to me in this unfortunate ship, if I

had made a voyage from Australia to look at the grave in the churchyard,

I should go away, thankful to GOD that that house was so close to it, and

that its shadow by day and its domestic lights by night fell upon the

earth in which its Master had so tenderly laid my dear one’s head.

The references that naturally arose out of our conversation, to the

descriptions sent down of shipwrecked persons, and to the gratitude of

relations and friends, made me very anxious to see some of those letters.

I was presently seated before a shipwreck of papers, all bordered with

black, and from them I made the following few extracts.

A mother writes:

REVEREND SIR. Amongst the many who perished on your shore was

numbered my beloved son. I was only just recovering from a severe

illness, and this fearful affliction has caused a relapse, so that I

am unable at present to go to identify the remains of the loved and

lost. My darling son would have been sixteen on Christmas-day next.

He was a most amiable and obedient child, early taught the way of

salvation. We fondly hoped that as a British seaman he might be an

ornament to his profession, but, ‘it is well;’ I feel assured my dear

boy is now with the redeemed. Oh, he did not wish to go this last

voyage! On the fifteenth of October, I received a letter from him

from Melbourne, date August twelfth; he wrote in high spirits, and in

conclusion he says: ‘Pray for a fair breeze, dear mamma, and I’ll not

forget to whistle for it! and, God permitting, I shall see you and

all my little pets again. Good-bye, dear mother—good-bye, dearest

parents. Good-bye, dear brother.’ Oh, it was indeed an eternal

farewell. I do not apologise for thus writing you, for oh, my heart

is so very sorrowful.

A husband writes:

MY DEAR KIND SIR. Will you kindly inform me whether there are any

initials upon the ring and guard you have in possession, found, as

the Standard says, last Tuesday? Believe me, my dear sir, when I say

that I cannot express my deep gratitude in words sufficiently for

your kindness to me on that fearful and appalling day. Will you tell

me what I can do for you, and will you write me a consoling letter to

prevent my mind from going astray?

A widow writes:

Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I thought it best that

my dear husband should be buried where he lies, and, much as I should

have liked to have had it otherwise, I must submit. I feel, from all

I have heard of you, that you will see it done decently and in order.

Little does it signify to us, when the soul has departed, where this

poor body lies, but we who are left behind would do all we can to

show how we loved them. This is denied me, but it is God’s hand that

afflicts us, and I try to submit. Some day I may be able to visit

the spot, and see where he lies, and erect a simple stone to his

memory. Oh! it will be long, long before I forget that dreadful

night! Is there such a thing in the vicinity, or any shop in Bangor,

to which I could send for a small picture of Moelfra or Llanallgo

church, a spot now sacred to me?

Another widow writes:

I have received your letter this morning, and do thank you most

kindly for the interest you have taken about my dear husband, as well

for the sentiments yours contains, evincing the spirit of a Christian

who can sympathise with those who, like myself, are broken down with

grief.

May God bless and sustain you, and all in connection with you, in

this great trial. Time may roll on and bear all its sons away, but

your name as a disinterested person will stand in history, and, as

successive years pass, many a widow will think of your noble conduct,

and the tears of gratitude flow down many a cheek, the tribute of a

thankful heart, when other things are forgotten for ever.

A father writes:

I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently express my gratitude to

you for your kindness to my son Richard upon the melancholy occasion

of his visit to his dear brother’s body, and also for your ready

attention in pronouncing our beautiful burial service over my poor

unfortunate son’s remains. God grant that your prayers over him may

reach the Mercy Seat, and that his soul may be received (through

Christ’s intercession) into heaven!

His dear mother begs me to convey to you her heartfelt thanks.

Those who were received at the clergyman’s house, write thus, after

leaving it:

DEAR AND NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN FRIENDS. I arrived here yesterday

morning without accident, and am about to proceed to my home by

railway.

I am overpowered when I think of you and your hospitable home. No

words could speak language suited to my heart. I refrain. God

reward you with the same measure you have meted with!

I enumerate no names, but embrace you all.

MY BELOVED FRIENDS. This is the first day that I have been able to leave

my bedroom since I returned, which will explain the reason of my not

writing sooner.

If I could only have had my last melancholy hope realised in recovering

the body of my beloved and lamented son, I should have returned home

somewhat comforted, and I think I could then have been comparatively

resigned.

I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn as one without hope.

The only consolation to my distressed mind is in having been so feelingly

allowed by you to leave the matter in your hands, by whom I well know

that everything will be done that can be, according to arrangements made

before I left the scene of the awful catastrophe, both as to the

identification of my dear son, and also his interment.

I feel most anxious to hear whether anything fresh has transpired since I

left you; will you add another to the many deep obligations I am under to

you by writing to me? And should the body of my dear and unfortunate son

be identified, let me hear from you immediately, and I will come again.

Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I owe to you all for your

benevolent aid, your kindness, and your sympathy.

* * * * *

MY DEARLY BELOVED FRIENDS. I arrived in safety at my house yesterday,

and a night’s rest has restored and tranquillised me. I must again

repeat, that language has no words by which I can express my sense of

obligation to you. You are enshrined in my heart of hearts.

I have seen him! and can now realise my misfortune more than I have

hitherto been able to do. Oh, the bitterness of the cup I drink! But I

bow submissive. God _must_ have done right. I do not want to feel less,

but to acquiesce more simply.

* * * * *

There were some Jewish passengers on board the Royal Charter, and the

gratitude of the Jewish people is feelingly expressed in the following

letter bearing date from ‘the office of the Chief Rabbi:’

REVEREND SIR. I cannot refrain from expressing to you my heartfelt

thanks on behalf of those of my flock whose relatives have

unfortunately been among those who perished at the late wreck of the

Royal Charter. You have, indeed, like Boaz, ‘not left off your

kindness to the living and the dead.’

You have not alone acted kindly towards the living by receiving them

hospitably at your house, and energetically assisting them in their

mournful duty, but also towards the dead, by exerting yourself to

have our co-religionists buried in our ground, and according to our

rites. May our heavenly Father reward you for your acts of humanity

and true philanthropy!

The ‘Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool’ thus express themselves

through their secretary:

REVEREND SIR. The wardens of this congregation have learned with

great pleasure that, in addition to those indefatigable exertions, at

the scene of the late disaster to the Royal Charter, which have

received universal recognition, you have very benevolently employed

your valuable efforts to assist such members of our faith as have

sought the bodies of lost friends to give them burial in our

consecrated grounds, with the observances and rites prescribed by the

ordinances of our religion.

The wardens desire me to take the earliest available opportunity to offer

to you, on behalf of our community, the expression of their warm

acknowledgments and grateful thanks, and their sincere wishes for your

continued welfare and prosperity.

A Jewish gentleman writes:

REVEREND AND DEAR SIR. I take the opportunity of thanking you right

earnestly for the promptness you displayed in answering my note with

full particulars concerning my much lamented brother, and I also

herein beg to express my sincere regard for the willingness you

displayed and for the facility you afforded for getting the remains

of my poor brother exhumed. It has been to us a most sorrowful and

painful event, but when we meet with such friends as yourself, it in

a measure, somehow or other, abates that mental anguish, and makes

the suffering so much easier to be borne. Considering the

circumstances connected with my poor brother’s fate, it does, indeed,

appear a hard one. He had been away in all seven years; he returned

four years ago to see his family. He was then engaged to a very

amiable young lady. He had been very successful abroad, and was now

returning to fulfil his sacred vow; he brought all his property with

him in gold uninsured. We heard from him when the ship stopped at

Queenstown, when he was in the highest of hope, and in a few short

hours afterwards all was washed away.

Mournful in the deepest degree, but too sacred for quotation here, were

the numerous references to those miniatures of women worn round the necks

of rough men (and found there after death), those locks of hair, those

scraps of letters, those many many slight memorials of hidden tenderness.

One man cast up by the sea bore about him, printed on a perforated lace

card, the following singular (and unavailing) charm:

A BLESSING.

May the blessing of God await thee. May the sun of glory shine

around thy bed; and may the gates of plenty, honour, and happiness be

ever open to thee. May no sorrow distress thy days; may no grief

disturb thy nights. May the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek, and the

pleasures of imagination attend thy dreams; and when length of years

makes thee tired of earthly joys, and the curtain of death gently

closes around thy last sleep of human existence, may the Angel of God

attend thy bed, and take care that the expiring lamp of life shall

not receive one rude blast to hasten on its extinction.

A sailor had these devices on his right arm. ‘Our Saviour on the Cross,

the forehead of the Crucifix and the vesture stained red; on the lower

part of the arm, a man and woman; on one side of the Cross, the

appearance of a half moon, with a face; on the other side, the sun; on

the top of the Cross, the letters I.H.S.; on the left arm, a man and

woman dancing, with an effort to delineate the female’s dress; under

which, initials.’ Another seaman ‘had, on the lower part of the right

arm, the device of a sailor and a female; the man holding the Union Jack

with a streamer, the folds of which waved over her head, and the end of

it was held in her hand. On the upper part of the arm, a device of Our

Lord on the Cross, with stars surrounding the head of the Cross, and one

large star on the side in Indian Ink. On the left arm, a flag, a true

lover’s knot, a face, and initials.’ This tattooing was found still

plain, below the discoloured outer surface of a mutilated arm, when such

surface was carefully scraped away with a knife. It is not improbable

that the perpetuation of this marking custom among seamen, may be

referred back to their desire to be identified, if drowned and flung

ashore.

It was some time before I could sever myself from the many interesting

papers on the table, and then I broke bread and drank wine with the kind

family before I left them. As I brought the Coast-guard down, so I took

the Postman back, with his leathern wallet, walking-stick, bugle, and

terrier dog. Many a heart-broken letter had he brought to the Rectory

House within two months many; a benignantly painstaking answer had he

carried back.

As I rode along, I thought of the many people, inhabitants of this mother

country, who would make pilgrimages to the little churchyard in the years

to come; I thought of the many people in Australia, who would have an

interest in such a shipwreck, and would find their way here when they

visit the Old World; I thought of the writers of all the wreck of letters

I had left upon the table; and I resolved to place this little record

where it stands. Convocations, Conferences, Diocesan Epistles, and the

like, will do a great deal for Religion, I dare say, and Heaven send they

may! but I doubt if they will ever do their Master’s service half so

well, in all the time they last, as the Heavens have seen it done in this

bleak spot upon the rugged coast of Wales.

Had I lost the friend of my life, in the wreck of the Royal Charter; had

I lost my betrothed, the more than friend of my life; had I lost my

maiden daughter, had I lost my hopeful boy, had I lost my little child; I

would kiss the hands that worked so busily and gently in the church, and

say, ‘None better could have touched the form, though it had lain at

home.’ I could be sure of it, I could be thankful for it: I could be

content to leave the grave near the house the good family pass in and out

of every day, undisturbed, in the little churchyard where so many are so

strangely brought together.

Without the name of the clergyman to whom—I hope, not without carrying

comfort to some heart at some time—I have referred, my reference would be

as nothing. He is the Reverend Stephen Roose Hughes, of Llanallgo, near

Moelfra, Anglesey. His brother is the Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes, of

Penrhos, Alligwy.

III

WAPPING WORKHOUSE

MY day’s no-business beckoning me to the East-end of London, I had turned

my face to that point of the metropolitan compass on leaving

Covent-garden, and had got past the India House, thinking in my idle

manner of Tippoo-Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my little

wooden midshipman, after affectionately patting him on one leg of his

knee-shorts for old acquaintance’ sake, and had got past Aldgate Pump,

and had got past the Saracen’s Head (with an ignominious rash of posting

bills disfiguring his swarthy countenance), and had strolled up the empty

yard of his ancient neighbour the Black or Blue Boar, or Bull, who

departed this life I don’t know when, and whose coaches are all gone I

don’t know where; and I had come out again into the age of railways, and

I had got past Whitechapel Church, and was—rather inappropriately for an

Uncommercial Traveller—in the Commercial Road. Pleasantly wallowing in

the abundant mud of that thoroughfare, and greatly enjoying the huge

piles of building belonging to the sugar refiners, the little masts and

vanes in small back gardens in back streets, the neighbouring canals and

docks, the India vans lumbering along their stone tramway, and the

pawnbrokers’ shops where hard-up Mates had pawned so many sextants and

quadrants, that I should have bought a few cheap if I had the least

notion how to use them, I at last began to file off to the right, towards

Wapping.

Not that I intended to take boat at Wapping Old Stairs, or that I was

going to look at the locality, because I believe (for I don’t) in the

constancy of the young woman who told her sea-going lover, to such a

beautiful old tune, that she had ever continued the same, since she gave

him the ’baccer-box marked with his name; I am afraid he usually got the

worst of those transactions, and was frightfully taken in. No, I was

going to Wapping, because an Eastern police magistrate had said, through

the morning papers, that there was no classification at the Wapping

workhouse for women, and that it was a disgrace and a shame, and divers

other hard names, and because I wished to see how the fact really stood.

For, that Eastern police magistrates are not always the wisest men of the

East, may be inferred from their course of procedure respecting the

fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at St. George’s in that quarter:

which is usually, to discuss the matter at issue, in a state of mind

betokening the weakest perplexity, with all parties concerned and

unconcerned, and, for a final expedient, to consult the complainant as to

what he thinks ought to be done with the defendant, and take the

defendant’s opinion as to what he would recommend to be done with

himself.

Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself up as having lost my way,

and, abandoning myself to the narrow streets in a Turkish frame of mind,

relied on predestination to bring me somehow or other to the place I

wanted if I were ever to get there. When I had ceased for an hour or so

to take any trouble about the matter, I found myself on a swing-bridge

looking down at some dark locks in some dirty water. Over against me,

stood a creature remotely in the likeness of a young man, with a puffed

sallow face, and a figure all dirty and shiny and slimy, who may have

been the youngest son of his filthy old father, Thames, or the drowned

man about whom there was a placard on the granite post like a large

thimble, that stood between us.

I asked this apparition what it called the place? Unto which, it

replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound like gurgling water in its

throat:

‘Mr. Baker’s trap.’

As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me on such occasions to be

equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation, I deeply

considered the meaning of this speech, while I eyed the apparition—then

engaged in hugging and sucking a horizontal iron bar at the top of the

locks. Inspiration suggested to me that Mr. Baker was the acting coroner

of that neighbourhood.

‘A common place for suicide,’ said I, looking down at the locks.

‘Sue?’ returned the ghost, with a stare. ‘Yes! And Poll. Likewise

Emily. And Nancy. And Jane;’ he sucked the iron between each name; ‘and

all the bileing. Ketches off their bonnets or shorls, takes a run, and

headers down here, they doos. Always a headerin’ down here, they is.

Like one o’clock.’

‘And at about that hour of the morning, I suppose?’

‘Ah!’ said the apparition. ‘_They_ an’t partickler. Two ’ull do for

_them_. Three. All times o’ night. On’y mind you!’ Here the

apparition rested his profile on the bar, and gurgled in a sarcastic

manner. ‘There must be somebody comin’. They don’t go a headerin’ down

here, wen there an’t no Bobby nor gen’ral Cove, fur to hear the splash.’

According to my interpretation of these words, I was myself a General

Cove, or member of the miscellaneous public. In which modest character I

remarked:

‘They are often taken out, are they, and restored?’

‘I dunno about restored,’ said the apparition, who, for some occult

reason, very much objected to that word; ‘they’re carried into the

werkiss and put into a ’ot bath, and brought round. But I dunno about

restored,’ said the apparition; ‘blow _that_!’—and vanished.

As it had shown a desire to become offensive, I was not sorry to find

myself alone, especially as the ‘werkiss’ it had indicated with a twist

of its matted head, was close at hand. So I left Mr. Baker’s terrible

trap (baited with a scum that was like the soapy rinsing of sooty

chimneys), and made bold to ring at the workhouse gate, where I was

wholly unexpected and quite unknown.

A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch of keys in her hand,

responded to my request to see the House. I began to doubt whether the

police magistrate was quite right in his facts, when I noticed her quick,

active little figure and her intelligent eyes.

The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the worst first. He was

welcome to see everything. Such as it was, there it all was.

This was the only preparation for our entering ‘the Foul wards.’ They

were in an old building squeezed away in a corner of a paved yard, quite

detached from the more modern and spacious main body of the workhouse.

They were in a building most monstrously behind the time—a mere series of

garrets or lofts, with every inconvenient and objectionable circumstance

in their construction, and only accessible by steep and narrow

staircases, infamously ill-adapted for the passage up-stairs of the sick

or down-stairs of the dead.

A-bed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there (for a change,

as I understood it) on the floor, were women in every stage of distress

and disease. None but those who have attentively observed such scenes,

can conceive the extraordinary variety of expression still latent under

the general monotony and uniformity of colour, attitude, and condition.

The form a little coiled up and turned away, as though it had turned its

back on this world for ever; the uninterested face at once lead-coloured

and yellow, looking passively upward from the pillow; the haggard mouth a

little dropped, the hand outside the coverlet, so dull and indifferent,

so light, and yet so heavy; these were on every pallet; but when I

stopped beside a bed, and said ever so slight a word to the figure lying

there, the ghost of the old character came into the face, and made the

Foul ward as various as the fair world. No one appeared to care to live,

but no one complained; all who could speak, said that as much was done

for them as could be done there, that the attendance was kind and

patient, that their suffering was very heavy, but they had nothing to ask

for. The wretched rooms were as clean and sweet as it is possible for

such rooms to be; they would become a pest-house in a single week, if

they were ill-kept.

I accompanied the brisk matron up another barbarous staircase, into a

better kind of loft devoted to the idiotic and imbecile. There was at

least Light in it, whereas the windows in the former wards had been like

sides of school-boys’ bird-cages. There was a strong grating over the

fire here, and, holding a kind of state on either side of the hearth,

separated by the breadth of this grating, were two old ladies in a

condition of feeble dignity, which was surely the very last and lowest

reduction of self-complacency to be found in this wonderful humanity of

ours. They were evidently jealous of each other, and passed their whole

time (as some people do, whose fires are not grated) in mentally

disparaging each other, and contemptuously watching their neighbours.

One of these parodies on provincial gentlewomen was extremely talkative,

and expressed a strong desire to attend the service on Sundays, from

which she represented herself to have derived the greatest interest and

consolation when allowed that privilege. She gossiped so well, and

looked altogether so cheery and harmless, that I began to think this a

case for the Eastern magistrate, until I found that on the last occasion

of her attending chapel she had secreted a small stick, and had caused

some confusion in the responses by suddenly producing it and belabouring

the congregation.

So, these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of the

grating—otherwise they would fly at one another’s caps—sat all day long,

suspecting one another, and contemplating a world of fits. For everybody

else in the room had fits, except the wards-woman; an elderly,

able-bodied pauperess, with a large upper lip, and an air of repressing

and saving her strength, as she stood with her hands folded before her,

and her eyes slowly rolling, biding her time for catching or holding

somebody. This civil personage (in whom I regretted to identify a

reduced member of my honourable friend Mrs. Gamp’s family) said, ‘They

has ’em continiwal, sir. They drops without no more notice than if they

was coach-horses dropped from the moon, sir. And when one drops, another

drops, and sometimes there’ll be as many as four or five on ’em at once,

dear me, a rolling and a tearin’, bless you!—this young woman, now, has

’em dreadful bad.’

She turned up this young woman’s face with her hand as she said it. This

young woman was seated on the floor, pondering in the foreground of the

afflicted. There was nothing repellent either in her face or head.

Many, apparently worse, varieties of epilepsy and hysteria were about

her, but she was said to be the worst here. When I had spoken to her a

little, she still sat with her face turned up, pondering, and a gleam of

the mid-day sun shone in upon her.

—Whether this young woman, and the rest of these so sorely troubled, as

they sit or lie pondering in their confused dull way, ever get mental

glimpses among the motes in the sunlight, of healthy people and healthy

things? Whether this young woman, brooding like this in the summer

season, ever thinks that somewhere there are trees and flowers, even

mountains and the great sea? Whether, not to go so far, this young woman

ever has any dim revelation of that young woman—that young woman who is

not here and never will come here; who is courted, and caressed, and

loved, and has a husband, and bears children, and lives in a home, and

who never knows what it is to have this lashing and tearing coming upon

her? And whether this young woman, God help her, gives herself up then

and drops like a coach-horse from the moon?

I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children, penetrating into so

hopeless a place, made a sound that was pleasant or painful to me. It

was something to be reminded that the weary world was not all aweary, and

was ever renewing itself; but, this young woman was a child not long ago,

and a child not long hence might be such as she. Howbeit, the active

step and eye of the vigilant matron conducted me past the two provincial

gentlewomen (whose dignity was ruffled by the children), and into the

adjacent nursery.

There were many babies here, and more than one handsome young mother.

There were ugly young mothers also, and sullen young mothers, and callous

young mothers. But, the babies had not appropriated to themselves any

bad expression yet, and might have been, for anything that appeared to

the contrary in their soft faces, Princes Imperial, and Princesses Royal.

I had the pleasure of giving a poetical commission to the baker’s man to

make a cake with all despatch and toss it into the oven for one

red-headed young pauper and myself, and felt much the better for it.

Without that refreshment, I doubt if I should have been in a condition

for ‘the Refractories,’ towards whom my quick little matron—for whose

adaptation to her office I had by this time conceived a genuine

respect—drew me next, and marshalled me the way that I was going.

The Refractories were picking oakum, in a small room giving on a yard.

They sat in line on a form, with their backs to a window; before them, a

table, and their work. The oldest Refractory was, say twenty; youngest

Refractory, say sixteen. I have never yet ascertained in the course of

my uncommercial travels, why a Refractory habit should affect the tonsils

and uvula; but, I have always observed that Refractories of both sexes

and every grade, between a Ragged School and the Old Bailey, have one

voice, in which the tonsils and uvula gain a diseased ascendency.

‘Five pound indeed! I hain’t a going fur to pick five pound,’ said the

Chief of the Refractories, keeping time to herself with her head and

chin. ‘More than enough to pick what we picks now, in sich a place as

this, and on wot we gets here!’

(This was in acknowledgment of a delicate intimation that the amount of

work was likely to be increased. It certainly was not heavy then, for

one Refractory had already done her day’s task—it was barely two

o’clock—and was sitting behind it, with a head exactly matching it.)

‘A pretty Ouse this is, matron, ain’t it?’ said Refractory Two, ‘where a

pleeseman’s called in, if a gal says a word!’

‘And wen you’re sent to prison for nothink or less!’ said the Chief,

tugging at her oakum as if it were the matron’s hair. ‘But any place is

better than this; that’s one thing, and be thankful!’

A laugh of Refractories led by Oakum Head with folded arms—who originated

nothing, but who was in command of the skirmishers outside the

conversation.

‘If any place is better than this,’ said my brisk guide, in the calmest

manner, ‘it is a pity you left a good place when you had one.’

‘Ho, no, I didn’t, matron,’ returned the Chief, with another pull at her

oakum, and a very expressive look at the enemy’s forehead. ‘Don’t say

that, matron, cos it’s lies!’

Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers again, skirmished, and retired.

‘And _I_ warn’t a going,’ exclaimed Refractory Two, ‘though I was in one

place for as long as four year—_I_ warn’t a going fur to stop in a place

that warn’t fit for me—there! And where the family warn’t ’spectable

characters—there! And where I fortunately or hunfort’nately, found that

the people warn’t what they pretended to make theirselves out to

be—there! And where it wasn’t their faults, by chalks, if I warn’t made

bad and ruinated—Hah!’

During this speech, Oakum Head had again made a diversion with the

skirmishers, and had again withdrawn.

The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to remark that he supposed Chief

Refractory and Number One, to be the two young women who had been taken

before the magistrate?

‘Yes!’ said the Chief, ‘we har! and the wonder is, that a pleeseman an’t

’ad in now, and we took off agen. You can’t open your lips here, without

a pleeseman.’

Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the skirmishers followed suit.

‘I’m sure I’d be thankful,’ protested the Chief, looking sideways at the

Uncommercial, ‘if I could be got into a place, or got abroad. I’m sick

and tired of this precious Ouse, I am, with reason.’

So would be, and so was, Number Two. So would be, and so was, Oakum

Head. So would be, and so were, Skirmishers.

The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting that he hardly thought it

probable that any lady or gentleman in want of a likely young domestic of

retiring manners, would be tempted into the engagement of either of the

two leading Refractories, on her own presentation of herself as per

sample.

‘It ain’t no good being nothink else here,’ said the Chief.

The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying.

‘Oh no it ain’t,’ said the Chief.

‘Not a bit of good,’ said Number Two.

‘And I’m sure I’d be very thankful to be got into a place, or got

abroad,’ said the Chief.

‘And so should I,’ said Number Two. ‘Truly thankful, I should.’

Oakum Head then rose, and announced as an entirely new idea, the mention

of which profound novelty might be naturally expected to startle her

unprepared hearers, that she would be very thankful to be got into a

place, or got abroad. And, as if she had then said, ‘Chorus, ladies!’

all the Skirmishers struck up to the same purpose. We left them,

thereupon, and began a long walk among the women who were simply old and

infirm; but whenever, in the course of this same walk, I looked out of

any high window that commanded the yard, I saw Oakum Head and all the

other Refractories looking out at their low window for me, and never

failing to catch me, the moment I showed my head.

In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such fables of a golden time as

youth, the prime of life, or a hale old age. In ten minutes, all the

lights of womankind seemed to have been blown out, and nothing in that

way to be left this vault to brag of, but the flickering and expiring

snuffs.

And what was very curious, was, that these dim old women had one company

notion which was the fashion of the place. Every old woman who became

aware of a visitor and was not in bed hobbled over a form into her

accustomed seat, and became one of a line of dim old women confronting

another line of dim old women across a narrow table. There was no

obligation whatever upon them to range themselves in this way; it was

their manner of ‘receiving.’ As a rule, they made no attempt to talk to

one another, or to look at the visitor, or to look at anything, but sat

silently working their mouths, like a sort of poor old Cows. In some of

these wards, it was good to see a few green plants; in others, an

isolated Refractory acting as nurse, who did well enough in that

capacity, when separated from her compeers; every one of these wards, day

room, night room, or both combined, was scrupulously clean and fresh. I

have seen as many such places as most travellers in my line, and I never

saw one such, better kept.

Among the bedridden there was great patience, great reliance on the books

under the pillow, great faith in GOD. All cared for sympathy, but none

much cared to be encouraged with hope of recovery; on the whole, I should

say, it was considered rather a distinction to have a complication of

disorders, and to be in a worse way than the rest. From some of the

windows, the river could be seen with all its life and movement; the day

was bright, but I came upon no one who was looking out.

In one large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs of distinction, like

the President and Vice of the good company, were two old women, upwards

of ninety years of age. The younger of the two, just turned ninety, was

deaf, but not very, and could easily be made to hear. In her early time

she had nursed a child, who was now another old woman, more infirm than

herself, inhabiting the very same chamber. She perfectly understood this

when the matron told it, and, with sundry nods and motions of her

forefinger, pointed out the woman in question. The elder of this pair,

ninety-three, seated before an illustrated newspaper (but not reading

it), was a bright-eyed old soul, really not deaf, wonderfully preserved,

and amazingly conversational. She had not long lost her husband, and had

been in that place little more than a year. At Boston, in the State of

Massachusetts, this poor creature would have been individually addressed,

would have been tended in her own room, and would have had her life

gently assimilated to a comfortable life out of doors. Would that be

much to do in England for a woman who has kept herself out of a workhouse

more than ninety rough long years? When Britain first, at Heaven’s

command, arose, with a great deal of allegorical confusion, from out the

azure main, did her guardian angels positively forbid it in the Charter

which has been so much besung?

The object of my journey was accomplished when the nimble matron had no

more to show me. As I shook hands with her at the gate, I told her that

I thought justice had not used her very well, and that the wise men of

the East were not infallible.

Now, I reasoned with myself, as I made my journey home again, concerning

those Foul wards. They ought not to exist; no person of common decency

and humanity can see them and doubt it. But what is this Union to do?

The necessary alteration would cost several thousands of pounds; it has

already to support three workhouses; its inhabitants work hard for their

bare lives, and are already rated for the relief of the Poor to the

utmost extent of reasonable endurance. One poor parish in this very

Union is rated to the amount of FIVE AND SIXPENCE in the pound, at the

very same time when the rich parish of Saint George’s, Hanover-square, is

rated at about SEVENPENCE in the pound, Paddington at about FOURPENCE,

Saint James’s, Westminster, at about TENPENCE! It is only through the

equalisation of Poor Rates that what is left undone in this wise, can be

done. Much more is left undone, or is ill-done, than I have space to

suggest in these notes of a single uncommercial journey; but, the wise

men of the East, before they can reasonably hold forth about it, must

look to the North and South and West; let them also, any morning before

taking the seat of Solomon, look into the shops and dwellings all around

the Temple, and first ask themselves ‘how much more can these poor

people—many of whom keep themselves with difficulty enough out of the

workhouse—bear?’

I had yet other matter for reflection as I journeyed home, inasmuch as,

before I altogether departed from the neighbourhood of Mr. Baker’s trap,

I had knocked at the gate of the workhouse of St. George’s-in-the-East,

and had found it to be an establishment highly creditable to those parts,

and thoroughly well administered by a most intelligent master. I

remarked in it, an instance of the collateral harm that obstinate vanity

and folly can do. ‘This was the Hall where those old paupers, male and

female, whom I had just seen, met for the Church service, was

it?’—‘Yes.’—‘Did they sing the Psalms to any instrument?’—‘They would

like to, very much; they would have an extraordinary interest in doing

so.’—‘And could none be got?’—‘Well, a piano could even have been got for

nothing, but these unfortunate dissensions—’ Ah! better, far better, my

Christian friend in the beautiful garment, to have let the singing boys

alone, and left the multitude to sing for themselves! You should know

better than I, but I think I have read that they did so, once upon a

time, and that ‘when they had sung an hymn,’ Some one (not in a beautiful

garment) went up into the Mount of Olives.

It made my heart ache to think of this miserable trifling, in the streets

of a city where every stone seemed to call to me, as I walked along,

‘Turn this way, man, and see what waits to be done!’ So I decoyed myself

into another train of thought to ease my heart. But, I don’t know that I

did it, for I was so full of paupers, that it was, after all, only a

change to a single pauper, who took possession of my remembrance instead

of a thousand.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he had said, in a confidential manner, on

another occasion, taking me aside; ‘but I have seen better days.’

‘I am very sorry to hear it.’

‘Sir, I have a complaint to make against the master.’

‘I have no power here, I assure you. And if I had—’

‘But, allow me, sir, to mention it, as between yourself and a man who has

seen better days, sir. The master and myself are both masons, sir, and I

make him the sign continually; but, because I am in this unfortunate

position, sir, he won’t give me the counter-sign!’

IV

TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE

AS I shut the door of my lodging behind me, and came out into the streets

at six on a drizzling Saturday evening in the last past month of January,

all that neighbourhood of Covent-garden looked very desolate. It is so

essentially a neighbourhood which has seen better days, that bad weather

affects it sooner than another place which has not come down in the

World. In its present reduced condition it bears a thaw almost worse

than any place I know. It gets so dreadfully low-spirited when damp

breaks forth. Those wonderful houses about Drury-lane Theatre, which in

the palmy days of theatres were prosperous and long-settled places of

business, and which now change hands every week, but never change their

character of being divided and sub-divided on the ground floor into

mouldy dens of shops where an orange and half-a-dozen nuts, or a

pomatum-pot, one cake of fancy soap, and a cigar box, are offered for

sale and never sold, were most ruefully contemplated that evening, by the

statue of Shakespeare, with the rain-drops coursing one another down its

innocent nose. Those inscrutable pigeon-hole offices, with nothing in

them (not so much as an inkstand) but a model of a theatre before the

curtain, where, in the Italian Opera season, tickets at reduced prices

are kept on sale by nomadic gentlemen in smeary hats too tall for them,

whom one occasionally seems to have seen on race-courses, not wholly

unconnected with strips of cloth of various colours and a rolling

ball—those Bedouin establishments, deserted by the tribe, and tenantless,

except when sheltering in one corner an irregular row of ginger-beer

bottles, which would have made one shudder on such a night, but for its

being plain that they had nothing in them, shrunk from the shrill cries

of the news-boys at their Exchange in the kennel of Catherine-street,

like guilty things upon a fearful summons. At the pipe-shop in Great

Russell-street, the Death’s-head pipes were like theatrical memento mori,

admonishing beholders of the decline of the playhouse as an Institution.

I walked up Bow-street, disposed to be angry with the shops there, that

were letting out theatrical secrets by exhibiting to work-a-day humanity

the stuff of which diadems and robes of kings are made. I noticed that

some shops which had once been in the dramatic line, and had struggled

out of it, were not getting on prosperously—like some actors I have

known, who took to business and failed to make it answer. In a word,

those streets looked so dull, and, considered as theatrical streets, so

broken and bankrupt, that the FOUND DEAD on the black board at the police

station might have announced the decease of the Drama, and the pools of

water outside the fire-engine maker’s at the corner of Long-acre might

have been occasioned by his having brought out the whole of his stock to

play upon its last smouldering ashes.

And yet, on such a night in so degenerate a time, the object of my

journey was theatrical. And yet within half an hour I was in an immense

theatre, capable of holding nearly five thousand people.

What Theatre? Her Majesty’s? Far better. Royal Italian Opera? Far

better. Infinitely superior to the latter for hearing in; infinitely

superior to both, for seeing in. To every part of this Theatre, spacious

fire-proof ways of ingress and egress. For every part of it, convenient

places of refreshment and retiring rooms. Everything to eat and drink

carefully supervised as to quality, and sold at an appointed price;

respectable female attendants ready for the commonest women in the

audience; a general air of consideration, decorum, and supervision, most

commendable; an unquestionably humanising influence in all the social

arrangements of the place.

Surely a dear Theatre, then? Because there were in London (not very long

ago) Theatres with entrance-prices up to half-a-guinea a head, whose

arrangements were not half so civilised. Surely, therefore, a dear

Theatre? Not very dear. A gallery at three-pence, another gallery at

fourpence, a pit at sixpence, boxes and pit-stalls at a shilling, and a

few private boxes at half-a-crown.

My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go into every nook of this great

place, and among every class of the audience assembled in it—amounting

that evening, as I calculated, to about two thousand and odd hundreds.

Magnificently lighted by a firmament of sparkling chandeliers, the

building was ventilated to perfection. My sense of smell, without being

particularly delicate, has been so offended in some of the commoner

places of public resort, that I have often been obliged to leave them

when I have made an uncommercial journey expressly to look on. The air

of this Theatre was fresh, cool, and wholesome. To help towards this

end, very sensible precautions had been used, ingeniously combining the

experience of hospitals and railway stations. Asphalt pavements

substituted for wooden floors, honest bare walls of glazed brick and

tile—even at the back of the boxes—for plaster and paper, no benches

stuffed, and no carpeting or baize used; a cool material with a light

glazed surface, being the covering of the seats.

[Picture: A Cheap Theatre]

These various contrivances are as well considered in the place in

question as if it were a Fever Hospital; the result is, that it is sweet

and healthful. It has been constructed from the ground to the roof, with

a careful reference to sight and sound in every corner; the result is,

that its form is beautiful, and that the appearance of the audience, as

seen from the proscenium—with every face in it commanding the stage, and

the whole so admirably raked and turned to that centre, that a hand can

scarcely move in the great assemblage without the movement being seen

from thence—is highly remarkable in its union of vastness with

compactness. The stage itself, and all its appurtenances of machinery,

cellarage, height and breadth, are on a scale more like the Scala at

Milan, or the San Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at Paris, than any

notion a stranger would be likely to form of the Britannia Theatre at

Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke’s Hospital in the Old-street-road,

London. The Forty Thieves might be played here, and every thief ride his

real horse, and the disguised captain bring in his oil jars on a train of

real camels, and nobody be put out of the way. This really extraordinary

place is the achievement of one man’s enterprise, and was erected on the

ruins of an inconvenient old building in less than five months, at a

round cost of five-and-twenty thousand pounds. To dismiss this part of

my subject, and still to render to the proprietor the credit that is

strictly his due, I must add that his sense of the responsibility upon

him to make the best of his audience, and to do his best for them, is a

highly agreeable sign of these times.

As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I will presently show,

were the object of my journey, I entered on the play of the night as one

of the two thousand and odd hundreds, by looking about me at my

neighbours. We were a motley assemblage of people, and we had a good

many boys and young men among us; we had also many girls and young women.

To represent, however, that we did not include a very great number, and a

very fair proportion of family groups, would be to make a gross

mis-statement. Such groups were to be seen in all parts of the house; in

the boxes and stalls particularly, they were composed of persons of very

decent appearance, who had many children with them. Among our dresses

there were most kinds of shabby and greasy wear, and much fustian and

corduroy that was neither sound nor fragrant. The caps of our young men

were mostly of a limp character, and we who wore them, slouched,

high-shouldered, into our places with our hands in our pockets, and

occasionally twisted our cravats about our necks like eels, and

occasionally tied them down our breasts like links of sausages, and

occasionally had a screw in our hair over each cheek-bone with a slight

Thief-flavour in it. Besides prowlers and idlers, we were mechanics,

dock-labourers, costermongers, petty tradesmen, small clerks, milliners,

stay-makers, shoe-binders, slop-workers, poor workers in a hundred

highways and byways. Many of us—on the whole, the majority—were not at

all clean, and not at all choice in our lives or conversation. But we

had all come together in a place where our convenience was well

consulted, and where we were well looked after, to enjoy an evening’s

entertainment in common. We were not going to lose any part of what we

had paid for through anybody’s caprice, and as a community we had a

character to lose. So, we were closely attentive, and kept excellent

order; and let the man or boy who did otherwise instantly get out from

this place, or we would put him out with the greatest expedition.

We began at half-past six with a pantomime—with a pantomime so long, that

before it was over I felt as if I had been travelling for six weeks—going

to India, say, by the Overland Mail. The Spirit of Liberty was the

principal personage in the Introduction, and the Four Quarters of the

World came out of the globe, glittering, and discoursed with the Spirit,

who sang charmingly. We were delighted to understand that there was no

liberty anywhere but among ourselves, and we highly applauded the

agreeable fact. In an allegorical way, which did as well as any other

way, we and the Spirit of Liberty got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins,

and found them at war with a potentate who called in to his aid their old

arch enemy Rust, and who would have got the better of them if the Spirit

of Liberty had not in the nick of time transformed the leaders into

Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, Harlequina, and a whole family of

Sprites, consisting of a remarkably stout father and three spineless

sons. We all knew what was coming when the Spirit of Liberty addressed

the king with a big face, and His Majesty backed to the side-scenes and

began untying himself behind, with his big face all on one side. Our

excitement at that crisis was great, and our delight unbounded. After

this era in our existence, we went through all the incidents of a

pantomime; it was not by any means a savage pantomime, in the way of

burning or boiling people, or throwing them out of window, or cutting

them up; was often very droll; was always liberally got up, and cleverly

presented. I noticed that the people who kept the shops, and who

represented the passengers in the thoroughfares, and so forth, had no

conventionality in them, but were unusually like the real thing—from

which I infer that you may take that audience in (if you wish to)

concerning Knights and Ladies, Fairies, Angels, or such like, but they

are not to be done as to anything in the streets. I noticed, also, that

when two young men, dressed in exact imitation of the

eel-and-sausage-cravated portion of the audience, were chased by

policemen, and, finding themselves in danger of being caught, dropped so

suddenly as to oblige the policemen to tumble over them, there was great

rejoicing among the caps—as though it were a delicate reference to

something they had heard of before.

The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melo-Drama. Throughout the evening I

was pleased to observe Virtue quite as triumphant as she usually is out

of doors, and indeed I thought rather more so. We all agreed (for the

time) that honesty was the best policy, and we were as hard as iron upon

Vice, and we wouldn’t hear of Villainy getting on in the world—no, not on

any consideration whatever.

Between the pieces, we almost all of us went out and refreshed. Many of

us went the length of drinking beer at the bar of the neighbouring

public-house, some of us drank spirits, crowds of us had sandwiches and

ginger-beer at the refreshment-bars established for us in the Theatre.

The sandwich—as substantial as was consistent with portability, and as

cheap as possible—we hailed as one of our greatest institutions. It

forced its way among us at all stages of the entertainment, and we were

always delighted to see it; its adaptability to the varying moods of our

nature was surprising; we could never weep so comfortably as when our

tears fell on our sandwich; we could never laugh so heartily as when we

choked with sandwich; Virtue never looked so beautiful or Vice so

deformed as when we paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what would come

of that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever Innocence in flowered

chintz from Honest Industry in striped stockings. When the curtain fell

for the night, we still fell back upon sandwich, to help us through the

rain and mire, and home to bed.

This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday night. Being Saturday night, I

had accomplished but the half of my uncommercial journey; for, its object

was to compare the play on Saturday evening with the preaching in the

same Theatre on Sunday evening.

Therefore, at the same hour of half-past six on the similarly damp and

muddy Sunday evening, I returned to this Theatre. I drove up to the

entrance (fearful of being late, or I should have come on foot), and

found myself in a large crowd of people who, I am happy to state, were

put into excellent spirits by my arrival. Having nothing to look at but

the mud and the closed doors, they looked at me, and highly enjoyed the

comic spectacle. My modesty inducing me to draw off, some hundreds of

yards, into a dark corner, they at once forgot me, and applied themselves

to their former occupation of looking at the mud and looking in at the

closed doors: which, being of grated ironwork, allowed the lighted

passage within to be seen. They were chiefly people of respectable

appearance, odd and impulsive as most crowds are, and making a joke of

being there as most crowds do.

In the dark corner I might have sat a long while, but that a very

obliging passer-by informed me that the Theatre was already full, and

that the people whom I saw in the street were all shut out for want of

room. After that, I lost no time in worming myself into the building,

and creeping to a place in a Proscenium box that had been kept for me.

There must have been full four thousand people present. Carefully

estimating the pit alone, I could bring it out as holding little less

than fourteen hundred. Every part of the house was well filled, and I

had not found it easy to make my way along the back of the boxes to where

I sat. The chandeliers in the ceiling were lighted; there was no light

on the stage; the orchestra was empty. The green curtain was down, and,

packed pretty closely on chairs on the small space of stage before it,

were some thirty gentlemen, and two or three ladies. In the centre of

these, in a desk or pulpit covered with red baize, was the presiding

minister. The kind of rostrum he occupied will be very well understood,

if I liken it to a boarded-up fireplace turned towards the audience, with

a gentleman in a black surtout standing in the stove and leaning forward

over the mantelpiece.

A portion of Scripture was being read when I went in. It was followed by

a discourse, to which the congregation listened with most exemplary

attention and uninterrupted silence and decorum. My own attention

comprehended both the auditory and the speaker, and shall turn to both in

this recalling of the scene, exactly as it did at the time.

‘A very difficult thing,’ I thought, when the discourse began, ‘to speak

appropriately to so large an audience, and to speak with tact. Without

it, better not to speak at all. Infinitely better, to read the New

Testament well, and to let _that_ speak. In this congregation there is

indubitably one pulse; but I doubt if any power short of genius can touch

it as one, and make it answer as one.’

I could not possibly say to myself as the discourse proceeded, that the

minister was a good speaker. I could not possibly say to myself that he

expressed an understanding of the general mind and character of his

audience. There was a supposititious working-man introduced into the

homily, to make supposititious objections to our Christian religion and

be reasoned down, who was not only a very disagreeable person, but

remarkably unlike life—very much more unlike it than anything I had seen

in the pantomime. The native independence of character this artisan was

supposed to possess, was represented by a suggestion of a dialect that I

certainly never heard in my uncommercial travels, and with a coarse swing

of voice and manner anything but agreeable to his feelings, I should

conceive, considered in the light of a portrait, and as far away from the

fact as a Chinese Tartar. There was a model pauper introduced in like

manner, who appeared to me to be the most intolerably arrogant pauper

ever relieved, and to show himself in absolute want and dire necessity of

a course of Stone Yard. For, how did this pauper testify to his having

received the gospel of humility? A gentleman met him in the workhouse,

and said (which I myself really thought good-natured of him), ‘Ah, John?

I am sorry to see you here. I am sorry to see you so poor.’ ‘Poor,

sir!’ replied that man, drawing himself up, ‘I am the son of a Prince!

_My_ father is the King of Kings. _My_ father is the Lord of Lords.

_My_ father is the ruler of all the Princes of the Earth!’ &c. And this

was what all the preacher’s fellow-sinners might come to, if they would

embrace this blessed book—which I must say it did some violence to my own

feelings of reverence, to see held out at arm’s length at frequent

intervals and soundingly slapped, like a slow lot at a sale. Now, could

I help asking myself the question, whether the mechanic before me, who

must detect the preacher as being wrong about the visible manner of

himself and the like of himself, and about such a noisy lip-server as

that pauper, might not, most unhappily for the usefulness of the

occasion, doubt that preacher’s being right about things not visible to

human senses?

Again. Is it necessary or advisable to address such an audience

continually as ‘fellow-sinners’? Is it not enough to be

fellow-creatures, born yesterday, suffering and striving to-day, dying

to-morrow? By our common humanity, my brothers and sisters, by our

common capacities for pain and pleasure, by our common laughter and our

common tears, by our common aspiration to reach something better than

ourselves, by our common tendency to believe in something good, and to

invest whatever we love or whatever we lose with some qualities that are

superior to our own failings and weaknesses as we know them in our own

poor hearts—by these, Hear me!—Surely, it is enough to be

fellow-creatures. Surely, it includes the other designation, and some

touching meanings over and above.

Again. There was a personage introduced into the discourse (not an

absolute novelty, to the best of my remembrance of my reading), who had

been personally known to the preacher, and had been quite a Crichton in

all the ways of philosophy, but had been an infidel. Many a time had the

preacher talked with him on that subject, and many a time had he failed

to convince that intelligent man. But he fell ill, and died, and before

he died he recorded his conversion—in words which the preacher had taken

down, my fellow-sinners, and would read to you from this piece of paper.

I must confess that to me, as one of an uninstructed audience, they did

not appear particularly edifying. I thought their tone extremely

selfish, and I thought they had a spiritual vanity in them which was of

the before-mentioned refractory pauper’s family.

All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere, but the slang and

twang of the conventicle—as bad in its way as that of the House of

Commons, and nothing worse can be said of it—should be studiously avoided

under such circumstances as I describe. The avoidance was not complete

on this occasion. Nor was it quite agreeable to see the preacher

addressing his pet ‘points’ to his backers on the stage, as if appealing

to those disciples to show him up, and testify to the multitude that each

of those points was a clincher.

But, in respect of the large Christianity of his general tone; of his

renunciation of all priestly authority; of his earnest and reiterated

assurance to the people that the commonest among them could work out

their own salvation if they would, by simply, lovingly, and dutifully

following Our Saviour, and that they needed the mediation of no erring

man; in these particulars, this gentleman deserved all praise. Nothing

could be better than the spirit, or the plain emphatic words of his

discourse in these respects. And it was a most significant and

encouraging circumstance that whenever he struck that chord, or whenever

he described anything which Christ himself had done, the array of faces

before him was very much more earnest, and very much more expressive of

emotion, than at any other time.

And now, I am brought to the fact, that the lowest part of the audience

of the previous night, _was not there_. There is no doubt about it.

There was no such thing in that building, that Sunday evening. I have

been told since, that the lowest part of the audience of the Victoria

Theatre has been attracted to its Sunday services. I have been very glad

to hear it, but on this occasion of which I write, the lowest part of the

usual audience of the Britannia Theatre, decidedly and unquestionably

stayed away. When I first took my seat and looked at the house, my

surprise at the change in its occupants was as great as my

disappointment. To the most respectable class of the previous evening,

was added a great number of respectable strangers attracted by curiosity,

and drafts from the regular congregations of various chapels. It was

impossible to fail in identifying the character of these last, and they

were very numerous. I came out in a strong, slow tide of them setting

from the boxes. Indeed, while the discourse was in progress, the

respectable character of the auditory was so manifest in their

appearance, that when the minister addressed a supposititious ‘outcast,’

one really felt a little impatient of it, as a figure of speech not

justified by anything the eye could discover.

The time appointed for the conclusion of the proceedings was eight

o’clock. The address having lasted until full that time, and it being

the custom to conclude with a hymn, the preacher intimated in a few

sensible words that the clock had struck the hour, and that those who

desired to go before the hymn was sung, could go now, without giving

offence. No one stirred. The hymn was then sung, in good time and tune

and unison, and its effect was very striking. A comprehensive benevolent

prayer dismissed the throng, and in seven or eight minutes there was

nothing left in the Theatre but a light cloud of dust.

That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good things, I do not doubt.

Nor do I doubt that they will work lower and lower down in the social

scale, if those who preside over them will be very careful on two heads:

firstly, not to disparage the places in which they speak, or the

intelligence of their hearers; secondly, not to set themselves in

antagonism to the natural inborn desire of the mass of mankind to

recreate themselves and to be amused.

There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, to which my

remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended. In the New Testament

there is the most beautiful and affecting history conceivable by man, and

there are the terse models for all prayer and for all preaching. As to

the models, imitate them, Sunday preachers—else why are they there,

consider? As to the history, tell it. Some people cannot read, some

people will not read, many people (this especially holds among the young

and ignorant) find it hard to pursue the verse-form in which the book is

presented to them, and imagine that those breaks imply gaps and want of

continuity. Help them over that first stumbling-block, by setting forth

the history in narrative, with no fear of exhausting it. You will never

preach so well, you will never move them so profoundly, you will never

send them away with half so much to think of. Which is the better

interest: Christ’s choice of twelve poor men to help in those merciful

wonders among the poor and rejected; or the pious bullying of a whole

Union-full of paupers? What is your changed philosopher to wretched me,

peeping in at the door out of the mud of the streets and of my life, when

you have the widow’s son to tell me about, the ruler’s daughter, the

other figure at the door when the brother of the two sisters was dead,

and one of the two ran to the mourner, crying, ‘The Master is come and

calleth for thee’?—Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget himself

and remember no individuality but one, and no eloquence but one, stand up

before four thousand men and women at the Britannia Theatre any Sunday

night, recounting that narrative to them as fellow creatures, and he

shall see a sight!

V

POOR MERCANTILE JACK

Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and keeps watch on

the life of poor Jack, commissioned to take charge of Mercantile Jack,

as well as Jack of the national navy? If not, who is? What is the

cherub about, and what are we all about, when poor Mercantile Jack is

having his brains slowly knocked out by penny-weights, aboard the brig

Beelzebub, or the barque Bowie-knife—when he looks his last at that

infernal craft, with the first officer’s iron boot-heel in his

remaining eye, or with his dying body towed overboard in the ship’s

wake, while the cruel wounds in it do ‘the multitudinous seas

incarnadine’?

Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard the brig

Beelzebub or the barque Bowie-knife, the first officer did half the

damage to cotton that he does to men, there would presently arise from

both sides of the Atlantic so vociferous an invocation of the sweet

little cherub who sits calculating aloft, keeping watch on the markets

that pay, that such vigilant cherub would, with a winged sword, have that

gallant officer’s organ of destructiveness out of his head in the space

of a flash of lightning?

If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable of men, for I

believe it with all my soul.

This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at Liverpool, keeping

watch on poor Mercantile Jack. Alas for me! I have long outgrown the

state of sweet little cherub; but there I was, and there Mercantile Jack

was, and very busy he was, and very cold he was: the snow yet lying in

the frozen furrows of the land, and the north-east winds snipping off the

tops of the little waves in the Mersey, and rolling them into hailstones

to pelt him with. Mercantile Jack was hard at it, in the hard weather:

as he mostly is in all weathers, poor Jack. He was girded to ships’

masts and funnels of steamers, like a forester to a great oak, scraping

and painting; he was lying out on yards, furling sails that tried to beat

him off; he was dimly discernible up in a world of giant cobwebs, reefing

and splicing; he was faintly audible down in holds, stowing and

unshipping cargo; he was winding round and round at capstans melodious,

monotonous, and drunk; he was of a diabolical aspect, with coaling for

the Antipodes; he was washing decks barefoot, with the breast of his red

shirt open to the blast, though it was sharper than the knife in his

leathern girdle; he was looking over bulwarks, all eyes and hair; he was

standing by at the shoot of the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the

stocks in trade of several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured

down into the ice-house; he was coming aboard of other vessels, with his

kit in a tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the very last moment of

his shore-going existence. As though his senses, when released from the

uproar of the elements, were under obligation to be confused by other

turmoil, there was a rattling of wheels, a clattering of hoofs, a

clashing of iron, a jolting of cotton and hides and casks and timber, an

incessant deafening disturbance on the quays, that was the very madness

of sound. And as, in the midst of it, he stood swaying about, with his

hair blown all manner of wild ways, rather crazedly taking leave of his

plunderers, all the rigging in the docks was shrill in the wind, and

every little steamer coming and going across the Mersey was sharp in its

blowing off, and every buoy in the river bobbed spitefully up and down,

as if there were a general taunting chorus of ‘Come along, Mercantile

Jack! Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed, entrapped, anticipated,

cleaned out. Come along, Poor Mercantile Jack, and be tempest-tossed

till you are drowned!’

The uncommercial transaction which had brought me and Jack together, was

this:—I had entered the Liverpool police force, that I might have a look

at the various unlawful traps which are every night set for Jack. As my

term of service in that distinguished corps was short, and as my personal

bias in the capacity of one of its members has ceased, no suspicion will

attach to my evidence that it is an admirable force. Besides that it is

composed, without favour, of the best men that can be picked, it is

directed by an unusual intelligence. Its organisation against Fires, I

take to be much better than the metropolitan system, and in all respects

it tempers its remarkable vigilance with a still more remarkable

discretion.

Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, and I had taken, for

purposes of identification, a photograph-likeness of a thief, in the

portrait-room at our head police office (on the whole, he seemed rather

complimented by the proceeding), and I had been on police parade, and the

small hand of the clock was moving on to ten, when I took up my lantern

to follow Mr. Superintendent to the traps that were set for Jack. In Mr.

Superintendent I saw, as anybody might, a tall, well-looking, well-set-up

man of a soldierly bearing, with a cavalry air, a good chest, and a

resolute but not by any means ungentle face. He carried in his hand a

plain black walking-stick of hard wood; and whenever and wherever, at any

after-time of the night, he struck it on the pavement with a ringing

sound, it instantly produced a whistle out of the darkness, and a

policeman. To this remarkable stick, I refer an air of mystery and magic

which pervaded the whole of my perquisition among the traps that were set

for Jack.

We began by diving into the obscurest streets and lanes of the port.

Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheerful discourse, before a dead wall,

apparently some ten miles long, Mr. Superintendent struck upon the

ground, and the wall opened and shot out, with military salute of hand to

temple, two policemen—not in the least surprised themselves, not in the

least surprising Mr. Superintendent.

‘All right, Sharpeye?’

‘All right, sir.’

‘All right, Trampfoot?’

‘All right, sir.’

‘Is Quickear there?’

‘Here am I, sir.’

‘Come with us.’

‘Yes, sir.’

So, Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent and I went next, and

Trampfoot and Quickear marched as rear-guard. Sharp-eye, I soon had

occasion to remark, had a skilful and quite professional way of opening

doors—touched latches delicately, as if they were keys of musical

instruments—opened every door he touched, as if he were perfectly

confident that there was stolen property behind it—instantly insinuated

himself, to prevent its being shut.

Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were set for Jack, but Jack

did not happen to be in any of them. They were all such miserable places

that really, Jack, if I were you, I would give them a wider berth. In

every trap, somebody was sitting over a fire, waiting for Jack. Now, it

was a crouching old woman, like the picture of the Norwood Gipsy in the

old sixpenny dream-books; now, it was a crimp of the male sex, in a

checked shirt and without a coat, reading a newspaper; now, it was a man

crimp and a woman crimp, who always introduced themselves as united in

holy matrimony; now, it was Jack’s delight, his (un)lovely Nan; but they

were all waiting for Jack, and were all frightfully disappointed to see

us.

‘Who have you got up-stairs here?’ says Sharpeye, generally. (In the

Move-on tone.)

‘Nobody, surr; sure not a blessed sowl!’ (Irish feminine reply.)

‘What do you mean by nobody? Didn’t I hear a woman’s step go up-stairs

when my hand was on the latch?’

‘Ah! sure thin you’re right, surr, I forgot her! ’Tis on’y Betsy White,

surr. Ah! you know Betsy, surr. Come down, Betsy darlin’, and say the

gintlemin.’

Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep staircase is in the

room) with a forcible expression in her protesting face, of an intention

to compensate herself for the present trial by grinding Jack finer than

usual when he does come. Generally, Sharpeye turns to Mr.

Superintendent, and says, as if the subjects of his remarks were

wax-work:

‘One of the worst, sir, this house is. This woman has been indicted

three times. This man’s a regular bad one likewise. His real name is

Pegg. Gives himself out as Waterhouse.’

‘Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me back, thin, since I was in this

house, bee the good Lard!’ says the woman.

Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes exceedingly

round-shouldered, and pretends to read his paper with rapt attention.

Generally, Sharpeye directs our observation with a look, to the prints

and pictures that are invariably numerous on the walls. Always,

Trampfoot and Quickear are taking notice on the doorstep. In default of

Sharpeye being acquainted with the exact individuality of any gentleman

encountered, one of these two is sure to proclaim from the outer air,

like a gruff spectre, that Jackson is not Jackson, but knows himself to

be Fogle; or that Canlon is Walker’s brother, against whom there was not

sufficient evidence; or that the man who says he never was at sea since

he was a boy, came ashore from a voyage last Thursday, or sails to-morrow

morning. ‘And that is a bad class of man, you see,’ says Mr.

Superintendent, when he got out into the dark again, ‘and very difficult

to deal with, who, when he has made this place too hot to hold him,

enters himself for a voyage as steward or cook, and is out of knowledge

for months, and then turns up again worse than ever.’

When we had gone into many such houses, and had come out (always leaving

everybody relapsing into waiting for Jack), we started off to a

singing-house where Jack was expected to muster strong.

The vocalisation was taking place in a long low room up-stairs; at one

end, an orchestra of two performers, and a small platform; across the

room, a series of open pews for Jack, with an aisle down the middle; at

the other end a larger pew than the rest, entitled SNUG, and reserved for

mates and similar good company. About the room, some amazing

coffee-coloured pictures varnished an inch deep, and some stuffed

creatures in cases; dotted among the audience, in Snug and out of Snug,

the ‘Professionals;’ among them, the celebrated comic favourite Mr. Banjo

Bones, looking very hideous with his blackened face and limp sugar-loaf

hat; beside him, sipping rum-and-water, Mrs. Banjo Bones, in her natural

colours—a little heightened.

It was a Friday night, and Friday night was considered not a good night

for Jack. At any rate, Jack did not show in very great force even here,

though the house was one to which he much resorts, and where a good deal

of money is taken. There was British Jack, a little maudlin and sleepy,

lolling over his empty glass, as if he were trying to read his fortune at

the bottom; there was Loafing Jack of the Stars and Stripes, rather an

unpromising customer, with his long nose, lank cheek, high cheek-bones,

and nothing soft about him but his cabbage-leaf hat; there was Spanish

Jack, with curls of black hair, rings in his ears, and a knife not far

from his hand, if you got into trouble with him; there were Maltese Jack,

and Jack of Sweden, and Jack the Finn, looming through the smoke of their

pipes, and turning faces that looked as if they were carved out of dark

wood, towards the young lady dancing the hornpipe: who found the platform

so exceedingly small for it, that I had a nervous expectation of seeing

her, in the backward steps, disappear through the window. Still, if all

hands had been got together, they would not have more than half-filled

the room. Observe, however, said Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, that

it was Friday night, and, besides, it was getting on for twelve, and Jack

had gone aboard. A sharp and watchful man, Mr. Licensed Victualler, the

host, with tight lips and a complete edition of Cocker’s arithmetic in

each eye. Attended to his business himself, he said. Always on the

spot. When he heard of talent, trusted nobody’s account of it, but went

off by rail to see it. If true talent, engaged it. Pounds a week for

talent—four pound—five pound. Banjo Bones was undoubted talent. Hear

this instrument that was going to play—it was real talent! In truth it

was very good; a kind of piano-accordion, played by a young girl of a

delicate prettiness of face, figure, and dress, that made the audience

look coarser. She sang to the instrument, too; first, a song about

village bells, and how they chimed; then a song about how I went to sea;

winding up with an imitation of the bagpipes, which Mercantile Jack

seemed to understand much the best. A good girl, said Mr. Licensed

Victualler. Kept herself select. Sat in Snug, not listening to the

blandishments of Mates. Lived with mother. Father dead. Once a

merchant well to do, but over-speculated himself. On delicate inquiry as

to salary paid for item of talent under consideration, Mr. Victualler’s

pounds dropped suddenly to shillings—still it was a very comfortable

thing for a young person like that, you know; she only went on six times

a night, and was only required to be there from six at night to twelve.

What was more conclusive was, Mr. Victualler’s assurance that he ‘never

allowed any language, and never suffered any disturbance.’ Sharpeye

confirmed the statement, and the order that prevailed was the best proof

of it that could have been cited. So, I came to the conclusion that poor

Mercantile Jack might do (as I am afraid he does) much worse than trust

himself to Mr. Victualler, and pass his evenings here.

But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent—said Trampfoot, receiving

us in the street again with military salute—for Dark Jack. True,

Trampfoot. Ring the wonderful stick, rub the wonderful lantern, and

cause the spirits of the stick and lantern to convey us to the Darkies.

There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark Jack; _he_ was

producible. The Genii set us down in the little first floor of a little

public-house, and there, in a stiflingly close atmosphere, were Dark

Jack, and Dark Jack’s delight, his _white_ unlovely Nan, sitting against

the wall all round the room. More than that: Dark Jack’s delight was the

least unlovely Nan, both morally and physically, that I saw that night.

As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the company, Quickear

suggested why not strike up? ‘Ah, la’ads!’ said a negro sitting by the

door, ‘gib the jebblem a darnse. Tak’ yah pardlers, jebblem, for ’um

QUAD-rill.’

This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress half Greek and half

English. As master of the ceremonies, he called all the figures, and

occasionally addressed himself parenthetically—after this manner. When

he was very loud, I use capitals.

‘Now den! Hoy! ONE. Right and left. (Put a steam on, gib ’um powder.)

LA-dies’ chail. BAL-loon say. Lemonade! TWO. AD-warnse and go back

(gib ’ell a breakdown, shake it out o’ yerselbs, keep a movil).

SWING-corners, BAL-loon say, and Lemonade! (Hoy!) THREE. GENT come

for’ard with a lady and go back, hoppersite come for’ard and do what yer

can. (Aeiohoy!) BAL-loon say, and leetle lemonade. (Dat hair nigger by

’um fireplace ’hind a’ time, shake it out o’ yerselbs, gib ’ell a

breakdown.) Now den! Hoy! FOUR! Lemonade. BAL-loon say, and swing.

FOUR ladies meet in ’um middle, FOUR gents goes round ’um ladies, FOUR

gents passes out under ’um ladies’ arms, SWING—and Lemonade till ’a

moosic can’t play no more! (Hoy, Hoy!)’

The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an unusually powerful man

of six feet three or four. The sound of their flat feet on the floor was

as unlike the sound of white feet as their faces were unlike white faces.

They toed and heeled, shuffled, double-shuffled, double-double-shuffled,

covered the buckle, and beat the time out, rarely, dancing with a great

show of teeth, and with a childish good-humoured enjoyment that was very

prepossessing. They generally kept together, these poor fellows, said

Mr. Superintendent, because they were at a disadvantage singly, and

liable to slights in the neighbouring streets. But, if I were Light

Jack, I should be very slow to interfere oppressively with Dark Jack,

for, whenever I have had to do with him I have found him a simple and a

gentle fellow. Bearing this in mind, I asked his friendly permission to

leave him restoration of beer, in wishing him good night, and thus it

fell out that the last words I heard him say as I blundered down the worn

stairs, were, ‘Jebblem’s elth! Ladies drinks fust!’

The night was now well on into the morning, but, for miles and hours we

explored a strange world, where nobody ever goes to bed, but everybody is

eternally sitting up, waiting for Jack. This exploration was among a

labyrinth of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries, kept in

wonderful order by the police, and in much better order than by the

corporation: the want of gaslight in the most dangerous and infamous of

these places being quite unworthy of so spirited a town. I need describe

but two or three of the houses in which Jack was waited for as specimens

of the rest. Many we attained by noisome passages so profoundly dark

that we felt our way with our hands. Not one of the whole number we

visited, was without its show of prints and ornamental crockery; the

quantity of the latter set forth on little shelves and in little cases,

in otherwise wretched rooms, indicating that Mercantile Jack must have an

extraordinary fondness for crockery, to necessitate so much of that bait

in his traps.

Among such garniture, in one front parlour in the dead of the night, four

women were sitting by a fire. One of them had a male child in her arms.

On a stool among them was a swarthy youth with a guitar, who had

evidently stopped playing when our footsteps were heard.

‘Well! how do _you_ do?’ says Mr. Superintendent, looking about him.

‘Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are going to treat us ladies,

now you have come to see us.’

‘Order there!’ says Sharpeye.

‘None of that!’ says Quickear.

Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself, ‘Meggisson’s lot this

is. And a bad ’un!’

‘Well!’ says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand on the shoulder of the

swarthy youth, ‘and who’s this?’

‘Antonio, sir.’

‘And what does _he_ do here?’

‘Come to give us a bit of music. No harm in that, I suppose?’

‘A young foreign sailor?’

‘Yes. He’s a Spaniard. You’re a Spaniard, ain’t you, Antonio?’

‘Me Spanish.’

‘And he don’t know a word you say, not he; not if you was to talk to him

till doomsday.’ (Triumphantly, as if it redounded to the credit of the

house.)

‘Will he play something?’

‘Oh, yes, if you like. Play something, Antonio. _You_ ain’t ashamed to

play something; are you?’

The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, and three of the

women keep time to it with their heads, and the fourth with the child.

If Antonio has brought any money in with him, I am afraid he will never

take it out, and it even strikes me that his jacket and guitar may be in

a bad way. But, the look of the young man and the tinkling of the

instrument so change the place in a moment to a leaf out of Don Quixote,

that I wonder where his mule is stabled, until he leaves off.

I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather to my uncommercial

confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty in this establishment, by

having taken the child in my arms. For, on my offering to restore it to

a ferocious joker not unstimulated by rum, who claimed to be its mother,

that unnatural parent put her hands behind her, and declined to accept

it; backing into the fireplace, and very shrilly declaring, regardless of

remonstrance from her friends, that she knowed it to be Law, that whoever

took a child from its mother of his own will, was bound to stick to it.

The uncommercial sense of being in a rather ridiculous position with the

poor little child beginning to be frightened, was relieved by my worthy

friend and fellow-constable, Trampfoot; who, laying hands on the article

as if it were a Bottle, passed it on to the nearest woman, and bade her

‘take hold of that.’ As we came out the Bottle was passed to the

ferocious joker, and they all sat down as before, including Antonio and

the guitar. It was clear that there was no such thing as a nightcap to

this baby’s head, and that even he never went to bed, but was always kept

up—and would grow up, kept up—waiting for Jack.

Later still in the night, we came (by the court ‘where the man was

murdered,’ and by the other court across the street, into which his body

was dragged) to another parlour in another Entry, where several people

were sitting round a fire in just the same way. It was a dirty and

offensive place, with some ragged clothes drying in it; but there was a

high shelf over the entrance-door (to be out of the reach of marauding

hands, possibly) with two large white loaves on it, and a great piece of

Cheshire cheese.

‘Well!’ says Mr. Superintendent, with a comprehensive look all round.

‘How do _you_ do?’

‘Not much to boast of, sir.’ From the curtseying woman of the house.

‘This is my good man, sir.’

‘You are not registered as a common Lodging House?’

‘No, sir.’

Sharpeye (in the Move-on tone) puts in the pertinent inquiry, ‘Then why

ain’t you?’

‘Ain’t got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye,’ rejoin the woman and my good man

together, ‘but our own family.’

‘How many are you in family?’

The woman takes time to count, under pretence of coughing, and adds, as

one scant of breath, ‘Seven, sir.’

But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who knows all about it, says:

‘Here’s a young man here makes eight, who ain’t of your family?’

‘No, Mr. Sharpeye, he’s a weekly lodger.’

‘What does he do for a living?’

The young man here, takes the reply upon himself, and shortly answers,

‘Ain’t got nothing to do.’

The young man here, is modestly brooding behind a damp apron pendent from

a clothes-line. As I glance at him I become—but I don’t know why—vaguely

reminded of Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and Dover. When we get out,

my respected fellow-constable Sharpeye, addressing Mr. Superintendent,

says:

‘You noticed that young man, sir, in at Darby’s?’

‘Yes. What is he?’

‘Deserter, sir.’

Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that when we have done with his services,

he will step back and take that young man. Which in course of time he

does: feeling at perfect ease about finding him, and knowing for a moral

certainty that nobody in that region will be gone to bed.

Later still in the night, we came to another parlour up a step or two

from the street, which was very cleanly, neatly, even tastefully, kept,

and in which, set forth on a draped chest of drawers masking the

staircase, was such a profusion of ornamental crockery, that it would

have furnished forth a handsome sale-booth at a fair. It backed up a

stout old lady—HOGARTH drew her exact likeness more than once—and a boy

who was carefully writing a copy in a copy-book.

‘Well, ma’am, how do _you_ do?’

Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentlemen, sweetly. Charmingly,

charmingly. And overjoyed to see us!

‘Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writing his copy. In the

middle of the night!’

‘So it is, dear gentlemen, Heaven bless your welcome faces and send ye

prosperous, but he has been to the Play with a young friend for his

diversion, and he combinates his improvement with entertainment, by doing

his school-writing afterwards, God be good to ye!’

The copy admonished human nature to subjugate the fire of every fierce

desire. One might have thought it recommended stirring the fire, the old

lady so approved it. There she sat, rosily beaming at the copy-book and

the boy, and invoking showers of blessings on our heads, when we left her

in the middle of the night, waiting for Jack.

Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous room with an earth floor,

into which the refuse scum of an alley trickled. The stench of this

habitation was abominable; the seeming poverty of it, diseased and dire.

Yet, here again, was visitor or lodger—a man sitting before the fire,

like the rest of them elsewhere, and apparently not distasteful to the

mistress’s niece, who was also before the fire. The mistress herself had

the misfortune of being in jail.

Three weird old women of transcendent ghastliness, were at needlework at

a table in this room. Says Trampfoot to First Witch, ‘What are you

making?’ Says she, ‘Money-bags.’