XXI

THE SHORT-TIMERS

‘WITHIN so many yards of this Covent-garden lodging of mine, as within so

many yards of Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the Houses of

Parliament, the Prisons, the Courts of Justice, all the Institutions that

govern the land, I can find—_must_ find, whether I will or no—in the open

streets, shameful instances of neglect of children, intolerable

toleration of the engenderment of paupers, idlers, thieves, races of

wretched and destructive cripples both in body and mind, a misery to

themselves, a misery to the community, a disgrace to civilisation, and an

outrage on Christianity.—I know it to be a fact as easy of demonstration

as any sum in any of the elementary rules of arithmetic, that if the

State would begin its work and duty at the beginning, and would with the

strong hand take those children out of the streets, while they are yet

children, and wisely train them, it would make them a part of England’s

glory, not its shame—of England’s strength, not its weakness—would raise

good soldiers and sailors, and good citizens, and many great men, out of

the seeds of its criminal population. Yet I go on bearing with the

enormity as if it were nothing, and I go on reading the Parliamentary

Debates as if they were something, and I concern myself far more about

one railway-bridge across a public thoroughfare, than about a dozen

generations of scrofula, ignorance, wickedness, prostitution, poverty,

and felony. I can slip out at my door, in the small hours after any

midnight, and, in one circuit of the purlieus of Covent-garden Market,

can behold a state of infancy and youth, as vile as if a Bourbon sat upon

the English throne; a great police force looking on with authority to do

no more than worry and hunt the dreadful vermin into corners, and there

leave them. Within the length of a few streets I can find a workhouse,

mismanaged with that dull short-sighted obstinacy that its greatest

opportunities as to the children it receives are lost, and yet not a

farthing saved to any one. But the wheel goes round, and round, and

round; and because it goes round—so I am told by the politest

authorities—it goes well.’

Thus I reflected, one day in the Whitsun week last past, as I floated

down the Thames among the bridges, looking—not inappropriately—at the

drags that were hanging up at certain dirty stairs to hook the drowned

out, and at the numerous conveniences provided to facilitate their

tumbling in. My object in that uncommercial journey called up another

train of thought, and it ran as follows:

‘When I was at school, one of seventy boys, I wonder by what secret

understanding our attention began to wander when we had pored over our

books for some hours. I wonder by what ingenuity we brought on that

confused state of mind when sense became nonsense, when figures wouldn’t

work, when dead languages wouldn’t construe, when live languages wouldn’t

be spoken, when memory wouldn’t come, when dulness and vacancy wouldn’t

go. I cannot remember that we ever conspired to be sleepy after dinner,

or that we ever particularly wanted to be stupid, and to have flushed

faces and hot beating heads, or to find blank hopelessness and obscurity

this afternoon in what would become perfectly clear and bright in the

freshness of to-morrow morning. We suffered for these things, and they

made us miserable enough. Neither do I remember that we ever bound

ourselves by any secret oath or other solemn obligation, to find the

seats getting too hard to be sat upon after a certain time; or to have

intolerable twitches in our legs, rendering us aggressive and malicious

with those members; or to be troubled with a similar uneasiness in our

elbows, attended with fistic consequences to our neighbours; or to carry

two pounds of lead in the chest, four pounds in the head, and several

active blue-bottles in each ear. Yet, for certain, we suffered under

those distresses, and were always charged at for labouring under them, as

if we had brought them on, of our own deliberate act and deed. As to the

mental portion of them being my own fault in my own case—I should like to

ask any well-trained and experienced teacher, not to say psychologist.

And as to the physical portion—I should like to ask PROFESSOR OWEN.’

It happened that I had a small bundle of papers with me, on what is

called ‘The Half-Time System’ in schools. Referring to one of those

papers I found that the indefatigable MR. CHADWICK had been beforehand

with me, and had already asked Professor Owen: who had handsomely replied

that I was not to blame, but that, being troubled with a skeleton, and

having been constituted according to certain natural laws, I and my

skeleton were unfortunately bound by those laws even in school—and had

comported ourselves accordingly. Much comforted by the good Professor’s

being on my side, I read on to discover whether the indefatigable Mr.

Chadwick had taken up the mental part of my afflictions. I found that he

had, and that he had gained on my behalf, SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE, SIR DAVID

WILKIE, SIR WALTER SCOTT, and the common sense of mankind. For which I

beg Mr. Chadwick, if this should meet his eye, to accept my warm

acknowledgments.

Up to that time I had retained a misgiving that the seventy unfortunates

of whom I was one, must have been, without knowing it, leagued together

by the spirit of evil in a sort of perpetual Guy Fawkes Plot, to grope

about in vaults with dark lanterns after a certain period of continuous

study. But now the misgiving vanished, and I floated on with a quieted

mind to see the Half-Time System in action. For that was the purpose of

my journey, both by steamboat on the Thames, and by very dirty railway on

the shore. To which last institution, I beg to recommend the legal use

of coke as engine-fuel, rather than the illegal use of coal; the

recommendation is quite disinterested, for I was most liberally supplied

with small coal on the journey, for which no charge was made. I had not

only my eyes, nose, and ears filled, but my hat, and all my pockets, and

my pocket-book, and my watch.

The V.D.S.C.R.C. (or Very Dirty and Small Coal Railway Company) delivered

me close to my destination, and I soon found the Half-Time System

established in spacious premises, and freely placed at my convenience and

disposal.

What would I see first of the Half-Time System? I chose Military Drill.

‘Atten-tion!’ Instantly a hundred boys stood forth in the paved yard as

one boy; bright, quick, eager, steady, watchful for the look of command,

instant and ready for the word. Not only was there complete

precision—complete accord to the eye and to the ear—but an alertness in

the doing of the thing which deprived it, curiously, of its monotonous or

mechanical character. There was perfect uniformity, and yet an

individual spirit and emulation. No spectator could doubt that the boys

liked it. With non-commissioned officers varying from a yard to a yard

and a half high, the result could not possibly have been attained

otherwise. They marched, and counter-marched, and formed in line and

square, and company, and single file and double file, and performed a

variety of evolutions; all most admirably. In respect of an air of

enjoyable understanding of what they were about, which seems to be

forbidden to English soldiers, the boys might have been small French

troops. When they were dismissed and the broadsword exercise, limited to

a much smaller number, succeeded, the boys who had no part in that new

drill, either looked on attentively, or disported themselves in a

gymnasium hard by. The steadiness of the broadsword boys on their short

legs, and the firmness with which they sustained the different positions,

was truly remarkable.

The broadsword exercise over, suddenly there was great excitement and a

rush. Naval Drill!

In the corner of the ground stood a decked mimic ship, with real masts,

yards, and sails—mainmast seventy feet high. At the word of command from

the Skipper of this ship—a mahogany-faced Old Salt, with the

indispensable quid in his cheek, the true nautical roll, and all

wonderfully complete—the rigging was covered with a swarm of boys: one,

the first to spring into the shrouds, outstripping all the others, and

resting on the truck of the main-topmast in no time.

And now we stood out to sea, in a most amazing manner; the Skipper

himself, the whole crew, the Uncommercial, and all hands present,

implicitly believing that there was not a moment to lose, that the wind

had that instant chopped round and sprung up fair, and that we were away

on a voyage round the world. Get all sail upon her! With a will, my

lads! Lay out upon the main-yard there! Look alive at the weather

earring! Cheery, my boys! Let go the sheet, now! Stand by at the

braces, you! With a will, aloft there! Belay, starboard watch! Fifer!

Come aft, fifer, and give ’em a tune! Forthwith, springs up fifer, fife

in hand—smallest boy ever seen—big lump on temple, having lately fallen

down on a paving-stone—gives ’em a tune with all his might and main.

Hoo-roar, fifer! With a will, my lads! Tip ’em a livelier one, fifer!

Fifer tips ’em a livelier one, and excitement increases. Shake ’em out,

my lads! Well done! There you have her! Pretty, pretty! Every rag

upon her she can carry, wind right astarn, and ship cutting through the

water fifteen knots an hour!

At this favourable moment of her voyage, I gave the alarm ‘A man

overboard!’ (on the gravel), but he was immediately recovered, none the

worse. Presently, I observed the Skipper overboard, but forbore to

mention it, as he seemed in no wise disconcerted by the accident.

Indeed, I soon came to regard the Skipper as an amphibious creature, for

he was so perpetually plunging overboard to look up at the hands aloft,

that he was oftener in the bosom of the ocean than on deck. His pride in

his crew on those occasions was delightful, and the conventional

unintelligibility of his orders in the ears of uncommercial landlubbers

and loblolly boys, though they were always intelligible to the crew, was

hardly less pleasant. But we couldn’t expect to go on in this way for

ever; dirty weather came on, and then worse weather, and when we least

expected it we got into tremendous difficulties. Screw loose in the

chart perhaps—something certainly wrong somewhere—but here we were with

breakers ahead, my lads, driving head on, slap on a lee shore! The

Skipper broached this terrific announcement in such great agitation, that

the small fifer, not fifeing now, but standing looking on near the wheel

with his fife under his arm, seemed for the moment quite unboyed, though

he speedily recovered his presence of mind. In the trying circumstances

that ensued, the Skipper and the crew proved worthy of one another. The

Skipper got dreadfully hoarse, but otherwise was master of the situation.

The man at the wheel did wonders; all hands (except the fifer) were

turned up to wear ship; and I observed the fifer, when we were at our

greatest extremity, to refer to some document in his waistcoat-pocket,

which I conceived to be his will. I think she struck. I was not myself

conscious of any collision, but I saw the Skipper so very often washed

overboard and back again, that I could only impute it to the beating of

the ship. I am not enough of a seaman to describe the manœuvres by which

we were saved, but they made the Skipper very hot (French polishing his

mahogany face) and the crew very nimble, and succeeded to a marvel; for,

within a few minutes of the first alarm, we had wore ship and got her

off, and were all a-tauto—which I felt very grateful for: not that I knew

what it was, but that I perceived that we had not been all a-tauto

lately. Land now appeared on our weather-bow, and we shaped our course

for it, having the wind abeam, and frequently changing the man at the

helm, in order that every man might have his spell. We worked into

harbour under prosperous circumstances, and furled our sails, and squared

our yards, and made all ship-shape and handsome, and so our voyage ended.

When I complimented the Skipper at parting on his exertions and those of

his gallant crew, he informed me that the latter were provided for the

worst, all hands being taught to swim and dive; and he added that the

able seaman at the main-topmast truck especially, could dive as deep as

he could go high.

The next adventure that befell me in my visit to the Short-Timers, was

the sudden apparition of a military band. I had been inspecting the

hammocks of the crew of the good ship, when I saw with astonishment that

several musical instruments, brazen and of great size, appeared to have

suddenly developed two legs each, and to be trotting about a yard. And

my astonishment was heightened when I observed a large drum, that had

previously been leaning helpless against a wall, taking up a stout

position on four legs. Approaching this drum and looking over it, I

found two boys behind it (it was too much for one), and then I found that

each of the brazen instruments had brought out a boy, and was going to

discourse sweet sounds. The boys—not omitting the fifer, now playing a

new instrument—were dressed in neat uniform, and stood up in a circle at

their music-stands, like any other Military Band. They played a march or

two, and then we had Cheer boys, Cheer, and then we had Yankee Doodle,

and we finished, as in loyal duty bound, with God save the Queen. The

band’s proficiency was perfectly wonderful, and it was not at all

wonderful that the whole body corporate of Short-Timers listened with

faces of the liveliest interest and pleasure.

What happened next among the Short-Timers? As if the band had blown me

into a great class-room out of their brazen tubes, _in_ a great

class-room I found myself now, with the whole choral force of

Short-Timers singing the praises of a summer’s day to the harmonium, and

my small but highly respected friend the fifer blazing away vocally, as

if he had been saving up his wind for the last twelvemonth; also the

whole crew of the good ship Nameless swarming up and down the scale as if

they had never swarmed up and down the rigging. This done, we threw our

whole power into God bless the Prince of Wales, and blessed his Royal

Highness to such an extent that, for my own Uncommercial part, I gasped

again when it was over. The moment this was done, we formed, with

surpassing freshness, into hollow squares, and fell to work at oral

lessons as if we never did, and had never thought of doing, anything

else.

Let a veil be drawn over the self-committals into which the Uncommercial

Traveller would have been betrayed but for a discreet reticence, coupled

with an air of absolute wisdom on the part of that artful personage.

Take the square of five, multiply it by fifteen, divide it by three,

deduct eight from it, add four dozen to it, give me the result in pence,

and tell me how many eggs I could get for it at three farthings apiece.

The problem is hardly stated, when a dozen small boys pour out answers.

Some wide, some very nearly right, some worked as far as they go with

such accuracy, as at once to show what link of the chain has been dropped

in the hurry. For the moment, none are quite right; but behold a

labouring spirit beating the buttons on its corporeal waistcoat, in a

process of internal calculation, and knitting an accidental bump on its

corporeal forehead in a concentration of mental arithmetic! It is my

honourable friend (if he will allow me to call him so) the fifer. With

right arm eagerly extended in token of being inspired with an answer, and

with right leg foremost, the fifer solves the mystery: then recalls both

arm and leg, and with bump in ambush awaits the next poser. Take the

square of three, multiply it by seven, divide it by four, add fifty to

it, take thirteen from it, multiply it by two, double it, give me the

result in pence, and say how many halfpence. Wise as the serpent is the

four feet of performer on the nearest approach to that instrument, whose

right arm instantly appears, and quenches this arithmetical fire. Tell

me something about Great Britain, tell me something about its principal

productions, tell me something about its ports, tell me something about

its seas and rivers, tell me something about coal, iron, cotton, timber,

tin, and turpentine. The hollow square bristles with extended right

arms; but ever faithful to fact is the fifer, ever wise as the serpent is

the performer on that instrument, ever prominently buoyant and brilliant

are all members of the band. I observe the player of the cymbals to dash

at a sounding answer now and then rather than not cut in at all; but I

take that to be in the way of his instrument. All these questions, and

many such, are put on the spur of the moment, and by one who has never

examined these boys. The Uncommercial, invited to add another,

falteringly demands how many birthdays a man born on the twenty-ninth of

February will have had on completing his fiftieth year? A general

perception of trap and pitfall instantly arises, and the fifer is seen to

retire behind the corduroys of his next neighbours, as perceiving special

necessity for collecting himself and communing with his mind. Meanwhile,

the wisdom of the serpent suggests that the man will have had only one

birthday in all that time, for how can any man have more than one, seeing

that he is born once and dies once? The blushing Uncommercial stands

corrected, and amends the formula. Pondering ensues, two or three wrong

answers are offered, and Cymbals strikes up ‘Six!’ but doesn’t know why.

Then modestly emerging from his Academic Grove of corduroys appears the

fifer, right arm extended, right leg foremost, bump irradiated. ‘Twelve,

and two over!’

The feminine Short-Timers passed a similar examination, and very

creditably too. Would have done better perhaps, with a little more

geniality on the part of their pupil-teacher; for a cold eye, my young

friend, and a hard, abrupt manner, are not by any means the powerful

engines that your innocence supposes them to be. Both girls and boys

wrote excellently, from copy and dictation; both could cook; both could

mend their own clothes; both could clean up everything about them in an

orderly and skilful way, the girls having womanly household knowledge

superadded. Order and method began in the songs of the Infant School

which I visited likewise, and they were even in their dwarf degree to be

found in the Nursery, where the Uncommercial walking-stick was carried

off with acclamations, and where ‘the Doctor’—a medical gentleman of two,

who took his degree on the night when he was found at an apothecary’s

door—did the honours of the establishment with great urbanity and gaiety.

These have long been excellent schools; long before the days of the

Short-Time. I first saw them, twelve or fifteen years ago. But since

the introduction of the Short-Time system it has been proved here that

eighteen hours a week of book-learning are more profitable than

thirty-six, and that the pupils are far quicker and brighter than of

yore. The good influences of music on the whole body of children have

likewise been surprisingly proved. Obviously another of the immense

advantages of the Short-Time system to the cause of good education is the

great diminution of its cost, and of the period of time over which it

extends. The last is a most important consideration, as poor parents are

always impatient to profit by their children’s labour.

It will be objected: Firstly, that this is all very well, but special

local advantages and special selection of children must be necessary to

such success. Secondly, that this is all very well, but must be very

expensive. Thirdly, that this is all very well, but we have no proof of

the results, sir, no proof.

On the first head of local advantages and special selection. Would

Limehouse Hole be picked out for the site of a Children’s Paradise? Or

would the legitimate and illegitimate pauper children of the long-shore

population of such a riverside district, be regarded as unusually

favourable specimens to work with? Yet these schools are at Limehouse,

and are the Pauper Schools of the Stepney Pauper Union.

On the second head of expense. Would sixpence a week be considered a

very large cost for the education of each pupil, including all salaries

of teachers and rations of teachers? But supposing the cost were not

sixpence a week, not fivepence? it is FOURPENCE-HALFPENNY.

On the third head of no proof, sir, no proof. Is there any proof in the

facts that Pupil Teachers more in number, and more highly qualified, have

been produced here under the Short-Time system than under the Long-Time

system? That the Short-Timers, in a writing competition, beat the

Long-Timers of a first-class National School? That the sailor-boys are

in such demand for merchant ships, that whereas, before they were

trained, 10_l._ premium used to be given with each boy—too often to some

greedy brute of a drunken skipper, who disappeared before the term of

apprenticeship was out, if the ill-used boy didn’t—captains of the best

character now take these boys more than willingly, with no premium at

all? That they are also much esteemed in the Royal Navy, which they

prefer, ‘because everything is so neat and clean and orderly’? Or, is

there any proof in Naval captains writing ‘Your little fellows are all

that I can desire’? Or, is there any proof in such testimony as this:

‘The owner of a vessel called at the school, and said that as his ship

was going down Channel on her last voyage, with one of the boys from the

school on board, the pilot said, “It would be as well if the royal were

lowered; I wish it were down.” Without waiting for any orders, and

unobserved by the pilot, the lad, whom they had taken on board from the

school, instantly mounted the mast and lowered the royal, and at the next

glance of the pilot to the masthead, he perceived that the sail had been

let down. He exclaimed, “Who’s done that job?” The owner, who was on

board, said, “That was the little fellow whom I put on board two days

ago.” The pilot immediately said, “Why, where could he have been brought

up?” The boy had never seen the sea or been on a real ship before’? Or,

is there any proof in these boys being in greater demand for Regimental

Bands than the Union can meet? Or, in ninety-eight of them having gone

into Regimental Bands in three years? Or, in twelve of them being in the

band of one regiment? Or, in the colonel of that regiment writing, ‘We

want six more boys; they are excellent lads’? Or, in one of the boys

having risen to be band-corporal in the same regiment? Or, in employers

of all kinds chorusing, ‘Give us drilled boys, for they are prompt,

obedient, and punctual’? Other proofs I have myself beheld with these

Uncommercial eyes, though I do not regard myself as having a right to

relate in what social positions they have seen respected men and women

who were once pauper children of the Stepney Union.

Into what admirable soldiers others of these boys have the capabilities

for being turned, I need not point out. Many of them are always

ambitious of military service; and once upon a time when an old boy came

back to see the old place, a cavalry soldier all complete, _with his

spurs on_, such a yearning broke out to get into cavalry regiments and

wear those sublime appendages, that it was one of the greatest

excitements ever known in the school. The girls make excellent domestic

servants, and at certain periods come back, a score or two at a time, to

see the old building, and to take tea with the old teachers, and to hear

the old band, and to see the old ship with her masts towering up above

the neighbouring roofs and chimneys. As to the physical health of these

schools, it is so exceptionally remarkable (simply because the sanitary

regulations are as good as the other educational arrangements), that when

Mr. TUFNELL, the Inspector, first stated it in a report, he was supposed,

in spite of his high character, to have been betrayed into some

extraordinary mistake or exaggeration. In the moral health of these

schools—where corporal punishment is unknown—Truthfulness stands high.

When the ship was first erected, the boys were forbidden to go aloft,

until the nets, which are now always there, were stretched as a

precaution against accidents. Certain boys, in their eagerness,

disobeyed the injunction, got out of window in the early daylight, and

climbed to the masthead. One boy unfortunately fell, and was killed.

There was no clue to the others; but all the boys were assembled, and the

chairman of the Board addressed them. ‘I promise nothing; you see what a

dreadful thing has happened; you know what a grave offence it is that has

led to such a consequence; I cannot say what will be done with the

offenders; but, boys, you have been trained here, above all things, to

respect the truth. I want the truth. Who are the delinquents?’

Instantly, the whole number of boys concerned, separated from the rest,

and stood out.

Now, the head and heart of that gentleman (it is needless to say, a good

head and a good heart) have been deeply interested in these schools for

many years, and are so still; and the establishment is very fortunate in

a most admirable master, and moreover the schools of the Stepney Union

cannot have got to be what they are, without the Stepney Board of

Guardians having been earnest and humane men strongly imbued with a sense

of their responsibility. But what one set of men can do in this wise,

another set of men can do; and this is a noble example to all other

Bodies and Unions, and a noble example to the State. Followed, and

enlarged upon by its enforcement on bad parents, it would clear London

streets of the most terrible objects they smite the sight with—myriads of

little children who awfully reverse Our Saviour’s words, and are not of

the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom of Hell.

Clear the public streets of such shame, and the public conscience of such

reproach? Ah! Almost prophetic, surely, the child’s jingle:

When will that be,

Say the bells of Step-ney!

XXII

BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE

BEHOLD me on my way to an Emigrant Ship, on a hot morning early in June.

My road lies through that part of London generally known to the initiated

as ‘Down by the Docks.’ Down by the Docks, is home to a good many

people—to too many, if I may judge from the overflow of local population

in the streets—but my nose insinuates that the number to whom it is Sweet

Home might be easily counted. Down by the Docks, is a region I would

choose as my point of embarkation aboard ship if I were an emigrant. It

would present my intention to me in such a sensible light; it would show

me so many things to be run away from.

Down by the Docks, they eat the largest oysters and scatter the roughest

oyster-shells, known to the descendants of Saint George and the Dragon.

Down by the Docks, they consume the slimiest of shell-fish, which seem to

have been scraped off the copper bottoms of ships. Down by the Docks,

the vegetables at green-grocers’ doors acquire a saline and a scaly look,

as if they had been crossed with fish and seaweed. Down by the Docks,

they ‘board seamen’ at the eating-houses, the public-houses, the

slop-shops, the coffee-shops, the tally-shops, all kinds of shops

mentionable and unmentionable—board them, as it were, in the piratical

sense, making them bleed terribly, and giving no quarter. Down by the

Docks, the seamen roam in mid-street and mid-day, their pockets inside

out, and their heads no better. Down by the Docks, the daughters of

wave-ruling Britannia also rove, clad in silken attire, with uncovered

tresses streaming in the breeze, bandanna kerchiefs floating from their

shoulders, and crinoline not wanting. Down by the Docks, you may hear

the Incomparable Joe Jackson sing the Standard of England, with a

hornpipe, any night; or any day may see at the waxwork, for a penny and

no waiting, him as killed the policeman at Acton and suffered for it.

Down by the Docks, you may buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage

preparations various, if you are not particular what they are made of

besides seasoning. Down by the Docks, the children of Israel creep into

any gloomy cribs and entries they can hire, and hang slops there—pewter

watches, sou’-wester hats, waterproof overalls—‘firtht rate articleth,

Thjack.’ Down by the Docks, such dealers exhibiting on a frame a

complete nautical suit without the refinement of a waxen visage in the

hat, present the imaginary wearer as drooping at the yard-arm, with his

seafaring and earthfaring troubles over. Down by the Docks, the placards

in the shops apostrophise the customer, knowing him familiarly

beforehand, as, ‘Look here, Jack!’ ‘Here’s your sort, my lad!’ ‘Try our

sea-going mixed, at two and nine!’ ‘The right kit for the British tar!’

‘Ship ahoy!’ ‘Splice the main-brace, brother!’ ‘Come, cheer up, my

lads. We’ve the best liquors here, And you’ll find something new In our

wonderful Beer!’ Down by the Docks, the pawnbroker lends money on

Union-Jack pocket-handkerchiefs, on watches with little ships pitching

fore and aft on the dial, on telescopes, nautical instruments in cases,

and such-like. Down by the Docks, the apothecary sets up in business on

the wretchedest scale—chiefly on lint and plaster for the strapping of

wounds—and with no bright bottles, and with no little drawers. Down by

the Docks, the shabby undertaker’s shop will bury you for next to

nothing, after the Malay or Chinaman has stabbed you for nothing at all:

so you can hardly hope to make a cheaper end. Down by the Docks, anybody

drunk will quarrel with anybody drunk or sober, and everybody else will

have a hand in it, and on the shortest notice you may revolve in a

whirlpool of red shirts, shaggy beards, wild heads of hair, bare tattooed

arms, Britannia’s daughters, malice, mud, maundering, and madness. Down

by the Docks, scraping fiddles go in the public-houses all day long, and,

shrill above their din and all the din, rises the screeching of

innumerable parrots brought from foreign parts, who appear to be very

much astonished by what they find on these native shores of ours.

Possibly the parrots don’t know, possibly they do, that Down by the Docks

is the road to the Pacific Ocean, with its lovely islands, where the

savage girls plait flowers, and the savage boys carve cocoa-nut shells,

and the grim blind idols muse in their shady groves to exactly the same

purpose as the priests and chiefs. And possibly the parrots don’t know,

possibly they do, that the noble savage is a wearisome impostor wherever

he is, and has five hundred thousand volumes of indifferent rhyme, and no

reason, to answer for.

Shadwell church! Pleasant whispers of there being a fresher air down the

river than down by the Docks, go pursuing one another, playfully, in and

out of the openings in its spire. Gigantic in the basin just beyond the

church, looms my Emigrant Ship: her name, the Amazon. Her figure-head is

not disfigured as those beauteous founders of the race of strong-minded

women are fabled to have been, for the convenience of drawing the bow;

but I sympathise with the carver:

A flattering carver who made it his care

To carve busts as they ought to be—not as they were.

My Emigrant Ship lies broadside-on to the wharf. Two great gangways made

of spars and planks connect her with the wharf; and up and down these

gangways, perpetually crowding to and fro and in and out, like ants, are

the Emigrants who are going to sail in my Emigrant Ship. Some with

cabbages, some with loaves of bread, some with cheese and butter, some

with milk and beer, some with boxes, beds, and bundles, some with

babies—nearly all with children—nearly all with bran-new tin cans for

their daily allowance of water, uncomfortably suggestive of a tin flavour

in the drink. To and fro, up and down, aboard and ashore, swarming here

and there and everywhere, my Emigrants. And still as the Dock-Gate

swings upon its hinges, cabs appear, and carts appear, and vans appear,

bringing more of my Emigrants, with more cabbages, more loaves, more

cheese and butter, more milk and beer, more boxes, beds, and bundles,

more tin cans, and on those shipping investments accumulated compound

interest of children.

I go aboard my Emigrant Ship. I go first to the great cabin, and find it

in the usual condition of a Cabin at that pass. Perspiring landsmen,

with loose papers, and with pens and inkstands, pervade it; and the

general appearance of things is as if the late Mr. Amazon’s funeral had

just come home from the cemetery, and the disconsolate Mrs. Amazon’s

trustees found the affairs in great disorder, and were looking high and

low for the will. I go out on the poop-deck, for air, and surveying the

emigrants on the deck below (indeed they are crowded all about me, up

there too), find more pens and inkstands in action, and more papers, and

interminable complication respecting accounts with individuals for tin

cans and what not. But nobody is in an ill-temper, nobody is the worse

for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears

depressed, nobody is weeping, and down upon the deck in every corner

where it is possible to find a few square feet to kneel, crouch, or lie

in, people, in every unsuitable attitude for writing, are writing

letters.

Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this day in June. And these

people are so strikingly different from all other people in like

circumstances whom I have ever seen, that I wonder aloud, ‘What _would_ a

stranger suppose these emigrants to be!’

The vigilant, bright face of the weather-browned captain of the Amazon is

at my shoulder, and he says, ‘What, indeed! The most of these came

aboard yesterday evening. They came from various parts of England in

small parties that had never seen one another before. Yet they had not

been a couple of hours on board, when they established their own police,

made their own regulations, and set their own watches at all the

hatchways. Before nine o’clock, the ship was as orderly and as quiet as

a man-of-war.’

I looked about me again, and saw the letter-writing going on with the

most curious composure. Perfectly abstracted in the midst of the crowd;

while great casks were swinging aloft, and being lowered into the hold;

while hot agents were hurrying up and down, adjusting the interminable

accounts; while two hundred strangers were searching everywhere for two

hundred other strangers, and were asking questions about them of two

hundred more; while the children played up and down all the steps, and in

and out among all the people’s legs, and were beheld, to the general

dismay, toppling over all the dangerous places; the letter-writers wrote

on calmly. On the starboard side of the ship, a grizzled man dictated a

long letter to another grizzled man in an immense fur cap: which letter

was of so profound a quality, that it became necessary for the amanuensis

at intervals to take off his fur cap in both his hands, for the

ventilation of his brain, and stare at him who dictated, as a man of many

mysteries who was worth looking at. On the lar-board side, a woman had

covered a belaying-pin with a white cloth to make a neat desk of it, and

was sitting on a little box, writing with the deliberation of a

bookkeeper. Down, upon her breast on the planks of the deck at this

woman’s feet, with her head diving in under a beam of the bulwarks on

that side, as an eligible place of refuge for her sheet of paper, a neat

and pretty girl wrote for a good hour (she fainted at last), only rising

to the surface occasionally for a dip of ink. Alongside the boat, close

to me on the poop-deck, another girl, a fresh, well-grown country girl,

was writing another letter on the bare deck. Later in the day, when this

self-same boat was filled with a choir who sang glees and catches for a

long time, one of the singers, a girl, sang her part mechanically all the

while, and wrote a letter in the bottom of the boat while doing so.

‘A stranger would be puzzled to guess the right name for these people,

Mr. Uncommercial,’ says the captain.

‘Indeed he would.’

‘If you hadn’t known, could you ever have supposed—?’

‘How could I! I should have said they were in their degree, the pick and

flower of England.’

‘So should I,’ says the captain.

‘How many are they?’

‘Eight hundred in round numbers.’

I went between-decks, where the families with children swarmed in the

dark, where unavoidable confusion had been caused by the last arrivals,

and where the confusion was increased by the little preparations for

dinner that were going on in each group. A few women here and there, had

got lost, and were laughing at it, and asking their way to their own

people, or out on deck again. A few of the poor children were crying;

but otherwise the universal cheerfulness was amazing. ‘We shall shake

down by to-morrow.’ ‘We shall come all right in a day or so.’ ‘We shall

have more light at sea.’ Such phrases I heard everywhere, as I groped my

way among chests and barrels and beams and unstowed cargo and ring-bolts

and Emigrants, down to the lower-deck, and thence up to the light of day

again, and to my former station.

Surely, an extraordinary people in their power of self-abstraction! All

the former letter-writers were still writing calmly, and many more

letter-writers had broken out in my absence. A boy with a bag of books

in his hand and a slate under his arm, emerged from below, concentrated

himself in my neighbourhood (espying a convenient skylight for his

purpose), and went to work at a sum as if he were stone deaf. A father

and mother and several young children, on the main deck below me, had

formed a family circle close to the foot of the crowded restless gangway,

where the children made a nest for themselves in a coil of rope, and the

father and mother, she suckling the youngest, discussed family affairs as

peaceably as if they were in perfect retirement. I think the most

noticeable characteristic in the eight hundred as a mass, was their

exemption from hurry.

Eight hundred what? ‘Geese, villain?’ EIGHT HUNDRED MORMONS. I,

Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human Interest Brothers, had come

aboard this Emigrant Ship to see what Eight hundred Latter-day Saints

were like, and I found them (to the rout and overthrow of all my

expectations) like what I now describe with scrupulous exactness.

The Mormon Agent who had been active in getting them together, and in

making the contract with my friends the owners of the ship to take them

as far as New York on their way to the Great Salt Lake, was pointed out

to me. A compactly-made handsome man in black, rather short, with rich

brown hair and beard, and clear bright eyes. From his speech, I should

set him down as American. Probably, a man who had ‘knocked about the

world’ pretty much. A man with a frank open manner, and unshrinking

look; withal a man of great quickness. I believe he was wholly ignorant

of my Uncommercial individuality, and consequently of my immense

Uncommercial importance.

UNCOMMERCIAL. These are a very fine set of people you have brought

together here.

MORMON AGENT. Yes, sir, they are a _very_ fine set of people.

UNCOMMERCIAL (looking about). Indeed, I think it would be difficult to

find Eight hundred people together anywhere else, and find so much beauty

and so much strength and capacity for work among them.

MORMON AGENT (not looking about, but looking steadily at Uncommercial).

I think so.—We sent out about a thousand more, yes’day, from Liverpool.

UNCOMMERCIAL. You are not going with these emigrants?

MORMON AGENT. No, sir. I remain.

UNCOMMERCIAL. But you have been in the Mormon Territory?

MORMON AGENT. Yes; I left Utah about three years ago.

UNCOMMERCIAL. It is surprising to me that these people are all so

cheery, and make so little of the immense distance before them.

MORMON AGENT. Well, you see; many of ’em have friends out at Utah, and

many of ’em look forward to meeting friends on the way.

UNCOMMERCIAL. On the way?

MORMON AGENT. This way ’tis. This ship lands ’em in New York City.

Then they go on by rail right away beyond St. Louis, to that part of the

Banks of the Missouri where they strike the Plains. There, waggons from

the settlement meet ’em to bear ’em company on their journey

’cross-twelve hundred miles about. Industrious people who come out to

the settlement soon get waggons of their own, and so the friends of some

of these will come down in their own waggons to meet ’em. They look

forward to that, greatly.

UNCOMMERCIAL. On their long journey across the Desert, do you arm them?

MORMON AGENT. Mostly you would find they have arms of some kind or

another already with them. Such as had not arms we should arm across the

Plains, for the general protection and defence.

UNCOMMERCIAL. Will these waggons bring down any produce to the Missouri?

MORMON AGENT. Well, since the war broke out, we’ve taken to growing

cotton, and they’ll likely bring down cotton to be exchanged for

machinery. We want machinery. Also we have taken to growing indigo,

which is a fine commodity for profit. It has been found that the climate

on the further side of the Great Salt Lake suits well for raising indigo.

UNCOMMERCIAL. I am told that these people now on board are principally

from the South of England?

MORMON AGENT. And from Wales. That’s true.

UNCOMMERCIAL. Do you get many Scotch?

MORMON AGENT. Not many.

UNCOMMERCIAL. Highlanders, for instance?

MORMON AGENT. No, not Highlanders. They ain’t interested enough in

universal brotherhood and peace and good will.

UNCOMMERCIAL. The old fighting blood is strong in them?

MORMON AGENT. Well, yes. And besides; they’ve no faith.

UNCOMMERCIAL (who has been burning to get at the Prophet Joe Smith, and

seems to discover an opening). Faith in—!

MORMON AGENT (far too many for Uncommercial). Well.—In anything!

Similarly on this same head, the Uncommercial underwent discomfiture from

a Wiltshire labourer: a simple, fresh-coloured farm-labourer, of

eight-and-thirty, who at one time stood beside him looking on at new

arrivals, and with whom he held this dialogue:

UNCOMMERCIAL. Would you mind my asking you what part of the country you

come from?

WILTSHIRE. Not a bit. Theer! (exultingly) I’ve worked all my life o’

Salisbury Plain, right under the shadder o’ Stonehenge. You mightn’t

think it, but I haive.

UNCOMMERCIAL. And a pleasant country too.

WILTSHIRE. Ah! ’Tis a pleasant country.

UNCOMMERCIAL. Have you any family on board?

WILTSHIRE. Two children, boy and gal. I am a widderer, _I_ am, and I’m

going out alonger my boy and gal. That’s my gal, and she’s a fine gal o’

sixteen (pointing out the girl who is writing by the boat). I’ll go and

fetch my boy. I’d like to show you my boy. (Here Wiltshire disappears,

and presently comes back with a big, shy boy of twelve, in a

superabundance of boots, who is not at all glad to be presented.) He is

a fine boy too, and a boy fur to work! (Boy having undutifully bolted,

Wiltshire drops him.)

UNCOMMERCIAL. It must cost you a great deal of money to go so far, three

strong.

WILTSHIRE. A power of money. Theer! Eight shillen a week, eight

shillen a week, eight shillen a week, put by out of the week’s wages for

ever so long.

UNCOMMERCIAL. I wonder how you did it.

WILTSHIRE (recognising in this a kindred spirit). See theer now! I

wonder how I done it! But what with a bit o’ subscription heer, and what

with a bit o’ help theer, it were done at last, though I don’t hardly

know how. Then it were unfort’net for us, you see, as we got kep’ in

Bristol so long—nigh a fortnight, it were—on accounts of a mistake wi’

Brother Halliday. Swaller’d up money, it did, when we might have come

straight on.

UNCOMMERCIAL (delicately approaching Joe Smith). You are of the Mormon

religion, of course?

WILTSHIRE (confidently). O yes, I’m a Mormon. (Then reflectively.) I’m

a Mormon. (Then, looking round the ship, feigns to descry a particular

friend in an empty spot, and evades the Uncommercial for evermore.)

After a noontide pause for dinner, during which my Emigrants were nearly

all between-decks, and the Amazon looked deserted, a general muster took

place. The muster was for the ceremony of passing the Government

Inspector and the Doctor. Those authorities held their temporary state

amidships, by a cask or two; and, knowing that the whole Eight hundred

emigrants must come face to face with them, I took my station behind the

two. They knew nothing whatever of me, I believe, and my testimony to

the unpretending gentleness and good nature with which they discharged

their duty, may be of the greater worth. There was not the slightest

flavour of the Circumlocution Office about their proceedings.

The emigrants were now all on deck. They were densely crowded aft, and

swarmed upon the poop-deck like bees. Two or three Mormon agents stood

ready to hand them on to the Inspector, and to hand them forward when

they had passed. By what successful means, a special aptitude for

organisation had been infused into these people, I am, of course, unable

to report. But I know that, even now, there was no disorder, hurry, or

difficulty.

All being ready, the first group are handed on. That member of the party

who is entrusted with the passenger-ticket for the whole, has been warned

by one of the agents to have it ready, and here it is in his hand. In

every instance through the whole eight hundred, without an exception,

this paper is always ready.

INSPECTOR (reading the ticket). Jessie Jobson, Sophronia Jobson, Jessie

Jobson again, Matilda Jobson, William Jobson, Jane Jobson, Matilda Jobson

again, Brigham Jobson, Leonardo Jobson, and Orson Jobson. Are you all

here? (glancing at the party, over his spectacles).

JESSIE JOBSON NUMBER TWO. All here, sir.

This group is composed of an old grandfather and grandmother, their

married son and his wife, and _their_ family of children. Orson Jobson

is a little child asleep in his mother’s arms. The Doctor, with a kind

word or so, lifts up the corner of the mother’s shawl, looks at the

child’s face, and touches the little clenched hand. If we were all as

well as Orson Jobson, doctoring would be a poor profession.

INSPECTOR. Quite right, Jessie Jobson. Take your ticket, Jessie, and

pass on.

And away they go. Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands them on.

Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands next party up.

INSPECTOR (reading ticket again). Susannah Cleverly and William

Cleverly. Brother and sister, eh?

SISTER (young woman of business, hustling slow brother). Yes, sir.

INSPECTOR. Very good, Susannah Cleverly. Take your ticket, Susannah,

and take care of it.

And away they go.

INSPECTOR (taking ticket again). Sampson Dibble and Dorothy Dibble

(surveying a very old couple over his spectacles, with some surprise).

Your husband quite blind, Mrs. Dibble?

MRS. DIBBLE. Yes, sir, he be stone-blind.

MR. DIBBLE (addressing the mast). Yes, sir, I be stone-blind.

INSPECTOR. That’s a bad job. Take your ticket, Mrs. Dibble, and don’t

lose it, and pass on.

Doctor taps Mr. Dibble on the eyebrow with his forefinger, and away they

go.

INSPECTOR (taking ticket again). Anastatia Weedle.

ANASTATIA (a pretty girl, in a bright Garibaldi, this morning elected by

universal suffrage the Beauty of the Ship). That is me, sir.

INSPECTOR. Going alone, Anastatia?

ANASTATIA (shaking her curls). I am with Mrs. Jobson, sir, but I’ve got

separated for the moment.

INSPECTOR. Oh! You are with the Jobsons? Quite right. That’ll do,

Miss Weedle. Don’t lose your ticket.

Away she goes, and joins the Jobsons who are waiting for her, and stoops

and kisses Brigham Jobson—who appears to be considered too young for the

purpose, by several Mormons rising twenty, who are looking on. Before

her extensive skirts have departed from the casks, a decent widow stands

there with four children, and so the roll goes.

The faces of some of the Welsh people, among whom there were many old

persons, were certainly the least intelligent. Some of these emigrants

would have bungled sorely, but for the directing hand that was always

ready. The intelligence here was unquestionably of a low order, and the

heads were of a poor type. Generally the case was the reverse. There

were many worn faces bearing traces of patient poverty and hard work, and

there was great steadiness of purpose and much undemonstrative

self-respect among this class. A few young men were going singly.

Several girls were going, two or three together. These latter I found it

very difficult to refer back, in my mind, to their relinquished homes and

pursuits. Perhaps they were more like country milliners, and pupil

teachers rather tawdrily dressed, than any other classes of young women.

I noticed, among many little ornaments worn, more than one

photograph-brooch of the Princess of Wales, and also of the late Prince

Consort. Some single women of from thirty to forty, whom one might

suppose to be embroiderers, or straw-bonnet-makers, were obviously going

out in quest of husbands, as finer ladies go to India. That they had any

distinct notions of a plurality of husbands or wives, I do not believe.

To suppose the family groups of whom the majority of emigrants were

composed, polygamically possessed, would be to suppose an absurdity,

manifest to any one who saw the fathers and mothers.

I should say (I had no means of ascertaining the fact) that most familiar

kinds of handicraft trades were represented here. Farm-labourers,

shepherds, and the like, had their full share of representation, but I

doubt if they preponderated. It was interesting to see how the leading

spirit in the family circle never failed to show itself, even in the

simple process of answering to the names as they were called, and

checking off the owners of the names. Sometimes it was the father, much

oftener the mother, sometimes a quick little girl second or third in

order of seniority. It seemed to occur for the first time to some heavy

fathers, what large families they had; and their eyes rolled about,

during the calling of the list, as if they half misdoubted some other

family to have been smuggled into their own. Among all the fine handsome

children, I observed but two with marks upon their necks that were

probably scrofulous. Out of the whole number of emigrants, but one old

woman was temporarily set aside by the doctor, on suspicion of fever; but

even she afterwards obtained a clean bill of health.

When all had ‘passed,’ and the afternoon began to wear on, a black box

became visible on deck, which box was in charge of certain personages

also in black, of whom only one had the conventional air of an itinerant

preacher. This box contained a supply of hymn-books, neatly printed and

got up, published at Liverpool, and also in London at the ‘Latter-Day

Saints’ Book Depôt, 30, Florence-street.’ Some copies were handsomely

bound; the plainer were the more in request, and many were bought. The

title ran: ‘Sacred Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Church of Jesus

Church of Latter-Day Saints.’ The Preface, dated Manchester, 1840, ran

thus:—‘The Saints in this country have been very desirous for a Hymn Book

adapted to their faith and worship, that they might sing the truth with

an understanding heart, and express their praise, joy, and gratitude in

songs adapted to the New and Everlasting Covenant. In accordance with

their wishes, we have selected the following volume, which we hope will

prove acceptable until a greater variety can be added. With sentiments

of high consideration and esteem, we subscribe ourselves your brethren in

the New and Everlasting Covenant, BRIGHAM YOUNG, PARLEY P. PRATT, JOHN

TAYLOR.’ From this book—by no means explanatory to myself of the New and

Everlasting Covenant, and not at all making my heart an understanding one

on the subject of that mystery—a hymn was sung, which did not attract any

great amount of attention, and was supported by a rather select circle.

But the choir in the boat was very popular and pleasant; and there was to

have been a Band, only the Cornet was late in coming on board. In the

course of the afternoon, a mother appeared from shore, in search of her

daughter, ‘who had run away with the Mormons.’ She received every

assistance from the Inspector, but her daughter was not found to be on

board. The saints did not seem to me, particularly interested in finding

her.

Towards five o’clock, the galley became full of tea-kettles, and an

agreeable fragrance of tea pervaded the ship. There was no scrambling or

jostling for the hot water, no ill humour, no quarrelling. As the Amazon

was to sail with the next tide, and as it would not be high water before

two o’clock in the morning, I left her with her tea in full action, and

her idle Steam Tug lying by, deputing steam and smoke for the time being

to the Tea-kettles.

I afterwards learned that a Despatch was sent home by the captain before

he struck out into the wide Atlantic, highly extolling the behaviour of

these Emigrants, and the perfect order and propriety of all their social

arrangements. What is in store for the poor people on the shores of the

Great Salt Lake, what happy delusions they are labouring under now, on

what miserable blindness their eyes may be opened then, I do not pretend

to say. But I went on board their ship to bear testimony against them if

they deserved it, as I fully believed they would; to my great

astonishment they did not deserve it; and my predispositions and

tendencies must not affect me as an honest witness. I went over the

Amazon’s side, feeling it impossible to deny that, so far, some

remarkable influence had produced a remarkable result, which better known

influences have often missed. {188}

XXIII

THE CITY OF THE ABSENT

WHEN I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and have earned the

right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from Covent-garden into the City

of London, after business-hours there, on a Saturday, or—better yet—on a

Sunday, and roam about its deserted nooks and corners. It is necessary

to the full enjoyment of these journeys that they should be made in

summer-time, for then the retired spots that I love to haunt, are at

their idlest and dullest. A gentle fall of rain is not objectionable,

and a warm mist sets off my favourite retreats to decided advantage.

Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place. Such strange

churchyards hide in the City of London; churchyards sometimes so entirely

detached from churches, always so pressed upon by houses; so small, so

rank, so silent, so forgotten, except by the few people who ever look

down into them from their smoky windows. As I stand peeping in through

the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off, like bark from

an old tree. The illegible tombstones are all lop-sided, the

grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago, the

Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a drysalter’s daughter and

several common-councilmen, has withered like those worthies, and its

departed leaves are dust beneath it. Contagion of slow ruin overhangs

the place. The discoloured tiled roofs of the environing buildings stand

so awry, that they can hardly be proof against any stress of weather.

Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to look down as they overhang,

dubiously calculating how far they will have to fall. In an angle of the

walls, what was once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots away,

encrusted with toadstools. Pipes and spouts for carrying off the rain

from the encompassing gables, broken or feloniously cut for old lead long

ago, now let the rain drip and splash as it list, upon the weedy earth.

Sometimes there is a rusty pump somewhere near, and, as I look in at the

rails and meditate, I hear it working under an unknown hand with a

creaking protest: as though the departed in the churchyard urged, ‘Let us

lie here in peace; don’t suck us up and drink us!’

One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard of Saint

Ghastly Grim; touching what men in general call it, I have no

information. It lies at the heart of the City, and the Blackwall Railway

shrieks at it daily. It is a small small churchyard, with a ferocious,

strong, spiked iron gate, like a jail. This gate is ornamented with

skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone; but it

likewise came into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim, that to stick iron

spikes a-top of the stone skulls, as though they were impaled, would be a

pleasant device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust

through and through with iron spears. Hence, there is attraction of

repulsion for me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and, having often contemplated it

in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a

thunderstorm at midnight. ‘Why not?’ I said, in self-excuse. ‘I have

been to see the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is it worse to go to

see Saint Ghastly Grim by the light of the lightning?’ I repaired to the

Saint in a hackney cab, and found the skulls most effective, having the

air of a public execution, and seeming, as the lightning flashed, to wink

and grin with the pain of the spikes. Having no other person to whom to

impart my satisfaction, I communicated it to the driver. So far from

being responsive, he surveyed me—he was naturally a bottled-nosed,

red-faced man—with a blanched countenance. And as he drove me back, he

ever and again glanced in over his shoulder through the little front

window of his carriage, as mistrusting that I was a fare originally from

a grave in the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim, who might have flitted

home again without paying.

Sometimes, the queer Hall of some queer Company gives upon a churchyard

such as this, and, when the Livery dine, you may hear them (if you are

looking in through the iron rails, which you never are when I am)

toasting their own Worshipful prosperity. Sometimes, a wholesale house

of business, requiring much room for stowage, will occupy one or two or

even all three sides of the enclosing space, and the backs of bales of

goods will lumber up the windows, as if they were holding some crowded

trade-meeting of themselves within. Sometimes, the commanding windows

are all blank, and show no more sign of life than the graves below—not so

much, for _they_ tell of what once upon a time was life undoubtedly.

Such was the surrounding of one City churchyard that I saw last summer,

on a Volunteering Saturday evening towards eight of the clock, when with

astonishment I beheld an old old man and an old old woman in it, making

hay. Yes, of all occupations in this world, making hay! It was a very

confined patch of churchyard lying between Gracechurch-street and the

Tower, capable of yielding, say an apronful of hay. By what means the

old old man and woman had got into it, with an almost toothless

hay-making rake, I could not fathom. No open window was within view; no

window at all was within view, sufficiently near the ground to have

enabled their old legs to descend from it; the rusty churchyard-gate was

locked, the mouldy church was locked. Gravely among the graves, they

made hay, all alone by themselves. They looked like Time and his wife.

There was but the one rake between them, and they both had hold of it in

a pastorally-loving manner, and there was hay on the old woman’s black

bonnet, as if the old man had recently been playful. The old man was

quite an obsolete old man, in knee-breeches and coarse grey stockings,

and the old woman wore mittens like unto his stockings in texture and in

colour. They took no heed of me as I looked on, unable to account for

them. The old woman was much too bright for a pew-opener, the old man

much too meek for a beadle. On an old tombstone in the foreground

between me and them, were two cherubim; but for those celestial

embellishments being represented as having no possible use for

knee-breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should have compared them with

the hay-makers, and sought a likeness. I coughed and awoke the echoes,

but the hay-makers never looked at me. They used the rake with a

measured action, drawing the scanty crop towards them; and so I was fain

to leave them under three yards and a half of darkening sky, gravely

making hay among the graves, all alone by themselves. Perhaps they were

Spectres, and I wanted a Medium.

In another City churchyard of similar cramped dimensions, I saw, that

selfsame summer, two comfortable charity children. They were making

love—tremendous proof of the vigour of that immortal article, for they

were in the graceful uniform under which English Charity delights to hide

herself—and they were overgrown, and their legs (his legs at least, for I

am modestly incompetent to speak of hers) were as much in the wrong as

mere passive weakness of character can render legs. O it was a leaden

churchyard, but no doubt a golden ground to those young persons! I first

saw them on a Saturday evening, and, perceiving from their occupation

that Saturday evening was their trysting-time, I returned that evening

se’nnight, and renewed the contemplation of them. They came there to

shake the bits of matting which were spread in the church aisles, and

they afterwards rolled them up, he rolling his end, she rolling hers,

until they met, and over the two once divided now united rolls—sweet

emblem!—gave and received a chaste salute. It was so refreshing to find

one of my faded churchyards blooming into flower thus, that I returned a

second time, and a third, and ultimately this befell:—They had left the

church door open, in their dusting and arranging. Walking in to look at

the church, I became aware, by the dim light, of him in the pulpit, of

her in the reading-desk, of him looking down, of her looking up,

exchanging tender discourse. Immediately both dived, and became as it

were non-existent on this sphere. With an assumption of innocence I

turned to leave the sacred edifice, when an obese form stood in the

portal, puffily demanding Joseph, or in default of Joseph, Celia. Taking

this monster by the sleeve, and luring him forth on pretence of showing

him whom he sought, I gave time for the emergence of Joseph and Celia,

who presently came towards us in the churchyard, bending under dusty

matting, a picture of thriving and unconscious industry. It would be

superfluous to hint that I have ever since deemed this the proudest

passage in my life.

But such instances, or any tokens of vitality, are rare indeed in my City

churchyards. A few sparrows occasionally try to raise a lively chirrup

in their solitary tree—perhaps, as taking a different view of worms from

that entertained by humanity—but they are flat and hoarse of voice, like

the clerk, the organ, the bell, the clergyman, and all the rest of the

Church-works when they are wound up for Sunday. Caged larks, thrushes,

or blackbirds, hanging in neighbouring courts, pour forth their strains

passionately, as scenting the tree, trying to break out, and see leaves

again before they die, but their song is Willow, Willow—of a churchyard

cast. So little light lives inside the churches of my churchyards, when

the two are co-existent, that it is often only by an accident and after

long acquaintance that I discover their having stained glass in some odd

window. The westering sun slants into the churchyard by some unwonted

entry, a few prismatic tears drop on an old tombstone, and a window that

I thought was only dirty, is for the moment all bejewelled. Then the

light passes and the colours die. Though even then, if there be room

enough for me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to the top of the

Church Tower, I see the rusty vane new burnished, and seeming to look out

with a joyful flash over the sea of smoke at the distant shore of

country.

Blinking old men who are let out of workhouses by the hour, have a

tendency to sit on bits of coping stone in these churchyards, leaning

with both hands on their sticks and asthmatically gasping. The more

depressed class of beggars too, bring hither broken meats, and munch. I

am on nodding terms with a meditative turncock who lingers in one of

them, and whom I suspect of a turn for poetry; the rather, as he looks

out of temper when he gives the fire-plug a disparaging wrench with that

large tuning-fork of his which would wear out the shoulder of his coat,

but for a precautionary piece of inlaid leather. Fire-ladders, which I

am satisfied nobody knows anything about, and the keys of which were lost

in ancient times, moulder away in the larger churchyards, under eaves

like wooden eyebrows; and so removed are those corners from the haunts of

men and boys, that once on a fifth of November I found a ‘Guy’ trusted to

take care of himself there, while his proprietors had gone to dinner. Of

the expression of his face I cannot report, because it was turned to the

wall; but his shrugged shoulders and his ten extended fingers, appeared

to denote that he had moralised in his little straw chair on the mystery

of mortality until he gave it up as a bad job.

You do not come upon these churchyards violently; there are shapes of

transition in the neighbourhood. An antiquated news shop, or barber’s

shop, apparently bereft of customers in the earlier days of George the

Third, would warn me to look out for one, if any discoveries in this

respect were left for me to make. A very quiet court, in combination

with an unaccountable dyer’s and scourer’s, would prepare me for a

churchyard. An exceedingly retiring public-house, with a bagatelle-board

shadily visible in a sawdusty parlour shaped like an omnibus, and with a

shelf of punch-bowls in the bar, would apprise me that I stood near

consecrated ground. A ‘Dairy,’ exhibiting in its modest window one very

little milk-can and three eggs, would suggest to me the certainty of

finding the poultry hard by, pecking at my forefathers. I first inferred

the vicinity of Saint Ghastly Grim, from a certain air of extra repose

and gloom pervading a vast stack of warehouses.

From the hush of these places, it is congenial to pass into the hushed

resorts of business. Down the lanes I like to see the carts and waggons

huddled together in repose, the cranes idle, and the warehouses shut.

Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard-street,

it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the broad counters

with a rim along the edge, made for telling money out on, the scales for

weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the

bright copper shovels for shovelling gold. When I draw money, it never

seems so much money as when it is shovelled at me out of a bright copper

shovel. I like to say, ‘In gold,’ and to see seven pounds musically

pouring out of the shovel, like seventy; the Bank appearing to remark to

me—I italicise _appearing_—‘if you want more of this yellow earth, we

keep it in barrows at your service.’ To think of the banker’s clerk with

his deft finger turning the crisp edges of the Hundred-Pound Notes he has

taken in a fat roll out of a drawer, is again to hear the rustling of

that delicious south-cash wind. ‘How will you have it?’ I once heard

this usual question asked at a Bank Counter of an elderly female, habited

in mourning and steeped in simplicity, who answered, open-eyed,

crook-fingered, laughing with expectation, ‘Anyhow!’ Calling these

things to mind as I stroll among the Banks, I wonder whether the other

solitary Sunday man I pass, has designs upon the Banks. For the interest

and mystery of the matter, I almost hope he may have, and that his

confederate may be at this moment taking impressions of the keys of the

iron closets in wax, and that a delightful robbery may be in course of

transaction. About College-hill, Mark-lane, and so on towards the Tower,

and Dockward, the deserted wine-merchants’ cellars are fine subjects for

consideration; but the deserted money-cellars of the Bankers, and their

plate-cellars, and their jewel-cellars, what subterranean regions of the

Wonderful Lamp are these! And again: possibly some shoeless boy in rags,

passed through this street yesterday, for whom it is reserved to be a

Banker in the fulness of time, and to be surpassing rich. Such reverses

have been, since the days of Whittington; and were, long before. I want

to know whether the boy has any foreglittering of that glittering fortune

now, when he treads these stones, hungry. Much as I also want to know

whether the next man to be hanged at Newgate yonder, had any suspicion

upon him that he was moving steadily towards that fate, when he talked so

much about the last man who paid the same great debt at the same small

Debtors’ Door.

Where are all the people who on busy working-days pervade these scenes?

The locomotive banker’s clerk, who carries a black portfolio chained to

him by a chain of steel, where is he? Does he go to bed with his chain

on—to church with his chain on—or does he lay it by? And if he lays it

by, what becomes of his portfolio when he is unchained for a holiday?

The wastepaper baskets of these closed counting-houses would let me into

many hints of business matters if I had the exploration of them; and what

secrets of the heart should I discover on the ‘pads’ of the young

clerks—the sheets of cartridge-paper and blotting-paper interposed

between their writing and their desks! Pads are taken into confidence on

the tenderest occasions, and oftentimes when I have made a business

visit, and have sent in my name from the outer office, have I had it

forced on my discursive notice that the officiating young gentleman has

over and over again inscribed AMELIA, in ink of various dates, on corners

of his pad. Indeed, the pad may be regarded as the legitimate modern

successor of the old forest-tree: whereon these young knights (having no

attainable forest nearer than Epping) engrave the names of their

mistresses. After all, it is a more satisfactory process than carving,

and can be oftener repeated. So these courts in their Sunday rest are

courts of Love Omnipotent (I rejoice to bethink myself), dry as they

look. And here is Garraway’s, bolted and shuttered hard and fast! It is

possible to imagine the man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back in a

hayfield; it is possible to imagine his desk, like the desk of a clerk at

church, without him; but imagination is unable to pursue the men who wait

at Garraway’s all the week for the men who never come. When they are

forcibly put out of Garraway’s on Saturday night—which they must be, for

they never would go out of their own accord—where do they vanish until

Monday morning? On the first Sunday that I ever strayed here, I expected

to find them hovering about these lanes, like restless ghosts, and trying

to peep into Garraway’s through chinks in the shutters, if not

endeavouring to turn the lock of the door with false keys, picks, and

screw-drivers. But the wonder is, that they go clean away! And now I

think of it, the wonder is, that every working-day pervader of these

scenes goes clean away. The man who sells the dogs’ collars and the

little toy coal-scuttles, feels under as great an obligation to go afar

off, as Glyn and Co., or Smith, Payne, and Smith. There is an old

monastery-crypt under Garraway’s (I have been in it among the port wine),

and perhaps Garraway’s, taking pity on the mouldy men who wait in its

public-room all their lives, gives them cool house-room down there over

Sundays; but the catacombs of Paris would not be large enough to hold the

rest of the missing. This characteristic of London City greatly helps

its being the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of business, and

greatly helps my Sunday sensation in it of being the Last Man. In my

solitude, the ticket-porters being all gone with the rest, I venture to

breathe to the quiet bricks and stones my confidential wonderment why a

ticket-porter, who never does any work with his hands, is bound to wear a

white apron, and why a great Ecclesiastical Dignitary, who never does any

work with his hands either, is equally bound to wear a black one.

XXIV

AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE

BEFORE the waitress had shut the door, I had forgotten how many

stage-coaches she said used to change horses in the town every day. But

it was of little moment; any high number would do as well as another. It

had been a great stage-coaching town in the great stage-coaching times,

and the ruthless railways had killed and buried it.

The sign of the house was the Dolphin’s Head. Why only head, I don’t

know; for the Dolphin’s effigy at full length, and upside down—as a

Dolphin is always bound to be when artistically treated, though I suppose

he is sometimes right side upward in his natural condition—graced the

sign-board. The sign-board chafed its rusty hooks outside the bow-window

of my room, and was a shabby work. No visitor could have denied that the

Dolphin was dying by inches, but he showed no bright colours. He had

once served another master; there was a newer streak of paint below him,

displaying with inconsistent freshness the legend, By J. MELLOWS.

My door opened again, and J. Mellows’s representative came back. I had

asked her what I could have for dinner, and she now returned with the

counter question, what would I like? As the Dolphin stood possessed of

nothing that I do like, I was fain to yield to the suggestion of a duck,

which I don’t like. J. Mellows’s representative was a mournful young

woman with eye susceptible of guidance, and one uncontrollable eye; which

latter, seeming to wander in quest of stage-coaches, deepened the

melancholy in which the Dolphin was steeped.

This young woman had but shut the door on retiring again when I bethought

me of adding to my order, the words, ‘with nice vegetables.’ Looking out

at the door to give them emphatic utterance, I found her already in a

state of pensive catalepsy in the deserted gallery, picking her teeth

with a pin.

At the Railway Station seven miles off, I had been the subject of wonder

when I ordered a fly in which to come here. And when I gave the

direction ‘To the Dolphin’s Head,’ I had observed an ominous stare on the

countenance of the strong young man in velveteen, who was the platform

servant of the Company. He had also called to my driver at parting, ‘All

ri-ight! Don’t hang yourself when you get there, Geo-o-rge!’ in a

sarcastic tone, for which I had entertained some transitory thoughts of

reporting him to the General Manager.

I had no business in the town—I never have any business in any town—but I

had been caught by the fancy that I would come and look at it in its

degeneracy. My purpose was fitly inaugurated by the Dolphin’s Head,

which everywhere expressed past coachfulness and present coachlessness.

Coloured prints of coaches, starting, arriving, changing horses, coaches

in the sunshine, coaches in the snow, coaches in the wind, coaches in the

mist and rain, coaches on the King’s birthday, coaches in all

circumstances compatible with their triumph and victory, but never in the

act of breaking down or overturning, pervaded the house. Of these works

of art, some, framed and not glazed, had holes in them; the varnish of

others had become so brown and cracked, that they looked like overdone

pie-crust; the designs of others were almost obliterated by the flies of

many summers. Broken glasses, damaged frames, lop-sided hanging, and

consignment of incurable cripples to places of refuge in dark corners,

attested the desolation of the rest. The old room on the ground floor

where the passengers of the Highflyer used to dine, had nothing in it but

a wretched show of twigs and flower-pots in the broad window to hide the

nakedness of the land, and in a corner little Mellows’s perambulator,

with even its parasol-head turned despondently to the wall. The other

room, where post-horse company used to wait while relays were getting

ready down the yard, still held its ground, but was as airless as I

conceive a hearse to be: insomuch that Mr. Pitt, hanging high against the

partition (with spots on him like port wine, though it is mysterious how

port wine ever got squirted up there), had good reason for perking his

nose and sniffing. The stopperless cruets on the spindle-shanked

sideboard were in a miserably dejected state: the anchovy sauce having

turned blue some years ago, and the cayenne pepper (with a scoop in it

like a small model of a wooden leg) having turned solid. The old

fraudulent candles which were always being paid for and never used, were

burnt out at last; but their tall stilts of candlesticks still lingered,

and still outraged the human intellect by pretending to be silver. The

mouldy old unreformed Borough Member, with his right hand buttoned up in

the breast of his coat, and his back characteristically turned on bales

of petitions from his constituents, was there too; and the poker which

never had been among the fire-irons, lest post-horse company should

overstir the fire, was _not_ there, as of old.

Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin’s Head, I found it sorely shrunken.

When J. Mellows came into possession, he had walled off half the bar,

which was now a tobacco-shop with its own entrance in the yard—the once

glorious yard where the postboys, whip in hand and always buttoning their

waistcoats at the last moment, used to come running forth to mount and

away. A ‘Scientific Shoeing—Smith and Veterinary Surgeon,’ had further

encroached upon the yard; and a grimly satirical jobber, who announced

himself as having to Let ‘A neat one-horse fly, and a one-horse cart,’

had established his business, himself, and his family, in a part of the

extensive stables. Another part was lopped clean off from the Dolphin’s

Head, and now comprised a chapel, a wheelwright’s, and a Young Men’s

Mutual Improvement and Discussion Society (in a loft): the whole forming

a back lane. No audacious hand had plucked down the vane from the

central cupola of the stables, but it had grown rusty and stuck at N-Nil:

while the score or two of pigeons that remained true to their ancestral

traditions and the place, had collected in a row on the roof-ridge of the

only outhouse retained by the Dolphin, where all the inside pigeons tried

to push the outside pigeon off. This I accepted as emblematical of the

struggle for post and place in railway times.

Sauntering forth into the town, by way of the covered and pillared

entrance to the Dolphin’s Yard, once redolent of soup and stable-litter,

now redolent of musty disuse, I paced the street. It was a hot day, and

the little sun-blinds of the shops were all drawn down, and the more

enterprising tradesmen had caused their ’Prentices to trickle water on

the pavement appertaining to their frontage. It looked as if they had

been shedding tears for the stage-coaches, and drying their ineffectual

pocket-handkerchiefs. Such weakness would have been excusable; for

business was—as one dejected porkman who kept a shop which refused to

reciprocate the compliment by keeping him, informed me—‘bitter bad.’

Most of the harness-makers and corn-dealers were gone the way of the

coaches, but it was a pleasant recognition of the eternal procession of

Children down that old original steep Incline, the Valley of the Shadow,

that those tradesmen were mostly succeeded by vendors of sweetmeats and

cheap toys. The opposition house to the Dolphin, once famous as the New

White Hart, had long collapsed. In a fit of abject depression, it had

cast whitewash on its windows, and boarded up its front door, and reduced

itself to a side entrance; but even that had proved a world too wide for

the Literary Institution which had been its last phase; for the

Institution had collapsed too, and of the ambitious letters of its

inscription on the White Hart’s front, all had fallen off but these:

L Y INS T

—suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent. As to the neighbouring

market-place, it seemed to have wholly relinquished marketing, to the

dealer in crockery whose pots and pans straggled half across it, and to

the Cheap Jack who sat with folded arms on the shafts of his cart,

superciliously gazing around; his velveteen waistcoat, evidently

harbouring grave doubts whether it was worth his while to stay a night in

such a place.

The church bells began to ring as I left this spot, but they by no means

improved the case, for they said, in a petulant way, and speaking with

some difficulty in their irritation, WHAT’S-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES!’

Nor would they (I found on listening) ever vary their emphasis, save in

respect of growing more sharp and vexed, but invariably went on,

‘WHAT’S-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES!’—always beginning the inquiry with an

unpolite abruptness. Perhaps from their elevation they saw the railway,

and it aggravated them.

Coming upon a coachmaker’s workshop, I began to look about me with a

revived spirit, thinking that perchance I might behold there some remains

of the old times of the town’s greatness. There was only one man at

work—a dry man, grizzled, and far advanced in years, but tall and

upright, who, becoming aware of me looking on, straightened his back,

pushed up his spectacles against his brown-paper cap, and appeared

inclined to defy me. To whom I pacifically said:

‘Good day, sir!’

‘What?’ said he.

‘Good day, sir.’

He seemed to consider about that, and not to agree with me.—‘Was you a

looking for anything?’ he then asked, in a pointed manner.

‘I was wondering whether there happened to be any fragment of an old

stage-coach here.’

‘Is that all?’

‘That’s all.’

‘No, there ain’t.’

It was now my turn to say ‘Oh!’ and I said it. Not another word did the

dry and grizzled man say, but bent to his work again. In the

coach-making days, the coach-painters had tried their brushes on a post

beside him; and quite a Calendar of departed glories was to be read upon

it, in blue and yellow and red and green, some inches thick. Presently

he looked up again.

‘You seem to have a deal of time on your hands,’ was his querulous

remark.

I admitted the fact.

‘I think it’s a pity you was not brought up to something,’ said he.

I said I thought so too.

Appearing to be informed with an idea, he laid down his plane (for it was

a plane he was at work with), pushed up his spectacles again, and came to

the door.

‘Would a po-shay do for you?’ he asked.

‘I am not sure that I understand what you mean.’

‘Would a po-shay,’ said the coachmaker, standing close before me, and

folding his arms in the manner of a cross-examining counsel—‘would a

po-shay meet the views you have expressed? Yes, or no?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you keep straight along down there till you see one. _You’ll_ see

one if you go fur enough.’

With that, he turned me by the shoulder in the direction I was to take,

and went in and resumed his work against a background of leaves and

grapes. For, although he was a soured man and a discontented, his

workshop was that agreeable mixture of town and country, street and

garden, which is often to be seen in a small English town.

I went the way he had turned me, and I came to the Beer-shop with the

sign of The First and Last, and was out of the town on the old London

road. I came to the Turnpike, and I found it, in its silent way,

eloquent respecting the change that had fallen on the road. The

Turnpike-house was all overgrown with ivy; and the Turnpike-keeper,

unable to get a living out of the tolls, plied the trade of a cobbler.

Not only that, but his wife sold ginger-beer, and, in the very window of

espial through which the Toll-takers of old times used with awe to behold

the grand London coaches coming on at a gallop, exhibited for sale little

barber’s-poles of sweetstuff in a sticky lantern.

The political economy of the master of the turnpike thus expressed

itself.

‘How goes turnpike business, master?’ said I to him, as he sat in his

little porch, repairing a shoe.

‘It don’t go at all, master,’ said he to me. ‘It’s stopped.’

‘That’s bad,’ said I.

‘Bad?’ he repeated. And he pointed to one of his sunburnt dusty children

who was climbing the turnpike-gate, and said, extending his open right

hand in remonstrance with Universal Nature. ‘Five on ’em!’

‘But how to improve Turnpike business?’ said I.

‘There’s a way, master,’ said he, with the air of one who had thought

deeply on the subject.

‘I should like to know it.’

‘Lay a toll on everything as comes through; lay a toll on walkers. Lay

another toll on everything as don’t come through; lay a toll on them as

stops at home.’

‘Would the last remedy be fair?’

‘Fair? Them as stops at home, could come through if they liked; couldn’t

they?’

‘Say they could.’

‘Toll ’em. If they don’t come through, it’s _their_ look out.

Anyways,—Toll ’em!’

Finding it was as impossible to argue with this financial genius as if he

had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and consequently the right man in

the right place, I passed on meekly.

My mind now began to misgive me that the disappointed coach-maker had

sent me on a wild-goose errand, and that there was no post-chaise in

those parts. But coming within view of certain allotment-gardens by the

roadside, I retracted the suspicion, and confessed that I had done him an

injustice. For, there I saw, surely, the poorest superannuated

post-chaise left on earth.

It was a post-chaise taken off its axletree and wheels, and plumped down

on the clayey soil among a ragged growth of vegetables. It was a

post-chaise not even set straight upon the ground, but tilted over, as if

it had fallen out of a balloon. It was a post-chaise that had been a

long time in those decayed circumstances, and against which scarlet beans

were trained. It was a post-chaise patched and mended with old

tea-trays, or with scraps of iron that looked like them, and boarded up

as to the windows, but having A KNOCKER on the off-side door. Whether it

was a post-chaise used as tool-house, summer-house, or dwelling-house, I

could not discover, for there was nobody at home at the post-chaise when

I knocked, but it was certainly used for something, and locked up. In

the wonder of this discovery, I walked round and round the post-chaise

many times, and sat down by the post-chaise, waiting for further

elucidation. None came. At last, I made my way back to the old London

road by the further end of the allotment-gardens, and consequently at a

point beyond that from which I had diverged. I had to scramble through a

hedge and down a steep bank, and I nearly came down a-top of a little

spare man who sat breaking stones by the roadside.

He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding me mysteriously through his

dark goggles of wire:

‘Are you aware, sir, that you’ve been trespassing?’

‘I turned out of the way,’ said I, in explanation, ‘to look at that odd

post-chaise. Do you happen to know anything about it?’

‘I know it was many a year upon the road,’ said he.

‘So I supposed. Do you know to whom it belongs?’

The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles over his heap of stones, as

if he were considering whether he should answer the question or not.

Then, raising his barred eyes to my features as before, he said:

‘To me.’

Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received it with a sufficiently

awkward ‘Indeed! Dear me!’ Presently I added, ‘Do you—’ I was going to

say ‘live there,’ but it seemed so absurd a question, that I substituted

‘live near here?’

The stone-breaker, who had not broken a fragment since we began to

converse, then did as follows. He raised himself by poising his finger

on his hammer, and took his coat, on which he had been seated, over his

arm. He then backed to an easier part of the bank than that by which I

had come down, keeping his dark goggles silently upon me all the time,

and then shouldered his hammer, suddenly turned, ascended, and was gone.

His face was so small, and his goggles were so large, that he left me

wholly uninformed as to his countenance; but he left me a profound

impression that the curved legs I had seen from behind as he vanished,

were the legs of an old postboy. It was not until then that I noticed he

had been working by a grass-grown milestone, which looked like a

tombstone erected over the grave of the London road.

My dinner-hour being close at hand, I had no leisure to pursue the

goggles or the subject then, but made my way back to the Dolphin’s Head.

In the gateway I found J. Mellows, looking at nothing, and apparently

experiencing that it failed to raise his spirits.

‘_I_ don’t care for the town,’ said J. Mellows, when I complimented him

on the sanitary advantages it may or may not possess; ‘I wish I had never

seen the town!’

‘You don’t belong to it, Mr. Mellows?’

‘Belong to it!’ repeated Mellows. ‘If I didn’t belong to a better style

of town than this, I’d take and drown myself in a pail.’ It then

occurred to me that Mellows, having so little to do, was habitually

thrown back on his internal resources—by which I mean the Dolphin’s

cellar.

‘What we want,’ said Mellows, pulling off his hat, and making as if he

emptied it of the last load of Disgust that had exuded from his brain,

before he put it on again for another load; ‘what we want, is a Branch.

The Petition for the Branch Bill is in the coffee-room. Would you put

your name to it? Every little helps.’

I found the document in question stretched out flat on the coffee-room

table by the aid of certain weights from the kitchen, and I gave it the

additional weight of my uncommercial signature. To the best of my

belief, I bound myself to the modest statement that universal traffic,

happiness, prosperity, and civilisation, together with unbounded national

triumph in competition with the foreigner, would infallibly flow from the

Branch.

Having achieved this constitutional feat, I asked Mr. Mellows if he could

grace my dinner with a pint of good wine? Mr. Mellows thus replied.

‘If I couldn’t give you a pint of good wine, I’d—there!—I’d take and

drown myself in a pail. But I was deceived when I bought this business,

and the stock was higgledy-piggledy, and I haven’t yet tasted my way

quite through it with a view to sorting it. Therefore, if you order one

kind and get another, change till it comes right. For what,’ said

Mellows, unloading his hat as before, ‘what would you or any gentleman

do, if you ordered one kind of wine and was required to drink another?

Why, you’d (and naturally and properly, having the feelings of a

gentleman), you’d take and drown yourself in a pail!’

XXV

THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND

THE shabbiness of our English capital, as compared with Paris, Bordeaux,

Frankfort, Milan, Geneva—almost any important town on the continent of

Europe—I find very striking after an absence of any duration in foreign

parts. London is shabby in contrast with Edinburgh, with Aberdeen, with

Exeter, with Liverpool, with a bright little town like Bury St. Edmunds.

London is shabby in contrast with New York, with Boston, with

Philadelphia. In detail, one would say it can rarely fail to be a

disappointing piece of shabbiness, to a stranger from any of those

places. There is nothing shabbier than Drury-lane, in Rome itself. The

meanness of Regent-street, set against the great line of Boulevards in

Paris, is as striking as the abortive ugliness of Trafalgar-square, set

against the gallant beauty of the Place de la Concorde. London is shabby

by daylight, and shabbier by gaslight. No Englishman knows what gaslight

is, until he sees the Rue de Rivoli and the Palais Royal after dark.

The mass of London people are shabby. The absence of distinctive dress

has, no doubt, something to do with it. The porters of the Vintners’

Company, the draymen, and the butchers, are about the only people who

wear distinctive dresses; and even these do not wear them on holidays.

We have nothing which for cheapness, cleanliness, convenience, or

picturesqueness, can compare with the belted blouse. As to our

women;—next Easter or Whitsuntide, look at the bonnets at the British

Museum or the National Gallery, and think of the pretty white French cap,

the Spanish mantilla, or the Genoese mezzero.

Probably there are not more second-hand clothes sold in London than in

Paris, and yet the mass of the London population have a second-hand look

which is not to be detected on the mass of the Parisian population. I

think this is mainly because a Parisian workman does not in the least

trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian idler, but dresses in

the way of his own class, and for his own comfort. In London, on the

contrary, the fashions descend; and you never fully know how inconvenient

or ridiculous a fashion is, until you see it in its last descent. It was

but the other day, on a race-course, that I observed four people in a

barouche deriving great entertainment from the contemplation of four

people on foot. The four people on foot were two young men and two young

women; the four people in the barouche were two young men and two young

women. The four young women were dressed in exactly the same style; the

four young men were dressed in exactly the same style. Yet the two

couples on wheels were as much amused by the two couples on foot, as if

they were quite unconscious of having themselves set those fashions, or

of being at that very moment engaged in the display of them.

Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion descends here in

London—and consequently in England—and thence shabbiness arises? Let us

think a little, and be just. The ‘Black Country’ round about Birmingham,

is a very black country; but is it quite as black as it has been lately

painted? An appalling accident happened at the People’s Park near

Birmingham, this last July, when it was crowded with people from the

Black Country—an appalling accident consequent on a shamefully dangerous

exhibition. Did the shamefully dangerous exhibition originate in the

moral blackness of the Black Country, and in the Black People’s peculiar

love of the excitement attendant on great personal hazard, which they

looked on at, but in which they did not participate? Light is much

wanted in the Black Country. O we are all agreed on that. But, we must

not quite forget the crowds of gentlefolks who set the shamefully

dangerous fashion, either. We must not quite forget the enterprising

Directors of an Institution vaunting mighty educational pretences, who

made the low sensation as strong as they possibly could make it, by

hanging the Blondin rope as high as they possibly could hang it. All

this must not be eclipsed in the Blackness of the Black Country. The

reserved seats high up by the rope, the cleared space below it, so that

no one should be smashed but the performer, the pretence of slipping and

falling off, the baskets for the feet and the sack for the head, the

photographs everywhere, and the virtuous indignation nowhere—all this

must not be wholly swallowed up in the blackness of the jet-black

country.

Whatsoever fashion is set in England, is certain to descend. This is a

text for a perpetual sermon on care in setting fashions. When you find a

fashion low down, look back for the time (it will never be far off) when

it was the fashion high up. This is the text for a perpetual sermon on

social justice. From imitations of Ethiopian Serenaders, to imitations

of Prince’s coats and waistcoats, you will find the original model in St.

James’s Parish. When the Serenaders become tiresome, trace them beyond

the Black Country; when the coats and waistcoats become insupportable,

refer them to their source in the Upper Toady Regions.

Gentlemen’s clubs were once maintained for purposes of savage party

warfare; working men’s clubs of the same day assumed the same character.

Gentlemen’s clubs became places of quiet inoffensive recreation; working

men’s clubs began to follow suit. If working men have seemed rather slow

to appreciate advantages of combination which have saved the pockets of

gentlemen, and enhanced their comforts, it is because working men could

scarcely, for want of capital, originate such combinations without help;

and because help has not been separable from that great impertinence,

Patronage. The instinctive revolt of his spirit against patronage, is a

quality much to be respected in the English working man. It is the base

of the base of his best qualities. Nor is it surprising that he should

be unduly suspicious of patronage, and sometimes resentful of it even

where it is not, seeing what a flood of washy talk has been let loose on

his devoted head, or with what complacent condescension the same devoted

head has been smoothed and patted. It is a proof to me of his

self-control that he never strikes out pugilistically, right and left,

when addressed as one of ‘My friends,’ or ‘My assembled friends;’ that he

does not become inappeasable, and run amuck like a Malay, whenever he

sees a biped in broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to him; that any

pretence of improving his mind, does not instantly drive him out of his

mind, and cause him to toss his obliging patron like a mad bull.

For, how often have I heard the unfortunate working man lectured, as if

he were a little charity-child, humid as to his nasal development,

strictly literal as to his Catechism, and called by Providence to walk

all his days in a station in life represented on festive occasions by a

mug of warm milk-and-water and a bun! What popguns of jokes have these

ears tingled to hear let off at him, what asinine sentiments, what

impotent conclusions, what spelling-book moralities, what adaptations of

the orator’s insufferable tediousness to the assumed level of his

understanding! If his sledge-hammers, his spades and pick-axes, his saws

and chisels, his paint-pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces, and

engines, the horses that he drove at his work, and the machines that

drove him at his work, were all toys in one little paper box, and he the

baby who played with them, he could not have been discoursed to, more

impertinently and absurdly than I have heard him discoursed to times

innumerable. Consequently, not being a fool or a fawner, he has come to

acknowledge his patronage by virtually saying: ‘Let me alone. If you

understand me no better than _that_, sir and madam, let me alone. You

mean very well, I dare say, but I don’t like it, and I won’t come here

again to have any more of it.’

Whatever is done for the comfort and advancement of the working man must

be so far done by himself as that it is maintained by himself. And there

must be in it no touch of condescension, no shadow of patronage. In the

great working districts, this truth is studied and understood. When the

American civil war rendered it necessary, first in Glasgow, and

afterwards in Manchester, that the working people should be shown how to

avail themselves of the advantages derivable from system, and from the

combination of numbers, in the purchase and the cooking of their food,

this truth was above all things borne in mind. The quick consequence

was, that suspicion and reluctance were vanquished, and that the effort

resulted in an astonishing and a complete success.

Such thoughts passed through my mind on a July morning of this summer, as

I walked towards Commercial Street (not Uncommercial Street),

Whitechapel. The Glasgow and Manchester system had been lately set

a-going there, by certain gentlemen who felt an interest in its

diffusion, and I had been attracted by the following hand-bill printed on

rose-coloured paper:

SELF-SUPPORTING

COOKING DEPÔT

FOR THE WORKING CLASSES

Commercial-street, Whitechapel,

Where Accommodation is provided for Dining comfortably

300 Persons at a time.

Open from 7 A.M. till 7 P.M.

PRICES.

All Articles of the BEST QUALITY.

Cup of Tea or Coffee One Penny

Bread and Butter One Penny

Bread and Cheese One Penny

Slice of bread One half-penny or One Penny

Boiled Egg One Penny

Ginger Beer One Penny

The above Articles always ready.

Besides the above may be had, from 12 to 3

o’clock,

Bowl of Scotch Broth One Penny

Bowl of Soup One Penny

Plate of Potatoes One Penny

Plate of Minced Beef Twopence

Plate of Cold Beef Twopence

Plate of Cold Ham Twopence

Plate of Plum Pudding or Rice One Penny

As the Economy of Cooking depends greatly upon the simplicity of the

arrangements with which a great number of persons can be served at one

time, the Upper Room of this Establishment will be especially set apart

for a

PUBLIC DINNER EVERY DAY

From 12 till 3 o’clock,

_Consisting of the following Dishes_:

Bowl of Broth, or Soup,

Plate of Cold Beef or Ham,

Plate of Potatoes,

Plum Pudding, or Rice.

FIXED CHARGE 4½_d._

THE DAILY PAPERS PROVIDED.

N.B.—This Establishment is conducted on the strictest business

principles, with the full intention of making it self-supporting, so that

every one may frequent it with a feeling of perfect independence.

The assistance of all frequenting the Depôt is confidently expected in

checking anything interfering with the comfort, quiet, and regularity of

the establishment.

Please do not destroy this Hand Bill, but hand it to some other person

whom it may interest.

* * * * *

The Self-Supporting Cooking Depôt (not a very good name, and one would

rather give it an English one) had hired a newly-built warehouse that it

found to let; therefore it was not established in premises specially

designed for the purpose. But, at a small cost they were exceedingly

well adapted to the purpose: being light, well ventilated, clean, and

cheerful. They consisted of three large rooms. That on the basement

story was the kitchen; that on the ground floor was the general

dining-room; that on the floor above was the Upper Room referred to in

the hand-bill, where the Public Dinner at fourpence-halfpenny a head was

provided every day. The cooking was done, with much economy of space and

fuel, by American cooking-stoves, and by young women not previously,

brought up as cooks; the walls and pillars of the two dining-rooms were

agreeably brightened with ornamental colours; the tables were capable of

accommodating six or eight persons each; the attendants were all young

women, becomingly and neatly dressed, and dressed alike. I think the

whole staff was female, with the exception of the steward or manager.

My first inquiries were directed to the wages of this staff; because, if

any establishment claiming to be self-supporting, live upon the

spoliation of anybody or anything, or eke out a feeble existence by poor

mouths and beggarly resources (as too many so-called Mechanics’

Institutions do), I make bold to express my Uncommercial opinion that it

has no business to live, and had better die. It was made clear to me by

the account books, that every person employed was properly paid. My next

inquiries were directed to the quality of the provisions purchased, and

to the terms on which they were bought. It was made equally clear to me

that the quality was the very best, and that all bills were paid weekly.

My next inquiries were directed to the balance-sheet for the last two

weeks—only the third and fourth of the establishment’s career. It was

made equally clear to me, that after everything bought was paid for, and

after each week was charged with its full share of wages, rent and taxes,

depreciation of plant in use, and interest on capital at the rate of four

per cent. per annum, the last week had yielded a profit of (in round

numbers) one pound ten; and the previous week a profit of six pounds ten.

By this time I felt that I had a healthy appetite for the dinners.

It had just struck twelve, and a quick succession of faces had already

begun to appear at a little window in the wall of the partitioned space

where I sat looking over the books. Within this little window, like a

pay-box at a theatre, a neat and brisk young woman presided to take money

and issue tickets. Every one coming in must take a ticket. Either the

fourpence-halfpenny ticket for the upper room (the most popular ticket, I

think), or a penny ticket for a bowl of soup, or as many penny tickets as

he or she choose to buy. For three penny tickets one had quite a wide

range of choice. A plate of cold boiled beef and potatoes; or a plate of

cold ham and potatoes; or a plate of hot minced beef and potatoes; or a

bowl of soup, bread and cheese, and a plate of plum-pudding. Touching

what they should have, some customers on taking their seats fell into a

reverie—became mildly distracted—postponed decision, and said in

bewilderment, they would think of it. One old man I noticed when I sat

among the tables in the lower room, who was startled by the bill of fare,

and sat contemplating it as if it were something of a ghostly nature.

The decision of the boys was as rapid as their execution, and always

included pudding.

There were several women among the diners, and several clerks and

shopmen. There were carpenters and painters from the neighbouring

buildings under repair, and there were nautical men, and there were, as

one diner observed to me, ‘some of most sorts.’ Some were solitary, some

came two together, some dined in parties of three or four, or six. The

latter talked together, but assuredly no one was louder than at my club

in Pall-Mall. One young fellow whistled in rather a shrill manner while

he waited for his dinner, but I was gratified to observe that he did so

in evident defiance of my Uncommercial individuality. Quite agreeing

with him, on consideration, that I had no business to be there, unless I

dined like the rest, ‘I went in,’ as the phrase is, for

fourpence-halfpenny.

The room of the fourpence-halfpenny banquet had, like the lower room, a

counter in it, on which were ranged a great number of cold portions ready

for distribution. Behind this counter, the fragrant soup was steaming in

deep cans, and the best-cooked of potatoes were fished out of similar

receptacles. Nothing to eat was touched with his hand. Every waitress

had her own tables to attend to. As soon as she saw a new customer seat

himself at one of her tables, she took from the counter all his

dinner—his soup, potatoes, meat, and pudding—piled it up dexterously in

her two hands, set it before him, and took his ticket. This serving of

the whole dinner at once, had been found greatly to simplify the business

of attendance, and was also popular with the customers: who were thus

enabled to vary the meal by varying the routine of dishes: beginning with

soup-to-day, putting soup in the middle to-morrow, putting soup at the

end the day after to-morrow, and ringing similar changes on meat and

pudding. The rapidity with which every new-comer got served, was

remarkable; and the dexterity with which the waitresses (quite new to the

art a month before) discharged their duty, was as agreeable to see, as

the neat smartness with which they wore their dress and had dressed their

hair.

If I seldom saw better waiting, so I certainly never ate better meat,

potatoes, or pudding. And the soup was an honest and stout soup, with

rice and barley in it, and ‘little matters for the teeth to touch,’ as

had been observed to me by my friend below stairs already quoted. The

dinner-service, too, was neither conspicuously hideous for High Art nor

for Low Art, but was of a pleasant and pure appearance. Concerning the

viands and their cookery, one last remark. I dined at my club in

Pall-Mall aforesaid, a few days afterwards, for exactly twelve times the

money, and not half as well.

The company thickened after one o’clock struck, and changed pretty

quickly. Although experience of the place had been so recently

attainable, and although there was still considerable curiosity out in

the street and about the entrance, the general tone was as good as could

be, and the customers fell easily into the ways of the place. It was

clear to me, however, that they were there to have what they paid for,

and to be on an independent footing. To the best of my judgment, they

might be patronised out of the building in a month. With judicious

visiting, and by dint of being questioned, read to, and talked at, they

might even be got rid of (for the next quarter of a century) in half the

time.