SUNDAY AT THE EAST END.
Sunday morning in and about the Whitechapel and Mile End roads Angela
discovered to be a time of peculiar interest. The closing of the shops
adds to the dignity of the broad thoroughfares, because it hides so many
disagreeable and even humiliating things. But it by no means puts a stop
to traffic, which is conducted with an ostentatious disregard of the
Fourth Commandment or Christian custom. At one end, the city end, is
Houndsditch, crowded with men who come to buy and sell; and while the
bells of St. Botolph call upon the faithful with a clanging and clashing
which ring like a cry of despair, the footpath is filled with the busy
loungers, who have long since ceased to regard the invitation as having
anything at all to do with them.
Strange and wonderful result of the gathering of men in great cities! It
is not a French, or an English, or a German, or an American result--it
is universal. In every great city of the world, below a certain level,
there is no religion--men have grown dead to their higher instincts;
they no longer feel the possibilities of humanity; faith brings to them
no more the evidence of things unseen. They are crowded together, so
that they have ceased to feel their individuality. The crowd is
eternal--they are part of that eternity; if one drops out, he is not
missed; nobody considers that it will be his own turn some day so to
drop out. Life is nothing for ever and ever, but work in the week with
as much beer and tobacco as the money will run to, and loafing on
Sundays with more beer and tobacco. This, my friends, is a truly
astonishing thing, and a thing unknown until this century. Perhaps,
however, in ancient Rome the people had ceased to believe in their gods;
perhaps, in Babylon, the sacred bricks were kicked about by the
unthinking mob; perhaps, in every great city, the same loss of
individual manhood may be found.
It was on a Sunday morning in August that Angela took a little journey
of exploration, accompanied by the young workman who was her companion
in these excursions. He led her into Houndsditch and the Minories, where
she had the pleasure of inspecting the great mercantile interest of old
clothes, and of gazing upon such as buy and sell therein. Then she
turned her face northward, and entered upon a journey which twenty years
ago would have been full of peril, and is now, to one who loves his
fellow-man, full of interest.
The great boulevard of the East was thronged with the class of men who
keep the Sabbath in holy laziness with tobacco. Some of them lounge,
some talk, some listen, all have pipes in their mouths. Here was a
circle gathered round a man who was waving his arms and shouting. He was
an Apostle of Temperance; behind him stood a few of his private friends
to act as a _claque_. The listeners seemed amused but not convinced.
"They will probably," said Harry, "enjoy their dinner beer quite as much
as if they had not heard this sermon." Another circle was gathered round
a man in a cart, who had a flaming red flag to support him. He belonged,
the flag told the world, to the Tower Hamlets Magna Charta Association.
What he said was listened to with the same languid curiosity and tepid
amusement. Angela stopped a moment to hear what he had to say. He was
detailing, with immense energy, the particulars of some awful act of
injustice committed upon a friend unknown, who got six months. The law
of England is always trampling upon some innocent victim, according to
this sympathizer with virtue. The working-men have heard it all before,
and they continue to smoke their pipes, their blood not quickened by a
single beat. The ear of the people is accustomed to vehemence; the case
must be put strongly before it will listen at all; and listening, as
most brawlers discover, is not conviction.
Next to the Magna Charta brethren a cheap-jack had placed his cart. He
drove a roaring trade in two-penn'orths, which, out of compliment to a
day which should be devoted to good works, consisted each of a bottle of
sarsaparilla, which he called "sassaple," and a box of pills. Next to
him the costers stood beside their carts loaded with cheap ices,
ginger-beer, and lemonade--to show that there was no deception, a great
glass jar stood upon each cart with actual undeniable slices of lemon
floating in water and a lump of ice upon the top; there were also piles
of plums, plums without end, early August apples, and windfall pears;
also sweet things in foot-long lumps sticky and gruesome to look upon;
Brazil nuts, also a favorite article of commerce in certain circles,
though not often met with at the tables of the luxurious; late oranges,
more plums, many more plums, plums in enormous quantities; and
periwinkles, which last all the year round, with whelks and vinegar, and
the toothsome shrimp. Then there came another circle, and in the midst
stood a young man with long fair hair and large blue eyes. He was
preaching the Gospel, as he understood it; his face was the face of an
enthusiast: a little solitude, a little meditation among the mountains,
would have made this man a seer of visions and a dreamer of dreams. He
was not ridiculous, though his grammar was defective and his
pronunciation had the cockney twang and his aspirates were wanting:
nothing is ridiculous that is in earnest. On the right of the street
they had passed the headquarters of the Salvation Army; the brave
warriors were now in full blast, and the fighting, "knee-drill,"
singing, and storming of the enemy's fort were at their highest and most
enjoyable point; Angela looked in and found an immense hall crammed with
people who came to fight, or look on, to scoff, or gaze. Higher up, on
the left, stands a rival in red-hot religion, the Hall of the Jubilee
Singers, where another vast crowd was worshipping, exhorting, and
singing.
"There seems," said Angela, "to be too much exhorting; can they not sit
down somewhere in quiet for praise and prayer?"
"We working-people," replied her companion, "like everything loud and
strong. If we are persuaded to take a side, we want to be always
fighting on that side."
Streams of people passed them, lounging or walking with a steady
purpose. The former were the indifferent and the callous, the hardened
and the stupid, men to whom preachers and orators appealed in vain; to
whom Peter the Hermit might have bawled himself hoarse, and Bernard
would have thrown all his eloquence away; they smoked short pipes, with
their hands in their pockets, and looked good-tempered; with them were
boys, also smoking short pipes, with their hands in their pockets. Those
who walked were young men dressed in long frock-coats of a shiny and
lustrous black, who carried Bibles and prayer-books with some
ostentation. They were on their way to church; with them were their
sisters, for the most part well-dressed, quiet girls, to whom the noise
and the crowds were a part of life--a thing not to be avoided, hardly
felt as a trouble.
"I am always getting a new sensation," said Angela.
"What is the last?"
"I have just realized that there are thousands and thousands of people
who never, all their lives, get to a place where they can be quiet.
Always noise, always crowds, always buying and selling."
"Here, at least," said Harry, "there is no noise."
They were at the wicket-gate of the Trinity Almshouse.
"What do you think, Miss Kennedy?"
"It is a haven of rest," she replied, thinking of a certain picture.
"Let us, too, seek peace awhile."
It was just eleven o'clock, and the beadsmen were going to their chapel.
They entered the square, and joined the old men in their weekly service.
Angela discovered, to her disappointment, that the splendid flight of
steps leading to the magnificent portal was a dummy, because the real
entrance to the chapel was a lowly door beneath the stone steps, suited,
Mr. Bunker would have said, to the humble condition of the moneyless.
It is a plain chapel, with a small organ in the corner, a tiny altar,
and over the altar the ten commandments in a black wood frame--rules of
life for those whose life is well-nigh done--and a pulpit, which serves
for reading the service as well as delivering the sermon. The
congregation consisted of about thirty of the almsmen, with about half
as many old ladies; and Angela wondered why these old ladies were all
dressed in black, and all wore crape. Perhaps they desired by the use of
this material to symbolize mourning for the loss of opportunities for
making money; or for the days of beauty and courtship, or for children
dead and gone, or to mark the humility which becomes an inmate, or to do
honor to the day which is still revered by many Englishwomen as a day of
humiliation and rebuke, or in the belief that crape confers dignity. We
know not, we know nothing; the love which women bear for crape is a
mystery; man can but speculate idly on their ways. We are like the
philosopher picking up pebbles by the seaside. Among the old people sat
Nelly Sorensen, a flower of youth and loveliness, in her simple black
dress, and her light hair breaking out beneath her bonnet. The Catholics
believe that no church is complete without a bone of some dead saint or
beatified person. Angela made up her mind, on the spot, that no act of
public worship is complete without the assistance of youth as well as of
age.
The men were all dressed alike in blue coats and brass buttons, the
uniform of the place; they seemed all, with the exception of one who was
battered by time, and was fain to sit while the rest stood, to be of the
same age, and that might be anything between a hearty sixty-five and a
vigorous eighty. After the manner of sailors, they were all exact in the
performance of their share in public worship, following the prayers in
the book and the lessons in the Bible. When the time came for listening
they straightened themselves out, in an attitude comfortable for
listening. The Scotch elder assumes, during the sermon, the air of a
hostile critic; the face of the British rustic becomes vacant; the eyes
of the ordinary listener in church show that his thoughts are far away;
but the expression of a sailor's face, while he is performing the
duty--part of the day's duty--of listening to the sermon, shows
respectful attention, although he may have heard it all before.
Angela did not listen much to the sermon: she was thinking of the old
men for whom that sermon was prepared. There was a fresh color upon
their faces, as if it was not so very long since their cheeks had been
fanned by the strong sea-breeze; their eyes were clear, they possessed
the bearing which comes of the habit of command, and they carried
themselves as if they were not ashamed of their poverty. Now Bunker,
Angela reflected, would have been very much ashamed, and would have
hung his head in shame. But then Bunker was one of the nimble-footed
hunters after money, while these ignoble persons had contented
themselves with the simple and slavish record of duty done.
The service over, they were joined by Captain Sorensen and his daughter,
and for half an hour walked in the quiet court behind the church, in
peaceful converse. Angela walked with the old man, and Nelly with the
young man. It matters little what they talked about, but it was
something good, because when the Captain went home to his dinner he
kissed his daughter, and said it seemed to him that it was the best
day's work he ever did when he let her go to Miss Kennedy.
In the evening Angela made another journey of exploration with the same
escort. They passed down Stepney Green, and plunged among the labyrinth
of streets lying between the Mile End Road and the Thames. It is as
unlovely a collection of houses as may be found anywhere, always
excepting Hoxton, which may fairly be considered the Queen of
Unloveliness. The houses in this part are small, and they are almost all
of one pattern. There is no green thing to be seen; no one plants trees,
there seem to be no gardens; no flowers are in the windows; there is no
brightness of paint or of clean windows; there is nothing of joy,
nothing to gladden the eye.
"Think," said Harry, almost in a whisper, as if in homage to the Powers
of Dirt and Dreariness, "think what this people could be made if we
could only carry out your scheme of the Palace of Delight."
"We could make them discontented, at least," said Angela. "Discontent
must come before reform."
"We should leave them to reform themselves," said Harry. "The mistake of
philanthropists is to think that they can do for people what can only be
done by the people. As you said this morning, there is too much
exhorting."
Presently they struck out of a street rather more dreary than its
neighbors, and found themselves in a broad road with a great church.
"This is Limehouse Church," said Harry. "All round you are sailors.
There is East India Dock Road. Here is West India Dock Road. There is
the Foreign Sailors' Home; and we will go no farther, if you please,
because the streets are all full, you perceive, of the foreign sailors
and the English sailors and the sailors' friends."
Angela had seen enough of the sailors. They turned back. Harry led her
through another labyrinth into another broad street, also crowded with
sailors.
"This is Shadwell," said her guide; "and if there is anything in
Shadwell to interest you, I do not know what it is. Survey Shadwell!"
Angela looked up the street and down the street; there was nothing for
the eye in search of the beautiful or the picturesque to rest upon. But
a great bawling of rough voices came from a great tent stuck up, oddly,
beside the road. A white canvas sheet with black letters proclaimed this
as the place of worship of the "Happy Gypsies." They were holding their
Sunday Function.
"More exhorting!" said Angela.
"Now, this," he said, as they walked along, "is a more interesting
place. It used to be called Ratcliffe Highway, and had the reputation of
being the wickedest place in London. I dare say it was all brag, and
that really it was not much worse than its neighbors."
It is a distinctly squalid street, that now called St.
George's-in-the-East. But it has its points; it is picturesque, like a
good many dirty places; the people are good-tempered, though they do not
wash their faces even on Sundays. They have quite left off knocking
down, picking pockets, kicking, and robbing the harmless stranger; they
are advancing slowly toward civilization.
"Come this way," said Harry.
He passed through a narrow passage, and led the way into a place at the
sight of which Angela was fain to cry out in surprise.
In it was nothing less than a fair and gracious garden planted with
flowers, and these in the soft August sunshine showed sweet and lovely.
The beds were well kept; the walks were of asphalt; there were seats set
about, and on them old women and old men sat basking in the evening sun.
The young men and maidens walked along the paths--an Arcadian scene.
"This little strip of Eden," said Harry, "was cut out of the old
church-yard."
The rest of the church-yard was divided from the garden by a railing,
and round the wall were the tombstones of the departed obscure. From the
church itself was heard the rolling of the organ and the soft singing of
a hymn.
"This," said Angela, "is better than exhortation. A garden for
meditation and the church for prayer. I like this place better than the
Whitechapel Road."
"I will show you a more quiet place still," said her guide. They walked
a little way farther down the main street; then he turned into a narrow
street on the north, and Angela found herself in a square of clean
houses round an inclosure of grass. Within the inclosure was a chapel,
and tombs were dotted on the grass.
They went into the chapel, a plain edifice of the Georgian kind with
round windows, and the evening sun shone through the window in the west.
The high pews were occupied by a congregation of forty or fifty, all
men. They all had light-brown hair, and as they turned round to look at
the new-comers, Angela saw that they all had blue eyes. The preacher,
who wore a black gown and bands, was similarly provided as to hair and
eyes. He preached in a foreign tongue, and as it is difficult to be
edified by a sermon not in one's native speech, they shortly went out
again. They were followed by the verger, who seemed not indisposed to
break the monotony of the service by a few minutes' walk.
He talked English imperfectly, but he told them that it was the church
of the Swedes. Angela asked if they were all sailors. He said, with some
seeming contempt for sailors, that only a few of them were sailors. She
then said that she supposed they were people engaged in trade. He shook
his head again, and informed her with a mysterious air that many of the
Swedish nobility lived in that neighborhood. After this they came away,
for fear of greater surprises.
They followed St. George's-in-the-East to the end of the street. Then
they turned to the right, and passed through a straight and quite
ignoble road leading north. It is a street greatly affected by Germans.
German names are over every shop and on every brass plate. They come
hither, these honest Germans, because to get good work in London is
better than going after it to New York or Philadelphia, and nearer home.
In the second generation their names will be Anglicized, and their
children will have become rich London merchants, and very likely Cabinet
ministers. They have their churches, too, the Reformed and the Lutheran,
with nothing to choose between them on the score of ugliness.
"Let us get home," said Angela; "I have seen enough."
"It is the joylessness of the life," she explained, "the ignorant,
contented joylessness, which weighs upon one. And there is so much of
it. Surely there is no other city in the world which is so utterly
without joy as this East London."
"No," said Harry, "there is not in the whole world a city so devoid of
pleasant things. They do not know how to be happy. They are like your
work-girls when you told them to dance."
"Look!" she cried, "what is that?"
There was a hoarse roar of many voices from a court leading out of the
main road; the roar became louder; Harry drew the girl aside as a mob of
men and boys and women rushed headlong out of the place. It was not a
fight apparently, yet there was beating with sticks and kicking. For
those who were beaten did not strike back in return. After a little the
beaters and kickers desisted, and returned to their court as to a
stronghold whose rights they had vindicated.
Those who had been beaten were a band of about a dozen, men and women.
The women's shawls were hanging in tatters, and they had lost their
bonnets. The men were without hats, and their coats were grievously
torn. There was a thing among them which had been a banner, but the pole
was broken and the flag was dragged in the dirt and smirched.
One of them who, seemed to be the leader--he wore a uniform coat
something like a volunteer's coat--stepped to the front and called upon
them all to form. Then with a loud voice he led off a hymn, in which all
joined as they marched down the street.
He was hatless, and his cheek was bleeding from an open wound. Yet he
looked undaunted, and his hymn was a song of triumph. A wild-set-up
young fellow with thick black hair and black beard, but pale cheeks. His
forehead was square and firm; his eyes were black and fierce.
"Good heavens!" cried Harry. "It is my cousin Tom, captain in the
Salvation Army. And that, I suppose, is his regiment. Well, if standing
still to be kicked means a victory, they have scored one to-night."
The pavement was even more crowded than in the morning. The political
agitators bawled more fiercely than in the forenoon to their circle of
apathetic listeners; the preachers exhorted the unwilling more fervently
to embrace the faith. Cheap-jacks was dispensing more volubly his two
penn'orths of "sassaple." The workmen lounged along, with their pipes in
their mouths, more lazily than in the morning. The only difference was
that the shop-boys were now added to the crowd, every lad with a
"twopenny smoke" between his lips; and that the throng was increased by
those who were going home from church.
"Let us, too, go home," said Angela; "there is too much humanity here;
we shall lose ourselves among the crowd."