Down at Dartford in Kent, on a fine bright day, I strolled through the
pleasant green lanes, on my way to a Paper-Mill. Accustomed, mainly, to
associate Dartford with Gunpowder Mills, and formidable tin canisters,
illustrated in copper-plate, with the outpourings of a generous
cornucopia of dead game, I found it pleasant to think, on a summer
morning when all living creatures were enjoying life, that it was only
paper in my mind—not powder.
If sturdy Wat Tyler, of this very town of Dartford in Kent (Deptford had
the honour of him once, but that was a mistake) could only have
anticipated and reversed the precept of the pious Orange-Lodges; if he
could only have put his trust in Providence, and kept his paper damp—for
printing—he need never have marched to London, the captain of a hundred
thousand men, and summarily beheaded the archbishop of Canterbury as a
bad adviser of the young king, Richard. Then, would William Walworth,
Lord Mayor of London (and an obsequious courtier enough, may be) never
have struck him from his charger, unawares. Then, might the “general
enfranchisement of all bondmen”—the bold smith’s demand—have come, a
long time sooner than it did. Then, might working-men have maintained
the decency and honour of their daughters, through many a hazy score of
troubled and oppressive years, when they were yet as the clods of the
valley, broken by the ploughshare, worried by the harrow. But, in those
days, paper and printing for the people were not; so, Wat lay low in
Smithfield, and Heaven knows what became of his daughter, and the old
ferocious wheel went driving round, some centuries longer.
The wild flowers were blowing in these Dartford hedges, all those many
summertimes; the larks were singing, high in air; the trees were
rustling as they rustle to-day; the bees went humming by; the light
clouds cast their shadows on the verdant fields. The pleasant little
river Darent ran the same course; sparkled in the same sun; had, then as
now, its tiny circles made by insects; and its plumps and plashes, made
by fish. But, the river has changed, since Wat the Blacksmith, bending
over with his bucket, saw his grimy face, impatient of unjust and
grievous tribute, making remonstrance with him for his long endurance.
Now, there are indeed books in the running brooks—for they go to feed
the Paper-Mill.
Time was, in the old Saxon days, when there stood a Mill here, “held in
ferm by a Reve,” but _that_ was not a Paper-Mill. Then, came a Nunnery,
with kings’ fair daughters in it; then, a Palace; then, Queen Elizabeth,
in her sixteenth year, to sojourn at the Palace two days; then, in that
reign, a Paper-Mill. In the church yonder, hidden behind the trees, with
many rooks discoursing in their lofty houses between me and it, is the
tomb of Sir John Spielman, jeweller to the Queen when she had grown to
be a dame of a shrewd temper, aged fifty or so: who “built a Paper-Mill
for the making of writing-paper,” and to whom his Royal Mistress was
pleased to grant a license “for the sole gathering for ten years of all
rags, &c., necessary for the making of such paper.” There is a legend
that the same Sir John, in coming here from Germany, to build his Mill,
did bring with him two young lime-trees—then unknown in England—which he
set before his Dartford dwelling-house, and which did flourish
exceedingly; so, that they fanned him with their shadows, when he lay
asleep in the upper story, an ancient gentleman. Now, God rest the soul
of Sir John Spielman, for the love of all the sweet-smelling lime-trees
that have ever greeted me in the land, and all the writing-paper I have
ever blotted!
But, as I turn down by the hawthorn hedge into the valley, a sound
comes in my ears—like the murmuring and throbbing of a mighty giant,
labouring hard—that would have unbraced all the Saxon bows, and shaken
all the heads off Temple Bar and London Bridge, ever lifted to those
heights from the always butchering, always craving, never
sufficiently-to-be-regretted, brave old English Block. It is the noise
of the Steam Engine. And now, before me, white and clean without, and
radiant in the sun, with the sweet clear river tumbling merrily down
to kiss it, and help in the work it does, is the Paper-Mill I have
come to see!
It is like the Mill of the child’s story, that ground old people young.
Paper! White, pure, spick and span new paper, with that fresh smell
which takes us back to school and school-books; can it ever come from
rags like these? Is it from such bales of dusty rags, native and
foreign, of every colour and of every kind, as now environ us, shutting
out the summer air and putting cotton into our summer ears, that virgin
paper, to be written on, and printed on, proceeds? We shall see
presently. Enough to consider, at present, what a grave of dress this
rag-store is; what a lesson of vanity it preaches. The coarse blouse of
the Flemish labourer, and the fine cambric of the Parisian lady, the
court dress of the Austrian jailer, and the miserable garb of the
Italian peasant; the woollen petticoat of the Bavarian girl, the linen
head-dress of the Neapolitan woman, the priest’s vestment, the player’s
robe, the Cardinal’s hat, and the ploughman’s nightcap; all dwindle down
to this, and bring their littleness or greatness in fractional portions
here. As it is with the worn, it shall be with the wearers; but there
shall be no dust in our eyes then, though there is plenty now. Not all
the great ones of the earth will raise a grain of it, and nothing but
the Truth will be.
My conductor leads the way into another room. I am to go, as the rags
go, regularly and systematically through the Mill. I am to suppose
myself a bale of rags. I _am_ rags.
Here, in another room, are some three-score women at little tables, each
with an awful scythe-shaped knife standing erect upon it, and looking
like the veritable tooth of time. I am distributed among these women,
and worried into smaller shreds—torn cross-wise at the knives. Already I
begin to lose something of my grosser nature. The room is filled with my
finest dust, and, as gratings of me drop from the knives, they fall
through the perforated surface of the tables into receptacles beneath.
When I am small enough, I am bundled up, carried away in baskets, and
stowed in immense bins, until they want me in the Boiling-Room.
The Boiling-Room has enormous cauldrons in it, each with its own big
lid, hanging to the beams of the roof, and put on by machinery when it
is full. It is a very clean place, “coddled” by much boiling, like a
washer-woman’s fingers, and looks as if the kitchen of the Parish Union
had gone into partnership with the Church Belfry. Here, I am pressed,
and squeezed, and jammed, a dozen feet deep, I should think, into my own
particular cauldron; where I simmer, boil, and stew, a long, long time.
Then, I am a dense, tight mass, cut out in pieces like so much clay—very
clean—faint as to my colour—greatly purified—and gradually becoming
quite ethereal.
In this improved condition, I am taken to the Cutting-Room. I am very
grateful to the clear fresh water, for the good it has done me; and I am
glad to be put into some more of it, and subjected to the action of
large rollers filled with transverse knives, revolving by steam power
upon iron beds, which favour me with no fewer than two million cuts per
minute, though, within the memory of man, the functions of this machine
were performed by an ordinary pestle and mortar. Such a drumming and
rattling, such a battering and clattering, such a delight in cutting and
slashing, not even the Austrian part of me ever witnessed before. This
continues, to my great satisfaction, until I look like shaving lather;
when I am run off into chambers underneath, to have my friend the water,
from whom I am unwilling to be separated, drained out of me.
At this time, my colour is a light blue, if I have indigo in me, or a
pale fawn, if I am rags from which the dyes have been expelled. As it is
necessary to bleach the fawn-coloured pulp (the blue being used for
paper of that tint), and as I _am_ fawn-coloured pulp, I am placed in
certain stone chambers, like catacombs, hermetically sealed, excepting
the first compartment, which communicates with a gasometer containing
manganese, vitriol, and salt. From these ingredients, a strong gas (not
agreeable, I must say, to the sense of smell) is generated, and forced
through all the chambers, each of which communicates with the other.
These continue closed, if I remember right, some four-and-twenty hours,
when a man opens them and takes to his heels immediately, to avoid the
offensive gas that rushes out. After I have been aired a little, I am
again conveyed (quite white now, and very spiritual indeed) to some more
obliging rollers upstairs.
At it these grinders go, “Munch, munch, munch!” like the sailor’s wife
in MACBETH, who had chesnuts in her lap. I look, at first, as if I were
the most delicious curds and whey; presently, I find that I am changed
to gruel—not thin oatmeal gruel, but rich, creamy, tempting, exalted
gruel! As if I had been made from pearls, which some voluptuous Mr.
Emden had converted into groats!
And now, I am ready to undergo my last astounding transformation, and be
made into paper by the machine. Oh what can I say of the wonderful
machine, which receives me, at one end of a long room, gruel, and
dismisses me at the other, paper!
Where is the subtle mind of this Leviathan lodged? It must be
somewhere—in a cylinder, a pipe, a wheel—or how could it ever do with me
the miracles it does! How could it receive me on a sheet of wire-gauze,
in my gruel-form, and slide me on, gradually assuming consistency—gently
becoming a little paper-like, a little more, a little more still, very
paper-like, indeed—clinging to wet blankets, holding tight by other
surfaces, smoothly ascending Witney hills, lightly coming down into a
woolly open country, easily rolling over and under a planetary system of
heated cylinders, large and small, and ever growing, as I proceed,
stronger and more paper-like! How does the power that fights the wintry
waves on the Atlantic, and cuts and drills adamantine slabs of metal
like cheese, how does it draw me out, when I am frailest and most liable
to tear, so tenderly and delicately, that a woman’s hand—no, even though
I were a man, very ill and helpless, and she may nurse who loved
me—could never touch me with so light a touch, or with a movement so
unerring! How can I believe, even on experience, that, being of itself
insensible, and only informed with intellect at second hand, it changes
me, in less time than I take to tell it, into any sort of paper that is
wanted, dries me, cuts me into lengths, becomes charged, just before
dismissing me, with electricity, and gathers up the hair of the
attendant-watcher, as if with horror at the mischiefs and desertions
from the right, in which I may be instrumental! Above all, how can I
reconcile its being mere machinery, with its leaving off when it has cut
me into sheets, and NOT conveying me to the Exciseman in the next room,
whom it plainly thinks a most unnatural conclusion!
I am carried thither on trucks. I am examined, and my defective portions
thrown out, for the Mill, again; I am made up into quires and reams; I
am weighed and excised by the hundredweight; and I am ready for my work.
Of my being made the subject of nonsensical defences of Excise duty, in
the House of Commons, I need say nothing. All the world knows that when
the Right Honourable the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the time
being, says I am only the worse by a duty of fifteen shillings per
hundredweight, he is a Wrong Honourable, and either don’t know, or don’t
care, anything about me. For, he leaves out of consideration all the
vexatious, depressing, and preventing influences of Excise Duty on any
trade, and all the extra cost and charge of packing and unpacking,
carrying and re-carrying, imposed upon the manufacturer, and of course
upon the public. But we must have it, in future, even with Right
Honourables as with birds. The Chancellor of the Exchequer that can
sing, and won’t sing, must be made to sing—small.
My metempsychosis ends with the manufacture. I am rags no more, but a
visitor to the Paper-Mill. I am a pleased visitor to see the Mill in
such beautiful order, and the workpeople so thriving; and I think that
my good friend the owner has reason for saying with an agreeable smile,
as we come out upon the sparkling stream again, that he is never so
contented, as when he is in rags.
Shining up in the blue sky, far above the Paper-Mill, a mere speck in
the distance, is a Paper Kite. It is an appropriate thing at the
moment—not to swear by (we have enough of that already) but to hope by,
with a devout heart. May all the Paper that I sport with, soar as
innocently upward as the paper kite, and be as harmless to the holder as
the kite is to the boy! May it bring, to some few minds, such fresh
associations; and to me no worse remembrances than the kite that once
plucked at my own hand like an airy friend. May I always recollect that
paper has a mighty Duty, set forth in no Schedule of Excise, and that
its names are love, forbearance, mercy, progress, scorn of the Hydra
Cant with all its million heads!
So, back by the green lanes, and the old Priory—a farm now, and none the
worse for that—and away among the lime-trees, thinking of Sir John.