The Adventures of Nebulus and Nubis.
The suitors of the Princess Cirrha, who returned to Nimbus, were a-foot
quite early the next morning, and petitioned their good-natured Prince
to waft them over London. They had agreed among themselves, that by
descending there, where men were densely congregated, they should have a
greater chance of doing service to the human race. Therefore the
Rain-Cloud floated over the great City of the World, and, as it passed
at sundry points, the suitors came down upon rain-drops to perform their
destined labour. Where each might happen to alight depended almost
wholly upon accident; so that their adventures were but little better
than a lottery for Cirrha’s hand. One, who had been the most
magniloquent among them all, fell with his pride upon the patched
umbrella of an early-breakfast woman, and from thence was shaken off
into a puddle. He was splashed up presently, mingled with soil, upon the
corduroys of a labourer, who stopped for breakfast on his way to work.
From thence, evaporating, he returned crest-fallen to the Land of
Clouds.
Among the suitors there were two kind-hearted fairies, Nebulus and
Nubis, closely bound by friendship to each other. While they were in
conversation, Nebulus, who suddenly observed that they were passing over
some unhappy region, dropped, with a hope that he might bless it. Nubis
passed on, and presently alighted on the surface of the Thames.
The district which had wounded the kind heart of Nebulus was in a part
of Bermondsey, called Jacob’s Island. The fairy fell into a ditch; out
of this, however, he was taken by a woman, who carried him to her own
home, among other ditch-water, within a pail. Nebulus abandoned himself
to complete despair, for what claim could he now establish on the hand
of Cirrha? The miserable plight of the poor fairy we may gather from a
description given by a son of man of the sad place to which he had
descended. “In this Island may be seen, at any time of the day, women
dipping water, with pails attached by ropes to the backs of the houses,
from a foul fetid ditch, its banks coated with a compound of mud and
filth, and strewed with offal and carrion; the water to be used for
every purpose, culinary ones not excepted; although close to the place
whence it is drawn, filth and refuse of various kinds are plentifully
showered into it from the outhouses of the wooden houses overhanging its
current, or rather slow and sluggish stream; their posts or supporters
rotten, decayed, and, in many instances broken and the filth dropping
into the water, to be seen by any passer by. During the summer, crowds
of boys bathe in the putrid ditches, where they must come in contact
with abominations highly injurious.”[2]
Footnote 2:
Report of Mr. Bowie on the cause of Cholera in Bermondsey.
So Nebulus was carried in a pail out of the ditch to a poor woman’s
home, and put into a battered saucepan with some other water. Thence,
after boiling, he was poured into an earthen tea-pot over some stuff of
wretched flavour, said to be tea. Now, thought the fairy, after all, I
may give pleasure at the breakfast of these wretched people. He pictured
to himself a scene of love as preface to a day of squalid toil, but he
experienced a second disappointment. The woman took him to another room
of which the atmosphere was noisome; there he saw that he was destined
for the comfort of a man and his two children, prostrate upon the floor
beneath a heap of rags. These three were sick; the woman swore at them,
and Nebulus shrunk down into the bottom of the tea-pot. Even the thirst
of fever could not tolerate too much of its contents, so Nebulus, after
a little time, was carried out and thrown into a heap of filth upon the
gutter.
Nubis, in the meantime, had commenced his day with hope of a more
fortunate career. On falling first into the Thames he had been much
annoyed by various pollutions, and been surprised to find, on kissing a
few neighbour drops, that their lips tasted inky. This was caused, they
said, by chalk pervading the whole river in the proportion of sixteen
grains to the gallon. That was what made their water inky to the taste
of those who were accustomed to much purer draughts. “It makes,” they
explained, “our river-water hard, according to man’s phrase; so hard as
to entail on multitudes who use it, some disease, with much expense and
trouble.”
“But all the mud and filth,” said Nubis, “surely no man drinks that?”
“No,” laughed the River-Drops, “not all of it. Much of the water used in
London passes through filters, and a filter suffers no mud or any
impurity to pass, except what is dissolved. The chalk is dissolved, and
there is filth and putrid gas dissolved.”
“That is a bad business,” said Nubis, who already felt his own drops
exercising that absorbent power for which water is so famous, and
incorporating in their substance matters that the Rain-Cloud never knew.
Presently Nubis found himself entangled in a current, by which he was
sucked through a long pipe into a meeting of Water-Drops, all summoned
from the Thames. He himself passed through a filter, was received into a
reservoir, and, having asked the way of friendly neighbours, worked for
himself with small delay a passage through the mainpipe into London.
Bewildered by his long, dark journey underground, Nubis at length saw
light, and presently dashed forth out of a tap into a pitcher. He saw
that there was fixed under the tap a water-butt, but into this he did
not fall. A crowd of women holding pitchers, saucepans, pails, were
chattering and screaming over him, and the anxiety of all appeared to be
to catch the water as it ran out of the tap, before it came into the tub
or cistern. Nubis rejoiced that his good fortune brought him to a
district in which it might become his privilege to bless the poor, and
his eye sparkled as his mistress, with many rests upon the way, carried
her pitcher and a heavy pail upstairs. She placed both vessels, full of
water, underneath her bed, and then went out again for more, carrying a
basin and a fish-kettle. Nubis pitied the poor creature, heartily
wishing that he could have poured out of a tap into the room itself to
save the time and labour of his mistress.
The pitcher wherein the good fairy lurked, remained under the bed
through the remainder of that day, and during the next night, the room
being, for the whole time, closely tenanted. Long before morning, Nubis
felt that his own drops and all the water near him had lost their
delightful coolness, and had been busily absorbing smells and vapours
from the close apartment. In the morning, when the husband dipped a
teacup in the pitcher, Nubis readily ran into it, glad to escape from
his unwholesome prison. The man putting the water to his lips, found it
so warm and repulsive, that, in a pet, he flung it from the window, and
it fell into the water-butt beneath.
The water-butt was of the common sort, described thus by a member of the
human race:— “Generally speaking, the wood becomes decomposed and
covered with fungi; and indeed, I can best describe their condition by
terming them filthy.” This water-butt was placed under the same shed
with a neglected cesspool, from which the water—ever absorbing—had
absorbed pollution. It contained a kitten among other trifles. “How many
people have to drink out of this butt?” asked Nubis. “Really I cannot
tell you,” said a neighbour Drop. “Once I was in a butt in Bethnal
Green, twenty-one inches across, and a foot deep, which was to supply
forty-eight families.[3] People store for themselves, and when they know
how dirty these tubs are, they should not use them.” “But the labour of
dragging water home, the impossibility of taking home abundance, the
pollution of keeping it in dwelling-rooms and under beds.” “Oh, yes,”
said the other Drop; “all very true. Besides, our water is not of a sort
to keep. In this tub there is quite a microscopic vegetable garden, so I
heard a doctor say who yesterday came hither with a party to inspect the
district. One of them said he had a still used only for distilling
water, and that one day, by chance, the bottoms of a series of
distillations boiled to dryness. Thereupon, the dry mass became heated
to the decomposing point, and sent abroad a stench plain to the dullest
nose as the peculiar stench of decomposed organic matter. It infected,
he said, the produce of many distillations afterwards.”[4] “I tell you
what,” said Nubis, “water may come down into this town innocent enough,
but it’s no easy matter for it to remain good among so many causes of
corruption. Heigho!” Then he began to dream of Princess Cirrha and the
worthy Prince of Nimbus, until he was aroused by a great tumult. It was
an uproar caused by drunken men. “Why are those men so?” said Nubis to
his friend. “I don’t know,” said the Water-Drop, “but I saw many people
in that way last night, and I have seen them so at Bethnal Green.” A
woman pulled her husband by, with loud reproaches for his visits to the
beer-shop. “Why,” cried the man, with a great oath, “where would you
have me go for drink?” Then, with another oath, he kicked the water-butt
in passing—“You would not have me to go there!” All the bystanders
laughed approvingly, and Nubis bade adieu to his ambition for the hand
of Cirrha.
Footnote 3:
Report of Dr. Gavin.
Footnote 4:
Evidence of Mr. J. T. Cooper, Practical Chemist.