_Noblemen who live in mean streets--A peer on a pound a week--A princess
out in service--Lodgekeeper where once mistress--A grave-digger with
royal blood--From £100,000 to nothing_
|Poverty has so many romances, and they are so varied.
Under the humblest roofs in this great city of ours men and women are
daily writing in the book of life beautiful stories of tender love, of
noble self-sacrifice, of deeds of heroic endurance. There are idylls of
the slums and alleys as charming as ever poet penned; there are stories
to be told of the dwellers in mean streets that lift our thoughts far
above the sordid things of earth.
But these are romances pure and simple, and in them is no element of
mystery. The romances I have in my mind as I write are those in which
the poverty conceals from the eyes of the world a truth it would be
greatly interested to learn.
When the London season is at its height the daily papers are filled with
the gay or great doings of the aristocracy. Every movement is chronicled
as being of surpassing interest to the general public. If my lord and
my lady entertain their friends at home the details are considered as
important as those of a battle in the Far East or a debate in the House
of Commons. Even if my lord or my lady dine or sup at a restaurant the
fact is duly chronicled. The untitled leaders of the smart set, our
wealthy American visitors, the stars of the opera and the stage, share
in the general publicity. Celebrities, whether of rank or wealth or
talent, are standing items of "Fashionable Intelligence." All the world
is made familiar with their features, and their diaries are compiled for
them by the staff, male and female, of the popular periodicals.
There are men and women of noble birth and ancient lineage, there
are men and women who have been famous in their day in the world of
fashion and of art, over whose lives a great silence has settled, who
move about in our midst, their very identity unsuspected, who know
sorrow and suffering, and sometimes even privation. These are the
romances of poverty which are mysteries, because they are rarely
fathomed. Now and again the veil is lifted in the hospital, in the
parish infirmary, or at the coroner's inquest. But many of them remain
hidden for ever by the shallow earth which covers a pauper's coffin.
There is an old, grey-headed gentleman in thread-bare, shiny clothes,
who comes out of his poor lodgings in a mean street daily when it is
fine and sits in the park. He brings with him a rusty brown bag that
once was black. From that bag he takes soon after midday a little packet
containing a slice or two of bread and a small piece of cheese. When he
has finished his humble meal he walks to the public drinking-fountain
and takes a cup of water.
If the society reporter wished to chronicle this midday meal in the
"Fashionable Intelligence," this is how he would have to word his
paragraph in order to be correct: "Among the company who lunched in
Regent's Park to-day was Lord ----------. His lordship is at present
occupying one room in Great James Street, Lisson Grove, where he is
staying incognito under the name of Mr. Wilson."
The old gentleman, who is so poor that he can only afford bread and
cheese for lunch--it is his dinner--and one room in Lisson Grove, bears
a name as noble as any in the pages of Burke. His ancestral home is one
of the show-places of England. But it passed from his family nearly a
hundred years ago, when the reverse of fortune came that left a noble
house beggared.
Lord ---------- is quite alone now. Her ladyship died a year or two ago.
She added to the poor little income by shirt-making at home for a West
End firm.
When her ladyship died his lordship had an income of 10s. a week. This
was generously increased to £1 by a relative who was just a little
better off. On £1 a week one of England's "old nobility" is passing a
peaceful old age. He has always a smile for the little children who play
near him in the park. Sometimes when they see him bring out his bread
they think he is going to feed the ducks. But he cannot afford to do
that.
Ducks want such big pieces. But now and then he spares a few crumbs for
the sparrows.
* * * **
The parish doctor stood by the bedside of a woman who had been brought
to the infirmary some days previously from a common lodging-house in the
neighbourhood.
The woman was dying, but quite conscious. The workhouse-master was with
the doctor.
"It's an extraordinary story she tells," said the master. "She says she
is the Marchioness of ----------."
The doctor looked pityingly at the poor creature, who was in the last
stage of a fatal disease, and bent down to listen to something she was
saying.
"It's quite true," she said. "We separated, you know, a good many years
ago, and I never saw him afterwards. What was the good? But I should
like him to know I'm dying--if you can find him."
The doctor, hearing the name of the nobleman, remembered something of
the story. He went away and made inquiries, which resulted in his being
able to find the dying woman's husband.
The Marquis, an elderly man, came to the bedside of his dying wife and
forgave her. He waited till the end. When the Marchioness was dead he
shook hands with the doctor, thanked him for his kindness, and said he
would try and get enough money to have her ladyship decently buried. He
kept his word.
Five years afterwards the doctor was rung up at one o'clock in the
morning. He put his head out of the window and found that the Marquis
had called upon him.
"Doctor," said the Marquis, "I'm married again, and I want you to come
to my wife at once."
In the early hours of the morning an heir to the ancient title was bom
in lodgings in a little suburban side street.
Up to the present the doctor has not received his fee. He did not press
for it. He knew how terribly straitened were the circumstances of the
nobleman, whose first wife died in the work-house, and whose second wife
presented him with an heir in cheap London lodgings.
* * * * *
In a recent book on Russian life it is told how a young woman who had
applied for the position of lady's-maid hesitated to produce her papers
of identification when asked by the lady who wished to engage her. "Ah!
Madame," the girl sobbed, "when you see who I am you will not take me
as your servant, and I have been so long looking for a home and work by
which I may live."
The lady, expecting some dreadful revelation, was astonished, when the
"papers" were reluctantly handed to her, to find that the applicant for
a situation as a domestic servant was of noble birth--a princess, in
fact.
Princesses do not go into service in England. But ladies of title,
concealing their identity, sometimes try to find a home and employment
by becoming servants.
There came to me some years ago a middle-aged lady of refined and gentle
appearance. She had heard that I wanted a cook, and she pleaded to be
allowed to take the situation.
I told her frankly that I did not think she was a cook in the domestic
sense of the word, and I asked her where she had been employed.
Eventually the poor lady confided in me.
The story she told was a simple one and a very old one. The solicitor
who, after her husband's death, had the management of her affairs had
absconded, and she and her daughter found themselves penniless. The
daughter, having a good voice and appearance, obtained an engagement in
the chorus of a travelling opera company. The mother, dropping her title
and changing her name, went to a registry office and entered herself on
the books as a cook. In her youth she had had a taste for cooking, and
had been one of the first to take lessons when it became the fashion for
ladies to master the details of the culinary art.
Lady -------- had some trouble about references, but, confiding in an
old friend who knew of her qualifications, she got over the difficulty.
In her first situation she was uncomfortable, and after three months
she left. But, fortified with a reference, she obtained a situation in a
good family. There it more than once happened that Lady --------
cooked for people who had been guests at her own table in her husband's
lifetime. They would have been considerably astonished had they known
that their former hostess was acting in the capacity of paid cook in the
kitchen of the house in which they were dining. A break-down in health
compelled Lady -------- to give up her situation. It was after her
recovery--the little she had been able to save by hard work swallowed up
in the expenses of her illness--that she came to me, hoping I might put
her in the way of getting some articles she had written on "Cooking for
Ladies" accepted by a newspaper. When I last heard of Lady -------- she
was going out to cook on what I believe is called "the job."
*****
Here is a little tobacconist's shop in the suburbs. The customers who
enter it daily for their cigars and tobacco, sometimes for a box of
lights, and see a neatly dressed lady, who is the proprietress, behind
the counter, have not the slightest idea that the lady who supplies them
with their packets of cigarettes and ounces of tobacco has a "handle to
her name," that her husband is the heir to an earldom, and that in
due course the fair tobacconist who is keeping a little shop for a
livelihood will have a right to, sit among the peeresses of England as
the Countess of ----------.
In the environs of London there is a comely old lady who lives in the
lodge on a great estate. Sometimes she comes out and opens the park gate
that the occupants of a magnificent carriage may drive up to the
Hall, which is their residence. The residents at the Hall are wealthy
Americans. The old lady is the widow of the former owner. It was the
home of his ancestors for three centuries. To the Hall he brought her
as a bride to be its mistress. Now she is the lodge-keeper. Her husband
before he died was employed as a coachman to a-wealthy City merchant.
It was this merchant who recommended the widow to the Americans as a
trustworthy woman to have the lodge.
Even the descendants of kings come upon evil times and bring the Crown
of England into the romance of poverty. The sexton of a West End
church was one of the co-heirs to the barony in a famous peerage claim
concerning which evidence was given before the House of Lords. This
gentleman, who followed the humble occupation of a grave-digger, was
entitled to quarter the Royal Arms. His direct descent from Thomas
Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, fifth son of Edward III, was
undisputed. A barefooted, ragged little lad playing in a back court in
Wapping is the descendant of the O'Neills, the scion of a race of kings
renowned in Irish history.
In one of the worst streets of London, a street that is painted in the
blackest colours in Mr. Charles Booth's great and exhaustive work, there
is a house let out in rooms. The inhabitants of this street are mostly
criminals. They are frankly classified as thieves, burglars, and
bullies. But in this house, if we enter it, we shall find a man of
education and refinement occupying with his wife and child two humble,
scantily furnished rooms. If you know the neighbourhood, the
"appearance" of this family at once rivets your attention. Their
features, their neatness and cleanliness, their speech--all are in
direct contrast to anything you have met with in the locality.
In what circumstances they have drifted to such a neighbourhood as this
I do not know; but their poverty they confess themselves. The man is
in bad health. He is waiting till he gets a little stronger to find
something to do. In the meantime he is living in a neighbourhood in
which it is not safe for a decent person to be abroad after nightfall.
He has been knocked down twice himself. His respectable appearance led
the inhabitants of the street to imagine that he must have some money
about him.
This man bears an honoured name. Living where he does, there is no
need for him to conceal it. To the thieves and hooligans who are his
neighbours the name means nothing. Respectable people never come down
the street. Knowing his name, his ancestry, and the position his kith
and kin have held in public life, the man is to me a mystery. His
poverty I can understand--I have seen the brother of a world-famous
divine in a wretched room in a slum in the Borough, and I have seen
his children given boots that they should not have to go barefooted to
school in the winter-time--but this man has hidden himself away in a
criminal area, in a street that is notorious, and here with his wife and
child he must rub shoulders night and day with the vilest of the vile.
To live by choice in a street where you are liable to be brutally
assaulted directly you put your nose outside your door is an act the
motive of which is difficult to fathom.
A little way out of London, on the road to a popular Thames-side resort,
there is a tavern with a tea-garden attached to it. All day long on
Sunday traps pull up there, and the occupants get out and refresh while
the ostlers water the horses.
Sometimes the ladies of the party remain in the trap and take their
refreshment there. To them there comes with shuffling feet an old,
grey-headed waiter, who is specially engaged to do the "outside Sunday
work." He takes the order and returns with the required "refreshment" on
a tray. When he is paid, and receives a penny or twopence for himself,
the old fellow returns thanks and doffs his weather-beaten cap to the
ladies in quite the old-world courtly style.
There was a time in the days long ago when he raised a glossy high hat
in the same courtly way--not to the ladies in a one-horse wagonette or
a pony-trap, but to the ladies in smart victorias and aristocratic
barouches. And he drove his own horses, too--a splendid pair that made
many a lounger in the park look after his mail phaeton and admire his
"cattle."
He could have signed his name to a cheque for £100,000 in those days,
and the cheque would have been paid by his bankers.
He had not made his money. It had been made for him by his father, a man
of renown in the City, the head of a firm that had been honourably known
in commerce for many generations.
His father, with an ample fortune, retired from the business and left
that fortune to his son, who had nothing to do but live as a private
gentleman.
He lived that life till he was forty. Then a large portion of his
capital was lost by an unwise investment, and from that day things began
to go badly, and in a few years he found himself penniless. His wife,
who had been accustomed to every comfort and luxury, died before the
final disaster came, and left him with a daughter who was a cripple and
an invalid.
Father and daughter faced adversity bravely. Together they managed to,
pay the rent of a small cottage at Chiswick. The daughter was clever
with her needle and did fancy work at home; the father obtained a
situation as waiter, and was sent out with provision vans to children's
treats and picnics. But he got too old for that, and at last was glad of
the Sunday job on which we have seen him engaged.
The man who could once sign his cheque for £100,000 is grateful for the
pennies that he gets from the "pull-up" parties. When the Sunday is
fine he goes back to his invalid daughter with a smiling face. When the
Sunday is wet he goes home with a smile all the same--but his heart is
as heavy as his pocket is light.
* * * * *
There died recently under tragic circumstances a man whom I had
seen rise to heights he had never dreamed of in his youth. Handsome,
agreeable, and refined, everybody liked him and said he would do well.
But from a humble beginning he rose to honours and dignities. He held an
official position that gave him a magnificent equipage to ride in, and
the honour conferred upon him made his wife "her ladyship."
He gave grand entertainments and receptions, and his name was constantly
before the world in the public prints. His daughter attended a
fashionable school and was fetched every day by a footman.
I saw him in his splendour, and complimented him on the favours that
Fortune had showered upon him with such a lavish hand.
Years went by, and gradually his name disappeared from the public
journals. He dropped out. The world moved on, and nobody troubled very
much what had become of him.
Then one day I saw him again. He passed me in the street.
The man I had seen honoured, féted, and acclaimed had come to the point
at which he shunned his friends. I would have stopped and spoken, but he
hurried past me.
Three weeks later I heard of his death. He had died penniless. He had
known the torture of penury for years.
And "her ladyship," broken-hearted, tortured by the memory of the past
magnificence, had eaten her heart out in sorrow by the side of the man
she loved.
I had seen their gorgeous carriage pass with its mounted escort through
acclaiming crowds. Husband and wife died tragically. The daughter who
used to be fetched from school by the family footman died not long ago
of starvation in circumstances of the most intense pathos.
About this romance of poverty there was, alas! the grim note of a
poignant realism. But it was a mystery that only the tragedy of its
victims' deaths revealed.