Homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes: the home of the very
poor man, and another which we shall speak to presently. Crowded
places of cheap entertainment, and the benches of ale-houses, if they
could speak, might bear mournful testimony to the first. To them the
very poor man resorts for an image of the home, which he cannot find
at home. For a starved grate, and a scanty firing, that is not enough
to keep alive the natural heat in the fingers of so many shivering
children with their mother, he finds in the depth of winter always a
blazing hearth, and a hob to warm his pittance of beer by. Instead
of the clamours of a wife, made gaunt by famishing, he meets with
a cheerful attendance beyond the merits of the trifle which he can
afford to spend. He has companions which his home denies him, for the
very poor man has no visiters. He can look into the goings on of the
world, and speak a little to politics. At home there are no politics
stirring, but the domestic. All interests, real or imaginary, all
topics that should expand the mind of man, and connect him to a
sympathy with general existence, are crushed in the absorbing
consideration of food to be obtained for the family. Beyond the price
of bread, news is senseless and impertinent. At home there is no
larder. Here there is at least a show of plenty; and while he cooks
his lean scrap of butcher's meat before the common bars, or munches
his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread and cheese with an onion,
in a corner, where no one reflects upon his poverty, he has sight of
the substantial joint providing for the landlord and his family. He
takes an interest in the dressing of it; and while he assists in
removing the trivet from the fire, he feels that there is such a thing
as beef and cabbage, which he was beginning to forget at home. All
this while he deserts his wife and children. But what wife, and what
children? Prosperous men, who object to this desertion, image to
themselves some clean contented family like that which they go home
to. But look at the countenance of the poor wives who follow and
persecute their good man to the door of the public house, which he
is about to enter, when something like shame would restrain him, if
stronger misery did not induce him to pass the threshold. That face,
ground by want, in which every cheerful, every conversable lineament
has been long effaced by misery,--is that a face to stay at home with?
is it more a woman, or a wild cat? alas! it is the face of the wife
of his youth, that once smiled upon him. It can smile no longer. What
comforts can it share? what burthens can it lighten? Oh, 'tis a fine
thing to talk of the humble meal shared together! But what if there be
no bread in the cupboard? The innocent prattle of his children takes
out the sting of a man's poverty. But the children of the very poor
do not prattle. It is none of the least frightful features in that
condition, that there is no childishness in its dwellings. Poor
people, said a sensible old nurse to us once, do not bring up their
children; they drag them up. The little careless darling of the
wealthier nursery, in their hovel is transformed betimes into a
premature reflecting person. No one has time to dandle it, no one
thinks it worth while to coax it, to soothe it, to toss it up and
down, to humour it. There is none to kiss away its tears. If it cries,
it can only be beaten. It has been prettily said that "a babe is fed
with milk and praise." But the aliment of this poor babe was thin,
unnourishing; the return to its little baby-tricks, and efforts to
engage attention, bitter ceaseless objurgation. It never had a toy,
or knew what a coral meant. It grew up without the lullaby of nurses,
it was a stranger to the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the
attracting novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper off-hand
contrivance to divert the child; the prattled nonsense (best sense
to it), the wise impertinences, the wholesome lies, the apt story
interposed, that puts a stop to present sufferings, and awakens the
passion of young wonder. It was never sung to--no one ever told to
it a tale of the nursery. It was dragged up, to live or to die as
it happened. It had no young dreams. It broke at once into the iron
realities of life. A child exists not for the very poor as any object
of dalliance; it is only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little
hands to be betimes inured to labour. It is the rival, till it can be
the co-operator, for food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his
diversion, his solace; it never makes him young again, with recalling
his young times. The children of the very poor have no young times.
It makes the very heart to bleed to overhear the casual street-talk
between a poor woman and her little girl, a woman of the better sort
of poor, in a condition rather above the squalid beings which we have
been contemplating. It is not of toys, of nursery books, of summer
holidays (fitting that age); of the promised sight, or play; of
praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and clear-starching,
of the price of coals, or of potatoes. The questions of the child,
that should be the very outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are
marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It has come to be
a woman, before it was a child. It has learned to go to market; it
chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it murmurs; it is knowing, acute,
sharpened; it never prattles. Had we not reason to say, that the home
of the very poor is no home?
There is yet another home, which we are constrained to deny to be one.
It has a larder, which the home of the poor man wants; its fireside
conveniences, of which the poor dream not. But with all this, it is no
home. It is--the house of the man that is infested with many visiters.
May we be branded for the veriest churl, if we deny our heart to the
many noble-hearted friends that at times exchange their dwelling for
our poor roof! It is not of guests that we complain, but of endless,
purposeless visitants; droppers in, as they are called. We sometimes
wonder from what sky they fall. It is the very error of the position
of our lodging; its horoscopy was ill calculated, being just situate
in a medium--a plaguy suburban mid-space--fitted to catch idlers from
town or country. We are older than we were, and age is easily put out
of its way. We have fewer sands in our glass to reckon upon, and we
cannot brook to see them drop in endlessly succeeding impertinences.
At our time of life, to be alone sometimes is as needful as sleep. It
is the refreshing sleep of the day. The growing infirmities of age
manifest themselves in nothing more strongly, than in an inveterate
dislike of interruption. The thing which we are doing, we wish to be
permitted to do. We have neither much knowledge nor devices; but there
are fewer in the place to which we hasten. We are not willingly put
out of our way, even at a game of nine-pins. While youth was, we had
vast reversions in time future; we are reduced to a present pittance,
and obliged to economise in that article. We bleed away our moments
now as hardly as our ducats. We cannot bear to have our thin wardrobe
eaten and fretted into by moths. We are willing to barter our good
time with a friend, who gives us in exchange his own. Herein is the
distinction between the genuine guest and the visitant. This latter
takes your good time, and gives you his bad in exchange. The guest
is domestic to you as your good cat, or household bird; the visitant
is your fly, that flaps in at your window, and out again, leaving
nothing but a sense of disturbance, and victuals spoiled. The inferior
functions of life begin to move heavily. We cannot concoct our food
with interruptions. Our chief meal, to be nutritive, must be solitary.
With difficulty we can eat before a guest; and never understood
what the relish of public feasting meant. Meats have no sapor, nor
digestion fair play, in a crowd. The unexpected coming in of a
visitant stops the machine. There is a punctual generation who time
their calls to the precise commencement of your dining-hour--not to
eat--but to see you eat. Our knife and fork drop instinctively, and we
feel that we have swallowed our latest morsel. Others again show their
genius, as we have said, in knocking the moment you have just sat down
to a book. They have a peculiar compassionating sneer, with which they
"hope that they do not interrupt your studies." Though they flutter
off the next moment, to carry their impertinences to the nearest
student that they can call their friend, the tone of the book is
spoiled; we shut the leaves, and, with Dante's lovers, read no
more that day. It were well if the effect of intrusion were simply
co-extensive with its presence; but it mars all the good hours
afterwards. These scratches in appearance leave an orifice that closes
not hastily. "It is a prostitution of the bravery of friendship," says
worthy Bishop Taylor, "to spend it upon impertinent people, who are,
it may be, loads to their families, but can never ease my loads." This
is the secret of their gaddings, their visits, and morning calls. They
too have homes, which are--no homes.