Transcribed from the 1895 Jarrold and Sons edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library,
UK, for kindly allowing their copy to be used for this transcription.
“This is the condition of humanity; we are placed as it were in an
intellectual twilight where we discover but few things clearly, and
yet we see enough to tempt us with the hope of making better and more
discoveries.”—BOLINGBROKE.
Crying for the Light
or Fifty Years Ago
* * * * *
J Ewing Ritchie
Author of ‘East Anglia’
* * * * *
Vol 1
* * * * *
London: Jarrold and Sons
Warwick Lane E.C.
1895
THIS STORY
IS
Dedicated to
ONE OF MY OLDEST FRIENDS,
BETTER KNOWN TO BETTER MEN
AS THE
RIGHT HONOURABLE JAMES STANSFELD, M.P.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PARKER’S PIECE, SLOVILLE 1
II. THE ACTRESS AND THE WAIF 28
III. GOING UP TO TOWN 53
IV. A YOUNG PREACHER 76
V. AFTER THE SERVICE 91
VI. AT SLOVILLE AGAIN 112
VII. THE CHARTISTS 132
VIII. IN BOHEMIA 162
IX. THE OLD, OLD STORY 197
X. UNDER THE STARS 229
CHAPTER I.
PARKER’S PIECE, SLOVILLE.
Upon my word, I don’t know a more desirable residence from the pauper’s
point of view than Parker’s Piece, an awful spot in the very heart of the
rising town of Sloville. I can’t say, as regards myself, that the place
has many attractions. It is too crowded, too dirty, too evil-smelling,
too much inhabited by living creatures, including insects which delicacy
forbids mentioning. I like living in the country, where I can hear the
birds sing their morning anthem. I like to see the buttercups and
daisies, and the green grass, and the blue sky, and the sunshine, which
makes everyone feel happy; and when winter comes, how much do I love the
sparkling diamonds on the frosted trees, and the pure white snow which
robes the earth with a loveliness of which the dweller in towns has no
adequate idea! I like to breathe fresh air, and not town smoke; and so,
individually, I had rather not reside in Parker’s Piece; but there are
those who live there, and much enjoy it. Mostly they are a ragged
lot—tramps and vagrants and the ever growing army of the unemployed—who
make it their headquarters, as it is full of old houses and corners where
the peelers cannot penetrate, and public-houses where the sot may drink
as long as his or her money lasts out; where, as regards the spot in
question, there is a special encouragement to do so, seeing how much
money was left ages ago by a pious founder, who had made money in some
way which was not exactly right, and who thought it just as well, when it
was of no further use to him, to leave it partly to the priests to pray
for his soul, and partly to the poor, that future generations might call
him blessed; and as the poor all round were well aware of the fact, there
was never a house or room that stood empty long—unhealthy as was the
place, and dilapidated as were the buildings.
One building, however, was an exception to the others, as regards age.
Originally it had been started as a boot and shoe manufactory, but that
did not pay; then it became a depot for pure literature and well-meant
publications, but no one came to buy; then it came into the hands of a
Town Councillor, who, disgusted that the Corporation would not purchase
it at an extravagant rate, to pull it down, vowed that he would never lay
out a penny on the place, only get out of it what rent he could. As he
let it out in tenements, the rents of which were collected by a somewhat
unscrupulous agent, the fact was, the locality became less respectable
and less cared for every day. It was avoided by the police as much as
possible. If there was a quarrel—as there was almost every day—between
its wretched inmates, it was hard to say who was to blame. Passing down
there one day, I saw a man savagely assaulting his wife. To my
remonstrance he replied that if he did not let her know that he was
master, she would stick a knife into him; and, according to the public
opinion of the place, he was right. Only on Sunday morning was the place
quiet, and that was not because the dwellers there were at church or
chapel, but simply because the weary were enjoying an extra hour’s sleep,
or the dissipated had not, as yet, overcome the effect of the previous
evening’s debauch.
All at once Parker’s Piece became known far and near. One night a little
one, happily, died, instead of making a feeble and ineffectual struggle
to live; an inquest was held, and the result was a revelation of misery
and wretchedness which made all Sloville stand aghast. A London radical
newspaper sent down an artist to give a rude drawing of the place, and a
special correspondent, whose report was as sensational as could be
desired. Parker’s Piece became as well known to the British community as
the Mansion House, or St. Paul’s, or Westminster Abbey, or the Houses of
Parliament. Money showered down on the place, little to the advantage of
the deserving, who are the last to proclaim their needs, but greatly to
that of the publican and sinner. It was felt by everybody something must
be done. A grand church was erected at one corner, to which, however, no
one went; a mission hall was started at the other by a speculative
philanthropist, on his own hook, while a building was secured for a
similar purpose by the leading people of the leading Congregational
Church in the town. It was a real case of line upon line, and precept
upon precept. The plan was to catch sparrows by putting a little salt on
their tails, and the plan succeeded to admiration. There was a free tea,
which was a great success; then there was a regular breakfast on a Sunday
morning, which answered still better. The men looked rather sheepish at
first, but the women were too many for them. The fleshpots of Egypt
prevailed, and there was a good attendance, a state of resignation when
the talking began, and some awful singing afterwards. On the day of
which I write, there was a little extra excitement in the place.
Christmas was coming, and all the good people for miles around had
determined to give a treat to the wretched ruffians in the very worst
part of the place—the big building to which I have already referred.
When the leading man of the place, Carroty Bill, heard it, he swore that
there should be no psalm-singing there. But his better-half modified his
rage as she drew a lovely picture of creature comforts to be had—the
boots for the children, the flannel for herself, and the extra money they
would have for a jolly spree after all.
‘I ’ave been to one of their meetin’s,’ said she, ‘and we ’ad a rare good
time of it, I can tell yer; tea, and coffee, such heaps of
bread-and-butter, and plum-cake, and great meat-pies; it was well worth
while a-settin’ an hour or two in a warm room while the parsons were
a-talkin’; and rally you’d ha’ thought as how the ladies and gentlemen
seemed to think as we were brothers and sisters. We wos quite a ’appy
family, we wos.’
‘And then to be preached to,’ said Carroty Bill, ‘arterwards. I’m
blessed if I’ll go.’
‘Well, I’ll take the children.’
‘Not Joe; yer can’t take him.’
‘Why not? he ain’t yer child.’
‘I know that, but I wants him—that’s enough.’
Carroty Bill kept his word; he had an idea of his own in his thick head,
and he was determined to carry it out.
Unfortunately, at that time there was a good deal of antagonism between
Church and Dissent. Generally, we know, it is otherwise, and they love
each other as fellow-Christians ought—a love that does you good to
contemplate. As the Dissenters gave the feed, it occurred to the Vicar
and his curates to make a house-to-house inspection—to see for themselves
the nakedness of the land, and to relieve it accordingly. At the bar of
the White Horse the new move was announced, and Carroty Bill, as he sat
smoking and drinking, hit on a plan of which he said nothing to his
female partner—for wife she never was—till the time had come to carry it
out. Said he, when he heard the Vicar was to come:
‘Here, Joe, you come along with me.’
‘No; I want to go with mother.’
‘You come along with me, or it will be the worse for yer, I can tell
yer,’ said Carroty Bill, with a look which forbade all further thought of
disobedience on the part of the poor boy.
‘You’ll make the boy as bad as yerself,’ said the woman, ‘let him come
along with me.’
‘Not if I know it,’ said the ruffian.
‘Why, wot’s up?’ asked the woman.
‘Wot’s that to you? The boy must come.’
And with a swelling heart, and a tear in his eye, the boy went. He was
filthy, and ragged, and half starved. Yet there was something noble
about the little lad’s face; had he been washed, and well dressed, and
well fed, with his curly hair and fine forehead and bright blue eyes, he
would have been as handsome a little fellow as was to be seen in the
town.
‘Don’t lead him into mischief,’ said the poor woman imploringly.
‘In course not, my dear,’ said Carroty Bill sarcastically: ‘he’s a
gentleman, ain’t he? and he’ll behave as such.’ Then, turning to the
boy, who was still lingering by the woman’s side, he said, ‘Come here,
you little warmint, or I’ll break every bone in your body.’
This conversation was carried on at the White Horse, where the speaker
was mostly to be found. The woman gave way; the speaker took the boy to
Parker’s Piece. Arrived there, he sought out his own apartment, and with
the help of the lad cleared it of everything it possessed in the shape of
chairs or clothes or table, leaving only a little straw, on which the
family were to lie. A dealer just by purchased his household chattels
for a song, about as much as they were worth, and Carroty Bill had just
time to get a drop at the White Horse and return in an unwonted state of
sobriety before the Vicar and his curates entered.
‘Dear me,’ said the kind-hearted Vicar, ‘what wretchedness! How is it
you are so badly off?’
‘Wife ill, and I got no work to do. It’s very hard on a poor fellow like
me,’ said our carroty friend.
‘Ah! it is indeed,’ said the Vicar.
‘Yes, I little thought as I should have come to this,’ said the man, in a
desponding tone.
‘Ah, well,’ said the Vicar, ‘perhaps we can help you a little.’
‘Thank you, sir, kindly,’ said the hardened hypocrite.
‘Dear me!’ said the Vicar, ‘what wretchedness—not a stick in the place!
We must do something to relieve this distressing case. What say you?’
said he to his companions.
‘Oh, a pair of blankets and a hundredweight of coal at the least.’
‘Yes, and a loaf of bread.’
‘Oh yes! and a little warm clothing for the wife and child in the corner.
That’s a bright little fellow,’ said he, pointing to Joe; ‘is that your
eldest?’
‘No, sir, he ain’t one of ours,’ said the woman. ‘We keep him out of
charity. His mother is dead.’
‘Dear me!’ said the Vicar; ‘who would have thought it? What true
benevolence! How it does shame us who are better off! How beautiful it
is to see the poor so ready to help one another!’
‘Ah! it is little we can do, but we allus tries to do our duty,’ said
Carroty Bill, with the look of a saint and the courage of a martyr, while
the forlorn woman seemed the picture of resignation and despair.
‘I am sure we might leave a little money here as well,’ said the Vicar.
‘Oh, certainly,’ said both the curates who declared they had never seen
more unmitigated poverty anywhere.
And then they went off.
And thus relieved with a little ready cash and food, and cheered with the
prospect of blankets and coals and clothes, for which tickets had been
left, Carroty Bill was enabled at leisure to rejoice over the effects of
his artful dodge, which was told to a crowd of applauding vagabonds, as
rascally as himself; while the landlord of the public, already referred
to, could not find too much to say on behalf of that Christian charity by
which he expected to benefit more than anyone else in that dingy and
poverty-stricken locality. The Vicar was quite justified so far as
appearances went. It was an unhealthy habitation which he visited, and
all the inmates looked sad and ill.
As the Vicar left the apartment of Carroty Bill he knocked at the next
door, inhabited by a hard-working shoemaker of freethought tendencies,
who hated him and all his ways. The Vicar beat a hasty retreat, as he
knew the sharpness of the shoemaker’s tongue.
‘We don’t want none of your cloth here,’ said the disciple of St.
Crispin. ‘If there were a God, should we be as wretched as we are?’
‘Yes, there is. I am His servant,’ said the Vicar.
‘You His servant? Why yer father bought yer the living, and a nice
living it is; you are yer father’s servant, not the Lord’s.’
‘But, my good man—’ said the Vicar.
‘Don’t “good man” me,’ was the angry reply.
‘But we come for your good.’
‘That’s what you all say; and I’ll believe it when I see you and the
likes of you give up that part of the tithes which was intended for the
poor.’
‘I come in the name of the Lord as His messenger,’ said the Vicar in his
most commanding tones.
‘The Lord’s receiver, I think,’ said the shoemaker cynically, ‘for you
get all you can in His name.’
‘It is no use leaving anything here,’ said the Vicar to his curates.
Nor was it. The shoemaker had been made an infidel, as many are, by hard
work and poor pay, by want of human sympathy, by the greatness of his
life-long sorrow. Wounded and bruised and fallen among thieves, the Jew
and the Levite had passed by, and no Samaritan had come to his aid. The
Gospel of glad tidings has been preached for ages by the Churches,
chiefly to the rich and the respectable as they are called, and the poor
have been sent empty away. Christian ministers of all denominations have
hard work to do to make up for the shortcomings of the past.
As the Vicar and his curates were leaving—and they were anxious to get
out into the fresh air, as the smell of the place was awful—a door
opened, and a thin and worn and weary elderly woman entered, who had to
earn her living by needlework, and was one of the many to be met
everywhere, who have seen better days, and who, friendless and alone,
have to die in a garret, while the rich thoughtlessly array themselves in
purple and fine linen and fare sumptuously every day. Surely there is
something amiss in our nineteenth-century civilization when such is the
case. It is well to tell such suffering ones that there is a better
world, and a Father in heaven who shall wipe all tears from every eye,
and where sorrow shall be unknown. But surely our rich need not be so
very rich nor our poor so very poor, nor the cup of human suffering be,
to many, so overflowing. Surely we need not wait till we have entered
the golden gates and walked the pearly streets of the new Jerusalem to
set such matters right, or till the Saviour, as some Christians tell us,
comes to reign as a temporal Prince, in a world He once blessed with His
presence and brightened with His smile. Human laws and misgovernment
have had a good deal to do with the appalling inequality which meets us
on every side, and which jars strongly with the Bible lessons read at our
churches on a Sunday and the utterances of our pulpit orators. But let
us return to the poor woman, weary with hard work, with disappointed
hope; weary of the bitter past and of contemplating the dark future, on
the black cloud of which she could see, as she gazed at it steadily from
year to year, no silver lining. She makes no complaint, utters no moan,
is never visible in the streets; yet her lot is hard—harder than she can
bear—harder than that of the improvident and thoughtless and vicious.
All the sunshine is gone out of her, and her heart is broken, though
mechanically she accomplishes her daily task. She had a husband, but he
died, and it was to give him decent burial that she had to part with her
little all; her son had been lost at sea; her daughter had married, and
had gone to live in a far-off colony, and a voyage thither would kill
her, as she had no stamina left in her emaciated body. Look at her
shrunken form, her pale cheeks, her lacklustre eye, her hand worn to the
bone! Her hold on life is slender indeed. One of the silent ones is
she, who accept their sorrow, and never speak of it as of a burden too
heavy to be borne.
‘Good-morning, my friend,’ said the Vicar with a benevolent smile. ‘We
have just been visiting your poor neighbours and relieving their
distress. They seem in a very bad way—nothing in the house. It is sad
to think what would have become of them, if we had not called in the very
nick of time. It is really shocking, the amount of misery in this
unfortunate neighbourhood.’
‘Yes, there is indeed a lot of it here,’ said the poor woman. ‘It is
hard work to be happy here.’
‘But you look as if you had employment.’
‘Yes, sir, I have, I am thankful to say, though it brings me in but
little; at any rate, I earn enough to keep me off the parish. Perhaps,
gentlemen, you would like to walk in.’
They did so.
‘How neat! how clean!’ said the Vicar, as he looked admiringly around.
‘What a view you have! Positively good; quite commands the place.’
‘Yes, sir, but the chimneys give me a little more smoke than I care for.
It is rarely I dare open my window, for fear of the blacks.’
‘Ah, my good woman, it is so with all of us! There is always something
amiss—something we should like to get rid of—a fly in the ointment,’ as
Solomon says. ‘Now, there are my curates: they are happy young men, but
I have no doubt they would like to be in my shoes’—a remark so true that
the curates could not contradict it, only by a deprecatory smile and
shake of the head. ‘Dear me!’ continued the Vicar, as he turned from the
window to the interior. ‘Why, you have a sofa here, with an
antimacassar!’
‘Pardon, sir, that is my bed.’
‘Ah, well, it is quite a model—quite a model. Why, we could dine here
off the floor. What a nice little bit of carpet! What a nice little
looking-glass! Oh, woman, how strong is the ruling passion! And bless
me!’ he said, turning, as he made a still longer inspection, ‘why, here
are flowers—positively flowers—and flowers cost a deal of money at this
season of the year!’
‘Excuse me, sir, they are artificial.’
‘What! ah, yes, I see they are; but artificial flowers cost money.’
‘They cost me but very little. I made them myself, to sell, if possible,
but I could not get a customer, and so I kept them to make the room a bit
cheerful.’
‘Ah, I see you are one of the better class of workpeople—what I may call
the aristocracy. I am awfully sorry. I should really have liked to have
helped you, but our funds are small, and the amount of distress in the
town is so large that we are obliged to be very particular—very
particular indeed. It is a duty we owe to the parish and to the kind
friends who have subscribed the money. They have the greatest confidence
in us, and we must not abuse that confidence.’
‘Pray, sir, don’t think of it. If there are any poor people much worse
off than myself, why, I pity ’em,’ said the poor woman.
‘Worse off, my good woman! Oh, the town is full of such! Look at your
poor neighbours in the next room—a most shocking case; yet, in all their
poverty, taking charge of a little waif that, somehow or other, came into
their hands.’
The woman said nothing. She could have said a good deal, but she knew
the family, and she also knew the value of peace and quietness.
‘Perhaps you will like to accept of this little tract,’ said the Vicar,
who wished to show his sympathy, but who did not exactly know how. ‘It
is prettily got up, and I rejoice to say it has been found greatly
useful. You will, perhaps, read it with more interest as it was written
by myself. And here is another, by my daughter, “On the Blessings of
Poverty.”’
‘On what, sir?’
‘“On the Blessings of Poverty.”’
‘Well, I never heard of them. I am sure I shall like to read that.’
‘Here they are, then,’ said the Vicar, handing them smilingly. ‘And now
we must wish you good-morning; our time is precious, and we have a good
deal to do yet.’
‘Had you better not give her something to eat?’ said one of the curates
in a low voice as they were turning away.
‘Oh dear no!’ said the Vicar; ‘that would be very wrong—very wrong
indeed.’ Then in an undervoice he added: ‘Our intrusion here is quite a
mistake. This is not a case in which we can interfere. But we wish you
a good-morning, with the compliments of the season; and I will get my
daughter to call with a few more tracts, and perhaps she might like to
buy some of your artificial flowers.’
‘I am sure I should be glad to see her.’
‘Well, well, we shall see. You know me, of course; I am the Vicar of the
parish. Of course, you have often seen me at church.’
‘Well, I can’t say that I have.’
‘Why, you don’t mean to say you don’t go to a place of worship? You are
not a heathen, are you?’
‘I hope not, sir; but I have to work so hard all the week that I am
thankful for a little more rest on a Sunday, and when I go out I go to
chapel.’
‘To chapel! How is that?’ said the Vicar, in a by no means pleased tone.
‘Don’t you know all Dissenters are schismatics? My good woman, I am
sorry for you.’
‘Well, sir, I go to chapel because I was brought up to it, and it seems
more homelike.’
‘Well, then, the chapel people must look after you. You are not in my
charge at all. It is a pity, and I am sorry for it. Perhaps, if we saw
you at church we could help you a little, if ever you did require any
aid. But we can’t discuss that question. It is clear we have no further
business here, have we, Mr. Jones?’
The curate with that uncommon name replied to his reverend superior,
‘Certainly not.’
‘Certainly not,’ replied the poor woman, with a shade of disappointment
over her pale face, and a little more of pardonable acidity in her tone;
‘certainly not. I am no beggar.’
‘Just so, my good woman,’ said the Vicar, as he tripped with his curate
downstairs. ‘Just so; as I have said, we have to exercise the utmost
care in the disposal of our funds.’
More of a Samaritan than the Vicar, the poor woman kept the door open
till she had heard the last of his steps down the creaking stairs, or he
might have had a fall, a not uncommon circumstance on that dilapidated
staircase, and then she turned away to her loneliness and misery with her
broken heart. The lamp flickered in the socket, the end was very near;
life for her had no charm, death no terror.
That night was one of extra jollity as far as the inhabitants of Parker’s
Piece were concerned. The police had not had so much trouble in the
place for a long while, nor had the publicans and pawnbrokers done such a
roaring trade. No one couple in all that squalid district was more drunk
that night than Carroty Bill and his better-half.
That night was one of intense cold—the coldest, in feet, of the year, the
coldest of many years—and, as such, noted by distinguished
meteorologists. The cold was everywhere; in the palace of the prince, as
well as in the hut of the peasant. It crept into Belgravian homes, where
the lord and master lined himself with extra good cheer, and warmed
himself with extra fires; it made dainty maidens and high-born matrons
wrap themselves in extra fur as they drove home from dinner-party or
theatre, or concert or ball. In railway carriages there was an extra
demand for foot-warmers, and at every refreshment bar there was an
incessant demand for a glass of something hot. It was the same in all
the publics and gin-palaces; and it was a curious fact, the poorer the
people were, the more eager was their consumption of potent fluids; and
how they lingered around the places where they were sold, even when their
money and their credit were gone, as if loath to do battle with the cold
without as it pinched their gloveless hands or shoeless feet, or as it
found its way into their cheerless garret or cellar as the case might be!
In the homes of the well-to-do how the fires blazed, as the fond mother
clasped tightly her babe to her bosom for further warmth. In some of the
best constructed conservatories the frost nipped off many a tender plant,
and as costly as tender, while out-door gardeners suffered losses
bewailed bitterly for many a long year. There were muscular young
Christians who enjoyed that cold amazingly, as, well fed and well clad,
bearing torches, they skated along the Serpentine, or in Regent’s Park,
and laughed hugely when any of their weaker brethren or sisters
complained. But, nevertheless, the night’s frost played sad havoc with
the old, the feeble, and the tender. It crept into that attic in
Parker’s Piece, where that poor needlewoman lived. There was no fire in
her empty grate to keep it out, no extra blanket for her bed, no vital
warmth in her attenuated frame to withstand its fatal power; and when the
early sunbeams made their way through the frosted window with difficulty,
they lit up, not the pale face of a living woman, but of a corpse. She
had been sorely tried that day. The last straw had broken the camel’s
back. Christian charity—while it relieved the undeserving, while it had
feasted the reprobate—had passed by her, because, poor as she was, she
was a real woman with all a woman’s self-respect and sensitiveness to
shame, not a drunken, dissipated wretch of brazen face and fluent tongue.
Her heart was broken already, and she fell an easy prey to the cold as it
stiffened her withered limbs and stopped her poor heart’s action and
dried up the feeble current of her blood. Again the coroner came to
Parker’s Piece, and an intelligent jury returned a verdict of ‘Death from
the visitation of God.’ Dear reader, you and I know better; she was
murdered, and a day will come when some one will have to suffer for that
deed—murdered she was, as surely as if her throat had been cut by the
assassin’s knife. There are thousands in this land of churches and
chapels and abounding charities who die in this way every year, and
someone, statesman, or parson, or philanthropist, or master, or
neighbour, is to blame. As regards each of us, it is as well that we
pray with David, ‘Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God of my
salvation.’ It is only as we realize the spirit of that prayer that we
can save the perishing. That is the remedy, and not the dream of the
Utopian, or the Socialist, or the mad result of anarchy and crime.