in comparison with the widow of him who dies while freeing slaves in
Africa, or falls overboard when, in a storm, he is performing some
delicate work. There is literally no provision for her. His mates will
buy his poor kit for four times its worth, will put the same object up
for auction over and over again until it has reached a fabulous value,
will tax themselves beyond all justice in order to send home money
to the widow. But the nation will let his children be vagabonds, and
beg their bread. Yea, they may even seek it in desolate places, until
the extortioner consumes all that he hath, and the stranger spoil his
labours. And that because he gave himself for England’s peace and for
England’s glory. Only three months ago a young fellow died on one of
the ships in the Mediterranean. His mates knew that he was going to
marry a girl when he came home, and that he had already had a child by
her. They collected privately amongst themselves over £40, which they
sent me. I have said sailors are like boys. God bless them for their
youthfulness of heart, full of generosity, and full of the tenderest
sympathy and most delicate understanding for every sorrow and for every
pain.
At the present moment we are going to expend many millions on building
new ships. We may need them. But we certainly do need a great deal
more--a great increase in every branch of the Service, especially
amongst the stokers. I doubt if at this present moment we can man the
ships we have A very excellent attempt has been made in the direction
of such increase in the case of the _Northampton_. Many of my
own lads have been on her, and so I can speak with authority of a
most splendid experiment. It takes in the lad who did not quite come
up to the necessary chest measurement at the proper age, or who was
suffering from some superficial complaint now cured, or whose parents
were an invincible obstacle, and yet who always wanted to become a
sailor. I believe the shorter training they get on board, because of
their increased age, fits them for their work very nearly as well as
the longer training. Let us have two _Northamptons_, then three,
then four. You will easily find recruits. Then roll away the reproach
from our Dockyard towns; remove, as far as you can, temptation from
the younger sailor’s life; give him a reasonable chance of promotion,
and treat all branches equally. The time is coming when the stoker and
engineer will be the chief men on board. The sooner this is recognised
on the quarter-deck, as well as on the main deck, the better. Show him
he can give adequate support to his wife and family, and that, if he
dies, the nation will not forget her; and I do not think you need have
any fear at all about being able to man the biggest fleet the Jingoes
may desire to build. The smell of the sea is the atmosphere in which
Englishmen live. The enthusiasm of travel, the spirit of enterprise,
the unknown with its dangers, has a strange attraction for every
Englishman, and no life supplies this as well as the sailor’s life.
[Illustration: OUR SAILORS.]
Very difficult though it was for them, many officers have helped us
very considerably. One, now a lieutenant in China, and another,
a lieutenant of Marines, will always be held by me in grateful
remembrance for their help amongst our most difficult class of boys.
But, of course, in a house like ours, it was very difficult for
officers to feel exactly at home, for they would very likely have to
share meals with men on board their own ships, and though snobbishness
hardly exists among naval officers, there was a very great practical
difficulty created by necessary discipline.
IX.
=Our Saints.=
The sight of true heroism is the best incentive to learn to be heroic
oneself, a virtue, as you may guess, greatly needed in a house like
ours. The heroism of the soldier who dies on the battle-field is as
nothing compared with the true heroism of one who endures long agonies
of pain and suffering without murmur, who prays in the morning, “Oh,
that it were evening,” and in the evening, “Oh, that it were morning.”
Oftentimes it is this sight which is the only witness for God in the
lives of the poor. “It is expedient that one man die for the people.”
And God granted to us, during several years of our work, this sight
of a living death. His father had been a staff-sergeant in the army,
but his mother had married again into great poverty and distress. He
had struggled as a tram-conductor as long as there was breath in his
body, and then crawled into a wretched bed in a wretched room, shared
with other members of his family, to die without one single comfort,
one alleviation of all his intolerable pain. But even this loneness
in the midst of his own was forbidden him, and impatiently he was
told to go to the workhouse to die. I shall never forget his look of
thankfulness, when I said, “If you don’t mind the noise and racket
of our house, come and die with us.” And as he crossed our threshold
the spirit of peace came with him; and I think it has never altogether
passed away. The good food and wine, and better medical attendance,
above all, the loving unceasing attention of Mary, our housekeeper,
brought him back again from the grave. He lived altogether six years
with us, every summer strengthening into a little activity of body,
tending our little garden across the street, sometimes almost crawling
there on his hands and knees. The very flowers seemed to know him;
they have never grown so luxuriantly since. Surely flowers recognise
love more quickly than men, and respond to it more truly. But then the
whole house was his garden, and so gently, and wisely, and lovingly
did he treat the roughest and most degraded, that they all seemed to
respond to the magic of his touch. Oftentimes, when the whole house
was in bed, he would crawl down from his room to tell me of someone’s
trouble which his love had discovered. Through all the winter he was in
agonies of pain, dreading every breath, and yet welcoming each breath
lest he should suffocate; above all things utterly unconscious of his
own influence, until the day of his death bewailing the expense and
trouble that he was to others, never measuring that in a true and real
sense he was God’s angel of peace dwelling amongst us, for it often
seemed to us as if one single breath would have carried him to that
resting-place which he needed so grievously. No pleasure was so great
in those hours of agony, when he could not speak or move, as to know
that some poor obstinate, hopeless one, was learning the only lesson
his dull soul could learn by watching his pain. So trusted was he that
everyone in all the house gave their money into his care, not only the
boys, but myself as well, for he kept all the Parish Collections, until
they were large enough to go down to the bank. No one would have dared
to have stolen from him. And then when the end was very near, and the
last Sacrament had been received, he asked to be left alone. After a
quarter of an hour or so I opened, as silently as I could, the door,
and found him kneeling beside his bed praying as I thought his last
prayer; but he had learned that divinest of all secrets, that prayer
must perfect itself in service, and so his poor death-chilled hands had
gathered each one’s little money into its own heap, lest he should even
seem to have been unfaithful. As we carried him through the streets to
the church the night before his funeral, there was not a dry eye in all
the parish. All the next morning when the Masses for his repose were
being said, the church was crowded as on a Sunday, factory girls and
Dockyar-dmen giving up their day’s work. His memory was perpetuated in
the new church by the beautifying of the little altar, which in the old
church he had loved so well, for the people had collected over £14 for
that purpose. Ah! would that Bishop Thorold had lived only two months
longer, for his eyes filled with tears, and his heart, so long a parish
priest’s, could realise exactly the importance of such a memory.
Shall I tell you of another of our saints? If some ten years ago you
had passed down the Hard at Portsmouth, you would have seen William
Dore, a mudlark, searching for pennies in the filthy mud of the
harbour for the amusement of good-natured stupids, who throw them to
such-like boys. Thus he earned the pennies which were eagerly taken
from him when he gained his home. He was what our boys would call a
little “off,” else he would not have been so imposed on by a wretched
step-father. The mother, blind and paralysed, lying on a few rags in
a corner of the room, strove to put some thoughts of decency into two
wayward girls--one older and one younger than Willie--earning, as
girls do in that part of Portsmouth, sometimes a shilling or sixpence
a night, and yet with a curious pathos striving to keep from the blind
mother the knowledge of how it was earned. There is a court near called
White’s Row, the most disgraceful place in that most disgraceful part
of the town; but it is redeemed by a little chapel belonging to the
mother church of Holy Trinity, where Mr. Marriott, I think, first,
and afterwards Mr. Lloyd, attracted Willie. He was one of those
extraordinary natures in whom religion seems to come spontaneously; for
they had hardly taught him one fact when he seemed to have grasped the
whole of religion. The first consequence was that he must leave his
home. He had become too old to be a mudlark. The only other living open
to him was a kind of hanging about and picking up odd sixpences from
people whom he knew, money which was gained by sin. Then the mother
died, so he came to us altogether. Whether it was inherited from her,
or due to the awful exposure of his early years, the nerves of his
eyes weakened, and he too became blind. But I think the pathos of his
blindness was almost as great an influence for good as Ross’s more
apparent suffering. His one idea, to give amusement, was his method of
repaying the little we did for him, and so he would learn comic songs,
and sing them after dinner. Often when he knew I was troubled, I would
hear his tap at the door, for he could find his way everywhere about
the house, and he would say, “I think I could make you laugh if you
would let me sing”; and then he would put his hands upon your head,
just as a little child would do, and say, “Your head is better now.” It
is such faith that works miracles of healing to-day. Sometimes strange
boys in the house, who did not know him, would gibe at him, or, with
the horrid cruelty of boys, because he was blind, push or pinch him.
Then a burst of ungoverned temper, and then an equal terror of remorse.
I have found him oftentimes lying on the floor in front of the altar,
having groped his way into church in penitence for these sins. His one
desire, to do something for the Mission, was gratified by allowing him
to become organ-blower, though, indeed, it was an arrangement open to
objection, especially when there were strangers in the church. He sat
in a place in which everybody saw him, and his poor blind eyes staring
into the unknown, and his thick-lipped mouth forming all manner of
grimace as he sang, moved people almost to laughter. We never knew how
he learned psalms and hymns and chants. I have thought myself that some
angel must have taught him. During catechising, too, when all the rest
of the school had failed, Willie could nearly always give the correct
answer. God did not will that he should die with us, for at last the
doctor said that he must go to the imbecile ward in the union. The day
before he died, coming out of a trance of many hours, he said, “Give
my love to the Sunday School children; tell them I have answered every
question,” and then drawing my head quite close down to his mouth, “You
will wear the black cope at my funeral.”
“There is a little boy just come into Alfred Street,” the district
visitor said one day. “He is fourteen, but he looks like a child of
five, and lives and sleeps in a little perambulator. There is no one to
look after him, for his mother is in a lunatic asylum, and his father
goes out at six in the morning, and does not come back till night.” And
so exactly I found him, our dear little Harry, all alone in this dark
room in his perambulator, and on a little shelf, which his poor twisted
hands could reach, his cold and wretched meals apportioned for the day.
At first when we brought him to the house he was very timid and very
nervous, but he soon brightened up. He never really lived with us,
for his father loved him so dearly that he had to go home at night to
be with him, but he was with us all day, and his little tender thread
was soon woven into the woof of our common life, and on all our rough
people his influence was as the influence of a little child. Sometimes,
when all else fails, the roughest beasts are led by a little child.
His face would wince with pain, when any boy spoke harshly to another,
and I have come in and found him almost in an agony of fear, when some
rough horse-play was going on amongst them. I am sure Dr. Fearon will
never forget wheeling him in his little perambulator up to the altar,
to be confirmed by the Bishop. I do not think I have ever seen such
devotion to the Blessed Sacrament as in that little soul. In it he
saw not only Jesus, but our Father, and even heaven as well. Strange,
wonderful stories he told me of what he had seen there, for sometimes
he would doze all day by the fire in the dining-room, in my study, or
in Mary’s kitchen, and then only say, “I was dreaming of the Blessed
Sacrament. Do you think someone would wheel me to Mass to-morrow
morning?” I remember so well kissing away the last tears I saw in his
eyes, as he held up in his little shrunken hands some woollen slippers,
which he had made for me, a little secret for my birthday, and found
that there was not work enough done, and then fell back saying, “I
shall never live to finish them,” and died that night.
These were but a few of the saints who have influenced our home. But
out in the parish there were just as saintly lives lived, women’s
lives, so we could not bring them in to die with us. Moore’s Square is
the most unhealthy spot in our district. It has never been free from
typhoid fever since I went there, and it is no wonder, for there are
slaughter-houses all round it. All of the houses are poor and squalid,
and more or less out of repair. Martha lived in the Square. Her husband
was a rough sailor, who coasted about. Often away from home he would
get converted, and clergymen would write to me about him, but he
generally signalled his return with an outburst of drunkenness. More
than once I have known all the furniture broken up, and once her arm
badly burnt, because a lighted paraffin lamp had been knocked down.
She had never heard anything about religion, till she came into church
by chance one day and heard me preaching about the Blessed Sacrament.
Very often our sermons consisted of saying the same thing over and over
again, and this day I was speaking of the Sacrament as “the Blood of
God.” I must have said the words very often, for she came round to my
house that night to ask me if it was really true that God had shed His
very Blood for her. It was a revelation to her of a love so pure and so
true, a love that had forced the Eternal out of compassion for us to
take to Himself Blood that he might shed it for our sakes. She could
neither read nor write, and as she was suffering from cancer, she had
not much time to learn. Once she was operated on, and as she went off
under the chloroform she whispered to me, “God’s Blood.” But it soon
began to grow again, and day by day we could see her bodily strength
decaying; such horrid decay. When you read the lives of the Saints you
think that kissing the sores of the lepers is an exaggeration, but it
is being done continually by the poor for the poor. Their rough hands
are soothed to tenderest nursing, and their rude, vulgar, boisterous
ways taught true refinement by the compassion which they feel. Hers was
a very tedious case, and neighbours have children of their own, and
cannot watch all day, though oftentimes all night, and so the little
daughter of twelve, who would rather have been playing than tending
her mother, was tied to the table. One day a neighbour, hearing cries,
ran in, and the child explained, “Mother is silly: she is crying for
the Blood of God.” How grateful I was that the Blessed Sacrament was
reserved that day! It was in truth her “viaticum.”
We could never make out why, however ill she was, an old woman--Maria
I will call her--would never allow us to go up to her bedroom. She was
always huddled up in a little chair, covered with a thin old shawl;
sometimes one doubted whether there was anything beneath it. She was
quite a lady, with a beautiful pinched face, bright cheerful eyes, yet
so sunken that the light was as stars seen from a well. So gracious,
always doing the honours of her little home, and yet so reticent
about the room upstairs; till one day suddenly taken ill at night, a
neighbour discovered she had no bed--had not had one for many years.
She had kept a little school, and many of the women round had been her
pupils; she could not bear that they should know she needed, else they
would stint themselves for her. I shall never forget how she kissed my
hands the first time I saw her in the bed we got for her, and said, “I
pray God you may never be as thankful for a bed as I am for this.” And
then, after a little while, when we passed by, she would not let us
in, saying, “I can go to church and hear you, so I won’t trouble you
to-day. I know you are very busy.” And the same thing to the district
visitors, till my sister Geraldine, who, because she is the shortest,
is the bravest of us all, found the bed was pawned. The poor old lady
held down her head, and looked so ashamed, and would not talk about
it, till a man across the street cried out, “That d----d ruffian of a
grandson came out of gaol the other day, and has pawned it.” Not only
did he pawn the bed, but, by his badness, he drove her to such sorrow
that she lost all hope; her old body could bear no more, and, falling
downstairs, she was wounded past recovery. The neighbours called in the
police, but the old woman’s last words were--“He did not push me.” But
though the coroner and jury acquitted him, the neighbours look askance
at him to-day.
Many cases like this forced upon me the need of some kind of
alms-houses, where I could put old ladies whose only other home was
the workhouse. And so we turned the cottages standing on the intended
site of the new church into homes for five or six old ladies, and when
these had to be pulled down we bought other ones, so that the Mission
possesses to-day twelve houses, in which five old couples and nine
or ten old ladies live. It has been a part of our work most blessed;
and as I have never been able to get away, owing to stress of work,
for the last five years, and people have kindly given me money for my
holidays, this holiday money has bought most of the alms-houses. Dear
old ladies, I wonder if they miss me to-day as much as I miss them. I
believe the purest happiness I have ever had in all my whole life is
knowing and seeing their happiness. The houses are all freehold, and
the old souls pay sixpence or a shilling a week, so there is enough to
pay taxes and repairs, sometimes even a balance over. Granny is not
always honoured in England as she is in Germany; she does not always
get the warmest seat by the fire, or the first helping from the dish;
she is sometimes the drudge of the whole family; minding the baby and
the little children; even when her head is splitting, the children
with that shrill voice which discovers every aching nerve, cry, “It is
only granny, she does not matter.” Sometimes, when the house is full,
she is put in the corner, where, in the days far gone, she used to put
that strong, stalwart man, who now does not take the trouble to defend
her.
Thank God, the workhouse is far more humane to-day in England than
it was, but the remembrance of what it was, has left a feeling, a
sentiment, if you like to call it so, which renders it abhorrent
to every honest and earnest man and woman. I pray God the time is
coming when we shall recognise out-door relief a great deal more. The
Portsmouth Guardians were wonderfully good in this respect; they tried
to keep people out of the house by allowing out-door relief. And I
cannot speak in too high praise of the parish doctor, Mr. Colt, and
our two relieving officers, Mr. Gardiner and Mr. Vine. There is no
man more admirable than the conscientious poor-law doctor. Think of
attending people who never obey any of your directions, who take your
medicine three doses at a time, and then come for more, who send for
you continually. And though our Union was, I think, as good as most--I
was on the Board of Guardians for a considerable time--I wonder whether
any of us Guardians would desire to go into it ourselves. Thank God we
have now four or five lady Guardians in Portsmouth, who will do for
the women and children what we never could do. I remember discovering
after weeks of visiting in the schools, hideous and horrid things that
a woman’s eye would have seen at once. I had to see three girls who
were going out to service. I noticed they used their aprons instead
of their pocket-handkerchiefs, and when I made enquiries, thinking
this would be an obstacle to their becoming servants, they told me
that they were only allowed pocket-handkerchiefs one day in the year,
when they went out for their annual treat. One day at four o’clock I
found them all at tea, and floating on the top of the liquid so called
were lumps of grease and fat. I discovered that they had eaten their
dinner of soup at one o’clock, and that tea was being served in the
same porringer. A little lad broke his arm on a Saturday, and though
he was bathed and dressed by the attendants, it was not known till
the Tuesday. Indeed, the whole system of the schools was wrong. They
ought to have been in the country, miles away from the main house.
Better still, the children ought to have been boarded out. I doubt if
any institutions for children are right, but I have no doubt at all
that our present barrack-system is altogether inhuman and scandalous.
And the same thing might be said of the Infirmary, in which there were
several hundred patients, and only one trained nurse to look after
them. The very sick and dying were left to the tender mercies of any
old porter who had wit enough to gain a few extra pence by becoming a
wardsman or wardswoman. Difficult surgical cases were nursed by these
utterly inefficient persons; people were left to die alone, without
anyone to moisten their lips. I am very proud to think that this has
been mended now, and that there are certified nurses, though, perhaps,
not yet a sufficient number.
The real difficulty of the whole workhouse system consists in the
want of classification. There are numbers of people who spend their
lives in workhouses, going from one to another. In many cases the
Union is actually a premium on idleness. You and I cannot imagine a
man who could like this sort of life, but such people will remain with
us, until there is some system of registration, some method by which
those, who are just entering on the life, may be checked and stopped at
the critical moment, when a helping hand would prevent them becoming
casuals. Above all we must separate from these loafers those who are
forced in old age to go into the workhouse. A great deal, I know, is
being done, but it is all being done in an institutional way, without
any individualising, without any humanity. If there is one place in the
world where the miserable divisions amongst Christian people are most
manifest, it is in the workhouse. It is this, I am sure, that prevents
it being worked on a Christian method. The Church of England would be
jealous if it were done by Dissenters, the Dissenters equally jealous
if it were done by the Church of England. So long as this ministering
to the poor, which is the highest and most Christ-like of all Christian
duties, is done by officials, it cannot ever be done in a Christian way
to any extent, though I know, of course, there are many exceptions.
And however desirous the officials are under present circumstances,
there rises the question of the rates, rates managed by Guardians,
who are often recklessly extravagant in all the outward part of their
organisation, which is seen by the public, and shockingly mean as
regards the small expenditure which makes all the difference between
comfort and discomfort.