Produced by Charles Keller
GINX'S BABY
His Birth and other Misfortunes
A SATIRE
By Edward Jenkins
PREFACE.
CRITIC.--I never read a more improbable story in my life.
AUTHOR.--Notwithstanding, it may be true.
CONTENTS.
PART I. WHAT GINX DID WITH HIM.
I. Ab initio
II. Home, sweet Home!
III. Work and Ideas
IV. Digressive, and may be skipped without mutilating the History
V. Reasons and Resolves
VI. The Antagonism of Law and Necessity
VII. Malthus and Man
VIII. The Baby's First Translation
PART II. WHAT CHARITY AND THE CHURCHES DID WITH HIM.
I. The Milk of Human Kindness, Mother's Milk, and the Milk of
the Word
II. The Protestant Detectoral Association
III. The Sacrament of Baptism
IV. Law on Behalf of Gospel
V. Magistrate's Law
VI. Popery and Protestantism in the Queen's Bench
VII. A Protestor, but not a Protestant
VIII. “See how these Christians love one another”
IX. Good Samaritans, and Good-Samaritan Twopences
X. The Force--and a Specimen of its Weakness
XI. The Unity of the Spirit and the Bond of Peace
XII. No Funds--no Faith, no Works
XIII. In transitu
PART III. WHAT THE PARISH DID WITH HIM.
I. Parochial Knots--to be untied without Prejudice
II. A Board of Guardians
III. “The World is my Parish”
IV. Without Prejudice to any one but the Guardians
V. An Ungodly Jungle
VI. Parochial Benevolence--and another Translation
PART IV. WHAT THE CLUBS AND POLITICIANS DID WITH HIM.
I. Moved on
II. Club Ideas
III. A thorough-paced Reformer--if not a Revolutionary
IV. Very Broad Views
V. Party Tactics--and Political Obstructions to Social Reform
VI. Amateur Debating in a High Legislative Body
PART V. WHAT GINX'S BABY DID WITH HIMSELF.
The Last Chapter
PART I. WHAT GINX DID WITH HIM.
I.--Ab initio.
The name of the father of Ginx's Baby was Ginx. By a not unexceptional
coincidence, its mother was Mrs. Ginx. The gender of Ginx's Baby was
masculine.
On the day when our hero was born, Mr. and Mrs. Ginx were living at
Number Five, Rosemary Street, in the City of Westminster. The being then
and there brought into the world was not the only human entity to which
the title of “Ginx's Baby” was or had been appropriate. Ginx had been
married to Betsy Hicks at St. John's, Westminster, on the twenty-fifth
day of October, 18--, as appears from the “marriage lines” retained by
Betsy Ginx, and carefully collated by me with the original register.
Our hero was their thirteenth child. Patient inquiry has enabled me
to verify the following history of their propagations. On July the
twenty-fifth, the year after their marriage, Mrs. Ginx was safely
delivered of a girl. No announcement of this appeared in the newspapers.
On the tenth of April following, the whole neighborhood, including Great
Smith Street, Marsham Street, Great and Little Peter Streets, Regent
Street, Horseferry Road, and Strutton Ground, was convulsed by
the report that a woman named Ginx had given birth to “a triplet,”
consisting of two girls and a boy. The news penetrated to Dean's Yard
and the ancient school of Westminster. The Dean, who accepted nothing
on trust, sent to verify the report, his messenger bearing a bundle of
baby-clothes from the Dean's wife, who thought that the mother could
scarcely have provided for so large an addition to her family. The
schoolboys, on their way to the play-ground at Vincent Square, slyly
diverged to have a look at the curiosity, paying sixpence a head to Mrs.
Ginx's friend and crony, Mrs. Spittal, who pocketed the money, and said
nothing about it to the sick woman. THIS birth was announced in all
the newspapers throughout the kingdom, with the further news that Her
Majesty the Queen had been graciously pleased to forward to Mrs. Ginx
the sum of three pounds.
What could have possessed the woman I can't say, but about a twelvemonth
after, Mrs. Ginx, with the assistance of two doctors hastily fetched
from the hospital by her frightened husband, nearly perished in a fresh
effort of maternity. This time two sons and two daughters fell to the
lot of the happy pair. Her Majesty sent four pounds. But whatever peace
there was at home, broils disturbed the street. The neighbors, who had
sent for the police on the occasion, were angered by a notoriety which
was becoming uncomfortable to them, and began to testify their feelings
in various rough ways. Ginx removed his family to Rosemary Street,
where, up to a year before the time when Ginx's Baby was born, his wife
had continued to add to her offspring until the tale reached one dozen.
It was then that Ginx affectionately but firmly begged that his wife
would consider her family ways, since, in all conscience, he had fairly
earned the blessedness of the man who hath his quiver full of them;
and frankly gave her notice that, as his utmost efforts could scarcely
maintain their existing family, if she ventured to present him with any
more, either single, or twins, or triplets, or otherwise, he would most
assuredly drown him, or her, or them in the water-butt, and take the
consequences.
II.--Home, sweet Home!
The day on which Ginx uttered his awful threat was that next to the one
wherein number twelve had drawn his first breath. His wife lay on the
bed which, at the outset of wedded life, they had purchased secondhand
in Strutton Ground for the sum of nine shillings and sixpence.
SECOND-HAND! It had passed through, at least, as many hands as there
were afterwards babies born upon it. Twelfth or thirteenth hand, a
vagabond, botched bedstead, type of all the furniture in Ginx's rooms,
and in numberless houses through the vast city. Its dimensions were
4 feet 6 inches by 6 feet. When Ginx, who was a stout navvy, and Mrs.
Ginx, who was, you may conceive, a matronly woman, were in it, there
was little vacant space about them. Yet, as they were forced to find
resting-places for all the children, it not seldom happened that at
least one infant was perilously wedged between the parental bodies; and
latterly they had been so pressed for room in the household that two
younglings were nestled at the foot of the bed. Without foot-board or
pillows, the lodgment of these infants was precarious, since any fatuous
movement of Ginx's legs was likely to expel them head-first. However
they were safe, for they were sure to fall on one or other of their
brothers or sisters.
I shall be as particular as a valuer, and describe what I have seen. The
family sleeping-room measured 13 feet 6 inches by 14 feet.
Opening out of this, and again on the landing of the third-floor, was
their kitchen and sitting-room; it was not quite so large as the other.
This room contained a press, an old chest of drawers, a wooden box
once used for navvy's tools, three chairs, a stool, and some cooking
utensils. When, therefore, one little Ginx had curled himself up under a
blanket on the box, and three more had slipped beneath a tattered piece
of carpet under the table, there still remained five little bodies to be
bedded. For them an old straw mattress, limp enough to be rolled up and
thrust under the bed, was at night extended on the floor. With this,
and a patchwork quilt, the five were left to pack themselves together as
best they could. So that, if Ginx, in some vision of the night, happened
to be angered, and struck out his legs in navvy fashion, it sometimes
came to pass that a couple of children tumbled upon the mass of
infantile humanity below.
Not to be described are the dinginess of the walls, the smokiness of the
ceilings, the grimy windows, the heavy, ever-murky atmosphere of these
rooms. They were 8 feet 6 inches in height, and any curious statist can
calculate the number of cubic feet of air which they afforded to each
person.
The other side of the street was 14 feet distant. Behind, the backs of
similar tenements came up black and cowering over the little yard of
Number Five. As rare, in the well thus formed, was the circulation of
air as that of coin in the pockets of the inhabitants. I have seen the
yard; let me warn you, if you are fastidious, not to enter it. Such
of the filth of the house as could not, at night, be thrown out of the
front windows, was there collected, and seldom, if ever, removed. What
became of it? What becomes of countless such accretions in like places?
Are a large proportion of these filthy atoms absorbed by human creatures
living and dying, instead of being carried away by scavengers and
inspectors? The forty-five big and little lodgers in the house were
provided with a single office in the corner of the yard. It had once
been capped by a cistern, long since rotted away--
* * * * *
The street was at one time the prey of the gas company; at
another, of the drainage contractors. They seemed to delight in turning
up the fetid soil, cutting deep trenches through various strata of
filth, and piling up for days or weeks matter that reeked with vegetable
and animal decay. One needs not affirm that Rosemary Street was not so
called from its fragrance. If the Ginxes and their neighbors preserved
any semblance of health in this place, the most popular guardian on
the board must own it a miracle. They, poor people, knew nothing of
“sanitary reform,” “sanitary precautions,” “zymotics,” “endemics,”
“epidemics,” “deodorizers,” or “disinfectants.” They regarded disease
with the apathy of creatures who felt it to be inseparable from
humanity, and with the fatalism of despair.
Gin was their cardinal prescription, not for cure, but for oblivion:
“Sold everywhere.” A score of palaces flourished within call of each
other in that dismal district--garish, rich-looking dens, drawing to
the support of their vulgar glory the means, the lives, the eternal
destinies of the wrecked masses about them. Veritable wreckers they who
construct these haunts, viler than the wretches who place false beacons
and plunder bodies on the beach. Bring down the real owners of
these places, and show them their deadly work! Some of them leading
Philanthropists, eloquent at Missionary meetings and Bible Societies,
paying tribute to the Lord out of the pockets of dying drunkards,
fighting glorious battles for slaves, and manfully upholding popular
rights. My rich publican--forgive the pun--before you pay tithes of mint
and cummin, much more before you claim to be a disciple of a certain
Nazarene, take a lesson from one who restored fourfold the money he had
wrung from honest toil, or reflect on the case of the man to whom it was
said, “Go sell all thou hast, and give to the poor.” The lips from which
that counsel dropped offered some unpleasant alternatives, leaving out
one, however, which nowadays may yet reach you--the contempt of your
kind.
III.--Work and Ideas.
I return again to Ginx's menace to his wife, who was suckling her
infant at the time on the bed. For her he had an animal affection that
preserved her from unkindness, even in his cups. His hand had never
unmanned itself by striking her, and rarely indeed did it injure any
one else. He wrestled not against flesh and blood, or powers, or
principalities, or wicked spirits in high places. He struggled with
clods and stones, and primeval chaos. His hands were horny with the
fight, and his nature had perhaps caught some of the dull ruggedness
of the things wherewith he battled. Hard and with a will had he worked
through the years of wedded life, and, to speak him fair, he had acted
honestly, within the limits of his knowledge and means, for the good of
his family. How narrow were those limits! Every week he threw into the
lap of Mrs. Ginx the eighteen or twenty shillings which his strength and
temperance enabled him continuously to earn, less sixpence reserved
for the public-house, whither he retreated on Sundays after the family
dinner. A dozen children overrunning the space in his rooms was then
a strain beyond the endurance of Ginx. Nor had he the heart to try the
common plan, and turn his children out of doors on the chance of their
being picked up in a raid of Sunday School teachers. So he turned out
himself to talk with the humbler spirits of the “Dragon,” or listen
sleepily while alehouse demagogues prescribed remedies for State abuses.
Our friend was nearly as guiltless of knowledge as if Eve had never
rifled the tree whereon it grew. Vacant of policies were his thoughts;
innocent he of ideas of state-craft. He knew there was a Queen; he had
seen her. Lords and Commons were to him vague deities possessing strange
powers. Indeed, he had been present when some of his better-informed
companions had recognized with cheers certain gentlemen,--of whom Ginx's
estimate was expressed by a reference to his test of superiority to
himself in that which he felt to be greatest within him--“I could lick
'em with my little finger”--as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the
Prime Minister. Little recked he of their uses or abuses. The functions
of Government were to him Asian mysteries. He only felt that it ought to
have a strong arm, like the brawny member wherewith he preserved order
in his domestic kingdom, and therefore generally associated Government
with the Police. In his view these were to clear away evil-doers and
leave every one else alone. The higher objects of Government were, if
at all, outlined in the shadowiest form in his imagination. Government
imposed taxes--that he was obliged to know. Government maintained the
parks; for that he thanked it. Government made laws, but what they were,
or with what aim or effects made, he knew not, save only that by them
something was done to raise or depress the prices of bread, tea, sugar,
and other necessaries. Why they should do so he never conceived--I am
not sure that he cared. Legislation sometimes pinched him, but darkness
so hid from him the persons and objects of the legislators that he could
not criticise the theories which those powerful beings were subjecting
to experiment at his cost. I must, at any risk, say something about this
in a separate chapter.
IV.--Digressive, and may be skipped without mutilating the History.
I stop here to address any of the following characters, should he
perchance read these memoirs:
You, Mr. Statesman--if there be such;
Mr. Pseudo-Statesman, Placeman, Party Leader, Wirepuller;
Mr. Amateur Statesman, Dilettante Lord, Civil Servant;
Mr. Clubman, Litterateur, Newspaper Scribe;
Mr. People's Candidate, Demagogue, Fenian Spouter;
or whoever you may be, professing to know aught or do anything in
matters of policy, consider, what I am sure you have never fairly
weighed, the condition of a man whose clearest notion of Government is
derived from the Police! Imagine one who had never seen a polyp trying
to construct an ideal of the animal, from a single tentacle swinging out
from the tangle of weed in which the rest was wrapped! How then any more
can you fancy that a man to whose sight and knowledge the only part of
government practically exposed is the strong process of police, shall
form a proper conception of the functions, reasons, operations, and
relations of Government; or even build up an ideal of anything but a
haughty, unreasonable, antagonistic, tax-imposing FORCE! And how can
you rule such a being except as you rule a dog, by that which alone
he understands--the dog-whip of the constable! Given in a country a
majority of creatures like these, and surely despotism is its properest
complement. But when they exist, as they exist in England to-day, in
hundreds of thousands, in town and country, think what a complication
they introduce into your theoretic free system of government. Acts
of Parliament passed by a “freely-elected” House of Commons, and an
hereditary House of Lords under the threats of freely-electing citizens,
however pure in intention and correct in principle, will not seem to
him to be the resultants of every wish in the community so much as
dictations by superior strength. To these the obedience he will render
will not be the loving assent of his heart, but a begrudged concession
to circumstance. Your awe-invested legislature is not viewed as his
friend and brother-helper, but his tyrant. Therefore the most natural
bent of his workman-statesmanship--a rough, bungling affair--will be to
tame you--you who ought to be his Counsellor and Friend. When he
finds that your legislative action exerts upon him a repressive and
restraining force he will curse you as its author, because he sees not
the springs you are working. Should he even be a little more advanced
in knowledge than our friend Ginx, and learn that he helps to elect the
Parliament to make laws on behalf of himself and his fellow-citizens, he
will scarce trust the assembly which is supposed to represent him.
Will he, like a good citizen and a politic, accept with dignity and
self-control the decision of a majority against his prejudices: or will
he not regard the whole Wittenagemote with suspicion, contempt, or
even hatred? See him rush madly to Trafalgar Square meetings, Hyde Park
demonstrations, perhaps to Lord George Gordon Riots, as if there were no
less perilous means of publishing his opinions! There wily men may lead
his unconscious intellect, and stir his passions, and direct his forces
against his own--and his children's good.
Did it ever occur to you, or any of you, how many voters cannot read,
and how many more, though they can read, are unable to apprehend reasons
of statesmanship?--that even newspapers cannot inform them, since they
have not the elementary knowledge needed for the comprehension of those
things which are discussed in them; nay, that for want of understanding
the same they may terribly distort political aims and consequences?
Might it not be worth while for you, gentlemen--may it not be your duty
to devise ways and means for conveying such elementary instruction
by good street-preachers on politics and economy, or even political
bible-women or colporteurs, and so to make clear to the understanding of
every voter what are the reasons and aims of every act of Legislation,
Home Administration, and Foreign Policy? If you do not find out some
way to do this he may turn round upon you--I hope he may--and insist on
annually-elected parliaments, and thus oblige ambitious state-mongers,
in the rivalry of place, to come to him and declare more often their
wishes and objects. Other attractions may be found in that solution:
such as the untying of some knots of electoral difficulty, and removing
incitements to corruption. Ten thousand pounds for one year's power were
a high price even to a contractor. Think then whether at any cost some
general political education must not be attempted, since there is a
spirit breathing on the waters, and how it shall convulse them is no
indifferent matter to you or to me. Everywhere around us are unhewn
rocks stirred with a strange motion. Leave these chaotic fragments of
humanity to be hewn into rough shape by coarse artists seeking only
a petty profit, unhandy, immeasurably impudent; or dress them by your
teaching--teaching which is the highest, noblest, purest, most efficient
function of Government, which ought to be the most lofty ambition of
statesmanship--to be civic corner-stones polished after the similitude
of a palace.
V.--Reasons and Resolves.
Ginx has been waiting through three chapters to explain his truculence
upon the birth of his twelfth child. Much explanation is not necessary.
When he looked round his nest and saw the many open mouths about him, he
might well be appalled to have another added to them. His children
were not chameleons, yet they were already forced to be content with a
proportion of air for their food. And even the air was bad. They were
pallid and pinched. How they were clad will ever be a mystery, save to
the poor woman who strung the limp rags together and Him who watched the
noble patience and sacrifice of a daily heroism. Of her own unsatisfied
cravings, and the dense motherly horrors that sometimes brooded over her
while she nursed these infants, let me refrain from speaking, since if
as vividly depicted as they were real, you, Madam, could not endure
to read of them. Her poor, unintelligent mind clung tenaciously to the
controverted aphorism, “Where God sends mouths he sends food to fill
them.” Believing that there was a God, and that He must be kind, she
trusted in this as a truth, and perhaps an all-seeing eye reading some
quaint characters on her simple heart, viewed them not too nearly, but
had regard to their general import, for, as she expressed it, “Thank
God! they had always been able to get along.”
In the rush and tumult of the world it is likely that the summum
bonum of nine-tenths of mankind is embraced in that purely negative
happiness--to get along. Not to perish: to open eyes, however wearily,
on a new morning: to satisfy with something, no matter what, a craving
appetite: to close eyes at night under some shadow or shelter: or, it
may be, in certain ranks to walk another day free from bankruptcy or
arrest: Thank Heaven, they are just able to get along!
Convinced that another infant straw would break his back, Ginx calmly
proposed to disconcert physical, moral, and legal relations by drowning
the straw Mrs. Ginx clinging to Number Twelve listened aghast. If a
mother can forget her sucking child she was not that mother. The stream
of her affections, though divided into twelve rills, would not have been
exhausted in twenty-four, and her soul, forecasting its sorrow, yearned
after that nonentity Number Thirteen. She pictured to herself the
hapless strangeling borne away from her bosom by those strong arms,
and--in fact she sobbed so that Ginx grew ashamed, and sought to comfort
her by the suggestion that she could not have any more. But she knew
better.
VI.--The Antagonism of Law and Necessity.
In eighteen months, notwithstanding resolves, menaces, and prophecies,
GINX'S BABY was born. The mother hid the impending event long, from
the father. When he came to know it, he fixed his determination by much
thought and a little extra drinking. He argued thus: “He wouldn't go on
the parish. He couldn't keep another youngster to save his life. He had
never taken charity and never would. There was nothink to do with it but
drown it!” Female friends of Mrs. Ginx bruited his intentions about the
neighborhood, so that her “time” was watched for with interest. At last
it came. One afternoon Ginx, lounging home, saw signs of excitement
around his door in Rosemary Street. A knot of women and children awaited
his coming. Passing through them he soon learned what had happened.
Poor Mrs. Ginx! Without staying to think or argue, he took up the little
stranger and bore it from the room----
“O, O, O, Ginx! Ginx!!”
She would have risen, but a strong power called weakness pulled her
back.
* * * * *
The man meanwhile had reached the street.
“Here he comes! There's the baby! He's going to do it, sure enough!”
shrieked the women. The children stood agape. He stopped to consider. It
is very well to talk about drowning your baby, but to do it you need two
things, water and opportunity. Vauxhall Bridge was the nearest way to
the former, and towards it Ginx turned.
“Stop him!”
“Murder!”
“Take the child from him!”
The crowd grew larger, and impeded the man's progress. Some of his
fellow-workmen stood by regarding the fun.
“Leave us aloan, naabors,” shouted Ginx; “this is my own baby, and I'll
do wot I likes with it. I kent keep it; an' if I've got anythin' I kent
keep, it's best to get rid of it, ain't it? This child's goin' over
Wauxhall Bridge.”
But the women clung to his arms and coattails.
“Hallo! What's all this about?” said a sharp, strong man, well-dressed,
and in good condition, coming up to the crowd; “another foundling!
Confound the place, the very stones produce babies. Where was it found?”
CHORUS (recognizing a deputy-relieving officer). It warn't found at all;
it's Ginx's baby.
OFFICER. Ginx's baby? Who's Ginx?
GINX. I am.
OFFICER. Well?
GINX. Well!
CHORUS. He's goin' to drown it.
OFFICER. Going to drown it? Nonsense.
GINX. I am.
OFFICER. But, bless my heart, that's murder!
GINX. No 'tain't. I've twelve already at home. Starvashon's sure to kill
this 'un. Best save it the trouble.
CHORUS. Take it away, Mr. Smug, he'll kill it if you don't.
OFFICER. Stuff and nonsense! Quite contrary to law! Why, man, you're
bound to support your child. You can't throw it off in that way;--nor on
the parish neither. Give me your name. I must get a magistrate's order.
The act of parliament is as clear as daylight. I had a man up under
it last week. “Whosoever shall unlawfully abandon or expose any child,
being under the age of two years whereby the life of such child shall
be endangered or the health of such child shall have been or shall be
likely to be permanently injured (drowning comes under that I think)
shall be GUILTY OF a MISDEMEANOR and being convicted thereof shall be
liable at the discretion of the court to be KEPT IN PENAL SERVITUDE for
the term of three years or to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding
two years with or without hard labor.”
Mr. Smug, the officer, rolled out this section in a sonorous monotone,
without stops, like a clerk of the court. It was his pride to know by
heart all the acts relating to his department, and to bring them down
upon any obstinate head that he wished to crush. Ginx's head, however,
was impervious to an act of parliament. In his then temper, the
Commination Service or St. Ernulphus's curse would have been feathers
to him. The only feeling aroused in his mind by the words of the
legislature was one of resentment. To him they seemed unjust, because
they were hard and fast, and made no allowance for circumstances. So he
said:
GINX. D---- the act of parliament! What's the use of saying I shan't
abandon the child, when I can't keep it alive?
OFFICER. But you're bound by law to keep it alive.
GINX. Bound to keep it alive? How am I to do it? There's the rest on 'em
there (nodding towards his house) little better nor alive now. If that's
an act of Parleyment, why don't the act of Parleyment provide for 'em?
You know what wages is, and I can't get more than is going.
CHORUS. Yes. Why don't Parleyment provide for 'em? You take the child,
Mr. Smug.
OFFICER (regardless of grammar). ME take the child! The parish has
enough to do to take care of foundlings and children whose parents can't
or don't work. You don't suppose we will look after the children of
those who can?
GINX. Jest so. You'll bring up bastards and beggars' pups, but you won't
help an honest man to keep his head above water. This child's head is
goin' under water anyhow!--and he prepared to bolt, amid fresh screams
from the Chorus.
VII.--Malthus and Man.
Two gentlemen, who had been observing the excitement, here came forward.
FIRST GENTLEMAN. This is our problem again, Mr. Philosopher.
Mr. PHILOSOPHER (to Ginx). You don't know what to do with your infant,
my friend, and you think the State ought to provide for it? I understand
you to say this is your thirteenth child. How came you to have so many?
This question, though put with profound and even melancholy gravity,
disconcerted Ginx, Officer, and Chorus, who united in a hearty outburst
of laughter.
GINX. Haw, Haw, Haw! How came I to have so many? Why my old woman's a
good un and----
In fact, after searching his mind for some clever way of putting a
comical rejoinder, Ginx laughed boisterously. There are two aspects of a
question.
PHILOSOPHER. I am serious, my friend. Did it never occur to you that you
had no right to bring children into the world unless you could feed and
clothe and educate them?
CHORUS. Laws a' mercy!
GINX. I'd like to know how I could help it, naabor. I'm a married man.
PHILOSOPHER. Well, I will go further and say you ought not to have
married without a fair prospect of being able to provide for any
contingent increase of family.
CHORUS. Laws a' mercy!
PHILOSOPHER (waxing warm). What right had you to marry a poor woman, and
then both of you, with as little forethought as two--a--dogs, or other
brutes--to produce between you such a multitudinous progeny--
GINX. Civil words, naabor; don't call my family hard names.
PHILOSOPHER. Then let me say, such a monstrous number of children as
thirteen? You knew, as you said just now, that wages were wages and did
not vary much. And yet you have gone on subdividing your resources by
the increase of what must become a degenerate offspring. (To the Chorus)
All you workpeople are doing it. Is it not time to think about these
things and stop the indiscriminate production of human beings, whose
lives you cannot properly maintain? Ought you not to act more like
reflective creatures and less like brutes? As if breeding were the whole
object of life! How much better for you, my friend, if you had never
married at all, than to have had the worry of a wife and children all
these years.
The philosopher had gone too far. There were some angry murmurs among
the women and Ginx's face grew dark. He was thinking of “all those
years” and the poor creature that from morning to night and Sunday to
Sunday, in calm and storm, had clung to his rough affections: and the
bright eyes, and the winding arms so often trellised over his tremendous
form, and the coy tricks and laughter that had cheered so many tired
hours. He may have been much of a brute, but he felt that, after
all, that sort of thing was denied to dogs and pigs. Before he could
translate his thoughts into words or acts a shrewd-looking, curly-haired
stonemason, who stood by with his tin on his arm, cut into the
discussion.
STONEMASON. Your doctrines won't go down here, Mr. Philosopher. I've
'eard of them before. I'd just like to ask you what a man's to do and
what a woman's to do if they don't marry: and if they do, how can you
honestly hinder them from having any children?
The stonemason had rudely struck out the cardinal issues of the
question.
PHILOSOPHER. Well, to take the last point first, there are physical and
ethical questions involved in it, which it is hard to discuss before
such an audience as this.
STONEMASON. But you must discuss 'em, if you wish us to change our ways,
and stop breeding.
PHILOSOPHER. Very well: perhaps you are right. But, again, I should
first have to establish a basis for my arguments, by showing that the
conception of marriage entertained by you all is a low one. It is not
simply a breeding matter. The beauty and value of the relation lies
in its educational effects--the cultivation of mutual sentiments and
refinements of great importance to a community.
STONEMASON. Ay! Very beautiful and refining to Mr. and Mrs. Philosopher,
but I'd like to know where the country would have been if our fathers
had held to that view of matrimony? Why, ain't it in natur' for all
beings to pair, and have young? an' you say we ain't to do it! I think a
statesman ought to make something out of what's nateral to human beings,
and not try to change their naturs. Besides, ain't there good of another
kind to be got out of the relation of parents and children? Did you ever
have a child yourself?
GINX (contemplating the Philosopher's physique). HE have a youngster! He
couldn't.
CHORUS. Ha! Ha! Ha!
STONEMASON. I don't believe in yer humbuggin' notions. They lead to
lust and crime;--I'm told they do in France. If you yourself haven't the
human natur in you to know it, I'll tell you, and we can all tell you
that as a rule if the healthy desires of natur ain't satisfied in a
honest way, they will be in another. You can't stop eating by passin' an
act of Parleyment to stop it. And as for yer eddication and cultivation,
that makes no difference. We know something here about yer eddicated
men;--more than they think. Who is it we meet about the streets late at
night, goin' to the gay houses? Some of 'em stand near as high as you,
but that don't alter their natur. They have their passions like other
men; and eddication don't keep 'em down. Well, if that's the case, how
can you ask people of our sort to put on the curb, or make us do it?
Are we to live more like beasts than we are now, or do what's worse
than murder? I don't see no other way. Among us I tell you, sir,
three-fourths of our eddication, is eddication of the heart. We have
to learn to be human, kind, self-denyin', and I think this makes better
men, as a rule, than head-larnin'; tho' I don't despise that, neither.
But you don't suppose head-citizens would fight for their country like
men with wives and children behind 'em; why they don't even at home work
for daily food like a man with wife and babies to provide for!
The stonemason was above his class--one of those shrewd men that “the
people called Methodists” get hold of, and use among the lower orders,
under the name of “local preachers;” men who learn to think and speak
better than their fellows. The Philosopher testified some admiration by
listening attentively, and was about to reply, but the Chorus was tired,
and the women would not hear him.
CHORUS. Best get out o' this. We don't want any o' yer filhosophy. Go
and get childer' of yer own, &c., &c.
The Philosopher and his friend departed, carrying with them unsolved the
problem they had brought.
VIII.--The Baby's First Translation.
The stonemason had been the hero of the moment; now attention centred
on our own hero. Ginx hurried off again, but as the crowd opened
before him, he was met, and his mad career stayed, by a slight figure,
feminine, draped in black to the feet, wearing a curiously framed
white-winged hood above her pale face, and a large cross suspended from
her girdle. He could not run her down.
NUN. Stop, MAN! Are you mad? Give me the child.
He placed the little bundle in her arms. She uncovered the queer, ruby
face, and kissed it. Ginx had not looked at the face before, but after
seeing it, and the act of this woman, he could not have touched a hair
of his child's head. His purpose died from that moment, though his
perplexity was still alive.
NUN. Let me have it. I will take it to the Sisters' Home, and it shall
live there. Your wife may come and nurse it. We will take charge of it.
GINX. And you won't send it back again? You'll take it for good and all?
NUN. O, yes.
GINX. Good. Give us yer hand.
A little white hand came out from under her burthen, and was at once
half-crushed in Ginx's elephantine grasp.
GINX. Done. Thank'ee, missus. Come, mates, I'll stand a drink.
A few minutes after, the woman of the cross, who had been up to comfort
the poor mother, fluttered with her white wings down Rosemary Street,
carrying in her arms Ginx's Baby.