[Illustration:
CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
Fifth Series
ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832
CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)
NO. 119.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]
GLOVING.
‘A pair of gloves, if you please.’—‘Yes, sir. Kid gloves?’ The
customer indicates the kind of gloves he requires; and down comes a
long shallow box, divided into several compartments, in each of which
there lies a neat bundle of gloves of various colours and shades, held
together by a band of paper. ‘What size, sir?’ The size is mentioned;
and one of the bundles is lifted out of its compartment and quickly
and carefully opened at one end. Gloves of the exact size and shade
required are selected, the price is paid, and there, for the most
part, the transaction ends. How many of the thousands who every day go
through this process have any idea of where and how the soft, delicate,
tight-fitting gloves they wear are made?
Enormous numbers—said to exceed two-thirds of the entire
consumption—are imported from France, Germany, and Sweden. But there is
a large home manufacture, which is carried on to a considerable extent
in and about Worcester, but principally in the west of England.
If the reader will glance at a railway map, and let his eye follow the
main line of the London and South-Western Railway, he will find, about
midway between Salisbury and Exeter, a station marked Yeovil Junction.
Should he actually travel down the line and change at this junction,
he would speedily find himself landed at the ancient market-town of
Yeovil, the centre and capital of the glove-trade, or as it is locally
described, ‘the gloving’—a town of about eight thousand inhabitants.
A visitor from the North or the Midlands would probably be surprised,
on entering the gloving metropolis, to find nothing of the noise or
dirt which is usually associated with manufacturing industry. No
tall chimneys belch out black clouds of smoke; no gaunt factories
rear themselves aloft above the houses; no ponderous machinery makes
its throb felt even by passers-by in the streets. No obtrusive signs
of the trade which is being carried on meet the eye anywhere. The
place is clean and bright and quiet; and surrounded by green hills
and luxuriant valleys dotted over with magnificent timber. Yet it
looks—what, indeed, inquiry proves it to be—a prosperous and thriving
town, presenting a marked and agreeable contrast to most of the sleepy
old towns whose glory has long since departed, in this beautiful west
country that Kingsley loved so well. In this respect the capital is
a fair sample of all the gloving centres—a general air of prosperity
pervades them all.
The area over which the trade extends is not large. A line drawn
east and west through Yeovil and continued for ten miles in each
direction would intersect the whole district, which lies on the
borderland of Somerset and Dorset, and includes some half-dozen small
towns and fair-sized villages, of which Milborne Port, Sherborne,
Stoke-sub-Hamdon, and Martock are the principal. Nor can the trade
itself be compared for magnitude with many other industries; it is a
mere pigmy beside the cotton, the iron, or the woollen trade.
Let us have the pleasure of conducting the reader over one of the glove
factories, fourteen or fifteen of which may be found in Yeovil alone,
that he may see the present state of one of the most ancient industries
in the country, and have an idea of the number and variety of the
processes and hands through which his gloves have passed.
Beginning at the beginning, we enter a room in which the raw material
lies before us in the shape of hundreds of bundles of sheep-skins
tanned and bleached as white as the driven snow. Handling them, we
find them soft and elastic to the touch. These are not the skins of
our high-bred English sheep, which are wholly unfit for the purpose,
but the skins of half-wild mountain-sheep, which are collected by Jews
over the east of Europe and the western part of Asia. The glover does
not care for the skins of your wool-producing sheep; his dictum is,
‘the rougher the hair, the better the pelt’ (skin). These skins were
formerly imported untanned; but the German tanners have now beaten
the English tanners out of the market, and they are bought in the
condition in which we now see them here, in Berlin or Vienna. As the
skins are required, they are taken out of the store and soaked in a vat
containing the yolks of eggs, in the proportion of ten dozen skins to
one gallon of yolks. In order to secure that every part of the skins
shall be thoroughly soaked, they are trodden by men’s feet. This is
done, it is said, ‘to feed or nourish them;’ or, in other words, to
make them still softer and more elastic. The soaking over, the skins
are next taken to the dyehouse, and laid face uppermost on a slightly
convex, lead-covered board. Here they are rapidly and frequently
brushed over with dyestuff until they have absorbed a sufficient
quantity to give them the desired colour, when they are again brushed
with what is called ‘a striker’—that is, a liquid preparation that will
fix and render permanent the dye already put on them.
The skin is next hung up in a stove or heated room, where it rapidly
dries. When dry, it is handed over to a man whose business it is to
examine it; and if, as is almost always the case, it is too thick for
the purpose for which it is intended, or is of unequal thickness, to
pare it down until it is of the required thickness and of one uniform
thickness all over. In some places this process is carried on in the
factory, but more commonly in an outbuilding attached to the workman’s
home. It is done by means of a peculiar knife, shaped like a quoit, the
outer edge of which is kept very sharp. Fixing the skin, by a dexterous
movement of the hand, to a horizontal bar in front of him, he lays hold
of it with the left hand to keep it stretched, and with the right hand
scrapes off so much of the fleshy matter at the back of it as may be
needed. Considerable skill is required to pare the skin without cutting
it, and should the workman be awkward, he may not only injure his work
but seriously cut himself.
The skins are next passed under the eye of an experienced workman, who
assorts them into their various qualities. After this, they are passed
on to another room, where they are first rolled up in damp cloths, very
much after the manner in which a laundress rolls up clothes preparatory
to wringing the water out of them; and, when so rolled up, they are
vigorously pulled, so as to develop their utmost stretching capacity
from head to tail. Then they are spread out on a broad flat table, and
carefully, though very quickly, for the workman’s eye gets exceedingly
sharp, examined for flaws or defects of any kind, such as the scar
left by a wound or thorn-scratch, or a thin place, which when found is
instantly made into a hole. The examination over, the cutter has made
up his mind how this particular skin before him can be cut up to the
best advantage—that is, in such a manner as to leave as little waste
as possible. His mind made up, he lays on a paper pattern, taking
care to place it so that it shall be the right way of the grain and
not across it; then, with a pair of shears, resembling sheep-shears,
he cuts it into as many oblong squares—each of which is just large
enough for one glove—as the material will admit of. Out of the parts
left he cuts pieces for the thumbs and fourchettes or sides of the
fingers—usually pronounced ‘forgets’—and for the binding round the
top and the opening just above the palm of the hand, which are called
‘welts.’ Having cut a number of skins, he proceeds to pair the pieces,
endeavouring to match them exactly in colour and quality, and to make
up little bundles containing all the pieces necessary for each pair of
gloves. This process is one of the most important of all those through
which the leather passes. A clumsy or careless workman will cut it to
waste, getting several pairs of gloves less out of a dozen skins than
a clever and careful one. As we watch the process, we are struck with
the rapidity with which the work is done, and with the skill shown in
dealing with flaws in the leather. Here, for example, is a skin with a
hole in the best part of it about the size of a shilling; with seeming
rashness, the man cuts the leather so that that very hole comes into
one of the oblong squares. We call attention to the fact, when, with a
smile, he points out that at that precise point a hole will be required
for the thumb-piece.
The pieces of leather, called in the trade ‘trancs’—for they are no
longer skins—are now passed on to another room, where they are cut into
their final shape. Hitherto, we have been dealing with the preparation
of the material for gloves, and a stranger might have followed all the
processes so far without gathering from what he saw any indication of
the use to be made of these pieces of leather. But now they begin to
assume a shape which cannot be mistaken. The reader, especially the
fair reader, has doubtless often seen, if not used, the shapes with
which pastry is cut into leaves, circles, squares, and so on. Now, if
you will put your two hands together, palms uppermost, and imagine a
shape that would cut out the figure made by these two hands, minus the
thumbs, and treating the two little fingers as one, you will have a
very fair idea of a glover’s punch or ‘web.’ In the room we now enter
we find quite a number of these punches, agreeing with the number
of sizes manufactured. One of them is laid on a sliding table edge
uppermost; then six of these oblong squares of leather—which have been
placed face to face in pairs, so that right and left hand gloves may be
cut together—are laid upon it, and covered with a thick pad of wood or
vulcanite. The table is pushed forward until the punch and its burden
rest under an iron press, not unlike a printing-press. One pull at the
powerful lever, and the press comes down, and the leather is cut. The
thumb-pieces are next treated in the same manner. Up the back of every
pair of gloves there are three lines of ornamental work of some kind.
If these gloves are to have the heavy silk-work on the back called
tambouring, they will now be laid upon a block and punctured with as
many holes as there are to be stitches in the tambour-work. Before
leaving this room, the size of the gloves is stamped on the inside of
one, and a consecutive or matching number is written inside each of the
two pieces of leather that are now an embryo pair of gloves, so that
if, in any of the subsequent processes, they should be accidentally
separated, they may be identified and brought together again. After
they have been looked over and carefully perfected with scissors
wherever the punch may have left a jagged edge, they are ready to
resume their travels.
Tied up in bundles of a dozen, they are given to women, who do the
ornamental work on the back of the gloves. Some of these women work
on the premises, and others at home. Most of the tambouring, which
is very popular, is done in cottage homes. Entering one of these
cottages, you may see a woman rocking a cradle with one foot, and
giving an occasional glance at the dinner cooking on the fire, while
she bends over a frame on which the gloves are stretched, and with
a crochet-hook, and apparently little more attention than a knitter
gives to her stocking, she quickly adds those three times three rows
of silk-work up what will be the back of the gloves. Carrying back the
gloves to the factory, she will receive ninepence a dozen for her work.
The gloves are next given out to other women, who also work at home,
to be stitched—that is, to have the fingers completed and the thumbs
put in. This is now nearly all done by a recently invented and cleverly
adapted sewing-machine, the needle of which comes down on the tip of
an upright iron finger. Gloves are not all stitched in the immediate
neighbourhood of the factories, but are often sent long distances into
remote country villages, where, work being scarce, labour is cheap.
And to facilitate this, a class of middle men (or women) has grown
up—people who come in from the country to the factories, and take away
a hundred or a hundred and fifty dozen a week, which they distribute
among the women of the village in which they live, collect again when
finished, and bring back to the factory. These putters-out or bagmen
are paid the usual price, some half-crown a dozen for the stitching,
and make their own bargain with the actual workers. They are generally
supposed to make a profit of about threepence a dozen; but, as a matter
of fact, being shopkeepers, they commonly make two profits—one on the
gloves, and another on the goods the sewers purchase at their shops.
These people have a somewhat difficult part to play, as they stand
between two fires; but they are a most useful class, and carry work and
its rewards into many villages where, but for them, they would never
come. They have done much to stay the exodus of the population from
this part of the agricultural districts, enabling parents to keep their
young people, and especially their young women, at home, instead of
sending them to the great towns to seek for employment.
Having come back from the stitchers, the gloves are sent out once more.
If they are heavy winter gloves, they are sent out to be lined with
warm soft cotton material. If they are lighter goods, they are at once
despatched to be welted—that is, to have the binding put round the top
and the opening at the wrist. The buttons or clasps, as the case may
be, are next added; that done, they come back to the factory for the
last time, and pass the final examination.
They have still a rough, tumbled, unfinished look, which would
prove anything but tempting to a purchaser. They are now forwarded
to the laying-out room, where they are stretched with ordinary
glove-stretchers, and then put on heated steel hands, which take out
all the creases and improve their appearance. Nothing now remains but
to assort them, to put them up in neat bundles according to size, to
pack them in boxes, and to send them to market.
The special gloves that we have been following through all their
stages are those which are known in the trade as ‘grain’ goods, and
are sold to the public under the name of dogskin, Cape, and other
names, each name indicating some peculiarity in the quality and finish
of the leather. Many other kinds of gloves are made in the district,
such as calf and buck and doe skin; the calf gloves are made from
English calf-skins, and the buck and doe from English lambskins.
There is also a large manufacture of fabric gloves—in other words, of
gloves made of cotton, woollen, silk, or merino material. Real kid,
however, is nowhere made in this district. The processes through which
leather gloves of every kind pass are very much the same as those
described above, and the manufacture of fabric gloves differs only in
the comparative fewness of its stages, beginning with the process of
punching the material into the required shape. After that, its course
is undistinguishable from that of the manufacture of leather gloves.
There are altogether about five-and-twenty factories in the district,
ranging from one which claims to be the largest glove factory in the
world, and is capable of turning out forty thousand pairs per week,
to some which produce only from five hundred to a thousand pairs in
the same time. These factories give employment to nearly ten thousand
persons, five-sixths of whom are women. Only about a quarter of the
employees work in the factories; the rest take the work home, and in
many cases do it in time which would otherwise be wasted. By thus
finding employment for the wives and daughters of an immense number of
agricultural labourers—an employment which in no way interferes with
their domestic duties—the gloving brings a large amount of comfort into
the homes of the peasantry of the west, and alleviates a lot which
would under other circumstances be hard and hopeless in the extreme.
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER XIX.
It was the very next day when the governor’s wife came to call. In any
case, Lady Modyford would have had to call on Marian; for etiquette
demands, from the head of the colony at least, a strict disregard
for distinctions of cuticle, real or imaginary. But Nora Dupuy had
seen Lady Modyford that very morning, and had told her all the absurd
story of the Hawthorns’ social disqualifications. Now, the governor’s
wife was a woman of the world, accustomed to many colonial societies,
big and small, as well as to the infinitely greater world of London;
and she was naturally moved, at first hearing, rather to amusement
than to indignation at the idea of Tom Dupuy setting himself up as
the social superior of a fellow of Catherine’s and barrister of the
Inner Temple. This point of view itself certainly lost nothing from
Nora’s emphatic way of putting it; for, though Nora had herself a
bountiful supply of fine old crusted West Indian prejudices, producible
on occasion, and looked down upon ‘brown people’ of every shade with
that peculiarly profound contempt possible only to a descendant of the
old vanquished slave-owning oligarchy, yet her personal affection for
Marian and Edward was quite strong enough to override all such abstract
considerations of invisible colour; and her sense of humour was quite
keen enough to make her feel the full ridiculousness of comparing such
a man as Edward Hawthorn with her own loutish sugar-growing cousin. She
had lived so long in England, as Tom Dupuy himself would have said,
that she had begun to pick up at least some faint tincture of these
newfangled Exeter Hall opinions; in other words, she had acquired a
little ballast of common-sense and knowledge of life at large to weigh
down in part her tolerably large original cargo of colonial prejudices.
But when Nora came to tell Lady Modyford, as far as she knew them, the
indignities to which the Hawthorns had already been subjected by the
pure blue blood of Trinidad, the governor’s wife began to perceive
there was more in it than matter for mere laughter; and she bridled
up a little haughtily at the mention of Mr Tom Dupuy’s free-spoken
comments, as overheard by Nora on the Orange Grove piazza. ‘Nigger
people!’ the fat, good-natured, motherly, little body echoed, angrily.
‘Did he say nigger people, my dear?—What! a daughter of General Ord
of the Bengal infantry—why, I came home from Singapore in the same
steamer with her mother, the year my father went away from the Straits
Settlements to South Australia! Do you mean to say, my dear, they won’t
call upon her, because she’s married a son of that nice old Mr Hawthorn
with the white beard up at Agualta! A perfect gentleman, too! Dear me,
how very abominable! You must excuse my saying it, my child, but really
you West Indian people do mistake your own little hole and corner
for the great world, in a most extraordinary sort of a fashion. Now,
confess to me, don’t you?’
So the same afternoon, Lady Modyford had powdered her round, fat,
little face, and put on her pretty coquettish French bonnet, and driven
round in full state from Government House to Edward Hawthorn’s new
bungalow in the Westmoreland valleys.
As the carriage with its red-liveried black footmen drove up to the
door, Marian’s heart sank once more within her: she knew it was the
governor’s wife come to call; and she had a vague presentiment in her
own mind that the fat little woman inside the carriage would send in
her card out of formal politeness, and drive away at once without
waiting to see her. But instead of that, Lady Modyford came up the
steps with great demureness, and walked into the bare drawing-room,
after Marian’s rather untidy and quite raw black waiting-maid; and the
moment she saw Marian, she stepped up to her very impulsively, and held
out both her hands, and kissed the poor young bride on either cheek
with genuine tenderness. ‘My dear,’ she said, with a motherly tremor in
her kind old voice, ‘you must forgive me for making myself quite at
home with you at once, and not standing upon ceremony in any way; but I
knew your mother years ago—she was just like you then—and I know what
a lonely thing it is for a newly married girl to come out to a country
like this, quite away from her own people; and I shall be so glad if
you’ll take Sir Adalbert and me just as we are. We’re homely people,
and we don’t live far away from you; and if you’ll run round and see me
any time you feel lonely or are in want of anything, why, you know, of
course, my dear, we shall be delighted to see you.’
And then, before Marian could wipe away the tears that rose quickly
to her eyes, fat little Lady Modyford had gone off into reminiscences
of Singapore and Bombay, and that dear Mrs Ord, and the baby that
died—‘Your sister, you know, my dear—the one that was born at Calcutta,
and died soon after your dear mamma reached England.—No, of course, my
dear; your mamma couldn’t know that I was here, because, you see, when
she and I came home together—why, that was twenty-two years ago—no,
twenty-four, I declare, because Sir Adalbert—he was plain Mr Modyford
then, on three hundred a year, in the Straits Settlements colonial
service—didn’t propose to me till the next summer, when he came home
on leave, you know, just before he was removed to Hong-kong by that
horrid Lord Modbury, who was Colonial Secretary in those days, and
afterwards died of suppressed gout, the doctors said, at his own villa
at that delightful Spezzia. So you see I was Kitty Fitzroy at that
time, my child; and I daresay your mamma, who’s older than me a good
bit, of course, never heard about my marrying Sir Adalbert, for we were
married very quietly down in Devonshire, where Sir Adalbert’s father
was a rector in a very small parish, on a tiny income; and we started
at once for Hong-kong, and spent our honeymoon at Venice—a nasty, damp,
uncomfortable place for a wedding tour, I call it, but not nearly
so bad as you coming out here straight from the church door almost,
Miss Dupuy told me; and Trinidad too, well known to be an unsociable,
dead-alive sort of an island. But whenever you like, dear, you must
just jump on your horse—you’ve got horses, of course?—yes, I thought
so—and ride over to Government House, and have a good chat with me and
Emily; for, indeed, Mrs Hawthorn—what’s your Christian name?—Marian—ah,
very pretty—we should like to see you as often as you choose; and next
week, after you’ve settled down a little, you must really come up and
stop some time with us; for I assure you I have quite taken a fancy
to you, my dear; and Sir Adalbert, when he saw Mr Hawthorn the other
day, at the Island Secretary’s office, came home quite delighted, and
said to me: “Kitty, the young man they’ve sent out for the new District
judge is the very man to keep that something old fool Dupuy in order in
future.”’
Lady Modyford waited a good deal longer than is usual with a first
call, and got very friendly indeed with poor Marian before the end
of her visit; for coarse-grained woman of the world as she was, her
heart warmed not a little towards the friendless young bride who had
come out to Trinidad—dull hole, Trinidad, not at all like Singapore,
or Mauritius, or Cape Town—to find herself so utterly deserted by
all society. And next day, all female Trinidad was talking, over
five-o’-clock tea, about the remarkable fact, learnt indirectly through
those unrecognised purveyors of fashionable intelligence, the servants,
that that horrid proud Lady Modyford—‘who treats you and me, my dear,
as if we were the dirt beneath her feet, don’t you know, and must call
with two footmen and so much grandeur and formality’—had actually
kissed that brown man’s wife, that’s to be the new District judge in
Westmoreland, on both cheeks, the very first moment she saw her. Female
Trinidad was so inexpressibly shocked at this disgraceful behaviour in
a person officially charged with the maintenance of a high standard
of decorum, that it was really half inclined to think it ought to cut
Lady Modyford direct on next meeting her. It was restrained from this
extreme measure, however, by a wholesome consideration of the fact
that Lady Modyford would undoubtedly take the rebuff with unruffled
amusement; so it contented itself by merely showing a little coldness
to the governor’s wife when it happened to meet her, and refusing to
enter into conversation with her on the subject of Marian and Edward
Hawthorn.
As for Marian herself, she had a good cry, as soon as Lady Modyford
was gone, over this interview also. Kind as the governor’s wife had
wished to show herself, and genuinely sympathetic as she had actually
been, Marian couldn’t help recognising that there was a certain
profound undercurrent of degradation in having to accept the ready
sympathy of such a woman at all on such a matter. Anywhere else, Marian
would have felt that Lady Modyford, motherly as she was, stood just a
grade or two by nature below her; in fact, she felt so there too; but
still, she was compelled by circumstances to take the good fat body’s
consolation and condolence as a sort of favour; while anywhere else
she would rather have repelled it as a disagreeable impertinence, or
at least as a distasteful interference with her own individuality. It
was impossible not to be dimly conscious that coming to Trinidad had
made a real difference in her own social position. At home, she had no
need for anybody’s condescension or anybody’s affability; here, she
was forced to recognise the fact that even Lady Modyford was making
generous concessions on purpose in her favour. It was galling, but
it was inevitable. There is nothing more painful to persons who have
always mixed in society on terms of perfect and undoubted equality,
than thus to put themselves into false positions, where it is possible
for equals, or even for natural inferiors, to seem to patronise them.
Nevertheless, that evening, Marian said to Edward very firmly: ‘Edward,
you must make up your mind to stop in Trinidad. I shall never feel so
much confidence again in your real courage if you turn and run from
Nora’s father. Besides, now Lady Modyford has called, and Nora has been
here, I daresay we shall get a little society of our own—people who
know too much about the outer world to be wholly governed by the fads
and fancies of Trinidad planters.’
And Edward answered in a somewhat faltering voice: ‘Very well, my
darling. One’s duty lies that way, I know; and if you’re strong enough
to stand up and face it, why, I must try to face it also.’
And they did face it, with less difficulty even than they at first
imagined. Presently, Mrs Castello came to call, the wife of the
governor’s aide-de-camp: a pretty, pleasant, sisterly little woman,
who struck up a mutual attachment with Marian almost at first sight,
and often dropped in to see them afterwards. Then one or two others
of the English officials brought their wives; and before long, when
Marian went to stay at Government House, it was clear that in the
imported official society at anyrate the Hawthorns were to be at least
tolerated. Toleration is a miserable sort of standing for people to
submit to; but in the last resort, it is better than isolation. And
as time went on, the toleration grew into friendliness and intimacy
in many quarters, though never among the native planter aristocracy.
Those noble people, intensely proud of their pure white blood, held
themselves entirely aloof with profound dignity. ‘Poor souls!’ Sir
Adalbert Modyford said contemptuously to Captain Castello, ‘they forget
how little it is to be proud of, and that every small street arab in
London could consider himself a gentleman in Trinidad on the very
self-same grounds of birth as they do.’
CONSCIENTIOUS MONEY-SPENDING.
‘Never treat money affairs with levity—money is character.’ It is
to be feared that many neglect this wise caution, and do not put
conscience into the spending of their money, whatever they may do as
regards the making of it. Rich people think that it is good for trade
to be free-handed with wealth, and do not always distinguish between
productive and unproductive expenditure. They are frequently guilty
of demoralising the poorer classes by careless almsgiving and the bad
example of their thoughtless money-spending.
Of course, so far as they are influenced by religious considerations,
the rich recognise the truth that all their possessions are held in
trust, and only lent to them by a superior Power for the service of
their fellow-beings. But the rich have difficulties as well as the
poor, and one of these lies in determining how to distribute their
expenditure in a way that shall prove beneficial to society. The
question, ‘To whom or to what cause shall I contribute money?’ must
be a very anxious one to conscientious men of wealth. ‘How are we
to measure,’ we may suppose rich men to ask, ‘the relative utility
of charities? And then political economists are down upon us if, by
mistake, we help those who might have helped themselves. It is easy to
talk against our extravagance; tell us rather how to spend our money
advantageously—that is to say, for the greatest good of the greatest
number.’ The fact is, riches must now be considered by all good men
as a distinct profession, with responsibilities no less onerous than
those of other professions. And this very difficult profession of
wealth ought to be learned by studying social science and otherwise
with as much care as the professions of divinity, law, and medicine
are learned. When in this way the rich accept and prepare themselves
for the duties of their high calling, it will cease to be a cause of
complaint that, in the nature of things, money tends to fall into the
hands of a few large capitalists.
Nor is the money-spending of the poor less careless than that of the
rich. During the time of high wages, labouring people buy salmon and
green peas when they are barely in season; and Professor Leone Levi
computes that their annual drink-bill amounts to thirty-six millions.
That is exactly the sum which the working-classes spend in rent; so,
although better houses are the strongest and most imperative demands
for the working-classes, those classes are spending, on the lowest
estimate, a sum equal to what they are spending on rent.
Some two years ago, an eminent London physician went into Hyde Park and
sat down upon a bench, and there sat down by him a pauper eighty years
of age. The physician entered into conversation with him, and asked him
what his trade was. The man said he was a carpenter.
‘A very good trade indeed. Well, how is it that you come at this time
of life to be a pauper? Have you been addicted to drink?’
‘Not at all; I have only taken my three pints a day—never spent more
than sixpence daily.’
The physician, taking out a pencil and a piece of paper, asked: ‘How
long have you continued this practice of drinking three pints of ale a
day?’
‘I am now eighty, and I have continued that practice, more or less, for
sixty years.’
‘Very well,’ continued the physician, ‘I will just do the sum.’ He
found that sixpence a day laid by for sixty years amounted, with
compound interest, to three thousand two hundred and twenty-six pounds;
and he said to the old carpenter: ‘My good man, instead of being a
pauper, you might have been the possessor of three thousand two hundred
and twenty-six pounds at this moment; in other words, you might have
had one hundred and fifty pounds a year, or some three pounds a week,
not by working an hour longer or doing anything differently, except by
putting by the money that you have been spending day by day these sixty
years on ale.’ The physician’s conclusion, however, should perhaps be
modified by the consideration that if this man had ceased spending
sixpence on beer, he might have required to spend a portion of that
sixpence on an increased supply of food. But notwithstanding this, the
physician’s argument is in the main a sound one.
It is not ‘ologies’ that the working-classes require to be taught
so much, as the right use of money and the good things that can be
purchased with it. It often astonishes the rich to see the wasteful
expenditure of the poor; but an explanation will be found in the
caution which Dr Johnson gives to men who fancy that poor girls must
necessarily make the most economical wives. ‘A woman of fortune,’ he
says, ‘being used to the handling of money, spends it judiciously;
but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her
marriage, has such a gust in spending, that she throws it away with
great profusion.’ That was excellent advice also which Dr Johnson
gave to Boswell, when the latter inherited his paternal estates. ‘You,
dear sir, have now a new station, and have therefore new cares and
new employments. Life, as Cowley seems to say, ought to resemble a
well-ordered poem; of which one rule generally received is, that the
exordium should be simple and should promise little. Begin your new
course of life with the least show and the least expense possible; you
may at pleasure increase both, but you cannot easily diminish them.
Do not think your estate your own while any man can call upon you for
money which you cannot pay; therefore begin with timorous parsimony.
Let it be your first care not to be in any man’s debt.’
People beginning to keep house should be careful not to pitch their
scale of expenditure higher than they can hope to continue it, and they
should remember that, as Lord Bacon said, ‘it is less dishonourable to
abridge petty charges than to stoop to petty gettings.’
What an admirable manager of money was Mrs Carlyle! ‘There was,’ writes
Mr Froude, ‘a discussion some years ago in the newspapers whether two
people with the habits of a lady and a gentleman could live together
in London on three hundred pounds a year. Mrs Carlyle, who often
laughed about it while it was going on, will answer the question. No
one who visited the Carlyles could tell whether they were poor or rich.
There were no signs of extravagance, but also none of poverty. The
drawing-room arrangements were exceptionally elegant. The furniture
was simple, but solid and handsome; everything was scrupulously clean;
everything good of its kind; and there was an air of ease, as of a
household living within its means. Mrs Carlyle was well dressed always.
Her admirable taste would make the most of inexpensive materials;
but the materials themselves were of the very best. Carlyle himself
generally kept a horse. They travelled, they visited, they were always
generous and open-handed.’ All this was done on an income of not quite
four hundred pounds. Of course Carlyle, as well as his wife, was imbued
with Scotch thrift, showing itself in hatred of waste. If he saw a
crust of bread on the roadway, he would stop to pick it up, and put it
on a step or a railing. ‘Some poor creature might be glad of it, or at
worst a dog or a sparrow. To destroy wholesome food is a sin.’
The thrifty wife of Benjamin Franklin felt it a gala day indeed when,
by long accumulated small savings, she was able to surprise her husband
one morning with a china cup and a silver spoon from which to take
his breakfast. Franklin was shocked. ‘You see how luxury creeps into
families in spite of principles,’ he said. When his meal was over, he
went to the store and rolled home a wheelbarrow full of papers through
the streets with his own hands, lest folk should get wind of the china
cup and say he was above his business.
It is a great blessing to have been trained hardily. Those who have few
wants are rich. Hundreds of middle-class people are heavily handicapped
in the race of life because they find it hard to do without luxuries
which they can ill afford to buy, but which they would never have
missed if they had not been accustomed to them in childhood. This
must become every year more apparent, because the classes that have
hitherto had the monopoly of education have now to compete with the
working-classes trained to privation for generations.
But although the creeping-in of luxury should be guarded against at
the commencement of married life, people should learn how to grow rich
gracefully. It is no part of wisdom to depreciate the little elegances
and social enjoyment of our homes. These things refine manners and
enlarge the heart. A gentleman told Dr Johnson that he had bought a
suit of lace for his wife. The Doctor said: ‘Well, sir, you have done
a good thing and a wise thing.’ ‘I have done a good thing,’ said the
gentleman; ‘but I do not know that I have done a wise thing.’ ‘Yes,
sir,’ continued the Doctor; ‘no money is better spent than what is
laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is
dressed as well as other people; and a wife is pleased that she is so
dressed.’
We should be particular about money, but not penurious. The mistress
of a well-ordered house takes broad and liberal views of things, and
while cutting her coat according to her cloth, and as much as possible
shielding her husband from the constant demand for money, which few
masculine tempers can stand, she refrains from the wearying, petty
economies which often enough are not worth the trouble and discomfort
they entail. Economy is altogether different from penuriousness; for it
is economy that can always best afford to be generous. Those who are
careless about personal expenditure are often driven in the end to do
very shabby things. Burns tells us that, ‘for the glorious privilege
of being independent,’ we should ‘gather gear by every wile that’s
justified by honour.’
‘Do not accustom yourself,’ said Dr Johnson, ‘to consider debt only
as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.’ Only the other
day the writer was speaking to an officer in the army who was so far
from considering the debt which he owed to his tailor as either an
inconvenience or a calamity, that he seemed to be quite proud of it.
‘My tailor,’ said he, ‘never duns me for the money. When I have a pound
or two which I don’t want, I send it to him, just as other people put
it in a bank.’ It was no use telling him that five or ten per cent. on
the amount of his bill was being charged every year, and that on a day
when he least expected it, payment would be demanded. Had this officer
never heard of the General Order which was issued by Sir Charles
Napier, in taking leave of his command in India? Sir Charles strongly
urged in that famous document that ‘honesty is inseparable from the
character of a thorough-bred gentleman;’ and that ‘to drink unpaid-for
champagne and unpaid-for beer, and to ride unpaid-for horses, is to be
a cheat, and not a gentleman.’
Men who lived beyond their means might be officers by virtue of their
commissions, but they were not gentlemen. The habit of being constantly
in debt, the general held, made men grow callous to the proper feelings
of a gentleman. It was not enough that an officer should be able to
fight; that, any bulldog could do. But did he hold his word inviolate?
Did he pay his debts? He should be as ready to utter his valiant
‘No,’ or ‘I can’t afford it,’ to the invitations of pleasure and
self-enjoyment, as to mount a breach amidst belching fire and the iron
hail of machine-guns.
The Duke of Wellington kept an accurate detailed account of all the
moneys received and expended by him. ‘I make a point,’ said he, ‘of
paying my own bills, and I advise every one to do the same. Formerly,
I used to trust a confidential servant to pay them; but I was cured
of that folly by receiving one morning, to my great surprise, duns of
a year or two’s standing. The fellow had speculated with my money and
left my bills unpaid.’ Talking of debt, his remark was: ‘It makes a
slave of a man. I have often known what it was to be in want of money,
but I never got into debt.’ Washington was as particular as Wellington
in matters of business detail, and he did not disdain to scrutinise
the smallest outgoings of his household—determined as he was to live
honestly within his means—even while holding the high office of
President of the American Union.
To provide for others and for our own comfort and independence in old
age, is honourable, and greatly to be commended; but to hoard for
mere wealth’s sake is the characteristic of the narrow-souled and the
miserly. ‘We must carry money in the head, not in the heart;’ that is
to say, we must not make an idol of it, but regard it as a useful agent.
Some of the finest qualities of human nature are intimately related
to the right use of money, such as generosity, honesty, justice,
and self-sacrifice, as well as the practical virtues of economy and
providence. On the other hand, there are their counterparts of avarice,
fraud, injustice, and selfishness, as displayed by the inordinate
lovers of gain; and the vices of thriftlessness, extravagance, and
improvidence, on the part of those who misuse and abuse the means
intrusted to them. ‘So that,’ as it has been well said, ‘a right
measure and manner in getting, saving, spending, giving, taking,
lending, borrowing, and bequeathing, would almost argue a perfect man.’
THE SIGNALMAN’S LOVE-STORY.
IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAP. II.
I obeyed Miss Cleabyrn’s injunction not to follow her, though I wished
to restore the watch and chain she had left with me; but I strained
my gaze in the direction she had taken. In the continued bellowing of
the wind and through the driving rain, it was difficult to hear or
see anything, even when close at hand; yet I fancied I could hear her
footsteps, as she reached the lane which was at the foot of the railway
bank, and could see her.—Yes! again I heard footsteps; but surely they
were not hers; and the vague, shadowy glimpse of a form I obtained was
not Beatrice Cleabyrn, and—I might be confused by the rain; but if not,
there were _two_ others.
It was in vain to strain my sight any longer; I could see and hear no
more, so I returned to my duties; and in the morning I might almost
have persuaded myself that all had been a dream, but for the presence
of the articles which Miss Cleabyrn had left with me.
I felt at liberty, and indeed felt bound to take my mother into the
secret, as her house would probably be the place of refuge for the
captain; but I did not tell her all I have now said. She was not
informed of what I well knew was the true reason for Miss Cleabyrn
seeking me out and intrusting me with so dangerous a secret.
The old lady, who was a confirmed student of the newspaper, and had
long been interested in the fate and fortunes of the captain, was glad
to have the chance of being of service to him, and arranged at once
where he should sleep. We had not much choice, our cottage being but of
four rooms.
My mate told me, when I went on duty, that it was rumoured at the
_Chequers_ that Captain Laurenston was in the neighbourhood for
certain, and would be caught, worse luck! It was impossible that he
could get away, there was such a lot on the lookout for him. I returned
some indifferent answer, for, of course, I could not tell him how
terribly I could have corroborated his tale. I could, however, and did,
echo his last wish at leaving, that the officer might beat all his
enemies.
It was again a soaking wet night; the wind had gone down, so that
the rain did not drive as on the previous day, and there was no
violence in the downpour, but it was steady and drenching enough. The
usual passenger and goods trains had passed, and I grew nervous with
expectancy. No idea had been given me as to when Captain Laurenston
would make his appearance; but I could not help thinking it would be
about the same time as my visitor had come on the previous evening; and
I was right.
I took the precaution to turn my lamp down a little, so as to diminish
the light; for there was no knowing what eyes might be on the watch,
and I was standing at the entrance to my hut, striving to pierce the
darkness, when I was startled by two figures coming suddenly before me.
I knew them. They entered, and I closed the door.
‘Thank heaven, you are safe, so far, Oswald!’ exclaimed the lady—Miss
Cleabyrn, of course—‘and I know you can confide in our friend Waltress;
so I trust you are out of the toils.’
‘Yes,’ said the captain, turning to me and grasping my hand. I knew him
by his voice and by Miss Cleabyrn’s words; but had we met casually, I
assuredly should not have recognised him. His glossy moustache and full
whiskers were gone, while a light wig hid what was left of his dark
curls. ‘I know I can trust him,’ he said; ‘I knew it the first time I
saw his face.—But leave me now, dearest; it will only be for a time—a
short time, ere we meet again. Thank our friend Waltress, and let us
say farewell.’
Miss Cleabyrn offered her hand—there was such a queer thrill in my own
veins as I touched it, such a recalling of past days!—and she said a
few words expressive of her gratitude. These were only few; but with
her soft voice in my ears, and the sight of her now swimming eyes
before me, I would have dared death in her service.
She then threw her arms round the captain’s neck, and strove to frame
a farewell, but broke down terribly, so that for a few minutes she
was hysterical, and I dreaded lest she might scream aloud, and thus
give the alarm to any chance traveller, or, it might be, any concealed
watcher. But she recovered herself as quickly as she had broken down,
dashed the tears from her eyes, gave one passionate kiss, and then fled
into the darkness.
‘My poor dear girl,’ said the captain, with some hesitation in his
voice, as he gazed after her. ‘I feel that I ought to have gone with
her, and yet I know it would have been madness.—We were traced here,
Waltress, for all I know; the watch upon me has been very close.’
I told him how I fancied I had seen two persons, when Miss Cleabyrn had
left my box on the previous night.
‘Yes,’ he said, with a smile; ‘I joined her at the foot of the bank.
But you must have good eyes.’
I explained that he misunderstood me; that I thought I had seen two
persons follow the lady, although, in such a storm and in the darkness,
it was impossible to be certain. He was a good deal disturbed at
hearing this, being evidently at once convinced that my suspicions were
well founded.
He had not been long in my hut, and we were talking about the best
method of first concealing him and then getting him away, when I
suddenly stopped in my speech and listened at the door.
‘What is the matter?’ asked Laurenston.
‘I heard a step of some one walking round the box,’ I returned; ‘and I
am sure there is a man on the rails. No one has any business there at
this time.’
In another instant a low whistle was heard.
‘They mean mischief,’ I said; ‘you are caged! These men are following
you.’
The captain turned pale, and thrust his hand into his breast.
I guessed he had some weapon concealed there, so I exclaimed: ‘That
will not do!—Here! There is just one chance; put on this coat and cap.’
They were those left by my mate.—‘Quick!’ I cried; ‘I can hear them
coming!—Now, sit down, and write anything in this book. Don’t seem to
shrink from’——
A sharp rap at the door interrupted me. Before I could answer it, the
door was thrown open, and I saw three men—strangers—before me. Another
was standing at some distance, so that I could not see him distinctly.
‘Your name is Waltress,’ said the foremost sharply, and with a quick
glance round the interior of the hut. ‘We are in pursuit of a criminal,
and have traced him to this spot.—Have you seen any stranger here?’
‘I have not been here all the evening,’ I said; ‘but no one has been
here except—— Bill!’ I exclaimed to my supposed mate, ‘have you seen any
fellows hanging about here?’
‘Bill’ turned half round; but the peak of his cap being drawn down over
his face, and the collar of his coat being turned up, as was natural
on such a night, he was effectually disguised, especially as his
appearance was, as I have described, so completely changed. He spoke
with his pen in his mouth, and said: ‘About three hours ago there was a
fellow at the gates that I didn’t like the look of.’
‘We have seen our man, or he has been seen, since then,’ returned the
speaker. Then addressing those behind, he said: ‘He may be hiding in
those trucks,’ pointing to some on the other side of the line.