A SHATTERED HOME.
“Bill, dear Bill, I do wish you would give up these Chartist goings on.
No good will come of it.”
The speaker was a pretty young woman, who would have been prettier, had
not premature care traced deep lines on her forehead, which Time, more
gentle, would not have done for years to come yet. Her dress was very
poor, and the scanty furniture of the attic in which she and her husband
lived, and the small embers of the fire over which a few potatoes were
boiling for their meal, seemed to say that want had helped care in its
work.
Bessy White had been the belle of her native village down in quiet
Hampshire. A wilful, merry, coquettish little beauty, knowing her power,
and using it; with a bright, fresh colour, and a happy ringing laugh. It
seemed hardly possible that four years could have changed her to the
thin, pale, careworn woman she now was. Yet it was only four years since
William Holl, a journeyman joiner, had on his wanderings passed through
the village, and had stopped to do some work at the Squire’s, which had
occupied him for several weeks. There he saw her, fell in love with her,
and carried her off in triumph from his rustic rivals, who, with the
village in general, had marvelled much what pretty Bessy White could see
to fancy in the pale, quiet, young carpenter, when so many stout young
fellows were laying their hearts at her feet. However, Bessy had laughed
at their wonder and their warnings, had gaily married, and gone off with
her husband to busy London. For the first two or three years of her
marriage her life was as happy as she had hoped that it would be. About
eighteen months after she had come up to London, she had a baby, which
only lived a few weeks; but this had been the only cloud to her
happiness. Her husband earned good wages, for he was a capital workman,
and was sober and industrious. He loved his wife fondly, and was very
proud of her, and of the prettily-furnished neat little rooms which
constituted his home.
But after a while, strange murmurs of discontent buzzed about among the
workpeople of the metropolis, and William Holl, with his talent and
enthusiasm, threw himself heart and soul into the movement, and soon
became one of its recognised heads.
Then came Bessy’s evil days. Her husband, who had been considered one of
the best and steadiest hands at the shop where he worked, was now
constantly away, and at last lost his place altogether. The pretty
furniture they once had, had gone piece by piece. They had moved from
the snug lodgings they formerly occupied into the bare garret they now
lived in. The rent even of this was frequently in arrear, and a crust of
dry bread was often all the food they had. William Holl was ready enough
to work now, but he had great difficulty in getting employment. Good
workman as he was, masters looked shy at a man whom they considered as a
sort of firebrand among their men, and it was only now by doing jobs at
home for other hands that he earned even the most scanty living. Still
his heart was in the cause, and although he acutely felt his changed
position, and his wife’s altered looks, he never wavered for an instant
in his course. For himself, indeed, he hardly felt it; the applause
which nightly greeted his impassioned speeches at the club to which he
belonged, was enough for him, and he would return to his wretched home
with a flushed cheek and a proud bearing. He was a pale, sickly-looking
man, with a high intellectual forehead, and a clear and expressive eye.
Few who saw him at ordinary times would have supposed him capable of
filling a large hall with his voice, pouring out bursts of real
eloquence, and moving hundreds with his impassioned utterances.
To his wife he answered with a faint smile, “It is too late, Bessy; it
is too late, my girl. I must go through with it now; I cannot draw back,
and I would not if I could. We have the right with us, Bessy, and we
have the strength; we must triumph in the end and get our Charter.”
His wife shook her head sadly.
“My poor Bessy,” he went on, “my poor girl. It is hard on you, you had
better have stayed down in Hampshire, quiet and happy. It was a sore day
for you when ever I saw you. But yet, Bessy, I can’t help it. I must
struggle for our rights even if I die for it. But I am sorry for your
sake, Bessy, that I feel as I do.”
“Never mind me, Bill,” his wife said, “I can bear it if you can, but I
am so afraid it will never come right. I do so fear the future—I am so
frightened lest you should get yourself into trouble.”
“Never fear that, Bessy, we are sure to win. We must get our Charter,
and then things will be all changed again, and we shall be better off
than ever.”
Again his wife shook her head doubtingly.
“Ah, Bill, if they were all like you, I should not fear—no, not one
bit—but they are not. Look at the men you take up with now—men you would
have been ashamed to be seen walking with in the old days; men who spend
half their time in the public-house, who are seen drunk in the middle of
the day—men who beat their wives, and let their children go about in
rags. Oh, Bill! with such men as these you will never make things better
than they were before. I have no doubt you are right, Bill, and that
things ought to be changed, but, for my part, it seems to me we were
very happy as we were before, when we never thought that we were, as you
say, only slaves.”
“You women don’t understand these things, Bessy,” her husband said, a
little impatiently; and then, with a slight shade on his face, went on,
“I know that the men I work with are not the sort I should choose, but
for a cause like ours we must work with the tools which come to hand.
The better sort will soon come. Let them only hear the truth, and they
will join us. They are doing so now—every day we get stronger, the
Charter receives thousands of fresh signatures, and the Government,
which grinds us down, trembles. Yes, Bessy, we are sure to succeed, and
then, my poor girl, your troubles will be over. But it is nearly time
for me to be off, let us have our potatoes. I must not miss our meeting
to-night, for I expect we shall have an important discussion.”
The scanty meal was eaten in silence, for William Holl could not help
comparing it in his mind with the snug, cheerful tea which he had always
found waiting for him at the end of his day’s work in the old times.
When he had gone out his wife sighed heavily, and then continued the
work at which she was engaged, and on which indeed their scanty living
at present greatly depended.
William Holl lodged in a small street in Pimlico, close to Vauxhall
Bridge, across which his shortest route lay. But a penny now was a
serious matter, and he accordingly kept along Millbank, in front of the
maze of scaffolding of the new Houses of Parliament, and over
Westminster Bridge, straight on to the Elephant and Castle. Then turning
off from the bustle and roar of traffic in Newington Causeway, he passed
into the heart of Bermondsey.
At first his way was through narrow streets inhabited entirely by the
working classes. The clocks have just struck six, and the men are
turning out from the neighbouring tan-yards and skinneries. Women are
standing in front of their houses talking to each other, and looking out
for their husbands’ return, and through the open doors can be seen the
tables laid with white cloths, and the little trays with the tea-things
standing there, and the bright fires with the kettles singing upon them.
The men come trooping along boldly, and lustily whistling snatches of
popular airs, laughing and joking together. All is bustle and
cheerfulness. Now William Holl has turned off into a narrow lane, and
has at once entered another atmosphere. There is no sound of whistling
and light laughter here. Heavy surly men lean against door-posts and
look sullenly out—men with heavy eyebrows and low foreheads, square
jawbones and bull-necks—men on whom crime seems to have set a stamp, and
whom instinct would lead you to avoid as you would a wolf or a tiger.
Through some of the windows come sounds of quarrelling and blows, and
foul imprecations of unspeakable horror, but no one heeds this; the men
at the doorways do not even turn their heads to listen. The few women
who are about, have for the most part an air of boldness and degradation
indescribable. They are dressed in dirty tawdry garments, their faces
show deep marks caused by misery and drink; whilst their mouths are full
of language even fouler and more horrible than that of the men. The men
seemed all of one stamp, but of the women there were two distinctly
marked classes. A few were very different from those just described.
Poor creatures, timid and shrinking; wretched worn-out women, who only a
few years before had been bright happy girls in some quiet country
village far from the misery and crime of London. They had seen their
husbands, originally perhaps honest and industrious, go with rapid steps
down the social ladder, beginning with drink and ending in a life passed
in violence and crime. Through all this the wives had never once thought
of leaving them, but had clung to them through good report and evil
report, through curses and blows, through desertion and shame, through
want and misery. These women looked with trembling and horror upon the
life they were bound to. To them death would have been a relief, oh, how
welcome! Their early life seemed to them now a glimpse of some far off,
long lost Paradise upon which they hardly dared even to cast a thought
back.
There were a few children, precocious and old-looking, treading rapidly
in their father’s steps, born to people these wretched dens, and to fill
the reformatories and gaols of their native land. These nests of crime,
these social ulcers, which eat into the heart of this London of ours,
defy alike the efforts of benevolence and the sword of the law to cure
or eradicate them. But one hope, one resource remains—to cut off the
springs by which they are fed, to send the children to schools and
reformatories before they are utterly hardened and debased, to make them
useful, industrious men, and to show them the happiness of honest
labour, and the inevitable misery of crime. Thus, and thus only, can the
evil be reached. For the men, reformation is hopeless. They must be
treated as savage beasts, and caged as such. And that not merely till
the first paroxysm of rage and evil is past, to be then turned loose
under the protection of a ticket-of-leave, to prey upon society. The
tiger who appears to sleep in his cage, with his glossy paw extended and
these terrible claws folded up, is the same tiger who in his native
wilds slew men and beasts and drank their blood. Who would think of
letting him loose again, to range with unrestrained freedom? Why, then,
should these men-tigers be permitted to work their savage wills? Should
they not rather, when once, by repeated crimes, they have shown that
their nature is thoroughly evil, be taken for ever from the world, of
which they are scourges, not to be confined for life in a cell, but only
until they learn that labour is a boon. Then they should be put to pass
their lives in labouring for the good of that society to whom their
existence has hitherto been a curse.
Through this den William Holl went. Beyond it the dwellings became,
scarcer; but the lanes were bounded by high walls, or large rambling
buildings, the odour of tan and hide from which sufficiently indicated
the trade carried on within them.
In a lonely corner of one of these lanes stood a public-house. It seemed
at first sight a strange position for it, but doubtless the landlord
knew his own business. It was a quiet out-of-the-way spot for men who
did not care to enter the full light of more-frequented houses; besides,
being in the midst of the tan-yards and skinneries, it obtained a fair
share of custom from the men working in them. When William Holl passed
the door he glanced in. A solitary gaslight was burning in the bar, but
the place seemed entirely empty and deserted, and no lights in the upper
windows betrayed any signs of life and activity. There was a small court
by the side of the house; down this he turned, stopped at a door, and
knocked in a quiet and peculiar way. The door was opened a little, and
some one behind it asked, “Who knocks?” to which he answered, “The
People and their Charter.” The door was then opened wide enough for him
to enter, and he passed through into a small court behind the
public-house. This he crossed, lifted the latch of a door, and went into
a small passage with a staircase leading up from it. He mounted this and
knocked at a door, and the same question and answer were exchanged
before it was opened for his admission.
The room which William Holl entered was a large one, and had probably
been used at one time for a penny concert room or singing hall, for at
the end was a sort of raised platform. The roof was black from the smoke
of years, and from it hung two chandeliers for gas. Neither of these
however was now in use, as the room was lit by some candles fastened to
a hoop hanging immediately over the table, at which fourteen men were
seated. The shutters were closed, and strips of paper pasted over the
cracks to prevent the light within being seen from the street. To these
men there was an indescribable charm in all this mystery, in these
closed windows and secret passwords, this obscure meeting place, and
this rough illumination. It seemed to raise them to the grandeur of
conspirators. They pleased themselves by imagining themselves watched
and tracked by the agents and spies of Government. While Government,
secure of the unanimous assistance of the middle classes and the
fidelity of the troops, troubled itself little with the ramifications of
the plot, although it looked with some little anxiety upon the
increasing murmurs and disaffection of the working classes, stirred up
as they were by the violent orations of their demagogue leaders. These
men, for their own selfish aims and ends, assured them that they were
down-trodden slaves, pointed to the scenes then enacting on the other
side of the water, and called upon them to make one united effort for
their freedom.
The present meeting was composed of some of the most influential and
violent of the agitators of the time, being, some of them, members of
the central committee, the rest delegates from various parts of London.
They were, as in the French Revolution they aspired to imitate, divided
into two distinct classes. A small minority were men like William Holl,
intelligent and enthusiastic, to a certain extent theorists and
dreamers, but actuated only by a sincere desire of ameliorating and
raising the condition of their fellow-workmen—men with pale faces and
lustrous eyes, animated with ardent hopes and pure intentions. But the
vast majority, had very different aims and notions. They desired in the
first place to pull down all above them, under the conviction that, in
the confusion and anarchy which would follow the carrying out of their
plans, they would somehow or other better their own condition. These men
cared but little for the nominal objects of their schemes, but to secure
their personal aggrandizement would not have hesitated at a reign of
terror. They hated work, and, lived upon the contributions wrung from
their dupes, and took up politics simply because they were selfish and
indolent. The general end for which all alike professed to be agitating
was manhood suffrage and political equality; their secret hopes and
wishes differed greatly. Some would have been satisfied with a change of
Government, and a House of Commons in which the democratic element
thoroughly preponderated; others would have abolished the House of
Peers, and have ruled only by an assembly chosen from the people; some,
again, openly advocated the establishment of a republic; while a few
went in for universal equality and a community of goods. The men present
were composed principally of the working classes, but there were some
few who by their attire belonged to a higher class, clerks and small
tradesmen, who, either from interest or ambition, had joined the
movement.
The chairman was evidently a man of a considerably higher social grade
than most of his associates, and was elevated to the position he at
present occupied for that reason, and not for any mental superiority.
Indeed, among all the faces present, his was the most strikingly
distinguished for an entire absence of any intellectual expression. An
elderly man, with white hair, whiskers, and hair under his chin, with a
look of self-importance which was laughable in its inordinate vanity. He
was a bad speaker, and delivered his harangues with an exaggeration of
attitude, and an inflated pomposity of manner, at which even his
associates had difficulty in restraining their laughter. And yet their
chairman was a useful man to them, and the LL.D. after his name threw a
sort of halo of respectability over the cause. Next to him sat a man who
differed in appearance yet more strongly from the remainder of those
present. He was a tall man, very carefully dressed, and with a military
bearing. Captain Thornton had been an officer in the army, but had been
put upon half-pay, and considered himself hardly used. He resembled the
chairman, only in being inordinately and absurdly vain. His personal
vanity it was which had urged him to take part in the present movement,
and made him delight to march at the head even of a mob from St.
Giles’s. He was one of those men who would fain be king, but would
otherwise be content to act the part of king’s fool, as being the next
most conspicuous personage. He loved being looked up to as a man of
consequence by the mechanics and roughs with whom he was associated. It
tickled his consuming vanity, when he was saluted in the streets with
the cry of “Bravo, Thornton!” To obtain popularity, even among the
lowest class, he would have done anything, short of disturbing the set
of his coat or the arrangement of his hair. Had there been no other way
of making himself conspicuous, he would have done it by wearing a
feather in his hat, or painting his boots scarlet. Not the least
gratification which Captain Thornton derived from his prominent position
in the ranks of the Chartists was the belief that he was revenging
himself upon the authorities for the manner in which they had treated
him. He was a more dangerous man than the chairman, for although equally
vain, he was not equally weak, and would have gone any lengths, even to
deluging England with blood, if he could have increased the notoriety of
his name by so doing.
Such were some of the nominal leaders of the Chartist movement of ‘48.
William Holl took his place at the lower end of the table by the side of
a few others who were, like himself, animated by a really disinterested
and lofty spirit. A whispered conversation was kept up for a few
minutes, and then the chairman rose. He accompanied his speech by
swaying his body backwards and forwards, and by striking one hand in the
palm of the other. He spoke very slowly in broken sentences, pausing
between each, as if he expected applause to follow every utterance.
“My friends, the glorious moment when we shall shake off the yoke under
which we have for a thousand years groaned, is at hand. The aristocracy,
who batten on your sweat and blood, tremble. The Government are
preparing for flight. The great cause gains ground daily. Ten thousand
signatures have been added to the Charter of the people during the last
three days. The moment of freedom is at hand! We agreed, at our last
meeting, that we would this evening discuss what our course of
proceeding shall be, when the Charter of the people is presented to the
House of Commons. In that House we have no confidence; it is composed of
the enemies of the people,—of the very men who are the worst
oppressors,—who lay the taxation of the nation on the shoulders of the
working men, while they enjoy their iniquitous wealth scot-free! They
are the ravening lions who lay wait to devour the poor! Yet to them must
we, in the first place, submit our cause. We have now to consider what
is the course it behoves us to adopt.”
There was a slight silence, and then William Holl said, “It appears to
me that the question resolves itself into two sides. If the House
receive our petition, and act in accordance with it, our object will
have been gained, and our course then will be to strain every nerve
throughout the country to return men of our own views. Every working man
in the kingdom must be pledged to vote only for the members selected for
them by a central committee, and as we shall be in a majority of twenty
to one everywhere, we shall return exactly such a House as we desire,
and can pass laws which will put an end to the injustice and anomalies
of which we complain. But this is for after consideration, and the
machinery can be arranged at a future time. The other alternative is, if
the House refuse to receive our petition, or if they accept it, to carry
it into force. The question then arises, and should now be determined
upon, what shall be our course? Shall we submit to the refusal, or use
force?”
Each man looked at the other. This was palpably the question upon which
the whole of their plans depended, and although nearly all were of one
opinion on it, none liked to be the first to propose violence. At last
Captain Thornton said:
“It appears to me, gentlemen, that we must be all of one opinion. The
voice of the people is the voice of God; we must compel the Houses of
Parliament to pass our Charter. We compelled them in ‘32 to pass the
Reform Bill, and the same means must be used now; but if those means
fail, we must follow the example of the people of Paris. We must march
our tens of thousands down from Manchester, and the manufacturing towns.
We must fill the galleries of the House; we must compel them to sit
until they have passed it; we must awe them into submission.”
“Right, Thornton,” another said. “We must render refusal out of the
question; we must make them carry our wishes into effect.”
“But force will be opposed to us,” one of the others remarked,
doubtingly.
“Then,” William Holl said, resolutely, “it must be met by force. Are we
greater cowards than the working men of the other capitals of Europe?
and yet in the last month or two we have seen them carry their way
against Despots, with armies of ten times the force of ours to back
them. Are we greater cowards than the French, who in ‘87, in ‘30, and
again now, have insisted on their will being respected? The working men
of London may be put down at five hundred thousand; and to oppose us,
are only the handful of troops now in it; for none will be spared from
other parts. Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, all the great
manufacturing towns are with us, and there are not thirty thousand
troops in England, and these are of ourselves. Let us always, when
interrupted by the police, beat them off. When the soldiers come against
us, cheer them and fraternise with them. If the worst comes to the
worst, let us defy them.”
There was a general sound of applause when he ceased.
“But,” said the man who had before objected, “we are not in the same
position the French people were; we are quite unarmed.”
“You are always timid, Wilkins,” one of the others said; “and timid
counsels have had their way long enough; it is the time now for action.
At any rate there are paving-stones, and a good supply of paving-stones
on the tops of the houses make a street nasty walking for the best
soldiers in the world. Besides, there are the gunsmiths’ shops; our
first move will, of course, be to possess ourselves of the contents of
them, and then to take possession of the arsenal in the Tower; it is not
half so strong as the Bastile was.”
“Woe be to London if they try and oppose us by force,” a man at the
other end of the table said. “We shall only have to call for our friend
Turner’s lambs; and it will take more troops than London can bring to
keep down St. Giles’s and Westminster.”
The man to whom he alluded was a powerful man, with a ruddy face, a low
forehead, overhanging eyebrows, and a coarse sensual mouth; he was a
butcher of Clare Market, and might have been well drawn for his
prototype the famous butcher Lepelletier, the leader of the faubourgs of
the French Revolution. He smiled significantly.
“Ay, ay,” he said, “if you once let my lambs loose, the devil himself
would not chain them up, as long as there is a shop ungutted in London.”
William Holl, and several others of the same class, made a movement of
disgust and dissent.
“I trust to God it will never come to that.”
“I hope not, too,” another speaker said, “but we must not blink the
fact; we must let those who would keep us down know, that we have it in
our power to compel them to assent to the popular will; and that unless
they obey it we will use that power. By so doing we shall gain the
support to a certain extent of all the shop-keepers, who are at heart
our most bitter opponents, for, rather than have their shops sacked,
they will be glad enough to help us to put a pressure upon the Houses to
do us justice.”
“I agree with you there,” William Holl said; “as a threat they will be
useful, but I for one will never consent to invoking riot and robbery
for our aid. In the French Revolution, anyone caught with plunder about
him was hung up instantly, and I should vote that we did the same; as
far as ourselves go, I should not hesitate, if necessary, to resort to
arms, and would fight to the last with my fellow-workmen in an effort
for liberty, but not by the side of St. Giles’s. But I do hope, and I
believe, that it will never come to that. I trust that Parliament will
quietly yield to the wishes of the nation.”
A significant look passed between two or three of the more advanced
party. A peaceful solution would have ill suited their plans and
schemes; and had William Holl’s wishes been carried into effect, he
would have found, as his predecessors, the Girondists, had done, another
Mountain to oppose him, and perhaps met with such a fate as them in the
end.
“I should say,” another man said, “that the whole of the working classes
in London—every man—should be agreed to meet at three or four centres,
such as Primrose Hill, Hyde Park, and Kennington Common, and that they
should go in procession to Westminster to present our petition, and
should call upon the House to name an early day for its consideration.
That on that day we should again assemble, and march to the House; that
we should fill the galleries, and sit there till it had passed. That we
should have everything prepared in case of refusal; the men all told off
in companies under officers, and their work given to each; so many to
the gunsmiths’ shops, so many to the Tower; the rest to throw up
barricades. That an agreement should be made with the northern towns to
rise simultaneously; and that we should then as a people declare
Parliament dissolved, and proclaim a Republic. That we should disarm the
troops when they did not resist us, annihilate them when they did, and
then proceed all over the country to elect a house of representatives by
universal suffrage.”
The speech was received with loud applause, and they proceeded to
discuss the details of the undertaking. Many of the speeches were really
brilliant, and the assembly was perfectly in accord on the main points.
It was nearly one o’clock when they separated. As they were breaking up,
Thornton spoke aside to a small malignant-looking man, who had taken a
very prominent part in the debates. This man was the editor of an
obscure paper, which pandered to the passions of its readers, by pouring
out the foulest abuse on all who were above them,—
“Everything goes on well, Hausford; don’t forget your part of the work.
We depend greatly upon you, you know. Be sure you keep them up to
boiling point.”
The man replied by a meaning nod, and then quietly one by one, to avoid
attracting attention, the council took their departure.