On the dun borderland of Islington and Hoxton, in a corner made by
the intersection of the New North Road and the Regent’s Canal, is
discoverable an irregular triangle of small dwelling-houses, bearing the
name of Wilton Square. In the midst stands an amorphous structure, which
on examination proves to be a very ugly house and a still uglier Baptist
chapel built back to back. The pair are enclosed within iron railings,
and, more strangely, a circle of trees, which in due season do veritably
put forth green leaves. One side of the square shows a second place of
worship, the resort, as an inscription declares, of ‘Welsh Calvinistic
Methodists.’ The houses are of one storey, with kitchen windows looking
upon small areas; the front door is reached by an ascent of five steps.
The canal--_maladetta e sventurata fossa_--stagnating in utter foulness
between coal-wharfs and builders’ yards, at this point divides two
neighbourhoods of different aspects. On the south is Hoxton, a region of
malodorous market streets, of factories, timber yards, grimy warehouses,
of alleys swarming with small trades and crafts, of filthy courts and
passages leading into pestilential gloom; everywhere toil in its most
degrading forms; the thoroughfares thundering with high-laden waggons,
the pavements trodden by working folk of the coarsest type, the
corners and lurking-holes showing destitution at its ugliest. Walking
northwards, the explorer finds himself in freer air, amid broader ways,
in a district of dwelling-houses only; the roads seem abandoned to
milkmen, cat’s-meat vendors, and costermongers. Here will be found
streets in which every window has its card advertising lodgings: others
claim a higher respectability, the houses retreating behind patches of
garden-ground, and occasionally showing plastered pillars and a balcony.
The change is from undisguised struggle for subsistence to mean and
spirit-broken leisure; hither retreat the better-paid of the great
slave-army when they are free to eat and sleep. To walk about a
neighbourhood such as this is the dreariest exercise to which man can
betake himself; the heart is crushed by uniformity of decent squalor;
one remembers that each of these dead-faced houses, often each separate
blind window, represents a ‘home,’ and the associations of the word
whisper blank despair.
Wilton Square is on the north side of the foss, on the edge of the
quieter district, and in one of its houses dwelt at the time of which
I write the family on whose behalf Fate was at work in a valley of
mid-England. Joseph Mutimer, nephew to the old man who had just died at
Wanley Manor, had himself been at rest for some five years; his widow
and three children still lived together in the home they had long
occupied. Joseph came of a family of mechanics; his existence was
that of the harmless necessary artisan. He earned a living by dint of
incessant labour, brought up his family in an orderly way, and departed
with a certain sense of satisfaction at having fulfilled obvious
duties--the only result of life for which he could reasonably look. With
his children we shall have to make closer acquaintance; but before doing
so, in order to understand their position and follow with intelligence
their several stories, it will be necessary to enter a little upon the
subject of ancestry.
Joseph Mutimer’s father, Henry by name, was a somewhat remarkable
personage. He grew to manhood in the first decade of our century, and
wrought as a craftsman in a Midland town. He had a brother, Richard,
some ten years his junior, and the two were of such different types of
character, each so pronounced in his kind, that, after vain attempts
to get along together, they parted for good, heedless of each other
henceforth, pursuing their sundered destinies. Henry was by nature a
political enthusiast, of insufficient ballast, careless of the main
chance, of hot and ready tongue; the Chartist movement gave him
opportunities of action which he used to the utmost, and he became a
member of the so-called National Convention, established in Birmingham
in 1839. Already he had achieved prominence by being imprisoned as
the leader of a torch-light procession, and this taste of martyrdom
naturally sharpened his zeal. He had married young, but only visited
his family from time to time. His wife for the most part earned her own
living, and ultimately betook herself to London with her son Joseph, the
single survivor of seven children. Henry pursued his career of popular
agitation, supporting himself in miscellaneous ways, writing his wife an
affectionate letter once in six months, and making himself widely known
as an uncompromising Radical of formidable powers. Newspapers of that
time mention his name frequently; he was always in hot water, and once
or twice narrowly escaped transportation. In 1842 he took active part in
the riots of the Midland Counties, and at length was unfortunate enough
to get his head broken. He died in hospital before any relative could
reach him.
Richard Mutimer regarded with detestation the principles to which Henry
had sacrificed his life. From childhood he was staid, earnest, and
iron-willed; to whatsoever he put his hand, he did it thoroughly, and it
was his pride to receive aid from no man. Intensely practical, he early
discerned the truth that a man’s first object must be to secure himself
a competency, seeing that to one who lacks money the world is but
a great debtors’ prison. To make money, therefore, was his aim, and
anything that interfered with the interests of commerce and industry
from the capitalist’s point of view he deemed unmitigated evil. When
his brother Henry was leading processions and preaching the People’s
Charter, Richard enrolled himself as a special constable, cursing the
tumults which drew him from business, but determined, if he got the
opportunity, to strike a good hard blow in defence of law and order.
Already he was well on the way to possess a solid stake in the country,
and the native conservatism of his temperament grew stronger as
circumstances bent themselves to his will; a proletarian conquering
wealth and influence naturally prizes these things in proportion to the
effort their acquisition has cost him. When he heard of his brother’s
death, he could in conscience say nothing more than ‘Serve him right!’
For all that, he paid the funeral expenses of the Chartist--angrily
declining an offer from Henry’s co-zealots, who would have buried the
martyr at their common charges--and proceeded to inquire after the widow
and son. Joseph Mutimer, already one- or two-and-twenty, was in no need
of help; he and his mother, naturally prejudiced against the thriving
uncle, declared themselves satisfied with their lot, and desired no
further connection with a relative who was practically a stranger to
them.
So Richard went on his way and heaped up riches. When already
middle-aged he took to himself a wife, his choice being marked with
characteristic prudence. The woman he wedded was turned thirty, had no
money, and few personal charms, but was a lady. Richard was fully able
to appreciate education and refinement; to judge from the course of
his later life, one would have said that he had sought money only as a
means, the end he really aimed at being the satisfaction of instincts
which could only have full play in a higher social sphere. No doubt the
truth was that success sweetened his character, and developed, as is
so often the case, those possibilities of his better nature which a
fruitless struggle would have kept in the germ or altogether crushed.
His excellent wife influenced him profoundly; at her death the work
was continued by the daughter she left him. The defects of his early
education could not of course be repaired, but it is never too late
for a man to go to school to the virtues which civilise. Remaining the
sturdiest of Conservatives, he bowed in sincere humility to those very
claims which the Radical most angrily disallows: birth, hereditary
station, recognised gentility--these things made the strongest demand
upon his reverence. Such an attitude was a testimony to his own capacity
for culture, since he knew not the meaning of vulgar adulation, and did
in truth perceive the beauty of those qualities to which the uneducated
Iconoclast is wholly blind. It was a joyous day for him when he saw his
daughter the wife of Godfrey Eldon. The loss which so soon followed was
correspondingly hard to bear, and but for Mrs. Eldon’s gentle sympathy
he would scarcely have survived the blow. We know already how his
character had impressed that lady; such respect was not lightly to be
won, and he came to regard it as the most precious thing that life had
left him.
But the man was not perfect, and his latest practical undertaking
curiously enough illustrated the failing which he seemed most completely
to have outgrown. It was of course a deplorable error to think of mining
in the beautiful valley which had once been the Eldons’ estate. Richard
Mutimer could not perceive that. He was a very old man, and possibly the
instincts of his youth revived as his mind grew feebler; he imagined it
the greatest kindness to Mrs. Eldon and her son to increase as much as
possible the value of the property he would leave at his death. They,
of course, could not even hint to him the pain with which they viewed so
barbarous a scheme; he did not as much as suspect a possible objection.
Intensely happy in his discovery and the activity to which it led, he
would have gone to his grave rich in all manner of content but for that
fatal news which reached him from London, where Hubert Eldon was sup
posed to be engaged in sober study in an interval of University work.
Doubtless it was this disappointment that caused his sudden death, and
so brought about a state of things which could he have foreseen it,
would have occasioned him the bitterest grief.
He had never lost sight of his relatives in London, and had made for
them such modest provision as suited his view of the fitness of things.
To leave wealth to young men of the working class would have seemed to
him the most inexcusable of follies; if such were to rise at all, it
must be by their own efforts and in consequence of their native merits;
otherwise, let them toil on and support themselves honestly. From secret
sources he received information of the capabilities and prospects of
Joseph Mutimer’s children, and the items of his will were regulated
accordingly.
So we return to the family in Wilton Square. Let us, before proceeding
with the story, enumerate the younger Mutimers. The first-born, now aged
five-and-twenty, had his great-uncle’s name; Joseph Mutimer, married,
and no better off in worldly possessions than when he had only himself
to support, came to regret the coldness with which he had received the
advances of his uncle the capitalist, and christened his son Richard,
with half a hope that some day the name might stand the boy in stead.
Richard was a mechanical engineer, employed in certain ironworks where
hydraulic machinery was made. The second child was a girl, upon whom had
been bestowed the names Alice Maud, after one of the Queen’s daughters;
on which account, and partly with reference to certain personal
characteristics, she was often called ‘the Princess.’ Her age was
nineteen, and she had now for two years been employed in the show-rooms
of a City warehouse. Last comes Henry, a lad of seventeen; he had been
suffered to aim at higher things than the rest of the family. In the
industrial code of precedence the rank of clerk is a step above that of
mechanic, and Henry--known to relatives and friends as ‘Arry--occupied
the proud position of clerk in a drain-pipe manufactory.