“Hout, man! what signifies repeynin’,
Owr grankin’, snifteran’, twistin’, tweynin’,
If down leyfe’s hill we be decleynin’,
We cannot slack,
Then gang on decent without wheynin’,
Or hingin’ back.
Leyfe, mak’ the best on’t ’s nowght owr pleesin’,
As every day some fash comes teasin’,
An’ oft eneugh the wheels want greesin’
To keep them ga’un,
Then brouce about nor tek sec preesin’
To nate our awn.”
_The New Year’s Epistle._
“There’s sic a gang in our town,
The deevil cannot wrang them,
And cud yen gat ’em put i’ prent
Aw England cuddent bang them.
* * * * *
Cheat who cheat can’s the common rule,
Fwoaks a’ cheat yen anither;
For he that’s nowther kneave or fuol,
God seake! what brought him hither.”
MR. SANDBOYS, when he had time for reflection, began to see that he was
very unpleasantly situated. The circumstances against him he was obliged
to confess, when he came to review them judicially, _did_ look
particularly black.
In the first place, as he said to himself, he had not only been detected
travelling without a ticket, and without money; but, what he felt was
equally suspicious, without so much as a box, bag, or parcel among the
whole half-dozen members of his family. If he accounted for the
possession of the counterfeit coin and notes by declaring that he had
been imposed upon, still, how was he satisfactorily to explain to any
unprejudiced mind that combination of mischances that had deprived him
of his luggage?
Then, supposing, he went on arguing with himself, he could sufficiently
prove his innocence to the authorities, to induce them to abandon the
charge against him, what was to become of him?—in a strange town,
without a friend, without a shilling—or without a change of linen for
himself or any of the miserable members of the wretched family that
looked up to him for protection.
If he escaped the prison, there was nothing that he could see left for
him but the workhouse; and, unsophisticated as he was, still he was man
of the world enough to know that the workhouse was much the worse of the
two.
“Waistomea! Waistomea!” he inwardly ejaculated, as he thought of his
many troubles.
To enliven the terrors of his position, Mrs. Sandboys obliged him, on
the road to the Police-office, by now sketching an imaginary picture of
the whole family at work on the treadmill, and now painting in the
darkest colours portraits of herself, Elcy, and Ann Lightfoot in the
female ward of the union, picking oakum, and Cursty, Jobby, and deaf
Postlethwaite, in the yard of the same wretched establishment, engaged
in the gentlemanly occupation of cracking stones.
The only hope, she gave him to understand very plainly, that she could
see for them was, to get the parish to pass them to their own county;
and then, in the depths of her misery, she wished to “guidness” they had
remained contented at Buttermere, and never made up their minds to enjoy
themselves.
But no sooner had the entire six been crammed into the dock at the
Police-office, and the Inspector cast his eyes towards the chief
prisoner, than, suddenly recognising him as a fellow-countryman, he
asked him whether he remembered one Johnny Wren, who had left Buttermere
some ten years before, and “listed” in the Life Guards.
This was a piece of good fortune which Mr. Sandboys, seeing how
uncivilly the fates had lately treated him, was in no way prepared for;
however, Johnny soon removed his fellow-countryman from the dock to a
seat by his side; and when he had listened to the series of
misadventures that had befallen his old friend, he begged of him not to
worry himself any further about his troubles, as he had a few pounds by
him, and should be most happy to place the money at his service.
When this bit of good luck had dispelled all the melancholy of the
family, Johnny himself proceeded to tell Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys how,
after ’listing in the Guards, he had received an injury while riding,
and how he had then been presented with a berth in the London Police,
whence he had been promoted to the post he at present filled in
Manchester.
In a short time Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys had in a measure forgotten all
their previous troubles and distresses, in the kindness and hospitality
of Inspector Wren.
After partaking of such fare as his establishment afforded, Mr. Sandboys
proceeded, under the guidance of the Inspector, to take a glance round
the town.
Manchester at any time is, perhaps, one of the peculiar sights that this
country affords.
To see the city of factories in all its bustle and all its life, with
its forests of tall chimneys, like huge masts of brick, with long black
flags of smoke streaming from their tops, is to look upon one of those
scenes of giant industry that England alone can show. As you pace its
busy streets, you hear the drone of a thousand steam-engines, humming in
the ears like a hive. As you sit in your home, you feel the floor
tremble with the motion of the vast machinery, whirling on every side.
Here the buildings are monstrous square masses of brick, pierced with a
hundred windows, while white wreaths of steam puff fitfully through
their walls. Many a narrow thoroughfare is dark and sunless with the
tall warehouses that rise up like bricken cliffs on either side. The
streets swarm with carts and railway-vans, with drivers perched high in
the air, and “lurrys”—some piled with fat round bags of wool, others
laden with hard square stony-looking blocks of cotton, and others filled
with many a folded piece of unbleached woven cloth. Green covered vans,
like huge chests on wheels, rattle past,—the bright zinc plates at their
sides, telling that they are hurrying with goods to or from some
“calender,” “dyer,” or “finisher.”
At one door stands a truck laden with red rows of copper cylinders, cut
deep with patterns. This basement or kitchen is transformed into the
showroom of some warehouseman, and as you look down the steps into the
subterranean shop, you can see that in front of where the kitchen range
should stand, a counter extends, spread with bright-coloured velveteens,
while the place of the dresser is taken up with shelves, filled with
showy cotton prints. The door-posts of every warehouse are inscribed
with long catalogues of names, like those of the Metropolitan Inns of
Court; and along the front of the tall buildings, between the different
floors, run huge black boards, gilt with the title of some merchant
firm.
Along the pavement walk bonnetless women, with shawls drawn over their
heads, and their hair and clothes spotted with white fluffs of cotton.
In the pathway, and at the corners of the principal streets, stand
groups of merchants and manufacturers—all with their hands in their
pockets—some buried in their coat-tails—others plunged deep in their
breeches, and rattling the money—and each busy trafficking with his
neighbour. Beside the kerb-stones loiter bright-coloured omnibuses, the
tired horses with their heads hanging low down, and their trembling
knees bulging forward—and with the drab-coated and big-buttoned driver
loitering by their side, and ready to convey the merchants to their
suburban homes.
Go which way you will, the whistle of some arriving or departing
railway-train shrieks shrilly in the ears; and at the first break of
morning, a thousand factory bells ring out the daily summons to work—and
then, as the shades of night fall upon the town, the many windows of the
huge mills and warehouses shine like plates of burnished gold with the
myriads of lights within. The streets, streaming with children going to
or coming from their toil, are black with the moving columns of busy
little things, like the paths to an ants’ nest.
Within the factories, the clatter and whirr of incalculable wheels stuns
and bewilders the mind. Here, in long low rooms, are vistas of
carding-engines, some disgorging thick sheets of white, soft-looking
wadding, and others pouring forth endless fluffy ropes of cotton into
tall tin cylinders; while over-head are wheels, with their rims worn
bright, and broad black straps descending from them on every side, with
their buckles running rapidly round, and making the stranger shrink as
he passes between them. On the floors above are mules after mules, with
long lines of white cops, twirling so fast that their forms are all
blurred together; while the barefooted artisan between draws out the
slender threads as from the bowels of a thousand spiders. Then too there
are floors crowded with looms all at work, tramping like an army, and
busy weaving the shirts and gowns of the entire world, and making the
stranger wonder how, with the myriads of bales of cotton that are here
spun, and with the myriads of yards of cotton that are here woven, there
can be one bare back to be found among the whole human family.
But Manchester, at the time of Mr. Sandboy’s visit, was not the
Manchester of every-day life.
The black smoke no longer streamed from the tall chimneys of its
factories—the sky above was no longer swarthy, as if grimed with the
endless labour of the town, but clear, and without a cloud. Not a cart,
nor a van, nor a railway wagon, nor a lurry, broke the stillness of the
streets, and the tramp of the policeman on his rounds was alone to be
heard. The mills were all hushed—the fires were out—the engines were
motionless—not a wheel whirred—not a loom clacked—not a cop twirled,
within them. The workers, young and old, had all gone to take their
share in England’s holiday. To walk through the work-rooms that a little
while ago had trembled and clattered with the stir of their many
machines, impressed the mind with the same sense of desolation as a
theatre seen by daylight. The mice, startled at the strange sound of a
footstep, scampered from out the heaps of cotton that lay upon the
floor, and spiders had already begun to spin their webs in the unused
shuttles of the looms. At night, the many windows of the mills and
warehouses no longer shimmered, like gold, with the lights within, but
glittered, like plates of silver, with the moon-rays shining on them
from without. The doors of the huge warehouses were all closed, and the
steps grown green from long disuse. Not a cab stood in front of the
infirmary—not a vehicle loitered beside the pavement in Market-street.
In the morning, not a factory bell was to be heard; nor a “bus” to be
seen bringing from the suburbs its crowds of merchants piled on the roof
and packed on the splash-board in front of the coachman. Not a milkman
dragged through the streets his huge tin can suspended on wheels; nor
was a scavenger, with his long loose blue woollen shirt and
round-crowned hat, to be met with.
On Saturday night, the thoroughfares clattered not with the tread of the
thousands of heavy-booted operatives on the pavement; not a grocer’s
shop was brilliant with the ground-glass globes of its many lamps; not a
linen draper’s window was stuck over with bills telling of another
“Tremendous Failure” or “Awful Sacrifice!”
[Illustration:
Looking for Lodgings.
_This is all I have ma’m:—I have just let the last tent on the tiles
to a Foreign Nobleman_
]
In Smithfield, there was neither light nor sound. The glossy crockery
and glittering glass no longer was strewn upon the ground, and no
impatient dealer was there jingling his cups and tumblers, and rattling
his basins to bring the customers to his stand. The covered sheds,
spread with bright-coloured handkerchiefs and muslin, and hung with long
streamers of lace, had all disappeared; the long narrow alleys of old
clothes stalls, decked with washed-out gowns and brown stays, and yellow
petticoats and limp bonnets, were gone; the old-boots stalls, bright
with the highly-polished shoe, were nowhere visible; nor the black
hardware, nor the white wicker-baskets, nor the dangling hairy brooms,
nor the glass cases glittering with showy jewellery. The booth-like
cook-shops were shut up, and not a boy was to be seen within them
enjoying his cheap basin of steaming soup or plate of smoking pie; and
the sheets of tripe, like bundles of shammy leather, and the cow-heels,
white and soddened, like washerwomen’s hands, had disappeared from the
stalls.
In Victoria Market the oranges were no longer to be seen piled up in
pyramids, and glittering like balls of gold against their white-papered
shelves. Not a sound of music was to be heard in any of the harmonic
taverns. The piano of “THE HEN AND CHICKENS” was hushed. The fiddle and
violoncello sounded not in “THE COTTON TREE.” At Ben Lang’s the lights
were all out, and the galleries empty—not a seriously-comic song, nor
comically-serious ditty disturbed the silence of the “Saloon.”
The shutters of the Exchange, too, were closed—none sat at the tables,
or stood at the desks scanning the papers. At Milner’s, the patent iron
safe that, laden with gold, had stood the attack of twenty desperate
robbers, was hidden for a time by the shutters. Barton the stationer had
eloped to London with his Love. Nathaniel Gould and his brother from
London had both returned to the metropolis to see the Exhibition, and
his mother. Binyons and Hunter had given over desiccating their coffee,
and had gone to air themselves instead, in the metropolis. At Crowther’s
Hotel, the pretty barmaid was no longer to be seen, for “THE ANGEL” had
retired to London. At the Commercial Dining Rooms, Bell’s joints had
ceased to be hot from twelve till three, for he, like the rest, had
gone, legs and shoulders and all, to the Great Exhibition; while Mrs.
Ja. Stewart, (“professed cook,”) no longer recommended those gentlemen
who wanted a relish to try her chops. Mrs. Lalor, having exhausted “her
winter supply of fancy shirts, braces, cravats, &c.,” had availed
herself of the opportunity of seeing the Exhibition to provide herself
with a summer stock. Mr. Albert, the dentist, of George-street, whose
“artificial teeth, he assures us, are such perfect imitations of nature,
that it is confidently predicted they will speedily supersede _every
other kind_,” had started for the metropolis, leaving his incorrodible
teeth behind him; and J. Casper, the tailor, of Market-street, having
“invented a cloth with two distinct faces, which may be worn on either
side, and suitable for trowsers,” as well as coats and vests, had turned
his coat like the very best “double-faced,” and gone up in a pair of his
own patent pantaloons, with the intention of using the outsides for week
days, and the insides for Sundays. At the City Mourning Establishment,
the young ladies of the shop had given over sorrowing for the deceased
friends of their customers, and, substituting lively pink glacés for
their sombre bombazins, had suddenly changed, like lobsters, from black
to red, and gone up with the chief mourner of “the establishment,”
determined to have a few weeks’ pleasure, like the rest of the world;
while Beddoe, of the opposition depôt for grief, had, “in consequence of
the mildness of the season,” (coupled with its general healthiness) “not
only reduced all his stock of the previous winter’s weeds and weepers,
but finding the mortality much below the usual average, had put up the
black shutters of his shop, and affixed a hatchment, with the motto of
“RESURGAM,” over his door, as a notice that he would turn up again
shortly.
Not a shop but had some announcement pasted on the shutters. In the
principal thoroughfares chickens scratched at the unremoved dust, while
the crowing of rival cocks sounded shrill in the silent streets.
Corpulent old ducks waddled along the kerb-stones to bathe themselves,
in the gutter. In Market-street the grass was already beginning to
sprout between the stones. The cats, left to take care of themselves,
wandered about as thin as French pigs, and lay in wait for the birds,
that no longer scared by the noise, now began to flock and twitter
loudly in every thoroughfare. In the People’s Parks, pigs roamed among
the flowers, while geese and donkeys nibbled at the grass.
There was, however, one quarter of the deserted town where the people
were not holiday-making, but still labouring—for what was to them,
indeed, dear life—one district where the toil knew no cessation—where
the workmen had no money to spend on pleasure, getting barely
enough—slave as they might—to keep soul and body together.
Round about the wretched purlieus of Rochdale-road the clicking of the
shuttles of the handloom weavers might still be heard. Early, long
before the light, and long after the dark, the weaver’s dim lamp might
be seen in the attic or cellar, and where some five-and-twenty were
styed together under one wretched roof, Mr. Sandboys was led by
Inspector Johnny Wren.
At the top of the house he found the rooms crowded with crazy old looms,
so that it was scarcely possible to move between—and here, with beds of
sacks of straw, and nothing but their own rags to cover them by night,
were a band of grim, hollow-cheeked, and half-starved men, toiling away
for a crust—and nothing more.
Mr. Sandboys started back in horror as he looked at the pinched faces
and gaunt figures of the workers. He asked why they were not, like the
rest of the town, at the Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations.
“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed out one with a week’s beard on his chin—“last week
I earnt three and ninepence, and this week I shall have got two and a
penny. Exhibition of Industry! let them as wants to see the use of
industry in this country come and see this here exhibition.”
“I warrant it’ll beat all nations hollow,” cried another.
And then the man laughed again, and so did all his fellow-workers, in a
grim, empty-bellied chorus.
Mr. Sandboys grew somewhat alarmed at the man’s manner, and not finding
much gratification in the contemplation of misery that he knew it was
out of his power to mitigate, beckoned Inspector Wren away, and made the
best of his road back to the house of his fellow-countryman.
Mrs. Sandboys had been anxiously awaiting his return for some time.
During the absence of Cursty, she had half made up her mind to return to
Hassness; and would have decided upon doing so immediately had it not
been for the loss of the luggage.
Mr. Sandboys, however, now that he had wholly forgotten his late
troubles, was in no way desirous of giving way to what appeared to be
simply a small concatenation of adverse circumstances. Besides, now that
he saw matters were taking a more propitious turn, he began to feel all
his heroism returning; and having made up his mind to enjoy himself for
a short period in the metropolis, why he would not allow it ever to be
said that he was weak enough to be wrested from his purpose by a few
mishaps.
His darling Aggy, however, thought far less of the heroism than she did
of her boxes; and seeing the imminent peril in which she stood of being
deprived of the entire three-and-twenty packages which contained the
family linen and all their best clothes, besides a sufficiency of notes
to cover, as she and Cursty had calculated, all their expenses in town,
why she agreed with her lord and master that, under all circumstances,
it _might_ perhaps be advisable to avail themselves of the kind offer of
Mr. Johnny Wren to advance them money enough to carry them on until they
could obtain their boxes from the railway station.
Mr. Sandboys, being of the same opinion, consulted privately with his
friend Johnny Wren as to the amount he could conveniently spare them;
and all the money-matters having been satisfactorily arranged, the
Sandboys family started once more on their journey, determined this
time, at least, to enjoy themselves.
------------------------------------------------------------------------