SOME few years later, while travelling with my family in Switzerland, we
happened to be staying at Baveno on Lago Maggiore at the same time, and
in the same hotel, as the Crown Prince and Princess of Germany. Their
Imperial Highnesses occupied a suite of apartments on the first floor.
Our rooms were immediately above them. As my wife was known to the
Princess, occasional greetings passed from balcony to balcony.
One evening while watching two lads rowing from the shore in the
direction of Isola Bella, I was aroused from my contemplation of a
gathering storm by angry vociferations beneath me. These were addressed
to the youths in the boat. The anxious father had noted the coming
tempest; and, with hands to his mouth, was shouting orders to the young
gentlemen to return. Loud and angry as cracked the thunder, the imperial
voice o’ertopped it. Commands succeeded admonitions, and as the only
effect on the rowers was obvious recalcitrancy, oaths succeeded both: all
in those throat-clearing tones to which the German language so
consonantly lends itself. In a few minutes the boat was immersed in the
down-pour which concealed it.
The elder of the two oarsmen was no other than the future firebrand
peacemaker, Miching Mallecho, our fierce little Tartarin de Berlin. One
wondered how he, who would not be ruled, would come in turn to rule?
That question is a burning one; and may yet set the world in flames to
solve it.
A comic little incident happened here to my own children. There was but
one bathing-machine. This, the two—a schoolboy and his sister—used in
the early morning. Being rather late one day, they found it engaged; and
growing impatient the boy banged at the door of the machine, with a shout
in schoolboy’s vernacular: ‘Come, hurry up; we want to dip.’ Much to the
surprise of the guilty pair, an answer, also in the best of English, came
from the inside: ‘Go away, you naughty boy.’ The occupant was the
Imperial Princess. Needless to say the children bolted with a mingled
sense of mischief and alarm.
About this time I joined a society for the relief of distress, of which
Bromley Davenport was the nominal leader. The ‘managing director,’ so to
speak, was Dr. Gilbert, father of Mr. W. S. Gilbert. To him I went for
instructions. I told him I wanted to see the worst. He accordingly sent
me to Bethnal Green. For two winters and part of a third I visited this
district twice a week regularly. What I saw in the course of those two
years was matter for a thoughtful—ay, or a thoughtless—man to think of
for the rest of his days.
My system was to call first upon the clergyman of the parish, and obtain
from him a guide to the severest cases of destitution. The guide would
be a Scripture reader, and, as far as I remember, always a woman. I do
not know whether the labours of these good creatures were gratuitous—they
themselves were certainly poor, yet singularly earnest and sympathetic.
The society supplied tickets for coal, blankets, and food. Needless to
say, had these supplies been a thousand-fold as great, they would have
done as little permanent good as those at my command.
In Bethnal Green the principal industry is, or was, silk-weaving by hand
looms. Nearly all the houses were ancient and dilapidated. A weaver and
his family would occupy part of a flat, consisting of two rooms perhaps,
one of which would contain his loom. The room might be about seven feet
high, nearly dark, lighted only by a lattice window, half of the panes of
which would be replaced by dirty rags or old newspaper. As the loom was
placed against the window the light was practically excluded. The
foulness of the air and filth which this entailed may be too easily
imagined. A couple of cases, taken almost at random, will sample scores
as bad.
It is one of the darkest days of December. The Thames is nearly frozen
at Waterloo Bridge. On the second floor of an old house in — Lane, in an
unusually spacious room (or does it only look spacious because there is
nothing in it save four human beings?) are a father, a mother, and a
grown-up son and daughter. They scowl at the visitor as the Scripture
reader opens the door. What is the meaning of the intrusion? Is he too
come with a Bible instead of bread? The four are seated side by side on
the floor, leaning against the wall, waiting for—death. Bedsteads,
chairs, table, and looms have been burnt this week or more for fuel. The
grate is empty now, and lets the freezing draught blow down the chimney.
The temporary relief is accepted, but not with thanks. These four
stubbornly prefer death to the work-house.
One other case. It is the same hard winter. The scene: a small garret
in the roof, a low slanting little skylight, now covered six inches deep
in snow. No fireplace here, no ventilation, so put your scented cambric
to your nose, my noble Dives. The only furniture a scanty armful of—what
shall we call it? It was straw once. A starving woman and a baby are
lying on it, notwithstanding. The baby surely will not be there
to-morrow. It has a very bad cold—and the mucus, and the—pah! The woman
in a few rags—just a few—is gnawing a raw carrot. The picture is
complete. There’s nothing more to paint. The rest—the whole indeed,
that is the consciousness of it—was, and remains, with the Unseen.
You will say, ‘Such things cannot be’; you will say, ‘There are relieving
officers, whose duty, etc., etc.’ May be. I am only telling you what I
myself have seen. There is more goes on in big cities than even
relieving officers can cope with. And who shall grapple with the causes?
That’s the point.
Here is something else that I have seen. I have seen a family of six in
one room. Of these, four were brothers and sisters, all within, none
over, their teens. There were three beds between the six. When I came
upon them they were out of work,—the young ones in bed to keep warm. I
took them for very young married couples. It was the Scripture reader
who undeceived me. This is not the exception to the rule, look you, but
the rule itself. How will you deal with it? It is with Nature, immoral
Nature and her heedless instincts that you have to deal. With what kind
of fork will you expel her? It is with Nature’s wretched children, the
_bêtes humaines_,
Quos venerem incertam rapientes more ferarum,
that your account lies. Will they cease to listen to her maddening
whispers: ‘Unissez-vous, multipliez, il n’est d’autre loi, d’autre but,
que l’amour?’ What care they for her aside—‘Et durez après, si vous le
pouvez; cela ne me regarde plus’? It doesn’t regard them either.
The infallible panacea, so the ‘Progressive’ tell us, is
education—lessons on the piano, perhaps? Doctor Malthus would be more to
the purpose; but how shall we administer his prescriptions? One thing we
might try to teach to advantage, and that is the elementary principles of
hygiene. I am heart and soul with the Progressive as to the ultimate
remedial powers of education. Moral advancement depends absolutely on
the humanising influences of intellectual advancement. The foreseeing of
consequences is a question of intelligence. And the appreciation of
consequences which follow is the basis of morality. But we must not
begin at the wrong end. The true foundation and condition of
intellectual and moral progress postulates material and physical
improvement. The growth of artificial wants is as much the cause as the
effect of civilisation: they proceed _pari passu_. A taste of comfort
begets a love of comfort. And this kind of love militates, not
impotently, against the other; for self-interest is a persuasive
counsellor, and gets a hearing when the blood is cool. Life must be more
than possible, it must be endurable; man must have some leisure, some
repose, before his brain-needs have a chance with those of his belly. He
must have a coat to his back before he can stick a rose in its
button-hole. The worst of it is, he begins—in Bethnal Green at
least—with the rose-bud; and indulges, poor devil! in a luxury which is
just the most expensive, and—in our Bethnal Greens—the most suicidal he
could resort to.
There was one method I adopted with a show of temporary success now and
then. It frequently happens that a man succumbs to difficulties for
which he is not responsible, and which timely aid may enable him to
overcome. An artisan may have to pawn or sell the tools by which he
earns his living. The redemption of these, if the man is good for
anything, will often set him on his legs. Thus, for example, I found a
cobbler one day surrounded by a starving family. His story was common
enough, severe illness being the burden of it. He was an intelligent
little fellow, and, as far as one could judge, full of good intentions.
His wife seemed devoted to him, and this was the best of vouchers. ‘If
he had but a shilling or two to redeem his tools, and buy two or three
old cast-off shoes in the rag-market which he could patch up and sell, he
wouldn’t ask anyone for a copper.’
We went together to the pawnbroker’s, then to the rag-market, and the
little man trotted home with an armful of old boots and shoes, some
without soles, some without uppers; all, as I should have thought, picked
out of dust-bins and rubbish heaps, his sunken eyes sparkling with
eagerness and renovated hope. I looked in upon him about three weeks
later. The family were sitting round a well provided tea-table, close to
a glowing fire, the cheeks of the children smeared with jam, and the
little cobbler hammering away at his last, too busy to partake of the
bowl of hot tea which his wife had placed beside him.
The same sort of treatment was sometimes very successful with a skilful
workman—like a carpenter, for instance. Here a double purpose might be
served. Nothing more common in Bethnal Green than broken looms, and
consequent disaster. There you had the ready-made job for the reinstated
carpenter; and good could be done in a small way, at very little cost.
Of coarse much discretion is needed; still, the Scripture readers or the
relieving officers would know the characters of the destitute, and the
visitor himself would soon learn to discriminate.
A system similar to this was the basis of the aid rendered by the Royal
Society for the Assistance of Discharged Prisoners, which was started by
my friend, Mr. Whitbread, the present owner of Southill, and which I
joined in its early days at his instigation. The earnings of the
prisoner were handed over by the gaols to the Society, and the Society
employed them for his advantage—always, in the case of an artisan, by
supplying him with the needful implements of his trade. But relief in
which the pauper has no productive share, of which he is but a mere
consumer, is of no avail.
One cannot but think that if instead of the selfish principles which
govern our trades-unions, and which are driving their industries out of
the country, trade-schools could be provided—such, for instance, as the
cheap carving schools to be met with in many parts of Germany and the
Tyrol—much might be done to help the bread-earners. Why could not
schools be organised for the instruction of shoemakers, tailors,
carpenters, smiths of all kinds, and the scores of other trades which in
former days were learnt by compulsory apprenticeship? Under our present
system of education the greater part of what the poor man’s children
learn is clean forgotten in a few years; and if not, serves mainly to
create and foster discontent, which vents itself in a passion for
mass-meetings and the fuliginous oratory of our Hyde Parks.
The emigration scheme for poor-law children as advocated by Mrs. Close is
the most promising, in its way, yet brought before the public, and is
deserving of every support.
In the absence of any such projects as these, the hopelessness of the
task, and the depressing effect of the contact with much wretchedness,
wore me out. I had a nursery of my own, and was not justified in risking
infectious diseases. A saint would have been more heroic, and could
besides have promised that sweetest of consolations to suffering
millions—the compensation of Eternal Happiness. I could not give them
even hope, for I had none to spare. The root-evil I felt to be the
overcrowding due to the reckless intercourse of the sexes; and what had
Providence to do with a law of Nature, obedience to which entailed
unspeakable misery?