WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT’S-HEY
The dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in the vicinity of
the docks are many very painful sights.
In going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, I
generally passed through a narrow street called “Launcelott’s-Hey,”
lined with dingy, prison-like cotton warehouses. In this street, or
rather alley, you seldom see any one but a truck-man, or some solitary
old warehouse-keeper, haunting his smoky den like a ghost.
Once, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail, which seemed
to come out of the earth. It was but a strip of crooked side-walk where
I stood; the dingy wall was on every side, converting the mid-day into
twilight; and not a soul was in sight. I started, and could almost have
run, when I heard that dismal sound. It seemed the low, hopeless,
endless wail of some one forever lost. At last I advanced to an opening
which communicated downward with deep tiers of cellars beneath a
crumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen feet below the walk,
crouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed over, was the figure
of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two
shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each
side. At first, I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made
no sign; they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that
soul-sickening wail.
I made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence, echoed far and
near; but there was no response. Louder still; when one of the children
lifted its head, and cast upward a faint glance; then closed its eyes,
and lay motionless. The woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but
let fall her eye again. They were dumb and next to dead with want. How
they had crawled into that den, I could not tell; but there they had
crawled to die. At that moment I never thought of relieving them; for
death was so stamped in their glazed and unimploring eyes, that I
almost regarded them as already no more. I stood looking down on them,
while my whole soul swelled within me; and I asked myself, What right
had any body in the wide world to smile and be glad, when sights like
this were to be seen? It was enough to turn the heart to gall; and make
a man-hater of a Howard. For who were these ghosts that I saw? Were
they not human beings? A woman and two girls? With eyes, and lips, and
ears like any queen? with hearts which, though they did not bound with
blood, yet beat with a dull, dead ache that was their life.
At last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley, hoping to meet
there some ragged old women, whom I had daily noticed groping amid foul
rubbish for little particles of dirty cotton, which they washed out and
sold for a trifle.
I found them; and accosting one, I asked if she knew of the persons I
had just left. She replied, that she did not; nor did she want to. I
then asked another, a miserable, toothless old woman, with a tattered
strip of coarse baling stuff round her body. Looking at me for an
instant, she resumed her raking in the rubbish, and said that she knew
who it was that I spoke of; but that she had no time to attend to
beggars and their brats. Accosting still another, who seemed to know my
errand, I asked if there was no place to which the woman could be
taken. “Yes,” she replied, “to the church-yard.” I said she was alive,
and not dead.
“Then she’ll never die,” was the rejoinder. “She’s been down there
these three days, with nothing to eat;—that I know myself.”
“She desarves it,” said an old hag, who was just placing on her crooked
shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, “that
Betsy Jennings desarves it—was she ever married? tell me that.”
Leaving Launcelott’s-Hey, I turned into a more frequented street; and
soon meeting a policeman, told him of the condition of the woman and
the girls.
“It’s none of my business, Jack,” said he. “I don’t belong to that
street.”
“Who does then?”
“I don’t know. But what business is it of yours? Are you not a Yankee?”
“Yes,” said I, “but come, I will help you remove that woman, if you say
so.”
“There, now, Jack, go on board your ship and stick to it; and leave
these matters to the town.”
I accosted two more policemen, but with no better success; they would
not even go with me to the place. The truth was, it was out of the way,
in a silent, secluded spot; and the misery of the three outcasts,
hiding away in the ground, did not obtrude upon any one.
Returning to them, I again stamped to attract their attention; but this
time, none of the three looked up, or even stirred. While I yet stood
irresolute, a voice called to me from a high, iron-shuttered window in
a loft over the way; and asked what I was about. I beckoned to the man,
a sort of porter, to come down, which he did; when I pointed down into
the vault.
“Well,” said he, “what of it?”
“Can’t we get them out?” said I, “haven’t you some place in your
warehouse where you can put them? have you nothing for them to eat?”
“You’re crazy, boy,” said he; “do you suppose, that Parkins and Wood
want their warehouse turned into a hospital?”
I then went to my boarding-house, and told Handsome Mary of what I had
seen; asking her if she could not do something to get the woman and
girls removed; or if she could not do that, let me have some food for
them. But though a kind person in the main, Mary replied that she gave
away enough to beggars in her own street (which was true enough)
without looking after the whole neighborhood.
Going into the kitchen, I accosted the cook, a little shriveled-up old
Welshwoman, with a saucy tongue, whom the sailors called _Brandy-Nan;_
and begged her to give me some cold victuals, if she had nothing
better, to take to the vault. But she broke out in a storm of swearing
at the miserable occupants of the vault, and refused. I then stepped
into the room where our dinner was being spread; and waiting till the
girl had gone out, I snatched some bread and cheese from a stand, and
thrusting it into the bosom of my frock, left the house. Hurrying to
the lane, I dropped the food down into the vault. One of the girls
caught at it convulsively, but fell back, apparently fainting; the
sister pushed the other’s arm aside, and took the bread in her hand;
but with a weak uncertain grasp like an infant’s. She placed it to her
mouth; but letting it fall again, murmuring faintly something like
“water.” The woman did not stir; her head was bowed over, just as I had
first seen her.
Seeing how it was, I ran down toward the docks to a mean little sailor
tavern, and begged for a pitcher; but the cross old man who kept it
refused, unless I would pay for it. But I had no money. So as my
boarding-house was some way off, and it would be lost time to run to
the ship for my big iron pot; under the impulse of the moment, I
hurried to one of the Boodle Hydrants, which I remembered having seen
running near the scene of a still smoldering fire in an old rag house;
and taking off a new tarpaulin hat, which had been loaned me that day,
filled it with water.
With this, I returned to Launcelott’s-Hey; and with considerable
difficulty, like getting down into a well, I contrived to descend with
it into the vault; where there was hardly space enough left to let me
stand. The two girls drank out of the hat together; looking up at me
with an unalterable, idiotic expression, that almost made me faint. The
woman spoke not a word, and did not stir. While the girls were breaking
and eating the bread, I tried to lift the woman’s head; but, feeble as
she was, she seemed bent upon holding it down. Observing her arms still
clasped upon her bosom, and that something seemed hidden under the rags
there, a thought crossed my mind, which impelled me forcibly to
withdraw her hands for a moment; when I caught a glimpse of a meager
little babe—the lower part of its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its
face was dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes
looked like balls of indigo. It must have been dead some hours.
The woman refusing to speak, eat, or drink, I asked one of the girls
who they were, and where they lived; but she only stared vacantly,
muttering something that could not be understood.
The air of the place was now getting too much for me; but I stood
deliberating a moment, whether it was possible for me to drag them out
of the vault. But if I did, what then? They would only perish in the
street, and here they were at least protected from the rain; and more
than that, might die in seclusion.
I crawled up into the street, and looking down upon them again, almost
repented that I had brought them any food; for it would only tend to
prolong their misery, without hope of any permanent relief: for die
they must very soon; they were too far gone for any medicine to help
them. I hardly know whether I ought to confess another thing that
occurred to me as I stood there; but it was this—I felt an almost
irresistible impulse to do them the last mercy, of in some way putting
an end to their horrible lives; and I should almost have done so, I
think, had I not been deterred by thoughts of the law. For I well knew
that the law, which would let them perish of themselves without giving
them one cup of water, would spend a thousand pounds, if necessary, in
convicting him who should so much as offer to relieve them from their
miserable existence.
The next day, and the next, I passed the vault three times, and still
met the same sight. The girls leaning up against the woman on each
side, and the woman with her arms still folding the babe, and her head
bowed. The first evening I did not see the bread that I had dropped
down in the morning; but the second evening, the bread I had dropped
that morning remained untouched. On the third morning the smell that
came from the vault was such, that I accosted the same policeman I had
accosted before, who was patrolling the same street, and told him that
the persons I had spoken to him about were dead, and he had better have
them removed. He looked as if he did not believe me, and added, that it
was not his street.
When I arrived at the docks on my way to the ship, I entered the
guard-house within the walls, and asked for one of the captains, to
whom I told the story; but, from what he said, was led to infer that
the Dock Police was distinct from that of the town, and this was not
the right place to lodge my information.
I could do no more that morning, being obliged to repair to the ship;
but at twelve o’clock, when I went to dinner, I hurried into
Launcelott’s-Hey, when I found that the vault was empty. In place of
the women and children, a heap of quick-lime was glistening.
I could not learn who had taken them away, or whither they had gone;
but my prayer was answered—they were dead, departed, and at peace.
But again I looked down into the vault, and in fancy beheld the pale,
shrunken forms still crouching there. Ah! what are our creeds, and how
do we hope to be saved? Tell me, oh Bible, that story of Lazarus again,
that I may find comfort in my heart for the poor and forlorn.
Surrounded as we are by the wants and woes of our fellowmen, and yet
given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we
not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house
of the dead?