WANT
LODGINGS IN LONDON--A CONVIVIAL HUSBAND--THE WIFE GIVES HER
OPINION--FAMILY PLEASURES--FAMILY CARES--DRESSING TO GO
OUT--THE DRUNKARD’S VISITORS--CHEAP ENJOYMENT--WHO IS THE
OWNER?--LONDON FOR THE POOR
As you walk jauntily along any of the great thoroughfares of London,
you arrive, ever and anon, at one of those narrow offshoots of which
you would scarcely discover the existence, were it not for the paved
crossing over which you daintily pick your way on the points of your
jetty boots. All the attention you can spare from passing events is
devoted to the preservation of your _chaussure_, and you do not
probably think it worth while to bestow even a casual peep down that
close, winding alley, in which love and hate, and hopes and fears, and
human joys and miseries and sympathies, are all packed together, just
as they are in your own house in Belgravia, Tyburnia, or Mayfair, only
considerably more cramped for room, and a good deal worse off for
fresh air. That noble animal, the horse, generally occupies the
ground-floor of such tenements as compose these narrow streets, whilst
the dirty children of those bipeds who look after his well-being,
embryo coachmen, and helpers, and stablemen, play and fight and
vociferate in the gutter, with considerable energy and no little
noise, munching their dinners _al fresco_ the while, with an appetite
that makes dry bread a very palatable sustenance. A strong “smell of
stables” pervades the atmosphere, attributable perhaps to the
accumulation of that agricultural wealth which, in its _right_ place,
produces golden harvests; and the ring of harness and stamp of
steeds, varied by an occasional snort, nearly drown the plaintive
street organ, grinding away, fainter and fainter, round the corner.
Shirts, stockings, and garments of which we neither know the names nor
natures, hang, like Macbeth’s banners, “on the outward walls.” Washing
appears to be the staple commerce, while porter seems the principal
support, of these busy regions; and as the snowy water-lily rises from
the stagnant marsh, so does the dazzling shirt-front, in which you
will to-day appear at dinner, owe its purity to that stream of soapy
starch-stained liquid now pouring its filthy volume down the gutter.
Dirty, drowsy-looking men clatter about with pails and other apparatus
for the cleansing of carriages, whilst here and there an urchin is
pounced upon and carried off by some maternal hawk, with bare arms and
disordered tresses, either to return with a smeared mouth and a
festive slice of bread and treacle, or to admonish its companions, by
piercing cries, that it is undergoing summary punishment not
undeserved. The shrill organ of female volubility, we need hardly say,
is in the ascendant; and we may add that the faces generally met with,
all dirty and careworn though they be, are gilded by an honest
expression of contentment peculiar to those who fulfil their destiny
by working for their daily bread.
In one of the worst lodgings in such a mews as we have faintly
endeavoured to describe, in a dirty, comfortless room, bare of
furniture, and to which laborious access is obtained by a dilapidated
wooden staircase, sits our old acquaintance Gingham, now Mrs. Blacke,
but who will never be known to “the families in which she lived” by
any other than her maiden patronymic. Though in her best days a lady
of no fascinating exterior, she is decidedly altered for the worse
since we saw her at St. Swithin’s, and is now, without question, a
hard-featured and repulsive-looking woman. She has lost the
“well-to-do” air, which sits more easily on those who live at
“housekeeping” than on those “who find themselves,” and everything
about her betrays a degree of poverty, if not of actual want, sadly
repugnant to the habits of an orderly upper-servant in a
well-regulated establishment.
Of all those who sink to hardships after having “seen better days,”
none bear privation so ill as this particular rank. They have neither
the determination and energy of “the gentle,” nor the happy
carelessness and bodily vigour of the labouring class. It is
lamentable to watch the gradual sinking of a once respectable man, who
has been tempted, by the very natural desire of becoming independent,
to leave “service” and set up on his own account. From his boyhood he
has been fed, housed, and clothed, without a thought or care of his
own, till he has spread into the portly, grave, ponderous official,
whom not even his master’s guests would think of addressing save by
the respectful title of “Mister.” He has saved a “pretty bit o’
money”; and on giving warning, announces his long-concealed marriage
to the housekeeper, who has perhaps saved a little more. Between them
they muster a _very_ few hundred pounds; and on this inexhaustible
capital they determine to set up for themselves. If he takes a
public-house, it is needless to dwell on the almost inevitable
catastrophe. But whatever the trade or speculation on which he
embarks, he has everything to learn; education cannot be had without
paying for it; business connections cannot be made--they must _grow_.
Those are positive hardships to _him_, which could scarcely be felt as
wants by others of his own sphere, who had not always lived, as he
has, on the fat of the land. Discontent and recrimination creep into
the household. The wife makes home uncomfortable, and “the husband
goes to the beer-shop.” The money dwindles--the business
fails--fortunate if the family do not increase. “Trade _never_ was so
bad,” and it soon becomes a question of assignees and ten shillings in
the pound. The man himself is honest, and it cuts him to the heart.
Only great speculators can rise, like the Phoenix, in gaudier
plumage after every fresh insolvency; and hunger begins to stare our
once portly acquaintance in the face. At last he is completely “sold
up,” and if too old to go again into service, he will probably think
himself well off to finish in the workhouse. And this is the career of
two-thirds of those who leave comfortable homes for the vague future
of a shadowy independence, and embark upon speculations of which they
neither understand the nature nor count the cost.
But we must return to Gingham, bending her thin, worn figure over some
dirty needlework, and rocking with her foot a wooden cradle, in which,
covered by a scanty rug not over-clean, sleeps a little pinched-up
atom of a child, contrasting sadly with those vigorous, brawling
urchins out of doors. There is a scanty morsel of fire in the grate,
though the day is hot and sultry, for a “bit of dinner” has to be kept
warm for “father”; and very meagre fare it is, between its two delf
plates. A thin-bladed knife and two-pronged fork lie ready for him on
the rough deal table, guiltless of a cloth; and Gingham wonders what
is keeping him, for he promised faithfully to come back to dinner, and
the poor woman sighs as she stitches and rocks the child, and counts
the quarters told out by the neighbouring clock, and ponders sadly on
old times, than which there is no surer sign of a heart ill at ease.
Well-to-do, thriving people are continually looking forward, and
scheming and living in the Future; it is only your worn, dejected,
hopeless sufferer that recalls the long-faded sunshine of the Past.
Gingham’s marriage took place at St. Swithin’s as soon after Mrs.
Kettering’s death as appearances would allow, and was conducted with
the usual solemnities observed on such occasions in her rank of life.
There was a new shawl, and a gorgeous bonnet, and a cake, with a large
consumption of tea, not to mention excisable commodities. Tom Blacke
looked very smart in a white hat and trousers to match, whilst
Hairblower signalised the event by the performance of an intricate and
unparalleled hornpipe, such as is never seen now-a-days off the stage.
Blanche made the bride a handsome present, which was acknowledged with
many blessings and a shower of tears. Gingham’s great difficulty was,
how ever she should part with Miss Blanche! and “all went merry as a
marriage bell.” But they had not long been man and wife ere Tom began
to show the cloven foot. First he would take his blushing bride to
tea-gardens and such places of convivial resort, where, whilst she
partook of the “cup that cheers but not inebriates,” he would sip
consolatory measures of that which does both. After a time he
preferred such expeditions as she could not well accompany him on, and
would come home with glazed eyes, a pale face, and the tie of his
neckcloth under his ear. The truth will out. Tom was a drunken dog.
There was no question about it. Then came dismissal from his employer,
the attorney. Still, as long as Gingham’s money lasted, all went on
comparatively well. But a lady’s-maid’s savings are not inexhaustible,
and people who live on their capital are apt to get through it
wonderfully fast. So they came down from three well-furnished rooms to
a kitchen and parlour, and from that to one miserable apartment,
serving all purposes at once. Then they moved to London to look for
employment; and Tom Blacke, a handy fellow enough when sober, obtained
a series of situations, all of which he lost owing to his convivial
failing. Now they paid two shillings a week for the wretched room in
which we find them, and a hard matter it often was to raise money for
the rent, and their own living, and Tom’s score at “The Feathers,”
just round the corner. But Gingham worked for the whole family, as a
woman will when put to it, and seemed to love her husband the better
the worse he used her, as is constantly the case with that
long-suffering sex. “Poor fellow,” she would say, when Tom reeled home
to swear at her in drunken ferocity, or kiss her in maudlin kindness,
“it’s trouble that’s drove him to it; but there’s good in Tom
yet--look how fond he is of baby.” And with all his faults, there is
no doubt little Miss Blacke possessed a considerable share of her
father’s heart, such as it was.
But even gentle woman’s temper is not proof against being kept
waiting, that most irritating of all trials; and Gingham, who in her
more prosperous days had been a lady of considerable asperity, could
“pluck up a spirit,” as she called it, even now, when she was
“_raised_,”--so, surmounting the coffee-coloured front with a dingy
bonnet, and folding her bare arms in a faded shawl, she locked baby
in, trusting devoutly the child might not wake during her absence, and
marched stoutly off to “The Feathers,” where she was sure to find her
good-for-nothing husband.
There he was, sure enough, just as she expected, his old black coat
glazed and torn, his pinched-up hat pressed down over his pale, sunken
features, his whole appearance dirty and emaciated. None but his wife
could have recognised the dapper Tom Blacke, of St. Swithin’s, in
that shaky, scowling, dissipated sot. Alas! she knew him in his
present character too well. There he was, playing skittles with a
ponderous ruffian, in a linen jacket and high-lows, who looked like a
showman of a travelling menagerie, only not so respectable; and a
little Jew pedlar, with a hawk eye and an expression of countenance
that defied Mephistopheles himself to overreach him. There was her
husband, betting pots of beer and “goes” of gin, though the cupboard
was bare at home and the child crying for food--marking his game with
a trembling hand, cheating when he won, and blaspheming when he lost,
like the very blackguard to which he was rapidly descending.
Gingham shook a little as she advanced, twirling the door-key
nervously round her finger; but she determined to try the _suaviter in
modo_ first, so she began, “Tom! Tom Blacke! dinner’s ready, ain’t you
coming home?”
“Home! Home be ----! and you, too, Mrs. Blacke; we won’t go home till
mornin’--shall us, Mr. Fibbes?” Mr. Fibbes, although appearances were
much against him, in his linen jacket and high-lows, was a man of
politeness where the fair were concerned, so he took a straw out of
his mouth, and replied, “Not to cross the missus, when sich is by no
means necessary; finish the game first, and then we’ll hargue the
pint--that’s what _I_ say.”
“O Tom, _pray_ come away,” said poor Gingham, who had caught sight of
the chalked-up score, and knew, by sad experience, what havoc it would
make with the weekly earnings. “I durstn’t leave the child not a
minute longer; I’ve kept your bit of dinner all hot for you--come
away, there’s a dear!”
“Not I,” said Tom, poising his wooden bowl for a fresh effort, and,
irritated by his failure, bursting forth upon his wife. “How _can_ I
leave these gentlemen in their game to attend to you? Come, let’s have
no nonsense; be off! _be off!_” he repeated, clenching his fist, and
raising his voice to a pitch that called forth from the large man the
admonitory remark that “_easy does it_,” whilst the little Jew’s eyes
glittered at the prospect of winning his game.
But Gingham was roused, and she went at him fiercely and at once:
“Shame--shame on ye!” she exclaimed, in a low, hoarse voice,
gradually rising, as she got more excited, and her pale features
worked with passion, “with the child cryin’ at home, and me obliged to
come and look for you in such a place as this; me that slaves and
toils, and works my fingers to the bone,” holding up her
needle-scarred hands to the by-standers, who were already collecting,
as they always do when there is a prospect of _a row_. “Call yourself
a man!--_a man_, indeed!--and let your wife and child starve whilst
you are taking your diversion, and enjoying of yourself here? And you
too,” she added, attacking the large man and the Jew with a suddenness
which much startled the former, “_you_ ought to be ashamed of
yourselves, you ought; keeping of him here, and making of him as bad
as yourselves--though perhaps _you’re_ not husbands and fathers, and
don’t know no better. Ay, do, you coward! strike a woman if you dare!
Was it for this I left my place and my missus? Oh dear, oh dear,
whatever shall I do?” and Gingham, throwing her apron over her head,
sank upon a bench in a passion of weeping, supported by a phalanx of
matrons who had already collected, and who took part in the
altercation, as being to all intents and purposes a Government
question.
Tom Blacke was furious, of course. Had it not been for the large man,
he would have struck his wife to the ground--alas! not the first time,
we fear, that she had felt the weight of a coward’s arm; but that
ponderous champion interposed his massive person, and recommended his
friend strongly “not to cross the missus.” Truth to tell, Mr. Fibbes
had a little shrew of a black-eyed wife at home, who ruled the roast,
and kept her great husband in entire subjection; besides which, like
most square, powerful men, he was a good-natured fellow, though not
very respectable; and having won as much beer as he wanted from Tom,
willingly lent his good offices to solder up the quarrel, which ended,
as such disturbances generally do, in a sort of half-sulky
reconciliation, and the wife marching off in triumph with her captured
husband. The women, as usual, had formed the majority of the crowd,
and of course sided with the injured lady; so Tom Blacke, after a few
ineffectual threats, and an oath or two, left the ground with his
still sobbing wife, promising himself an ample revenge if she should
dare to cross him at home, when there was no one by to take her part.
When they arrived at the desolate room which served them for home,
“baby” was awake, and crying piteously to find its little self alone.
On what trifles do the moods and tempers of the human mind depend! The
child set up a crow of delight to see its father, instead of the
hideous howl in which it had been indulging, and stretched out its
little arms with a welcome that went straight to the drunkard’s heart.
In another moment he was dancing the little thing up and down in
perfect good humour; and poor Gingham, thoroughly overcome, was
leaning her head against his shoulder in a paroxysm of reconciled
affection, and going through that process of relief known to ladies by
the expressive term of “having a good cry.”
How many a matrimonial bicker has been interrupted and ended by the
innocent smile of “one of these little ones”! How many an ill-assorted
couple have been kept from separation by the homely consideration of
“what should be done with the children”! How many an evil desire, how
many an unkind thought, has been quenched at its very birth by the
pure, open gaze of a guileless child! The stern, severe man, disgusted
with the world, and disappointed in his best affections, has a corner
in his heart for those whom he prizes as his own flesh and blood; the
passionate, impetuous woman, yearning for the love she seeks in vain
at home, her mind filled with an image of which it is sin even to
think, and beset by the hundred temptations to which those are exposed
who pass their lives in wedded misery, pauses on the very threshold,
and is saved from guilt when she thinks of her darlings. Sunshine and
music do they make in a house, with their bright, happy faces, the
patter of their little feet, and the ringing echoes of their merry
laugh. Grudge not to have the quiver full of them. Love and prize them
whilst you may; for the hour will come at last, and your life will be
weary and your hearth desolate when they take wing and fly away.
So Tom Blacke and his wife are reconciled for the time, and would be
comparatively happy, were it not for the grinding anxiety ever
present to their minds of how to “make both ends meet”--that
consideration which poisons the comfort of many a homely dwelling, and
which in their case is doubtless their own fault, or at least the
fault of the “pater familias,” but none the less bitter on that
account.
“There is the baker to pay, and the rent,” sighed Gingham, enumerating
them on her fingers; “and the butcher called this morning with his
account; to be sure it is but little, and little there is to meet it
with. I shall be paid to-day for the plain-work, and I got a bit of
washing yesterday, that brought me in sevenpence-halfpenny,” she
proceeded, immersed in calculation; “and then we shall be
three-and-eightpence short--three-and-eight-pence! and where to get it
I don’t know, if I was to drop down dead this minute!”
“I _must_ have a little money to-day, too, missus,” said Tom, in a
hoarse, dogged voice; “can’t ye put the screw on a little tighter? A
man may as well be starved to death as worried to death; and I can’t
face ‘The Feathers’ again without wiping off a bit of the score, ye
know.” Gingham’s eye glanced at the Sunday gown, hanging on a nail
behind the door--a black silk one, of voluminous folds and formidable
rustle, the last remnant of respectability left--and she thought
_that_, too, must follow the rest to the pawnbroker’s, to that
receptacle of usury with which, alas! she was too familiar, and from
which even now she possessed sundry mocking duplicates, representing
many a once-prized article of clothing and furniture.
Tom saw and interpreted the hopeless glance. “No, no,” said he,
relenting, “not quite so bad as that, neither; I wouldn’t strip the
gown off your back, Rachel, not if it was ever so; I couldn’t bear to
see you, that was once so respectable, going about all in rags. We
_might_ get on, too,” added he, brightening up, with an expression of
desperate cunning in his bad eye--“we might get money--ay, plenty of
it--if you were only like the rest: you’re too mealy-mouthed, Mrs.
Blacke, that’s where it is.”
“O Tom, what would you have me do?” exclaimed his wife, bursting
afresh into tears; “we’ve been honest as yet through it all, and I’ve
borne and borne because we _were_ honest. I’d work upon my bare knees
for you and the child--I’d starve and never complain _myself_, if I
hadn’t a morsel in the cupboard; but I’d keep my honesty, Tom, I’d
keep my honesty, for when _that’s_ gone, all’s gone together.”
“Will your honesty put decent clothes on your back, missus?” rejoined
Tom, who did not see that the article in question was by any means so
indispensable; “will your honesty put a joint down before the fire,
such as we used to sit down to every day, when we was first man and
wife, and lived respectable? Will your honesty furnish a bellyful for
this poor little beggar, that’s whining now on my knee for a bit to
eat?” Gingham began to relent at this consideration, and Tom pursued
his advantage: “Besides, it’s not as if it was to do anybody any harm;
there’s Miss Blanche got more than she knows what to do with, and the
young gentleman--he’s away at the wars. _Honesty_, indeed! if
honesty’s the game, you’ve a right to your share, what Mrs. Kettering
intended you should have. I think I ought to know the law; and the
law’s on our side, and the justice too. Ah! Rachel, you used not to be
so difficult to come round once,” concluded Tom, trying the _tender_
tack, when he had exhausted all his other arguments; and recalling to
his wife’s mind, as he intended it should do, their early days of
courtship, and the carriage of a certain brown-paper parcel by the
sea-shore.
But Gingham felt she had right on her side; and when we can indulge
the spirit of contradiction never dormant in our natures, and fight
under the banner of truth at the same time, it is too great a luxury
for mortal man, or especially mortal woman, to forego, so Gingham was
game to the last. “No, Tom, _no_!” she said, steadily and with
emphasis, “I _won’t_ do it, so don’t ask me, and there’s an end of
it!”
Her husband put the child down in disgust, banged his hat upon his
head, as if to go back to “The Feathers,” and was leaving the room,
when a fresh idea struck him. If he could but break down his wife’s
self-respect he might afterwards mould her more easily to his purpose,
and the course he proposed to adopt might, at any rate, furnish him
in the meantime with a little money for his dissipation; so he turned
round coaxingly to poor Gingham, and asked for his bit of dinner, and
put the infant once more upon his knee, ere he began to sound her on
the propriety of applying for a little assistance to her darling Miss
Blanche. “You ought to go and see your young lady, Rachel,” said he,
quite good-humouredly, and with the old keeping-company-days’ smile;
“it’s only proper respect, now she’s grown to be a great lady, and
come to London. I’ll mind the child at home; it likes to be left with
its daddy--a deary--and you brush yourself up a bit, and put on your
Sunday gown there, and take a bit of a holiday; you needn’t hurry
back, you know, if they ask you to stay tea in the room, and I’ll be
here till you come home; or if I’m not, I’ll get one of the neighbours
to look in. So now go, there’s a good wench.”
Mrs. Blacke had not heard such endearing language since the sea-side
walks at St. Swithin’s--she felt almost happy again, and nearly forgot
the “three-and-eightpence” wanting for the week’s account. Sundry
feminine misgivings had she, as to her personal appearance being
sufficiently fine to face the new servants, in the exalted character
of Miss Blanche’s late lady’s-maid; but women, even ugly ones, have a
wonderful knack of adorning themselves on very insufficient materials,
and Tom assured her the black silk looked as good as new, and that
bonnet always _did_ become her, and always _would_--so she gave the
child a parting kiss, and her husband many injunctions to take care of
the treasure, and started in wonderfully good spirits; Tom’s last
injunction to her as she departed being to this effect--“If Miss
Blanche should ask you how we’re getting on, Rachel, you put your
pride in your pocket--mind that--put your pride in your pocket, do you
understand?” So the drunkard was left alone with his child.
We have already said Tom was fond of the little thing--in fact, it was
the only being on earth that had found its way to his heart. Man must
love _something_, and Tom Blacke, the attorney’s clerk, who had
married for money as if he had been a ruined peer of the realm, cared
just as little for his wife as any impoverished nobleman might for the
peeress with whom his income was necessarily encumbered; but the more
indifferent he was to the mother, the fonder he was of the child; and
with all his liking for skittles and vulgar dissipation (the whist and
claret of higher circles), he thought it no hardship to spend the rest
of the afternoon with an infant that was just beginning to talk. He
fully intended, as he had promised, to remain at home till his wife
returned, but a drunkard can have no will of his own. When a man gives
himself up to strong drink he chooses a mistress who will take no
denial, for whom appetite grows too fiercely by what it feeds on,
whose beck and call he must be ever ready to obey, for she will punish
his neglect by the infliction of such horrors as we may fancy pictured
in the imagination of the doomed--till he fly for relief back to the
enchantress that has maddened him; and whilst the poison begets thirst
as the thirst craves for the poison, the liquid fire poured upon the
smouldering flame eats, and saps, and scorches, till it expires in
drivelling idiocy, or blazes out in raving, riotous madness. Mr.
Blacke was tolerably cheerful up to a certain point, when he arrived
at that state which we once heard graphically described by the
sergeant of a barrack-guard, on whom the duty had devolved of placing
an inebriated warrior in solitary confinement--“Was he drunk,
sergeant?” said the orderly officer. “No, sir.” “Was he sober, then?”
“No, sir.” “How? neither drunk nor sober! what d’ye mean?” “Well, sir,
the man had been drinking, no doubt, _but the liquor was just dying
out in him_.”
So with Tom Blacke--after an hour or so the liquor began to _die out
in him_, and then came the ghastly reaction. First he thought the room
was gloomy and solitary, and he got nearer the child’s cradle for
company--the little thing was again asleep, and he adjusted its
coverlet more comfortably--ah! that slimy, crawling creature! what is
it? so near the infant’s head--he brushed it away with his hand, but
swarms of the same loathsome insects came climbing over the cradle,
chairs, and furniture. Now they settled on his legs and clothes, and
he beat them down and flung them from him by hundreds, shuddering with
horror the while; then he looked into the corners of the room, and put
his hands before his eyes after each startled glance, for hideous
faces grinned and gibbered at him, starting out from the very walls,
and mopping and mowing, shifted their forms and places, so that it was
impossible to identify them. He could have borne these, but worse
still, there was a Shape in the room with him, of whose presence he
was fearfully conscious, though whenever he manned himself to look
steadily at it, it was gone. He could not bear to have this visitant
_behind_ him, so he backed his chair hard against the wall. In
vain--still on the side from which he turned his head the grim Shape
sat and cowered and blinked at him. He knew it--he felt it--mortal
nerves could bear it no longer. He grew desperate, as a man does in a
dream. Should he take the child and run for it? No! he would meet It
on the narrow stairs, and he could not get by there. Ha! the window!
bounding into the air, child and all, he might escape. He was mad
now--he was capable of anything. Come along, little one!--they are
blocking up the room--they cover the room in myriads--the Shape is
waving them on--light and freedom without, the devil and all his
legions within--Hurrah!
Fortunate was it for the hope of the Blacke family that Mrs. Crimp was
at this instant returning to her lodgings above, accompanied by
several promising young Crimps, with whom, as she toiled up the common
staircase, she kept up a running fire of objurgation and entreaty. The
homely sounds, the familiar voices, brought Tom Blacke to himself. The
vicinity of such a material dame as Mrs. Crimp was sufficient to
destroy the ideal in the most brandy-sodden brain, and the horrors
left their victim for the time. But he dared not remain to encounter a
second attack. He could not answer for the consequences of another
hour in that room alone with the child; so he asked his neighbour, a
kind, motherly woman, and as fond of a baby as if she had not nursed a
dozen of her own, to keep an eye upon his little one, and betook
himself straight to “The Feathers,” to raise the accursed remedy to
his lips with a trembling hand, and borrow half-an-hour’s callousness
at a frightful sacrifice. Tom thought he knew what was good for his
complaint, and “clung to the hand that smote him” with the confirmed
infatuation of a sot. So we leave him at the bar, with a glazed eye, a
haggard smile, and the worm that never dies eating into his very
vitals.
In the meantime, Gingham, with the dingy bonnet somewhat cocked up
behind, and her bony fingers peeping through the worn thread gloves,
is making her way along the sunny pavement in the direction of
Grosvenor Square. The old black silk gown looks worse than she
expected in that searching light, and she feels nervous and shy at
revisiting her former haunts; nor does she like leaving home for many
hours at a time. But as she walks on, the exercise does her good. The
moving objects on all sides, and the gaudy bustle of London in the
height of the season, have an exhilarating effect on her spirits. It
is so seldom she has _an outing_; moped up for days together in that
mews, the very change is enjoyment; and the shops, with their cheap
dresses and seductive ribbons, are perfect palaces of delight. She
cannot tear herself from one window, where an excellent silk for her
own wear, and a frock “fit to dress an angel,” as she thinks, for
baby, are to be sold, in tempting juxtaposition, respectively for a
mere nothing. If she was sure the colour of the silk would _stand_,
she would try and scrape the money together to buy it; but a pang
shoots through her as she recalls the fatal “three-and-eightpence,” so
she walks on with a heavy sigh, and though she knows she never can
possess it, yet she feels all the better for having seen such a dress
as _that_.
And these, and such as these, are the pleasures of the poor in our
great metropolis. Continual self-denial, continual self-restraint,
continual self-abasement--like Tantalus, to be whelmed in the waters
of enjoyment which must never touch the lip. In the country the poor
man can at least revel in its freshest and purest delights. We have
been told that “the meek shall inherit the earth”; and the
day-labourer, mending “my lord’s” park fence, has often far more
enjoyment in that wilderness of beauty than its high-born proprietor.
While the latter is in bed, the former breathes the sweet morning air
and the scent of a thousand wild flowers, whose fragrance will be
scorched up ere noon. The glad song of birds makes music to his
ear--the whole landscape, smiling in the sunlight, is spread out for
the delight of his eye. Not only the park, and the waving woods, and
the placid lake, are his property for the time, but the cheerful
homesteads, and the scattered herds, and the hazy distance stretching
away as far as those blue hills that melt into the sky. He can admire
the shadow of each giant elm without disturbing himself as to which of
them must be marked for the axe; he can watch the bounding deer
without caring which is the fattest to furnish a haunch for solemn
dinners and political entertainments, where people eat because they
are weary, and drink because they are dull. The distant view he looks
upon is to him a breathing, sparkling world, full of light and life
and hope--not a mere county, subdivided into votes and freeholds, and
support and interest. His frame is attempered by toil to the enjoyment
of natural pleasures and natural beauties. The wild breeze fans his
brow--the daisies spring beneath his feet--the glorious summer sky is
spread above--and the presence of his Maker pervades the atmosphere
about him. For the time the man is happy--happier, perhaps, than he is
himself aware of. To be sure he is mortal, and in the midst of all he
sighs for beer; yet is his lot one not unmixed with many pure and
thrilling pleasures; and if he can only get plenty of work, there are
many states of existence far worse than that of an English
field-labourer.
Not so with the sons of toil in town--there, all enjoyment is
artificial, all pleasure must be paid for--the air they breathe will
support life, but its odours are far different from those of the wild
flower. If their eyes are ever gladdened by beauty, it is but the pomp
and splendour of their fellow-creatures, on which they gaze with
sneering admiration--half envy, half contempt. If their ears are ever
ravished by music, there is a tempting demon wafting sin into their
hearts upon the sounds--there is a mocking voice of ribaldry and
vulgar revelry accompanying the very concord of heaven. What pleasure
_can_ they have but those of the senses? Where have they to go for
relaxation but to the gin-shop? What inducement have they to raise
themselves above the level of “the beasts which perish”?
Honour to those who are working to provide intellectual amusements for
the masses, and that education of the soul which places man _above_
the circumstances by which he is surrounded! Much has been done, and
much is still left to do. Those waves must be taught to leap ever
upwards, to fling their separate crests towards the sky; for if the
tempest should arise, and they should come surging on in one gigantic
volume, they will make a clear breach wherever the embankment happens
to be weakest; and who shall withstand their force?
Can we wonder to find the lower classes sometimes discontented, when
we think of their privations and their toils? Shall a man starve with
but half-an-inch of plate-glass betwixt his dry white lips and the
reeking abundance of luxurious gluttony? and shall he turn away
without a murmur, die, and make no sign? Shall a fellow-creature drag
on an existence of perpetual labour, with no pleasures, no
relaxations, almost no repose; and shall we expect this dreary,
blighted being to be always contented, always cheerful, always
respectful to his superiors? Is it to be all one way here below? shall
it be all joy, and mirth, and comfort, and superfluity with the one;
and all want, and misery, and grim despair with the other? Forbid it,
Heaven! Let us, every man, put his shoulder to the wheel--let each, in
his own circle, be it small or great, do all in his power for those
beneath him--beneath him but in the accident of station, brothers in
all besides--live and let live--stretch a helping hand to all who need
it--treat every man as one who has an immortal soul--and though “they
shall never cease out of the land,” yet will their wants be known and
their hardships alleviated, and the fairest spirit of heaven--angelic
Charity--shall spread her wings widest and warmest in London for the
poor.