SOMETHING in Fleet Street holds tight those who once come within its
influence. The cerebellum of the world, the "grey matter" of the world's
brain, lies somewhere thereabouts. The thoughts of our time issue
thence, like the radiating spokes of a wheel, to all places of the
earth. There you have touch of the throbbing pulse of the vast
multitudes that live and breathe. Their ideas come from Fleet Street.
From the printing-press and the engraver's wood-block, the
lithographic-stone, the etcher's plate, from book and magazine,
periodical and pamphlet, from world-read newspaper.
From Fleet Street, the centre whence ideas flow outwards.
It is joyous to be in the flower-grown meads; it is sweet to be on the
hill-top; delicious to feel the swell and the long roll of the hexameter
of the seas; doubtless there is a wild rapture on the summit of the
Himalayas; triumph in the heart of the African explorer at the river's
source. But if once the mind has been dipped in Fleet Street, let the
meads be never so sweet, the mountain-top never so exalted, still to
Fleet Street the mind will return, because there is that other Mind,
without whose sympathy even success is nothing--the Mind of the world.
I am, of course, thinking not only of the thoroughfare, Fleet Street,
but of all that the printing-press means.
Alere was no leader of thought, but it was necessary to him to live and
breathe in the atmosphere of thought--to feel the throb and swell around
him--to be near the "grey matter" of the world's brain.
Once a man gets into Fleet Street he cannot get out. Flamma would not
leave it for months of gilded idleness in any nobleman's mansion.
The flame must be fed. His name had some connection with the design of
the Roman lamp on the splendid bindings of the books tooled in the House
of Flamma. _Alere Flammam_--feed the flame. The flame of the mind must
be fed.
Sad things happen on the stones of Fleet Street; if I could but get at
it all to write the inside life of it, it would, indeed, be a book.
Stone-cold poverty hovers about. The rich, living in the fool's paradise
of money, think they know life, but they do not, for, as was said of the
sea----
Only those who share its dangers
Comprehend its mystery.
Only those who have shared the struggle literally for bread--for a
real, actual loaf--understand the dread realities of man's existence.
Let but a morsel of wood--a little splinter of deal, a curl of
carpenter's shaving--lie in Fleet Street, and it draws to it the
wretched human beasts as surely as the offal draws the beast of the
desert to the camp. A morsel of wood in the streets that are paved with
gold!
It is so valuable. Women snatch it up and roll it in their aprons,
clasping it tightly, lest it should somehow disappear. Prowling about
from street to street, mile after mile, they fill their aprons with
these precious splinters of deal, for to those who are poor fuel is as
life itself.
Even the wealthy, if they have once been ill, especially of
blood-thinning diseases (as rheumatism), sometimes say they would rather
go without food than coal. Rather emptiness than chill.
These women know where there are hoardings erected by builders, where
shop-fronts are being rebuilt, where fires have taken place, where
alterations are proceeding; they know them as the birds know the places
where they are likely to find food, and visit them day by day for the
scraps of wood and splinters that drop on the pavement.
Or they send their children, ragged urchins, battling for a knot of
pine-wood.
The terror of frost to these creatures is great indeed. Frost is the
King of Terrors to them--not Death; they sleep and live with death
constantly, the dead frequently in the room with the living, and with
the unborn that is near birth.
Alere's ten pounds helped them. The drunkard's wife knew that Flamma,
the drinker, would certainly give her the silver in his pocket.
The ragged urchins, battling for a knot of pine-wood, knew that they
could charm the pennies and the threepenny bits out of his waistcoat;
the baked potatoes and the roasted chestnuts looked so nice on the
street stove.
Wretched girls whose power of tempting had gone, and with it their means
of subsistence, begged, and not in vain, of shaky Alere Flamma. There
are many of these wretches in Fleet Street. There is no romance about
them to attract the charity of the world.
Once a flower-girl, selling flowers without a licence in the street, was
charged by the police. How this harshness to the flower-girl--the human
representation of Flora--roused up sentiment in her behalf!
But not every starving girl has the fortune to rouse up sentiment and to
be fed. Their faces disfigured with eruptions, their thin shoulders,
their dry, disordered hair--hair never looks nice unless soft with its
natural oil--their dingy complexions, their threadbare shawls, tempt no
one. They cannot please, therefore they must starve.
The good turn from them with horror--Are they not sin made manifest? The
trembling hand of Alere fed them.
Because the boys bawl do you suppose they are happy? It is curious that
people should associate noise with a full stomach. The shoeblack boys,
the boys that are gathered into institutions and training ships, are
expected to bawl and shout their loudest at the annual fêtes when
visitors are present. Your bishops and deans forthwith feel assured that
their lives are consequently joyous.
Why then do they set fire to training ships? Why do they break out of
reformatory institutions? Bawling is not necessarily happiness. Yet
fatuous fools are content if only they can hear a good uproar of
bawling.
I have never walked up Fleet Street and the Strand yet without seeing a
starving woman and child. The children are indeed dreadful; they run
unguarded and unwatched out of the side courts into the broader and more
lively Strand--the ceaseless world pushes past--they play on the
pavement unregarded. Hatless, shoeless, bound about with rags, their
faces white and scarred with nameless disease, their eyes bleared, their
hair dirty; little things, such as in happy homes are sometimes set on
the table to see how they look.
How _can_ people pass without seeing them?
Alere saw them, and his hand went to his waistcoat pocket.
The rich folk round about this great Babylon of Misery, where cruel Want
sits on the Seven Hills--make a cartoon of that!--the rich folk who
receive hundreds on the turn of a stock, who go to the Bank of England
on dividend days--how easily the well-oiled doors swing open for
them!--who dwell in ease and luxury at Sydenham, at Norwood, at
Surbiton, at Streatham, at Brighton, at Seven-oaks, wherever there is
pure air, have distinguished themselves lately in the giving of alms,
ordained by the Lord whom they kneel before each Sunday, clad in silk,
scarlet, and fine linen, in their cushioned pews.
They have established Homes for Lost Dogs and Homes for Lost Cats,
neither of which are such nuisances as human beings.
In the dog institution they have set up an apparatus specially designed
by one of the leading scientific men of the age. The dogs that are not
claimed in a certain time, or that have become diseased--like the human
nuisances--are put into this apparatus, into a comfortable sort of
chamber, to gnaw their last bone. By-and-by, a scientific vapour enters
the chamber, and breathing this, the animal falls calmly to death,
painlessly poisoned in peace.
Seven thousand dogs were thus happily chloroformed "into eternity" in
one season. Jubilant congratulations were exchanged at the success of
the apparatus. Better than shooting, drowning, hanging, vivisection, or
starvation!
Let a dog die in peace. Is not this an age of humanity indeed? To sell
all you have and give to the poor was nothing compared to this. We have
progressed since Anno Domini I. We know better how to do it now.
Alere did not seem to trouble himself much about the dogs; he saw so
much of the human nuisances.
What a capital idea it would be to set up an apparatus like this in the
workhouses and in conjunction with the hospitals!
Do you know, thoughtless, happy maiden, singing all the day, that one
out of every five people who die in London, die in the workhouse or the
hospital?
Eighty-two thousand people died in London in 1882, and of these,
fourteen thousand expired in the workhouses, and six thousand in
hospitals!
Are not these ghastly figures? By just setting up a few Apparatuses, see
what an immense amount of suffering would be saved, and consider what a
multitude of human nuisances would he "moved on!"
The poor have a saying that none live long after they have been in a
certain hospital. "He's been in that hospital--he won't live long." They
carry out such wonderful operations there--human vivisections, but
strictly painless, of course, under chloroform--true Christian
chopping-up--still the folk do not live long when they come out.
Why not set up the Apparatus? But a man must not die in peace.
Starvation is for human nuisances.
These rich folk dwelling round about the great Babylon of Misery, where
Want sits on the Seven Hills, have also distinguished themselves by yet
another invention. This is the organization of alms. Charity is so holy
we will not leave it to chance--to the stray penny--we will organize it.
The system is very simple: it is done by ticket. First you subscribe a
few shillings to some organization, with its secretary, its clerks, its
offices, board-room, and "machinery." For this you receive tickets.
If a disagreeable woman with a baby in her arms, or a ragged boy, or a
maimed man asks you for a "copper," you hand him a ticket. This saves
trouble and responsibility.
The beggar can take the ticket to the "office" and get his case
"investigated." After an inquiry, and an adjournment for a week; another
inquiry, and another adjournment for a week; a third inquiry, and a
third adjournment, then, if he be of high moral character and highly
recommended, he may get his dinner.
One great advantage is conspicuous in this system: by no possible means
can you risk giving a penny to a man not of high moral character, though
he be perishing of starvation.
If a man asks for bread, will ye give him a stone? Certainly not; give
him a ticket.
They did not understand how to do things in Judea Anno Domini I.
This organization of charity saves such a lot of money: where people
used to give away five pounds they now pay five shillings.
Nothing like saving money. And, besides, you walk about with a clear
conscience. No matter how many maimed men, or disagreeable women, or
ragged boys you see, you can stroll on comfortably and never think about
them; your charity is organized.
If the German thinkers had not found out twenty years ago that there was
no Devil, one would be inclined to ascribe this spurious, lying, false,
and abominable mockery to the direct instigation of a Satan.
The organization of charity! The very nature of charity is
spontaneousness.
You should have heard Alere lash out about this business; he called it
charity suppression.
Have you ever seen London in the early winter morning, when the frost
lies along the kerb, just melting as the fires are lit; cold, grey,
bitter, stony London?
Whatever _can_ morning seem like to the starved and chilly wretches who
have slept on the floor, and wake up to frost in Fleet Street?
The pavements are covered with expectoration, indicating the chest
diseases and misery that thousands are enduring. But I must not write
too plainly; it would offend.
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