Unquestionably, darkness is disagreeable. Whether to manhood
hoary-headed in wisdom, or to childhood yet in soft-brained ignorance,
darkness is an unpleasant fact, to be got over in the best way
possible--to be got over at all events, and at any cost, and to be
turned into luminosity by every expedient that can be used.
Wax-tapers, to throw their soft, luxurious light on my lady's delicate
face, as she lies like a beautiful piece of marble-work on her dreamy
couch; shaded lamps for the grave merchant, the virtual king of the
present, as he sits in his still office, ruling nations by bale and
bond, and guiding the tide of events by invoices and ship's papers;
Palmer's candles, under green pent-houses, for students and authors,
whose eyes must withstand a double strain; the mild house-light, with
a dash of economy in the selection, whether of oil, sperm, long-fours,
or short-sixes, for the family group; the white camphene flame for the
artist: strange mechanisms for the curious; the flaunting brilliancy
of the coloured chandeliers and cut-glass shades for our English
Bedouins in the gin-palace; the flaring jet of the open butchers'
shops; the paper-lantern of the street-stalls; the consumptive dip of
the slop-worker; the glimmering rush-light for the sick-room; the
resin torch for the midnight funeral: these, and countless other
inventions--not to mention the universal gas--assert man's
disinclination to transact his life in the dark, or to bound his
powers by the simple arrangements of nature. There are better lights,
though, than any of these, and a worse than mere physical night, be it
the blackest with which romancer ever stained his innocent paper, when
describing those dark deeds on desolate moors which all romancers
delight in, and which send young ladies pale to bed. The night of the
mind is worse than the night of time; and lamps which can dispel this
are more valuable than any which make up for the loss of the sun only,
though these are grand undertakings too.
Most people know what a Child's night-light is, and most people have
heard of Belmont Wax, and Price's Patent Candles, though few would be
able to explain exactly what the warrant guards. But who ever pretends
to understand patents? The 'Belmont' every one knows; it is a mere
ordinary wax-candle, which perhaps does not 'gutter' so much as
others, and with wick more innocent of 'thieves' than most, but with
nothing more wonderful in appearance than an ordinary candle. A
Child's night-light, too, has nothing mysterious in its look. It
greatly resembles the thick stumpy end of a magnificent mould, done up
in a coloured card-jacket, and with a small thin wick, that gives just
a point of flame, and no more, by which to light another candle, if
necessary--of admirable service for this and all other purposes of a
common-place bedroom. Eccentric sleepers, who write Greek hexameters,
and fasten on poetic thoughts while the rest of the world are in
rational slumber, might object to the feebleness of this point of
light; but eccentricities need provisions of their own, and comets
have orbits to which the laws of the stars do not apply. For all
ordinary people, this thick candle-end is a delicious substitute for
the ghastly rush-light in its chequered cage, which threw strange
figures on wall and curtain, and gave nervous women the megrims. But
nothing more is known of Belmonts or night-lights; their birthplace,
and the manner of their making, are alike hidden from the outer world;
the uninitiated accept the arcana of tallow only in the positive form.
It is generally presumed that candles, in the abstract, come from some
unknown place in 'the City;' but how they are made, or who is employed
in their making, or how the workmen live in the grease-laden steam of
the factory, not one in a thousand would know if he could certainly
none would give himself any trouble to find out. Neither should we
ourselves have known, had not a little pamphlet, bearing the heading,
_Special Report by the Directors to the Proprietors of Price's Patent
Candle Company_, fallen into our hands. Holding the Report open on the
desk before us, we will now give to our readers the net result of the
moral doings of the factory.
In the winter of 1848, half-a-dozen of the boys employed in the candle
manufactory used to hide themselves behind a bench two or three times
a week, when work and tea were over, to practise writing on useless
scraps of paper picked up anyhow, and with worn-out pens begged from
the counting-house. Encouraged by the foreman of their department, who
begged some rough, movable desks for them, and aided by timely but not
oppressive prizes from the Messrs Wilson, and by the presence of Mr J.
P. Wilson, the little self-constituted school progressed considerably,
until it reached the number of thirty; then a large old building was
cleared out, a rickety wooden staircase taken down, an iron one put up
in its stead, and a lofty school-room, capable of holding about 100 or
more, made in the place of two useless lumber-rooms. The making and
furnishing that room amounted to L.172. The school for some time held
to its first principles of self-government. All the instruction,
discipline, and management were supplied by the boys themselves; and
when a number of elder boys joined, a committee, appointed by
themselves, regulated the affairs of the community. However, this did
not last long. The hot young blood and immature young brain needed a
stronger curb than self-appointed committees could supply; and by a
general request, the school has since been worked by authority--this
authority itself guided by a general vote in many matters of choice
immediately concerning the scholars. In the following summer--we are
still in '48--a day-school was held in the room, to which the younger
boys who were wanted in the factory at uncertain times and for
indefinite periods, were sent when not employed--drafted from school
to work, and from work to school, as the necessities of the factory
required. The annual cost of this day-school is L.130; the total cost
from the commencement, L.327.
Amusements must now be provided. The first and most obvious were
tea-parties, the usual rewards to school-children, and often made very
tedious affairs by the enormous quantity of talk inflicted on them.
However, Mr Wilson managed better. To the first, many of the boys came
dirty and untidy; the second shewed a great improvement; the third,
one still greater; until now, most of the factory-boys assemble to
chapel, and other places where they ought to be decent, in plain suits
of black, which give them a neat and even gentlemanlike appearance:
yes, though the word applied to a set of factory-boys, candlemakers,
may make many of our readers smile. But for all that constitutes real
gentlemanlike feeling for order, obedience to authority, courtesy of
manner, the absence of rudeness, quarrelling, and other petty vices of
school-boys--these factory lads, taken from the very heart of a low
population, shine pre-eminently, or rather have shone, since Mr Wilson
has taken their educational training so much to heart. The first
tea-party was held on Easter-Monday, as a counterpoise to the
attractions of Greenwich and Camberwell fairs; and it succeeded in
that object, evidencing that vice is not that necessary ingredient in
the pleasures of the people which some people think.
In 1849, the cholera came, peculiarly severe about Lambeth and
Battersea Fields, where many of the candlemakers lived. Mr Wilson's
first thought was for the young people in the factory. He consulted
with his brother, and they took additional counsel of first-rate
medical men, and then added to the committee a Mr Symes, a gentleman
holding a field that was waiting to be built on. The result of these
consultations was, that Mr Symes giving them temporary possession of
the field, the night-school was closed entirely, and all the boys set
to work to learn cricket--cricket as the best antidote to cholera the
directors of Price's Patent could devise. Wise men these directors,
with some sterling common sense and rare old hearty benevolence mixed
up with their generous Saxon blood! Mr Symes was not the only
stranger--for stranger he was--eager to help the directors. A Mr
Graham came forward, and many others joined in offering; and
altogether, as Mr J. P. Wilson says, 'everybody's heart seemed to warm
up to their object.' The plan was a success. Of the whole crowd of
cricket-players, only one, an interesting lad of seventeen, was lost,
though most of them had kinspeople dying and dead in their own homes.
That cricket-ground was not, however, useful only for physical health;
it presented a beautiful and striking scene, which must have carried
home to every heart deep thoughts and holy purposes to strengthen the
soul as well.
'Always when the game was finished,' says Mr Wilson, 'they (the boys)
collected in a corner of the field, and took off their caps for a very
short prayer for the safety of themselves and their friends from
cholera; and the tone in which they said their amen to this, has
always made me think, that although the school was nominally given up
for the time, they were really getting from their game, so concluded,
more moral benefit than any ordinary schooling could have given them.'
This belief we heartily endorse. That informal prayer, made while the
blood was warm with happiness and high with health, spoken in the open
field, by themselves, direct to Heaven, without other interpreter
between them, must have made a deep impression on the boys. Its very
informality must have added to its solemnity; making it appear, and
indeed making it in reality, so much more the genuine, spontaneous,
heart-spoken expression of each individual, than the mere customary
attendance on a prescribed form can admit. A field of six and a half
acres is now rented, at the annual gross cost of L.80, the middle of
which is kept for the cricket-ground, while the edges are laid down in
gardens, allotted out.
During all the bright summer weather the boys worked eagerly at their
gardens, and played perseveringly at cricket--making a happy and
healthy use of time that otherwise must, if used well, have been spent
in a dull school-room (not the most inviting of recreations, after a
hard day's work at the candle-making), or idled away in the streets,
amongst the unprofitable and unhealthy amusements provided for the
people. Amongst other good results, Mr Wilson notices that of
'softening to the boys one of the greatest evils now existing in the
factory--the night-work, for which the men and boys come in at six in
the evening, to leave at six in the morning.' These workers do not go
to bed, it seems, so soon as they leave work: in former days, they
generally dawdled about, took a walk, or strolled into a gin-palace,
as it might happen, or did anything else to kill the time until their
sleeping-hour arrived. Since the cricket-ground has been established,
however, they rush off to the field on leaving work at six in the
morning, thoroughly enjoy themselves at gardening and cricket until
about a quarter past eight; and then, after collecting in a little
shed, where a verse or two of the New Testament and the Lord's Prayer
are read to them, they go home to sleep, refreshed by the exercise
after their unnatural hours, happy, peaceful, and healthy. These are
the birches and canes of the Messrs Wilson's moral and scholastic
training!
Then came the summer-excursion. The first experiment was in June 1850,
when 100 of them went down to Guildford early in the morning, and
returned late in the evening. It was a beautiful day, bright and
cloudless; and as those London boys wandered about the country lanes
and meadows of Guildford, and heard the ceaseless hum of insect life,
and the uncaged birds singing high in the blue sky, and saw the
wild-flowers in the hedgerows, and the glancing waters in their way,
we may be sure that more than mere enjoyment was stored up in their
minds, and that thoughts which might not be brought out into set
phrases, but which would be undying in their influence through life,
were raised in each heart that drank in the glories and the holy
teaching of nature, perhaps on that day for the first time. It was
something for them to think of in the toil and heat of the factory; a
beautiful picture, to fill their minds while their hands were busy at
their work; and the rippling rivers and singing birds would sing and
flow again and again in many a young head bending carefully over its
task. The excursion of the next year was on a grander scale: 250
started from Vauxhall Bridge, to go down the river to Herne Bay,
which, though it may sound ludicrously Cockneyfied, was quite as much
as the strength, and more than the stomachs of the little candlemakers
could stand; yet very delightful, notwithstanding the qualmishness and
face-playing of the majority. This year, they are all invited by the
Bishop of Winchester to the brave old castle of Farnham--a treat to
which they are looking forward with all the headlong eagerness of
youth, and which, we trust, will have other and even better results
than the pleasures we wish them. A bishop entertaining a set of
factory children will be a welcome sight in these days of clerical
pomp, when the episcopal purple so often hides the pastoral staff. It
will be a rare occurrence, but a good practice begun--to be followed,
we would fain hope, by its like in other districts.
The expense of the day at Guildford was L.28; of that at Herne Bay,
L.48; the estimated expense of the excursion for the present year is
L.55. This seems a heavy item for a single day's amusement, but the
Messrs Wilson have proved the immense advantage which their boys
derive from these excursions: the hope, the stimulus to exertion--as
only those who have worked hard at school, and behaved well generally,
join the cricket-club and the excursionists--the health, the incentive
to good conduct, and the preservation from evil habits; all these
varied good effects have convinced the directors that it is money well
spent--money that will bring in a richer percentage than government
securities or Australian gold-fields could give, for it brings in the
percentage of virtue. Not always in the power of money to gain that!
And right thankful ought we to be, when we have found any investment
whatever which will return us such rich usurious interest for what is
in itself so intrinsically valueless.
So much, then, for the Belmont Factory--for the light of that busy
wax-candle making. Turn we now to the Night-Light Factory, though our
notice of this must be brief; but brevity befits those thick, short
candle-ends.
In the autumn of 1849, the night-light trade came into the possession
of Price's Patent Candle Company. Amongst the Child's Lights we have
girls to deal with as well as boys--an element not to be provided for
in the Belmont arrangements, and causing a little difficulty as to
their proper disposition on first starting. But nothing seems to daunt
Mr Wilson. Give him but a square inch for his foothold, and his moral
lever will raise any given mass of ignorance, and remove any possible
amount of obstruction. After a little time, and some expense, one of
the railway arches near the night-factory was taken possession of,
fitted up, made water-tight, and turned into a school-room for the
boys and girls of the adopted concern. The expense of preparing and
furnishing that arch was L.93. Still, the girls remained as a doubtful
and untried version of the Belmont success; but by the energetic aid
of a lady, much experienced in such matters, and by the untiring cares
of a chaplain recently appointed to the factory, and who is in reality
the moral and educational superintendent of the whole, something of
the uncertainty hanging over the result has been removed, and all
matters have greatly improved. Inasmuch as the character of women is
of more delicate texture than that of men, so are the managers of the
Night-Light School more careful to secure an unexceptionable set of
girls in the school, that prudent parents may send their children
there without alarm, and without more danger of contamination than
must always arise where a number of human beings, adults or youths,
are assembled together.
Everything seems prospering. Church-organs in the school-rooms,
chapel-services at various times as the different sets of workmen come
and go, and flourishing schools for the mere child up to the actual
young man, supply all the spiritual, intellectual, and devotional
requirements of the work-people; games, gardening, excursions, and a
general friendliness between masters and people, form their social
happiness; and useful arts taught and about to be taught, help to make
up the wellbeing of the community. Tailoring and shoemaking are to be
learned, not as trades, but as domestic aids, many working-men having
found the advantage, in various ways, of being able to do those little
repairs at home which perishable garments are always requiring; and a
shop full of young coopers employs another section of tradesmen in
rather large numbers. For this last improvement, Mr J. Wilson was
obliged to take up his freedom of the city, that he might apprentice
the lads to himself, as it is a rule among the coopers that no one
follows this trade, which is a close one, without having learned it by
regular apprenticeship. However, a freeman can take apprentices in any
trade, whether close or open, provided he does teach them a _bonâ
fide_ business; and Mr Wilson availed himself of this privilege, and
netted to himself a batch of young coopers, as we have said. So much
can one earnest wish to be of real use to a cause or a generation
enable a single individual to do! We may be sure that when we talk of
our inability to do good, we mean our inattention to means, not our
incapacity from want of them.
The expenses we have quoted were all originally borne by Mr J. P.
Wilson. In three years, he spent L.3289 in payments to teachers, in
fitting up schools, in cricket-grounds, excursions, chaplain's salary,
&c. His own salary is L.1000 per annum. And though the proprietors
have refunded all moneys spent by him on these things, and have taken
on themselves the future expenses of the institutions commenced by
him, yet that does not diminish the worth of his magnificent
intentions, or take from the largeness of his self-sacrifice and
generosity. Add to this simple expenditure--for it was made in good
faith, and in the belief that it was a virtual sacrifice of
income--the labour, want of rest, the constant thought at all times
and under all sorts of pressure--illness and business the most
frequent--and we may form a slight estimate of what this glorious work
of educating his young charge has cost a man whose name we must ever
mention with respect.
In Mr J. Wilson's Report, there are many points unattainable to
moderate incomes and circumscribed resources, but many also that it is
in the power of every man of education, and consequently of influence,
to carry out in his neighbourhood. Amongst them is that simple item of
the cricket-field and garden-ground. It has become so much the fashion
among certain of us, renowned more for zeal than knowledge, to cry
down all amusements for the people, as tending to the subversion and
overthrow of morality, to shut them out from all but the church, the
conventicle, and the gin-shop--that any recognition of this mistake in
a more liberal arrangement, may be hailed as the inauguration of an
era of common sense, and consequently of true morality. Amusements are
absolutely necessary for mankind. The nation never existed on this
earth which could dispense with them. Sects rise up every now and then
which carry their abhorrence of all that is not fanaticism--after
their own pattern--to the extreme, and which lay pleasure under the
same curse with vice; but sects are cometic, and are not to be judged
of after the generalisations of national character. Practically, we
find that rigidness and vice, amusements and morality, go together,
Siamese-like. In the year of the Crystal Palace, the London
magistrates had fewer petty criminals brought before them than at any
other period of the same duration; and what Mr Wilson proves in his
cricket-ground, what London shewed in the time of the World's Fair,
generations and countries would always exhibit in larger characters,
more widely read--that the mind and body of man require
amusement--simple pleasure--purposeless, aimless, unintellectual,
physical pleasure--as much as his digestive organs require food and
his hands work; not as the sole employment, but mixed in with, and
forming the basis and the body of higher things--the strong practical
woof through which the warp of golden stuff is woven into a glorious
fabric--a glorious fabric of national progression. Yes, and into a
wider garment still; one that will cover many an outlying Bedouin
cowering in the darkness round--one that will join together the high
and the low, the good and the bad, and so knead up the baser element
into amalgamation with and absorption into the higher. This is no
ideal theory. It is a possibility, a practical fact, proved in this
place and in that--wherever men have taken the trouble to act on
rational bases and on a true acceptation of the needs of human nature.
For as the quality of light is to spread, and as the higher things
will always absorb the lower, so will schools and kindly sympathy
diffuse knowledge and virtue among the ignorant and brutalised; and
Love to Humanity will once more read its mission in the salvation of a
world.