The Project Gutenberg eBook of Household words, No. 1, March 30, 1850
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Title: Household words, No. 1, March 30, 1850
A weekly journal
Editor: Charles Dickens
Release date: September 6, 2026 [eBook #79523]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79523
Credits: Steven desJardins, Eloise Tara Unerman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 1, MARCH 30, 1850 ***
HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
NO. 1
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“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.
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HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.
CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
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Nº. 1.] SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._
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A PRELIMINARY WORD.
The name that we have chosen for this publication expresses, generally,
the desire we have at heart in originating it.
We aspire to live in the Household affections, and to be numbered among
the Household thoughts, of our readers. We hope to be the comrade and
friend of many thousands of people, of both sexes, and of all ages and
conditions, on whose faces we may never look. We seek to bring into
innumerable homes, from the stirring world around us, the knowledge of
many social wonders, good and evil, that are not calculated to render
any of us less ardently persevering in ourselves, less tolerant of one
another, less faithful in the progress of mankind, less thankful for
the privilege of living in this summer-dawn of time.
No mere utilitarian spirit, no iron binding of the mind to grim
realities, will give a harsh tone to our Household Words. In the bosoms
of the young and old, of the well-to-do and of the poor, we would
tenderly cherish that light of Fancy which is inherent in the human
breast; which, according to its nurture, burns with an inspiring flame,
or sinks into a sullen glare, but which (or woe betide that day!) can
never be extinguished. To show to all, that in all familiar things,
even in those which are repellant on the surface, there is Romance
enough, if we will find it out:—to teach the hardest workers at this
whirling wheel of toil, that their lot is not necessarily a moody,
brutal fact, excluded from the sympathies and graces of imagination; to
bring the greater and the lesser in degree, together, upon that wide
field, and mutually dispose them to a better acquaintance and a kinder
understanding—is one main object of our Household Words.
The mightier inventions of this age are not, to our thinking, all
material, but have a kind of souls in their stupendous bodies which may
find expression in Household Words. The traveller whom we accompany
on his railroad or his steamboat journey, may gain, we hope, some
compensation for incidents which these later generations have outlived,
in new associations with the Power that bears him onward; with the
habitations and the ways of life of crowds of his fellow creatures
among whom he passes like the wind; even with the towering chimneys
he may see, spirting out fire and smoke upon the prospect. The swart
giants, Slaves of the Lamp of Knowledge, have their thousand and one
tales, no less than the Genii of the East; and these, in all their
wild, grotesque, and fanciful aspects, in all their many phases
of endurance, in all their many moving lessons of compassion and
consideration, we design to tell.
Our Household Words will not be echoes of the present time alone, but
of the past too. Neither will they treat of the hopes, the enterprises,
triumphs, joys, and sorrows, of this country only, but, in some degree,
of those of every nation upon earth. For nothing can be a source of
real interest in one of them, without concerning all the rest.
We have considered what an ambition it is to be admitted into many
homes with affection and confidence; to be regarded as a friend
by children and old people; to be thought of in affliction and in
happiness; to people the sick room with airy shapes ‘that give delight
and hurt not,’ and to be associated with the harmless laughter and
the gentle tears of many hearths. We know the great responsibility of
such a privilege; its vast reward; the pictures that it conjures up,
in hours of solitary labour, of a multitude moved by one sympathy; the
solemn hopes which it awakens in the labourer’s breast, that he may
be free from self-reproach in looking back at last upon his work, and
that his name may be remembered in his race in time to come, and borne
by the dear objects of his love with pride. The hand that writes these
faltering lines, happily associated with _some_ Household Words before
to-day, has known enough of such experiences to enter in an earnest
spirit upon this new task, and with an awakened sense of all that it
involves.
Some tillers of the field into which we now come, have been before
us, and some are here whose high usefulness we readily acknowledge,
and whose company it is an honour to join. But, there are others
here—Bastards of the Mountain, draggled fringe on the Red Cap, Panders
to the basest passions of the lowest natures—whose existence is a
national reproach. And these, we should consider it our highest service
to displace.
Thus, we begin our career! The adventurer in the old fairy story,
climbing towards the summit of a steep eminence on which the object of
his search was stationed, was surrounded by a roar of voices, crying
to him, from the stones in the way, to turn back. All the voices _we_
hear, cry Go on! The stones that call to us have sermons in them, as
the trees have tongues, as there are books in the running brooks, as
there is good in everything! They, and the Time, cry out to us Go on!
With a fresh heart, a light step, and a hopeful courage, we begin the
journey. The road is not so rough that it need daunt our feet: the way
is not so steep that we need stop for breath, and, looking faintly
down, be stricken motionless. Go on, is all we hear, Go on! In a glow
already, with the air from yonder height upon us, and the inspiriting
voices joining in this acclamation, we echo back the cry, and go on
cheerily!
LIZZIE LEIGH.
IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.
When Death is present in a household on a Christmas Day, the very
contrast between the time as it now is, and the day as it has often
been, gives a poignancy to sorrow,—a more utter blankness to the
desolation. James Leigh died just as the far-away bells of Rochdale
Church were ringing for morning service on Christmas Day, 1836. A few
minutes before his death, he opened his already glazing eyes, and
made a sign to his wife, by the faint motion of his lips, that he had
yet something to say. She stooped close down, and caught the broken
whisper, ‘I forgive her, Anne! May God forgive me.’
‘Oh my love, my dear! only get well, and I will never cease showing my
thanks for those words. May God in heaven bless thee for saying them.
Thou’rt not so restless, my lad! may be—Oh God!’
For even while she spoke, he died.
They had been two-and-twenty years man and wife; for nineteen of those
years their life had been as calm and happy, as the most perfect
uprightness on the one side, and the most complete confidence and
loving submission on the other, could make it. Milton’s famous line
might have been framed and hung up as the rule of their married
life, for he was truly the interpreter, who stood between God and
her; she would have considered herself wicked if she had ever dared
even to think him austere, though as certainly as he was an upright
man, so surely was he hard, stern, and inflexible. But for three
years the moan and the murmur had never been out of her heart; she
had rebelled against her husband as against a tyrant, with a hidden
sullen rebellion, which tore up the old land-marks of wifely duty
and affection, and poisoned the fountains whence gentlest love and
reverence had once been for ever springing.
But those last blessed words replaced him on his throne in her heart,
and called out penitent anguish for all the bitter estrangement of
later years. It was this which made her refuse all the entreaties of
her sons, that she would see the kind-hearted neighbours, who called on
their way from church, to sympathise and condole. No! she would stay
with the dead husband that had spoken tenderly at last, if for three
years he had kept silence; who knew but what, if she had only been more
gentle and less angrily reserved he might have relented earlier—and in
time!
She sat rocking herself to and fro by the side of the bed, while the
footsteps below went in and out; she had been in sorrow too long to
have any violent burst of deep grief now; the furrows were well worn in
her cheeks, and the tears flowed quietly, if incessantly, all the day
long. But when the winter’s night drew on, and the neighbours had gone
away to their homes, she stole to the window, and gazed out, long and
wistfully, over the dark grey moors. She did not hear her son’s voice,
as he spoke to her from the door, nor his footstep as he drew nearer.
She started when he touched her.
‘Mother! come down to us. There’s no one but Will and me. Dearest
mother, we do so want you.’ The poor lad’s voice trembled, and he began
to cry. It appeared to require an effort on Mrs. Leigh’s part to tear
herself away from the window, but with a sigh she complied with his
request.
The two boys (for though Will was nearly twenty-one, she still thought
of him as a lad) had done everything in their power to make the
house-place comfortable for her. She herself, in the old days before
her sorrow, had never made a brighter fire or a cleaner hearth, ready
for her husband’s return home, than now awaited her. The tea-things
were all put out, and the kettle was boiling; and the boys had calmed
their grief down into a kind of sober cheerfulness. They paid her every
attention they could think of, but received little notice on her part;
she did not resist—she rather submitted to all their arrangements; but
they did not seem to touch her heart.
When tea was ended,—it was merely the form of tea that had been gone
through,—Will moved the things away to the dresser. His mother leant
back languidly in her chair.
‘Mother, shall Tom read you a chapter? He’s a better scholar than I.’
‘Aye, lad!’ said she, almost eagerly. ‘That’s it. Read me the Prodigal
Son. Aye, aye, lad. Thank thee.’
Tom found the chapter, and read it in the high-pitched voice which is
customary in village-schools. His mother bent forward, her lips parted,
her eyes dilated; her whole body instinct with eager attention. Will
sat with his head depressed, and hung down. He knew why that chapter
had been chosen; and to him it recalled the family’s disgrace. When the
reading was ended, he still hung down his head in gloomy silence. But
her face was brighter than it had been before for the day. Her eyes
looked dreamy, as if she saw a vision; and by and by she pulled the
bible towards her, and putting her finger underneath each word, began
to read them aloud in a low voice to herself; she read again the words
of bitter sorrow and deep humiliation; but most of all she paused and
brightened over the father’s tender reception of the repentant prodigal.
So passed the Christmas evening in the Upclose Farm.
The snow had fallen heavily over the dark waving moorland, before the
day of the funeral. The black storm-laden dome of heaven lay very still
and close upon the white earth, as they carried the body forth out of
the house which had known his presence so long as its ruling power.
Two and two the mourners followed, making a black procession, in their
winding march over the unbeaten snow, to Milne-Row Church—now lost
in some hollow of the bleak moors, now slowly climbing the heaving
ascents. There was no long tarrying after the funeral, for many of the
neighbours who accompanied the body to the grave had far to go, and the
great white flakes which came slowly down, were the boding fore-runners
of a heavy storm. One old friend alone accompanied the widow and her
sons to their home.
The Upclose Farm had belonged for generations to the Leighs; and yet
its possession hardly raised them above the rank of labourers. There
was the house and out-buildings, all of an old-fashioned kind, and
about seven acres of barren unproductive land, which they had never
possessed capital enough to improve; indeed they could hardly rely upon
it for subsistence; and it had been customary to bring up the sons to
some trade—such as a wheelwright’s, or blacksmith’s.
James Leigh had left a will, in the possession of the old man who
accompanied them home. He read it aloud. James had bequeathed the farm
to his faithful wife, Anne Leigh, for her life-time; and afterwards, to
his son William. The hundred and odd pounds in the savings’-bank was to
accumulate for Thomas.
After the reading was ended, Anne Leigh sat silent for a time; and
then she asked to speak to Samuel Orme alone. The sons went into the
back-kitchen, and thence strolled out into the fields regardless of the
driving snow. The brothers were dearly fond of each other, although
they were very different in character. Will, the elder, was like his
father, stern, reserved, and scrupulously upright. Tom (who was ten
years younger) was gentle and delicate as a girl, both in appearance
and character. He had always clung to his mother, and dreaded his
father. They did not speak as they walked, for they were only in the
habit of talking about facts, and hardly knew the more sophisticated
language applied to the description of feelings.
Meanwhile their mother had taken hold of Samuel Orme’s arm with her
trembling hand.
‘Samuel, I must let the farm—I must.’
‘Let the farm! What’s come o’er the woman?’
‘Oh, Samuel!’ said she, her eyes swimming in tears, ‘I’m just fain to
go and live in Manchester. I mun let the farm.’
Samuel looked, and pondered, but did not speak for some time. At last
he said—
‘If thou hast made up thy mind, there’s no speaking again it; and thou
must e’en go. Thou’lt be sadly pottered wi’ Manchester ways; but that’s
not my look out. Why, thou’lt have to buy potatoes, a thing thou hast
never done afore in all thy born life. Well! it’s not my look out. It’s
rather for me than again me. Our Jenny is going to be married to Tom
Higginbotham, and he was speaking of wanting a bit of land to begin
upon. His father will be dying sometime, I reckon, and then he’ll step
into the Croft Farm. But meanwhile’—
‘Then, thou’lt let the farm,’ said she, still as eagerly as ever.
‘Aye, aye, he’ll take it fast enough, I’ve a notion. But I’ll not drive
a bargain with thee just now; it would not be right; we’ll wait a bit.’
‘No; I cannot wait, settle it out at once.’
‘Well, well; I’ll speak to Will about it. I see him out yonder. I’ll
step to him, and talk it over.’
Accordingly he went and joined the two lads, and without more ado,
began the subject to them.
‘Will, thy mother is fain to go live in Manchester, and covets to let
the farm. Now, I’m willing to take it for Tom Higginbotham; but I like
to drive a keen bargain, and there would be no fun chaffering with thy
mother just now. Let thee and me buckle to, my lad! and try and cheat
each other; it will warm us this cold day.’
‘Let the farm!’ said both the lads at once, with infinite surprise,
‘Go live in Manchester!’
When Samuel Orme found that the plan had never before been named to
either Will or Tom, he would have nothing to do with it, he said,
until they had spoken to their mother; likely she was ‘dazed’ by her
husband’s death; he would wait a day or two, and not name it to any
one; not to Tom Higginbotham himself, or may be he would set his heart
upon it. The lads had better go in and talk it over with their mother.
He bade them good day, and left them.
Will looked very gloomy, but he did not speak till they got near the
house. Then he said,—
‘Tom, go to th’ shippon, and supper the cows. I want to speak to mother
alone.’
When he entered the house-place, she was sitting before the fire,
looking into its embers. She did not hear him come in; for some time
she had lost her quick perception of outward things.
‘Mother! what’s this about going to Manchester?’ asked he.
‘Oh, lad!’ said she, turning round, and speaking in a beseeching tone,
‘I must go and seek our Lizzie. I cannot rest here for thinking on her.
Many’s the time I’ve left thy father sleeping in bed, and stole to th’
window, and looked and looked my heart out towards Manchester, till I
thought I must just set out and tramp over moor and moss straight away
till I got there, and then lift up every downcast face till I came to
our Lizzie. And often, when the south wind was blowing soft among the
hollows, I’ve fancied (it could but be fancy, thou knowest) I heard her
crying upon me; and I’ve thought the voice came closer and closer, till
at last it was sobbing out “Mother” close to the door; and I’ve stolen
down, and undone the latch before now, and looked out into the still
black night, thinking to see her,—and turned sick and sorrowful when I
heard no living sound but the sough of the wind dying away. Oh! speak
not to me of stopping here, when she may be perishing for hunger, like
the poor lad in the parable.’ And now she lifted up her voice and wept
aloud.
Will was deeply grieved. He had been old enough to be told the family
shame when, more than two years before, his father had had his letter
to his daughter returned by her mistress in Manchester, telling him
that Lizzie had left her service some time—and why. He had sympathised
with his father’s stern anger; though he had thought him something
hard, it is true, when he had forbidden his weeping, heart-broken
wife to go and try to find her poor sinning child, and declared that
henceforth they would have no daughter; that she should be as one
dead, and her name never more be named at market or at meal time, in
blessing or in prayer. He had held his peace, with compressed lips
and contracted brow, when the neighbours had noticed to him how poor
Lizzie’s death had aged both his father and his mother; and how they
thought the bereaved couple would never hold up their heads again. He
himself had felt as if that one event had made him old before his time;
and had envied Tom the tears he had shed over poor, pretty, innocent,
dead Lizzie. He thought about her sometimes, till he ground his teeth
together, and could have struck her down in her shame. His mother had
never named her to him until now.
‘Mother!’ said he at last. ‘She may be dead. Most likely she is.’
‘No, Will; she is not dead,’ said Mrs. Leigh. ‘God will not let her
die till I’ve seen her once again. Thou dost not know how I’ve prayed
and prayed just once again to see her sweet face, and tell her I’ve
forgiven her, though she’s broken my heart—she has, Will.’ She could
not go on for a minute or two for the choking sobs. ‘Thou dost not
know that, or thou wouldst not say she could be dead,—for God is very
merciful, Will; He is,—He is much more pitiful than man,—I could never
ha’ spoken to thy father as I did to Him,—and yet thy father forgave
her at last. The last words he said were that he forgave her. Thou’lt
not be harder than thy father, Will? Do not try and hinder me going to
seek her, for it’s no use.’
Will sat very still for a long time before he spoke. At last he said,
‘I’ll not hinder you. I think she’s dead, but that’s no matter.’
‘She is not dead,’ said her mother, with low earnestness. Will took no
notice of the interruption.
‘We will all go to Manchester for a twelvemonth, and let the farm to
Tom Higginbotham. I’ll get blacksmith’s work; and Tom can have good
schooling for awhile, which he’s always craving for. At the end of the
year you’ll come back, mother, and give over fretting for Lizzie, and
think with me that she is dead,—and, to my mind, that would be more
comfort than to think of her living;’ he dropped his voice as he spoke
these last words. She shook her head, but made no answer. He asked
again,—
‘Will you, mother, agree to this?’
‘I’ll agree to it a-this-ns,’ said she. ‘If I hear and see nought of
her for a twelvemonth, me being in Manchester looking out, I’ll just
ha’ broken my heart fairly before the year’s ended, and then I shall
know neither love nor sorrow for her any more, when I’m at rest in the
grave—I’ll agree to that, Will.’
‘Well, I suppose it must be so. I shall not tell Tom, mother, why we’re
flitting to Manchester. Best spare him.’
‘As thou wilt,’ said she, sadly, ‘so that we go, that’s all.’
Before the wild daffodils were in flower in the sheltered copses round
Upclose Farm, the Leighs were settled in their Manchester home; if
they could ever grow to consider that place as a home, where there was
no garden, or outbuilding, no fresh breezy outlet, no far-stretching
view, over moor and hollow,—no dumb animals to be tended, and, what
more than all they missed, no old haunting memories, even though those
remembrances told of sorrow, and the dead and gone.
Mrs. Leigh heeded the loss of all these things less than her sons. She
had more spirit in her countenance than she had had for months, because
now she had hope; of a sad enough kind, to be sure, but still it was
hope. She performed all her household duties, strange and complicated
as they were, and bewildered as she was with all the town-necessities
of her new manner of life; but when her house was ‘sided,’ and the
boys come home from their work, in the evening, she would put on her
things and steal out, unnoticed, as she thought, but not without
many a heavy sigh from Will, after she had closed the house-door and
departed. It was often past midnight before she came back, pale and
weary, with almost a guilty look upon her face; but that face so full
of disappointment and hope deferred, that Will had never the heart
to say what he thought of the folly and hopelessness of the search.
Night after night it was renewed, till days grew to weeks and weeks
to months. All this time Will did his duty towards her as well as
he could, without having sympathy with her. He staid at home in the
evenings for Tom’s sake, and often wished he had Tom’s pleasure in
reading, for the time hung heavy on his hands, as he sat up for his
mother.
I need not tell you how the mother spent the weary hours. And yet I
will tell you something. She used to wander out, at first as if without
a purpose, till she rallied her thoughts, and brought all her energies
to bear on the one point; then she went with earnest patience along
the least known ways to some new part of the town, looking wistfully
with dumb entreaty into people’s faces; sometimes catching a glimpse
of a figure which had a kind of momentary likeness to her child’s,
and following that figure with never wearying perseverance, till some
light from shop or lamp showed the cold strange face which was not
her daughter’s. Once or twice a kind-hearted passer-by, struck by her
look of yearning woe, turned back and offered help, or asked her what
she wanted. When so spoken to, she answered only, ‘You don’t know a
poor girl they call Lizzie Leigh, do you?’ and when they denied all
knowledge, she shook her head, and went on again. I think they believed
her to be crazy. But she never spoke first to any one. She sometimes
took a few minutes’ rest on the door-steps, and sometimes (very seldom)
covered her face and cried; but she could not afford to lose time and
chances in this way; while her eyes were blinded with tears, the lost
one might pass by unseen.
One evening, in the rich time of shortening autumn-days, Will saw an
old man, who, without being absolutely drunk, could not guide himself
rightly along the foot-path, and was mocked for his unsteadiness of
gait by the idle boys of the neighbourhood. For his father’s sake Will
regarded old age with tenderness, even when most degraded and removed
from the stern virtues which dignified that father; so he took the old
man home, and seemed to believe his often-repeated assertions that he
drank nothing but water. The stranger tried to stiffen himself up into
steadiness as he drew nearer home, as if there were some one there, for
whose respect he cared even in his half-intoxicated state, or whose
feelings he feared to grieve. His home was exquisitely clean and neat
even in outside appearance; threshold, window, and window-sill, were
outward signs of some spirit of purity within. Will was rewarded for
his attention by a bright glance of thanks, succeeded by a blush of
shame, from a young woman of twenty or thereabouts. She did not speak,
or second her father’s hospitable invitations to him to be seated. She
seemed unwilling that a stranger should witness her father’s attempts
at stately sobriety, and Will could not bear to stay and see her
distress. But when the old man, with many a flabby shake of the hand,
kept asking him to come again some other evening and see them, Will
sought her downcast eyes, and, though he could not read their veiled
meaning, he answered timidly, ‘If it’s agreeable to everybody, I’ll
come—and thank ye.’ But there was no answer from the girl to whom this
speech was in reality addressed; and Will left the house liking her all
the better for never speaking.
He thought about her a great deal for the next day or two; he scolded
himself for being so foolish as to think of her, and then fell to
with fresh vigour, and thought of her more than ever. He tried to
depreciate her; he told himself she was not pretty, and then made
indignant answer that he liked her looks much better than any beauty
of them all. He wished he was not so country looking, so red-faced, so
broad-shouldered; while she was like a lady, with her smooth colourless
complexion, her bright dark hair and her spotless dress. Pretty, or
not pretty, she drew his footsteps towards her; he could not resist
the impulse that made him wish to see her once more, and find out some
fault which should unloose his heart from her unconscious keeping.
But there she was, pure and maidenly as before. He sat and looked,
answering her father at cross-purposes, while she drew more and more
into the shadow of the chimney-corner out of sight. Then the spirit
that possessed him (it was not he himself, sure, that did so impudent
a thing!) made him get up and carry the candle to a different place,
under the pretence of giving her more light at her sewing, but, in
reality, to be able to see her better; she could not stand this much
longer, but jumped up, and said she must put her little niece to bed;
and surely, there never was, before or since, so troublesome a child
of two years old; for, though Will staid an hour and a half longer,
she never came down again. He won the father’s heart, though, by his
capacity as a listener, for some people are not at all particular,
and, so that they themselves may talk on undisturbed, are not so
unreasonable as to expect attention to what they say.
Will did gather this much, however, from the old man’s talk. He had
once been quite in a genteel line of business, but had failed for more
money than any greengrocer he had heard of; at least, any who did not
mix up fish and game with greengrocery proper. This grand failure
seemed to have been the event of his life, and one on which he dwelt
with a strange kind of pride. It appeared as if at present he rested
from his past exertions (in the bankrupt line), and depended on his
daughter, who kept a small school for very young children. But all
these particulars Will only remembered and understood, when he had left
the house; at the time he heard them, he was thinking of Susan. After
he had made good his footing at Mr. Palmer’s, he was not long, you may
be sure, without finding some reason for returning again and again. He
listened to her father, he talked to the little niece, but he looked at
Susan, both while he listened and while he talked. Her father kept on
insisting upon his former gentility, the details of which would have
appeared very questionable to Will’s mind, if the sweet, delicate,
modest Susan had not thrown an inexplicable air of refinement over all
she came near. She never spoke much; she was generally diligently at
work; but when she moved it was so noiselessly, and when she did speak,
it was in so low and soft a voice, that silence, speech, motion and
stillness, alike seemed to remove her high above Will’s reach into some
saintly and inaccessible air of glory—high above his reach, even as she
knew him! And, if she were made acquainted with the dark secret behind,
of his sister’s shame, which was kept ever present to his mind by his
mother’s nightly search among the outcast and forsaken, would not
Susan shrink away from him with loathing, as if he were tainted by the
involuntary relationship? This was his dread; and thereupon followed a
resolution that he would withdraw from her sweet company before it was
too late. So he resisted internal temptation, and staid at home, and
suffered and sighed. He became angry with his mother for her untiring
patience in seeking for one who, he could not help hoping, was dead
rather than alive. He spoke sharply to her, and received only such
sad deprecatory answers as made him reproach himself, and still more
lose sight of peace of mind. This struggle could not last long without
affecting his health; and Tom, his sole companion through the long
evenings, noticed his increasing languor, his restless irritability,
with perplexed anxiety, and at last resolved to call his mother’s
attention to his brother’s haggard, care-worn looks. She listened with
a startled recollection of Will’s claims upon her love. She noticed his
decreasing appetite, and half-checked sighs.
‘Will, lad! what’s come o’er thee?’ said she to him, as he sat
listlessly gazing into the fire.
‘There’s nought the matter with me,’ said he, as if annoyed at her
remark.
‘Nay, lad, but there is.’ He did not speak again to contradict her;
indeed she did not know if he had heard her, so unmoved did he look.
‘Would’st like to go back to Upclose Farm?’ asked she, sorrowfully.
‘It’s just blackberrying time,’ said Tom.
Will shook his head. She looked at him awhile, as if trying to read
that expression of despondency and trace it back to its source.
‘Will and Tom could go,’ said she; ‘I must stay here till I’ve found
her, thou know’st,’ continued she, dropping her voice.
He turned quickly round, and with the authority he at all times
exercised over Tom, bade him begone to bed.
When Tom had left the room he prepared to speak.
VALENTINE’S DAY AT THE POST-OFFICE.
Late in the afternoon of the 14th of February last past, an individual
who bore not the smallest resemblance to a despairing lover, or,
indeed, to a lover in any state of mind, was seen to drop into the box
of a Fleet Street receiving-house two letters folded in flaming covers.
He did not look round to see if he were observed, but walked boldly
into the shop with a third epistle, and deposited thereon one penny.
Considering the suspicious appearance of this document—for its envelope
was green—he retired from the counter with extraordinary _nonchalance_,
and coolly walked on towards Ludgate Hill.
Long paces soon brought him to St. Martin’s-le-Grand, for he strode
like a man who had an imminent appointment. Sure enough, under the
clock of the General Post-Office, he joined another, who eagerly asked,—
‘Have you done it?’
The answer was, ‘I have!’
‘Very well. Let us now watch the result.’
Most people are aware that the Great National Post-Office in St.
Martin’s-le-Grand is divided into halves by a passage, whose sides
are perforated with what is called the ‘Window Department.’ Here
huge slits gape for letters, whole sashes yawn for newspapers, or
wooden panes open for clerks to frame their large faces, like giant
visages in the slides of a Magic Lanthorn; and to answer inquiries, or
receive unstamped paid letters. The southern side is devoted to the
London District Post, and the northern to what still continues to be
called the ‘Inland Department,’ although foreign, colonial, and other
outlandish correspondence now passes through it. It was with the London
District Branch that the two gentlemen first appeared to have business.
Having been led through a maze of offices and passages more or less
dark, they found themselves—like knights-errant in a fairy tale—‘in an
enormous hall, illumined by myriads of lights.’ Without being exactly
transformed into statues, or stricken fast asleep, the occupants of
this hall (whose name was Legion) appeared to be in an enchanted state
of idleness. Among a wilderness of long tables, and of desks not unlike
those on which butter-men perform their active parts of legerdemain
in making ‘pats’—only these desks were covered with black cloth—they
were reading books, talking together, wandering about, lying down, or
drinking coffee—apparently quite unused to doing any work, and not at
all expectant of ever having anything to do, but die.
In a few minutes, and without any preparation, a great stir began at
one end of this hall, and an immense train of private performers, in
the highest state of excitement, poured in, getting up, on an immense
scale, the first scene in the ‘Miller and his Men.’ Each had a sack
on his back; each bent under its weight; and the bare sight of these
sacks, as if by magic, changed all the readers, all the talkers, all
the wanderers, all the liers-down, all the coffee-drinkers, into a
colony of human ants!
For the sacks were great sheepskin bags of letters tumbling in from the
receiving-houses. Anon they looked like whole flocks suddenly struck
all of a heap, ready for slaughter; for a ruthless individual stood
at a table, with sleeves tucked up and knife in hand, who rapidly cut
their throats, dived into their insides, abstracted their contents,
and finally skinned them. ‘For every letter we leave behind,’ said the
bag-opener, in answer to an inquiry, ‘we are fined half-a-crown. That’s
why we turn them inside out.’
The mysterious visitors closely scrutinised the letters that were
disgorged. These were _from_ all parts of London _to_ all parts of
London and to the provinces and to the far-off quarters of the globe.
An acute postman might guess the broad tenour of their contents by
their covers:—business letters are in big envelopes, official letters
in long ones, and lawyers’ letters in none at all; the tinted and
lace-bordered mean Valentines, the black-bordered tell of grief, and
the radiant with white enamel announce marriage. When the Fleet Street
dispatch appeared, the visitors tracked it, and the operations of
the clerk who separated the three bundles of which it consisted were
closely followed. With the prying curiosity which now only began to
show itself, one of the intruders actually took a copy of the bill
which accompanied the letters. It set forth in three lines that there
were so many ‘Stamped,’ so many ‘Prepaid,’ and so many ‘Unpaid.’
The clerk counted the stamped letters like lightning, and a flash of
red gleaming past showed the inquirers that one of their epistles was
safe. Suddenly the motion was stopped; the official had instinctively
detected that one letter was insufficiently adorned with the Queen’s
profile, and he weighed and taxed it double in a twinkling. Having
proved the number of stamped letters to be exactly as per account
rendered, he went on checking off the prepaid, turning up the sender’s
green missive in the process. He then dealt with the unpaid, amongst
which the lookers-on perceived their yellow one. The cash column
was computed and cast in a single thought, and a short-hand mark,
signifying ‘quite correct,’ dismissed the Fleet Street bill upon a
file, for the leisurely scrutiny of the Receiver-General’s office.
All the other letters, and all the other bills of all the other
receiving-houses, were going through the same routine at all the other
tables; and these performances are repeated ten times in every day, all
the year round, Sundays excepted!
‘You perceived,’ said one of the two friends, ‘that in the rapid
process of counting, our stamped letter gleamed past like a meteor,
whilst our money-paid and unpaid epistles remained long enough under
observation for a careful reading of the superscriptions.’
‘That delay,’ said an intelligent official, ‘is occasioned because
the latter are unstamped. Such letters cause a great complication of
trouble, wholly avoided by the use of Queen’s heads. Every officer
through whose hands they pass—from the receiving-house-keeper to the
carriers who deliver them at their destinations—has to give and take a
cash account of each. If the public would put stamps on _all_ letters,
it would save us, and therefore _itself_, some thousands a-year.’
‘What are the proportions of the stamped to the prepaid and unpaid
letters which pass through all the post-offices during the year?’
‘We can tell within a very near approximation to
correctness:—337,500,000 passed through the post-offices of the United
Kingdom during last year, and to every 100 of them about fifty had
stamps; 46 were prepaid with pennies; and only 4 were committed to the
box unpaid.’
While one of the visitors was receiving this information, the other had
followed his variegated letters to the next process; which was that of
stamping on the sealed face, in red ink, the date and hour of despatch.
The letters are ranged in a long row, like a pack of cards thrown
across a table, and so fast does the stamper’s hand move, that he can
mark 3000 in an hour. While defacing the Queen’s heads on the other
side, he counts as he thumps, till he enumerates fifty, when he dodges
his stamp on one side to put his black mark on a piece of plain paper.
All these memoranda are afterwards collected by the president, who,
reckoning fifty letters to every black mark, gets a near approximation
to the number that have passed through the office.
It was by this means that our friends obtained the following account
of the number of district letters that passed through this office on
St. Valentine’s Day:—
|----------------------------------------------------|
| Feb. 14th, | Paid. | Unpaid. |Stamped.| Total. |
| 1850. | | | | |
|----------------------------------------------------|
| | 1d. | 1d. | 2d. | | |
|----------------------------------------------------|
|Collections.| | | | | |
| 8 o’clock. | 6,872 | 52 | 1,216 | 20,082 | 28,222 |
|10 ” | 6,212 | 19 | 607 | 13,629 | 20,467 |
|12 ” | 7,069 | 36 | 612 | 15,240 | 22,957 |
| 1 ” | 2,989 | 17 | 277 | 6,395 | 9,678 |
| 2 ” | 6,520 | 39 | 535 | 13,696 | 20,790 |
| 3 ” | 2,456 | 36 | 328 | 6,909 | 9,729 |
| 4 ” | 4,873 | 36 | 375 | 13,478 | 13,478 |
| 5 ” | 3,340 | 28 | 317 | 8,207 | 11,892 |
| 6 ” | 9,300 | 129 | 958 | 27,950 | 38,337 |
| 8 ” | 3,903 | 32 | 812 | 6,650 | 11,487 |
|----------------------------------------------------|
| |53,624 | 424 | 6,037 |126,952 |187,037 |
|----------------------------------------------------|
To this total are to be added 6,000 ‘bye’ letters—or those which passed
from village to village within the suburban limits of the district
post without reaching the chief office—and 100,000 destined for the
provinces and places beyond sea, which were transferred to the Inland
Department. The grand total for the day, therefore, rose to nearly
300,000. Thus the sacrifices to the fane of St. Valentine—consisting
of hearts, darts, Cupid peeping out of paper-roses, Hymen embowered
in hot-pressed embossing, swains in very blue coats and nymphs in
very opaque muslin, coarse caricatures and tender verses—caused an
augmentation to the revenue on this anniversary equal to about 70,000
missives; 123,000 being the usual daily average for district and
‘byes’ during the month of February. This increase, being peculiar
to cross and district posts, does not so much affect the Inland
Office, for lovers and sweethearts are generally neighbours. The
entire correspondence of the three kingdoms is augmented on each St.
Valentine’s day to the extent of about 400,000 letters.
‘Is it possible?’ exclaimed one of the visitors, regarding the piles
of epistles on the numerous tables, ‘that this mass of letters can be
arranged and sent away to their respective addresses in time to receive
the next collection, which will arrive in less than an hour?’
‘Quite,’ replied an obliging informant, ‘I’ll tell you how we do it.
We have divided London into seventeen sections. There they are, you
perceive.’ He then pointed to the tables with pigeon-holes numbered
from one to seventeen; one marked ‘blind,’ with a nineteenth labelled
‘general.’ It was explained that the proper arrangement of the letters
in these compartments constitutes the first sorting. They are then
sorted into sub-divisions; then into districts, and finally handed
over to the letter-carriers, who, in another room, arrange them for
their own convenience into ‘walks.’ As the visitors looked round
they perceived their coloured envelopes—which were all addressed to
Scotland—suddenly emerge from a chaotic heap, and lodge in the division
marked ‘general,’ as magically as a conjurer causes any card you may
choose to fly out of the whole pack. ‘These letters,’ remarked the
expositor, ‘being for the country will be presently passed into the
Inland Office through a tunnel under the hall. The “blind” letters have
superscriptions which the sorters cannot decypher, and are sent to the
“blind” table where a gentleman presides, to whom, from the extreme
sharpness of his vision, we give the _lucus à non lucendo_ name of the
“blind clerk.” You will have a specimen of his powers presently.’
While this dialogue was going on there was a general abatement of
the noise of stamping, and shuffling letters, and when the visitors
looked round, the place had relapsed into its former tranquillity.
It was scarcely credible that from 30,000 to 40,000 letters had been
received, stamped, counted, sorted, and sent away in so short a time.
‘A judicious division of labour,’ remarked one of our friends, ‘must
work these miracles.’
‘Yes, sir,’ was the reply of an official, ‘and there are from 1200
to 1700 of us to do the work of the district post alone. When it was
removed from Gerard Street to this building there was not a quarter
of that number. For instance—then, three carriers sufficed for the
Paddington district; but, by the dispatch you have just seen completed,
we have sent off 2000 letters to that single locality by the hands of
twenty-five carriers.’
‘The increase is attributable to the penny system?’ interrogated one of
our inquiring friends.
‘Entirely.’
The questioner then referred to a Parliamentary paper of which he
had obtained possession. It showed him the history of general postal
increase since the era of dear distance rates. In 1839—under the
old system—the number of letters which passed through the post was
76,000,000. In 1840 came the uniform penny, and for that year the
number was 162,000,000, or an increase of 93,000,000, equal to 123
per cent. That was the grand start; afterwards the rate of increase
subsided from 36 per cent. in 1841, to 16 per cent. in 1842 and 1843.
In 1845, and the three following years, the increase was respectively,
39, 37, and 30 per cent. Then succeeded a sudden drop; perhaps the
culminating point had been attained. The Post-Office is, however, a
thermometer of commerce: during the depressing year 1848, the number
of letters increased no more than 9 per cent. But last year 37,500,000
epistles passed through the office, being an augmentation of 8,500,000
upon the preceding year, or 11 per cent. of progressive increase.
Another Parliamentary document shows, that, although the business
is now exactly four-and-a-half times more than it was in 1839, the
expense of doing it has only doubled. In the former year the cost of
the establishment was not quite 690,000_l._; in 1849 it was about
1,400,000_l._
While one visitor was poring over these documents, the other
deliberately watched the coloured envelopes. They were, with about 2000
other General Post letters, put into boxes and taken to the tunnel to
be conveyed into the Inland Office upon a horizontal band worked by a
wheel. The two friends now took leave of the District Department to
follow the objects of their pursuit.
It was a quarter before six o’clock when they crossed the Hall—six
being the latest hour at which newspapers can be posted without fee.
It was then just drizzling newspapers. The great window of that
department being thrown open, the first black fringe of a thunder-cloud
of newspapers impending over the Post-Office was discharging itself
fitfully—now in large drops, now in little; now in sudden plumps, now
stopping altogether. By degrees it began to rain hard; by fast degrees
the storm came on harder and harder, until it blew, rained, hailed,
snowed, newspapers. A fountain of newspapers played in at the window.
Water-spouts of newspapers broke from enormous sacks, and engulphed the
men inside. A prodigious main of newspapers, at the Newspaper River
Head, seemed to be turned on, threatening destruction to the miserable
Post-Office. The Post-Office was so full already, that the window
foamed at the mouth with newspapers. Newspapers flew out like froth,
and were tumbled in again by the bystanders. All the boys in London
seemed to have gone mad, and to be besieging the Post-Office with
newspapers. Now and then there was a girl; now and then a woman; now
and then a weak old man: but as the minute hand of the clock crept near
to six, such a torrent of boys, and such a torrent of newspapers came
tumbling in together pell-mell, head over heels, one above another,
that the giddy head looking on chiefly wondered why the boys springing
over one another’s heads, and flying the garter into the Post-Office
with the enthusiasm of the corps of acrobats at M. Franconi’s, didn’t
post themselves nightly, along with the newspapers, and get delivered
all over the world.
Suddenly it struck six. Shut Sesame! Perfectly still weather. Nobody
there. No token of the late storm—Not a soul, too late!
But what a chaos within! Men up to their knees in newspapers on great
platforms; men gardening among newspapers with rakes; men digging and
delving among newspapers as if a new description of rock had been
blasted into those fragments; men going up and down a gigantic trap—an
ascending and descending-room worked by a steam-engine—still taking
with them nothing but newspapers! All the history of the time, all
the chronicled births, deaths, and marriages, all the crimes, all the
accidents, all the vanities, all the changes, all the realities, of all
the civilised earth, heaped up, parcelled out, carried about, knocked
down, cut, shuffled, dealt, played, gathered up again, and passed from
hand to hand, in an apparently interminable and hopeless confusion,
but really in a system of admirable order, certainty, and simplicity,
pursued six nights every week, all through the rolling year! Which of
us, after this, shall find fault with the rather more extensive system
of good and evil, when we don’t quite understand it at a glance; or set
the stars right in their spheres?
The friends were informed that 70,000,000 newspapers pass through all
the post-offices every year. Upwards of 80,000,000 newspaper-stamps
are distributed annually from the Stamp-Office; but most of the London
papers are conveyed into the country by early trains. On the other
hand, frequently the same paper passes through the post several times,
which accounts for the small excess of 10,000,000 stamps issued over
papers posted. In weight, 187 tons of paper and print pass up and down
the ingenious ‘lift’ every week, and thence to the uttermost corners of
the earth—from Blackfriars to Botany Bay, from the Strand to Chusan.
As to the rooms, revealed through gratings in the well, traversed
by the ascending and descending-room, and walked in by the visitors
afterwards,—those enormous chambers, each with its hundreds of sorters
busy over their hundreds of thousands of letters—those dispatching
places of a business that has the look of being eternal and never to
be disposed of or cleared away—those silent receptacles of countless
millions of passionate words, for ever pouring through them like a
Niagara of language, and leaving not a drop behind—what description
could present them? But when a sorter goes home from these places
to his bed, does he dream of letters? When he has a fever (sorters
_must_ have fevers sometimes) does he never find the Welch letters
getting into the Scotch divisions, and the London letters going to
Jericho? When he gets a glass too much, does he see no double letters
mis-sorting themselves unaccountably? When he is very ill, do no
dead letters stare him in the face? And yonder dark, mysterious,
ground-glass balcony high up in the wall, not unlike a church organ
without the pipes—the screen from whence an unseen eye watches the
sorters who are listening to temptation—when he has a nightmare, does
he never dream of _that_?
Then that enormous table upon which the public shoot their letters
through the window-slits—do the four men who sit at it never fancy
themselves playing at whist, gathering up an enormous pack of red aces,
with here and there a many-hued Valentine to stand for a Court card?
Their duty is termed ‘facing,’ or turning the ace-like seals downwards,
ready for stamping.
The system of stamping, sorting, and arranging, is precisely similar
to that in the District Branch, and by his recently acquired knowledge
of it, the person who posted the coloured letters was able to trace
them through every stage, till they were tied up ready to be ‘bagged,’
and sent away. While thus employed, his companion made the following
observations:—
In an opposite side of the enormous apartment, a good space and a few
officials are devoted to repairing the carelessness of the public,
which is—in amount and extent—scarcely credible. Upon an average,
300 letters per day pass through the General Post-Office totally
unfastened; chiefly in consequence of the use of what stationers are
pleased to call ‘adhesive’ envelopes. Many are virgin ones, without
either seal or direction; and not a few contain money. In Sir Francis
Freeling’s time, the sum of 5000_l._ in Bank notes was found in a
‘blank.’ It was not till after some trouble that the sender was traced,
and the cash restored to him. Not long since, an humble post-mistress
of an obscure Welch post-town, unable to decipher the address on a
letter, perceived, on examining it, the folds of several Bank notes
protruding from a torn edge of the envelope. She securely re-enclosed
it to the secretary of the Post-Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand; who
found the contents to be 1500_l._, and the superscription too much
even for the hieroglyphic powers of the ‘blind clerk.’ Eventually the
enclosures found their true destination.
It is estimated that there lies, from time to time, in the Dead-Letter
Office, undergoing the process of finding owners, some 11,000_l._
annually, in cash alone. In July, 1847, for instance—only a two
months’ accumulation—the post-haste of 4658 letters, all containing
property, was arrested by the bad superscriptions of the writers. They
were consigned—after a searching inquest upon each by that efficient
coroner, the ‘blind clerk’—to the Post-Office _Morgue_. There were Bank
notes of the value of 1010_l._, and money-orders for 407_l._ 12_s._
But most of these ill-directed letters contained coin in small sums,
amounting to 310_l._ 9_s._ 7_d._ On the 17th of July, 1847, there were
lying in the Dead-Letter Office bills of Exchange for the immense sum
of 40,410_l._ 5_s._ 7_d._!
‘I assure you,’ said a gentleman high in this department, ‘it is
scarcely possible to take up a handful of letters without finding one
with coin in it, despite the facilities afforded by the money-order
system. All this is very distressing to us. The temptation it throws in
the way of sorters, carriers, and other humble _employés_ is greater
than they ought to be subjected to. Seventy men have been discharged
for dishonesty from the District Office alone during the past two
years.’
‘But the public do use the Money-Order Office extensively?’
This question was startlingly answered by reference to a Parliamentary
Return which showed that there were issued and paid in England and
Wales alone, during the year which ended on the 5th of January, 1849,
6,852,911 Post-office orders for sums amounting to the enormous
aggregate of 13,678,377_l._ 3_s._ 1_d._
Taking up a thin card-board box of artificial flowers, which had been
shaken into the form of an irregular rhomboid, under the pressure of
several pounds’ weight of letters and newspapers, a ‘sub-president’
remarked—‘The faith the public have in us is extraordinary. Here is an
article which is designed to go safely to Dublin; yet not one single
precaution, except this thin piece of twine, is taken by the sender to
ensure its preservation. Here, again, is a pair of white satin shoes,
fast losing their colour from friction with damp newspapers and the
edges of books. The other day the toe of a similar packet protruded
from its very thin casing, and the stamper not being able to stop his
hand in time, ornamented it, in vividly blue ink, with the words,
“York, Feb. 1, 1850, D.” You will see by this Parliamentary Return of
the articles found in the Dead-Letter Office what curious things are
trusted to our care.’
The obliging gentleman then produced the document. Its lists showed,
amongst other articles,—tooth-picks, tooth-files, fishing-flies, an
eye-glass, brad-awls, portraits, miniatures, a whistle, corkscrews,
a silver watch, a pair of spurs, a bridle, a soldier’s discharge and
sailors’ register tickets, samples of hops and corn, a Greek MS.,
silver spoons, gold thread, dinner, theatre, and pawn tickets, boxes
of pills, shirts, night-caps, razors, all sorts of knitting and lace,
‘doll’s things,’ and a vast variety of other articles, that would
puzzle ingenuity to conjecture.
‘Besides carelessness we have to contend against ignorance,’ was
remarked as the visitors were introduced to the ‘blind’ table, and
to the hawk-eyed gentleman who presides at it. ‘He is provided, you
perceive, with a small library of local and general Directories, Court
Guides, Army, Navy, and Clergy Lists; and much he needs them, as
will be seen by these fac-similes.’ Several transcripts of curiously
addressed letters were then produced. ‘Where would you or I have sent a
letter
[Illustration:
For
George Miller
boy on board H M S
Amphirtrite Vallop
a Rayzor or Ellesware
]
certainly not to its proper destination, which turned out to be the
“Amphitrite,” Valparaiso, or elsewhere? Who but our friend here would
have found out that another boy in her Majesty’s naval service said to
be on board
_H.M. Steem Friegkt
Vultur Uncon or els ware_,
belonged to the Steam Frigate Vulture, at Hong Kong? Few would think
that
_Mr. Weston
Osburn Cottage
Ilawait_
was a neighbour of her Majesty, and lived at Osborne Cottage, Isle of
Wight.’
The following additional epistolary puzzles were then read, amidst, as
reporters say, ‘loud laughter:’
_Mr. Laurence
New Land
Ivicum_ (High Wycombe).
_W. Stratton
Commonly
Ceald teapot_
(We presume as a total abstinence man.)
_Weelin_ (Welwyn).
_Thom Hoodless
3 St. Ann Ct
Searhoo Skur_ (Soho Square).
The ingenious orthographies _Ratlifhaivai_ and _Ratlef Fieway_ went
straight to the proper parties in Ratcliffe Highway; but it is a wonder
how—
_Mr. Dick
Bishop Cans
ner the Wises_
got his letter, considering that his place of abode was near Devizes.
For the next specimen of spelling there is some excuse. ‘In England,’
says a French traveller, ‘what they write “Greenwich,” they pronounce
“Grinitch,” and I am not quite sure that when they set down “Solomon,”
they do not pronounce it “Nebuchadnezzar.”’ ‘I much question,’
continued one of the amateur Post-Office inspectors, ‘if either
of us had never seen the name of the place to which the following
superscription applies, that we should not have spelt it nearly
similarly to the correspondent of—
Peter Robertson
2 Compney 7 Batilian
Rolyl Artirian
_Owilige_
England.
‘Although the writer’s ear misled him grievously in the other words,
he has recorded the sound into which we render _Woolwich_ with curious
correctness.’
‘Innocent simplicity baulks us as much as ignorance,’ remarked the head
of the hieroglyphic department. ‘Here are one or two specimens of it:—
_To Mr. Michl
Darcy
In the town of
England._
‘A schoolboy sends from Salisbury,
_To My Uncle Jon
in London._
‘Another addressed the highest personage in the realm—no doubt on
particular business—as
_Miss
Queene Victoria
of England._’
While this amusement was going forward, the bustle in the adjoining
rooms had reached its climax. It was approaching eight o’clock, and
the ‘Miller and his Men’ above stairs were delivering their sacks from
the mouth of the ever-revolving mill at an incessant rate. These,
filled nearly to the mouth with newspapers, were dragged to the tables,
which the brass label fastened to the corner of each bag marked as its
own, to have the letters inserted. Our friends rushed to where they
saw ‘Edinburgh’ painted up on the walls, and there they beheld their
yellow, green, and red letters in separate packets, though destined for
the same place; just as they had come in at first from Fleet Street.
The bundles were popped in a trice into the Edinburgh bag, which was
sealed and sent away. Exactly the same thing was happening to every
bundle of letters, and to every bag on the premises.
The clock now struck eight, and the two visitors looked round in
astonishment. Had they been guests at the ball in ‘Cinderella,’ when
_that_ clock struck they would not have been more astonished; for
hardly less rapidly did the fancy dresses of the postmen disappear,
and the lights grow dim. This is the most striking peculiarity of the
extraordinary establishment. Everything is done on military principles
to minute time. The drill and subdivision of duties are so perfect,
that the alternations throughout the day are high pressure and sudden
collapse. At five minutes before eight the enormous offices were
glaring with light and crowded with men; at ten minutes after eight the
glass slipper had fallen off, and there was hardly a light or a living
being visible.
‘Perhaps, however,’ it was remarked as our friends were leaving the
building, ‘an invisible individual is now stealthily watching behind
the ground glass screen. Only the other day he detected from it a
sorter secreting 140 sovereigns.’
It is a deplorable thing that such a place of observation should be
necessary; but it is hardly less deplorable—and this should be most
earnestly impressed upon the reader—that the public, now possessed of
such conveniences for remitting money, by means of Post-Office Orders
and Registered Letters, should lightly throw temptation in the way of
these clerks, by enclosing actual coin. No man can say that, placed
in such circumstances from day to day, he could be stedfast. Many may
hope they would be, and believe it; but none can be sure. It is in the
power, however, of every conscientious and reflecting mind, to make
quite sure that it has no part in this class of crimes. The prevention
for this one great source of misery is made easy to the public hand;
and it is the public’s bounden duty to adopt it. They who do not,
cannot be blameless.
Such is the substance of information obtained by our friends before
they took leave of the mighty heart of the postal system of this
country.
In conclusion, they beg it to be understood that their experimental
letters were _not_ Valentines.
ABRAHAM AND THE FIRE-WORSHIPPER.
~A Dramatic Parable.~
SCENE—_The inside of a Tent, in which the Patriarch_ ABRAHAM
_and a_ PERSIAN TRAVELLER, _a Fire-Worshipper, are sitting
awhile after supper_.
_Fire-Worshipper_ (_aside_). What have I said, or
done, that by degrees
Mine host hath changed his gracious countenance,
Until he stareth on me, as in wrath!
Have I, ’twixt wake and sleep, lost his wise lore?
Or sit I thus too long, and he himself
Would fain be sleeping? I will speak to that.
(_Aloud._) Impute it, O my great and gracious lord,
Unto my feeble flesh, and not my folly,
If mine old eyelids droop against their will,
And I become as one that hath no sense
Ev’n to the milk and honey of thy words.—
With my lord’s leave, and his good servant’s help,
My limbs would creep to bed.
_Abraham_ (_angrily quitting his seat_). In this tent, never.
Thou art a thankless and an impious man.
_Fire-W._ (_rising in astonishment_). A thankless
and an impious man! Oh, sir,
My thanks have all but worshipp’d thee.
_Abraham._ And whom
Forgotten? like the fawning dog I feed.
From the foot-washing to the meal, and now
To this thy cramm’d and dog-like wish for bed,
I’ve noted thee; and never hast thou breath’d
One syllable of prayer, or praise, or thanks,
To the great God who made and feedeth all.
_Fire-W._ Oh, sir, the God I worship is the Fire,
The god of gods; and seeing him not here,
In any symbol, or on any shrine,
I waited till he blessed mine eyes at morn,
Sitting in heaven.
_Abraham._ Oh, foul idolator!
And darest thou still to breathe in Abraham’s tent?
Forth with thee, wretch: for he that made thy god,
And all thy tribe, and all the host of heaven,
The invisible and only dreadful God,
Will speak to thee this night, out in the storm,
And try thee in thy foolish god, the Fire,
Which with his fingers he makes lightnings of.
Hark to the rising of his robes, the winds,
And get thee forth, and wait him.
[_A violent storm is heard rising._
_Fire-W._ What! unhoused!
And on a night like this! me, poor old man,
A hundred years of age!
_Abraham_ (_urging him away_). Not reverencing
The God of ages, thou revoltest reverence.
_Fire-W._ Thou hadst a father:—think of his grey hairs,
Houseless, and cuff’d by such a storm as this.
_Abraham._ God is thy father, and thou own’st not him.
_Fire-W._ I have a wife, as aged as myself,
And if she learn my death, she’ll not survive it,
No, not a day; she is so used to me;
So propp’d up by her other feeble self.
I pray thee, strike us not both down.
_Abraham_ (_still urging him_). God made
Husband and wife, and must be own’d of them,
Else he must needs disown them.
_Fire-W._ We have children,
One of them, sir, a daughter, who, next week,
Will all day long be going in and out,
Upon the watch for me; she, too, a wife,
And will be soon a mother. Spare, oh spare her!
She’s a good creature, and not strong.
_Abraham._ Mine ears
Are deaf to all things but thy blasphemy,
And to the coming of the Lord and God,
Who will this night condemn thee.
[_Abraham pushes him out; and remains alone, speaking._
For if ever
God came at night-time forth upon the world,
’Tis now this instant. Hark to the huge winds,
The cataracts of hail, and rocky thunder,
Splitting like quarries of the stony clouds,
Beneath the touching of the foot of God.
That was God’s speaking in the heavens,—that last
And inward utterance coming by itself.
What is it shaketh thus thy servant, Lord,
Making him fear, that in some loud rebuke
To this idolator, whom thou abhorrest,
Terror will slay himself? Lo, the earth quakes
Beneath my feet, and God is surely here.
[_A dead silence; and then a still small voice._
_The Voice._ Abraham!
_Abraham._ Where art thou, Lord? and who is it that speaks
So sweetly in mine ear, to bid me turn
And dare to face thy presence?
_The Voice._ Who but He
Whose mightiest utterance thou hast yet to learn?
I was not in the whirlwind, Abraham;
I was not in the thunder, or the earthquake;
But I am in the still small voice.
Where is the stranger whom thou tookest in?
_Abraham._ Lord, he denied thee, and I drove him forth.
_The Voice._ Then didst thou do what God himself forbore.
Have I, although he did deny me, borne
With his injuriousness these hundred years,
And couldst thou not endure him one sole night,
And such a night as this?
_Abraham._ Lord! I have sinn’d,
And will go forth, and if he be not dead,
Will call him back, and tell him of thy mercies
Both to himself, and me.
_The Voice._ Behold, and learn!
[_The Voice retires while it is speaking; and a fold of the tent
is turned back, disclosing the_ FIRE-WORSHIPPER, _who is calmly
sleeping, with his head on the back of a house-lamb_.
_Abraham._ O loving God! the lamb itself’s his pillow,
And on his forehead is a balmy dew,
And in his sleep he smileth. I, meantime,
Poor and proud fool, with my presumptuous hands,
Not God’s, was dealing judgments on his head,
Which God himself had cradled!—Oh, methinks
There’s more in this than prophet yet hath known,
And Faith, some day, will all in Love be shown.
THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE.
As one half of the world is said not to know how the other half lives,
so it may be affirmed that the upper half of the world neither knows
nor greatly cares how the lower half amuses itself. Believing that it
does not care, mainly because it does not know, we purpose occasionally
recording a few facts on this subject.
The general character of the lower class of dramatic amusements is
a very significant sign of a people, and a very good test of their
intellectual condition. We design to make our readers acquainted in
the first place with a few of our experiences under this head in the
metropolis.
It is probable that nothing will ever root out from among the common
people an innate love they have for dramatic entertainment in some
form or other. It would be a very doubtful benefit to society, we
think, if it could be rooted out. The Polytechnic Institution in Regent
Street, where an infinite variety of ingenious models are exhibited
and explained, and where lectures comprising a quantity of useful
information on many practical subjects are delivered, is a great
public benefit and a wonderful place, but we think a people formed
_entirely_ in their hours of leisure by Polytechnic Institutions would
be an uncomfortable community. We would rather not have to appeal
to the generous sympathies of a man of five-and-twenty, in respect
of some affliction of which he had had no personal experience, who
had passed all his holidays, when a boy, among cranks and cogwheels.
We should be more disposed to trust him if he had been brought into
occasional contact with a Maid and a Magpie; if he had made one or
two diversions into the Forest of Bondy; or had even gone the length
of a Christmas Pantomime. There is a range of imagination in most
of us, which no amount of steam-engines will satisfy; and which
The-great-exhibition-of-the-works-of-industry-of-all-nations, itself,
will probably leave unappeased. The lower we go, the more natural it is
that the best-relished provision for this should be found in dramatic
entertainments; as at once the most obvious, the least troublesome, and
the most real, of all escapes out of the literal world. Joe Whelks, of
the New Cut, Lambeth, is not much of a reader, has no great store of
books, no very commodious room to read in, no very decided inclination
to read, and no power at all of presenting vividly before his mind’s
eye what he reads about. But, put Joe in the gallery of the Victoria
Theatre; show him doors and windows in the scene that will open and
shut, and that people can get in and out of; tell him a story with
these aids, and by the help of live men and women dressed up, confiding
to him their innermost secrets, in voices audible half a mile off;
and Joe will unravel a story through all its entanglements, and sit
there as long after midnight as you have anything left to show him.
Accordingly, the Theatres to which Mr. Whelks resorts, are always full;
and whatever changes of fashion the drama knows elsewhere, it is always
fashionable in the New Cut.
The question, then, might not unnaturally arise, one would suppose,
whether Mr. Whelks’s education is at all susceptible of improvement,
through the agency of his theatrical tastes. How far it is improved at
present, our readers shall judge for themselves.
In affording them the means of doing so, we wish to disclaim any grave
imputation on those who are concerned in ministering to the dramatic
gratification of Mr. Whelks. Heavily taxed, wholly unassisted by the
State, deserted by the gentry, and quite unrecognised as a means of
public instruction, the higher English Drama has declined. Those who
would live to please Mr. Whelks, must please Mr. Whelks to live. It
is not the Manager’s province to hold the Mirror up to Nature, but to
Mr. Whelks—the only person who acknowledges him. If, in like manner,
the actor’s nature, like the dyer’s hand, become subdued to what he
works in, the actor can hardly be blamed for it. He grinds hard at his
vocation, is often steeped in direful poverty, and lives, at the best,
in a little world of mockeries. It is bad enough to give away a great
estate six nights a-week, and want a shilling; to preside at imaginary
banquets, hungry for a mutton chop; to smack the lips over a tankard
of toast and water, and declaim about the mellow produce of the sunny
vineyard on the banks of the Rhine; to be a rattling young lover, with
the measles at home; and to paint sorrow over, with burnt cork and
rouge; without being called upon to despise his vocation too. If he can
utter the trash to which he is condemned, with any relish, so much the
better for him, Heaven knows; and peace be with him!
A few weeks ago, we went to one of Mr. Whelks’s favourite Theatres,
to see an attractive Melo-Drama called MAY MORNING, OR THE MYSTERY OF
1715, AND THE MURDER! We had an idea that the former of these titles
might refer to the month in which either the Mystery or the Murder
happened, but we found it to be the name of the heroine, the pride
of Keswick Vale; who was ‘called May Morning’ (after a common custom
among the English Peasantry) ‘from her bright eyes and merry laugh.’ Of
this young lady, it may be observed, in passing, that she subsequently
sustained every possible calamity of human existence, in a white
muslin gown with blue tucks; and that she did every conceivable and
inconceivable thing with a pistol, that could anyhow be effected by
that description of fire-arms.
The Theatre was extremely full. The prices of admission were, to the
boxes, a shilling; to the pit, sixpence; to the gallery, threepence.
The gallery was of enormous dimensions (among the company, in the
front row, we observed Mr. Whelks); and overflowing with occupants. It
required no close observation of the attentive faces, rising one above
another, to the very door in the roof, and squeezed and jammed in,
regardless of all discomforts, even there, to impress a stranger with
a sense of its being highly desirable to lose no possible chance of
effecting any mental improvement in that great audience.
The company in the pit were not very clean or sweet-savoured, but there
were some good-humoured young mechanics among them, with their wives.
These were generally accompanied by ‘the baby,’ insomuch that the pit
was a perfect nursery. No effect made on the stage was so curious, as
the looking down on the quiet faces of these babies fast asleep, after
looking up at the staring sea of heads in the gallery. There were a
good many cold fried soles in the pit, besides; and a variety of flat
stone bottles, of all portable sizes.
The audience in the boxes was of much the same character (babies and
fish excepted) as the audience in the pit. A private in the Foot
Guards sat in the next box; and a personage who wore pins on his coat
instead of buttons, and was in such a damp habit of living as to be
quite mouldy, was our nearest neighbour. In several parts of the house
we noticed some young pickpockets of our acquaintance; but as they
were evidently there as private individuals, and not in their public
capacity, we were little disturbed by their presence. For we consider
the hours of idleness passed by this class of society as so much
gain to society at large; and we do not join in a whimsical sort of
lamentation that is generally made over them, when they are found to be
unoccupied.
As we made these observations the curtain rose, and we were presently
in possession of the following particulars.
Sir George Elmore, a melancholy Baronet with every appearance of
being in that advanced stage of indigestion in which Mr. Morrison’s
patients usually are, when they happen to hear, through Mr. Moat, of
the surprising effects of his Vegetable Pills, was found to be living
in a very large castle, in the society of one round table, two chairs,
and Captain George Elmore, ‘his supposed son, the Child of Mystery,
and the Man of Crime.’ The Captain, in addition to an undutiful habit
of bullying his father on all occasions, was a prey to many vices:
foremost among which may be mentioned his desertion of his wife,
‘Estella de Neva, a Spanish lady,’ and his determination unlawfully to
possess himself of May Morning; M. M. being then on the eve of marriage
to Will Stanmore, a cheerful sailor, with very loose legs.
The strongest evidence, at first, of the Captain’s being the Child
of Mystery and the Man of Crime was deducible from his boots, which,
being very high and wide, and apparently made of sticking-plaister,
justified the worst theatrical suspicions to his disadvantage. And
indeed he presently turned out as ill as could be desired: getting into
May Morning’s Cottage by the window after dark; refusing to ‘unhand’
May Morning when required to do so by that lady; waking May Morning’s
only surviving parent, a blind old gentleman with a black ribbon over
his eyes, whom we shall call Mr. Stars, as his name was stated in the
bill thus * * * * * *; and showing himself desperately bent on carrying
off May Morning by force of arms. Even this was not the worst of the
Captain; for, being foiled in his diabolical purpose—temporarily by
means of knives and pistols, providentially caught up and directed at
him by May Morning, and finally, for the time being, by the advent
of Will Stanmore—he caused one Slink, his adherent, to denounce Will
Stanmore as a rebel, and got that cheerful mariner carried off, and
shut up in prison. At about the same period of the Captain’s career,
there suddenly appeared in his father’s castle, a dark complexioned
lady of the name of Manuella, ‘a Zingara Woman from the Pyrenean
mountains; the wild wanderer of the heath, and the pronouncer of the
prophecy,’ who threw the melancholy baronet, his supposed father, into
the greatest confusion by asking him what he had upon his conscience,
and by pronouncing mysterious rhymes concerning the Child of Mystery
and the Man of Crime, to a low trembling of fiddles. Matters were in
this state when the Theatre resounded with applause, and Mr. Whelks
fell into a fit of unbounded enthusiasm, consequent on the entrance of
‘Michael the Mendicant.’
At first we referred something of the cordiality with which Michael
the Mendicant was greeted, to the fact of his being ‘made up’ with an
excessively dirty face, which might create a bond of union between
himself and a large majority of the audience. But it soon came out that
Michael the Mendicant had been hired in old time by Sir George Elmore,
to murder his (Sir George Elmore’s) elder brother—which he had done;
notwithstanding which little affair of honour, Michael was in reality
a very good fellow; quite a tender-hearted man; who, on hearing of the
Captain’s determination to settle Will Stanmore, cried out, ‘What! more
bel-ood!’ and fell flat—overpowered by his nice sense of humanity. In
like manner, in describing that small error of judgment into which he
had allowed himself to be tempted by money, this gentleman exclaimed,
‘I ster-ruck him down, and fel-ed in er-orror!’ and further he
remarked, with honest pride, ‘I have liveder as a beggar—a roadersider
vaigerant, but no ker-rime since then has stained these hands!’
All these sentiments of the worthy man were hailed with showers of
applause; and when, in the excitement of his feelings on one occasion,
after a soliloquy, he ‘went off’ _on his back_, kicking and shuffling
along the ground, after the manner of bold spirits in trouble, who
object to be taken to the station-house, the cheering was tremendous.
And to see how little harm he had done, after all! Sir George Elmore’s
elder brother was NOT dead. Not he! He recovered, after this sensitive
creature had ‘fel-ed in er-orror,’ and, putting a black ribbon over his
eyes to disguise himself, went and lived in a modest retirement with
his only child. In short, Mr. Stars was the identical individual! When
Will Stanmore turned out to be the wrongful Sir George Elmore’s son,
instead of the Child of Mystery and Man of Crime, who turned out to be
Michael’s son, (a change having been effected, in revenge, by the lady
from the Pyrenean Mountains, who became the Wild Wanderer of the Heath,
in consequence of the wrongful Sir George Elmore’s perfidy to her and
desertion of her), Mr. Stars went up to the Castle, and mentioned to
his murdering brother how it was. Mr. Stars said it was all right; he
bore no malice; he had kept out of the way, in order that his murdering
brother (to whose numerous virtues he was no stranger) might enjoy the
property; and now he would propose that they should make it up and dine
together. The murdering brother immediately consented, embraced the
Wild Wanderer, and it is supposed sent instructions to Doctors’ Commons
for a license to marry her. After which, they were all very comfortable
indeed. For it is not much to try to murder your brother for the sake
of his property, if you only suborn such a delicate assassin as Michael
the Mendicant!
All this did not tend to the satisfaction of the Child of Mystery and
Man of Crime, who was so little pleased by the general happiness,
that he shot Will Stanmore, now joyfully out of prison and going to
be married directly to May Morning, and carried off the body, and
May Morning to boot, to a lone hut. Here, Will Stanmore, laid out
for dead at fifteen minutes past twelve, P.M., arose at seventeen
minutes past, infinitely fresher than most daisies, and fought two
strong men single-handed. However, the Wild Wanderer, arriving with
a party of male wild wanderers, who were always at her disposal—and
the murdering brother arriving arm-in-arm with Mr. Stars—stopped the
combat, confounded the Child of Mystery and Man of Crime, and blessed
the lovers.
The adventures of ‘RED RIVEN THE BANDIT’ concluded the moral lesson
of the evening. But, feeling by this time a little fatigued, and
believing that we already discerned in the countenance of Mr. Whelks a
sufficient confusion between right and wrong to last him for one night,
we retired: the rather as we intended to meet him, shortly, at another
place of dramatic entertainment for the people.
AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF
MAD^{LLE} CLAIRON.
The occurrence related in the letter which we are about to quote, is
a remarkable instance of those apparently supernatural visitations
which it has been found so difficult (if not impossible) to explain and
account for. It does not appear to have been known to Scott, Brewster,
or any other English writer who has collected and endeavoured to
expound those ghostly phenomena.
Clairon was the greatest tragedian that ever appeared on the French
stage; holding on it a supremacy similar to that of Siddons on our own.
She was a woman of powerful intellect, and had the merit of effecting a
complete revolution in the French school of tragic acting; substituted
an easy, varied, and natural delivery for the stilted and monotonous
declamation which had till then prevailed, and being the first to
consult classic taste and propriety of costume. Her mind was cultivated
by habits of intimacy with the most distinguished men of her day; and
she was one of the most brilliant ornaments of those literary circles
which the contemporary Memoir writers describe in such glowing colours.
In an age of corruption, unparalleled in modern times, Mademoiselle
Clairon was not proof against the temptations to which her position
exposed her. But a lofty spirit, and some religious principles, which
she retained amidst a generation of infidels and scoffers, saved her
from degrading vices, and enabled her to spend an old age protracted
beyond the usual period of human life, in respectability and honour.
She died in 1803, at the age of eighty. She was nearly seventy when the
following letter was written. It was addressed to M. Henri Meister, a
man of some eminence among the literati of that period; the associate
of Diderot, Grimm, D’Holbach, M. and Madame Necker, &c., and the
_collaborateur_ of Grimm in his famous ‘Correspondence.’ This gentleman
was Clairon’s ‘literary executor;’ having been intrusted with her
Memoirs, written by herself, and published after her death.
With this preface we give Mademoiselle Clairon’s narrative, written
in her old age, of an occurrence which had taken place half a century
before.
* * * * *
‘In 1743, my youth, and my success on the stage, had drawn round me a
good many admirers. M. de S——, the son of a merchant in Brittany, about
thirty years old, handsome, and possessed of considerable talent, was
one of those who were most strongly attached to me. His conversation
and manners were those of a man of education and good society, and
the reserve and timidity which distinguished his attention made a
favourable impression on me. After a green-room acquaintance of some
time I permitted him to visit me at my house, but a better knowledge
of his situation and character was not to his advantage. Ashamed of
being only a _bourgeois_, he was squandering his fortune at Paris under
an assumed title. His temper was severe and gloomy; he knew mankind
too well, he said, not to despise and avoid them. He wished to see
no one but me, and desired from me, in return, a similar sacrifice
of the world. I saw, from this time, the necessity, for his own sake
as well as mine, of destroying his hopes by reducing our intercourse
to terms of less intimacy. My behaviour brought upon him a violent
illness, during which I showed him every mark of friendly interest, but
firmly refused to deviate from the course I had adopted. My steadiness
only deepened his wound; and unhappily, at this time, a treacherous
relative, to whom he had intrusted the management of his affairs, took
advantage of his helpless condition by robbing him, and leaving him so
destitute that he was obliged to accept the little money I had, for his
subsistence, and the attendance which his condition required. You must
feel, my dear friend, the importance of never revealing this secret. I
respect his memory, and I would not expose him to the insulting pity of
the world. Preserve, then, the religious silence which after many years
I now break for the first time.
‘At length he recovered his property, but never his health; and
thinking I was doing him a service by keeping him at a distance from
me, I constantly refused to receive either his letters or his visits.
‘Two years and a half elapsed between this period and that of his
death. He sent to beg me to see him once more in his last moments, but
I thought it necessary not to comply with his wish. He died, having
with him only his domestics, and an old lady, his sole companion for
a long time. He lodged at that time on the Rempart, near the Chaussée
d’Antin; I resided in the Rue de Bussy, near the Abbaye St. Germain. My
mother lived with me; and that night we had a little party to supper.
We were very gay, and I was singing a lively air, when the clock struck
eleven, and the sound was succeeded by a long and piercing cry of
unearthly horror. The company looked aghast; I fainted, and remained
for a quarter of an hour totally insensible. We then began to reason
about the nature of so frightful a sound, and it was agreed to set a
watch in the street in case it were repeated.
‘It was repeated very often. All our servants, my friends, my
neighbours, even the police, heard the same cry, always at the same
hour, always proceeding from under my windows, and appearing to come
from the empty air. I could not doubt that it was meant entirely for
me. I rarely supped abroad; but the nights I did so, nothing was heard;
and several times, when I came home, and was asking my mother and
servants if they had heard anything, it suddenly burst forth, as if
in the midst of us. One night, the President de B——, at whose house I
had supped, desired to see me safe home. While he was bidding me “good
night” at my door, the cry broke out seemingly from something between
him and me. He, like all Paris, was aware of the story; but he was so
horrified, that his servants lifted him into his carriage more dead
than alive.
‘Another time, I asked my comrade Rosely to accompany me to the Rue St.
Honoré, to choose some stuffs, and then to pay a visit to Mademoiselle
de St. P——, who lived near the Porte Saint-Denis. My ghost story (as it
was called) was the subject of our whole conversation. This intelligent
young man was struck by my adventure, though he did not believe there
was anything supernatural in it. He pressed me to evoke the phantom,
promising to believe if it answered my call. With weak audacity I
complied, and suddenly the cry was heard three times with fearful
loudness and rapidity. When we arrived at our friend’s door both of us
were found senseless in the carriage.
‘After this scene, I remained for some months without hearing anything.
I thought it was all over; but I was mistaken.
‘All the public performances had been transferred to Versailles on
account of the marriage of the Dauphin. We were to pass three days
there, but sufficient lodgings were not provided for us. Madame
Grandval had no apartment; and I offered to share with her the room
with two beds which had been assigned to me in the avenue of St. Cloud.
I gave her one of the beds and took the other. While my maid was
undressing to lie down beside me, I said to her, “We are at the world’s
end here, and it is dreadful weather; the cry would be somewhat puzzled
to get at us.” In a moment it rang through the room. Madame Grandval
ran in her night-dress from top to bottom of the house, in which nobody
closed an eye for the rest of the night. This, however, was the last
time the cry was heard.
‘Seven or eight days afterwards, while I was chatting with my usual
evening circle, the sound of the clock striking eleven was followed
by the report of a gun fired at one of the windows. We all heard the
noise, we all saw the fire, yet the window was undamaged. We concluded
that some one sought my life, and that it was necessary to take
precautions against another attempt. The Intendant des Menus Plaisirs,
who was present, flew to the house of his friend, M. de Marville, the
Lieutenant of Police. The houses opposite mine were instantly searched,
and for several days were guarded from top to bottom. My house was
closely examined; the street was filled with spies in all possible
disguises. But, notwithstanding all this vigilance, the same explosion
was heard and seen for three whole months always at the same hour, and
at the same window-pane, without any one being able to discover from
whence it proceeded. This fact stands recorded in the registers of the
police.
‘Nothing was heard for some days; but, having been invited by
Mademoiselle Dumesnil[1] to join a little evening party at her house
near the _Barrière blanche_, I got into a hackney-coach at eleven
o’clock with my maid. It was clear moonlight as we passed along the
Boulevards, which were then beginning to be studded with houses.
While we were looking at the half-finished buildings, my maid said,
“Was it not in this neighbourhood that M. de S—— died?” “From what I
have heard,” I answered, “I think it should be there”—pointing with
my finger to a house before us. From that house came the same gunshot
that I had heard before. It seemed to traverse our carriage, and the
coachman set off at full speed, thinking we were attacked by robbers.
We arrived at Mademoiselle Dumesnil’s in a state of the utmost terror;
a feeling I did not get rid of for a long time.’
[Footnote 1: The celebrated tragedian.]
[Mademoiselle Clairon gives some further details similar to the above,
and adds that the noises finally ceased in about two years and a half.
After this, intending to change her residence, she put up a bill on the
house she was leaving; and many people made the pretext of looking at
the apartments an excuse for gratifying their curiosity to see, in her
every-day guise, the great tragedian of the Théâtre Français.]
‘One day I was told that an old lady desired to see my rooms. Having
always had a great respect for the aged, I went down to receive her.
An unaccountable emotion seized me on seeing her, and I perceived that
she was moved in a similar manner. I begged her to sit down, and we
were both silent for some time. At length she spoke, and, after some
preparation, came to the subject of her visit.
‘“I was, mademoiselle, the best friend of M. de S——, and the only
friend whom he would see during the last year of his life. We spoke
of you incessantly; I urging him to forget you,—he protesting that he
would love you beyond the tomb. Your eyes which are full of tears allow
me to ask you why you made him so wretched; and how, with such a mind
and such feelings as yours, you could refuse him the consolation of
once more seeing and speaking to you?”
‘“We cannot,” I answered, “command our sentiments. M. de S—— had merit
and estimable qualities; but his gloomy, bitter, and overbearing temper
made me equally afraid of his company, his friendship, and his love.
To make him happy, I must have renounced all intercourse with society,
and even the exercise of my talents. I was poor and proud; I desire,
and hope I shall ever desire, to owe nothing to any one but myself. My
friendship for him prompted me to use every endeavour to lead him to
more just and reasonable sentiments: failing in this, and persuaded
that his obstinacy proceeded less from the excess of his passion than
from the violence of his character, I took the firm resolution to
separate from him entirely. I refused to see him in his last moments,
because the sight would have rent my heart; because I feared to appear
too barbarous if I remained inflexible, and to make myself wretched if
I yielded. Such, madame, are the motives of my conduct,—motives for
which, I think, no one can blame me.”
‘“It would indeed,” said the lady, “be unjust to condemn you. My poor
friend himself in his reasonable moments acknowledged all that he owed
you. But his passion and his malady overcame him, and your refusal to
see him hastened his last moments. He was counting the minutes, when
at half-past ten, his servant came to tell him that decidedly you
would not come. After a moment’s silence, he took me by the hand with
a frightful expression of despair. ‘Barbarous woman!’ he cried; ‘but
she will gain nothing by her cruelty. As I have followed her in life, I
shall follow her in death!’ I endeavoured to calm him;—he was dead.”
‘I need scarcely tell you, my dear friend, what effect these last words
had upon me. Their analogy to all my apparitions filled me with terror,
but time and reflection calmed my feelings. The consideration that I
was neither the better nor the worse for all that had happened to me,
have led me to ascribe it all to chance. I do not, indeed, know what
_chance_ is; but it cannot be denied that the something which goes by
that name has a great influence on all that passes in the world.
‘Such is my story; do with it what you will. If you intend to make it
public, I beg you to suppress the initial letter of the name, and the
name of the province.’
* * * * *
This last injunction was not, as we see, strictly complied with; but,
at the distance of half a century, the suppression of a name was
probably of little consequence.
There is no reason to doubt the entire truth of Mademoiselle Clairon’s
narrative. The incidents which she relates made such a deep and
enduring impression on her mind, that it remained uneffaced during
the whole course of her brilliant career, and, almost at the close of
a long life spent in the bustle and business of the world, inspired
her with solemn and religious thoughts. Those incidents can scarcely
be ascribed to delusions of her imagination; for she had a strong
and cultivated mind, not likely to be influenced by superstitious
credulity; and besides, the mysterious sounds were heard by others as
well as herself, and had become the subject of general conversation
in Paris. The suspicion of a trick or conspiracy never seems to have
occurred to her, though such a supposition is the only way in which
the circumstances can be explained; and we are convinced that this
explanation, though not quite satisfactory in every particular, is the
real one. Several portentous occurrences, equally or more marvellous,
have thus been accounted for.
Our readers remember the history of the Commissioners of the Roundhead
Parliament for the sequestration of the royal domains, who were
terrified to death, and at last fairly driven out of the Palace of
Woodstock, by a series of diabolical sounds and sights, which were long
afterwards discovered to be the work of one of their own servants, Joe
Tomkins by name, a loyalist in the disguise of a puritan. The famous
‘Cock-lane Ghost,’ which kept the town in agitation for months, and
baffled the penetration of multitudes of the divines, philosophers, and
literati of the day, was a young girl of some eleven or twelve years
old, whose mysterious knockings were produced by such simple means,
that their remaining so long undetected is the most marvellous part
of the story. This child was the agent of a conspiracy formed by her
father, with some confederates, to ruin the reputation of a gentleman
by means of pretended revelations from the dead. For this conspiracy
these persons were tried, and the father, the most guilty party,
underwent the punishment of the pillory.
A more recent story is that of the ‘Stockwell Ghost,’ which forms the
subject of a volume published in 1772, and is shortly told by Mr.
Hone in the first volume of his ‘Every Day Book.’ Mrs. Golding, an
elderly lady residing at Stockwell, in Surrey, had her house disturbed
by portents, which not only terrified her and her family, but spread
alarm through the vicinity. Strange noises were heard proceeding from
empty parts of the house, and heavy articles of furniture, glass and
earthenware, were thrown down and broken in pieces before the eyes of
the family and neighbours. Mrs. Golding, driven by terror from her
own dwelling, took refuge, first in one neighbouring house, and then
in another, and thither the prodigies followed her. It was observed
that her maid-servant, Ann Robinson, was always present when these
things took place, either in Mrs. Golding’s own house, or in those
of the neighbours. This girl, who had lived only about a week with
her mistress, became the subject of mistrust and was dismissed, after
which the disturbances entirely ceased. But the matter rested on mere
suspicion. ‘Scarcely any one,’ says Mr. Hone, ‘who lived at that time
listened patiently to the presumption, or without attributing the whole
to witchcraft.’ At length Mr. Hone himself obtained a solution of the
mystery from a gentleman who had become acquainted with Ann Robinson
many years after the affair happened, and to whom she had confessed
that she alone had produced all these supernatural horrors, by fixing
wires or horse-hairs to different articles, according as they were
heavy or light, and thus throwing them down, with other devices equally
simple, which the terror and confusion of the spectators prevented
them from detecting. The girl began these tricks to forward some love
affair, and continued them for amusement when she saw the effect they
produced.
Remembering these cases, we can have little doubt that Mademoiselle
Clairon’s maid was the author of the noises which threw her mistress
and her friends into such consternation. Her own house was generally
the place where these things happened; and on the most remarkable
occasions where they happened elsewhere, it is expressly mentioned that
the maid was present. At St. Cloud it was to the maid, who was her
bed-fellow, that Clairon was congratulating herself on being out of
the way of the cry, when it suddenly was heard in the very room. She
had her maid in the carriage with her on the Boulevards, and it was
immediately after the girl had asked her a question about the death
of M. de S—— that the gunshot was heard, which seemed to traverse
the carriage. Had the maid a confederate—perhaps her fellow-servant
on the box—to whom she might have given the signal? When Mademoiselle
Clairon went a-shopping to the Rue St. Honoré, she probably had her
maid with her, either in or outside the carriage; and, indeed, in
every instance the noises took place when the maid would most probably
have been present, or close at hand. In regard to the unearthly cry,
she might easily have produced it herself without any great skill in
ventriloquism, or the art of imitating sounds; a supposition which is
rendered the more probable, as its realisation was rendered the more
easy, by the fact of no words having been uttered—merely a wild cry.
Most of the common itinerant ventriloquists on our public race-courses
can utter speeches for an imaginary person without any perceptible
motion of the lips; the utterance of a mere sound in this way would be
infinitely less difficult.
The noises resembling the report of firearms (very likely to have been
unconsciously, and in perfect good faith, exaggerated by the terror of
the hearers) may have been produced by a confederate fellow-servant,
or a lover. It is to be observed, that the first time this seeming
report was heard, the houses opposite were guarded by the police, and
spies were placed in the street, but Mademoiselle Clairon’s own house
was merely ‘examined.’ It is evident that these precautions, however
effectual against a plot conducted from without, could have no effect
whatever against tricks played within her house by one or more of her
own servants.
As to the maid-servant’s motives for engaging in this series of
deceptions, many may have existed and been sufficiently strong; the
lightest, which we shall state last, would probably be the strongest.
She may have been in communication with M. de S——’s relations for some
hidden purpose which never was effected. How far this circumstance
may be connected with the date of the first portent, the very night
of the young man’s death, or whether that coincidence was simply
accidental, is matter for conjecture. The old lady, his relative, who
afterwards visited Clairon, and told her a tale calculated to fill her
with superstitious dread, _may_ herself have been the maid-servant’s
employer for some similar purpose; or (which is at least equally
probable) the tale may have had nothing whatever to do with the sound,
and may have been perfectly true. But all experience in such cases
assures us that the love of mischief, or the love of power, and the
desire of being important, would be sufficient motives to the maid for
such a deception. The more frightened Clairon was, the more necessary
and valuable her maid became to her, naturally. A thousand instances
of long-continued deception on the part of young women, begun in mere
folly, and continued for the reasons just mentioned, though continued
at an immense cost of trouble, resolution, and self-denial in all other
respects, are familiar to most readers of strange transactions, medical
and otherwise. There seem to be strong grounds for the conclusion that
the maid was the principal, if not the sole agent in this otherwise
supernatural part of this remarkable story.
THE WAYSIDE WELL.
O! The pretty wayside well,
Wreathed about with roses,
Where, beguiled with soothing spell,
Weary foot reposes.
With a welcome fresh and green,
Wave thy border grasses,
By the dusty traveller seen,
Sighing as he passes.
Treads the drover on thy sward,
Comes the beggar to thee,
Free as gentleman or lord
From his steed to woo thee.
Thou from parching lip dost earn
Many a murmured blessing;
And enjoyest in thy turn
Innocent caressing.
Fair the greeting face ascends,
Like a naiad daughter,
When the peasant lassie bends
To thy trembling water.
When she leans upon her pail,
Glancing o’er the meadow,—
Sweet shall fall the whispered tale,
Soft the double shadow!
Mortals love thy crystal cup;
Nature seems to pet thee,—
Seething Summer’s fiery lip
Hath no power to fret thee.
Coolly sheltered, hid from smirch,
In thy cavelet shady,
O’er thee in a silver birch
Stoops a forest lady.
To thy glass the Star of Eve
Shyly dares to bend her;
Matron Moon thy depths receive,
Globed in mellow splendour.
—Bounteous Spring! for ever own
Undisturbed thy station,—
Not to thirsty lips alone
Serving mild donation.
Never come the newt or frog,
Pebble thrown in malice,
Mud, or withered leaves, to clog
Or defile thy chalice;
Heaven be still within thy ken,
Through the veil thou wearest,—
Glimpsing clearest, as with men,
When the boughs are barest!
A BUNDLE OF EMIGRANTS’ LETTERS.
A scheme has been propounded by MRS. CHISHOLM, a lady to whose great
exertions in reference to the emigration of the poor, especially of her
own sex, the public is much indebted,—for the establishment of what it
is proposed to call ‘A Family Colonisation Loan Society.’
The design is based, in the main, upon three positions. First ‘that
it is melancholy to reflect that thousands of British subjects should
wander about, more like spectres than beings of flesh and blood; and
that hundreds should die from starvation, while our vast colonies could
provide abundantly for them.’ Secondly, ‘that in England a society is
much needed, the great moral aim of which should be to check crime,
by protecting and encouraging virtue.’ Thirdly, ‘that the zealous
endeavours of the charitable, _combined with the industrious and frugal
efforts of the working classes themselves_,’ could accomplish great
ends in the way of emigration.
For these leading considerations, it is proposed that the projected
society should assist persons desiring to emigrate, by loans of money
for two years or longer without interest. That these loans should be
made to friendly parties or groups of approved individuals, acquainted
with the character of each other, and becoming jointly and severally
responsible for the loans made to them. That agents should be appointed
in different parts of Australia, to maintain a general knowledge of the
emigrants so assisted, and a general communication with them; and that
the advances should always bear a certain proportion to the amount of
the funds raised by the emigrants themselves, or by their friends in
the Colonies, at the time of their making application for assistance to
quit this country.
The re-uniting of various members of one family when some have
emigrated, while others have been left at home; and the removal of the
difficulty too often found in raising sufficient funds to effect this
re-union, is one important object of Mrs. Chisholm’s scheme. And it
must not be forgotten that money lent and repaid, would be lent again
and again; and thus the good effected by one small sum would become
quite incalculable.
It is admitted in the published letter setting forth the design, that
the friends and well-wishers of the society can hardly expect the
full confidence of the public at its commencement; the great moral
problem being yet to be solved; ‘whether the various grades of our
working classes can be trusted, or whether, with all our religious,
moral, social, and commercial advantages, we are rearing rogues or
honest men;’ at the same time it is understood on the authority of the
projectress, that in numerous cases where private advances have been
made with similar objects, the rule has been gratitude and honesty—not
ingratitude and dishonesty; and that her personal experience on
this point, under many disadvantageous circumstances, is powerfully
encouraging.
There may be difficulties in the details of such a plan; and it is
possible that many persons who would retain an honourable sense of an
obligation to an individual, would subside into a more lax morality,
if the obligation were to a Board. The observation is trite enough,
that a number of individuals united in an association will do,
without any scruple, in the name of the society, what each of them
would deem unworthy of his own character; but there are two sides to
this question, and it is equally certain that many persons will take
advantage of an associated body, if they can, who would hesitate to
cheat any single member of it.
Reserving such questions, there can be little doubt, we apprehend, of
the soundness of the three positions we have briefly stated. It is
unquestionably melancholy that thousands upon thousands of people,
ready and willing to labour, should be wearing away life hopelessly in
this island, while within a few months’ sail—within a few weeks’ when
steam communication with Australia shall be established—there are vast
tracts of country where no man who is willing to work hard (but that
he must be, or he had best not go there), can ever know want. That we
have come to an absurd pass, in our costly regard for those who have
committed crime, and our neglect of those who have not, must be every
day more manifest to rational men whose thoughts are not confined
within the walls of prisons, but can take the air outside. Nor is it to
be contested—either that where it is possible for the poor, by great
self-denial, to scrape together a portion of the means of going abroad,
it is extremely important to encourage them to do so, in practical
illustration of the wholesome precept that Heaven helps those who help
themselves; or that they who do so help themselves, give a proof of
their fitness for emigration, in one essential, and establish a strong
claim on legitimate sympathy and benevolence, to do the rest.
Besides which, it appears to us that there are strong reasons in favour
of this emigration of groups of people. It is not only that colonial
experience, acting on this side of the water, can wisely proportion the
amount of strength and the amount of weakness in each group—the number
of single people, the number of married people, the number of men, the
number of women, and the number of children—but it is, that from little
communities thus established, other and larger communities will rise in
time, bound together in a love of the old country still fondly spoken
of as Home, in the remembrance of many old struggles shared together,
of many new ties formed since, and in the salutary influence and
restraint of a kind of social opinion, even amid the wild solitudes of
Australia.
These remarks have originated in the circumstance of our having on our
desk certain letters from emigrants in Australia, written to relatives
and friends here—to serve no purpose, to support no theory, but simply
to relate how they are doing, and what they know about the country, and
to express their desire to have their dearest relatives and friends
about them. As the truth, whatever it may be, on such a subject,
cannot be, we think, too plainly stated or too widely diffused in this
country, we consider ourselves fortunate in the possession of these
documents. We are responsible, of course, for their being genuine, and
we write with the originals before us. The passages we shall give are
accurately copied, with no correction, and with no omission, but that
of names when they occur.
The first is from a man in Sydney, who writes to his brother. He ‘would
like to come to England for one day and no more to see the Railways and
the baptist chappel.’
If you can emigrate out i shall be able to provide for you Send me
word in your next what progress you are making toward finding your
way out here do not stop there to staarve for as bad as Sydney is
no one that is willing to work need want i am beginning to think of
expecting some or all of you out i have told you what i can do and
look to God and he will do the rest for you dear brothere send answer
to this as soon as Possoble that is if you can understand it but it
is wrote so bad i think it will take some time to make it out.
The next is from a man at Melbourne writing to his wife:
My Dear and most beloved Wife this is the 7th letters I have written
and sincerly hope this may find you and my dear children in good
health likewise all my friends and acquaintances but I have not yet
received one from you excepting the one Mr W brought I am realy very
anxious about you particularly as I hear such bad accounts from home
you are in my thoughts day and night Oh that I could see you here
then you would spend the hapiest days you have ever yet spent there
is not the care and trouble on your mind here as there is at home but
God knows I have my share of it about you but I persevere for your
benefit. My dear wife do keep up your spirits and come as soon as
you can you will not have to study wich is the cheapest way to get a
meal here you can judge for yourself when I tell you that the best
flour is only 20 shillings the sack and such quality that you cannot
buy in England the bread is the best bread I ever eat in my life
and the meat very fine and no price at all for instance I saw a man
on Saturday night last buy a very fine round of beef and a fine leg
of mutton for 2 shillings and for all that Butchers is a very good
trade here there are several Establishments called the boiling down
houses where they boil down Bullocks and sheep for the fat only and
one house alone will boil down 800 and sometimes a 1000 in one day
this may seem almost incredible to you but it is a fact and the beast
must be of the best quality sheeps heads and plucks you can have by
wheel barrows full for fetching away for people never think of eating
such stuff as they call it ox tails you can have for fetching away
but you must skin them yourselfe so much for meat. Tea is 1_s_ 6_d_
lb but it can be bought for 1_s_ by the chest Coffee is 9_d_ lb wich
can be bought for 5_d_ but you must roast yourselfe or send it to the
roasters but you can do it at home very well for every body has what
is called a lamp oven here which costs about 7 or 8 shilling and you
can bake your bread or your dinners at your own fireplace Potatoes
are rather dear they are 1_d_ lb but they are butifully fine onions
the same price Cabbages 1½ and 2_d_ each fresh butter 1_s_ 6_d_ lb
and salt do 1_s_ 2_d_ lb Mushrooms grow very plentiful you may go
and get a bushell some time before breakfast I have taken a deal of
notice in the people here they do not study economy as they ought
if you where here we could save money fast I am determined to buy a
peice of ground shortly and I intend joining the building society but
I dont know what to do untill I heare from you I am daily expecting
a letter from you I know I could not have had one much sooner for
I recon upon ten months to get an answer. I am still living in the
little cottage and I have worked very hard lattely I dare say you
will be suprised when I tell you that I have been at work as a joiner
the last 3 months and I have made 3 Chests of drawers at home in my
over time since for a Master Cabinet Maker I expect a winters work
at the carpentering as there are a great many Buildings going on
here I am happy to say that I enjoy most excellent health indeed it
would be a sin to wish for a better state of health I never have
had the slightest cough since I came here I have had a slight touch
of my old Complant in the legs but I have got a presription which
cures it directly the Chemist that made it up told me that my stomach
must be like iron and my Constitution as strong as a horse to take
it the doctor told me to wear flanell drawers so I got 2 pair and
since then I never have it. Rents are rising rapidly here you cant
get a cottage with 2 rooms under 7 or 8 shillings a week they have
rose my rent to 5_s_ I almost forgot to say that I shall have 10_s_
monthly to pay in the Building Sosiety and 10_s_ entrance it began
in January so I shall have the back money to pay and it is expected
that it will run out in six years and then you will get 120 pounds
out if you let it lay the whole time there is two of them and they
are going on flourishing. I have been at work at the builders now 11
weeks and have not lost an hour till last week and then I only lost
a quarter which was 1_s_ 6_d_ but I got 10_s_ profit for I had an
infant to bury. I made the coffin after I done work that is the first
funeral I have been to they never keep a corpse more than 2 days. I
have been thinking a great deal about Alfred wether his master will
give him his time out to come with you Tell my dear sarah that
I have got a beautiful parrot for her I tried hard to rear some to
send home to jane and one for poor C. but they died I think of Mr
and Mrs C. and fameley very often I wish he was here to have a glass
of ale and a pipe with him but he must not expect a long pipe here
for they smoke nothing but short pipes about 6 inches long and the
blacker they are the better they like them and you have to give ½
each for them give my best respects to him I shall always be glad to
hear of his welfare I do hope it will be in my power to reward him
for his kindness before long and to Mrs C. and fameley give my love
to my brothers and sisters with one exception tell master he would do
well here it is an excelent business here indeed one of the best give
my love to my dear children. Oh that the day may not be far distant
when my happiness may be more Complete by seeing them and you on the
happy shore in the _Province of Victoria_ this is the new name given
by the Queen for Port Phillip. My dear as soon as I get a letter from
you letting me know that you are coming then I shall begin to make up
things for my selfe but untill then I am unsettled which way to act
for I have saved a few pounds wich will be very much wanted to lay
out and I have bought myselfe several things since I have been here
that I could not do without, I have been very carefull and am almost
a Teetotaler I very seldom drink anything but I will live well and I
feel the benefit of it in my strength for I have lately often worked
from 4 in the morning till 11 at night and dont feel half so tired as
I used with half a days work but sometimes I am almost compelled to
go and get a pint of beer for the sake of company as I am at home by
my selfe and no one to speak to. I get very dull there is no notice
taken of Easter here. I worked all day on Good friday and Easter
monday the Melbourn races are thought the most of it lasts 3 days
but I worked all the time and did not go to see them I cant enjoy
pleasure untill you come to share it with me.
This poor fellow seems to be possessed of an appetite which must have
been very inconvenient to him at home. This is his account of a light
supper he had one night:
I almost forgot to say that I wanted something for my supper saturday
night so I went to the butchers to get some chops and I had a pound
and half of the loin 2_d_ fine sheep hearts and a sheep kidney and
how much do you think they was why only 4_d_ the lot a fine bullocks
kidney is only 2 and a very fine shin of beef 4_d_ or 6_d_ what will
the London butcher say to this. Poultry is rather dear but it is
about the same price as at home.
Finding himself not quite well, and perhaps a little affected in his
digestion by the trifling meal just described, he put himself on short
commons as follows:
Yesterday being sunday I took some medecin so I got 4 lbs ½ of
the neck of mutton and made myselfe some nice broth and some suet
dumplings the meat only cost me 4_d_½ I think my dear I have stated
facts wich ought to cheer you up and you must consider that the sun
has been clouded from us a long time but thank God that cloud I hope
is being removed and our sunny day are yet to come. I have no doubt
about it I can assure you I have not the slightes wish to see England
again I dont know wether I told you that all sorts of clothing is
much about the same here as home there is some very fine linen
drapers shops here there is one thing that is very dear here and that
is artificial flowers the comonest is a shilling a sprig flannel is
1 8 a yard the ladies dress very fashionable here My dear as I have
nothing more to say at present I must conclude with hoping you will
keep up your spirits and that you may have a pleasant and prosperous
Voyage wich there is no fear of for it is considered the best voyage
out of london. I shall write directly I receive your letter which I
am sure will not be long.
A gentleman, who has been ordained as a clergyman of the Church of
England, writes thus of Sydney at present:
Sydney is at present crowded with _respectable_ young men,—Bankers
and merchants’ clerks, artists and such kind of people, are not
wanted at all, so that many of them having but small means are quite
in despair. They are almost useless to the settlers and people
in the Bush and can find no occupation in town and are therefore
liable to every temptation. I hope you will exert all your influence
in preventing such people from coming out here, unless they come
prepared to go into the Bush as shepherds, &c.
A vast number of the orphans who have come out here have turned out
ill in consequence of the bad training at home. They fancy they are
young ladies and that they ought to sit and knit or just take a walk
on the race course or in the domain, with children. They have not the
slightest idea of industry, nor do they understand what household
work is. All this they should be practically taught in the old
country, and it would save much disappointment and misery when they
arrive here.
A poor woman at Sydney, re-united to her children, writes,—
Dear Friend,
Your kind note of Dec. 4th I have received informing me that you had
obtained passage to this port for my children. They safely arrived
by the Castle Eden all in good health. They however left their box
of clothes behind at Plymouth and I have not as yet been able to get
any account of it. It appears to be lost, but as _they_ arrived safe
I do not care to trouble any one to enquire for this. The oldest girl
got married about five months since to a respectable young man a
tradesman, a pretty good match—the next boy is apprenticed six months
ago to the wheelwright business and the next boy is four months
apprenticed to a boot and shoemaker—the other the little one I have
myself. My own health is pretty good, and although times are rather
dull just now yet I hope that I shall find enough to do to keep along
with. Many ships have arrived here with emigrants and this for a
time causes rather more to be looking for situations than there are
situations to be filled, but most of them go into the country.
An orphan girl at Bathurst, to whom the Emigration Company granted a
free passage, writes thence to a lady in Ireland, ‘If in case any
emigrants were coming to Sydney, _to send me my little sisters which I
left at home_.’ Another sighs from ‘Patrick’s Plains, New South Wales,’
for another sister. In these cases, and in that of the wife of the good
fellow with the appetite, it seems to us that a society on the proposed
plan would do great service, and run little risk. Also in such an
instance as the following:
Melbourne, Port Phillip
My Dear Brother and Sister
I now take this opportunity of writing a more lengthened letter
than my last which I wrote in haste in which I Enclosed a Draft for
the sum of twenty five pounds £25 payable to you on the Bank of
Australasia in Austin Friars London thirty days after sight, which I
hope you will get Safe. I also send by this ship’s Mail another Draft
for the same money only to Ensure the money safe in case one ship
might get lost on the passage to London and one Draft I Keep myself.
I hope as soon as you receive my letter that you will not make any
Delay but write to me Immediately and I hope and trust you will send
me a long letter for nothing will give me more pleasure than to hear
a little about you all not Omitting one of you you wrote to me for
£30 but £25 is all I can spare for the present. I have been perfectly
aware of the state of England Ever Since I left or I should have been
among you many years since but now I have banished all thoughts from
my mind of ever seeing England, the way to Say it is don’t want, for
ever since I have been here I _have not seen anybody in want_ but at
the present time wages is not quite so good as they were when I wrote
to you first that is in Consequence of the late Influx of Emigration
of late, you say you have not left a stone unturned to try to get to
me the reason is you don’t understand farming nor sheep, I am sorry
poor mother has met with the accident of which you Say poor Creature
Mother must by this time be quite Infirm, and I am happy to hear
my sister marys Child I will now say a man Thomas is quite well I
suppose he cannot recollect me 20 years since I saw him, I have often
thought of him when he first Called me uncle, If I am not mistaken
you are the only one who had written anything to me about him I was
very fond of him and my Kind love to him and I hope he has the use
of his feet. I was not aware of you being married you never stated
how long you had been so whether girls or boys what age, now this is
unkind of you was it my case I should have told you all particulars
with their age and Everything, assist poor Mother all you Can for
what kindness I have received from her now think of that. It appears
to me that you are all in a thriving way you four Children and your
Sister Eight, as I stated in my last letter here I am Tom nobody but
myself but you must Endeavour to Increase your family to the same
number. I suppose your wife will laugh at me making so bold to Say
so but she must forgive me and she must Say so in your next Letter
to me my kind love to her and your Children and I hope I shall have
that happiness of seeing you all with me before this time 12 months.
I will try to make you all as comfortable as my circumstances will
admit please the Almighty to spare me but I have my troubles in
another way to yours. I believe I told you I had separated from my
wife some years since In Consequence of her taking to Drink but she
followed me over to port phillip of late since you recd my letter. I
gave her another trial and I expended about £20 but all to no purpose
therefore I have left her about four months since she has kept me
back considerably in pocket but still I Care not, so long as the
almighty spares my health how happy I should be if you was with me,
but please God in the meanwhile I will Endeavour to purchase about an
Acre of Land on some of the Townships so that it will at all times
be your Own and a home as long as you live but at the present time
I hold a Ticket for which I gave five Guineas for landed property
to be drawn in a Lottery in the port philip District at present
belonging to the Bank of Australasia when you take your Draft for
the £25 which I remit to you ask any of the proprietors of the Bank
and no Doubt they will Explain all to you about the Drawing for they
are all prizes from 640 acres of land in a prize to ½ an acre as
also Dwelling houses. should I be fortunate to get a grand Drawing
it shall be all for the sole benefit of you and yours I do certainly
expect things will get rather worse that is as far as regards wages,
but at the present time when all things is considered now being the
middle of winter the slackest time of year but still should it be as
I anticipe, then it will be Ten times better than England as you Say
you can scarcely keep the wolf from the Door but here you can for
you Can and we do buy a sheep at a time from 4_s_ 6_d_ to 6_s_ each
oftentimes a milking cow from £1,0,0, to thirty shillings sometimes
less a Sack of flour of 200 weight of the best quallity for one
pound sugar 2_d_½ per lb 1_s_ 6_d_ per lb for Tea Everything will
seem Quite strange if you come I must Initiate you in our colonial
ways you will not be like many who arrives here strangers that know
no one. I hope should you come you will bring as many newspapers
as you can as also books should you have any for I am very fond of
reading should you Engage with the Emigration agents to come Out you
will Immediately post a letter in London to me stating the name of
the Ship you will be likely to arrive in so that on her Arrival in
port phillip I will come on board for you as also on your arrival
here you will send a letter Directly from the Ship to me by the post
as probably by that means I may get one Safe for where the Shipping
Come to anchor is nine miles from Melbourne Just off williams Town.
I sent you the first Draft for the £25 by mail that went to London
in the ship General Palmer as I am to send by two separate Ships on
the receipt of any of my letters you will write to me Immediately you
will if you possibly can to bring some recommendations they may be a
service to you att all Events they will do you no harm should it cause
you any trouble never mind. I suppose I told you in my last Letter of
my cousin Williams Death some years since the Bank here charged me
£1,0,0 to send you the £25 Mr C. or Mrs C. will no Doubt put you in
the way to come to me as I have remitted all I Can spare, had I have
recd your letter one Month Earlier I would have sent you £40 they
say farm labourers is all they want here I Say no I Consider that my
Judgment and Experience of 20 years will allow me to say something
on that head for I have seen persons and that many who arrived from
London I can safely Say never knew what a plough was meant for
untill they came to these Colonies they have made far better farm
servants in all its Branches than people from the rural Districts of
England who had been brought up to a farm from their Infancy and that
in the space of a Couple of years in fact the Londoners is Considered
the best working men in the Colonies upon an average they so soon
pick anything up and they are I may say the majority of them are the
hardest working men such as Bush carpententers splitters and fencers.
I stated in one of my letters some years Since to Mother about me
being Deaf but I am happy to say that I am now but very slightly and
that in my right hear first through a Cold but this last four Months
I have been at times been slightly troubled with spitting blood and
palpitation of the Heart but I am under a Course of Medicine and
getting bether I expect all through a cold that I Caught, Medicine
and Doctor’s Charges are very Dear here all has to be paid for. I
also Enclose to you the second Draft for the £25 in this Letter as
also a memorandum of the present rate of wages for working people as
you must expect there has been a great reduction since you received
my first letter the Consequence of so many arriving of late from
England but still if you was here it would not Interfere materially
with you while I am alive please God to see that you and yours would
be more comfortobly situated than many who Arrives entire strangers
to this province.
The writer of the next, sent out as a labouring man, and then very
poor, now holds an influential position at Sydney. The reader will
smile at his description of ‘mean and unmanly occupations:’
In Sydney times are rather dull at present—various causes have given
rise to this; the disturbed state of Europe has sensibly affected
commerce. The Gold hunting Mania of Chalaforina has put to flight
many small capitalists, who will ultimately return if permitted
by the daring freebooters of that Country. The steady stream of
immigration pouring into Sydney has brought down to a fair standard
the exorbitant wages given to female Servants. For this the Public
are mainly indebted to you. It would be well if possible to advise
all persons before leaving home, not upon any account to hang about
the purlieus of Sydney, or the other Towns of the Interior for a
dislike is generally acquired in those places for a bush life. It
is deplorable to see the Number of able bodied men who eke out a
miserable subsistence in Sydney in mean and unmanly occupations, such
as hawking through the Public Street fish, fruit, vegitables, pies
all hot—and various other things as equally disreputable, whilst they
could if they possessed a spark of Manliness or common energy of
mind obtain respectable employment in the interior, but their Weak
and fantestic minds conjure up a thousand Hobgoblins in the Shape of
Blacks, Snakes, flying foxes, Squirls, Mad Bulls, and other dreaded
Animals, as equally ridiculous. A man coming to New South Wales 16000
miles in search of a living and remaining in Sydney after he lands,
is like to an individual who digs all day long in search of some
hidden treasure, who when he discovers it declines to take it up,
because it would be too burthensome to take home.
The letter with which we shall conclude our extracts, is from a
convict—the only one before us, from any member of that class.
New South Wales.
Dear Affectionate Wife and family
I with pleasure embrace this first Opportunity of addressing these
few lines to you hoping by the blessing of God they will find you in
the perfect enjoyment of Good Health as it leaves me at present thank
God for it. I wrote you a letter to you while our stay at the Cape
of Good Hope which I hoped you received. We abode there one week and
we arrived at Port Jackson in Sydney on the 8th day of June after
a fine and pleasing voyage for 4 Callender Months wanting two days
only. Nothing worth Mentioning happened all the Voyage. Only 2 of our
unhapy Number was taken away from us by death. While lying in Sydney
Harbour I engaged for one twelve Month and am now for the present
time situated up in the country, in not so quite a comfortable
position as I should wish but I must bear it for a short time, and
as conveniences will allow I shall be in Sydney to work. Dear Wife
You can come out to Me as soon as it pleases you and also my Sister
and I will provide for you a comfortable Situation and Home as a good
one as ever lies in my power, And When you come or send You must
come to My Masters House at Sydney. He is a rich a Gentleman known
by every one in this colony, and you must come out as emigrants, and
when you come ask for me as a emigrant and never use the word Convict
or the ship Hashemy on your Voyage never let it be once named among
you, let no one know your business but your own selves, and When you
Land come to my Masters a enquire for me and thats quite sufficient.
Dear Wife do not you cumber yourself with no more luggage than is
necessary for they are of no use out here you can bring your bed and
bedclothes and sufficient clothes for yourself and family. You can
buy for yourself a tin hook pot to hang on before the fire in the
Gally to boil tea at times when it is required. And a few Oranges
and lemons for the Sea Sickness or any thing you please. Dear Wife
this is a fine Country and a beautiful climate it is like a perpetual
Sumer, and I think it will prove congenial for your health, No
wild beast nor anything of the Sort out here, fine beautiful birds
and every thing seems to smile with pleasure Cockatoos as plentiful
and common as crows in England Provisions of Every kind is very cheap
you can buy Beef at 1_d_ penny per lb flour 1½_d_ per lb tea 2_s_
per lb and Sugar at 2_d_ per lb and other things as cheep, but this
is every poor mans diet. Wages is not so very high out here not so
much as they are in England. I have Nothing more to Say at Present
more than this is just the country where we can end our days in peace
and contentment when we meet. I send my kind love and best of wishes
to you all and every one related to you and me, to your father and
Mother. Sisters and Brothers, aquaintences and friends and to every
one who may ask for me. I send my kind love to you all and especially
to my wife and children.
Farewell.
These ‘simple annals of the poor,’ written for no eyes but those to
which they were addressed, are surely very pleasant to read, and
very affecting. We earnestly commend to all who may peruse them,
the remembrance of these affectionate longings of the heart, and the
consideration of the question whether money would not be well lent or
even spent in re-uniting relatives and friends thus parted, and in
sending a steady succession of people of all laborious classes (not of
any one particular pursuit) from places where they are not wanted, and
are miserable, to places where they are wanted, and can be happy and
independent.
MILKING IN AUSTRALIA.—This is a very serious operation. First, say at
four o’clock in the morning, you drive the cows into the stock-yard,
where the calves have been penned up all the previous night, in a hutch
in one comer. Then you have to commence a chase after the first cow,
who, with a perversity common to Australian females, expects to be
pursued two or three times round the yard, ankle deep in dust or mud,
according to the season, with loud halloas and a thick stick. This
done, she generally proceeds up to the _fail_, a kind of pillory, and
permits her neck to be made fast. The cow safe in the fail, her near
hind leg is stretched out to its full length, and tied to a convenient
post with the universal cordage of Australia, a piece of green hide. At
this stage, in ordinary cases, the milking commences; but it was one of
the hobbies of Mr. Jumsorew, a practice I have never seen followed in
any other part of the colony, that the cow’s tail should be held tight
during the operation. This arduous duty I conscientiously performed for
some weeks, until it happened one day that a young heifer slipped her
head out of an ill-fastened fail, upset milkman and milkpail, charged
the Head Stockman, who was unloosing the calves, to the serious damage
of a new pair of fustians, and ended, in spite of all my efforts,
in clearing the top rail of the stock-yard, leaving me flat and
flabbergasted at the foot of the fence.—_From ‘Scenes in the Life of a
Bushman.’_ (_Unpublished._)
METAL IN SEA-WATER.—The French _sarans_, MM. Malaguti, Durocher, and
Sarzeaud, announce that they have detected in the waters of the ocean
the presence of copper, lead, and silver. The water examined appears
to have been taken some leagues off the coast of St. Malo, and the
fucoidal plants of that district are also found to contain silver.
The _F. serratus_ and the _F. ceramoides_ yielded ashes containing
1-100000th, while the water of the sea contained but little more than
1-100000000th. They state also that they find silver in sea-salt, in
ordinary muriatic acid, and in the soda of commerce; and that they
have examined the rock-salt of Lorraine, in which also they discover
this metal. Beyond this, pursuing their researches on terrestrial
plants, they have obtained such indications as leave no doubt of the
existence of silver in vegetable tissues. Lead is said to be always
found in the ashes of marine plants, usually about an 18-100000th
part—and invariably a trace of copper. Should these results be
confirmed by further examination, we shall have advanced considerably
towards a knowledge of the phenomena of the formation of mineral
veins.—_Athenæum._
------------------------------------------------------------
Published at the Office, No. 16. Wellington Street North, Strand; and
Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:=
Italics, bold letters, blackletter font, superscript
and small capitals are represented by _ = ~ ^{}
and ALL CAPS respectively.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Perceived typos have been silently corrected, while
archaic or variant spelling and punctuation have been
retained.
The above excludes the section ‘A Bundle of Emigrants’
Letters’, in which all potential errors were retained,
as the number of contributing authors made it
challenging to separate genuine errors from individual
spelling habits.
The totals in the table ‘Feb. 14th, 1850.’ are inaccurate
in the original text, and this has been retained.
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