The Project Gutenberg eBook of Household words, No. 3, April 13, 1850
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Title: Household words, No. 3, April 13, 1850
Editor: Charles Dickens
Release date: March 10, 2026 [eBook #78166]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 3, APRIL 13, 1850 ***
“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.
HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL
CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
N^{o.}3.] SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._
THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE.
We take this opportunity of announcing a design, closely associated with
our Household Words, which we have now matured, and which we hope will
be acceptable to our readers.
We purpose publishing, at the end of each month as a supplementary
number to the monthly part of Household Words, a comprehensive Abstract
or History of all the occurrences of that month, native and foreign,
under the title of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE OF CURRENT EVENTS.
The size and price of each of these numbers will be the same as the size
and price of the present number of Household Words. Twelve numbers will
necessarily be published in the course of the year—one for each
month—and on the completion of the Annual Volume, a copious Index will
appear, and a title-page for the volume; which will then be called THE
HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE of such a year. It will form a complete Chronicle of
all that year’s events, carefully compiled, thoroughly digested, and
systematically arranged for easy reference; presenting a vast mass of
information that must be interesting to all, at a price that will render
it accessible to the humblest purchasers of books, and at which only our
existing machinery in connexion with this Work would enable us to
produce it.
The first number of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE will appear as a supplement
to the first monthly part of Household Words, published at the end of
the present month of APRIL. As the Volume for 1850 would be incomplete
(in consequence of our not having commenced this publication at the
beginning of a year) without a backward reference to the three months of
JANUARY, FEBRUARY, and MARCH, a similar number of THE HOUSEHOLD
NARRATIVE for each of those months will be published before the year is
out.
It is scarcely necessary to explain that it is not proposed to render
the purchase of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE compulsory on the purchasers of
Household Words; and that the supplementary number, though always
published at the same time as our monthly part, will therefore be
detached from it, and published separately.
Nor is it necessary for us, we believe, to expatiate on our leading
reasons for adding this new undertaking to our present enterprise. The
intimate connexion between the facts and realities of the time, and the
means by which we aim, in Household Words, to soften what is hard in
them, to exalt what is held in little consideration, and to show the
latent hope there is in what may seem unpromising, needs not to be
pointed out. All that we sought to express in our Preliminary Word, in
reference to this work, applies, we think, to its proposed companion. As
another humble means of enabling those who accept us for their friend,
to bear the world’s rough-cast events to the anvil of courageous duty,
and there beat them into shape, we enter on the project, and confide in
its success.
THE TROUBLED WATER QUESTION.
My excellent and eloquent friend, Lyttleton, of Pump Court, Temple,
barrister-at-law, disturbed me on a damp morning at the end of last
month, to bespeak my company to a meeting at which he intended to hold
forth. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘the Great Water Supply Congress, which
assembles to-morrow.’
‘Do you know anything of the subject?’
‘A vast deal both practically and theoretically. Practically, I pay for
my little box in the Regent’s Park, twice the price for water our friend
Fielding is charged, and both supplies are derived from the same
Company. Yet his is a mansion, mine is a cottage; his rent more than
doubles mine in amount, and his family trebles mine in number. So much
for the consistency and exactions of an irresponsible monopoly.
Practically, again, there are occasions when my cisterns are without
water. So much for deficient supply.’
‘Is your water bad?’
‘Not absolutely unwholesome; but I have drunk better.’
‘Now then, Theoretically.’
‘Theoretically, I learn from piles of blue books—a regular blue mountain
of parliamentary inquiry instituted in the years 1810, 1821, 1827, 1828,
1834, 1840, and 1845—from a cloud of prospectuses issued by embryo Water
Companies, from a host of pamphlets _pro_ and _con_, and from the
reports of the Board of Health, that of the 300,000 houses of which
London is said to consist, 70,000 are without the great element of
suction and cleanliness; I find also that the supply, such as it is, is
derived from nine water companies all linked together to form a giant
monopoly; and that, in consequence, the charge for water is in some
instances excessive; that six of these companies draw their water from
the filthy Thames;—and the same number, including those which use the
Lea and New River water, have no system of filtration—hence it is
unwholesome: that in short, the public of the metropolis are the victims
of dear, insufficient and dirty water. Like Tantalus of old they are
denied much of the great element of life, although it flows within reach
of their parched and thirsty lips. And by whom? By that many-headed
Cerberus—that nine gentlemen in one—the great monopolist Water Company
combination of London! Unless, therefore, we bestir ourselves in the
great cause for which this numerous, enlightened, and respectable
meeting have assembled here this day—’
‘You forget; you have only two listeners at present—myself and my
spaniel. I can suggest a more profitable morning’s amusement than a
rehearsal of your speech.’
‘What?’
‘Your theoretical knowledge is, I doubt not, very comprehensive and
varied. But second-hand information is not to be trusted too implicitly.
Every statement of fact, like every story, gains something in
exaggeration, or loses something in accuracy by repetition from book to
book, or from book to mouth.’
‘Granted; but what do you suggest?’
‘Ocular demonstration. Let us at once visit and minutely inspect the
works of one of the Companies. I am sure they will let us in at the
Grand Junction, for I have already been over their premises.’
‘A capital notion! Agreed.’
The preliminaries—consisting of the hasty bundling up of Mr. Lyttleton’s
notes for the morrow’s oration, and the hire of a Hansom cab—were
adjusted in a few minutes.
The order to drive to Kew Bridge, was obeyed in capital style; for in
three-quarters of an hour we were deposited on the towing path on the
Surrey side of the Thames, opposite the King of Hanover’s house, and a
quarter of a mile west of Kew Bridge.
‘Here,’ I explained, ‘is the spot whence the Grand Junction Company
derive their water. In the bed of the river is an enormous culvert pipe
laid parallel to this path. Its mouth—open towards Richmond—is barred
across with a grating, to intercept stray fish, murdered kittens, or
vegetable impurities, and—except now and then the intrusion edgeways of
a small flounder, or the occasional slip of an erratic eel—it admits
nothing into the pipe but what is more or less fluid. The culvert then
takes a bend round the edge of the islet opposite to us; burrows beneath
the Brentford road, and delivers its contents into a well under that
tall chimney and taller iron “stand-pipe” which you see on the other
side of the river.’
‘And is _this_ the stuff I have to pay four pounds ten a year for?’
exclaimed Mr. Lyttleton, contemplating the opaque fluid; part of which
was then making its way into the cisterns of Her Majesty’s lieges.
‘Certainly; but it is purified first. We will now cross the bridge to
the Works.’
Those of my readers who make prandial expeditions to Richmond, must have
noticed at the beginning of Old Brentford, a little beyond where they
turn over Kew Bridge, an immensely tall thin column that shoots up into
the air like an iron mast unable to support itself, and seems to require
four smaller, thinner, and not much shorter props to keep it upright.
This, with the engine and engine-houses, is all they can see of the
Grand Junction Waterworks from the road. It is only when one gets
inside, that the whole extent of the aquatic apparatus is revealed.
Determined to follow the water from the Thames till it began its travels
to London, we entered the edifice, went straight to the well, and called
for a glass of water. Our hosts—who had received our visit without
hesitation—supplied us. ‘That,’ remarked one of them, as he held the
half-filled tumbler up to the light, ‘is precisely the state of the
water as emptied from the Thames into the well.’
It looked like a dose of weak magnesia, or that peculiar London liquid
known as ‘skim-sky-blue,’ but deceitfully sold under the name of milk.
‘The analysis of Professor Brande,’ said Lyttleton, ‘gives to every
gallon of Thames water taken from Kew Bridge, 19·2 parts of solid
matter; but the water, I apprehend, in which he experimented must have
been taken from the river on a serener occasion than this. To-day’s rain
appears to have drained away the chalk—so as to give in this specimen a
much larger proportion of solids to fluids than his estimate.’
‘In this impure state,’ one of the engineers told us, ‘the water is
pumped by steam power into the reservoirs to which you will please to
follow me.’
Passing out of the building and climbing a sloping bank, we now saw
before us an expanse of water covering 3½ acres; but divided into two
sections. Into the larger, the pump first delivers the water, that so
much of the impurity as will form sediment may be precipitated. It then
slowly glides through a small opening into the lesser section, which is
a huge filter.
‘The impurities of water,’ said the barrister, assuming an oratorical
attitude, to give us a taste of his ‘reading up,’ ‘are of two kinds;
first, such as are mechanically suspended—say earth, chalk, sand, clay,
dead vegetation or decomposed cats; and secondly, such as are dissolved
or chemically combined—like salt, sugar, or alkali. Separation in the
one case is easy, in the other it involves a chemical process. If you
throw a pinch of sand into a tumbler of water, and stir it about, you
produce a turbid mixture; but to render the fluid clear again you have
only to adopt the simple process of letting it alone; for on setting the
tumbler down for awhile, the particles—which, from their extreme
minuteness, were easily disturbed and distributed amidst the fluid—being
heavier than water, are precipitated, or in other words, fall to the
bottom, leaving the liquid translucent. This is what is happening in the
larger section of the reservoir to the chalky water of which we drank. I
think I am correct?’ asked the speaker, angling for a single ‘cheer’
from the Engineer.
‘Quite so,’ replied that gentleman.
‘Provided the water could remain at rest long enough—which the
insatiable maw of the modern Babylon does not allow,’—continued the
honourable orator, rehearsing a bit more of his speech, ‘this mode of
cleansing would be perfectly effectual. In proof of which I may only
allude to Nature’s mode of depuration, as shown in lakes—that of Geneva
for instance. The waters of the Rhone enter that expansive reservoir
from the Valais in a very muddy condition; yet, after reposing in the
lake, they issue at Geneva as clear as crystal. But so incessant is the
London demand, that scarcely any time can be afforded for the impurities
of the Thames, the Lea, or the New River to separate themselves from the
water by mere deposition.’
‘True,’ interjected one of the superintendants. ‘It is for that reason
that our water is passed afterwards into the filtering bed, which is
four feet thick.’
‘How do you make up this enormous bed?’
‘The water rests upon, and permeates through, 1st, a surface of fine
sand; 2d, a stratum of shells; 3d, a layer of garden gravel; and 4th, a
base of coarse gravel. It thence falls through a number of ducts into
cisterns, whence it is pumped up so as to commence its travels to town
through the conduit-pipe.’
We were returning to the engine-house, when Lyttleton asked the
Engineer, ‘Does your experience generally, enable you to say that water
as supplied by the nine companies, is tolerably pure?’
‘Upon the whole, yes,’ was the answer.
‘Indeed!’ ejaculated the orator, sharply. ‘If that be true,’ he
whispered to me, in a rueful tone, ‘I shall be cut out of one of the
best points in my speech.’
‘Of course,’ continued the Engineer, ‘purity entirely depends upon the
source, and the means of cleansing.’
‘Then, as to the source—how many companies take their supplies from the
Thames, near to, and after it has received the contents of, the common
sewers?’
‘No water is taken from the Thames below Chelsea, except that of the
Lambeth Company, which is supplied from between Waterloo and Hungerford
Bridges; an objectionable source, which they have obtained an act to
change to Thames Ditton. The Chelsea Waterworks have a most efficient
system of filtration; as also have the Southwark and Vauxhall Company;
both draw their water from between the Red House, Battersea, and Chelsea
Hospital. The other companies do not filter. The West Middlesex sucks up
some of Father Thames as he passes Barnes Terrace. Except the lowest of
these sources, Thames water is nearly as pure as that of other rivers.’
‘Perhaps it is,’ was the answer; ‘but the unwholesomeness arises from
contaminations received during its course; we don’t object to the
“Thames,” but to its “tributaries,” such as the black contents of common
sewers, and the refuse of gut, glue, soap, and other nauseous
manufactures; to say nothing of animal and vegetable offal, of which the
river is the sole receptacle. Brande shows that, while the solid matter
contained in the river at Teddington is 17·4, that which the water has
contracted when it flows past Westminster is 24·4, and the City of
London, 28·0.’
‘But,’ said the Engineer, ‘these adulterations are only mechanically
suspended in the fluid, and are, as you shall see presently, totally
separated from it by our mode of filtration.’
‘Which brings us to your second point, as to efficient cleansing; you
admit that without filtration this is impossible, and also that only
three companies filter; the deduction, therefore, is that two-thirds of
the water supplied to Londoners is insufficiently cleansed. This indeed,
is not a mere inference; we know it for a fact, we see it in our ewers,
we taste it out of our caraffes.’
‘But this does not wholly arise from the inefficient filtration of the
six companies,’ returned an officer of this Company, ‘the public is much
to blame—though, when agitating against an abuse, it never thinks of
blaming itself. Half the dirt, dust, and animalculæ found at table are
introduced after the water has been delivered to the houses. Impurity of
all sorts finds its way into out-door cisterns, even when covered, and
few of them, open or closed, are often enough cleansed. In some
neighbourhoods water-butts are always uncovered, and hardly ever cleaned
out. The water is foul, and the companies are blamed.’
‘The blame belongs to the system,’ said the barrister. ‘Domestic
reservoirs are not only an evil but an unnecessary expense. Besides
filth, they cause waste and deficient supply: they should be abolished;
for continuous supply is the real remedy. Let the pipes be always full,
and the water would be always ready, always fresh, and could never
acquire new impurities. Still, despite all you say, I am bound to
conclude that although one-third of the water may arrive in the domestic
cisterns of the metropolis in a pellucid state, the other two-thirds
does not.’ Mr. L. then inscribed this calculation in his note book,
whispering to me that his pet ‘dirty water point’ would come out even
stronger than he had expected.
We had now returned to one of the engine-rooms.
‘You have tasted the water before, I now present you with some of it
after, filtration,’ said the chief engineer, handing us a tumbler. ‘This
is exactly the condition in which we deliver it to our customers.’
It was clear to the eye, and to the taste innocuous; but Lyttleton (who
I should mention, occasionally turns on powerful streams of oratory at
Temperance meetings, and is a judge of the article,) complained that the
liquid wanted ‘flavour.’
‘In other words, then it wants _impurity_’ replied one of our cicerones
with alacrity, ‘for perfectly pure water is quite tasteless. Indeed,
water may be too pure. Distilled water which contains no salt, is
insipid, and tends to indigestion. It is a wise provision of Nature,
that waters should contain a greater or less quantity of foreign
ingredients; for without these water is dangerous to drink. It never
fails to take up from the atmosphere a certain proportion of carbonic
acid gas, and when passing through lead pipes it imbibes enough
carbonate of lead to constitute poison. Dr. Christison mentions several
severe cases of lead (or painter’s) cholic, which arose chiefly in
country houses to which water was supplied from springs through lead
pipes. The most remarkable case was that at Claremont, where the ex-king
of the French and several members of his family were nearly poisoned by
pure spring water conveyed to the mansion through lead pipes.
‘Mercy!’ I exclaimed, with all the energy of despair that a mere
water-drinker is capable of, ‘if river water be unwholesome, and pure
water poison, what _is_ to become of every temperance pledgee?’
The Engineer relieved me: ‘All the Chemists,’ he stated, ‘have agreed
that a water containing from eight to ten grains of sulphate of magnesia
or soda, to the imperial gallon, is best suited for alimentary,
lavatory, and other domestic purposes.’
We were now introduced to the great engine. What a monster! Imagine an
enormous see-saw, with a steam engine at one end, and a pump at the
other. Fancy this ‘beam,’ some ten yards long, and twenty-eight tons in
weight, moving on a pivot in the middle, the ends of which show a
circumference greater than the crown of the biggest hat ever worn. See,
with what earnest deliberation the ‘see,’ or engine, pulls up the ‘saw,’
or balance-box of the pump, which then comes down upon the water-trap
with the ferocious _àplomb_ of 49 tons, sending 400 gallons of water in
one tremendous squirt nearly the twentieth part of a mile high;—that is
to the top of the stand-pipe.
‘We have a smaller engine which “does” 150 gallons per stroke,’ remarked
our informant: ‘each performs 11 strokes, and forces up 4400 gallons of
water per minute, and thus our average delivery per diem throughout the
year is from 4,000,000, to 5,000,000 gallons.’
‘What proportion of London do you supply?’ asked Mr. Lyttleton.
‘The quadrangle included between Oxford Street, Wardour Street,
Pall-Mall, and Hyde Park; besides the whole of Notting-hill, Bayswater,
and Paddington. We serve 14,058 houses, to each of which we supply 225
gallons per day, or, taking the average number of persons per house at
nine, 25 gallons a head; besides public services, such as baths,
watering streets, or manufactories; making our total daily delivery at
the rate of 252 gallons per house. This delivery is performed through 80
miles of service pipes, whose diameter varies from 3 to 30 inches.
‘Now,’ said my companion, sharpening his pencil, ‘to go into the
question of supply.’ He then unfolded his pocket soufflet, and brought
out a calculation, of quantities derived, he said, from parliamentary
returns and other authorities more or less reliable:—
Gals. daily.
New River Company 20,000,000
Chelsea Company 3,250,000
West Middlesex Company 3,650,000
Grand Junction Company 3,500,000
East London Company 7,000,000
South Lambeth Company 2,500,000
South London Company and Southwark Company 3,000,000
Hampstead Company 400,000
Kent Company 1,200,000
——————————
44,500,000
Artesian Wells 8,000,000
Land-spring Pumps 3,000,000
“Catch” rain water (say) 1,000,000
——————————
Making a total quantity supplied daily to London, from all
sources, of 56,500,000
‘An abundant supply,’ said an engineer eagerly, ‘for as the present
population of the metropolis is estimated at 2,336,000, the total
affords about 24 gallons of water per day, for every man, woman, and
child.’
‘Admitted,’ rejoined Lyttleton; ‘but we have to deal with large
deductions; first, nearly half this quantity runs to waste, chiefly in
consequence of the intermittent system. I live in a small house with
proportionately small cisterns, which are filled no more than three
times a week; now, as my neighbours have larger houses and larger
reservoirs, the water when turned on runs for as long a time into my
small, as it does into their capacious cisterns, and consequently, if my
stop-taps be in the least out of order, a greater quantity descends the
waste pipe than remains behind. This is universally the case in similar
circumstances.’
‘_We_ supply water daily, Sundays excepted,’ remarked the Engineer.
‘Then you are wiser than your neighbours. But every inconvenience and
nearly all the waste, would be saved by the adoption of the continuous
system of supply. Secondly, a large quantity of water is consumed by
cattle, breweries, baths, public institutions, for putting out fires,
and for laying dust. The lieges of London have only, therefore, to
divide between them some 10 gallons of water each per day; and, as it is
generally admitted that a sixth part of their habitations are without
water at all, the division must be most unequally made. That such is the
fact is shown by your own figures—your customers get 25 gallons each per
day, or more than double their share. For this excess, some in poorer
districts get none at all.’
‘That is no fault of the existing companies. As sellers of an article,
they are but too happy to get as many customers for it as possible; but
poor tenants cannot, and their landlords will not, afford the expense.
If the companies were to make the outlay necessary to connect the houses
with their mains, they would have no legal power to recover the money so
expended—nor indeed is it clear, that were they inclined to run the
risk, the parties would avail themselves of it. In one instance, the
Southwark and Vauxhall Company offered to construct a tank which would
give continuous supply to a block of 100 small houses, at the rate of 50
gallons per diem to each—if the proprietor would pay an additional rate
sufficient to yield 5 per cent. on the outlay, such additional rate not
exceeding one half-penny per week for each house, but the offer was
declined.’
‘That is an extreme case of cheapness on the one side, and of stupidity
on the other,’ said the barrister. ‘Other landlords will not turn on
water for their tenants, because of the expense; not only of the
“plant,” in the first instance, but of the after water-rent. I find, by
the account rendered to the House of Commons in 1834, that the South
London Company (since incorporated with the Southwark, as the “Southwark
and Vauxhall,”—the very Company you mention,) charged considerably less
than any other. The return shows that while they obtained only 15_s._
per 1000 hogsheads; the West Middlesex (the highest) exacted 48_s._,
6_d._ for the same quantity; consequently, had the houses of the foolish
landlord who refused one half-penny per week for water, stood in
northwestern instead of southern London, he would have had to pay more
than treble, or a fraction above three half-pence per week.’
‘Allowing for difference of level,’ I remarked, ‘and other interferences
with the cheap delivery of water; the disparity in the charges of the
different companies, and even by the same company to different
customers, is unaccountable: they are guided by no principle. You have
mentioned the extreme points of the scale of rates; the remaining
companies charged at the time you mention, respectively per 1000
hogsheads, 17_s._, 17_s._, 2_d._, 21_s._, 28_s._, 29_s._, and 45_s._ The
only companies whose charges are limited by act of parliament are the
Grand Junction, the East London, the Southwark and Vauxhall, and the
Lambeth. The others exact precisely what they please.’
‘And,’ interposed Lyttleton, ‘there is no redress: the only appeal we,
the taxed, have, is to our taxers, and the monopoly is so tight that—as
is my case—although your next door neighbour is supplied from a cheaper
company, you are not allowed to change.’
‘The companies were obliged to combine, to save themselves from ruin and
the public from extreme inconvenience,’ said our informant; ‘during the
competition streets were torn up, traffic was stopped, and confusion was
worse confounded in the districts where the opposition raged.’
‘But what happened when the war ceased, and the general peace was
concluded?’ said Lyttleton, chuckling. ‘To show how ill some of the
companies manage their affairs, I could cite some laughable cases. When
the combination commenced, some of them forgot to stop off their mains,
and supplied water to customers whom they had previously turned over to
their quondam rivals; so that one company gave the water, and the other
pocketed the rent. This, in some instances, went on for years.’
Here the subject branched off into other topics. It is worthy of notice
that the conversation was carried on by the side of the enormous Cornish
engine, that was driving 4400 gallons per minute 218 feet high.
‘It is marvellous,’ I remarked, ‘that so much power can be exercised
with so little noise and vibration.’
‘That’s owing to the patent valves in the pump,’ said the stoker.
Taking a last look at the monster, we went outside to view the
stand-pipe. Being, we were told, 218 feet high, it tops the Monument in
Fish Street-hill by 16 feet. Within it is performed the last stroke of
hydraulic art which is needed; for nature does the rest. The water, sent
up through the middle or thickest of the tubes, falls over into the open
mouths of the smaller ones—(which most people mistake for
supports)—descends through all four at once into the conduit-pipe, and
travels of its own accord leisurely to London. In obedience to the law
of levels, it rises without further trouble to the tops of the tallest
houses on the highest spots in the Company’s district. In its way it
fills a large reservoir on Camden-hill. The iron conduit-pipe ends at
Poland street, Oxford street, and is 7½ miles long.
Our inspection was now terminated. We took a parting glass of water with
our intelligent and communicative hosts, and returned to town.
I firmly believe that the success of Lyttleton’s speech at the great
meeting next day, was very much owing to this visit. The room was
crowded in every part. His tone was moderate. He avoided the extravagant
exaggerations of the more fiery order of water spouters. Neither was he
too tame; he was not—as Moore said of a tory orator—like an
‘awkward thing of wood
Which up and down its clumsy arm doth move;
And only spout, and spout, and spout away,
In one weak, washy, everlasting flood,’
but he came out capitally in the hard, argumentative style. His oration
bristled with logic and statistics to a degree of which I cannot pretend
to give the faintest notion.
Sipping inspiration out of a tumbler filled with the flowing subject of
discussion, Mr. Lyttleton commenced by declaring his conviction that the
water supplied to the metropolis was, generally speaking, bad in
quality, extravagantly dear, and, from excessive waste, deficient in
quantity. In order to remedy those defects an efficient control was
essential. Continuous supply, filtration, and a uniform scale of rates
must be enforced. Some of the companies were pocketing enormous
dividends, and was it a fair argument to retort, that they are now being
reimbursed for periods of no dividend at all? Are we of the present day
to be mulcted to cover losses occasioned because the early career of
some of these companies was marked by the ignorance, imprudence, and
reckless extravagance, which he (Mr. Lyttleton) could prove it was? If
our wine merchant, or coal merchant, or baker, began business badly and
with loss, would he be tolerated, if, when he grew wiser and more
prosperous, he tried to exact large prices to cover the consequences of
his previous mismanagement? Mr. Lyttleton apprehended not. With this
branch of the question—he proceeded to remark—the important subjects of
distribution and supply were intimately connected. It had been
ascertained that a vast proportion of the poor had no water in their
houses. Why? Partly because it was too dear; but partly he (the learned
speaker) was bound to say from the parsimony of landlords. He had
pointed out a remedy for the first evil; for the second he would propose
that every house owner should be bound to introduce pipes into every
house. The law was stringent on him as to sewers and party-walls, and
why should not a water supply be enforced on him also?—In dealing with
the whole question of supply—the honourable gentleman went on to say, he
could not agree with those who stated that the delivery of it was
deficient. A moderate calculation estimated the quantity running through
the underground net-work of London pipes at 56,000,000 of gallons per
day. Waste (of which there is a prodigious amount), steam-engines,
cattle, public baths and other supplies deducted, left more than 10
gallons per diem per head for the whole population,—that is supposing
these gallons were equitably distributed; but they are not,—the rich get
an excess, and the poor get none at all. He (the learned barrister) was
not prepared to say that 10 or 20 gallons per head daily were sufficient
for all the purposes of life in this or in any other city, great or
small; but this he would say, that under proper management the existing
supply might be made ample for present wants;—whether for the
requirements of augmenting population and increased cleanliness we need
not discuss now. What was wanted at this time was a better distribution
rather than a greater supply; but what was wanted most of all was united
action and one governing body. Without this, confusion, extravagance,
and waste, would inevitably continue.
Mr. Lyttleton wound up with a peroration that elicited very general
applause. ‘Although we must,’ he said, ‘establish an efficient control
over the existing means of water supply, we must neither wholly despise
nor neglect them, nor blindly rush into new and ruinous schemes. We must
remove the onus of payment from the poorer tenants to their landlords,
and into whatever central directing power the Waterworks of this great
city shall pass,’ concluded the learned orator, with energetic unction,
‘our motto must be “continuous supply, uniform rates, and universal
filtration!”’
ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.
THE LUCIFER MATCH.
Some twenty years ago the process of obtaining fire, in every house in
England, with few exceptions, was as rude, as laborious, and as
uncertain, as the effort of the Indian to produce a flame by the
friction of two dry sticks.
The nightlamp and the rushlight were for the comparatively luxurious. In
the bedrooms of the cottager, the artisan, and the small tradesman, the
infant at its mother’s side too often awoke, like Milton’s nightingale,
‘darkling,’—but that ‘nocturnal note’ was something different from
‘harmonious numbers.’ The mother was soon on her feet; the friendly
tinder-box was duly sought. Click, click, click; not a spark tells upon
the sullen blackness. More rapidly does the flint ply the sympathetic
steel. The room is bright with the radiant shower. But the child,
familiar enough with the operation, is impatient at its tediousness, and
shouts till the mother is frantic. At length one lucky spark does its
office—the tinder is alight. Now for the match. It will not burn. A
gentle breath is wafted into the murky box; the face that leans over the
tinder is in a glow. Another match, and another, and another. They are
all damp. The toil-worn father ‘swears a prayer or two’; the baby is
inexorable; and the misery is only ended when the goodman has gone to
the street door, and after long shivering has obtained a light from the
watchman.
In this, the beginning of our series of Illustrations of Cheapness, let
us trace this antique machinery through the various stages of its
production.
The tinder-box and the steel had nothing peculiar. The tinman made the
one as he made the saucepan, with hammer and shears; the other was
forged at the great metal factories of Sheffield and Birmingham; and
happy was it for the purchaser if it were something better than a rude
piece of iron, very uncomfortable to grasp. The nearest chalk quarry
supplied the flint. The domestic manufacture of the tinder was a serious
affair. At due seasons, and very often if the premises were damp, a
stifling smell rose from the kitchen, which, to those who were not
intimate with the process, suggested doubts whether the house were not
on fire. The best linen rag was periodically burnt, and its ashes
deposited in the tinman’s box, pressed down with a close fitting lid
upon which the flint and steel reposed. The match was chiefly an article
of itinerant traffic. The chandler’s shop was almost ashamed of it. The
mendicant was the universal match-seller. The girl who led the blind
beggar had invariably a basket of matches. In the day they were vendors
of matches—in the evening manufacturers. On the floor of the hovel sit
two or three squalid children, splitting deal with a common knife. The
matron is watching a pipkin upon a slow fire. The fumes which it gives
forth are blinding as the brimstone is liquifying. Little bundles of
split deal are ready to be dipped, three or four at a time. When the
pennyworth of brimstone is used up, when the capital is exhausted, the
night’s labour is over. In the summer, the manufacture is suspended, or
conducted upon fraudulent principles. Fire is then needless; so delusive
matches must be produced—wet splints dipped in powdered sulphur. They
will never burn, but they will do to sell to the unwary
maid-of-all-work.
About twenty years ago Chemistry discovered that the tinder-box might be
abolished. But Chemistry set about its function with especial reference
to the wants and the means of the rich few. In the same way the first
printed books were designed to have a great resemblance to manuscripts,
and those of the wealthy class were alone looked to as the purchasers of
the skilful imitations. The first chemical light-producer was a complex
and ornamental casket, sold at a guinea. In a year or so, there were
pretty portable cases of a phial and matches, which enthusiastic young
housekeepers regarded as the cheapest of all treasures at five
shillings. By-and-bye the light-box was sold as low as a shilling. The
fire revolution was slowly approaching. The old dynasty of the
tinder-box maintained its predominance for a short while in kitchen and
garret, in farmhouse and cottage. At length some bold adventurer saw
that the new chemical discovery might be employed for the production of
a large article of trade—that matches, in themselves the vehicles of
fire without aid of spark and tinder, might be manufactured upon the
factory system—that the humblest in the land might have a new and
indispensable comfort at the very lowest rate of cheapness. When
Chemistry saw that phosphorus, having an affinity for oxygen at the
lowest temperature, would ignite upon slight friction,—and so ignited
would ignite sulphur, which required a much higher temperature to become
inflammable, thus making the phosphorus do the work of the old tinder
with far greater certainty; or when Chemistry found that chlorate of
potash by slight friction might be exploded so as to produce combustion,
and might be safely used in the same combination—a blessing was bestowed
upon society that can scarcely be measured by those who have had no
former knowledge of the miseries and privations of the tinder-box. The
Penny Box of Lucifers, or Congreves, or by whatever name called, is a
real triumph of Science, and an advance in Civilisation.
Let us now look somewhat closely and practically into the manufacture of
a Lucifer match.
The combustible materials used in the manufacture render the process an
unsafe one. It cannot be carried on in the heart of towns without being
regarded as a common nuisance. We must therefore go somewhere in the
suburbs of London to find such a trade. In the neighbourhood of Bethnal
Green there is a large open space called Wisker’s Gardens. This is not a
place of courts and alleys, but a considerable area, literally divided
into small gardens, where just now the crocus and the snowdrop are
telling hopefully of the springtime. Each garden has the smallest of
cottages—for the most part wooden—which have been converted from
summer-houses into dwellings. The whole place reminds one of numberless
passages in the old dramatists, in which the citizens’ wives are
described in their garden-houses of Finsbury, or Hogsden, sipping
syllabub and talking fine on summer holidays. In one of these
garden-houses, not far from the public road, is the little factory of
‘Henry Lester, Patentee of the Domestic Safety Match-box,’ as his label
proclaims. He is very ready to show his processes, which in many
respects are curious and interesting.
Adam Smith has instructed us that the business of making a pin is
divided into about eighteen distinct operations; and further, that ten
persons could make upwards of forty-eight thousand pins a day with the
division of labour; while if they had all wrought independently and
separately, and without any of them having been educated to this
peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made
twenty. The Lucifer Match is a similar example of division of labour,
and the skill of long practice. At a separate factory, where there is a
steam engine, not the refuse of the carpenter’s shop, but the best
Norway deals are cut into splints by machinery, and are supplied to the
matchmaker. These little pieces, beautifully accurate in their minute
squareness, and in their precise length of five inches, are made up into
bundles, each of which contains eighteen hundred. They are daily brought
on a truck to the dipping-house, as it is called—the average number of
matches finished off daily requiring two hundred of these bundles. Up to
this point we have had several hands employed in the preparation of the
match, in connection with the machinery that cuts the wood. Let us
follow one of these bundles through the subsequent processes. Without
being separated, each end of the bundle is first dipped into sulphur.
When dry, the splints, adhering to each other by means of the sulphur,
must be parted by what is called dusting. A boy sitting on the floor,
with a bundle before him, strikes the matches with a sort of a mallet on
the dipped ends till they become thoroughly loosened. In the best
matches the process of sulphur-dipping and dusting is repeated. They
have now to be plunged into a preparation of phosphorus or chlorate of
potash, according to the quality of the match. The phosphorus produces
the pale, noiseless fire; the chlorate of potash the sharp cracking
illumination. After this application of the more inflammable substance,
the matches are separated, and dried in racks. Thoroughly dried, they
are gathered up again into bundles of the same quantity; and are taken
to the boys who cut them; for the reader will have observed that the
bundles have been dipped at each end. There are few things more
remarkable in manufactures than the extraordinary rapidity of this
cutting process, and that which is connected with it. The boy stands
before a bench, the bundle on his right hand, a pile of half opened
empty boxes on his left, which have been manufactured at another
division of this establishment. These boxes are formed of scale-board,
that is, thin slices of wood, planed or scaled off a plank. The box
itself is a marvel of neatness and cheapness. It consists of an inner
box, without a top, in which the matches are placed, and of an outer
case, open at each end, into which the first box slides. The matches,
then, are to be cut, and the empty boxes filled, by one boy. A bundle is
opened; he seizes a portion, knowing by long habit the required number
with sufficient exactness; puts them rapidly into a sort of frame,
knocks the ends evenly together, confines them with a strap which he
tightens with his foot, and cuts them in two parts with a knife on a
hinge, which he brings down with a strong leverage: the halves lie
projecting over each end of the frame; he grasps the left portion and
thrusts it into a half open box, which he instantly closes, and repeats
the process with the matches on his right hand. This series of movements
is performed with a rapidity almost unexampled; for in this way, two
hundred thousand matches are cut, and two thousand boxes filled in a
day, by one boy, at the wages of three half-pence per gross of boxes.
Each dozen boxes is then papered up, and they are ready for the
retailer. The number of boxes daily filled at this factory is from fifty
to sixty gross.
The _wholesale_ price per dozen boxes of the best matches, is FOURPENCE,
of the second quality, THREEPENCE.
There are about ten Lucifer Match manufactories in London. There are
others in large provincial towns. The wholesale business is chiefly
confined to the supply of the metropolis and immediate neighbourhood by
the London makers; for the railroad carriers refuse to receive the
article, which is considered dangerous in transit. But we must not
therefore assume that the metropolitan population consume the
metropolitan matches. Taking the population at upwards of two millions,
and the inhabited houses at about three hundred thousand, let us
endeavour to estimate the distribution of these little articles of
domestic comfort.
At the manufactory at Wisker’s Gardens there are fifty gross, or seven
thousand two hundred boxes, turned out daily, made from two hundred
bundles, which will produce seven hundred and twenty thousand matches.
Taking three hundred working days in the year, this will give for one
factory, two hundred and sixteen millions of matches annually, or two
millions one hundred and sixty thousand boxes, being a box of one
hundred matches for every individual of the London population. But there
are ten other Lucifer manufactories, which are estimated to produce
about four or five times as many more. London certainly cannot absorb
ten millions of Lucifer boxes annually, which would be at the rate of
thirty three boxes to each inhabited house. London, perhaps, demands a
third of the supply for its own consumption; and at this rate the annual
retail cost for each house is eightpence, averaging those boxes sold at
a half-penny, and those at a penny. The manufacturer sells this article,
produced with such care as we have described, at one farthing and a
fraction per box.
And thus, for the retail expenditure of three farthings per month, every
house in London, from the highest to the lowest, may secure the
inestimable blessing of constant fire at all seasons, and at all hours.
London buys this for ten thousand pounds annually.
The excessive cheapness is produced by the extension of the demand,
enforcing the factory division of labour, and the most exact saving of
material. The scientific discovery was the foundation of the cheapness.
But connected with this general principle of cheapness, there are one or
two remarkable points, which deserve attention.
It is a law of this manufacture that the demand is greater in the summer
than in the winter. The old match maker, as we have mentioned, was idle
in the summer—without fire for heating the brimstone—or engaged in more
profitable field-work. A worthy woman who once kept a chandler’s shop in
a village, informs us, that in summer she could buy no matches for
retail, but was obliged to make them for her customers. The increased
summer demand for the Lucifer Matches shows that the great consumption
is amongst the masses—the labouring population—those who make up the
vast majority of the contributors to duties of customs and excise. In
the houses of the wealthy there is always fire; in the houses of the
poor, fire in summer is a needless hourly expense. Then comes the
Lucifer Match to supply the want; to light the candle to look in the
dark cupboard—to light the afternoon fire to boil the kettle. It is now
unnecessary to run to the neighbour for a light, or, as a desperate
resource, to work at the tinder-box. The Lucifer Matches sometimes fail,
but they cost little, and so they are freely used, even by the poorest.
And this involves another great principle. The demand for the Lucifer
Match is always continuous, for it is a perishable article. The demand
never ceases. Every match burnt demands a new match to supply its place.
This continuity of demand renders the supply always equal to the demand.
The peculiar nature of the commodity prevents any accumulation of stock;
its combustible character—requiring the simple agency of friction to
ignite it—renders it dangerous for large quantities of the article to be
kept in one place. Therefore no one makes for store, but all for
immediate sale. The average price, therefore, must always yield a
profit, or the production would altogether cease. But these essential
qualities limit the profit. The manufacturers cannot be rich without
secret processes or monopoly. The contest is to obtain the largest
profit by economical management. The amount of skill required in the
labourers, and the facility of habit, which makes fingers act with the
precision of machines, limit the number of labourers, and prevent their
impoverishment. Every condition of this cheapness is a natural and
beneficial result of the laws that govern production.
THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE.
Mr. Whelks being much in the habit of recreating himself at a class of
theatres called ‘Saloons,’ we repaired to one of these, not long ago, on
a Monday evening; Monday being a great holiday-night with MR. WHELKS and
his friends.
The Saloon in question is the largest in London (that which is known as
The Eagle, in the City Road, should be excepted from the generic term,
as not presenting by any means the same class of entertainment), and is
situate not far from Shoreditch Church. It announces ‘The People’s
Theatre,’ as its second name. The prices of admission are, to the boxes,
a shilling; to the pit, sixpence; to the lower gallery, fourpence; to
the upper gallery and back seats, threepence. There is no half-price.
The opening piece on this occasion was described in the bills as ‘the
greatest hit of the season, the grand new legendary and traditionary
drama, combining supernatural agencies with historical facts, and
identifying extraordinary superhuman causes with material, terrific, and
powerful effects.’ All the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men could
not have drawn MR. WHELKS into the place like this description.
Strengthened by lithographic representations of the principal superhuman
causes, combined with the most popular of the material, terrific, and
powerful effects, it became irresistible. Consequently, we had already
failed, once, in finding six square inches of room within the walls, to
stand upon; and when we now paid our money for a little stage box, like
a dry shower-bath, we did so in the midst of a stream of people who
persisted in paying their’s for other parts of the house in despite of
the representations of the Money-taker that it was ‘very full,
everywhere.’
The outer avenues and passages of the People’s Theatre bore abundant
testimony to the fact of its being frequented by very dirty people.
Within, the atmosphere was far from odoriferous. The place was crammed
to excess, in all parts. Among the audience were a large number of boys
and youths, and a great many very young girls grown into bold women
before they had well ceased to be children. These last were the worst
features of the whole crowd, and were more prominent there than in any
other sort of public assembly that we know of, except at a public
execution. There was no drink supplied, beyond the contents of the
porter-can (magnified in its dimensions, perhaps), which may be usually
seen traversing the galleries of the largest Theatres as well as the
least, and which was here seen everywhere. Huge ham-sandwiches, piled on
trays like deals in a timber-yard, were handed about for sale to the
hungry; and there was no stint of oranges, cakes, brandy-balls, or other
similar refreshments. The Theatre was capacious, with a very large
capable stage, well lighted, well appointed, and managed in a
business-like, orderly manner in all respects; the performances had
begun so early as a quarter past six, and had been then in progress for
three-quarters of an hour.
It was apparent here, as in the theatre we had previously visited, that
one of the reasons of its great attraction was its being directly
addressed to the common people, in the provision made for their seeing
and hearing. Instead of being put away in a dark gap in the roof of an
immense building, as in our once National Theatres, they were here in
possession of eligible points of view, and thoroughly able to take in
the whole performance. Instead of being at a great disadvantage in
comparison with the mass of the audience, they were here _the_ audience,
for whose accommodation the place was made. We believe this to be one
great cause of the success of these speculations. In whatever way the
common people are addressed, whether in churches, chapels, schools,
lecture-rooms, or theatres, to be successfully addressed they must be
directly appealed to. No matter how good the feast, they will not come
to it on mere sufferance. If, on looking round us, we find that the only
things plainly and personally addressed to them, from quack medicines
upwards, be bad or very defective things,—so much the worse for them and
for all of us, and so much the more unjust and absurd the system which
has haughtily abandoned a strong ground to such occupation.
We will add that we believe these people have a right to be amused. A
great deal that we consider to be unreasonable, is written and talked
about not licensing these places of entertainment. We have already
intimated that we believe a love of dramatic representations to be an
inherent principle in human nature. In most conditions of human life of
which we have any knowledge, from the Greeks to the Bosjesmen, some form
of dramatic representation has always obtained.[1] We have a vast
respect for county magistrates, and for the lord chamberlain; but we
render greater deference to such extensive and immutable experience, and
think it will outlive the whole existing court and commission. We would
assuredly not bear harder on the fourpenny theatre, than on the four
shilling theatre, or the four guinea theatre; but we would decidedly
interpose to turn to some wholesome account the means of instruction
which it has at command, and we would make that office of Dramatic
Licenser, which, like many other offices, has become a mere piece of
Court favour and dandy conventionality, a real, responsible, educational
trust. We would have it exercise a sound supervision over the lower
drama, instead of stopping the career of a real work of art, as it did
in the case of Mr. Chorley’s play at the Surrey Theatre, but a few weeks
since, for a sickly point of form.
Footnote 1:
In the remote interior of Africa, and among the North American
Indians, this truth is exemplified in an equally striking manner. Who
that saw the four grim, stunted, abject Bush-people at the Egyptian
Hall—with two natural actors among them out of that number, one a male
and the other a female—can forget how something human and imaginative
gradually broke out in the little ugly man, when he was roused from
crouching over the charcoal fire, into giving a dramatic
representation of the tracking of a beast, the shooting of it with
poisoned arrows, and the creature’s death?
To return to MR. WHELKS. The audience, being able to see and hear, were
very attentive. They were so closely packed, that they took a little
time in settling down after any pause; but otherwise the general
disposition was to lose nothing, and to check (in no choice language)
any disturber of the business of the scene.
On our arrival, MR. WHELKS had already followed Lady Hatton the Heroine
(whom we faintly recognised as a mutilated theme of the late THOMAS
INGOLDSBY) to the ‘Gloomy Dell and Suicide’s Tree,’ where Lady H. had
encountered the ‘apparition of the dark man of doom,’ and heard the
‘fearful story of the Suicide.’ She had also ‘signed the compact in her
own Blood;’ beheld ‘the Tombs rent asunder;’ seen ‘skeletons start from
their graves, and gibber Mine, mine, for ever!’ and undergone all these
little experiences, (each set forth in a separate line in the bill) in
the compass of one act. It was not yet over, indeed, for we found a
remote king of England of the name of ‘Enerry,’ refreshing himself with
the spectacle of a dance in a Garden, which was interrupted by the
‘thrilling appearance of the Demon.’ This ‘superhuman cause’ (with black
eyebrows slanting up into his temples, and red-foil cheekbones,) brought
the Drop-Curtain down as we took possession of our Shower-Bath.
It seemed, on the curtain’s going up again, that Lady Hatton had sold
herself to the Powers of Darkness, on very high terms, and was now
overtaken by remorse, and by jealousy too; the latter passion being
excited by the beautiful Lady Rodolpha, ward to the king. It was to urge
Lady Hatton on to the murder of this young female (as well as we could
make out, but both we and MR. WHELKS found the incidents complicated)
that the Demon appeared ‘once again in all his terrors.’ Lady Hatton had
been leading a life of piety, but the Demon was not to have his bargain
declared off, in right of any such artifices, and now offered a dagger
for the destruction of Rodolpha. Lady Hatton hesitating to accept this
trifle from Tartarus, the Demon, for certain subtle reasons of his own,
proceeded to entertain her with a view of the ‘gloomy court-yard of a
convent,’ and the apparitions of the ‘Skeleton Monk,’ and the ‘King of
Terrors.’ Against these superhuman causes, another superhuman cause, to
wit, the ghost of Lady H.’s mother came into play, and greatly
confounded the Powers of Darkness, by waving the ‘sacred emblem’ over
the head of the else devoted Rodolpha, and causing her to sink into the
earth. Upon this the Demon, losing his temper, fiercely invited Lady
Hatton to ‘Be-old the tortures of the damned!’ and straightway conveyed
her to a ‘grand and awful view of Pandemonium, and Lake of Transparent
Rolling Fire,’ whereof, and also of ‘Prometheus chained, and the Vulture
gnawing at his liver,’ MR. WHELKS was exceedingly derisive.
The Demon still failing, even there, and still finding the ghost of the
old lady greatly in his way, exclaimed that these vexations had such a
remarkable effect upon his spirit as to ‘sear his eyeballs,’ and that he
must go ‘deeper down,’ which he accordingly did. Hereupon it appeared
that it was all a dream on Lady Hatton’s part, and that she was newly
married and uncommonly happy. This put an end to the incongruous heap of
nonsense, and set MR. WHELKS applauding mightily; for, except with the
lake of transparent rolling fire (which was not half infernal enough for
him), MR. WHELKS was infinitely contented with the whole of the
proceedings.
Ten thousand people, every week, all the year round, are estimated to
attend this place of amusement. If it were closed to-morrow—if there
were fifty such, and they were all closed to-morrow—the only result
would be to cause that to be privately and evasively done, which is now
publicly done; to render the harm of it much greater, and to exhibit the
suppressive power of the law in an oppressive and partial light. The
people who now resort here, _will be_ amused somewhere. It is of no use
to blink that fact, or to make pretences to the contrary. We had far
better apply ourselves to improving the character of their amusement. It
would not be exacting much, or exacting anything very difficult, to
require that the pieces represented in these Theatres should have, at
least, a good, plain, healthy purpose in them.
To the end that our experiences might not be supposed to be partial or
unfortunate, we went, the very next night, to the Theatre where we saw
MAY MORNING, and found MR. WHELKS engaged in the study of an ‘Original
old English Domestic and Romantic Drama,’ called ‘EVA THE BETRAYED, OR
THE LADYE OF LAMBYTHE.’ We proceed to develope the incidents which
gradually unfolded themselves to MR. WHELKS’S understanding.
One Geoffrey Thornley the younger, on a certain fine morning, married
his father’s ward, Eva the Betrayed, the Ladye of Lambythe. She had
become the betrayed, in right—or in wrong—of designing Geoffrey’s
machinations; for that corrupt individual, knowing her to be under
promise of marriage to Walter More, a young mariner (of whom he was
accustomed to make slighting mention, as ‘a minion’), represented the
said More to be no more, and obtained the consent of the too trusting
Eva to their immediate union.
Now, it came to pass, by a singular coincidence, that on the identical
morning of the marriage, More came home, and was taking a walk about the
scenes of his boyhood—a little faded since that time—when he rescued
‘Wilbert the Hunchback’ from some very rough treatment. This misguided
person, in return, immediately fell to abusing his preserver in round
terms, giving him to understand that he (the preserved) hated
‘manerkind, wither two eckerceptions,’ one of them being the deceiving
Geoffrey, whose retainer he was, and for whom he felt an unconquerable
attachment; the other, a relative, whom, in a similar redundancy of
emphasis, adapted to the requirements of MR. WHELKS, he called his
‘assister.’ This misanthrope also made the cold-blooded declaration,
‘There was a timer when I loved my fellow keretures till they deserpised
me. Now, I live only to witness man’s disergherace and woman’s misery!’
In furtherance of this amiable purpose of existence, he directed More to
where the bridal procession was coming home from church, and Eva
recognised More, and More reproached Eva, and there was a great to-do,
and a violent struggling, before certain social villagers who were
celebrating the event with morris-dances. Eva was borne off in a tearing
condition, and the bill very truly observed that the end of that part of
the business was ‘despair and madness.’
Geoffrey, Geoffrey, why were you already married to another! Why could
you not be true to your lawful wife Katherine, instead of deserting her,
and leaving her to come tumbling into public-houses (on account of
weakness) in search of you! You might have known what it would end in,
Geoffrey Thornley! You might have known that she would come up to your
house on your wedding day with her marriage-certificate in her pocket,
determined to expose you. You might have known beforehand, as you now
very composedly observe, that you would have ‘but one course to pursue.’
That course clearly is to wind your right hand in Katherine’s long hair,
wrestle with her, stab her, throw down the body behind the door (Cheers
from MR. WHELKS), and tell the devoted Hunchback to get rid of it. On
the devoted Hunchback’s finding that it is the body of his ‘assister,’
and taking her marriage-certificate from her pocket and denouncing you,
of course you have still but one course to pursue, and that is to charge
the crime upon him, and have him carried off with all speed into the
‘deep and massive dungeons beneath Thornley Hall.’
More having, as he was rather given to boast, ‘a goodly vessel on the
lordly Thames,’ had better have gone away with it, weather permitting,
than gone after Eva. Naturally, he got carried down to the dungeons too,
for lurking about, and got put into the next dungeon to the Hunchback,
then expiring from poison. And there they were, hard and fast, like two
wild beasts in dens, trying to get glimpses of each other through the
bars, to the unutterable interest of MR. WHELKS.
But when the Hunchback made himself known, and when More did the same;
and when the Hunchback said he had got the certificate which rendered
Eva’s marriage illegal; and when More raved to have it given to him, and
when the Hunchback (as having some grains of misanthropy in him to the
last) persisted in going into his dying agonies in a remote corner of
his cage, and took unheard-of trouble not to die anywhere near the bars
that were within More’s reach; MR. WHELKS applauded to the echo. At last
the Hunchback was persuaded to stick the certificate on the point of a
dagger, and hand it in; and that done, died extremely hard, knocking
himself violently about, to the very last gasp, and certainly making the
most of all the life that was in him.
Still, More had yet to get out of his den before he could turn this
certificate to any account. His first step was to make such a violent
uproar as to bring into his presence a certain ‘Norman Free Lance’ who
kept watch and ward over him. His second, to inform this warrior, in the
style of the Polite Letter-Writer, that ‘circumstances had occurred’
rendering it necessary that he should be immediately let out. The
warrior declining to submit himself to the force of these circumstances,
Mr. More proposed to him, as a gentleman and a man of honour, to allow
him to step out into the gallery, and there adjust an old feud
subsisting between them, by single combat. The unwary Free Lance,
consenting to this reasonable proposal, was shot from behind by the
comic man, whom he bitterly designated as ‘a snipe’ for that action, and
then died exceedingly game.
All this occurred in one day—the bridal day of the Ladye of Lambythe;
and now MR. WHELKS concentrated all his energies into a focus, bent
forward, looked straight in front of him, and held his breath. For, the
night of the eventful day being come, MR. WHELKS was admitted to the
‘bridal chamber of the Ladye of Lambythe,’ where he beheld a toilet
table, and a particularly large and desolate four-post bedstead. Here
the Ladye, having dismissed her bridesmaids, was interrupted in
deploring her unhappy fate, by the entrance of her husband; and matters,
under these circumstances, were proceeding to very desperate
extremities, when the Ladye (by this time aware of the existence of the
certificate) found a dagger on the dressing-table, and said, ‘Attempt to
enfold me in thy pernicious embrace, and this poignard—!’ &c. He did
attempt it, however, for all that, and he and the Ladye were dragging
one another about like wrestlers, when Mr. More broke open the door, and
entering with the whole domestic establishment and a Middlesex
magistrate, took him into custody and claimed his bride.
It is but fair to MR. WHELKS to remark on one curious fact in this
entertainment. When the situations were very strong indeed, they were
very like what some favourite situations in the Italian Opera would be
to a profoundly deaf spectator. The despair and madness at the end of
the first act, the business of the long hair, and the struggle in the
bridal chamber, were as like the conventional passion of the Italian
singers, as the orchestra was unlike the opera band, or its ‘hurries’
unlike the music of the great composers. So do extremes meet; and so is
there some hopeful congeniality between what will excite MR. WHELKS, and
what will rouse a Duchess.
SONNET
TO LORD DENMAN.
_Retiring from the Chief Justiceship of England._
There is a solemn rapture in the Hail
With which a nation blesses thy repose,
Which proves thy image deathless—that the close
Of man’s extremest age whose boyhood glows
While pondering o’er thy lineaments, shall fail
To delegate to cold historic tale
What DENMAN was; for dignity which flows
Not in the moulds of compliment extern,
But from the noble spirit’s purest urn
Springs vital; justice kept from rigour’s flaw
By beautiful regards; and thoughts that burn
With generous ire, no form but thine shall draw
Within the soul, when distant times would learn
The bodied majesty of England’s Law.
LIZZIE LEIGH.
IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER III.
That night Mrs. Leigh stopped at home; that only night for many months.
Even Tom, the scholar, looked up from his books in amazement; but then
he remembered that Will had not been well, and that his mother’s
attention having been called to the circumstance, it was only natural
she should stay to watch him. And no watching could be more tender, or
more complete. Her loving eyes seemed never averted from his face; his
grave, sad, care-worn face. When Tom went to bed the mother left her
seat, and going up to Will where he sat looking at the fire, but not
seeing it, she kissed his forehead, and said,
‘Will! lad, I’ve been to see Susan Palmer!’
She felt the start under her hand which was placed on his shoulder, but
he was silent for a minute or two. Then he said,
‘What took you there, mother?’
‘Why, my lad, it was likely I should wish to see one you cared for; I
did not put myself forward. I put on my Sunday clothes, and tried to
behave as yo’d ha liked me. At least I remember trying at first; but
after, I forgot all.’
She rather wished that he would question her as to what made her forget
all. But he only said,
‘How was she looking, mother?’
‘Will, thou seest I never set eyes on her before; but she’s a good
gentle looking creature; and I love her dearly, as I’ve reason to.’
Will looked up with momentary surprise; for his mother was too shy to be
usually taken with strangers. But after all it was natural in this case,
for who could look at Susan without loving her? So still he did not ask
any questions, and his poor mother had to take courage, and try again to
introduce the subject near to her heart. But how?
‘Will!’ said she (jerking it out, in sudden despair of her own powers to
lead to what she wanted to say), ‘I telled her all.’
‘Mother! you’ve ruined me,’ said he standing up, and standing opposite
to her with a stern white look of affright on his face.
‘No! my own dear lad; dunnot look so scared, I have not ruined you!’ she
exclaimed, placing her two hands on his shoulders and looking fondly
into his face. ‘She’s not one to harden her heart against a mother’s
sorrow. My own lad, she’s too good for that. She’s not one to judge and
scorn the sinner. She’s too deep read in her New Testament for that.
Take courage, Will; and thou mayst, for I watched her well, though it is
not for one woman to let out another’s secret. Sit thee down, lad, for
thou look’st very white.’
He sat down. His mother drew a stool towards him, and sat at his feet.
‘Did you tell her about Lizzie, then?’ asked he, hoarse and low.
“I did, I telled her all; and she fell a crying over my deep sorrow, and
the poor wench’s sin. And then a light comed into her face, trembling
and quivering with some new glad thought; and what dost thou think it
was, Will, lad? Nay, I’ll not misdoubt but that thy heart will give
thanks as mine did, afore God and His angels, for her great goodness.
That little Nanny is not her niece, she’s our Lizzie’s own child, my
little grandchild.” She could no longer restrain her tears, and they
fell hot and fast, but still she looked into his face.
‘Did she know it was Lizzie’s child? I do not comprehend,’ said he,
flushing red.
‘She knows now: she did not at first, but took the little helpless
creature in, out of her own pitiful loving heart, guessing only that it
was the child of shame, and she’s worked for it, and kept it, and tended
it ever sin’ it were a mere baby, and loves it fondly. Will! won’t you
love it?’ asked she beseechingly.
He was silent for an instant; then he said, ‘Mother, I’ll try. Give me
time, for all these things startle me. To think of Susan having to do
with such a child!’
‘Aye, Will! and to think (as may be yet) of Susan having to do with the
child’s mother! For she is tender and pitiful, and speaks hopefully of
my lost one, and will try and find her for me, when she comes, as she
does sometimes, to thrust money under the door, for her baby. Think of
that, Will. Here’s Susan, good and pure as the angels in heaven, yet,
like them, full of hope and mercy, and one who, like them, will rejoice
over her as repents. Will, my lad, I’m not afeared of you now, and I
must speak, and you must listen. I am your mother, and I dare to command
you, because I know I am in the right and that God is on my side. If He
should lead the poor wandering lassie to Susan’s door, and she comes
back crying and sorrowful, led by that good angel to us once more, thou
shalt never say a casting-up word to her about her sin, but be tender
and helpful towards one “who was lost and is found,” so may God’s
blessing rest on thee, and so mayst thou lead Susan home as thy wife.’
She stood, no longer as the meek, imploring, gentle mother, but firm and
dignified, as if the interpreter of God’s will. Her manner was so
unusual and solemn, that it overcame all Will’s pride and stubbornness.
He rose softly while she was speaking, and bent his head as if in
reverence at her words, and the solemn injunction which they conveyed.
When she had spoken, he said in so subdued a voice that she was almost
surprised at the sound, ‘Mother, I will.’
‘I may be dead and gone,—but all the same,—thou wilt take home the
wandering sinner, and heal up her sorrows, and lead her to her Father’s
house. My lad! I can speak no more; I’m turned very faint.’
He placed her in a chair; he ran for water. She opened her eyes and
smiled.
‘God bless you, Will. Oh! I am so happy. It seems as if she were found;
my heart is so filled with gladness.’
That night Mr. Palmer stayed out late and long. Susan was afraid that he
was at his old haunts and habits,—getting tipsy at some public-house;
and this thought oppressed her, even though she had so much to make her
happy, in the consciousness that Will loved her. She sat up long, and
then she went to bed, leaving all arranged as well as she could for her
father’s return. She looked at the little rosy sleeping girl who was her
bedfellow, with redoubled tenderness, and with many a prayerful thought.
The little arms entwined her neck as she lay down, for Nanny was a light
sleeper, and was conscious that she, who was loved with all the power of
that sweet childish heart, was near her, and by her, although she was
too sleepy to utter any of her half-formed words.
And by-and-bye she heard her father come home, stumbling uncertain,
trying first the windows, and next the door-fastenings, with many a loud
incoherent murmur. The little Innocent twined around her seemed all the
sweeter and more lovely, when she thought sadly of her erring father.
And presently he called aloud for a light; she had left matches and all
arranged as usual on the dresser, but, fearful of some accident from
fire, in his unusually intoxicated state, she now got up softly, and
putting on a cloak, went down to his assistance.
Alas! the little arms that were unclosed from her soft neck belonged to
a light, easily awakened sleeper. Nanny missed her darling Susy, and
terrified at being left alone in the vast mysterious darkness, which had
no bounds, and seemed infinite, she slipped out of bed, and tottered in
her little night-gown towards the door. There was a light below, and
there was Susy and safety! So she went onwards two steps towards the
steep abrupt stairs; and then dazzled with sleepiness, she stood, she
wavered, she fell! Down on her head on the stone floor she fell! Susan
flew to her, and spoke all soft, entreating, loving words; but her white
lids covered up the blue violets of eyes, and there was no murmur came
out of the pale lips. The warm tears that rained down did not awaken
her; she lay stiff, and weary with her short life, on Susan’s knee.
Susan went sick with terror. She carried her upstairs, and laid her
tenderly in bed; she dressed herself most hastily, with her trembling
fingers. Her father was asleep on the settle down stairs; and useless,
and worse than useless if awake. But Susan flew out of the door, and
down the quiet resounding street, towards the nearest doctor’s house.
Quickly she went; but as quickly a shadow followed, as if impelled by
some sudden terror. Susan rung wildly at the night-bell,—the shadow
crouched near. The doctor looked out from an upstairs window.
‘A little child has fallen down stairs at No. 9, Crown-street, and is
very ill,—dying I’m afraid. Please, for God’s sake, sir, come directly.
No. 9, Crown-street.’
‘I’ll be there directly,’ said he, and shut the window.
‘For that God you have just spoken about,—for His sake,—tell me are you
Susan Palmer? Is it my child that lies a-dying?’ said the shadow,
springing forwards, and clutching poor Susan’s arm.
‘It is a little child of two years old,—I do not know whose it is; I
love it as my own. Come with me, whoever you are; come with me.’
The two sped along the silent streets,—as silent as the night were they.
They entered the house; Susan snatched up the light, and carried it
upstairs. The other followed.
She stood with wild glaring eyes by the bedside, never looking at Susan,
but hungrily gazing at the little white still child. She stooped down,
and put her hand tight on her own heart, as if to still its beating, and
bent her ear to the pale lips. Whatever the result was, she did not
speak; but threw off the bed-clothes wherewith Susan had tenderly
covered up the little creature, and felt its left side.
Then she threw up her arms with a cry of wild despair.
‘She is dead! she is dead!’
She looked so fierce, so mad, so haggard, that for an instant Susan was
terrified—the next, the holy God had put courage into her heart, and her
pure arms were round that guilty wretched creature, and her tears were
falling fast and warm upon her breast. But she was thrown off with
violence.
‘You killed her—you slighted her—you let her fall down those stairs! you
killed her!’
Susan cleared off the thick mist before her, and gazing at the mother
with her clear, sweet, angel-eyes, said mournfully—
‘I would have laid down my own life for her.’
‘Oh, the murder is on my soul!’ exclaimed the wild bereaved mother, with
the fierce impetuosity of one who has none to love her and to be
beloved, regard to whom might teach self-restraint.
‘Hush!’ said Susan, her finger on her lips. ‘Here is the doctor. God may
suffer her to live.’
The poor mother turned sharp round. The doctor mounted the stair. Ah!
that mother was right; the little child was really dead and gone.
And when he confirmed her judgment, the mother fell down in a fit.
Susan, with her deep grief, had to forget herself, and forget her
darling (her charge for years), and question the doctor what she must do
with the poor wretch, who lay on the floor in such extreme of misery.
‘She is the mother!’ said she.
‘Why did not she take better care of her child?’ asked he, almost
angrily.
But Susan only said, ‘The little child slept with me; and it was I that
left her.’
‘I will go back and make up a composing draught; and while I am away you
must get her to bed.’
Susan took out some of her own clothes, and softly undressed the stiff,
powerless, form. There was no other bed in the house but the one in
which her father slept. So she tenderly lifted the body of her darling;
and was going to take it down stairs, but the mother opened her eyes,
and seeing what she was about, she said,
‘I am not worthy to touch her, I am so wicked; I have spoken to you as I
never should have spoken; but I think you are very good; may I have my
own child to lie in my arms for a little while?’
Her voice was so strange a contrast to what it had been before she had
gone into the fit that Susan hardly recognised it; it was now so
unspeakably soft, so irresistibly pleading, the features too had lost
their fierce expression, and were almost as placid as death. Susan could
not speak, but she carried the little child, and laid it in its mother’s
arms; then as she looked at them, something overpowered her, and she
knelt down, crying aloud,
‘Oh, my God, my God, have mercy on her, and forgive, and comfort her.’
But the mother kept smiling, and stroking the little face, murmuring
soft tender words, as if it were alive; she was going mad, Susan
thought; but she prayed on, and on, and ever still she prayed with
streaming eyes.
The doctor came with the draught. The mother took it, with docile
unconsciousness of its nature as medicine. The doctor sat by her; and
soon she fell asleep. Then he rose softly, and beckoning Susan to the
door, he spoke to her there.
‘You must take the corpse out of her arms. She will not awake. That
draught will make her sleep for many hours. I will call before noon
again. It is now daylight. Good-bye.’
Susan shut him out; and then gently extricating the dead child from its
mother’s arms, she could not resist making her own quiet moan over her
darling. She tried to learn off its little placid face, dumb and pale
before her.
“Not all the scalding tears of care
Shall wash away that vision fair;
Not all the thousand thoughts that rise,
Not all the sights that dim her eyes,
Shall e’er usurp the place
Of that little angel-face.”
And then she remembered what remained to be done. She saw that all was
right in the house; her father was still dead asleep on the settle, in
spite of all the noise of the night. She went out through the quiet
streets, deserted still although it was broad daylight, and to where the
Leighs lived. Mrs. Leigh, who kept her country hours, was opening her
window shutters. Susan took her by the arm, and, without speaking, went
into the house-place. There she knelt down before the astonished Mrs.
Leigh, and cried as she had never done before; but the miserable night
had overpowered her, and she who had gone through so much calmly, now
that the pressure seemed removed could not find the power to speak.
‘My poor dear! What has made thy heart so sore as to come and cry
a-this-ons. Speak and tell me. Nay, cry on, poor wench, if thou canst
not speak yet. It will ease the heart, and then thou canst tell me.’
‘Nanny is dead!’ said Susan. ‘I left her to go to father, and she fell
down stairs, and never breathed again. Oh, that’s my sorrow! but I’ve
more to tell. Her mother is come—is in our house! Come and see if it’s
your Lizzie.’ Mrs. Leigh could not speak, but, trembling, put on her
things, and went with Susan in dizzy haste back to Crown-street.
CHAPTER IV.
As they entered the house in Crown-street, they perceived that the door
would not open freely on its hinges, and Susan instinctively looked
behind to see the cause of the obstruction. She immediately recognised
the appearance of a little parcel, wrapped in a scrap of newspaper, and
evidently containing money. She stooped and picked it up. ‘Look!’ said
she, sorrowfully, ‘the mother was bringing this for her child last
night.’
But Mrs. Leigh did not answer. So near to the ascertaining if it were
her lost child or no, she could not be arrested, but pressed onwards
with trembling steps and a beating, fluttering heart. She entered the
bed-room, dark and still. She took no heed of the little corpse, over
which Susan paused, but she went straight to the bed, and withdrawing
the curtain, saw Lizzie,—but not the former Lizzie, bright, gay,
buoyant, and undimmed. This Lizzie was old before her time; her beauty
was gone; deep lines of care, and alas! of want (or thus the mother
imagined) were printed on the cheek, so round, and fair, and smooth,
when last she gladdened her mother’s eyes. Even in her sleep she bore
the look of woe and despair which was the prevalent expression of her
face by day; even in her sleep she had forgotten how to smile. But all
these marks of the sin and sorrow she had passed through only made her
mother love her the more. She stood looking at her with greedy eyes,
which seemed as though no gazing could satisfy their longing; and at
last she stooped down and kissed the pale, worn hand that lay outside
the bed-clothes. No touch disturbed the sleeper; the mother need not
have laid the hand so gently down upon the counterpane. There was no
sign of life, save only now and then a deep sob-like sigh. Mrs. Leigh
sat down beside the bed, and, still holding back the curtain, looked on
and on, as if she could never be satisfied.
Susan would fain have stayed by her darling one; but she had many calls
upon her time and thoughts, and her will had now, as ever, to be given
up to that of others. All seemed to devolve the burden of their cares on
her. Her father, ill-humoured from his last night’s intemperance, did
not scruple to reproach her with being the cause of little Nanny’s
death; and when, after bearing his upbraiding meekly for some time, she
could no longer restrain herself, but began to cry, he wounded her even
more by his injudicious attempts at comfort: for he said it was as well
the child was dead; it was none of theirs, and why should they be
troubled with it? Susan wrung her hands at this, and came and stood
before her father, and implored him to forbear. Then she had to take all
requisite steps for the coroner’s inquest; she had to arrange for the
dismissal of her school; she had to summon a little neighbour, and send
his willing feet on a message to William Leigh, who, she felt, ought to
be informed of his mother’s whereabouts, and of the whole state of
affairs. She asked her messenger to tell him to come and speak to
her,—that his mother was at her house. She was thankful that her father
sauntered out to have a gossip at the nearest coach-stand, and to relate
as many of the night’s adventures as he knew; for as yet he was in
ignorance of the watcher and the watched, who silently passed away the
hours upstairs.
At dinner-time Will came. He looked red, glad, impatient, excited. Susan
stood calm and white before him, her soft, loving eyes gazing straight
into his.
‘Will,’ said she, in a low, quiet voice, ‘your sister is upstairs.’
‘My sister!’ said he, as if affrighted at the idea, and losing his glad
look in one of gloom. Susan saw it, and her heart sank a little, but she
went on as calm to all appearance as ever.
‘She was little Nanny’s mother, as perhaps you know. Poor little Nanny
was killed last night by a fall down stairs.’ All the calmness was gone;
all the suppressed feeling was displayed in spite of every effort. She
sat down, and hid her face from him, and cried bitterly. He forgot
everything but the wish, the longing to comfort her. He put his arm
round her waist, and bent over her. But all he could say, was, ‘Oh,
Susan, how can I comfort you! Don’t take on so,—pray don’t!’ He never
changed the words, but the tone varied every time he spoke. At last she
seemed to regain her power over herself; and she wiped her eyes, and
once more looked upon him with her own quiet, earnest, unfearing gaze.
‘Your sister was near the house. She came in on hearing my words to the
doctor. She is asleep now, and your mother is watching her. I wanted to
tell you all myself. Would you like to see your mother?’
‘No!’ said he. ‘I would rather see none but thee. Mother told me thou
knew’st all.’ His eyes were downcast in their shame.
But the holy and pure, did not lower or vail her eyes.
She said, ‘Yes, I know all—all but her sufferings. Think what they must
have been!’
He made answer low and stern, ‘She deserved them all; every jot.’
‘In the eye of God, perhaps she does. He is the judge: we are not.’
‘Oh!’ she said with a sudden burst, ‘Will Leigh! I have thought so well
of you; don’t go and make me think you cruel and hard. Goodness is not
goodness unless there is mercy and tenderness with it. There is your
mother who has been nearly heart-broken, now full of rejoicing over her
child—think of your mother.’
‘I do think of her,’ said he. ‘I remember the promise I gave her last
night. Thou shouldst give me time. I would do right in time. I never
think it o’er in quiet. But I will do what is right and fitting, never
fear. Thou hast spoken out very plain to me; and misdoubted me, Susan; I
love thee so, that thy words cut me. If I did hang back a bit from
making sudden promises, it was because not even for love of thee, would
I say what I was not feeling; and at first I could not feel all at once
as thou wouldst have me. But I’m not cruel and hard; for if I had been,
I should na’ have grieved as I have done.’
He made as if he were going away; and indeed he did feel he would rather
think it over in quiet. But Susan, grieved at her incautious words,
which had all the appearance of harshness, went a step or two
nearer—paused—and then, all over blushes, said in a low soft whisper—
‘Oh Will! I beg your pardon. I am very sorry—won’t you forgive me?’
She who had always drawn back, and been so reserved, said this in the
very softest manner; with eyes now uplifted beseechingly, now dropped to
the ground. Her sweet confusion told more than words could do; and Will
turned back, all joyous in his certainty of being beloved, and took her
in his arms and kissed her.
‘My own Susan!’ he said.
Meanwhile the mother watched her child in the room above.
It was late in the afternoon before she awoke; for the sleeping draught
had been very powerful. The instant she awoke, her eyes were fixed on
her mother’s face with a gaze as unflinching as if she were fascinated.
Mrs. Leigh did not turn away; nor move. For it seemed as if motion would
unlock the stony command over herself which, while so perfectly still,
she was enabled to preserve. But by-and-bye Lizzie cried out in a
piercing voice of agony—
‘Mother, don’t look at me! I have been so wicked!’ and instantly she hid
her face, and grovelled among the bed-clothes, and lay like one dead—so
motionless was she.
Mrs. Leigh knelt down by the bed, and spoke in the most soothing tones.
‘Lizzie, dear, don’t speak so. I’m thy mother, darling; don’t be afeard
of me. I never left off loving thee, Lizzie. I was always a-thinking of
thee. Thy father forgave thee afore he died.’ (There was a little start
here, but no sound was heard). ‘Lizzie, lass, I’ll do aught for thee;
I’ll live for thee; only don’t be afeard of me. Whate’er thou art or
hast been, we’ll ne’er speak on’t. We’ll leave th’ oud times behind us,
and go back to the Upclose Farm. I but left it to find thee, my lass;
and God has led me to thee. Blessed be His name. And God is good too,
Lizzie. Thou hast not forgot thy Bible, I’ll be bound, for thou wert
always a scholar. I’m no reader, but I learnt off them texts to comfort
me a bit, and I’ve said them many a time a day to myself. Lizzie, lass,
don’t hide thy head so, it’s thy mother as is speaking to thee. Thy
little child clung to me only yesterday; and if it’s gone to be an
angel, it will speak to God for thee. Nay, don’t sob a that ‘as; thou
shalt have it again in Heaven; I know thou’lt strive to get there, for
thy little Nancy’s sake—and listen! I’ll tell thee God’s promises to
them that are penitent—only doan’t be afeard.’
Mrs. Leigh folded her hands, and strove to speak very clearly, while she
repeated every tender and merciful text she could remember. She could
tell from the breathing that her daughter was listening; but she was so
dizzy and sick herself when she had ended, that she could not go on
speaking. It was all she could do to keep from crying aloud.
At last she heard her daughter’s voice.
‘Where have they taken her to?’ she asked.
‘She is down stairs. So quiet, and peaceful, and happy she looks.’
‘Could she speak? Oh, if God—if I might but have heard her little voice!
Mother, I used to dream of it. May I see her once again—Oh mother, if I
strive very hard, and God is very merciful, and I go to heaven, I shall
not know her—I shall not know my own again—she will shun me as a
stranger and cling to Susan Palmer and to you. Oh woe! Oh woe!’ She
shook with exceeding sorrow.
In her earnestness of speech she had uncovered her face, and tried to
read Mrs. Leigh’s thoughts through her looks. And when she saw those
aged eyes brimming full of tears, and marked the quivering lips, she
threw her arms round the faithful mother’s neck, and wept there as she
had done in many a childish sorrow; but with a deeper, a more wretched
grief.
Her mother hushed her on her breast; and lulled her as if she were a
baby; and she grew still and quiet.
They sat thus for a long, long time. At last Susan Palmer came up with
some tea and bread and butter for Mrs. Leigh. She watched the mother
feed her sick, unwilling child, with every fond inducement to eat which
she could devise; they neither of them took notice of Susan’s presence.
That night they lay in each other’s arms; but Susan slept on the ground
beside them.
They took the little corpse (the little unconscious sacrifice, whose
early calling-home had reclaimed her poor wandering mother,) to the
hills, which in her life-time she had never seen. They dared not lay her
by the stern grand-father in Milne-Row churchyard, but they bore her to
a lone moorland graveyard, where long ago the quakers used to bury their
dead. They laid her there on the sunny slope, where the earliest
spring-flowers blow.
Will and Susan live at the Upclose Farm. Mrs. Leigh and Lizzie dwell in
a cottage so secluded that, until you drop into the very hollow where it
is placed, you do not see it. Tom is a schoolmaster in Rochdale, and he
and Will help to support their mother. I only know that, if the cottage
be hidden in a green hollow of the hills, every sound of sorrow in the
whole upland is heard there—every call of suffering or of sickness for
help is listened to, by a sad, gentle looking woman, who rarely smiles
(and when she does, her smile is more sad than other people’s tears),
but who comes out of her seclusion whenever there’s a shadow in any
household. Many hearts bless Lizzie Leigh, but she—she prays always and
ever for forgiveness—such forgiveness as may enable her to see her child
once more. Mrs. Leigh is quiet and happy. Lizzie is to her eyes
something precious,—as the lost piece of silver—found once more. Susan
is the bright one who brings sunshine to all. Children grow around her
and call her blessed. One is called Nanny. Her, Lizzy often takes to the
sunny graveyard in the uplands, and while the little creature gathers
the daisies, and makes chains, Lizzie sits by a little grave, and weeps
bitterly.
THE SEASONS.
A blue-eyed child that sits amid the noon,
O’erhung with a laburnum’s drooping sprays,
Singing her little songs, while softly round
Along the grass the chequered sunshine plays.
All beauty that is throned in womanhood,
Pacing a summer garden’s fountained walks,
That stoops to smooth a glossy spaniel down,
To hide her flushing cheek from one who talks.
A happy mother with her fair-faced girls,
In whose sweet spring again her youth she sees,
With shout and dance and laugh and bound and song,
Stripping an autumn orchard’s laden trees.
An aged woman in a wintry room;
Frost on the pane,—without, the whirling snow;
Reading old letters of her far-off youth,
Of pleasures past and joys of long ago.
SHORT CUTS ACROSS THE GLOBE.
To a person who wishes to sail to California an inspection of the map of
the world reveals a provoking peculiarity. The Atlantic Ocean—the
highway of the globe—being separated from the Pacific by the great
western continent, it is impossible to sail to the opposite coasts
without going thousands of miles out of his way; for he must double Cape
Horn. Yet a closer inspection of the map will discover that but for one
little barrier of land, which is in size but as a grain of sand to the
bed of an ocean, the passage would be direct. Were it not for that small
neck of land, the Isthmus of Panama (which narrows in one place to
twenty-eight miles) he might save a voyage of from six to eight thousand
miles, and pass at once into the Pacific Ocean. Again, if his desires
tend towards the East, he perceives that but for the Isthmus of Suez, he
would not be obliged to double the Cape of Good Hope. The Eastern
difficulty has been partially obviated by the overland route opened up
by the ill-rewarded Waghorn. The western barrier has yet to be broken
through.
Now that we can shake hands with Brother Jonathan in twelve days by
means of weekly steamers; travel from one end of Great Britain to
another, or from the Hudson to the Ohio, as fast as the wind, and make
our words dance to distant friends upon the magic tight wire a great
deal faster—now that the European and Columbian Saxon is spreading his
children more or less over all the known habitable world: it seems
extraordinary that the simple expedient of opening a twenty-eight mile
passage between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, to save a dangerous
voyage of some eight thousand miles, has not been already achieved. In
this age of enterprise that so simple a remedy for so great an evil
should not have been applied appears astonishing. Nay, we ought to feel
some shame when we reflect that evidences in the neighbourhood of both
Isthmuses exist of such junctions having existed, in what we are pleased
to designate ‘barbarous’ ages.
Does nature present insurmountable engineering difficulties to the
Panama scheme? By no means: for after the Croton aqueduct, our own
railway tunnelling and the Britannia tubular bridge, engineering
difficulties have become obsolete. Are the levels of the Pacific and the
Gulph of Mexico, which should be joined, so different, that if one were
admitted the fall would inundate the surrounding country? Not at all.
Hear Humboldt on these points.
Forty years ago he declared it to be his firm opinion that ‘the Isthmus
of Panama is suited to the formation of an oceanic canal—one with fewer
sluices than the Caledonian Canal—capable of affording an unimpeded
passage, at all seasons of the year, to vessels of that class which sail
between New York and Liverpool, and between Chili and California.’ In
the recent edition of his ‘Views of Nature,’ he ‘sees no reason to alter
the views he has always entertained on this subject.’ Engineers, both
British and American, have confirmed this opinion by actual survey. As,
then, combination of British skill, capital, and energy, with that of
the most ‘go-ahead’ people upon earth, have been dormant, whence the
secret of the delay? The answer at once allays astonishment:—Till the
present time, the speculation would not have ‘paid.’
Large works of this nature, while they create an inconceivable
development of commerce, must have a certain amount of a trading
population to begin upon. A goldbeater can cover the effigy of a man on
horseback with a sovereign; but he must have the sovereign first. It was
not merely because the full power of the iron rail to facilitate the
transition of heavy burdens had not been estimated, and because no
Stephenson had constructed a ‘Rocket engine,’ that a railway with steam
locomotives was not made from London to Liverpool before 1836. Until the
intermediate traffic between these termini had swelled to a sufficient
amount in quantity and value to bear reimbursement for establishing such
a mode of conveyance, its execution would have been impossible, even
though men had known how to set about it.
What has been the condition of the countries under consideration? In
1839, the entire population of the tropical American isthmus, in the
states of central America and New Grenada did not exceed three millions.
The number of the inhabitants of pure European descent did not exceed
one hundred thousand. It was only among this inconsiderable fraction
that anything like wealth, intelligence, and enterprise, akin to that of
Europe, was to be found; the rest were poor and ignorant aboriginals and
mixed races, in a state of scarcely demi-civilisation. Throughout this
thinly-peopled and poverty-stricken region, there was neither law nor
government. In Stephens’s ‘Central America,’ may be found an amusing
account of a hunt after a government, by a luckless American
diplomatist, who had been sent to seek for one in central America. A
night wanderer running through bog and brake after a will-o’-the-wisp
could not have encountered more perils, or in search of a more
impalpable phantom. In short, there was nobody to trade with. To the
south of the Isthmus, along the Pacific coast of America, there was only
one station to which merchants could resort with any fair prospect of
gain—Valparaiso. Except Chili, all the Pacific states of South America
were retrograding from a very imperfect civilisation, under a succession
of petty and aimless revolutions. To the north of the Isthmus matters
were little, if anything, better. Mexico had gone backwards from the
time of its revolution; and, at the best, its commerce in the Pacific
had been confined to a yearly ship between Acapulco and the Philippines.
Throughout California and Oregon, with the exception of a few European
and half-breed members, there were none but savage aboriginal tribes.
The Russian settlements in the far north had nothing but a paltry trade
in furs with Kamschatka, that barely defrayed its own expenses. Neither
was there any encouragement to make a short cut to the innumerable
islands of the Pacific. The whole of Polynesia lay outside of the pale
of civilisation. In Tahiti, the Sandwich group, and the northern
peninsula of New Zealand, missionaries had barely sowed the first seeds
of morals and enlightenment. The limited commerce of China and the
Eastern Archipelago was engrossed by Europe, and took the route of the
Cape of Good Hope, with the exception of a few annual vessels that
traded from the sea-board States of the North American Union to
Valparaiso and Canton. The wool of New South Wales was but coming into
notice, and found its way to England alone round the Cape of Good Hope.
An American fleet of whalers scoured the Pacific, and adventurers of the
same nation carried on a desultory and inconsiderable traffic in hides
with California, in tortoise-shell and mother of pearl with the
Polynesian Islands.
What then would have been the use of cutting a canal, through which
there would not have passed five ships in a twelvemonth? But twenty
years have worked a wondrous revolution in the state and prospects of
these regions.
The traffic of Chili has received a large development, and the stability
of its institutions has been fairly tried. The resources of Costa Rica,
the population of which is mainly of European race, is steadily
advancing. American citizens have founded a state in Oregon. The
Sandwich Islands have become for all practical purposes an American
colony. The trade with China—to which the proposed canal would open a
convenient avenue by a western instead of the present eastern route—is
no longer restricted to the Canton river, but is open to all nations as
far north as the Yangtse-Kiang. The navigation of the Amur has been
opened to the Russians by a treaty, and cannot long remain closed
against the English and American settlers between Mexico and the Russian
settlements in America. Tahiti has become a kind of commercial emporium.
The English settlements in Australia and New Zealand have opened a
direct trade with the Indian Archipelago and China. The permanent
settlements of intelligent and enterprising Anglo-Americans and English
in Polynesia, and on the eastern and western shores of the Pacific, have
proved so many _depôts_ for the adventurous traders with its innumerable
islands, and for the spermaceti whalers. Then the last, but greatest
addition of all, is California: a name in the world of commerce and
enterprise to conjure with. There gold is to be had for fetching. Gold,
the main-spring of commercial activity, the reward of toil—for which men
are ready to risk life, to endure every sort of privation; sometimes,
alas! to sacrifice every virtue; one most especially, and that is
Patience. They will away with her now.
Till the discovery of the new Gold country how contentedly they dawdled
round Cape Horn; creeping down one coast and up another; but now such
delay is not to be thought of. Already, indeed, Panama has become the
seat of a great increasing and perennial transit trade. This cannot fail
to augment the settled population of the region, its wealth and
intelligence. Upon these facts we rest the conviction that the time has
arrived for realising the project of a ship canal there or in the near
neighbourhood.
That a ship canal, and not a railway, is what is first wanted (for very
soon there will be both), must be obvious to all acquainted with the
practical details of commerce. The delay and expense to which merchants
are subjected, when obliged to ‘break bulk’ repeatedly between the port
whence they sail and that of their destination, is extreme. The waste
and spoiling of goods, the cost of the operation, are also heavy
drawbacks, and to these they are subject by the stormy passage round
Cape Horn.
Two points present themselves offering great facilities for the
execution of a ship canal. The one is in the immediate vicinity of
Panama; where the many imperfect observations which have hitherto been
made, are yet sufficient to leave no doubt that, as the distance is
comparatively short, the summit levels are inconsiderable, and the
supply of water ample. The other is some distance to the northward. The
isthmus is there broader, but is in part occupied by the large and deep
fresh-water lakes of Nicaragua and Naragua. The lake of Nicaragua
communicates with the Atlantic by a copious river, which may either be
rendered navigable, or be made the source of supply for a side canal.
The space between the two lakes is of inconsiderable extent, and
presents no great engineering difficulties. The elevation of the lake of
Naragua above the Pacific is inconsiderable; there is no hill range
between it and the gulph of Canchagua; and Captain Sir Edward Belcher
carried his surveying ship _Sulphur_ sixty miles up the Estero Real,
which rises near the lake, and falls into the gulf. The line of the
Panama canal presents, as Humboldt remarks, facilities equal to those of
the line of the Caledonian canal. The Nicaragua line is not more
difficult than that of the canal of Languedoc, a work executed between
1660 and 1682, at a time when the commerce to be expedited by it did not
exceed—if it equalled—that which will find its way across the Isthmus;
when great part of the maritime country was as thinly inhabited by as
poor a population as the Isthmus now is; and when the last subsiding
storms of civil war, and the dragonnades of Louis XIV., unsettled men’s
minds and made person and property insecure.
The cosmopolitan effects of such an undertaking, if prosecuted to a
successful close, it is impossible even approximatively to estimate. The
acceleration it will communicate to the already rapid progress of
civilisation in the Pacific is obvious. And no less obvious are the
beneficial effects it will have upon the mutual relations of civilised
states, seeing that the recognition of the independence and neutrality
in times of general war of the canal and the region through which it
passes, is indispensable to its establishment.
We have dwelt principally on the commercial, the economical
considerations of the enterprise, for they are what must render it
possible. But the friends of Christian missions, and the advocates of
Universal Peace among nations, have yet a deeper interest in it. In the
words used by Prince Albert at the dinner at the Mansion House
respecting the forthcoming great Exhibition of Arts and Industry,
‘Nobody who has paid any attention to the particular features of our
present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of
most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great
end—to which indeed all history points—the realisation of the unity of
mankind. Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the
peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but
rather a unity the result and product of those very national varieties
and antagonistic qualities. The distances which separated the different
nations and parts of the globe are gradually vanishing before the
achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with
incredible speed; the languages of all nations are known, and their
acquirements placed within the reach of everybody; thought is
communicated with the rapidity, and even by the power of lightning.’
Every short cut across the globe brings man in closer communion with his
distant brotherhood, and results in concord, prosperity, and peace.
THE TRUE STORY OF A COAL FIRE.
IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER II.
Down the lower shaft the young man continued to descend in silence and
darkness. He did not know if he descended slowly or rapidly. The sense
of motion had become quite indefinite. There was a horrible feathery
ease about it, as though he were being softly taken down to endless
darkness, with an occasional tantalising waft upwards, and then a lower
descent, which made his whole soul sink within him. But he grasped the
chain in front of him with all his remaining force, as his only hold on
this world—which in fact it _was_.
From this condition of helpless dismay and apprehension, poor Flashley
was suddenly aroused by a violent and heavy bump on the top of his iron
umbrella! He thought it must be some falling miner, or perhaps his
ponderous-footed elfin abductor, who had leaped down after him. It was
only the accidental fall of a loose brick from above, somewhere; but the
dead bang of the sound, coming upon the previous silence, was
tremendous. The missile shot off slanting from the iron umbrella—seemed
to dash its brains out against the side of the shaft—and then flew down
before him, like a lost soul.
Flashley now felt a wavering motion in his descent, while an increasing
current of air rose to meet him; and almost immediately after, he heard
strange and confused sounds beneath. Looking down into the darkness, he
not only saw a reddening light, but, as he stared down, it became
brighter, until he saw the gleam of flames issuing from one side of the
shaft. He fully expected to descend into the midst, and ‘there an end;’
but he speedily found he was reserved for some other fate. The fire was
placed in a large chasm, and appeared to have a steep red pathway
sloping away behind it. He passed it safely. From this moment he felt no
current of air, but his ears were assailed with a variety of noises, in
which he could distinguish the gush of waters, the lumbering of wood,
the clank and jar of chains, and the voices of men—or something worse.
Three black figures were distinctly visible.
In a few seconds more, his feet touched earth—which seemed to give a
heave, in answer. His descent from the upper surface had not occupied
longer time than has been necessary to describe it, but this was greatly
magnified to his imagination by the number, novelty, and force of the
emotions and thoughts that had attended it. He was now at the bottom of
the William Pitt Coal Mine, nine hundred and thirty feet below the
surface of the earth.
A man all black with coal-dust, and naked from the waist upwards, took
hold of Flashley, and extricating him from the chain girdle and iron
umbrella, led him away into the darkness, lighted only by a candle stuck
in a lump of clay which his conductor held in the other hand.
Over all the various sounds, that of rushing waters predominated at this
spot; and very soon they turned an angle which enabled Flashley to
descry a black torrent spouting from a narrow chasm, and rushing down a
precipitous gully on one side of them to seek some still lower abyss.
Another angle was turned; the torrent was no longer seen and its noise
grew fainter almost at every step.
The passage through which they were advancing was cut out of the solid
coal. It was just high enough for the man to walk upright, though with
the danger of striking his head occasionally against some wedge of rock,
stone, or block of coal, projected downwards from the roof. In width the
sides could be reached by the man’s extended hands. They were sometimes
supported by beams, and sometimes by a wall of brick, and the roof was
frequently sustained by upright timbers, and limbs or trunks of trees.
In one place, where the roofing had evidently sunk, there stood an
irregular row of stunted oak trunks, of grotesque shapes and shadows,
many of which were cracked and gaping in ragged flaws from the crushing
pressure they had resisted; showing that, without them, the roof would
certainly have fallen, and rendering the passage more ‘suggestive’ than
agreeable to a stranger beneath. Here and there, at considerable
distances, candles stuck in clay were set in gaps of the coaly walls, in
the sandstone, or against the logs and trunks. The pathway was for the
most part a slush of coal-dust, mixed with mud and slates, varied with
frequent nobs and snaggs of rock and iron-stone. In this path of
intermittent ingredients, a tram-road had been established, the rails of
which had been laid down at not more than 15 inches asunder; and moving
above this at no great distance, Flashley now saw a dull vapoury light,
and next descried a horse emerging from the darkness ahead of them. It
seemed clear that nothing could save them from being run over, unless
_they_ could run over the horse. However, his guide made him stand with
his back flat against one side of the passage—and presently the long,
hot, steamy body of the horse moved by, just moistening his face and
breast in passing. He had never before thought a horse’s body was so
long. At the creature’s heels a little low black waggon followed with
docility. The wheels were scarcely six inches high. Its sides were
formed by little black rails. It was full of coals. A boy seemed to be
driving, whose voice was heard on the other side of the horse, or else
from beneath the animal’s body, it was impossible to know which.
They had not advanced much further when they came to a wooden barricade,
which appeared to close their journey abruptly. But it proved to be a
door, and swung open of its own accord as they approached. No sooner
were they through, than the door again closed, apparently of its own
careful good will and pleasure. The road was still through cuttings in
the solid coal, varied occasionally with a few yards of red sandstone,
or with brick walls and timbers as previously described. Other horses
drawing little black coal-waggons were now encountered; sometimes two
horses drawing two or more waggons, and these passed by in the same
unpleasant proximity. More _Sesame_ doors were also opened and shut as
before; but Flashley at length perceived that this was not effected by
any process of the black art, as he had imagined, but by a very little
and very lonely imp, who was planted behind the door in a toad-squat,
and on this latter occasion was honoured by his guide with the title of
an ‘infernal small _trapper_,’ in allusion to some neglect of duty on a
previous occasion. It was, in truth, a poor child of nine years of age,
one of the victims of poverty, of bad parents, and the worst management,
to whose charge the safety of the whole mine, with the lives of all
within it, was committed; the requisite ventilation depending on the
careful closing of these doors by the trapper-boys, after anybody has
passed.
Proceeding in this way, they arrived at a side-working close upon the
high-road, in which immense ledges of rocks and stones projected from
the roof, being embedded in the coal. In cutting away the coal there was
danger of loosening and bringing down some of these stones, which might
crush the miners working beneath. A ‘council’ was now being held at the
entrance, where seven experienced ‘undergoers’ were lying flat on the
ground, smoking, with wise looks, in Indian fashion, and considering the
best mode of attack, whereby they might bring down the coals without
being ‘mashed up’ by the premature fall of the rocks and stones together
with the black masses in which they were embedded.
Among all the gloomy and oppressive feelings induced by this journey
between dismal walls—faintly lighted, at best, so as to display a most
forbidding succession of ugly shadows and grotesque outlines—and
sometimes not lighted at all for a quarter of a mile; there was nothing
more painful than the long pauses of silence; a silence only broken by
the distant banging of the trappers’ doors, or by an avalanche of coal
in some remote working. After advancing in a silence of longer duration
than any that had preceded it, Flashley’s dark conductor paused every
now and then, and listened—then advanced; then stopped again
thoughtfully, and listened. At length he stopped with gradual paces, and
turning to Flashley, said in a deep tone, the calmness of which added
solemnity to the announcement,—
‘We are now walking beneath the bed of the sea!—and ships are sailing
over our heads!’
Several horses and waggons were met and passed after the fashion already
described. On one occasion, the youth who drove the horse, walked in
front, waving his candle in the air, and causing it to gleam upon a
black pool in a low chasm on one side, which would otherwise have been
invisible. He was totally without clothing, and of a fine symmetrical
form, like some young Greek charioteer doing penance on the borders of
Lethe for careless driving above ground. As he passed the pool of water,
he stooped with his candle. Innumerable bubbles of gas were starting to
the surface. The instant the flame touched them, they gave forth
sparkling explosions, and remained burning with a soft blue gleam. It
continued visible a long time, and gave the melancholy idea of some
spirit, once beautiful, which had gone astray, and was for ever lost to
its native region. It was as though the youth had written his own
history in symbol, before he passed away into utter darkness.
‘You used to be fond,’ observed Flashley’s companion, with grim ironical
composure, after one of these close encounters with horseflesh—‘You
_used_ to be fond of horses.’
Flashley made no reply, beyond a kind of half-suppressed groan of
fatigue and annoyance.
‘Well, then,’ said the other, appearing to understand the smothered
groan as an acquiescence—‘we will go and look at the stables.’
He turned off at the next corner on the left, and led the way up a
narrow and steep path of broken brick and sandstone, till they arrived
at a bank of rock and coal, up which they had to clamber, Flashley’s
guide informing him that it would save a mile of circuitous path.
Arriving at the top, they soon came to a narrow door, somewhat higher
than any they had yet seen. It opened by a long iron latch, and they
entered the ‘mine stables.’
A strong hot steam and most oppressive odour of horses, many of whom
were asleep and snoring, was the first impression. The second, was a
sepulchral Davy-lamp hanging from the roof, whose dull gleam just
managed to display the uplifting of a head and inquiring ears in one
place, the contemptuous whisking of a tail in another, and a large
eye-ball gleaming through the darkness, in another! The stalls were like
a succession of narrow black dens, at each side of a pathway of broken
brick and sand. In this way sixty or seventy horses were ‘stabled.’
‘This is a prince of a mine!’ said the guide; ‘we have seven hundred
people down here, and a hundred and fifty horses.’
They emerged at the opposite end, which led up another steep path
towards a shaft (for the mine now had four or five) which was used for
the ascent and descent of horses. They were just in time to witness the
arrival of a new-comer,—a horse who had never before been in a mine.
The animal’s eyes and ears became more frightfully expressive, as with
restless anticipatory limbs and quivering flesh he swung round in his
descending approach to the earth. When his hoofs touched, he made a
plunge. But though the band and chain confined him, he appeared yet more
restrained by the appalling blackness. He made a second plunge, but with
the same result. He then stood stock-still, glared round at the black
walls and the black faces and figures that surrounded him, and instantly
fainted.
The body of the horse was speedily dragged off on a sort of sledge, by a
tackle. The business of the mine could not wait for his recovery. He was
taken to be ‘fanned.’ Flashley of course understood this as a mine joke;
but it was not entirely so. A great iron wheel, with broad fans, was
often worked rapidly in a certain place, to create a current of air and
to drive it on towards the fire in the up-cast shaft, assisting by this
means the ventilation of the mine; and thither, or at all events, in
that direction, the poor horse was dragged, amidst the laughter and
jokes of the miners and the shouts and whistles of the boys.
How silent the place became after they were gone! Flashley stepped
forwards towards the spot immediately beneath the shaft. It was much
nearer to the surface than any of the other shafts, and the daylight
from above ground just managed to reach the bottom. Under the shaft was
a very faint circle of sad-coloured and uncertain light. The palest
ghost might have stood in the middle of it and felt ‘at home.’
The ‘streets’ of the mine appeared to be composed of a series of
horse-ways having square entrances to ‘workings’ at intervals on either
side, and leading to narrow side-lane workings. Up one of these his
guide now compelled Flashley to advance; in order to do which they were
both obliged to stoop very low; and, before long, to kneel down and
crawl on all-fours. While moving forward in this way upon the coal-dust
slush, where no horse could draw a waggon, a poor beast of another kind
was descried approaching with his load. It was in the shape of a human
being, but not in the natural position—in fact, it was a boy degraded to
a beast, who with a girdle and chain was dragging a small coal-waggon
after him. A strap was round his forehead, in front of which, in a tin
socket, a lighted candle was stuck. His face was close to the ground. He
never looked up as he passed.[2]
Footnote 2:
Young women and girls were also used in this way till the Report of
the Children’s Employment Commission caused it to be forbidden by Act
of Parliament.
These narrow side-lane passages from the horse-road, varied in length
from a few fathoms, to half-a-mile and upwards; and the one in which
Flashley was now crawling, being among the longest, his impression of
the extent of these underground streets and by-ways, was sufficiently
painful, especially as he had no notion of what period he was doomed to
wander through them. Besides, the difficulty of respiration, the
crouching attitude, the heated mist, the heavy sense of gloomy monotony,
pressed upon him as they continued to make their way along this dismal
burrow.
From this latter feeling, however, he was roused by a sudden and loud
explosion. It proceeded from some remote part of the trench in which
they were struggling, and in front of them. The arrival of a new sort of
mist convinced them of this. It was so impregnated with sulphur, that
Flashley felt nearly suffocated, and was obliged to lie down with his
face almost touching the coal-slush beneath him, for half-a-minute,
before he could recover himself. Onward, however, he was obliged to go,
urged by his gruff companion behind; and in this way they continued to
crawl till a dim light became visible at the farther end. The light came
forwards. It proceeded from a candle stuck in the front of the head of a
boy, harnessed to a little narrow waggon, who pulled in front, while
another boy pushed with his head behind. A side-cutting, into which
Flashley and his companion squeezed themselves, enabled the waggon to
pass. The hindermost boy, stopping to exchange a word with his
companion, Flashley observed that the boy’s head had a bald patch in the
hair, owing to the peculiar nature of his head-work behind the waggon.
They passed, and now another distant light was visible; but this
remained stationary.
As they approached it, the narrow passage widened into a gap, and a
rugged chamber appeared hewn out in the coal. The sides were supported
by upright logs and beams; and further inwards, were pillars of coal
left standing, from which the surrounding mass had been cut away. At the
remote end of this, sat the figure of a man, perfectly black and quite
naked, working with a short-handled pickaxe, with which he hewed down
coals in front of him, and from the sides, lighted by a single candle
stuck in clay, and dabbed up against a projecting block of coal. From
the entrance to this dismal work-place, branched off a second passage,
terminating in another chamber, the lower part of which was heaped up
with great loose coals apparently just fallen from above. The strong
vapour of gunpowder pervading the place, and curling and clinging about
the roof, showed that a mass of coal had been undermined and brought
down by an explosion. To this smoking heap, ever and anon, came boys
with baskets, or little waggons, which they filled and carried away into
the narrow dark passage, disappearing with their loads as one may see
black ants making off with booty into their little dark holes and
galleries under ground.
The naked miner in the first chamber, now crept out to the entrance,
having fastened a rope round the remotest logs that supported the roof
of the den he had hewed. These he hauled out. He then knocked away the
nearest ones with a great mallet. Taking a pole with a broad blade of
iron at the end, edged on one side and hooked at the other, something
like a halbert, he next cut and pulled away, one by one, by repeated
blows and tugs, each of the pillars of coal which he had left within. A
strange cracking overhead was presently heard. All stepped back and
waited. The cracking ceased, and the miner again advanced, accompanied
by Flashley’s guide; while, by some detestable necromancy, our young
visitor—alack! so very lately such a dashing young fellow ‘about town,’
now suddenly fallen into the dreadful condition of receiving all sorts
of knowledge about coals—felt compelled to assist in the operation.
Advancing with great wedges, while Flashley carried two large sledge
hammers to be ready for use, the miners inserted their wedges into
cracks in the upper part of the wall of coal above the long chamber that
had just been excavated, the roof of which was now bereft of all
internal support. They then took the hammers and began to drive in the
wedges. The cracks widened, and shot about in branches, like some black
process of crystallisation. The party retreated several paces—one wide
flaw opened above, and down came a hundred tons of coal in huge blocks
and broad splinters! The concussion of the air, and the flight of
coal-dust, extinguished the candles. At this the two miners laughed
loudly, and, pushing Flashley before them, caused him to crouch down on
his hands and knees, and again creep along the low passage by which they
had entered. A boy in harness drawing a little empty waggon soon
approached, with a candle on his forehead, as usual. The meeting being
unexpected and out of order, as the parties could not pass each other in
this place, Flashley’s special guide and ‘tutor’ gave him a lift and a
push, by means of which he was squeezed between the rough roofing and
the upper rail of the empty waggon, into which he then sank down with a
loud ‘Oh!’ His tutor now set his head to the hinder part of the waggon,
the miner assumed the same position with respect to the tutor—the boy
did the same by the miner—and thus, by reversing the action of the
wheels, the little waggon, with its alarmed occupant, was driven along
by this three-horse power through the low passage, with a reckless speed
and jocularity, in which the ridiculous and hideous were inextricably
mingled.
Arriving at the main horse-road, as Flashley quickly distinguished by
the wider space, higher roofing, and candles stuck against the sides,
his mad persecutors never stopped, but increasing their speed the moment
the wheels were set upon the rails, they drove the waggon onwards with
yells and laughter, and now and then a loud discordant whistle in
imitation of the wailful cry of a locomotive; passing ‘getters,’ and
‘carriers,’ and ‘hurryers,’ and ‘drawers,’ and ‘pushers,’ and other
mine-people, and once sweeping by an astonished horse—gates and doors
swinging open before them—and shouts frequently being sent after them,
sometimes of equivocal import, but generally _not_ to be mistaken, by
those whom they thus rattled by, who often received sundry concussions
and excoriations in that so narrow highway beneath the earth.
In this manner did our unique _cortège_ proceed, till sounds of many
voices ahead of them were heard, and then more and more light gleamed
upon the walls; and the next minute they emerged from the road-way, and
entered a large oblong chamber, or cavern, where they were received with
a loud shout of surprise and merriment. It was the dining-hall of the
mine.
This cavern had been hewn out of the solid coal, with intervals of rock
and sandstone here and there in the sides. Candles stuck in lumps of
damp clay, were dabbed up against the rough walls all round. A table,
formed of dark planks laid upon low tressels, was in the middle, and
round this sat the miners, nearly naked,—and far blacker than negroes,
whose glossy skins shine with any light cast upon them,—while these were
of a dead-black, which gave their robust outlines and muscular limbs the
grimness of sepulchral figures, strangely at variance with the
boisterous vitality and physical capacities of their owners. These, it
seemed, were the magnates of the mine—the ‘hewers,’ ‘holers,’
‘undergoers,’ or ‘pickers,’—those who hew down the coal, and not the
fetchers and carriers, and other small people.
Before he had recovered from his recent drive through the mine, Flashley
was seated at the table. Cold roast beef, and ham, and slices of cold
boiled turkey were placed before him, with a loaf of bread, fresh
dairy-butter, and a brown jug of porter. He was scarcely aware whether
he ate or not, but he soon began to feel _much_ revived; and then he saw
a hot roast duck; and then another; and then three more; and then a
great iron dish, quite hot, and with flakes of fire at the bottom, full
of roast ducks. Green peas were only just coming into season, and sold
at a high price in the markets; but here were several delphic dishes
piled up with them; and Flashley could but admire and sit amazed at the
rapidity with which these delicate green pyramids sank lower and lower,
as the great spoonfuls ascended to the red and white open mouths of the
jovial black visages that surrounded him. He was told that the
‘undergoers’ dined here every day after this fashion; but only with
ducks and green peas at this particular season, when the miners made a
point of buying up all the green peas in the markets, claiming the right
to have them before all the nobility and gentry in the neighbourhood.
While all this was yet going on, Flashley became aware of a voice, as of
some one discoursing very gravely. It was like the voice of the Elfin
who had wrought him all this undesired experience. But upon looking
forwards in the direction of the sound, he perceived that it proceeded
from one of the miners—a brawny-chested figure, who was making a speech.
Their eyes met, and then it seemed that the miner was addressing himself
expressly to poor Flashley. Something impelled the latter, averse as he
was, to stand up and receive the address.
‘Young man—or rather gent!’ said the miner—‘You are now in the bowels of
old mother Earth—grandmother and great grandmother of all these seams of
coal; and you see a set of men around you, whose lives are passed in
these gloomy places, doing the duties of their work without repining at
its hardness, without envying the lot of others, and smiling at all its
dangers. We know very well that there are better things above ground—and
worse. We know that many men and women and children, who are ready to
work, can’t get it, and so starve to death, or die with miserable
slowness. A sudden death, and a violent is often our fate. We may fall
down a shaft; something may fall upon us and crush us; we may be damped
to death;[3] we may be drowned by the sudden breaking in of water; we
may be burned up by the wildfire,[4] or driven before it to destruction;
in daily labour we lead the same lives as horses and other beasts of
burden; but for _all_ that, we feel that we have something else within,
which has a kind of tingling notion of heaven, and a God above, and
which we have heard say is called ‘the soul.’ Now, tell us—young master,
you who have had all the advantages of teachers, and books, and learning
among the people who live above ground—tell us, benighted working men,
how have _you_ passed your time, and what kind of thing is your soul?’
Footnote 3:
_The choke-damp_, carbonic acid gas.
Footnote 4:
_Fire-damp_, also called _the sulphur_—hydrogen gas.
The miner ceased speaking, but continued standing. Flashley stood
looking at him, unable to utter a word. At this moment, a half-naked
miner entered hurriedly from one of the main roads, shouting confused
words—to the effect that the fire which is always placed in the up-cast
shaft to attract and draw up the air for the ventilation of the mine,
had just been extinguished by the falling in of a great mass of coal,
and the mine was no longer safe!
‘Fire-damp!’—‘The sulphur!’—‘Choke-damp!’ ejaculated many voices, as all
the miners sprang from their seats, and made a rush towards the main
outlet. Flashley was borne away in the scramble of the crowd; but they
had scarcely escaped from the cavern, when the flame of the candles ran
up to the roof, and a loud explosion instantly followed. The crowd was
driven pell-mell before it, flung up, and flung down, dashed sideways,
or borne onwards, while explosion after explosion followed the few who
had been foremost, and were still endeavouring to make good their
retreat.
Among these latter was Flashley, who was carried forwards, he knew not
how, and was scarcely conscious of what was occurring, except that it
was something imminently dreadful, which he momentarily expected to
terminate in his destruction.
At length only himself and one other remained. It was the miner who had
been his companion from the first. They had reached a distant ‘working,’
and stopped an instant to take breath, difficult as it was to do this,
both from the necessity of continuing their flight, and also from the
nature of the inflammable air that surrounded them. Some who had arrived
here before them, had been less fortunate. Half-buried in black slush
lay the dead body of a miner, scorched to a cinder by the wildfire; and
on a broad ledge of coal sat another man, in an attitude of faintness,
with one hand pressed, as with a painful effort, against his head. The
black-damp had suffocated him: he was quite dead.
Beyond this Flashley knew nothing until he found himself placed in a
basket, and rising rapidly through the air, as he judged, by a certain
swinging motion, and the occasional grating of the basket against the
sides of the shaft. After a time he ventured to look up, and to his joy,
not unmixed with awe, he discerned the mouth of the shaft above,
apparently of the size of a small coffee-cup. Some coal-dust and drops
of water fell into his eyes; he saw no more; but with a palpitating
heart, full of emotions, and prayers, and thankfulness, for his prospect
of deliverance, continued his ascent.
Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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