The Project Gutenberg eBook of Household words, no. 9, May 25, 1850
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Title: Household words, no. 9, May 25, 1850
A weekly journal
Editor: Charles Dickens
Release date: March 11, 2026 [eBook #78174]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78174
Credits: Richard Tonsing, Steven desJardins, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 9, MAY 25, 1850 ***
“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.
HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.
CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
N^{o. 9.}] SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1850. [Price 2_d._
THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.
IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER I.
It was not often that anything happened to enliven the village of
Bleaburn, in Yorkshire: but there was a day in the summer of 1811, when
the inhabitants were roused from their apathy, and hardly knew
themselves. A stranger was once heard to say, after some accident had
compelled him to pass through Bleaburn, that he saw nothing there but a
blacksmith asleep, and a couple of rabbits hung up by the heels. That
the blacksmith was wholly asleep at midday might indicate that there was
a public house in the place; but, even there, in that liveliest and most
intellectual spot in a country village of those days,—the ale-house
kitchen—the people sat half asleep. Sodden with beer, and almost without
ideas and interests, the men of the place let indolence creep over them;
and there they sat, as quiet a set of customers as ever landlord had to
deal with. For one thing, they were almost all old or elderly men. The
boys were out after the rabbits on the neighbouring moor; and the young
men were far away. A recruiting party had met with unusual success, for
two successive years—(now some time since)—in inducing the men of
Bleaburn to enter the king’s service. In a place where nobody was very
wise, and everybody was very dull, the drum and fife, the soldierly
march, the scarlet coats, the gay ribbons, the drink and the pay, had
charms which can hardly be conceived of by dwellers in towns, to whose
eyes and ears something new is presented every day. Several men went
from Bleaburn to be soldiers, and Bleaburn was declared to be a loyal
place; and many who had never before heard of its existence, spoke of it
now as a bright example of attachment and devotion to the throne in a
most disloyal age. While, throughout the manufacturing districts, the
people were breaking machinery—while on these very Yorkshire hills they
were drilling their armed forces—while the moneyed men were grumbling at
the taxes, and at the war in Spain, whence, for a long time, they had
heard of many disasters and no victories; and while the hungry labourers
in town and country were asking how they were to buy bread when wheat
was selling at 95_s._ the quarter, and while there were grave
apprehensions of night-burnings of the corn magazines, the village of
Bleaburn, which could not be seen without being expressly sought, was
sending up strong men out of its cleft of the hills, to fight the
battles of their country.
Perhaps the chief reason of the loyalty, as well as the quietness of
Bleaburn, was its lying in a cleft of the hills; in a fissure so deep
and narrow, that a traveller in a chaise might easily pass near it
without perceiving that there was any settlement at all, unless it was
in the morning when the people were lighting their fires, or on the
night of such a day as that on which our story opens. In the one case,
the smoke issuing from the cleft might hint of habitations: in the
other, the noise and ruddy light would leave no doubt of there being
somebody there. There was, at last, a victory in Spain. The news of the
battle of Albuera had arrived; and it spread abroad over the kingdom,
lighting up bonfires in the streets, and millions of candles in windows,
before people had time to learn at what cost this victory was obtained,
and how very nearly it had been a fatal defeat, or anything about it, in
short. If they had known the fact that while our allies, the Spaniards,
Portuguese, and Germans, suffered but moderately, the British were
slaughtered as horribly as they could have been under defeat: so that,
out of six thousand men who went up the hill, only fifteen hundred were
left standing at the top, the people might have let their bonfires burn
out as soon as they would, and might have put out their candles that
mourners might weep in darkness. But they burst into rejoicing first,
and learned details afterwards.
Every boy in Bleaburn forgot the rabbits that day. All were busy getting
in wood for the bonfire. Not a swinging shutter, not a loose pale, not a
bit of plank, or ricketty gate, or shaking footbridge escaped their
clutches. Where they hid their stock during the day, nobody knew; but
there was a mighty pile at dusk. It was then that poor Widow Slaney,
stealing out to close her shutter, because she could not bear the sound
of rejoicing, nor the sight of her neighbours abroad in the ruddy light,
found that her shutter was gone. All day, she had been in the loft, lest
she should see anybody; for the clergyman had been to tell her that her
son Harry had been shot as a deserter. She had refused to believe it at
first; but Mr. Finch had explained to her that the soldiers in Spain had
suffered so cruelly from hunger, and want of shoes and of every comfort,
that hundreds of them had gone into the towns to avoid starvation; and
then, when the towns were taken by the allies, such British soldiers as
were found, and were declared to have no business there, were treated as
deserters, for an example. It was some comfort that Mr. Finch did not
think that Harry had done any thing very wicked; but Mrs. Slaney could
not meet any one, nor bear the flaring light on her ceiling; so she went
up to the loft again, and cried all night in the dark. Farmer Neale was
the wonder of the place this evening. He was more gracious than anybody,
though there was nobody who was not, at all times, afraid of him. When
he was seen striding down the steep narrow street, the little boys hid
themselves. They had not been able to resist altogether the temptation
of dry thorns in his fences, and of the chips which had still lain about
where his winter felling had been done, and they concluded he was come
now to give them a rough handling: but they found themselves mistaken.
He was in high good-humour, sending such boys as he could catch with
orders upon his people at home for a tar-barrel and a whole load of
faggots.
“’Tis hardly natural, though, is it?” said Mrs. Billiter to Ann
Warrender. “It does not seem natural for any father to rejoice in a
victory when his own son has lost his best leg there.”
“Has Jack Neale lost his leg? O! what a thing!” exclaimed Ann Warrender.
She was going on, but she perceived that the farmer had heard her.
“Yes,” said he, without any sound of heart-pain in his voice. “Jack has
lost his right leg, Mr. Finch tells me. And I tell Mr. Finch, it is
almost a pity the other did not go after it. He deserved no more good of
either of them when he had let them do such a thing as carry him off
from his home and his duty.”
“How _can_ you, Mr. Neale?” burst out both the women.
“How can I do what, my dears? One thing I can do; and that is, see when
an undutiful son is properly punished. He must live on his pension,
however: he can be of no use to me, now; and I can’t be burdened with a
cripple at home.”
“I don’t think he will ask you,” Mrs. Billiter said. “He was none so
happy there before as to want to come again.”
Ann Warrender told this speech to her father afterwards as the severest
she had ever heard from Mrs. Billiter; and they agreed that it was very
bold, considering that Billiter was one of Farmer Neale’s labourers. But
they also agreed that it was enough to stir up flesh and blood to see a
man made hearty and good-humoured by misfortune having befallen a son
who had offended him. After all, poor Jack Neale had run away only
because he could not bear his father’s tyranny. Two more of the Bleaburn
recruits had suffered—had been killed outright; one a widower, who, in
his first grief, had left his babes with their grandmother, and gone to
the wars; and the other, an ignorant lout, who had been entrapped
because he was tall and strong; had been fuddled with beer, flattered
with talk of finery, and carried off before he could recover his slow
wits. He was gone, and would soon be forgotten.
“I say, Jem,” said Farmer Neale, when he met the village idiot, Jem
Johnson, shuffling along the street, staring at the lights: “you’re the
wise man, after all: you’re the best off, my man.”
Widow Johnson, who was just behind, put her arm in poor Jem’s, and tried
to make him move on. She was a stern woman; but she was as much
disgusted at Farmer Neale’s hardness as her tender-hearted daughter,
Mrs. Billiter, or anyone else.
“Good day, Mrs. Johnson,” said Neale. “You are better off for a son than
I am, after all. Yours is not such a fool as to go and get his leg shot
off, like my precious son.”
Mrs. Johnson looked him hard in the face, as she would a madman or a
drunken man whom she meant to intimidate; and compelled her son to pass
on. In truth, Farmer Neale was drunk with evil passions; in such high
spirits, that, when he found that the women—mothers of sons—would have
nothing to say to him to-day, he went to the public house, where he was
pretty sure of being humoured by the men who depended on his employment
for bread, and on his temper for much of the peace of their lives.
On his way he met the clergyman, and proposed to him to make a merry
evening of it. “If you will just step in at the Plough and Harrow, Sir,”
said he, “and tell us all you have heard about the victory, it will be
the finest thing—just what the men want. And we will drink your health,
and the King’s, and Marshal Beresford’s, who won the victory. It is a
fine occasion, Sir; an occasion to confirm the loyalty of the people.
You will come with me, Sir?”
“No,” replied Mr. Finch, “I have to go among another sort of people,
Neale. If you have spirits to make merry to-night, I own to you I have
not. Victories that cost so much, do not make me very merry.”
“Oh, fie, Mr. Finch! How are we to keep up our character for loyalty, if
you fail us—if you put on a black face in the hour of rejoicing?”
“Just come with me,” said Mr. Finch, “and I can show you cause enough
for heaviness of heart. In our small village, there is mourning in many
houses. Three of our late neighbours are dead, and one of them in such a
way as will break his mother’s heart.”
“And another has lost a leg, you are thinking. Out with it, Sir, and
don’t be afraid of my feelings about it. Well, it is certain that
Bleaburn has suffered more than is the fair share of one place; but we
must be loyal.”
“And so,” said Mr. Finch, “you are going to prepare more of your
neighbours to enlist, the next time a recruiting party comes this way.
Oh, I don’t say that men are not to be encouraged to serve their king
and country: but it seems to me that our place has done its duty well
enough for the present. I wonder that you, as a farmer, do not consider
the rates, and dread the consequences of having the women and children
on our hands, if our able men get killed and maimed in the wars. I
should have thought that the price of bread—”
“There, now, don’t let us talk about that!” said Neale; “You know that
is a subject that we never agree about. We will let alone the price of
bread for to-day.”
Neale might easily forget this sore subject, and every other that was
disagreeable to other people, in the jollity at the Plough and Harrow,
where there was an uproar of tipsy mirth for the greater part of the
night. But Mr. Finch found little mirth among the people left at home in
the cottages. The poor women, who lived hardly, knitting for eighteen
hours out of the twenty-four, and finding themselves less and less able
to overtake the advancing prices of the necessaries of life, had no
great store of spirits to spend in rejoicing over victories, or anything
else; and among them there was one who loved Jack Neale, and was beloved
by him; and others, who respected Widow Slaney, and could not
countenance noisy mirth while she was sunk in horror and grief. They
were hungry enough, too, to look upon young Slaney’s death as something
of an outrage. If hunger and nakedness had driven him into the shelter
of a town, to avoid dying by the roadside, it seemed to them that being
shot was a hard punishment for the offence. Mr. Finch endeavoured to
show, in hackneyed language, what the dereliction of duty really was,
and how intolerable during warfare; but the end of it was that the
neighbours pitied the poor young man the more, the more they dwelt upon
his fate.
As it turned out, Bleaburn made more sacrifices to the war than those of
the Battle of Albuera, even before drum or fife was again heard coming
over the moor. The place had not been healthy before; and illness set in
somewhat seriously after the excitements of the bonfire night. The cold
and wet spring had discouraged the whole kingdom about the harvest; and
in Bleaburn it had done something more. Where there are stone houses,
high winds aggravate the damage of wet weather. The driven rain had been
sucked in by the stone; and more wet was absorbed from the foundations,
when the swollen stream had rushed down the hollow, and overflowed into
the houses, and the pigstyes, and every empty place into which it could
run. Where there were glass windows and fires in the rooms, the panes
were dewy, and the walls shiny with trickling drops; and in the cottages
where there were no fires, the inhabitants were so chilly, that they
stuffed up every broken window-pane, and closed all chinks by which air
might enter, in hopes of keeping themselves warm; but the floors were
never really dry that summer, and even the beds had a chilly feel. The
best shoes showed mould between one Sunday and another; and the meal in
the bin (of those who were so fortunate as to have a meal-bin) did not
keep well. Mr. Finch had talked a great deal about what was to be
expected from summer weather and the harvest; but as the weeks went on,
there were graver doubts about the harvest than there had been even
while people were complaining at Easter, and shaking their heads at
Whitsuntide; and when a few days of hot weather came at last, the people
of Bleaburn did not know how to bear them at all. The dead rats and
decaying matter which had been deposited by the spring overflow, made
such a stench that people shut their windows closer than ever. Their
choice now was between being broiled in the heat which was reflected
from the sides of the cleft in which they lived, and being shut into
houses where the walls, floors, and windows were reeking with steam. The
women, who sat still all day, knitting, had little chance for health in
such abodes; and still less had such of the men as, already weakened by
low diet, had surfeited themselves with beer on the night of the
rejoicing, and broiled themselves in the heat of the bonfire, and
fevered mind and body with shouting, and singing, and brawling, and been
brought home to be laid upon musty straw, under a somewhat damp blanket.
This excess was hardly more pernicious to some than depression was to
others. Those of the people at Bleaburn that had received heart-wounds
from the Battle of Albuera, thought they could never care again for any
personal troubles or privations; but they were not long in learning that
they now suffered more than before from low diet and every sort of
discomfort. They blamed themselves for being selfish; but this
self-blame again made the matter worse. They had lost a hope which had
kept them up. They were not only in grief, but thoroughly discouraged.
Their gloom was increased by seeing that a change had come over Mr.
Finch. On Sundays he looked so anxious, that it was enough to lower
people’s spirits to go to church. His very voice was dismal, as he read
the service; his sermon grew shorter almost every Sunday: and it was
about everything that the people cared least about He gave them
discussions of doctrine, or dry moral essays, which were as stones to
them when they wanted the bread of consolation and the wine of hope.
Here and there, women said it really was too much for their spirits to
go to church, and they staid away; and the boys and girls took the
opportunity to go spying upon the rabbits. It was such boys and girls
that gave news of Mr. Finch during the week. Every morning, he was so
busy over his books in his study, that it was no easy matter to get a
sight of him; and every fine afternoon he went quietly, by a bye-path,
to a certain spot on the moor, where an ostler from the Cross Keys at
O—— was awaiting him with the horse on which he took long rides over the
hills. Mr. Finch was taking care of his health.
CHAPTER II.
“Can I have a chaise?” inquired a young lady, on being set down by the
coach at the Cross Keys, at O——.
“Yes, ma’am, certainly,” replied the neat landlady.
“How far do you call it to Bleaburn?”
“To Bleaburn, ma’am! It is six miles. But, ma’am, you are not going to
Bleaburn, surely.”
“Indeed I am. Why not?”
“Because of the fever, ma’am. There never was anything heard of like it.
You cannot go there, I assure you, ma’am, and I could not think of
sending a chaise there. Neither of my post-boys would go.”
“One of them shall take me as near as is safe, then. I dare say we shall
find somebody who will take care of my little trunk till I can send for
it.”
“The cordon would take care of your trunk, if that were all, but—”
“The what?” interrupted the young lady.
“The cordon, they call it, ma’am. To preserve ourselves, we have set
people to watch on the moor above, to prevent anybody from Bleaburn
coming among us, to spread the fever. Ma’am, it is worse than anything
you ever heard of.”
“Not worse than the plague,” thought Mary Pickard, in whose mind now
rose up all she had read and heard of the horrors of the great plague,
and all the longing she had felt when a child to have been a clergyman
at such a time, or at least, a physician, to give comfort to numbers in
their extremity.
“Indeed, ma’am,” resumed the landlady, “you cannot go there. By what I
hear, there are very few now that are not dead, or down in the fever.”
“Then they will want me the more,” said Mary Pickard. “I must go and see
my aunt. I wrote to her that I should go; and she may want me more than
I thought.”
“Have you an aunt living at Bleaburn?” asked the landlady, in some
surprise. “I did not know that there was any lady living at Bleaburn. I
thought they had been all poor people there.”
“I believe my aunt is poor,” said Mary. “I have heard nothing of her for
several years, except merely that she was living at Bleaburn. She had
the education of a gentlewoman; but I believe her husband became a
common labourer before he died. I am from America, and my name is Mary
Pickard, and my aunt’s name is Johnson; and I shall be glad if you can
tell me anything about her, if this fever is really raging as you say. I
must see her before I go home to America.”
“You see, ma’am, if you go,” said the landlady, contemplating the little
trunk, “you will not be able to come away again while the fever lasts.”
“And you think I shall not have clothes enough,” said Mary, smiling. “I
packed my box for a week only, but I dare say I can manage. If everybody
was ill, I could wash my clothes myself. I have done such a thing with
less reason. Or, I could send to London for more. I suppose one can get
at a post-office.”
“Through the cordon, I dare say you might, ma’am. But, really, I don’t
know that there is anybody at Bleaburn that can write a letter, except
the clergyman and the doctor and one or two more.”
“My aunt can,” said Mary, “and it is because she does not answer our
letters, that I am so anxious to see her. You did not tell me whether
you know her name,—Johnson.”
“A widow, I think you said, ma’am.” And the landlady called to the
ostler to ask him if he knew anything of a Widow Johnson, who lived at
Bleaburn. Will Ostler said there was a woman of that name who was the
mother of Silly Jem. “Might that be she?” Mary had never heard of Silly
Jem; but when she found that Widow Johnson had a daughter, some years
married, that she had white hair, and strong black eyes, and a strong
face altogether, and that she seldom spoke, she had little doubt that
one so like certain of her relations was her aunt. The end of it was
that Mary went to Bleaburn. She ordered the chaise herself, leaving it
to the landlady to direct the post-boy where to set her down; she
appealed to the woman’s good feelings to aid her if she should find that
wine, linen or other comforts were necessary at Bleaburn, and she could
not be allowed to come and buy them: explained that she was far from
rich, and told the exact sum which she at present believed she should be
justified in spending on behalf of the sick; and gave a reference to a
commercial house in London. She did not tell—and indeed she gave only a
momentary thought to it herself—that the sum of money she had mentioned
was that which she had saved up to take her to Scotland, to see some
friends of her family, and travel through the Highlands. As she was
driven off from the gateway of the Cross Keys, nodding and smiling from
the chaise window in turning the corner, the landlady ceased from
commanding the post-boy on no account to go beyond the brow, and said to
herself that this Miss Pickard was the most wilful young lady she had
ever known, but that she could not help liking her, too. She did not
seem to value her life any more than a pin; and yet she appeared
altogether cheerful and sensible. If the good woman had been able to see
into Mary’s heart, she would have discovered that she had the best
reason in the world for valuing life very much indeed: but she had been
so accustomed, all her life, to help everybody that needed it, that she
naturally went straight forward into the business, without looking at
difficulties or dangers, on the right hand or the left.
Mary never, while she lived, forgot this drive. Her tone of mind was, no
doubt, high, though she was unconscious of it. It was a splendid August
evening, and she had never before seen moorland. In America, she had
travelled among noble inland forests, and a hard granite region near the
coasts of New England: but the wide-spreading brown and green moorland,
with its pools of clear brown water glittering in the evening sunshine,
and its black cocks popping out of the heather, and running into the
hollows, was quite new to her. She looked down, two or three times, into
a wooded dell where grey cottages were scattered among the coppices, and
a little church tower rose above them; but the swelling ridges of the
moor, with the tarns between, immediately attracted her eye again.
“Surely,” thought she, “the cordon will let me walk on the moor in the
afternoons, if I go where I cannot infect any body. With a walk in such
places as these every day, I am sure I could go through any thing.”
This seemed very rational beforehand. It never entered Mary’s head that
for a long while to come, she should never once have leisure for a walk.
“Yon’s the cordon,” said the post-boy, at last, pointing with his whip.
“What do you understand by a cordon?”
“Them people that you may see there. I don’t know why they call them so;
for I don’t hear that they do anything with a cord.”
“Perhaps it is because there is a French word—_cordon_—that means any
thing that encloses any other thing. They would call your hat band a
cordon, and an officer’s sash, and a belt of trees round a park. So, I
suppose these people surround poor Bleaburn and let nobody out.”
“May be so,” said the man, “but I don’t see why we should go to the
French for our words or anything else, when we have everything better of
our own. For my part, I shall be beholden to the French for no word, now
I know of it. I shall call them people the watch, or something of that
like.”
“I think I will call them messengers,” said Mary: “and that will sound
least terrible to the people below. They do go on errands, do not
they,—and take and send parcels and messages?”
“They are paid to do it, Miss: but they put it upon one another, or get
out of the way, if they can,—they are so afraid of the fever, you
see.——I think we must stop here, please, Miss. I could go a little
nearer, only, you see—.”
“I see that you are afraid of the fever too,” said Mary, with a smile,
as she jumped out upon the grass. One of the sentinels was within hail.
Glad of the relief from the dulness of his watch, he came with alacrity,
took charge of the little trunk, and offered to show the lady, from the
brow, the way down the hollow to the village.
The post-boy stood, with his money in his hand, watching the retreating
lady, till, under a sudden impulse, he hailed her. Looking round, she
saw him running towards her, casting a momentary glance back at his
horses. He wanted to try once more to persuade her to return to O——. He
should be so happy to drive her back, out of the way of danger. His
employer would be so glad to see her again! When he perceived that it
was no use talking, he went on touching his hat, while he begged her to
take back the shilling she had just given him. It would make his mind
easier, he said, not to take money for bringing any lady to such a
place. Mary saw that this was true; and she took back the shilling,
promising that it should be spent in the service of some poor sick
person.
As Mary descended into the hollow, she was struck with the quiet beauty
of the scene. The last sun-blaze rushed level along the upper part of
the cleft, while the lower part lay in deep shadow. While she was
descending a steep slope, with sometimes grass, and sometimes grey rock,
by the roadside, the opposite height rose precipitous; and from chinks
in its brow, little drips of water fell or oozed down, calling into life
ferns, and grass, and ivy, in every moist crevice. Near the top, there
were rows of swallow-holes; and the birds were at this moment all at
play in the last glow of the summer day, now dipping into the shaded
dell, down to the very surface of the water, and then sprinkling the
grey precipice with their darting shadows. Below, when Mary reached the
bridge, she thought all looked shadowy in more senses than one. The
first people she saw were some children, excessively dirty, who were
paddling about in a shallow pool, which was now none of the sweetest,
having been filled by the spring overflow, and gradually drying up ever
since. Mary called to these children from the bridge, to ask where Widow
Johnson lived. She could learn nothing more than that she must proceed;
for, if the creatures had not been almost too boorish to speak, she
could have made nothing of the Yorkshire dialect, on the first
encounter. In the narrow street, every window seemed closed, and even
the shutters of some. She could see nobody in the first two or three
shops that she passed; but, at the baker’s, a woman was sitting at work.
On the entrance of a stranger, she looked up in surprise; and, when at
the door, to point out the turn down to Widow Johnson’s, she remained
there, with her work on her arm, to watch the lady up the street. The
doctor, quickening his pace, came up, saying,
“Who was that you were speaking to?—A lady wanting Widow Johnson! What a
very extraordinary thing! Did you tell her the fever had got there?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she must go and nurse them.”
“Do you mean that she is going to stay here?”
“I suppose so, by her talking of nursing them. She says Widow Johnson is
her aunt.”
“O! that’s it! I have heard that Mrs. Johnson came of a good family. But
what a good creature this must be—that is, if she knows what she is
about. If she is off before morning, I shall think it was a vision,
dropped down out of the clouds. Eh?”
“She is not handsome enough to be an angel, or anything of that kind,”
said the baker’s wife.
“O! isn’t she? I did not see her face. But it is all the better, if she
is not very like an angel. She is all the more likely to stay and nurse
the Johnsons. Upon my word, they are lucky people if she does. I must go
and pay my respects to her presently.—Do look now—at the doors all along
the street, on both sides the way! I have not seen so many people at
once for weeks past;—for, you know, I have no time to go to church in
these days.”
“You would not see many people, if you went. See! some of the children
are following her! It is long since they have seen a young lady, in a
white gown, and with a smile on her face, in our street. There she goes,
past the corner; she has taken the right turn.”
“I will just let her get the meeting over, and settle herself a little,”
said the doctor; “and then I will go and pay my respects to her.”
The little rabble of dirty children followed Mary round the corner,
keeping in the middle of the lane, and at some distance behind. When she
turned to speak to them, they started and fled, as they might have done,
if she had been a ghost. But when she laughed, they returned cautiously;
and all their brown forefingers pointed the same way at once, when she
made her final inquiry about which was the cottage she wanted. Two
little boys were pushed forward by the rest; and it transpired that
these were grandchildren of Widow Johnson.
“Is she your granny?” said Mary. “Then, I am your cousin. Come with me;
and if granny is very much surprised to see me, you must tell her that I
am your cousin Mary.”
The boys, however, had no notion of entering the cottage. They slipped
away, and hid themselves behind it; and Mary had to introduce herself.
After knocking in vain for some time, she opened the door, and looked
in. No one was in the room but a man, whom she at once recognised for
Silly Jem. He was half-standing, half-sitting, against the table by the
wall, rolling his head from side to side. By no mode of questioning
could Mary obtain a word from him. The only thing he did was to throw a
great log of wood on the fire, when she observed what a large fire he
had. She tried to take it off again; but this he would not permit. The
room was insufferably hot and close. The only window was beside the
door; so that there was no way of bringing a current of fresh air
through the room. Mary tried to open the window; but it was not made to
open, except that a small pane at the top, three inches square, went
upon hinges. As soon as Mary had opened it, however, poor Jem went and
shut it. Within this kitchen, was a sort of closet for stores; and this
was the whole of the lower floor. Mary opened one other door, and found
within it a steep, narrow stair, down which came a sickening puff of
hot, foul air. She went up softly, and Jem slammed the door behind her.
It seemed as if it was the business of his life to shut everything.
Groping her way, Mary came to a small chamber, which she surveyed for an
instant from the stair, before showing herself within. There was no
ceiling; and long cobwebs hung from the rafters. A small window, two
feet from the floor, and curtained with a yellow and tattered piece of
muslin, was the only break in the wall. On the deal table stood a phial
or two, and a green bottle, which was presently found to contain rum. A
turn-up bedstead, raised only a foot from the floor, was in a corner;
and on it lay some one who was very restless, feebly throwing off the
rug, which was immediately replaced by a sleepy woman who dozed between
times in a chair that boasted a patchwork cushion. Mary doubted whether
the large black eyes which stared forth from the pillow had any sense in
them. She went to see.
“Aunty,” said she, going to the bed, and gently taking one of the wasted
hands that lay outside. “I am come to nurse you.”
The poor patient made a strong effort to collect herself, and to speak.
She did not want anybody. She should do very well. This was no place for
strangers. She was too ill to see strangers, and so on; but, from time
to time, a few wandering words about her knowing best how to choose a
husband for herself—her having a right to marry as she pleased—or of
insisting that her relations would go their own way in the world, and
leave her hers—showed Mary that she was recognised, and what feelings
she had to deal with.
“She knows where I came from; but she takes me for my mother or my
grandmother,” thought she. “If she grows clear in mind, we shall be
friends on our own account. If she remains delirious, she will become
used to the sight of me. I must take matters into my own hands at once.”
The first step was difficult. Coolness and fresh air were wanted above
everything. But there was no chimney; the window would not open; poor
Jem would not let any door remain open for a moment; and the sleepy
neighbour was one of those who insist upon warm bedclothes, large fires,
and hot spirit-and-water, in fever cases. She was got rid of by being
paid to find somebody who would go for Mary’s trunk, and bring it here
before dark. She did her best to administer another dose of rum before
she tied on her bonnet; but as the patient turned away her head with
disgust, Mary interposed her hand. The dram was offered to her, and, as
she would not have it, the neighbour showed the only courtesy then
possible, by drinking Mary’s health, and welcome to Bleaburn. The woman
had some sharpness. She could see that if she took Jem with her, and put
the trunk on his shoulder, she should get the porter’s fee herself,
instead of giving it to some rude boy; and, as Mary observed, would be
doing a kindness to Jem in taking him for a pleasant evening walk. Thus
the coast was cleared. In little more than half-an-hour they would be
back. Mary made the most of her time.
She set the doors below wide open, and lowered the fire. She would fain
have put on some water to boil, for it appeared to her that everybody
and everything wanted washing extremely. But she could find no water,
but some which seemed to have been used—which was, at all events, not
fit for use now. For water she must wait till somebody came. About air,
she did one thing more—a daring thing. She had a little diamond ring on
her finger. With this, without noise and quickly, she cut so much of two
small panes of the chamber-window as to be able to take them clean out;
and then she rubbed the neighbouring panes bright enough to hide, as she
hoped, an act which would be thought mad. When she looked round again at
Aunty, she could fancy that there was a somewhat clearer look about the
worn face, and a little less dulness in the eye. But this might be
because she herself felt less sick now that fresh air was breathing up
the stairs.
There was something else upon the stairs—the tread of some one coming
up. It was the doctor. He said he came to pay his respects to the lady
before him, as well as to visit his patient. It was no season for losing
time, and doctor and nurse found in a minute that they should agree very
well about the treatment of the patient. Animated by finding that he
should no longer be wholly alone in his terrible wrestle with disease
and death, the doctor did things which he could not have believed he
should have courage for. He even emptied out the rum-bottle, and hurled
it away into the bed of the stream. The last thing he did was to turn up
his cuffs, and actually bring in two pails of water with his own hands.
He promised (and kept his promise) to send his boy with a supply of
vinegar, and a message to the neighbour that she was wanted elsewhere,
that Mary might have liberty to refresh the patient, without being
subject to the charge of murdering her. “A charge, however,” said he,
“which I fully expect will be brought against any one of us who knows
how to nurse. I confess they have cowed me. In sheer despair, I have let
them take their own way pretty much. But now we must see what can be
done.”
“Yes,” said Mary. “It is fairly our turn now. We must try how we can cow
the fever.”
SPRING-TIME IN THE COURT.
They say the Spring has come again!
There is no Spring-time here;
In this dark, reeking court, there seems
No change throughout the year:
Except, sometimes, ’tis bitter cold,
Or else ’tis hot and foul;
How hard it is, in such a place,
To feel one has a soul!
They say the Spring has come again!
I scarce believe ’tis so;
For where’s the sun, and gentle breeze,
That make the primrose blow?
Oh, would that I could lead my child
Over the meadows green,
And see him playing with the flowers
_His_ eyes have never seen!
His toys are but an oyster-shell,
Or piece of broken delf;
His playground is the gulley’s side,
With outcasts like himself!
_I_ used to play on sunny banks,
Or else by pleasant streams;
How oft—oh, God be thanked! how oft—
I see them in my dreams.
I used to throw my casement wide,
To breathe the morning’s breath;
But now I keep the window close—
The air smells so like death!
Once only, on my window-sill
I placed a little flower,
Something to tell me of the fields—
It withered in an hour.
Why are we housed like filthy swine?
Swine! they have better care;
For we are pent up with the plague,
Shut out from light and air.
We work and wear our lives away,
To heap this city’s wealth;
But labour God decreed for us—
’Tis man denies us health!
They say the Spring has come again
To wake the sleeping seed,
Whether it be the tended flower,
Or poor, neglected weed!
Then Harvest comes. Think you our wrongs
For ever, too, will sleep?
The misery which man has sown,
Man will as surely reap!
THE PLANET-WATCHERS OF GREENWICH.
There is a morsel of Greenwich Park, which has, for now nearly two
centuries, been held sacred from intrusion. It is the portion inclosed
by the walls of the Observatory. Certainly a hundred thousand visitors
must ramble over the surrounding lawns, and look with curious eye upon
the towers and outer boundaries of that little citadel of science, for
one who finds admission to the interior of the building. Its brick
towers, with flanking turrets and picturesque roofs, perched on the side
of the gravelly hill, and sheltered round about by groups of fine old
trees, are as well known as Greenwich Hospital itself. But what work
goes on inside its carefully preserved boundary and under those
moveable, black-domed roofs, is a popular mystery. Many a
holiday-maker’s wonder has been excited by the fall, at one o’clock, of
the huge black ball, high up there, by the weather vane on the topmost
point of the eastern turret. He knows, or is told if he asks a loitering
pensioner, that the descent of the ball tells the time as truly as the
sun; and that all the ships in the river watch it to set their
chronometers by, before they sail; and that all the railway clocks, and
all the railway trains over the kingdom are arranged punctually by its
indications. But how the heavens are watched to secure this punctual
definition of the flight of time, and what other curious labours are
going on inside the Observatory, is a sealed book. The public have
always been, of necessity, excluded from the Observatory walls, for the
place is devoted to the prosecution of a science whose operations are
inconsistent with the bustle, the interruptions, the talk, and the
anxieties of popular curiosity and examination.
But when public information and instruction are the objects, the doors
are widely opened, and the press and its _attachés_ find a way into
this, as into many other sacred and forbidden spots. Only last week one
of ‘our own contributors’ was seen in a carriage on the Greenwich
railway, poring over the paper in the last Edinburgh Review that
describes our national astronomical establishment, and was known
afterwards to have climbed the Observatory hill, and to have rung and
gained admission at the little black mysterious gate in the Observatory
wall. Let us see what is told in his report of what he saw within that
sacred portal.
In the park on a fine day all seems life and gaiety—once within the
Observatory boundary, the first feeling is that of isolation. There is a
curious stillness about the place, and the footsteps of the old
pensioner, who closes the gate upon a visitor, echoes again on the
pavement as he goes away to wake up from his astronomical or
meteorological trance one of the officers of this sanctum. Soon, under
the guidance of the good genius so invoked, the secrets of the place
begin to reveal themselves.
The part of the Observatory so conspicuous from without is the portion
least used within. When it was designed by Christopher Wren, the general
belief was that such buildings should be lofty, that the observer might
be raised towards the heavenly bodies whose motions he was to watch.
More modern science has taught its disciples better; and in
Greenwich,—which is an eminently practical Observatory,—the working part
of the building is found crouching behind the loftier towers. These are
now occupied as subsidiary to the modern practical building. The ground
floor is used as a residence by the chief astronomer; above is the large
hall originally built to contain huge moveable telescopes and
quadrants—such as are not now employed. Now-a-days, this hall
occasionally becomes a sort of scientific counting-house—irreverent but
descriptive term—in which, from time to time, a band of scientific
clerks are congregated to post up the books, in which the daily business
of the planets has been jotted down by the astronomers who watch those
marvellous bodies. Another portion is a kind of museum of astronomical
curiosities. Flamstead and Halley, and their immediate successors,
worked in these towers, and here still rest some of the old, rude tools
with which their discoveries were completed, and their reputation, and
the reputation of Greenwich, were established. As time has gone on,
astronomers and opticians have invented new and more perfect and more
luxurious instruments. Greater accuracy is thus obtainable, at a less
expenditure of human patience and labour; and so the old tools are cast
aside. One of them belonged to Halley, and was put up by him a hundred
and thirty years ago; another is an old brazen quadrant, with which many
valuable observations were made in by-gone times; and another, an old
iron quadrant, still fixed in the stone pier to which it was first
attached. Some of the huge telescopes that once found place in this old
Observatory, have been sent away. One went to the Cape of Good Hope, and
has been useful there. Another of the unsatisfactory, and now unused,
instruments had a tube twenty-five feet long, whose cool and dark
interior was so pleasant to the spiders that, do what they would, the
astronomers could not altogether banish the persevering insects from it.
Spin they would; and, spite of dusting and cleaning, and spider-killing,
spin they did; and, at length, the savans got more instruments and less
patience, and the spiders were left in quiet possession. This has been
pleasantly spoken of as an instance of poetical justice. It is but fair
that spiders should, at times, have the best of astronomers, for
astronomers rob spiders for the completion of their choicest
instruments. No fabric of human construction is fine enough to strain
across the eye-piece of an important telescope, and opticians preserve a
particular race of spiders, that their webs may be taken for that
purpose. The spider lines are strained across the best instruments at
Greenwich and elsewhere; and when the spinners of these beautifully fine
threads disturbed the accuracy of the tube in the western wing of the
old Observatory, it was said to be but fair retaliation for the
robberies the industrious insects had endured.
A narrow stair leads from the unused rooms of the old Observatory to its
leaded roof, whence a magnificent view is obtained; the park, the
hospital, the town of Greenwich, and the windings of the Thames, and,
gazing further, London itself comes grandly into the prospect. The most
inveterate astronomer could scarcely fail to turn for a moment from the
wonders of the heavens to admire these glories of the earth. From the
leads, two turrets are reached, where the first constantly active
operations in this portion of the building, are in progress.
At the present time, indeed, these turrets are the most useful portions
of the old building. In one is placed the well-known contrivance for
registering, hour after hour, and day after day, the force and direction
of the wind. To keep such a watch by human vigilance, and to make such a
register by human labour, would be a tedious, expensive, and irksome
task; and human ingenuity taxed itself to make a machine for perfecting
such work. The wind turns a weather-cock, and, by aid of cog-wheels the
motion is transferred to a lead pencil fixed over a sheet of paper, and
thus the wind is made to write down the direction which itself is
blowing. Not far distant is a piece of metal, the flat side of which is
ever turned by the weather-cock to meet the full force of the wind,
which, blowing upon it, drives it back against a spring. To this spring
is affixed a chain passing over pullies towards another pencil, fixed
above a sheet of paper, and moving faithfully, more or less, as the wind
blows harder or softer. And thus the ‘gentle zephyr’ and the fresh
breeze, and the heavy gale, and, when it comes, the furious hurricane,
are made to note down their character and force. The sheets of paper on
which the uncertain element, the wind, is bearing witness against
itself, is fixed upon a frame moved by clockwork. Steady as the progress
of time, this ingenious mechanism draws the paper under the suspended
pencils. Thus each minute and each hour has its written record, without
human help or inspection. Once a day only, an assistant comes to put a
new blank sheet in the place of that which has been covered by the
moving pencils, and the latter is taken away to be bound up in a volume.
The book might with truth be lettered ‘The History of the Wind; written
by Itself,’—an Æolian autobiography.
Close by is another contrivance for registering in decimals of an inch
the quantity of rain that falls. The drops are caught, and passing down
a tube, a permanent mark is made by which the quantity is determined.
The eastern turret is devoted to the Time Ball and its mechanism. Far
out at sea—away from all sources of information but those to be asked of
the planets, his compass, his quadrant, his chronometer, and his
almanack, the mariner feels the value of _time_ in a way which the
landsman can scarcely conceive. If his chronometer is right, he may feel
safe; let him have reason to doubt its accuracy, and he knows how the
perils surrounding him are increased. An error of a few seconds in his
time may place him in danger—an error of a few minutes may lead him to
steer blindly to his certain wreck. Hence his desire when he is leaving
port to have his time-pieces right to a second; and hence the
expenditure of thought, and labour, and money, at the Greenwich
Observatory, to afford the shipping of the great port of London, and the
English navy, the exact time—true to the tenth of a second, or six
hundredth of a minute—and to afford them also a book, the Nautical
Almanack, containing a mass of astronomical facts, on which they may
base their calculations, with full reliance as to their accuracy. Every
day for the last seventeen years, at five minutes before one o’clock,
the black ball five feet across and stuffed with cork, is raised halfway
up its shaft above the eastern turret of the Observatory;—at
two-and-a-half minutes before that hour, it rises to the top. Telescopes
from many a point, both up and down the river, are now pointed to this
dark spot above the Greenwich trees, and many an anxious mariner has his
time-pieces beside him, that their indications may be made true. Watch
the Ball as you stand in the Park. It is now just raised. You must wait
two minutes and a half, and as you do so, you feel what a minute may be.
It seems a long, palpable, appreciable time, indeed. In the turret
below, stands a clock telling the true time, gained by a laborious
watching of the _clock-stars_; and beside the clock, is a man with a
practised hand upon a trigger, and a practised eye upon the face of the
dial. One minute—two minutes pass. Thirty seconds more, and the trigger
has released the Ball. As it leaves the top of the shaft, it is one
o’clock to the tenth of a second. By the time it has reached the bottom
it is some five seconds later.
Leaving the Ball Turret, and the old building which it surmounts, the
new Observatory, where the chief work of the establishment is done,
claims our notice. This attention would scarcely be given to its outward
appearance for it is a long low building, scarcely seen beyond its own
boundaries. The Greenwich Observatory is not a _show_ place, but an
eminently practical establishment. St. Petersburg and other cities have
much more gorgeous buildings devoted to astronomical purposes, and
Russia and other countries spend much more money on astronomy than
England does, yet the Greenwich Tables have a world-wide reputation, and
some of them are used as the groundwork for calculations in all
Observatories at home and abroad. The astronomer does not want marble
halls or grand saloons for his work. Galileo used a bell-tower at
Venice, and Kepler stood on the bridge at Prague to watch the stars. The
men, not the buildings, do the work. No disappointment need be felt,
then, to find the modern Observatory a range of unadorned buildings
running east and west, with slits in the roof, and in some of the walls.
Within these simple buildings are the instruments now used, displaying
almost the perfection of mechanical skill in their construction and
finish—beautifully adapted to the object they have to fulfil, and in
perfect order. They are fixed on solid piers of masonry, deeply imbedded
in the earth, to secure freedom from vibration—a quality better obtained
when the foundations are on sand or gravel than when on rock.
To describe the instruments by their technical names, and to go into any
particulars of the instruments they have superseded, would take space,
only to do the work of a scientific treatise. Enough, therefore, to say
that there are the telescopes best adapted to the chief duty of the
place, which is, watching the moon whenever she is visible; watching the
_clock-stars_, by which the true time is calculated more exactly than it
could be from observations of the sun alone; and watching other
planetary bodies as they pass the meridian. Eclipses, occultations, and
other phenomena, of course, have their share of attention, and add to
the burden of the observer’s duties.
The staff of the Observatory includes a chief astronomer, Mr. Airy, with
a salary of 800_l._ a year; and six assistants who are paid, 470_l._,
290_l._, 240_l._, 150_l._, 130_l._, and 130_l._, respectively. This does
not include the officers of the Meteorological branch of the
establishment, to be spoken of hereafter; and which consists of Mr.
Glaisher, with 240_l._ a year, one assistant at 120_l._, and two
additional computers. At times, when these scientific labourers have
collected more observations than they are able to work out; additional
help is summoned, in shape of the body of scientific clerks before
spoken of; who, seated at desks, cast up the accounts the planetary
bodies, including such regular old friends as the moon and fixed stars,
but not forgetting those wandering celestial existences that rush, from
time to time, over the meridian, and may be fairly called the chance
customers of the astronomer.
Though the interior of the Observatory seems so still, the life of those
employed there has its excitements. Looking through telescopes forms a
small part only of their duty—and that duty cannot be done when the
weather is unfavourable. On cloudy days the observer is idle; in bright
weather he is busy; and a long continuance of clear days and nights
gives him more employment than he can well complete. Summer, therefore,
is his time of labour; winter his time of rest. It appears that in our
climate the nights, on the whole, are clearer than the days, and
evenings less cloudy than mornings. Every assistant takes his turn as an
observer, and a chain of duty is kept up night and day; at other
periods, the busiest portion of the twenty-four hours at the
Observatory, is between nine in the morning and two in the afternoon.
During this time they work in silence, the task being to complete the
records of the observations made, by filling in the requisite columns of
figures upon printed forms, and then adding and subtracting them as the
case requires. Whilst thus engaged, the assistant who has charge of an
instrument looks, from time to time, at his star-regulated clock, and
when it warns him that his expected planet is nearly due, he leaves his
companions, and quietly repairs to the room where the telescope is
ready. The adjustment of this has previously been arranged with the
greatest nicety. The shutter is moved from the slit in the roof, the
astronomer sits upon an easy chair with a moveable back. If the object
he seeks is high in the heavens, this chair-back is lowered till its
occupant almost lies down; if the star is lower, the chair-back is
raised in proportion. He has his note-book and metallic pencil in hand.
Across the eye-piece of the telescope are stretched seven lines of
spider-web, dividing the field of view. If his seat requires change, the
least motion arranges it to his satisfaction, for it rests upon a
railway of its own. Beside him is one of the star-clocks, and as the
moment approaches for the appearance of the planet, the excitement of
the moment increases. ‘The tremble of impatience for the entrance of the
star on the field of view,’ says an Edinburgh Reviewer, ‘is like that of
a sportsman whose dog has just made a full point, and who awaits the
rising of the game. When a star appears, the observer, in technical
language, _takes a second from the clock face_; that is, he reads the
second with his eye, and counts on by the ear the succeeding beats of
the clock, naming the seconds mentally. As the star passes each wire of
the transit, he marks down in his jotting-book with a metallic pencil
the second, _and the second only_, of his observation, with such a
fraction of a second as corresponds, in his judgment, to the interval of
time between the passage of the star, and the beat of the clock which
preceded such passage.’
An experienced observer will never commit an error in this mental
calculation, exceeding the tenth of a second, or six hundredth of a
minute. When the star has been thus watched over the seven cobweb lines
(or wires), the observer jots down the hour and minute, in addition to
the second, and the task is done. Stars, not very near the sun, may be
seen in broad daylight, but, at night, it is requisite to direct a ray
of light from a lamp, so far to enlighten the field of the telescope, as
to permit the spider lines to be seen running across the brighter ground
on which the expected star is to be visible.
The adjustment of the instruments is a task of great nicety. If they are
out of trim only a shadow of a shade of a hair’s-breadth, the desired
accuracy is interfered with, and they have to be re-adjusted.
Temperature is of course an important element in their condition, and a
slight sensibility may do mischief. The warmth of the observer’s body,
when approaching the instruments, has been known to affect their
accuracy; and to avoid such sources of error, instruments have at times
been cased in flannel, that the non-conducting powers of that homely
fabric might screen the too-sensitive metal.
Sunday is a comparative holiday at the Observatory, for then, except
when any extraordinary phenomena are expected, the only duty done is to
drop the Time Ball, and observe the moon’s place. The moon is never
neglected, and her motions have been here watched, during the last
hundred and seventy years, with the most pertinacious care,—to the great
service of astronomy, and the great benefit of navigation.
The library should not pass unnoticed. It is small; but being devoted to
works upon astronomy, and the kindred sciences, there is ample room for
all that has hitherto been written on the subject, or that can, for many
generations, be produced. The observations of a lifetime spent in
watching the stars may be printed in marvellously few pages. A glance
through the Greenwich Astronomical Library gives a rough general idea of
what the world has done and is doing for the promotion of this science.
Russia contributes large, imperial-looking tomes, that tell of extended
observations made under the munificent patronage of a despot; Germany
sends from different points a variety of smaller, cheaper-looking, yet
valuable contributions; France gives proofs of her genius and her
discoveries; but _her_ forte is not in observation. The French are bad
observers. They have no such proofs of unremitting, patient toil in
search of facts, as those afforded in the records of the Greenwich
Tables of the Moon. Indeed, Greenwich, as we have already said, is a
working Observatory; and those who go into its library, and its
fire-proof manuscript-room, and see how its volumes of observations have
been growing from the small beginnings of the days of Flamstead and
Halley, to those of our later and more liberal times, will have good
reason to acknowledge that the money devoted to this establishment has
been well employed.
One other spot must be noticed as amongst the notable things in this
astronomical sanctum. It is the Chronometer-room, to which, during the
first three Mondays in the year, the chief watchmakers of London send in
their choicest instruments for examination and trial. The watches remain
for a good portion of a year; their rates being noted, day by day, by
two persons; and then the makers of the best receive prizes, and their
instruments are purchased for the navy. Other competitors obtain
certificates of excellence, which bring customers from the merchant
service; whilst others pass unrewarded. To enter the room where these
admirable instruments are kept, suggests the idea of going into a
Brobdingnag Watch-factory. Round the place are ranged shelves, on which
the large watches are placed, all ticking in the most distinct and
formidable way one against another. When they first arrive, in January,
they are left to the ordinary atmospheric temperature for some months.
Their rates being taken under these circumstances, a large stove in the
centre of the apartment is lighted, and heat got up to a sort of
artificial East India or Gold Coast point. Tried under these influences,
they are placed in an iron tray over the stove, like so many watch-pies
in a baker’s dish, and the fire being encouraged, they are literally
kept baking, to see how their metal will stand that style of treatment.
Whilst thus hot, their rates are once more taken; and then, after this
fiery ordeal, such of them as their owners like to trust to an opposite
test, are put into freezing mixtures! Yet, so beautifully made are these
triumphs of human ingenuity—so well is their mechanism ‘corrected’ for
compensating the expansion caused by the heat, and the contraction
induced by the cold—that an even rate of going is established, so
nearly, that its variation under opposite circumstances becomes a matter
of close and certain estimate.
The rates of chronometers on trial for purchase by the Board of
Admiralty, at the Observatory, are posted up and printed in an official
form. Upon looking to the document for last year, we find a statement of
their performances during six months of 1849, with memoranda of the
exact weeks during which the chronometers were exposed to the open air
at a north window; the weeks the Chronometer-room was heated by a stove,
the chronometers being dispersed on the surrounding shelves; and the
weeks during which they were placed in the tray above the stove. The
rate given during the first week of trial is in every case omitted; like
newly entered schoolboys their early vagaries are not taken into
account; but after that, every merit and every fault is watched with
jealous care, and, when the day of judgment comes, the order of the
arrangement of the chronometers in the list is determined solely by
consideration of their irregularities of rate as expressed in the
columns, ‘Difference between greatest and least,’ and, ‘Greatest
difference between one week and the next.’
The Royal Observatory, according to a superstition not wholly extinct,
is the headquarters, not only of Astronomy, but of Astrology. The
structure is awfully regarded, by a small section of the community which
ignorance has still left amongst us, as a manufactory of horoscopes, and
a repository for magic mirrors and divining-rods. Not long ago a
well-dressed woman called at the Observatory gate to request a hint as
to the means of recovering a lost sum of money; and recently, somebody
at Brighton dispatched the liberal sum of five shillings in a
post-office order to the same place, with a request to have his nativity
cast in return! Another, only last year, wrote as follows:—‘I have been
informed that there are persons at the Observatory who will, by my
enclosing a remittance and the hour of my birth, give me to understand
_who is to be my wife_? An early answer, stating all particulars, will
oblige,’ &c.
This sketch descriptive of its real duties and uses are not necessary to
relieve the Greenwich Observatory from the charge of being an abode of
sorcerers and astrologers. A few only of the most ignorant can yet
entertain such notions of its character; but they are not wholly
unfounded. Magicians, whose symbols are the Arabic numerals, and whose
_arcana_ are mathematical computations, daily foretell events in that
building with unerring certainty. They pre-discover the future of the
stars down to their minutest evolution and eccentricity. From data
furnished from the Royal Observatory, is compiled an extraordinary
prophetic Almanack from which all other almanacs are copied. It
foretells to a second when and where each of the planets may be seen in
the heavens at any minute for the next three years. The current number
of the Nautical Almanack is for the Year of Grace 1853.
In this quiet sanctuary, then, the winds are made to register their own
course and force, and the rain to gauge its own quantity as it falls;
the planets are watched to help the mariner to steer more safely over
the seas; and the heavens themselves are investigated for materials from
which their future as well as their past history may be written.
SWEDISH FOLK-SONGS.
THE DOVE ON THE LILY.
There sits a pure dove on a lily so white,
On midsummer morning:—
She sang of Christ Jesus from morning to night,
In Heaven there is great joy, O!
She sang, and she sang, ’twas a joy to hear,
Expecting a maiden in Heaven that year.
“And should I reach Heaven ere twelvemonths are o’er,
Sickness and pain I should know never more.”
To her father’s hall the maiden she went,
And through her left side a sharp pain was sent.
“Oh! make my bed, mother, in haste, mother dear,
I shall in the fields no more wander this year.”
“And speak such words, daughter, dear daughter, no more;
Thou shalt wed with a king ere twelvemonths are o’er.”
“Oh! better that I be in Heaven a bride,
Than remain on the earth amid kingly pride.
“And father, dear father, go fetch me a priest,
For I know that, ere long, death will be my guest.
“And brother, dear brother, go get me a bier;
And sister, dear sister, do thou dress my hair.”
The maiden, she died, and was laid on her bier,
And all her hand-maidens they plaited her hair.
They carried her out from her father’s hall door;
And the angels of God with lights went before.
They carried the corpse to the churchyard along,
And the angels of God went before with a song.
They buried the maiden beneath the dark sod,
On midsummer morning:—
And her coming was even well pleasing to God;
In Heaven there is great joy, O!
A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE.
A few Sundays ago, I formed one of the congregation assembled in the
chapel of a large metropolitan Workhouse. With the exception of the
clergyman and clerk, and a very few officials, there were none but
paupers present. The children sat in the galleries; the women in the
body of the chapel, and in one of the side aisles; the men in the
remaining aisle. The service was decorously performed, though the sermon
might have been much better adapted to the comprehension and to the
circumstances of the hearers. The usual supplications were offered, with
more than the usual significancy in such a place, for the fatherless
children and widows, for all sick persons and young children, for all
that were desolate and oppressed, for the comforting and helping of the
weak-hearted, for the raising-up of them that had fallen; for all that
were in danger, necessity, and tribulation. The prayers of the
congregation were desired “for several persons in the various wards,
dangerously ill;” and others who were recovering returned their thanks
to Heaven.
Among this congregation, were some evil-looking young women, and
beetle-browed young men; but not many—perhaps that kind of characters
kept away. Generally, the faces (those of the children excepted) were
depressed and subdued, and wanted colour. Aged people were there, in
every variety. Mumbling, blear-eyed, spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame;
vacantly winking in the gleams of sun that now and then crept in through
the open doors, from the paved yard; shading their listening ears, or
blinking eyes, with their withered hands; poring over their books,
leering at nothing, going to sleep, crouching and drooping in corners.
There were weird old women, all skeleton within, all bonnet and cloak
without, continually wiping their eyes with dirty dusters of
pocket-handkerchiefs; and there were ugly old crones, both male and
female, with a ghastly kind of contentment upon them which was not at
all comforting to see. Upon the whole, it was the dragon, Pauperism, in
a very weak and impotent condition; toothless, fangless, drawing his
breath heavily enough, and hardly worth chaining up.
When the service was over, I walked with the humane and conscientious
gentleman whose duty it was to take that walk, that Sunday morning,
through the little world of poverty enclosed within the workhouse walls.
It was inhabited by a population of some fifteen hundred or two thousand
paupers, ranging from the infant newly born or not yet come into the
pauper world, to the old man dying on his bed.
In a room opening from a squalid yard, where a number of listless women
were lounging to and fro, trying to get warm in the ineffectual sunshine
of the tardy May morning—in the “Itch-Ward,” not to compromise the
truth—a woman such as HOGARTH has often drawn, was hurriedly getting on
her gown, before a dusty fire. She was the nurse, or wardswoman, of that
insalubrious department—herself a pauper—flabby, raw-boned,
untidy—unpromising and coarse of aspect as need be. But, on being spoken
to about the patients whom she had in charge, she turned round, with her
shabby gown half on, half off, and fell a crying with all her might. Not
for show, not querulously, not in any mawkish sentiment, but in the deep
grief and affliction of her heart; turning away her dishevelled head:
sobbing most bitterly, wringing her hands, and letting fall abundance of
great tears, that choked her utterance. What was the matter with the
nurse of the itch-ward? Oh, “the dropped child” was dead! Oh, the child
that was found in the street, and she had brought up ever since, had
died an hour ago, and see where the little creature lay, beneath this
cloth! The dear, the pretty dear!
The dropped child seemed too small and poor a thing for Death to be in
earnest with, but Death had taken it; and already its diminutive form
was neatly washed, composed, and stretched as if in sleep upon a box. I
thought I heard a voice from Heaven saying, It shall be well for thee, O
nurse of the itch-ward, when some less gentle pauper does those offices
to thy cold form, that such as the dropped child are the angels who
behold my Father’s face!
In another room, were several ugly old women crouching, witch-like,
round a hearth, and chattering and nodding, after the manner of the
monkies. “All well here? And enough to eat?” A general chattering and
chuckling; at last an answer from a volunteer. “Oh yes gentleman! Bless
you gentleman! Lord bless the parish of St. So-and-So! It feed the
hungry, Sir, and give drink to the thirsty, and it warm them which is
cold, so it do, and good luck to the parish of St. So-and-So, and
thankee gentleman!” Elsewhere, a party of pauper nurses were at dinner.
“How do _you_ get on?” “Oh pretty well Sir! We works hard, and we lives
hard—like the sodgers!”
In another room, a kind of purgatory or place of transition, six or
eight noisy mad-women were gathered together, under the superintendence
of one sane attendant. Among them was a girl of two or three and twenty,
very prettily dressed, of most respectable appearance, and good manners,
who had been brought in from the house where she had lived as domestic
servant (having, I suppose, no friends), on account of being subject to
epileptic fits, and requiring to be removed under the influence of a
very bad one. She was by no means of the same stuff, or the same
breeding, or the same experience, or in the same state of mind, as those
by whom she was surrounded; and she pathetically complained that the
daily association and the nightly noise made her worse, and was driving
her mad—which was perfectly evident. The case was noted for enquiry and
redress, but she said she had already been there for some weeks.
If this girl had stolen her mistress’s watch, I do not hesitate to say
she would, in all probability, have been infinitely better off. Bearing
in mind, in the present brief description of this walk, not only the
facts already stated in this Journal, in reference to the Model Prison
at Pentonville, but the general treatment of convicted prisoners under
the associated silent system too, it must be once more distinctly set
before the reader, that we have come to this absurd, this dangerous,
this monstrous pass, that the dishonest felon is, in respect of
cleanliness, order, diet, and accommodation, better provided for, and
taken care of, than the honest pauper.
And this conveys no special imputation on the workhouse of the parish of
St. So-and-So, where, on the contrary, I saw many things to commend. It
was very agreeable, recollecting that most infamous and atrocious
enormity committed at Tooting—an enormity which, a hundred years hence,
will still be vividly remembered in the bye-ways of English life, and
which has done more to engender a gloomy discontent and suspicion among
many thousands of the people than all the Chartist leaders could have
done in all their lives—to find the pauper children in this workhouse
looking robust and well, and apparently the objects of very great care.
In the Infant School—a large, light, airy room at the top of the
building—the little creatures, being at dinner, and eating their
potatoes heartily, were not cowed by the presence of strange visitors,
but stretched out their small hands to be shaken, with a very pleasant
confidence. And it was comfortable to see two mangey pauper
rocking-horses rampant in a corner. In the girls’ school, where the
dinner was also in progress, everything bore a cheerful and healthy
aspect. The meal was over, in the boys’ school, by the time of our
arrival there and the room was not yet quite re-arranged; but the boys
were roaming unrestrained about a large and airy yard, as any other
schoolboys might have done. Some of them had been drawing large ships
upon the schoolroom wall; and if they had a mast with shrouds and stays
set up for practice (as they have in the Middlesex House of Correction),
it would be so much the better. At present, if a boy should feel a
strong impulse upon him to learn the art of going aloft, he could only
gratify it, I presume, as the men and women paupers gratify their
aspirations after better board and lodging, by smashing as many
workhouse windows as possible, and being promoted to prison.
In one place, the Newgate of the Workhouse, a company of boys and youths
were locked up in a yard alone; their day-room being a kind of kennel
where the casual poor used formerly to be littered down at night. Divers
of them had been there some long time. “Are they never going away?” was
the natural enquiry. “Most of them are crippled, in some form or other,”
said the Wardsman, “and not fit for anything.” They slunk about, like
dispirited wolves or hyænas; and made a pounce at their food when it was
served out, much as those animals do. The big-headed idiot shuffling his
feet along the pavement, in the sunlight outside, was a more agreeable
object everyway.
Groves of babies in arms; groves of mothers and other sick women in bed;
groves of lunatics; jungles of men in stone-paved down-stairs day-rooms,
waiting for their dinners; longer and longer groves of old people, in
upstairs Infirmary wards, wearing out life, God knows how—this was the
scenery through which the walk lay, for two hours. In some of these
latter chambers, there were pictures stuck against the wall, and a neat
display of crockery and pewter on a kind of sideboard; now and then it
was a treat to see a plant or two; in almost every ward, there was a
cat.
In all of these Long Walks of aged and infirm, some old people were
bed-ridden, and had been for a long time; some were sitting on their
beds half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out of bed, and sitting
at a table near the fire. A sullen or lethargic indifference to what was
asked, a blunted sensibility to everything but warmth and food, a moody
absence of complaint as being of no use, a dogged silence and resentful
desire to be left alone again, I thought were generally apparent. On our
walking into the midst of one of these dreary perspectives of old men,
nearly the following little dialogue took place, the nurse not being
immediately at hand:
“All well here?”
No answer. An old man in a Scotch cap sitting among others on a form at
the table, eating out of a tin porringer, pushes back his cap a little
to look at us, claps it down on his forehead again, with the palm of his
hand, and goes on eating.
“All well here?” (repeated.)
No answer. Another old man sitting on his bed, paralytically peeling a
boiled potato, lifts his head, and stares.
“Enough to eat?”
No answer. Another old man, in bed, turns himself and coughs.
“How are _you_ to-day?” To the last old man.
That old man says nothing; but another old man, a tall old man of a very
good address, speaking with perfect correctness, comes forward from
somewhere, and volunteers an answer. The reply almost always proceeds
from a volunteer, and not from the person looked at or spoken to.
“We are very old, Sir,” in a mild, distinct voice. “We can’t expect to
be well, most of us.”
“Are you comfortable?”
“I have no complaint to make, Sir.” With a half shake of his head, a
half shrug of his shoulders, and a kind of apologetic smile.
“Enough to eat?”
“Why, Sir, I have but a poor appetite,” with the same air as before;
“and yet I get through my allowance very easily.”
“But,” showing a porringer with a Sunday dinner in it; “here is a
portion of mutton, and three potatoes. You can’t starve on that?”
“Oh dear no, Sir,” with the same apologetic air. “Not starve.”
“What do you want?”
“We have very little bread, Sir. It’s an exceedingly small quantity of
bread.”
The nurse, who is now rubbing her hands at the questioner’s elbow,
interferes with, “It ain’t much raly, Sir. You see they’ve only six
ounces a day, and when they’ve took their breakfast, there _can_ only be
a little left for night, Sir.”
Another old man, hitherto invisible, rises out of his bedclothes, as out
of a grave, and looks on.
“You have tea at night?” The questioner is still addressing the
well-spoken old man.
“Yes, Sir, we have tea at night.”
“And you save what bread you can from the morning, to eat with it?”
“Yes, Sir—if we can save any.”
“And you want more to eat with it?”
“Yes, Sir.” With a very anxious face.
The questioner, in the kindness of his heart, appears a little
discomposed, and changes the subject.
“What has become of the old man who used to lie in that bed in the
corner?”
The nurse don’t remember what old man is referred to. There has been
such a many old men. The well-spoken old man is doubtful. The spectral
old man who has come to life in bed, says, “Billy Stevens.” Another old
man who has previously had his head in the fireplace, pipes out,
“Charley Walters.”
Something like a feeble interest is awakened. I suppose Charley Walters
had conversation in him.
“He’s dead!” says the piping old man.
Another old man, with one eye screwed up, hastily displaces the piping
old man, and says:
“Yes! Charley Walters died in that bed, and—and—”
“Billy Stevens,” persists the spectral old man.
“No, no! and Johnny Rogers died in that bed, and—and—they’re both on ’em
dead—and Sam’l Bowyer;” this seems very extraordinary to him; “he went
out!”
With this he subsides, and all the old men (having had quite enough of
it) subside, and the spectral old man goes into his grave again, and
takes the shade of Billy Stevens with him.
As we turn to go out at the door, another previously invisible old man,
a hoarse old man in a flannel gown, is standing there, as if he had just
come up through the floor.
“I beg your pardon, Sir, could I take the liberty of saving a word?”
“Yes; what is it?”
“I am greatly better in my health, Sir; but what I want, to get me quite
round,” with his hand on his throat, “is a little fresh air, Sir. It has
always done my complaint so much good, Sir. The regular leave for going
out, comes round so seldom, that if the gentlemen, next Friday, would
give me leave to go out walking, now and then—for only an hour or so,
Sir!—”
Who could wonder, looking through those weary vistas of bed and
infirmity, that it should do him good to meet with some other scenes,
and assure himself that there was something else on earth? Who could
help wondering why the old men lived on as they did; what grasp they had
on life; what crumbs of interest or occupation they could pick up from
its bare board; whether Charley Walters had ever described to them the
days when he kept company with some old pauper woman in the bud, or
Billy Stevens ever told them of the time when he was a dweller in the
far-off foreign land called Home!
The morsel of burnt child, lying in another room, so patiently, in bed,
wrapped in lint, and looking stedfastly at us with his bright quiet eyes
when we spoke to him kindly, looked as if the knowledge of these things,
and of all the tender things there are to think about, might have been
in his mind—as if he thought, with us, that there was a fellow-feeling
in the pauper nurses which appeared to make them more kind to their
charges than the race of common nurses in the hospitals—as if he mused
upon the Future of some older children lying around him in the same
place, and thought it best, perhaps, all things considered, that he
should die—as if he knew, without fear, of those many coffins, made and
unmade, piled up in the store below—and of his unknown friend, “the
dropped child,” calm upon the box-lid covered with a cloth. But there
was something wistful and appealing, too, in his tiny face, as if, in
the midst of all the hard necessities and incongruities he pondered on,
he pleaded, in behalf of the helpless and the aged poor, for a little
more liberty—and a little more bread.
THE “IRISH DIFFICULTY” SOLVED BY CON Mc Nale.
Con Mc Nale would have been summarily repudiated as an Irishman by our
farce-writers and slashing novelists. He neither drank, fought, nor
swore; did not make many blunders; and never addressed a friend either
as his ‘honey’ or his ‘jewel.’ His _cotamore_ was of stout frieze, and
though Con had long attained his full height, the tailor had left him
room to grow. The _caubeen_ was not his head-dress, for Con had arrived
at the dignity of a silk hat, which had been manufactured, as the mark
in the crown declared, by the Saxons in the Borough of Southwark, which
locality Con believed to be in the n_a_ighbourhood of England. The
brogues were also absent, but were favourably represented by shoes of
native manufacture laced with stout thongs. In fact, Mr. Mc Nale was a
fine specimen of the finest _pisantry_ in the world—without the rags.
People have gone to the Highlands and to Switzerland, and perhaps seen
many places not much more grand and picturesque than the district where
Con Mc Nale had made a patch of the desert to smile. A long range of
blue mountains rising irregularly above each other, looked down on an
extensive plain, that lay along the shore of a mighty lake, to the banks
of which thick plantations crowded so near that the old Irish called the
water _Lough-glas_, which signifies waters of green. The districts where
a short but thick and sweet herbage sprung up among the rocks, were
certainly put to the use of feeding cattle, and it was while employed
there as a herd-boy, that Con Mc Nale determined to become a farmer. His
mind was made up. His earnings were hardly enough to keep life in him,
and if he had tried to save the price of a spade out of them to begin
business with, the chances are that he would have died prematurely for
want of food. But that didn’t matter much; he was determined to be a
farmer. This determination was then as likely of fulfilment as that of
Oliver Cromwell to become Protector of the Realm, while tending the vats
at Huntingdon; or that of Aladdin to become a prince, when he was a
ragged boy in the streets of Bagdad. To show, however, what perseverance
will do, when I made acquaintance with Mr. Con Mc Nale he had actually
got possession of a spade, and was making good use of it in a ditch—his
own ditch, on his own land. As he went on, now digging, now resting on
the handle, he told me all about his gradual promotion from a herd-boy
to a country jontleman.
“My father,” said he, “lived under ould Squire Kilkelly, an’ for awhile
tinded his cattle: but the Squire’s gone out iv this part iv the
counthry, to Australia or some furrin part, an’ the mentioned house
(mansion house) an’ the fine propperty was sould, so it was, for little
or nothin’, for the fightin’ was over in furrin parts; Boney was put
down, an’ there was no price for corn or cattle, an’ a jontleman from
Scotland came an’ bought the istate. We were warned by the new man to
go, for he tuk in his own hand all the in-land about the domain, bein’ a
grate farmer. He put nobody in our little place, but pulled it down, an’
he guv father a five guinea note, but my father was ould an’ not able to
face the world agin, an’ he went to the town an’ tuk a room—a poor,
dirty, choky place it was for him, myself, and sisther to live in. The
naighbours were very kind an’ good, though. Sister Bridget got a place
wid a farmer hereabouts, and I tuk the world on my own showlders. I had
nothin’ at all but the rags I stud up in, an’ they were bad enuf. Poor
Biddy got a shillin’ advanced iv her wages that her masther was to giv
her. She guv it me, for I was bent on goin’ towards Belfast to look for
work. All along the road I axed at every place; they could giv it me but
to no good, except when I axed, they’d giv me a bowl iv broth, or a
piece iv bacon, or an oaten bannock, so that I had my shillin’ to the
fore when I got to Belfast.
“Here the heart was near lavin’ me all out intirely. I went wandtherin’
down to the quay among the ships, and what should there be but a ship
goin’ to Scotland that very night, wid pigs. In throth it was fun to see
the sailors at cross-purposes wid ’em, for they didn’t know the natur iv
the bastes. I did. I knew how to coax ’em. I set to an’ I deludhered an’
coaxed the pigs, an’, by pullin’ them by the tail, knowing that if they
took a fancy I wished to pull ’em back out of the ship, they’d run might
and main into her, and so they did. Well, the sailors were mightily
divarted, an’ when the pigs was aboord, I wint down to the place—an’ the
short iv it is that in three days I was in Glasgow town, an’ the captain
an’ the sailors subschribed up tin-shillins an’ guv it into my hand.
Well, I bought a raping hook, an’ away I trudged till I got quite an’
clane into the counthry, an’ the corn was, here and there, fit to cut.
At last I goes an’ ax a farmer for work. He thought I was too wake to be
paid by the day, but one field havin’ one corner fit to cut, an’ the
next not ready, ‘Paddy,’ says he, ‘you may begin in that corner, an’
I’ll pay yees by the work yees do,’ an’ he guv me my breakfast an’ a
pint of beer. Well, I never quit that masther the whole harvest, an’
when the raping was over I had four goolden guineas to carry home,
besides that I was as sthrong as a lion. Yees would wonder how glad the
sailors was to see me back agin, an’ ne’er a farthin’ would they take
back iv their money, but tuk me over agin to Belfast, givin’ me the
hoighth of good thratemint of all kinds. I did not stay an hour in
Belfast, but tuk to the road to look afther the ould man an’ little
Biddy. Well, sorrows the tidins’ I got. The ould man had died, an’ the
grief an’ disthress of poor little Biddy had even touched her head a
little. The dacent people where she was, may the Lord reward ’em, though
they found little use in her, kep her, hoping I would be able to come
home an’ keep her myself, an’ so I was. I brought her away wid me, an’
the sight iv me put new life in her. I was set upon not being idle, an’
I’ll tell yees what I did next.
“When I was little _bouchaleen_ iv a boy I used to be a head on the
mountain face, an’ ’twas often I sheltered myself behind them gray rocks
that’s at the gable iv my house, an’ somehow it came into my head that
the new Squire, being a grate man for improvin’, might let me try to
brake in a bit iv land there, an’ so I goes off to him, an’ one iv the
sarvints bein’ a sort iv cousin iv mine, I got to spake to the Squire,
an’ behould yees he guv me lave at onst. Well, there’s no time like the
prisint, an’ as I passed out iv the back yard of the mentioned (mansion)
house, I sees the sawyers cutting some Norway firs that had been blown
down by the storm, an’ I tells the sawyers that I had got lave to brake
in a bit iv land in the mountains, an’ what would some pieces iv fir
cost. They says they must see what kind of pieces they was that I wished
for, an’ no sooner had I set about looking ’em through than the Squire
himself comes ridin’ out of the stable-yard, an’ says he at onst,
Mc Nale, says he, you may have a load iv cuttins to build your cabin, or
two if you need it. ‘The Heavens be your honour’s bed,’ says I, an’ I
wint off to the room where I an’ Biddy lived, not knowin’ if I was on my
head or my heels. Next day, before sunrise, I was up here five miles up
the face of Slieve-dan, with a spade in my fist, an’ I looked roun’ for
the most shiltered spot I could sit my eyes an. Here I saw, where the
house an’ yard are stan’in, a plot iv about an acre to the south iv that
tall ridge of rocks, well sheltered from the blast from the north an’
from the aste, an’ it was about sunrise an’ a fine morning in October
that I tuk up the first spadeful. There was a spring then drippin’ down
the face iv the rocks, the same you see gushin’ through the crockery
pipe in the farm-yard; an’ I saw at once that it would make the cabin
completely damp, an’ the land about mighty sour an’ water-_slain_; so I
determined to do what I saw done in Scotland. I sunk a deep drain right
under the rock to run all along the back iv the cabin, an’ workin’ that
day all alone by myself, I did a grate dale iv it. At night, it was
close upon dark when I started to go home, so I hid my spade in the
heath an’ trudged off. The next mornin’ I bargined with a farmer to
bring me up a load iv fir cuttins from the Squire’s, an’ by the evenin’
they were thrown down within a quarter iv a mile iv my place,—for there
was no road to it then, an’ I had to carry ’em myself for the remainder
of the way. This occupied me till near nightfall; but I remained that
night till I placed two upright posts of fir, one at each corner iv the
front iv the cabin.
“I was detarmined to get the cabin finished as quickly as possible, that
I might be able to live upon the spot, for much time was lost in goin’
and comin’. The next day I was up betimes, an’ finding a track iv stiff
blue clay, I cut a multitude of thick square sods iv it, an’ having set
up two more posts at the remainin’ two corners iv the cabin, I laid four
rows iv one gable, rising it about three feet high. Havin’ laid the
rows, I sharpind three or four straight pine branches, an’ druv them
down through the sods into the earth, to pin the wall in its place. Next
day I had a whole gable up, each three rows iv sods pinned through to
the three benathe. In about eight days I had put up the four walls,
makin’ a door an’ two windows; an’ now my outlay began, for I had to pay
a thatcher to put on the sthraw an’ to assist me in risin’ the rafthers.
In another week it was covered in, an’ it was a pride to see it with the
new thatch, an’ a wicker chimbley daubed with clay, like a pallis
undernathe the rock. I now got some turf that those who had cut ’em had
not removed, an’ they sould ’em for a thrifle, an’ I made a grate fire
an’ slept on the flure of my own house that night. Next day I got
another load iv fir brought, to make the partitions in the winter, an’
in a day or two after I had got the inside so dhry that I was able to
bring poor Biddy to live there for good and all. The Heavens be praised,
there was not a shower iv rain fell from the time I began the cabin till
I ended it, an’ when the rain did fall, not a drop came through,—all was
carried off by my dhrain into the little river before yees. The moment I
was settled in the house I comminced dhraining about an acre iv bog in
front, an’ the very first winter I sowed a shillin’s worth of cabbidge
seed, an’ sold in the spring a pound’s worth of little cabbidge plants
for the gardins in the town below. When spring came—noticin’ how the
early planted praties did the best, I planted my cabbidge ground with
praties, an’ I had a noble crap, while the ground was next year fit for
the corn. In the mane time, every winther I tuk in more and more ground,
an’ in summer I cut my turf for fewel; where the cuttins could answer,
in winther, for a dhrain; an’ findin’ how good the turf were, I got a
little powney an’ carried ’em to the town to sell, when I was able to
buy lime in exchange, an’ put it on my bog, so as to make it produce
double. As things went on, I got assistance, an’ when I marrid, my wife
had two cows that guv me a grate lift.
“I was always thought to be a handy boy; an’ I could do a turn of
mason-work with any man not riglarly bred to it; so I took one of my
loads of lime, an’ instead of puttin’ it on the land, I made it into
morthar—and indeed the stones being no ways scarce, I set to an’ built a
little kiln, like as I had seen down the counthry. I could then burn my
own lime, an’ the limestone were near to my hand, too many iv ’em. While
all this was goin’ on, I had riz an’ sould a good dale iv oats and
praties, an’ every summer I found ready sale for my turf in the town
from one jontleman that I always charged at an even rate, year by year.
I got the help of a stout boy, a cousin iv my own, who was glad iv a
shilter; an’ when the childher were ould enough, I got some young cattle
that could graze upon the mountain in places where no other use could be
made iv the land, and set the gossoons to herd ’em.
“There was one bit iv ground nigh han’ to the cabin, that puzzled me
intirely. It was very poor and sandy, an’ little better than a rabbit
burrow; an’ telling the Squire’s Scotch steward iv it, he bade me thry
some flax, an’ sure enuf, so I did, an’ a fine crap iv flax I had, as
you might wish to see; an’ the stame-mills being beginnin’ in the
counthry at that time, I sould my flax for a very good price—my wife
having dhried it, beetled it, an’ scutched it with her own two hands. I
should have said before, that the Squire himself came up here with a lot
iv fine ladies and jontlemen to see what I had done; an’ you never in
your life seed a man so well plased as he was, an’ a Mimber of Parlimint
from Scotland was with him, an’ he tould me I was a credit to ould
Ireland; and sure, didn’t Father Connor read upon the papers, how he
tould the whole story in the Parlimint House before all the lords an’
quality: but faix, he didn’t forgit me; for a month or two after he was
here, an’ it coming on the winter, comes word for me an’ the powney to
go down to the mentioned (mansion) house, for the steward wanted me; so
away I wint, an’ there, shure enuf, was an illigant Scotch plough, every
inch of iron, an’ a lot of young Norroway pines—the same you see
shiltering the house an’ yard—an’ all was a free prisint for me from the
Scotch jontleman that was the Mimber of Parliment. ’Twas that plough
that did the meracles iv work hereabouts; for I often lint it to any
that I knew to be a careful hand; an’ it was the manes iv havin’ the
farmers all round send an’ buy ’em. At last I was able to build a brave
snug house; and praised be Providence, I have never had an hour’s ill
health, nor a moment’s grief, but when poor Biddy, the cratur, died from
us. It is thirty years since that morning that I tuk up the first
spadeful from the wild mountain side; an’ twelve acres are good labour
land, an’ fifteen drained, an’ good grazin’. I have been payin’ rint
twinty years, an’ am still, thank God, able to take my own part iv any
day’s work,—plough, spade, or flail.”
“Have you got a lease?” said I.
“No, indeed; not a schrape of a pin; nor I never axed it. Have I not my
_tinnant-rite_?”
From that subject, Mr. Mc Nale diverged slightly into politics, touching
on the state of the _counthry_, and untwisting some entanglements of the
‘Irish difficulty’ that might be usefully made known in the
neighbourhood of Westminster.
“Troth, Sir,” said Con, “you English are mighty grand in all your
doings. You dale wholesale in all sorts iv things; good luck to you—in
charity as well as in pigs, praties, an’ sich like. Well you want to
improve Ireland by wholesale; you set up illigant schames for puttin’ us
all to rights by the million; for clanin’ an’ dranin’ a whole province
at onst; for giving labour to everybody; an’ all mighty purty on paper,
with figures all as round an’ nate as copybooks, with long rigiments of
O’s, after ’em. I’ve heard iv whole stacks of papers piled up an’
handsomely ticketed in tidy big offices—all ‘rules and riglations’ for
labourers, which the boys can’t follow, and the inspectors can’t force.
Why not,” continued Mr. Con, giving his spade a thrust into the ground
that sent it up to the maker’s name, “Why not tache the boys to do as I
have done?”
“But all are not so persevering, so knowing, and so fond of work as
you.”
Whether Mr. Mc Nale was impressed by his own modesty, or by the force of
my suggestion, I know not. But he was silent.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
William Wordsworth was born on the 7th of April, 1770; he died on the
23d of April, 1850. His life was prolonged for ten years beyond the
space attributed to man by the inspired Psalmist. He lived in an age
unprecedented for its social and civil revolutions; for its discoveries
in science, and their practical application. He was fourteen years of
age when the new North American Republic was finally recognised as one
of the brotherhood of nations; he witnessed the French Revolution; the
subjection of every monarchy in Europe, except England and Russia, to
the absolute will of a French emperor; the instalment and evaporation of
the Holy Alliance; the European war of twenty years, and the European
peace of thirty-two years; one Pope carried into exile by a foreign
conqueror, another driven into exile by his own subjects: and at home,
the trials of Hardy and Thelwall; the Bank Restriction Act; the
origination of the Bell and Lancaster systems of Education; the visit of
the allied monarchs to London; the passing of Peel’s Bill; the
introduction of Palmer’s mail-coaches and M‘Adam’s roads; the invention
of steam navigation; the pausing of the Reform Bill; the development of
the Railway system, and the Electric telegraph. He was the contemporary
of Davey, Herschell, Bentham, Godwin, Malthus and Ricardo, Byron, Scott,
Wilkie, Chantrey, Fox, Pitt, Canning and Brougham.
Wordsworth’s age was one of stirring events and great changes. The
character of his poetry is in startling contrast to that age. It is
passionless, a record of the poet’s own mind; simple and austere,
emanating from his own independent thoughts and fancies; receiving
little of its form and colour from external events, or the feelings and
opinions of men. For eighty long years, Wordsworth would almost appear
to have lived ‘_among_ men, not _of_ them;’ sympathising as little with
the ephemeral pursuits of his contemporaries as the colossal Memnon does
with the Copts, Turks, and Arabs who now tenant the banks of the Nile.
William Wordsworth was born in the little county town of Cockermouth;
his father was an attorney—not a wealthy man, but in circumstances that
enabled him to give his family a fair education. One son entered the
merchant service, rose to command a vessel, and perished at sea. Another
has acquired a name as master of Harrow, and the author of a delightful
book on Greece, full of delicate beauty and fine classical feeling. The
allusions by William to his favourite sister are among the most touching
passages in his poems; and one or two little pieces of verse, and some
extracts from her journals, which he has published, show that she was
every way deserving of his love. The poetical dedication of the River
Duddon to Dr. Wordsworth, is full of delightful allusions to the boyhood
of the brothers, and conveys a pleasing impression of their family
relations.
Our poet received the rudiments of his education at the grammar school
of Hawkeshead, in Westmoreland, conducted in his time by a master of
more than ordinary attainments. In 1787, he matriculated at St. John’s
College, Cambridge. Even in his boyhood it was obvious that he possessed
superior abilities, but they were not of the showy and ambitious kind
which achieve school or college distinction. He was partial to solitary
rambles; fond of reading and reciting verses; a boy whom elder men
‘singled out for his grave looks,’ as he has said in the Excursion, and
liked to converse with.
It was intended that he should enter the Church, the family
circumstances rendering it necessary that he should adopt a profession.
But, independently of his wish to devote himself exclusively to literary
pursuits, he had caught the prevalent spirit of the time—the aversion to
conventional forms and opinions. A moderate income, settled upon him by
Raisley Calvert, the victim of a premature decline, enabled him to
follow his inclinations. This benefit the poet has gratefully
acknowledged:—
‘Calvert, it must not be unheard by them
Who may respect my name, that I to thee
Owed many years of early liberty.
This care was thine, when sickness did condemn
Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem;
That I, if frugal and severe, might stray
Where’er I liked; and finally array
My temples with the Muse’s diadem.’
After leaving College he made extensive tours on foot, in Scotland and
on the Continent with a youthful friend. In 1793 he for the first time
ventured into print. Two small volumes appeared in that year:
“Descriptive Sketches, in verse, taken during a Pedestrian Tour among
the Alps;” and “An Evening Walk, an Epistle in Verse, addressed to a
young Lady from the Lakes in the North of England.” In these poems we
find no traces of the poetical theory which he subsequently adopted. But
they are characterised by the same, almost exclusive, preference for
lakes, cataracts and mountains, the elementary beauty of external
nature, human passions and incidents, and they contain many passages of
glaring imagination powerfully expressed.
In 1796 he took up his abode with his sister at Allfaxden, at the foot
of the Quantock Hills, in Somersetshire. This was an important era in
the development of his intellect and imagination. During his residence
at Allfaxden he was in constant and unreserved communication with
Coleridge. Totally dissimilar as the two men were in character, they had
many sympathies. Upon both, the classical tastes and ecclesiastical
opinions inculcated at English schools and colleges, had, without their
being aware of it, made a deep and indelible impression. Both had been
animated by the vague but ardent longings after an undefined liberty,
and perfection of human nature, then prevalent. They were isolated from
general sympathy without knowing it; from the revolutionary party by
their literary tastes and strong attachment to traditional English
morals; from the Church and State party by their freedom from sectarian
narrowness. The resolute independence of thought of the young poets is
worthy of all admiration; their frank and cordial communication of all
their thoughts, equally so. A pleasing though brief sketch of them at
that time has been given by Hazlitt, in an essay, entitled, ‘My first
Acquaintance with Poets;’ a more petulant and shallow account, which yet
contains some valuable information, by Cottle.
The result of this literary alliance was the first volume of the
“Lyrical Ballads.” The quiet but perfect melody of Wordsworth’s
versification and the depth of the human sentiment in his reflections,
the more swelling tone of Coleridge’s verse and his wild unearthly
imaginings, might have secured a more favourable reception for his work,
had it not been announced as the result of a new theory of poetry. That
theory was misapprehended by the critics of the day, and was indeed
inadequately expressed by its authors themselves. Coleridge subsequently
developed it in more precise and unexceptionable language in his
Biographia Literaria. The effect of its premature announcement was, that
the Lyrical Ballads were judged, not by their own intrinsic merits, but
by the theory upon which they were said to have been constructed.
The insurmountable indolence of Coleridge—always planning works too
great for human accomplishment, and resting satisfied with projects—left
Wordsworth to pursue his path alone. This he did with characteristic
pertinacity of purpose; if criticism had any influence on him at all, it
was only to confirm him in his foregone conclusions. After an excursion
to Germany, in which he was accompanied by his sister and Coleridge, he
returned to his native country, ‘with the hope,’ as he has told us in
his Preface to the Excursion, ‘of being enabled to construct a literary
work that might live.’
In 1803, Wordsworth married his cousin, Miss Mary Hutchinson, and
settled at Grasmere. He removed in a few years to Rydal Mount, where he
continued to reside till his death. Subsequently to this time his life
is utterly devoid of personal incident, and may be briefly recapitulated
before proceeding to chronicle his poetical productions, which are
indeed his life. By his wife, who survives him, he had one daughter, who
died before him, and two sons, one of whom holds a vicarage in
Cumberland, the other is a distributor of stamps. In 1814, Wordsworth,
by the patronage of the Earl of Lonsdale, was appointed distributor of
stamps for Cumberland and Westmoreland—a recognition of the claims of
genius to public support only second in eccentricity to the making of
Burns an exciseman. After holding this office for twenty-eight years, he
was allowed to relinquish it to his eldest son, and retire upon a
pension of 300_l._ a year. In 1843, he succeeded Southey in the limited
emoluments and questionable dignity of the Laureateship. His slender
inheritance, the beneficence of Raisley Calvert, his office under
Government, his retiring pension, and his emoluments as Laureate,
sufficed, with his simple tastes, to enable him to wait the slow
pecuniary returns of his literary labours.
While the critical storm awakened by the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
was still raging, he composed his Peter Bell and his Waggoner, which
were not, however, published till many years later. They are full of
fine and deep-felt poetry. Their language is genuine racy English, and
their versification unsurpassed for sweetness. It cannot, however, be
denied that they are marked by a self-willed, exaggerated adherence to
the theory of poetry he had promulgated, the effect of something that is
very like a spirit of contradiction. In a playful adaptation of Milton’s
sonnet, Tetrachordon, Wordsworth defends his choice of subjects by the
admiration felt or professed for Tam o’ Shanter. He overlooks the utter
difference between the mode in which Burns conceived and executed that
poem, and himself his Benjamin the Waggoner. Burns was for the time the
hero himself. In Tam o’ Shanter, and still more in the Jolly Beggars, he
expresses the very passions of the characters he presents to us.
Wordsworth, constitutionally incapable of the emotions of a boon
companion, merely describes and moralises on the waywardness of his
Benjamin. We sympathise with the common humanity of Burns’s genial
reprobates; we feel the cold shadow of Wordsworth’s Benjamin to be a
hideous intruder among the fine poetical imagery and thought with which
he is mixed up.
In 1807, Wordsworth published two volumes, containing his own
contributions to the Lyrical Ballads, with many additional poems. Minute
detached criticism is not the object of this sketch. Suffice it to say
that many pieces in these volumes are unsurpassed in English poetry, or
in the poetry of any language. The Song at the feast of Brougham Castle
has a rich lyrical exuberance of feeling; the Laodamia is as severely
beautiful as a Greek statue; Hartleap Well is full of mellow humanity;
Rob Roy’s Grave, the Highland Girl, ‘She was a phantom of
delight,’—every piece, in short, is replete with delightful sentiment
and graphic pictures of rural nature. The objects of some of these poems
obviously originate in a mistaken apprehension of the scope and purpose
of poetry. Wordsworth was a curious observer of the workings of the
human mind, and he sometimes confounded the pleasure derived from such
metaphysical scrutiny with the pleasure derived from the presentation of
poetical imaginings. Hence, what is questionable in his Idiot Boy, his
Harry Gill, and some others.
The Excursion, the most ambitious, and, with all its defects, the
greatest of his works, was published in 1814. Here the poet was in his
true element. Wordsworth’s genius was essentially moralising and
reflective. Incidents and adventure had no charm for him. He arrived at
his knowledge of character by an inductive process, not like
Shakespeare, by the intuition of sympathy and imagination. He had no
power of perceiving those light and graceful peculiarities of men and
society, generally designated manners, vivid presentations of which
constitute the charm of so many poets; but he was tremulously alive to
the charms of inanimate nature.
‘——The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were there to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.’
His soul was full of lofty and imaginative conceptions of moral truths.
He, therefore, after severe examination of his own poems, resolved to
rest his claims to immortality on his composition of ‘a philosophical
poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society; and to be entitled
The Recluse, as having for its principal subject the sensations and
opinions of a poet living in retirement.’
How far this projected work has been advanced to completion, we have no
means of knowing. A preliminary work, descriptive of the growth of his
own powers, is, he has informed us, finished. The Recluse was to consist
of three parts, the first and third containing chiefly meditations in
the author’s own person; the intermediate introducing characters in a
semi-dramatic form. It is to be regretted that his second part has alone
been published, for Wordsworth’s genius was essentially undramatic. But
notwithstanding the disadvantages under which the poet laboured from the
selection of an uncongenial form, and his imperfect mastery of blank
verse (a measure of which, perhaps. Milton alone among our English poets
has developed the full measure, and varied power of modulation), the
Excursion is, undoubtedly, a poem in the highest and truest sense of the
word. The philosophical musings with which it abounds, are alike
profound and elevating. And nothing can surpass the deep pathos of the
episodes of Margaret and Ellen.
The subsequent publications of Wordsworth may be briefly enumerated.
Peter Bell and the Waggoner appeared within two years after the
Excursion; and the White Doe of Rylstone soon followed them. A
miscellaneous volume, of which the River Duddon was the most prominent,
was published in 1820, and Yarrow Revisited, in 1835. Of all these
works, it may suffice to say that they are highly characteristic of the
author, and contain many beauties.
Wordsworth’s poetry had long to contend against the conventional
prepossessions of the literary world. From the beginning, however, his
genius was felt by superior minds, and by a few young unprejudiced
enthusiasts. His first admirers were literally a sect, and their
admiration was, like the devotion of all sectarians, ardent and
indiscriminating. They have, however, served as interpreters between him
and the reading public, and thus his merits have come to be generally
acknowledged. His writings lent a tone to the works of some who, like
Shelley, dissented from his theory; and some who, like Byron,
systematically scoffed at them. The public taste was thus insensibly
approximated to them. Even yet, however, Wordsworth is probably more
praised than liked. But the process will go on, and in time what is
really valuable in his poems will take the place that is due to it in
the land’s literature.
Of the first writings of Wordsworth little need be said. Though they
contain valuable thoughts, they are lumbering and sufficiently
unreadable. The once furious controversy about his literary creed as
heresy, need not be resuscitated; there were great errors on both sides.
If his merits were individually depreciated, there was much in his
seemingly supercilious re-assertion, rather than defence and explanation
of his views, to extenuate the petulance with which he was often
treated. As for his wanderings in the fields of politics and polemics,
he is no exception to the general truth, that the warmest admirers of
poets must regret their deviations into such uncongenial by-ways.
The man was like his poetry; simple and therefore conservative in his
tastes: self-reliant and sometimes repulsive from his austerity, yet
with a rich fund of benevolence beneath the hard exterior. His frame was
strong and sinewy from his habits of exercise; his look heavy, and, at
first sight, unimpressive; but there was an inexpressible charm in his
smile. He was the antithesis of the materialist and practical activity
of the time. He did not understand, and therefore could not appreciate,
the ennobling tendencies of the social and scientific career on which
this age has entered—an age into which he had lingered, rather than to
which he belonged. He looked out upon the world from his egotistic
isolation rather as a critical spectator, than as a sympathiser. His
views of it were rusted over with the conservative prejudices of the
past. Railways he hated, and against them waged a sonneteering war.
Although they were rapidly increasing the commerce, comforts,
intercourse, affluence, and happiness of the whole community, they
invaded the selfish solitude of the one man; and single-handed he did
battle against the armies of invading tourists, who came to share with
him the heathful pleasures of the mountain and the lake, in which he
would have almost preserved a patent right for the few.
This anti-natural spirit, however, did not always lead him astray from
the right path. In the Excursion, were promulgated, for the first time,
these views respecting the embruting tendency of the unintermitting toil
of our factory labourers, the necessity of universal education by the
State, and the vocation of the English race to colonise the earth, which
have been so many zealous missionaries. We cannot better conclude these
desultory remarks,—an imperfect prelude to the lip of a truly good and
great man—than by quoting part of his weighty words in the Excursion,
respecting National Education:—
‘Oh! for the coming of that glorious time
When, prizing Knowledge as her noblest wealth
And best protection, this Imperial Realm,
While she exacts allegiance, shall admit
An obligation, on her part, to _teach_
Them who are born to serve her and obey;
Binding herself by statute to secure
To all her children whom her soil maintains,
The rudiments of Letters, and to inform
The mind with moral and religious truth,
Both understood and practised—so that none,
However destitute, be left to droop
By timely culture unsustained; or run
Into a wild disorder; or be forced
To drudge through weary life without the aid
Of intellectual implements and tools;
A savage horde among the civilised,
A servile band among the lordly free!
· · · · ·
‘The discipline of slavery is unknown
Amongst us—hence the more do we require
The discipline of virtue; order else
Cannot subsist, nor confidence, nor peace.
Thus duties rising out of good possess’d,
And prudent caution, needful to avert
Impending evil, do alike require
That permanent provision should be made
For the whole people to be taught and trained.
So shall licentiousness and black resolve
Be rooted out, and virtuous habits take
Their place; and genuine piety descend,
Like an inheritance, from age to age.’
These are indeed worthy to become Household words.
FATHER AND SON.
One evening in the month of March, 1798,—that dark time in Ireland’s
annals whose memory (overlooking all minor subsequent _émeutes_) is
still preserved among us, as ‘the year of the rebellion’—a lady and
gentleman were seated near a blazing fire in the old-fashioned
dining-room of a large lonely mansion. They had just dined; wine and
fruit were on the table, both untouched, while Mr. Hewson and his wife
sat silently gazing at the fire, watching its flickering light becoming
gradually more vivid as the short Spring twilight faded into darkness.
At length the husband poured out a glass of wine, drank it off, and then
broke silence, by saying—
“Well, well, Charlotte, these are awful times; there were ten men taken
up to-day for burning Cotter’s house at Knockane; and Tom Dycer says
that every magistrate in the country is a marked man.”
Mrs. Hewson cast a frightened glance towards the windows, which opened
nearly to the ground, and gave a view of a wide tree-besprinkled lawn,
through whose centre a long straight avenue led to the high-road. There
was also a footpath at either side of the house, branching off through
close thickets of trees, and reaching the road by a circuitous route.
“Listen, James!” she said, after a pause; “what noise is that?”
“Nothing but the sighing of the wind among the trees. Come, wife, you
must not give way to imaginary fears.”
“But really I heard something like footsteps on the gravel, round the
gable-end—I wish”—
A knock at the parlour door interrupted her.
“Come in.”
The door opened, and Tim Gahan, Mr. Hewson’s confidential steward and
right-hand man, entered, followed by a fair-haired delicate-looking boy
of six years’ old, dressed in deep mourning.
“Well, Gahan, what do you want?”
“I ask your Honour’s pardon for disturbing you and the mistress; but I
thought it right to come tell you the bad news I heard.”
“Something about the rebels, I suppose?”
“Yes, Sir; I got a whisper just now that there’s going to be a great
rising intirely, to-morrow; thousands are to gather before daybreak at
Kilcrean bog, where I’m told they’ve a power of pikes hiding; and then
they’re to march on and sack every house in the country. I’ll engage,
when I heard it, I didn’t let grass grow under my feet, but came off
straight to your Honour, thinking maybe you’d like to walk over this
fine evening to Mr. Warren’s, and settle with him what’s best to be
done.”
“Oh, James! I beseech you, don’t think of going.”
“Make your mind easy, Charlotte; I don’t intend it: not that I suppose
there would be much risk; but, all things considered, I think I’m just
as comfortable at home.”
The steward’s brow darkened, as he glanced nervously towards the end
window, which jutting out in the gable, formed a deep angle in the outer
wall.
“Of course ’tis just as your Honour pleases, but I’ll warrant you there
would be no harm in going. Come, Billy,” he added, addressing the child,
who by this time was standing close to Mrs. Hewson, “make your bow, and
bid good night to master and mistress.”
The boy did not stir, and Mrs. Hewson taking his little hand in hers,
said—
“You need not go home for half-an-hour, Gahan; stay and have a chat with
the servants in the kitchen, and leave little Billy with me—and with the
apples and nuts”—she added, smiling as she filled the child’s hands with
fruit.
“Thank you, Ma’am,” said the steward hastily. “I can’t stop—I’m in a
hurry home, where I wanted to leave this brat to-night; but he _would_
follow me. Come, Billy; come this minute, you young rogue.”
Still the child looked reluctant, and Mr. Hewson said peremptorily—
“Don’t go yet, Gahan; I want to speak to you by and by; and you know the
mistress always likes to pet little Billy.”
Without replying, the steward left the room; and the next moment his
hasty footsteps resounded through the long flagged passage that led to
the offices.
“There’s something strange about Gahan, since his wife died,” remarked
Mrs. Hewson. “I suppose ’tis grief for her that makes him look so
darkly, and seem almost jealous when any one speaks to his child. Poor
little Billy! your mother was a sore loss to you.”
The child’s blue eyes filled with tears, and pressing closer to the
lady’s side, he said:—
“Old Peggy doesn’t wash and dress me as nicely as mammy used.”
“But your father is good to you?”
“Oh, yes, Ma’am, but he’s out all day busy, and I’ve no one to talk to
me as mammy used; for Peggy is quite deaf, and besides she’s always busy
with the pigs and chickens.”
“I wish I had you, Billy, to take care of and to teach, for your poor
mother’s sake.”
“And so you may, Charlotte,” said her husband. “I’m sure Gahan, with all
his odd ways, is too sensible a fellow not to know how much it would be
for his child’s benefit to be brought up and educated by us, and the boy
would be an amusement to us in this lonely house. I’ll speak to him
about it before he goes home. Billy, my fine fellow, come here,” he
continued, “jump up on my knee, and tell me if you’d like to live here
always and learn to read and write.”
“I would, Sir, if I could be with father too.”
“So you shall;—and what about old Peggy?”
The child paused—
“I’d like to give her a pen’north of snuff and a piece of tobacco every
week, for she said the other day that _that_ would make her quite
happy.”
Mr. Hewson laughed, and Billy prattled on, still seated on his knee;
when a noise of footsteps on the ground, mingled with low suppressed
talking was heard outside.
“James, listen! there’s the noise again.”
It was now nearly dark, but Mr. Hewson, still holding the boy in his
arms, walked towards the window and looked out.
“I can see nothing,” he said,—“stay—there are figures moving off among
the trees, and a man running round to the back of the house—very like
Gahan he is too!”
Seizing the bell-rope, he rang it loudly, and said to the servant who
answered his summons:—
“Fasten the shutters and put up the bars, Connell; and then tell Gahan I
want to see him.”
The man obeyed; candles were brought, and Gahan entered the room.
Mr. Hewson remarked that, though his cheeks were flushed, his lips were
very white, and his bold dark eyes were cast on the ground.
“What took you round the house just now, Tim?” asked his master, in a
careless manner.
“What took me round the house, is it? Why, then, nothing in life, Sir,
but that just as I went outside the kitchen door to take a smoke, I saw
the pigs, that Shaneen forgot to put up in their stye, making right for
the mistress’s flower-garden; so I just put my _dudheen_, lighting as it
was, into my pocket, and ran after them. I caught them on the grand walk
under the end window, and indeed, Ma’am, I had my own share of work
turning them back to their proper spear.”
Gahan spoke with unusual volubility, but without raising his eyes from
the ground.
“Who were the people,” asked his master, “whom I saw moving through the
western grove?”
“People! your Honour—not a sign of any people moving there, I’ll be
bound, barring the pigs.”
“Then,” said Mr. Hewson, smiling, to his wife, “the miracle of Circe
must have been reversed, and swine turned into men; for, undoubtedly,
the dark figures I saw were human beings.”
“Come, Billy,” said Gahan, anxious to turn the conversation, “will you
come home with me now? I am sure ’twas very good of the mistress to give
you all them fine apples.”
Mrs. Hewson was going to propose Billy’s remaining, but her husband
whispered:—“Wait till to-morrow.” So Gahan and his child were allowed to
depart.
Next morning the magistrates of the district were on the alert, and
several suspicious looking men found lurking about, were taken up. A hat
which fitted one of them was picked up in Mr. Hewson’s grove; the gravel
under the end window bore many signs of trampling feet; and there were
marks on the wall as if guns had rested against it. Gahan’s information
touching the intended meeting at Kilcrean bog proved to be totally
without foundation; and after a careful search not a single pike or
weapon of any description could be found there. All these circumstances
combined certainly looked suspicious; but, after a prolonged
investigation, as no guilt could be actually brought home to Gahan, he
was dismissed. One of his examiners, however, said privately, “I advise
you take care of that fellow, Hewson. If I were in your place, I’d just
trust him as far as I could throw him, and not an inch beyond.”
An indolent hospitable Irish country gentleman, such as Mr. Hewson, is
never without an always shrewd and often roguish prime minister, who
saves his master the trouble of looking after his own affairs, and
manages everything that is to be done in both the home and foreign
departments,—from putting a new door on the pig-stye, to letting a farm
of an hundred acres on lease. Now in this, or rather these capacities,
Gahan had long served Mr. Hewson; and some seven years previous to the
evening on which our story commences, he had strengthened the tie and
increased his influence considerably by marrying Mrs. Hewson’s favourite
and faithful maid. One child was the result of this union; and Mrs.
Hewson, who had no family of her own, took much interest in little
Billy,—more especially after the death of his mother, who, poor thing!
the neighbours said, was not very happy, and would gladly, if she dared,
have exchanged her lonely cottage for the easy service of her former
mistress.
Thus, though for a time Mr. and Mrs. Hewson regarded Gahan with some
doubt, the feeling gradually wore away, and the steward regained his
former influence.
After the lapse of a few stormy months the rebellion was quelled: all
the prisoners taken up were severally disposed of by hanging,
transportation or acquittal, according to the nature and amount of the
evidence brought against them; and the country became as peaceful as it
is in the volcanic nature of our Irish soil ever to be.
The Hewsons’ kindness towards Gahan’s child was steady and unchanged.
They took him into their house, and gave him a plain but solid
education; so that William, while yet a boy, was enabled to be of some
use to his patron, and daily enjoyed more and more of his confidence.
* * * * *
Another Evening, the twentieth anniversary of that with which this
narrative commenced, came round. Mr. and Mrs. Hewson were still hale and
active, dwelling in their hospitable home. About eight o’clock at night,
Tim Gahan, now a stooping, grey-haired man, entered Mr. Hewson’s
kitchen, and took his seat on the corner of the settle next the fire.
The cook, directing a silent significant glance of compassion towards
her fellow-servants, said:
“Would you like a drink of cider, Tim, or will you wait and take a cup
of tay with myself and Kitty?”
The old man’s eyes were fixed on the fire, and a wrinkled hand was
planted firmly on each knee, as if to check their involuntary trembling.
“I’ll not drink anything this night, thank you kindly, Nelly,” he said,
in a slow musing manner, dwelling long on each word.
“Where’s Billy?” he asked, after a pause, in a quick hurried tone,
looking up suddenly at the cook, with an expression in his eyes, which,
as she afterwards said, ‘took away her breath.’
“Oh, never heed Billy! I suppose he’s busy with the master.”
“Where’s the use, Nelly,” said the coachman, “in hiding it from him?
Sure, sooner or later he must know it. Tim,” he continued, “God knows
’tis sorrow to my heart this blessed night to make yours sore,—but the
truth is, that William has done what he oughtn’t to do to the man that
was all one as a father to him.”
“What has he done? what will you _dar_ say again my boy?”
“Taken money, then,” replied the coachman, “that the master had marked
and put by in his desk; for he suspected this some time past that gold
was missing. This morning ’twas gone; a search was made, and the marked
guineas were found with your son William.”
The old man covered his face with his hands, and rocked himself to and
fro.
“Where is he now?” at length he asked, in a hoarse voice.
“Locked up safe in the inner store-room; the master intends sending him
to gaol early to-morrow morning.”
“He will not,” said Gahan slowly. “Kill the boy that saved his life!—no,
no.”
“Poor fellow! the grief is setting his mind astray—and sure no wonder!”
said the cook, compassionately.
“I’m not astray!” cried the old man, fiercely. “Where’s the master?—take
me to him.”
“Come with me,” said the butler, “and I’ll ask him will he see you?”
With faltering steps the father complied; and when they reached the
parlour, he trembled exceedingly, and leant against the wall for
support, while the butler opened the door, and said:
“Gahan is here, Sir, and wants to know will you let him speak to you for
a minute?”
“Tell him to come in,” said Mr. Hewson, in a solemn tone of sorrow, very
different from his ordinary cheerful voice.
“Sir,” said the steward, advancing, “they tell me you are going to send
my boy to prison,—is it true?”
“Too true, indeed, Gahan. The lad who was reared in my house, whom my
wife watched over in health, and nursed in sickness—whom we loved almost
as if he were our own, has _robbed_ us, and that not once or twice, but
many times. He is silent and sullen, too, and refuses to tell why he
stole the money, which was never withheld from him when he wanted it. I
can make nothing of him, and must only give him up to justice in the
morning.”
“No, Sir, no. The boy saved your life; you can’t take his.”
“You’re raving, Gahan.”
“Listen to me, Sir, and you won’t say so. You remember this night twenty
years? I came here with my motherless child, and yourself and the
mistress pitied us, and spoke loving words to him. Well for us all you
did so! That night—little you thought it!—I was banded with them that
were sworn to take your life. They were watching you outside the window,
and I was sent to inveigle you out, that they might shoot you. A faint
heart I had for the bloody business, for you were ever and always a good
master to me; but I was under an oath to them that I darn’t break,
supposing they ordered me to shoot my own mother. Well! the hand of God
was over you, and you wouldn’t come with me. I ran out to them, and I
said—‘Boys, if you want to shoot him, you must do it through the
window,’ thinking they’d be afeard of that; but they weren’t—they were
daring fellows, and one of them, sheltered by the angle of the window,
took deadly aim at you. That very moment you took Billy on your knee,
and I saw his fair head in a line with the musket. I don’t know exactly
then what I said or did, but I remember I caught the man’s hand, threw
it up, and pointed to the child. Knowing I was a determined man, I
believe they didn’t wish to provoke me; so they watched you for a while,
and when you didn’t put him down they got daunted, hearing the sound of
soldiers riding by the road, and they stole away through the grove. Most
of that gang swung on the gallows, but the last of them died this
morning quietly in his bed. Up to yesterday he used to make me give him
money,—sums of money to buy his silence—and it was for that I made my
boy a thief. It was wearing out his very life. Often he went down on his
knees to me, and said: ‘Father, I’d die myself sooner than rob my
master, but I can’t see _you_ disgraced. Oh, let us fly the country!’
Now, Sir, I have told you all—do what you like with me—send me to gaol,
I deserve it—but spare my poor deluded innocent boy!”
It would be difficult to describe Mr. Hewson’s feelings, but his wife’s
first impulse was to hasten to liberate the prisoner. With a few
incoherent words of explanation she led him into the presence of his
master, who, looking at him sorrowfully but kindly, said:
“William, you have erred deeply, but not so deeply as I supposed. Your
father has told me everything. I forgive him freely and you also.”
The young man covered his face with his hands, and wept tears more
bitter and abundant than he had ever shed since the day when he followed
his mother to the grave. He could say little, but he knelt on the
ground, and clasping the kind hand of her who had supplied to him that
mother’s place, he murmured;
“Will _you_ tell him I would rather die than sin again.”
Old Gahan died two years afterwards, truly penitent, invoking blessings
on his son and on his benefactors; and the young man’s conduct, now no
longer under evil influence, was so steady and so upright, that his
adopted parents felt that their pious work was rewarded, and that, in
William Gahan, they had indeed a son.
* * * * *
Monthly Supplement of ‘HOUSEHOLD WORDS,’
Conducted
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
_Price 2d., Stamped 3d._,
THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE
OF
CURRENT EVENTS.
_The Number, containing a history of the present month, will be issued
with the Magazines._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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