Crying for the Light: or, Fifty Years Ago. Volume 1 of 3

James Ewing Ritchie

Crying for the Light; Or, Fifty Years Ago. Vol. 1 [of 3]

“This is the condition of humanity; we are placed as it were in an intellectual twilight where we discover but few things clearly, and yet we see enough to tempt us with the hope of making better and more discoveries.” – Bolingbroke.

CHAPTER I.

PARKER’S PIECE, SLOVILLE

Upon my word, I don’t know a more desirable residence from the pauper’s point of view than Parker’s Piece, an awful spot in the very heart of the rising town of Sloville. I can’t say, as regards myself, that the place has many attractions. It is too crowded, too dirty, too evil-smelling, too much inhabited by living creatures, including insects which delicacy forbids mentioning. I like living in the country, where I can hear the birds sing their morning anthem. I like to see the buttercups and daisies, and the green grass, and the blue sky, and the sunshine, which makes everyone feel happy; and when winter comes, how much do I love the sparkling diamonds on the frosted trees, and the pure white snow which robes the earth with a loveliness of which the dweller in towns has no adequate idea! I like to breathe fresh air, and not town smoke; and so, individually, I had rather not reside in Parker’s Piece; but there are those who live there, and much enjoy it. Mostly they are a ragged lot – tramps and vagrants and the ever growing army of the unemployed – who make it their headquarters, as it is full of old houses and corners where the peelers cannot penetrate, and public-houses where the sot may drink as long as his or her money lasts out; where, as regards the spot in question, there is a special encouragement to do so, seeing how much money was left ages ago by a pious founder, who had made money in some way which was not exactly right, and who thought it just as well, when it was of no further use to him, to leave it partly to the priests to pray for his soul, and partly to the poor, that future generations might call him blessed; and as the poor all round were well aware of the fact, there was never a house or room that stood empty long – unhealthy as was the place, and dilapidated as were the buildings.

One building, however, was an exception to the others, as regards age. Originally it had been started as a boot and shoe manufactory, but that did not pay; then it became a depot for pure literature and well-meant publications, but no one came to buy; then it came into the hands of a Town Councillor, who, disgusted that the Corporation would not purchase it at an extravagant rate, to pull it down, vowed that he would never lay out a penny on the place, only get out of it what rent he could. As he let it out in tenements, the rents of which were collected by a somewhat unscrupulous agent, the fact was, the locality became less respectable and less cared for every day. It was avoided by the police as much as possible. If there was a quarrel – as there was almost every day – between its wretched inmates, it was hard to say who was to blame. Passing down there one day, I saw a man savagely assaulting his wife. To my remonstrance he replied that if he did not let her know that he was master, she would stick a knife into him; and, according to the public opinion of the place, he was right. Only on Sunday morning was the place quiet, and that was not because the dwellers there were at church or chapel, but simply because the weary were enjoying an extra hour’s sleep, or the dissipated had not, as yet, overcome the effect of the previous evening’s debauch.

All at once Parker’s Piece became known far and near. One night a little one, happily, died, instead of making a feeble and ineffectual struggle to live; an inquest was held, and the result was a revelation of misery and wretchedness which made all Sloville stand aghast. A London radical newspaper sent down an artist to give a rude drawing of the place, and a special correspondent, whose report was as sensational as could be desired. Parker’s Piece became as well known to the British community as the Mansion House, or St. Paul’s, or Westminster Abbey, or the Houses of Parliament. Money showered down on the place, little to the advantage of the deserving, who are the last to proclaim their needs, but greatly to that of the publican and sinner. It was felt by everybody something must be done. A grand church was erected at one corner, to which, however, no one went; a mission hall was started at the other by a speculative philanthropist, on his own hook, while a building was secured for a similar purpose by the leading people of the leading Congregational Church in the town. It was a real case of line upon line, and precept upon precept. The plan was to catch sparrows by putting a little salt on their tails, and the plan succeeded to admiration. There was a free tea, which was a great success; then there was a regular breakfast on a Sunday morning, which answered still better. The men looked rather sheepish at first, but the women were too many for them. The fleshpots of Egypt prevailed, and there was a good attendance, a state of resignation when the talking began, and some awful singing afterwards. On the day of which I write, there was a little extra excitement in the place. Christmas was coming, and all the good people for miles around had determined to give a treat to the wretched ruffians in the very worst part of the place – the big building to which I have already referred. When the leading man of the place, Carroty Bill, heard it, he swore that there should be no psalm-singing there. But his better-half modified his rage as she drew a lovely picture of creature comforts to be had – the boots for the children, the flannel for herself, and the extra money they would have for a jolly spree after all.

‘I ’ave been to one of their meetin’s,’ said she, ‘and we ’ad a rare good time of it, I can tell yer; tea, and coffee, such heaps of bread-and-butter, and plum-cake, and great meat-pies; it was well worth while a-settin’ an hour or two in a warm room while the parsons were a-talkin’; and rally you’d ha’ thought as how the ladies and gentlemen seemed to think as we were brothers and sisters. We wos quite a ’appy family, we wos.’

‘And then to be preached to,’ said Carroty Bill, ‘arterwards. I’m blessed if I’ll go.’

‘Well, I’ll take the children.’

‘Not Joe; yer can’t take him.’

‘Why not? he ain’t yer child.’

‘I know that, but I wants him – that’s enough.’

Carroty Bill kept his word; he had an idea of his own in his thick head, and he was determined to carry it out.

Unfortunately, at that time there was a good deal of antagonism between Church and Dissent. Generally, we know, it is otherwise, and they love each other as fellow-Christians ought – a love that does you good to contemplate. As the Dissenters gave the feed, it occurred to the Vicar and his curates to make a house-to-house inspection – to see for themselves the nakedness of the land, and to relieve it accordingly. At the bar of the White Horse the new move was announced, and Carroty Bill, as he sat smoking and drinking, hit on a plan of which he said nothing to his female partner – for wife she never was – till the time had come to carry it out. Said he, when he heard the Vicar was to come:

‘Here, Joe, you come along with me.’

‘No; I want to go with mother.’

‘You come along with me, or it will be the worse for yer, I can tell yer,’ said Carroty Bill, with a look which forbade all further thought of disobedience on the part of the poor boy.

‘You’ll make the boy as bad as yerself,’ said the woman, ‘let him come along with me.’

‘Not if I know it,’ said the ruffian.

‘Why, wot’s up?’ asked the woman.

‘Wot’s that to you? The boy must come.’

And with a swelling heart, and a tear in his eye, the boy went. He was filthy, and ragged, and half starved. Yet there was something noble about the little lad’s face; had he been washed, and well dressed, and well fed, with his curly hair and fine forehead and bright blue eyes, he would have been as handsome a little fellow as was to be seen in the town.

‘Don’t lead him into mischief,’ said the poor woman imploringly.

‘In course not, my dear,’ said Carroty Bill sarcastically: ‘he’s a gentleman, ain’t he? and he’ll behave as such.’ Then, turning to the boy, who was still lingering by the woman’s side, he said, ‘Come here, you little warmint, or I’ll break every bone in your body.’

This conversation was carried on at the White Horse, where the speaker was mostly to be found. The woman gave way; the speaker took the boy to Parker’s Piece. Arrived there, he sought out his own apartment, and with the help of the lad cleared it of everything it possessed in the shape of chairs or clothes or table, leaving only a little straw, on which the family were to lie. A dealer just by purchased his household chattels for a song, about as much as they were worth, and Carroty Bill had just time to get a drop at the White Horse and return in an unwonted state of sobriety before the Vicar and his curates entered.

‘Dear me,’ said the kind-hearted Vicar, ‘what wretchedness! How is it you are so badly off?’

‘Wife ill, and I got no work to do. It’s very hard on a poor fellow like me,’ said our carroty friend.

‘Ah! it is indeed,’ said the Vicar.

‘Yes, I little thought as I should have come to this,’ said the man, in a desponding tone.

‘Ah, well,’ said the Vicar, ‘perhaps we can help you a little.’

‘Thank you, sir, kindly,’ said the hardened hypocrite.

‘Dear me!’ said the Vicar, ‘what wretchedness – not a stick in the place! We must do something to relieve this distressing case. What say you?’ said he to his companions.

‘Oh, a pair of blankets and a hundredweight of coal at the least.’

‘Yes, and a loaf of bread.’

‘Oh yes! and a little warm clothing for the wife and child in the corner. That’s a bright little fellow,’ said he, pointing to Joe; ‘is that your eldest?’

‘No, sir, he ain’t one of ours,’ said the woman. ‘We keep him out of charity. His mother is dead.’

‘Dear me!’ said the Vicar; ‘who would have thought it? What true benevolence! How it does shame us who are better off! How beautiful it is to see the poor so ready to help one another!’

‘Ah! it is little we can do, but we allus tries to do our duty,’ said Carroty Bill, with the look of a saint and the courage of a martyr, while the forlorn woman seemed the picture of resignation and despair.

‘I am sure we might leave a little money here as well,’ said the Vicar.

‘Oh, certainly,’ said both the curates who declared they had never seen more unmitigated poverty anywhere.

And then they went off.

And thus relieved with a little ready cash and food, and cheered with the prospect of blankets and coals and clothes, for which tickets had been left, Carroty Bill was enabled at leisure to rejoice over the effects of his artful dodge, which was told to a crowd of applauding vagabonds, as rascally as himself; while the landlord of the public, already referred to, could not find too much to say on behalf of that Christian charity by which he expected to benefit more than anyone else in that dingy and poverty-stricken locality. The Vicar was quite justified so far as appearances went. It was an unhealthy habitation which he visited, and all the inmates looked sad and ill.

As the Vicar left the apartment of Carroty Bill he knocked at the next door, inhabited by a hard-working shoemaker of freethought tendencies, who hated him and all his ways. The Vicar beat a hasty retreat, as he knew the sharpness of the shoemaker’s tongue.

‘We don’t want none of your cloth here,’ said the disciple of St. Crispin. ‘If there were a God, should we be as wretched as we are?’

‘Yes, there is. I am His servant,’ said the Vicar.

‘You His servant? Why yer father bought yer the living, and a nice living it is; you are yer father’s servant, not the Lord’s.’

‘But, my good man – ’ said the Vicar.

‘Don’t “good man” me,’ was the angry reply.

‘But we come for your good.’

‘That’s what you all say; and I’ll believe it when I see you and the likes of you give up that part of the tithes which was intended for the poor.’

‘I come in the name of the Lord as His messenger,’ said the Vicar in his most commanding tones.

‘The Lord’s receiver, I think,’ said the shoemaker cynically, ‘for you get all you can in His name.’

‘It is no use leaving anything here,’ said the Vicar to his curates.

Nor was it. The shoemaker had been made an infidel, as many are, by hard work and poor pay, by want of human sympathy, by the greatness of his life-long sorrow. Wounded and bruised and fallen among thieves, the Jew and the Levite had passed by, and no Samaritan had come to his aid. The Gospel of glad tidings has been preached for ages by the Churches, chiefly to the rich and the respectable as they are called, and the poor have been sent empty away. Christian ministers of all denominations have hard work to do to make up for the shortcomings of the past.

As the Vicar and his curates were leaving – and they were anxious to get out into the fresh air, as the smell of the place was awful – a door opened, and a thin and worn and weary elderly woman entered, who had to earn her living by needlework, and was one of the many to be met everywhere, who have seen better days, and who, friendless and alone, have to die in a garret, while the rich thoughtlessly array themselves in purple and fine linen and fare sumptuously every day. Surely there is something amiss in our nineteenth-century civilization when such is the case. It is well to tell such suffering ones that there is a better world, and a Father in heaven who shall wipe all tears from every eye, and where sorrow shall be unknown. But surely our rich need not be so very rich nor our poor so very poor, nor the cup of human suffering be, to many, so overflowing. Surely we need not wait till we have entered the golden gates and walked the pearly streets of the new Jerusalem to set such matters right, or till the Saviour, as some Christians tell us, comes to reign as a temporal Prince, in a world He once blessed with His presence and brightened with His smile. Human laws and misgovernment have had a good deal to do with the appalling inequality which meets us on every side, and which jars strongly with the Bible lessons read at our churches on a Sunday and the utterances of our pulpit orators. But let us return to the poor woman, weary with hard work, with disappointed hope; weary of the bitter past and of contemplating the dark future, on the black cloud of which she could see, as she gazed at it steadily from year to year, no silver lining. She makes no complaint, utters no moan, is never visible in the streets; yet her lot is hard – harder than she can bear – harder than that of the improvident and thoughtless and vicious. All the sunshine is gone out of her, and her heart is broken, though mechanically she accomplishes her daily task. She had a husband, but he died, and it was to give him decent burial that she had to part with her little all; her son had been lost at sea; her daughter had married, and had gone to live in a far-off colony, and a voyage thither would kill her, as she had no stamina left in her emaciated body. Look at her shrunken form, her pale cheeks, her lacklustre eye, her hand worn to the bone! Her hold on life is slender indeed. One of the silent ones is she, who accept their sorrow, and never speak of it as of a burden too heavy to be borne.

‘Good-morning, my friend,’ said the Vicar with a benevolent smile. ‘We have just been visiting your poor neighbours and relieving their distress. They seem in a very bad way – nothing in the house. It is sad to think what would have become of them, if we had not called in the very nick of time. It is really shocking, the amount of misery in this unfortunate neighbourhood.’

‘Yes, there is indeed a lot of it here,’ said the poor woman. ‘It is hard work to be happy here.’

‘But you look as if you had employment.’

‘Yes, sir, I have, I am thankful to say, though it brings me in but little; at any rate, I earn enough to keep me off the parish. Perhaps, gentlemen, you would like to walk in.’

They did so.

‘How neat! how clean!’ said the Vicar, as he looked admiringly around. ‘What a view you have! Positively good; quite commands the place.’

‘Yes, sir, but the chimneys give me a little more smoke than I care for. It is rarely I dare open my window, for fear of the blacks.’

‘Ah, my good woman, it is so with all of us! There is always something amiss – something we should like to get rid of – a fly in the ointment,’ as Solomon says. ‘Now, there are my curates: they are happy young men, but I have no doubt they would like to be in my shoes’ – a remark so true that the curates could not contradict it, only by a deprecatory smile and shake of the head. ‘Dear me!’ continued the Vicar, as he turned from the window to the interior. ‘Why, you have a sofa here, with an antimacassar!’

‘Pardon, sir, that is my bed.’

‘Ah, well, it is quite a model – quite a model. Why, we could dine here off the floor. What a nice little bit of carpet! What a nice little looking-glass! Oh, woman, how strong is the ruling passion! And bless me!’ he said, turning, as he made a still longer inspection, ‘why, here are flowers – positively flowers – and flowers cost a deal of money at this season of the year!’

‘Excuse me, sir, they are artificial.’

‘What! ah, yes, I see they are; but artificial flowers cost money.’

‘They cost me but very little. I made them myself, to sell, if possible, but I could not get a customer, and so I kept them to make the room a bit cheerful.’

‘Ah, I see you are one of the better class of workpeople – what I may call the aristocracy. I am awfully sorry. I should really have liked to have helped you, but our funds are small, and the amount of distress in the town is so large that we are obliged to be very particular – very particular indeed. It is a duty we owe to the parish and to the kind friends who have subscribed the money. They have the greatest confidence in us, and we must not abuse that confidence.’

‘Pray, sir, don’t think of it. If there are any poor people much worse off than myself, why, I pity ’em,’ said the poor woman.

‘Worse off, my good woman! Oh, the town is full of such! Look at your poor neighbours in the next room – a most shocking case; yet, in all their poverty, taking charge of a little waif that, somehow or other, came into their hands.’

The woman said nothing. She could have said a good deal, but she knew the family, and she also knew the value of peace and quietness.

‘Perhaps you will like to accept of this little tract,’ said the Vicar, who wished to show his sympathy, but who did not exactly know how. ‘It is prettily got up, and I rejoice to say it has been found greatly useful. You will, perhaps, read it with more interest as it was written by myself. And here is another, by my daughter, “On the Blessings of Poverty.”’

‘On what, sir?’

‘“On the Blessings of Poverty.”’

‘Well, I never heard of them. I am sure I shall like to read that.’

‘Here they are, then,’ said the Vicar, handing them smilingly. ‘And now we must wish you good-morning; our time is precious, and we have a good deal to do yet.’

‘Had you better not give her something to eat?’ said one of the curates in a low voice as they were turning away.

‘Oh dear no!’ said the Vicar; ‘that would be very wrong – very wrong indeed.’ Then in an undervoice he added: ‘Our intrusion here is quite a mistake. This is not a case in which we can interfere. But we wish you a good-morning, with the compliments of the season; and I will get my daughter to call with a few more tracts, and perhaps she might like to buy some of your artificial flowers.’

‘I am sure I should be glad to see her.’

‘Well, well, we shall see. You know me, of course; I am the Vicar of the parish. Of course, you have often seen me at church.’

‘Well, I can’t say that I have.’

‘Why, you don’t mean to say you don’t go to a place of worship? You are not a heathen, are you?’

‘I hope not, sir; but I have to work so hard all the week that I am thankful for a little more rest on a Sunday, and when I go out I go to chapel.’

‘To chapel! How is that?’ said the Vicar, in a by no means pleased tone. ‘Don’t you know all Dissenters are schismatics? My good woman, I am sorry for you.’

‘Well, sir, I go to chapel because I was brought up to it, and it seems more homelike.’

‘Well, then, the chapel people must look after you. You are not in my charge at all. It is a pity, and I am sorry for it. Perhaps, if we saw you at church we could help you a little, if ever you did require any aid. But we can’t discuss that question. It is clear we have no further business here, have we, Mr. Jones?’

The curate with that uncommon name replied to his reverend superior, ‘Certainly not.’

‘Certainly not,’ replied the poor woman, with a shade of disappointment over her pale face, and a little more of pardonable acidity in her tone; ‘certainly not. I am no beggar.’

‘Just so, my good woman,’ said the Vicar, as he tripped with his curate downstairs. ‘Just so; as I have said, we have to exercise the utmost care in the disposal of our funds.’

More of a Samaritan than the Vicar, the poor woman kept the door open till she had heard the last of his steps down the creaking stairs, or he might have had a fall, a not uncommon circumstance on that dilapidated staircase, and then she turned away to her loneliness and misery with her broken heart. The lamp flickered in the socket, the end was very near; life for her had no charm, death no terror.

That night was one of extra jollity as far as the inhabitants of Parker’s Piece were concerned. The police had not had so much trouble in the place for a long while, nor had the publicans and pawnbrokers done such a roaring trade. No one couple in all that squalid district was more drunk that night than Carroty Bill and his better-half.

That night was one of intense cold – the coldest, in feet, of the year, the coldest of many years – and, as such, noted by distinguished meteorologists. The cold was everywhere; in the palace of the prince, as well as in the hut of the peasant. It crept into Belgravian homes, where the lord and master lined himself with extra good cheer, and warmed himself with extra fires; it made dainty maidens and high-born matrons wrap themselves in extra fur as they drove home from dinner-party or theatre, or concert or ball. In railway carriages there was an extra demand for foot-warmers, and at every refreshment bar there was an incessant demand for a glass of something hot. It was the same in all the publics and gin-palaces; and it was a curious fact, the poorer the people were, the more eager was their consumption of potent fluids; and how they lingered around the places where they were sold, even when their money and their credit were gone, as if loath to do battle with the cold without as it pinched their gloveless hands or shoeless feet, or as it found its way into their cheerless garret or cellar as the case might be! In the homes of the well-to-do how the fires blazed, as the fond mother clasped tightly her babe to her bosom for further warmth. In some of the best constructed conservatories the frost nipped off many a tender plant, and as costly as tender, while out-door gardeners suffered losses bewailed bitterly for many a long year. There were muscular young Christians who enjoyed that cold amazingly, as, well fed and well clad, bearing torches, they skated along the Serpentine, or in Regent’s Park, and laughed hugely when any of their weaker brethren or sisters complained. But, nevertheless, the night’s frost played sad havoc with the old, the feeble, and the tender. It crept into that attic in Parker’s Piece, where that poor needlewoman lived. There was no fire in her empty grate to keep it out, no extra blanket for her bed, no vital warmth in her attenuated frame to withstand its fatal power; and when the early sunbeams made their way through the frosted window with difficulty, they lit up, not the pale face of a living woman, but of a corpse. She had been sorely tried that day. The last straw had broken the camel’s back. Christian charity – while it relieved the undeserving, while it had feasted the reprobate – had passed by her, because, poor as she was, she was a real woman with all a woman’s self-respect and sensitiveness to shame, not a drunken, dissipated wretch of brazen face and fluent tongue. Her heart was broken already, and she fell an easy prey to the cold as it stiffened her withered limbs and stopped her poor heart’s action and dried up the feeble current of her blood. Again the coroner came to Parker’s Piece, and an intelligent jury returned a verdict of ‘Death from the visitation of God.’ Dear reader, you and I know better; she was murdered, and a day will come when some one will have to suffer for that deed – murdered she was, as surely as if her throat had been cut by the assassin’s knife. There are thousands in this land of churches and chapels and abounding charities who die in this way every year, and someone, statesman, or parson, or philanthropist, or master, or neighbour, is to blame. As regards each of us, it is as well that we pray with David, ‘Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God of my salvation.’ It is only as we realize the spirit of that prayer that we can save the perishing. That is the remedy, and not the dream of the Utopian, or the Socialist, or the mad result of anarchy and crime.