Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348

“Charles is taking the part already of a teacher, in whom remains the traditionary knowledge of an old world,” said Paulett; “and Alice represents the new inhabitants, who have their own rude copies of natural objects, but who will be open to the training of the learned man.”

“The learned man will be their father,” said Ellen; “they will gladly take their notions from him.”

“Yes; but if it should be so destined, the first generation must work hard merely to live—they must be very long ignorant of every thing except a paternal government, and such habitations as can be raised or appropriated most easily. They will be children in comparison to Charles all their lives, if we can but succeed in giving him the ideas of the age we have lived in. Fancy them, Ellen, increased to perhaps fifty inhabitants before he dies, a very old man, coming round his chair to hear of the wonderful steam-engine, and the use of the telescope, and to learn the art of printing, and the list of different languages which Romans, Frenchmen, Germans, Greeks, used; and what lions were, and horses.”

“Or tell them how he and Alice escaped from the great drought,” said Ellen. “But, alas! it is far more likely he and she will perish in it, and then of what use is this knowledge to him?”

“Why—his soul. ‘It is a thing immortal like thyself;’ and if what he knows is of no use here, it will be useful elsewhere.”

“What!” said Ellen, smiling—“are there railroads and telescopes in another world?”

“For aught I can tell. At all events, the powers that contrive them here may contrive something from the same principles hereafter.”

“But we can tell nothing about the other world,” said Ellen.

“Nay, this is another world to the stars; and, if we know nothing about our destiny, the only way we have to   judge is by what we actually are, and tend to be, now. So, while life remains, I will teach my boy all I know, and go on as a man of this world ought to do; then we shall be ready for every thing.”

Accordingly, Paulett every day carried on his son’s education, as far as the boy’s age permitted, and instructed him in all that he would have learned had the world been as it was formerly. Only, like a man in a shipwreck looking forward to a desert island as his best hope, he dwelt most upon what would be usefullest, supposing Charles (being preserved) to have to provide for the physical necessities of a new race of man. Next in order came science and arts; and it was easier to make him feel the merits of these than of the exploits of men, especially when they consisted of valour, and of the deeds of conquerors; for the heroic virtues seemed to take a new character in the present circumstances of the world; and whereas they used to kindle and blaze in personal danger, and at the sound of the applause of men, they now burned brightly in the endurance of a world’s dissolution, which, with all its terrors and prolonged impressions, must be met by the calm, self-sustaining spirit, rising superior to the greatest excess of physical injury. The boy’s soul replied to the call upon it. He learned to look on the dangers before him, and to consider the possibility of escape with quiet calculation of chances. He inured himself to privation readily, and eagerly tried to spare his mother and Alice from it. He and his father, hand in hand, walked over the desolate land, realizing the idea that they were in fact spirits, superior to all physical things, and divided from spirits and their sphere only by their frail connexion with a body. They talked of virtue and duty, and how good it was to dwell in these painful bodies, since they were the place wherein virtue was practised and duty learned; and the father taught the son that the opportunities occurred, not only in enduring the dissolution of the frame of present things, and in the untiring exertion to aid and support life in those who were of weaker sex than they, but in abiding with even and cheerful temper the vexations of every day, and in adorning as far as possible, as well as preserving, life. The mother was heroic, good, and patient, too. She brought her children, night and morning, to the mouth of the cavern, and there they all kneeled by Paulett, who prayed aloud with them and for them. Then Ellen made ready their meal, which must all be prepared without water, and which consisted of the stores from former harvests, of which there was abundance laid up in various houses; and the little Alice, who could run at her mother’s side, learned to be useful in some matters, and patient and obedient. Charles played with her and taught her; and he himself, mere child as he was, grew merry in his play, and earnest; and many a time the profound silence of the earth was broken by the hearty laugh of children, which would ring out through the cavern, and reverberate against its walls. They grew, and were perfect and beautiful in shape; their minds developed, and talents and virtues filled them. They were types of man and woman—the one bold and protecting, the other seeking for affection and defence. They flourished when means appeared inadequate to their support; and, amid a paralysed world, it was in them only that body and spirit seemed to unfold.

Chapter V

Time passed on, and there was no change in the state of things. Still an unclouded sun—still the deep, intense blue sky—winds on the earth but no moisture; and the whole frame of nature seemed crumbling into chaos. Paulett felt the strife with fate to be unequal indeed, and could scarcely comprehend that he and his family were truly survivors amid such destruction; but he resolved not to give in, while the means remained to him, but to fight the fight out till overpowered by the   material universe. He told Ellen that they must move to some place where they might hope to find more diamonds, and Ellen agreed—wishing with Paulett that the strife were over and the last agony suffered, and that they were among the free and disembodied spirits. London was their object; for there they might hope to find most of the materials of what was now the most precious of all things, water; and providing as well as they could for their necessities by the way, they quitted the cavern, and set off on their journey.

First came the father, carrying the little Alice in his arms; the boy held his mother by the hand; and they followed Paulett on his path. There was the delicate woman, the mother of all that remained alive of the human race, setting out on the desert, which she remembered, but a few years before, the scene of luxury and abundance. On her shoulder she carried a burthen containing corn for their sustenance; and the brave boy took his share by bearing the jar of water which had been provided for their support on the journey; and thus the last family of mankind set out on their pilgrimage over the desolated earth. The unmitigated sun had made great rents in the sides of the hills, and, together with the wind, had broken up the roads, between which and the parched fields there was scarcely now any difference. Where there had been inclosures and hedges, the withered sticks had in most places yielded to the winds, and were scattered about the spot where they had stood. Here and there were the marks of fire, which had run along the country till some interval of previous desolation had stopped it; and where this had been the case, the black unsightly remains lay strewn over the surface, one further step advanced in dissolution than the dead world around. There was no want of habitations for their nightly shelter. Palaces and cottages, all alike, were open; all alike were silent and tenantless habitations. They might choose where they would. And the first day they did not go far, for Ellen and her children, with stout hearts, had not bodily strength for great fatigue, and were unused to the strong exertion they were now compelled to make. Towards evening, therefore, when they reached a house with which Paulett and Ellen had once been familiar, they determined to rest there for the night. They pushed open the gates, which still swung on their hinges, and which admitted them to what had been a park, filled once with trees, and bathed with waters. A large wood covered the hill which rose on one side, and which now, under a summer sun, stood perfectly bare, and all of one uniform grey colour as far as the view extended. On the other side, the eye looked over a tract of country varied with hill and dale, but desolate of every colour that used to shine forth in light and shade. The setting sun shone among the leafless branches, casting long brilliant rays of light. The unclouded sky met the sparkling earth, and both glittered with unnatural brilliancy. To Paulett and Ellen, every thing spoke of desolation and death; and an exclamation escaped Ellen, in a low tone, that it was a piteous and horrible spectacle. But Charles, standing still at their side as they looked on the scene, cried it was beautiful; the colours of the sun were so splendid on the fine white trees, and one could see so far, and every thing was so white and shining on the earth. The parents felt that ideas were ceasing to be in common between the last and the first members of the old and the new generation; and far from contradicting their boy, they tried to partake his pleasure and enter into his impressions. They moved on up to the old familiar door and entered the open silent hall, where they remembered the ceremonies and the courtesies of life. They chose among the rooms which had been those of friends, and recognised familiar objects of their everyday existence. It was a conceit of Paulett’s, for which he smiled at himself, to wind up the clock in the hall, and set it to tell out the time again for another week. There were musical instruments in a room adjoining, and over one of these Ellen timidly passed her fingers. It was out of tune, and the sounds, though sweet in themselves, all jarred with one another.

“That’s the last music of the world, perhaps,” said Ellen; “and all discord too.”

They found some small store of corn in one of the rooms; they prepared and ate it, and lay down to sleep; forgetting in fatigue all their dismal feelings, and in their dreams seeing the old state of things and dead persons—nay, a dead world—without wondering that they were come to life again. All the days of their journey wore an uniform character; and they kept on and on through waste and ruin, glad to leave the country behind them, and expecting, as some relief, the aspect of streets and a town. They halted, at length, within a few miles of London, and lay down to rest, thankful to be so near their bourne; for they had suffered as much fatigue as they could well bear, and their stock of diamonds was waxing very low and needed replenishment. Paulett continued busy preparing water from part of those that remained, after his wife and children were asleep. His own frame scarcely felt the exertion of the journey, and he was full of the thoughts with which the approaching sight of what had been once the great metropolis filled him. The vast untenanted dwelling-place, the solitude of the habitation of crowds, the absence of mind and talent from the scene they had so filled; all these things excited his feelings, and gaining ground in the solitude of the night he felt at last that he could not willingly delay his first meeting with the bereaved city, and that he should be pleased to have an opportunity of indulging alone the highly-wrought emotion with which he expected the sight of it. Accordingly, when the light began to break, he wrote word to Ellen that she should wait for him a few hours, and that he would be back again in that time to lead her and the children to their journey’s end; and then, softly leaving the house, set forward eagerly on his way.

It was evening before he returned. He came in pale and excited; he took his children in his arms as usual, and seemed like one upon whom a thing which he has seen has made a deep impression, but who either doubts the power of words to convey the same impression, or thinks that he himself is over-excited by it.

“Ellen,” he said at last, “London is burned to the ground.”

The sudden flush on her face, and her clasped hands, while she spoke not, showed that the event touched her, too, as deeply as him; and then he went on freely—

“Oh, Ellen! if you had seen it! It stands there, all in ruins—the whole city in ruins! It has been the work of some great storm which fired it when all were gone or dead; for there has been no pulling down, no pillage, no aid, no attempt to stop the fire! All the palaces, all the museums, all the stores of learning and art, the streets, the crowded houses; they are gone, Ellen—they are all gone!”

His wife had never before in all their misery seen him so deeply moved—so nearly overpowered by any thing that had occurred. His excitement communicated itself to her, and she caught the full bearing of his narration. She felt for the long ages of story, and the monuments of human skill, buried in the great city. Irretrievable ruin! The work which men, and years, and glowing knowledge, had slowly raised up, all dead, all annihilated so suddenly. They sat talking of it very long before Ellen said,

“And what must we do now, Paulett?”

“We must go on, Ellen; we must travel further. The rest we hoped for is destroyed with the city, and we must press forward if we are to save our lives.”

“That seems less and less possible,” said Ellen; “and in all this destruction why should we be preserved?”

“Perhaps because we have as yet avoided the stroke, by using all our human skill; perhaps because a new race is to spring from us, who shall reign in another mighty London! Alas, London!—alas, the great city!”

Several times during the night Ellen heard Paulett murmur to himself words of lament over the fallen city; and when he slept, his rest was agitated, and his frame seemed trembling under the emotions of the day.

It was resolved that Ellen should rest a little while in their present   habitation, before undertaking the toils of further travel. They intended to make for the coast, sure of a dry channel to the opposite shore, and hoping to reach some of the great continental towns before their store of diamonds should be utterly exhausted. In the meantime, Paulett was bent upon taking his boy through the ruins of London, and impressing upon him the memory of the place, and its great events. So the next day, leaving Ellen and the little Alice together, he and Charles began their pilgrimage through the mighty ruins. The event must have occurred very many months ago, for the ruins were perfectly cold, and the winds had toppled down the walls of all the more fragile buildings; so that the streets lay in confusion over one another, and it was impossible, except by other marks, to recognise the localities. Paulett and Charles clambered over the fallen walls, and would have been bewildered among heaps of masonry, and houses shaken from their base and blackened by fire—only that over the desolate prospect they saw, and Paulett marked the bearings of St Paul’s, the chief part of whose dome rose high in the air, though a huge rent let the daylight through it, and threatened a speedy fall. There was here and there a spire, rising perfect over the ruins; there were remains of Whitehall, strong though blackened, seen over a long view of prostrate streets; and in the distance beyond, fragments of Westminster Abbey showed themselves in the sunlight, though defaced and crumbled, as if the frame had been too ancient to resist the fire. Guided by these landmarks, Paulett traced out the plan of the city, and by degrees recognised where the great streets had run, where the palaces had stood, where the river had flowed. And all was silent, all an absolute stillness, where there had been such ceaseless voices, and sounds of life; the libraries were burned, the statues calcined, the museums in ashes; the mind of man, which triumphs over the body, had here been subdued by matter, and left no trace of itself.

“Oh! London, London! So much talent, so much glory and beauty; such mighty hearts, such mighty works; such ages of story—all buried in one black mass! Piteous spectacle!” cried Paulett, striking his breast, and stretching forth his arms over the skeleton of what was once a sovereign in the world.

He took his son by the hand, and led him over the confused masses, telling him as they went along what were the ruins by which they passed.

“This great heap of building which has fallen into a square, must be the palace of our kings. It is that St James’s, where they dwelt till nobler buildings rose with the improving times. See here, Charles—there is less ruin here. This opener space was park and garden; and time has been that I have heard the buzz of men filling all this place, when the sovereigns came to hold their courts in that building. I think that this dreadful fire must have taken place before life was quite extinct; for see, there are heaps of bones here, as though men had fled together to avoid it; and it either overtook them with long tongues of fire, such as a burning city would send forth, or smothered them before they could escape, with its smoke. Ha! I see almost a palace there—a wonder of modern art. It is the house I once saw, and only once, for it was built during the years of the great drought.”

“Who could build in those days, father?” said Charles; “I thought no one had any heart for doing more than we do, and that is but just keeping ourselves alive.”

“Nay, it was very long before the persuasion came that those were the last days. We all believed that rain would come again and restore the earth to its old order, and whoever possessed the means, builded and projected still. You may see this magnificent place suffered violence before the fire; for its ornaments are torn from the walls, and its statues mutilated by other means than the bare fall. It was the property of a man called Jephcot, who, when the water began to fail, contrived means to bring it into London from great distances, and thus to secure a supply when the ordinary means were useless. He kept his contrivance secret, and supplied the city when other men’s resources were exhausted; and he   grew exceedingly rich by this exercise of his ingenuity, and built himself the palace which you see there. But when the failure of water amounted to absolute famine, the rich people naturally were the last who wanted; they gave his price, and he supplied them before he would supply others who had no money to bring. This was endured with murmurs, which might have gone on a little longer, had not Jephcot, in the midst of this distress, given a banquet to the great people of London.

“It was in the second year of the drought, when little thinking what the end was to be, we all continued to live, as far as possible, as we had done before. I was in London where the parliament was then sitting, and among others I was invited to this house, and still remember the scene of luxury and profusion of these bare rooms. In the midst of the noise of a crowded assembly, some of us heard sounds outside, which were such as you will never hear, even if you live—sounds of the feet and voices of thousands of human beings. Among this tumult, we began to distinguish individual voices, chiefly those of women, crying out, “water!” We paid little attention, and those who did, said the police and soldiers were called out and would prevent violence; but before long it was whispered that these forces, pressed by extreme want, and seeing their families perishing, had joined the mob, and were exciting violence. There fell a silence over all the assembly; every one left the tables, and gathered together to hear and to consult: and while we did so, there came an assault on the front of the house, and the voices of the populace all broke out at once into shouting. They were irresistible; they forced their way in, and came pouring up the staircase; they uttered cries of vengeance for imaginary wrongs, saying that the waters of London had been kept for the rich, and that there was abundance for both rich and poor, and threatened the lives of Jephcot and his family, even more eagerly than they demanded water. He tried to address them, but they caught him down from the head of the staircase where he stood, and flung him at once over the marble banisters. This was the signal for attack on all sides. We rushed forward to rescue his body and revenge him, they to possess themselves of the treasure they so much coveted. Of course we were overpowered, for we were one to fifty; and that night there fell a hundred of the nobles of England. The women were respected by the mob, and except one lady who was shot accidentally, and another who saw her son fall, and stood over him till he ceased to breathe, then fell wounded and dying herself, all escaped. Your mother was not there. When our party was quite vanquished, I found myself in the midst of the mob, bleeding to death as I thought; but they flung me on one side, and I recovered. They pulled the house to the ground, after they had satiated themselves with drinking. And that was the first great calamity which overthrew the government of the country.”

“And how did that come about, father?” said Charles, eagerly holding him by the hand, and sharing his excitement.

Paulett led him on, telling him, at one ruined monument after another, what steps had been taken at each, in the destruction of the order of things. They came to the dry channel of the Thames, a deep and wide trench, whose bottom showed objects that had lain there when the waters flowed above, and which would once have been as precious as now they were unregarded. Here as a bridge from side to side; and a little way above, stood part of the walls of a noble building, partly black with smoke, partly white with the polish and beauty of stones newly built together.

“These are the Houses of Parliament,” said Paulett, “the work of many years, which were to replace those burned in 1834. See how beautiful they were, what excellent design, what exquisite finish; how strong and stable, to last for a thousand ages, and to crown the river which then flowed in this dusty channel. When matters were come almost to the worst, and there were convulsions all over the country in consequence of the famine, the queen, for the first time, came to these houses to open the last parliament that ever assembled.   There were no beasts of burthen left alive in the country; it had been found impossible to appropriate water enough to those which had been reserved in the royal stables; and the queen, surrounded by a certain number of the court, walked along yonder street to the House. The sight of so young a woman, and so great a sovereign, thus leveled by physical necessity with the meanest, excited some of the old enthusiasm with which she used to be greeted: the populace themselves, with their squalid faces, and in their extreme misery, greeted her; but the greatest feeling was aroused among the nobles and gentry who surrounded her, and who seemed to make a point of offering more homage, the less outer circumstances commanded it. There was assembled in the House all that remained alive of the nobles of England, and the sovereign; and they proposed to deliberate upon the possibility of any means remaining to provide water. But a demagogue of the people, Matthison by name, roused their fury and their madness, and they burst in, accusing their superiors of their calamities. The queen’s life was in danger;—and then occurred a gallant action, which is worthy to live if man lives. A Churchill, a descendant of that Marlborough who fought Blenheim, came to the hall whither they had broken in, and required in the queen’s name to know what they wanted. He meant to gain time; for other nobles had effected an exit at a private door for her, and were hurrying her away to a place of security, till she could escape from England. They answered Churchill, that water was monopolized; that Matthison must be minister; that they must speak to the queen face to face, and have her hostage for the accomplishment of what they wished. Churchill pretended to deliberate for an instant with some one in the adjoining chamber; and then returning, said, ‘If the queen do not speak with you in ten minutes, you may tear me in pieces.’ Some of the mob cried that he was saying this to give her time to escape. Others said, if it were so, he should assuredly suffer the penalty. Churchill answered nothing, only smiled; and then the majority said he could not be so foolhardy, and they would grant the queen ten minutes.

“The time passed, and Matthison eagerly cried, ‘The time is gone, yet we don’t see the queen.’