Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. by Various

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We went into several other rooms, at the doors of which, pausing on the
outside, we could hear the volubility, and sometimes the wrangling, of the
female inhabitants within, but invariably found silence and peace when we
stepped over the threshold. The women were grouped together in their
sitting-rooms, sometimes three or four, sometimes a larger number,
classified by their spontaneous affinities, I suppose, and all busied, so
far as I can remember, with the one occupation of knitting coarse yarn
stockings. Hardly any of them, I am sorry to say, had a brisk or cheerful
air, though it often stirred them up to a momentary vivacity to be
accosted by the governor, and they seemed to like being noticed, however
slightly, by the visitors. The happiest person whom I saw there (and,
running hastily through my experiences, I hardly recollect to have seen a
happier one in my life, if you take a careless flow of spirits as
happiness) was an old woman that lay in bed among ten or twelve
heavy-looking females, who plied their knitting-work round about her. She
laughed, when we entered, and immediately began a talk to us, in a thin,
little, spirited quaver, claiming to be more than a century old; and the
governor (in whatever way he happened to be cognizant of the fact)
confirmed her age to be a hundred and four. Her jauntiness and cackling
merriment were really wonderful. It was as if she had got through with all
her actual business in life two or three generations ago, and now, freed
from every responsibility for herself or others, had only to keep up a
mirthful state of mind till the short time, or long time, (and, happy as
she was, she appeared not to care whether it were long or short,) before
Death, who had misplaced her name in his list, might remember to take her
away. She had gone quite round the circle of human existence, and come
back to the play-ground again. And so she had grown to be a kind of
miraculous old pet, the plaything of people seventy or eighty years
younger than herself, who talked and laughed with her as if she were a
child, finding great delight in her wayward and strangely playful
responses, into some of which she cunningly conveyed a gibe that caused
their ears to tingle a little. She had done getting out of bed in this
world, and lay there to be waited upon like a queen or a baby.

In the same room sat a pauper who had once been an actress of considerable
repute, but was compelled to give up her profession by a softening of the
brain. The disease seemed to have stolen the continuity out of her life,
and disturbed all healthy relationship between the thoughts within her and
the world without. On our first entrance, she looked cheerfully at us, and
showed herself ready to engage in conversation; but suddenly, while we
were talking with the century-old crone, the poor actress began to weep,
contorting her face with extravagant stage-grimaces, and wringing her
hands for some inscrutable sorrow. It might have been a reminiscence of
actual calamity in her past life, or, quite as probably, it was but a
dramatic woe, beneath which she had staggered and shrieked and wrung her
hands with hundreds of repetitions in the sight of crowded theatres, and
been as often comforted by thunders of applause. But my idea of the
mystery was, that she had a sense of wrong in seeing the aged woman (whose
empty vivacity was like the rattling of dry peas in a bladder) chosen as
the central object of interest to the visitors, while she herself, who had
agitated thousands of hearts with a breath, sat starving for the
admiration that was her natural food. I appeal to the whole society of
artists of the Beautiful and the Imaginative,--poets, romancers, painters,
sculptors, actors,--whether or no this is a grief that may be felt even
amid the torpor of a dissolving brain!

We looked into a good many sleeping-chambers, where were rows of beds,
mostly calculated for two occupants, and provided with sheets and
pillow-cases that resembled sackcloth. It appeared to me that the sense of
beauty was insufficiently regarded in all the arrangements of the
almshouse; a little cheap luxury for the eye, at least, might do the poor
folks a substantial good. But, at all events, there was the beauty of
perfect neatness and orderliness, which, being heretofore known to few of
them, was perhaps as much as they could well digest in the remnant of
their lives. We were invited into the laundry, where a great washing and
drying were in process, the whole atmosphere being hot and vaporous with
the steam of wet garments and bedclothes. This atmosphere was the
pauper-life of the past week or fortnight resolved into a gaseous state,
and breathing it, however fastidiously, we were forced to inhale the
strange element into our inmost being. Had the Queen been there, I know
not how she could have escaped the necessity. What an intimate brotherhood
is this in which we dwell, do what we may to put an artificial remoteness
between the high creature and the low one! A poor man's breath, borne on
the vehicle of tobacco-smoke, floats into a palace-window and reaches the
nostrils of a monarch. It is but an example, obvious to the sense, of the
innumerable and secret channels by which, at every moment of our lives,
the flow and reflux of a common humanity pervade us all. How superficial
are the niceties of such as pretend to keep aloof! Let the whole world be
cleansed, or not a man or woman of us all can be clean.

By-and-by we came to the ward where the children were kept, on entering
which, we saw, in the first place, several unlovely and unwholesome little
people lazily playing together in a court-yard. And here a singular
incommodity befell one member of our party. Among the children was a
wretched, pale, half-torpid little thing, (about six years old, perhaps,
but I know not whether a girl or a boy,) with a humor in its eyes and
face, which the governor said was the scurvy, and which appeared to bedim
its powers of vision, so that it toddled about gropingly, as if in quest
of it did not precisely know what. This child--this sickly, wretched,
humor-eaten infant, the offspring of unspeakable sin and sorrow, whom it
must have required several generations of guilty progenitors to render so
pitiable an object as we beheld it--immediately took an unaccountable
fancy to the gentleman just hinted at. It prowled about him like a pet
kitten, rubbing against his legs, following everywhere at his heels,
pulling at his coat-tails, and, at last, exerting all the speed that its
poor limbs were capable of, got directly before him and held forth its
arms, mutely insisting on being taken up. It said not a word, being
perhaps underwitted and incapable of prattle. But it smiled up in his
face,--a sort of woful gleam was that smile, through the sickly blotches
that covered its features,--and found means to express such a perfect
confidence that it was going to be fondled and made much of, that there
was no possibility in a human heart of balking its expectation. It was as
if God had promised the poor child this favor on behalf of that
individual, and he was bound to fulfil the contract, or else no longer
call himself a man among men. Nevertheless, it could be no easy thing for
him to do, he being a person burdened with more than an Englishman's
customary reserve, shy of actual contact with human beings, afflicted with
a peculiar distaste for whatever was ugly, and, furthermore, accustomed to
that habit of observation from an insulated stand-point which is said
(but, I hope, erroneously) to have the tendency of putting ice into the
blood.

So I watched the struggle in his mind with a good deal of interest, and am
seriously of opinion that he did an heroic act, and effected more than he
dreamed of towards his final salvation, when he took up the loathsome
child and caressed it as tenderly as if he had been its father. To be
sure, we all smiled at him, at the time, but doubtless would have acted
pretty much the same in a similar stress of circumstances. The child, at
any rate, appeared to be satisfied with his behavior; for when he had held
it a considerable time, and set it down, it still favored him with its
company, keeping fast hold of his forefinger till we reached the confines
of the place. And on our return through the court-yard, after visiting
another part of the establishment, here again was this same little
Wretchedness waiting for its victim, with a smile of joyful, and yet dull
recognition about its scabby mouth and in its rheumy eyes. No doubt, the
child's mission in reference to our friend was to remind him that he was
responsible, in his degree, for all the sufferings and misdemeanors of the
world in which he lived, and was not entitled to look upon a particle of
its dark calamity as if it were none of his concern: the offspring of a
brother's iniquity being his own blood-relation, and the guilt, likewise,
a burden on him, unless he expiated it by better deeds.

All the children in this ward seemed to be invalids, and, going up-stairs,
we found more of them in the same or a worse condition than the little
creature just described, with their mothers (or more probably other women,
for the infants were mostly foundlings) in attendance as nurses. The
matron of the ward, a middle-aged woman, remarkably kind and motherly in
aspect, was walking to and fro across the chamber--on that weary journey
in which careful mothers and nurses travel so continually and so far, and
gain never a step of progress--with an unquiet baby in her arms. She
assured us that she enjoyed her occupation, being exceedingly fond of
children; and, in fact, the absence of timidity in all the little people
was a sufficient proof that they could have had no experience of harsh
treatment, though, on the other hand, none of them appeared to be
attracted to one individual more than another. In this point they differed
widely from the poor child below-stairs. They seemed to recognize a
universal motherhood in womankind, and cared not which individual might be
the mother of the moment. I found their tameness as shocking as did
Alexander Selkirk that of the brute subjects of his else solitary kingdom.
It was a sort of tame familiarity, a perfect indifference to the approach
of strangers, such as I never noticed in other children. I accounted for
it partly by their nerveless, unstrung state of body, incapable of the
quick thrills of delight and fear which play upon the lively harp-strings
of a healthy child's nature, and partly by their woful lack of
acquaintance with a private home, and their being therefore destitute of
the sweet homebred shyness, which is like the sanctity of heaven about a
mother-petted child. Their condition was like that of chickens hatched in
an oven, and growing up without the especial guardianship of a matron-hen:
both the chicken and the child, methinks, must needs want something that
is essential to their respective characters.

In this chamber (which was spacious, containing a large number of beds)
there was a clear fire burning on the hearth, as in all the other occupied
rooms; and directly in front of the blaze sat a woman holding a baby,
which, beyond all reach of comparison, was the most horrible object that
ever afflicted my sight. Days afterwards--nay, even now, when I bring it
up vividly before my mind's eye--it seemed to lie upon the floor of my
heart, polluting my moral being with the sense of something grievously
amiss in the entire conditions of humanity. The holiest man could not be
otherwise than full of wickedness, the chastest virgin seemed impure, in a
world where such a babe was possible. The governor whispered me, apart,
that, like nearly all the rest of them, it was the child of unhealthy
parents. Ah, yes! There was the mischief. This spectral infant, a hideous
mockery of the visible link which Love creates between man and woman, was
born of disease and sin. Diseased Sin was its father, and Sinful Disease
its mother, and their offspring lay in the woman's arms like a nursing
Pestilence, which, could it live to grow up, would make the world a more
accursed abode than ever heretofore. Thank Heaven, it could not live! This
baby, if we must give it that sweet name, seemed to be three or four
months old, but, being such an unthrifty changeling, might have been
considerably older. It was all covered with blotches, and preternaturally
dark and discolored; it was withered away, quite shrunken and fleshless;
it breathed only amid pantings and gaspings, and moaned painfully at every
gasp. The only comfort in reference to it was the evident impossibility of
its surviving to draw many more of those miserable, moaning breaths; and
it would have been infinitely less heart-depressing to see it die, right
before my eyes, than to depart and carry it alive in my remembrance, still
suffering the incalculable torture of its little life. I can by no means
express how horrible this infant was, neither ought I to attempt it. And
yet I must add one final touch. Young as the poor little creature was, its
pain and misery had endowed it with a premature intelligence, insomuch
that its eyes seemed to stare at the by-standers out of their sunken
sockets knowingly and appealingly, as if summoning us one and all to
witness the deadly wrong of its existence. At least, I so interpreted its
look, when it positively met and responded to my own awe-stricken gaze,
and therefore I lay the case, as far as I am able, before mankind, on whom
God has imposed the necessity to suffer in soul and body till this dark
and dreadful wrong be righted.

Thence we went to the school-rooms, which were underneath the chapel. The
pupils, like the children whom we had just seen, were, in large
proportion, foundlings. Almost without exception, they looked sickly, with
marks of eruptive trouble in their doltish faces, and a general tendency
to diseases of the eye. Moreover, the poor little wretches appeared to be
uneasy within their skins, and screwed themselves about on the benches in
a disagreeably suggestive way, as if they had inherited the evil habits of
their parents as an innermost garment of the same texture and material as
the shirt of Nessus, and must wear it with unspeakable discomfort as long
as they lived. I saw only a single child that looked healthy; and on my
pointing him out, the governor informed me that this little boy, the sole
exception to the miserable aspect of his school-fellows, was not a
foundling, nor properly a workhouse child, being born of respectable
parentage, and his father one of the officers of the institution. As for
the remainder,--the hundred pale abortions to be counted against one
rosy-cheeked boy,--what shall we say or do? Depressed by the sight of so
much misery, and uninventive of remedies for the evils that force
themselves on my perception, I can do little more than recur to the idea
already hinted at in the early part of this article, regarding the speedy
necessity of a new deluge. So far as these children are concerned, at any
rate, it would be a blessing to the human race, which they will contribute
to enervate and corrupt,--a greater blessing to themselves, who inherit no
patrimony but disease and vice, and in whose souls if there be a spark of
God's life, this seems the only possible mode of keeping it aglow,--if
every one of them could be drowned to-night, by their best friends,
instead of being put tenderly to bed. This heroic method of treating human
maladies, moral and material, is certainly beyond the scope of man's
discretionary rights, and probably will not be adopted by Divine
Providence until the opportunity of milder reformation shall have been
offered us, again and again, through a series of future ages.

It may be fair to acknowledge that the humane and excellent governor, as
well as other persons better acquainted with the subject than myself, took
a less gloomy view of it, though still so dark a one as to involve scanty
consolation. They remarked that individuals of the male sex, picked up in
the streets and nurtured in the work-house, sometimes succeed tolerably
well in life, because they are taught trades before being turned into the
world, and, by dint of immaculate behavior and good luck, are not unlikely
to get employment and earn a livelihood. The case is different with the
girls. They can only go to service, and are invariably rejected by
families of respectability on account of their origin, and for the better
reason of their unfitness to fill satisfactorily even the meanest
situations in a well-ordered English household. Their resource is to take
service with people only a step or two above the poorest class, with whom
they fare scantily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and precarious
lives, and finally drop into the slough of evil, through which, in their
best estate, they do but pick their slimy way on stepping-stones.

From the schools we went to the bakehouse, and the brew-house, (for such
cruelty is not harbored in the heart of a true Englishman as to deny a
pauper his daily allowance of beer,) and through the kitchens, where we
beheld an immense pot over the fire, surging and walloping with some kind
of a savory stew that filled it up to its brim. We also visited a tailor's
shop and a shoemaker's shop, in both of which a number of men, and pale,
diminutive apprentices, were at work, diligently enough, though seemingly
with small heart in the business. Finally, the governor ushered us into a
shed, inside of which was piled up an immense quantity of new coffins.
They were of the plainest description, made of pine boards, probably of
American growth, not very nicely smoothed by the plane, neither painted
nor stained with black, but provided with a loop of rope at either end for
the convenience of lifting the rude box and its inmate into the cart that
shall carry them to the burial-ground. There, in holes ten feet deep, the
paupers are buried one above another, mingling their relics
indistinguishably. In another world may they resume their individuality,
and find it a happier one than here!

As we departed, a character came under our notice which I have met with in
all almshouses, whether of the city or village, or in England or America.
It was the familiar simpleton, who shuffled across the court-yard,
clattering his wooden-soled shoes, to greet us with a howl or a laugh, I
hardly know which, holding out his hand for a penny, and chuckling grossly
when it was given him. All underwitted persons, so far as my experience
goes, have this craving for copper coin, and appear to estimate its value
by a miraculous instinct, which is one of the earliest gleams of human
intelligence while the nobler faculties are yet in abeyance. There may
come a time, even in this world, when we shall all understand that our
tendency to the individual appropriation of gold and broad acres, fine
houses, and such good and beautiful things as are equally enjoyable by a
multitude, is but a trait of imperfectly developed intelligence, like the
simpleton's cupidity of a penny. When that day dawns,--and probably not
till then,--I imagine that there will be no more poor streets nor need of
almshouses.

I was once present at the wedding of some poor English people, and was
deeply impressed by the spectacle, though by no means with such proud and
delightful emotions as seem to have affected all England on the recent
occasion of the marriage of its Prince. It was in the Cathedral at
Manchester, a particularly black and grim old structure, into which I had
stepped to examine some ancient and curious wood-carvings within the
choir. The woman in attendance greeted me with a smile, (which always
glimmers forth on the feminine visage, I know not why, when a wedding is
in question,) and asked me to take a seat in the nave till some poor
parties were married, it being the Easter holidays, and a good time for
them to marry, because no fees would be demanded by the clergyman. I sat
down accordingly, and soon the parson and his clerk appeared at the altar,
and a considerable crowd of people made their entrance at a side-door, and
ranged themselves in a long, huddled line across the chancel. They were my
acquaintances of the poor streets, or persons in a precisely similar
condition of life, and were now come to their marriage-ceremony in just
such garbs as I had always seen them wear: the men in their loafers'
coats, out at elbows, or their laborers' jackets, defaced with grimy toil;
the women drawing their shabby shawls tighter about their shoulders, to
hide the raggedness beneath; all of them unbrushed, unshaven, unwashed,
uncombed, and wrinkled with penury and care; nothing virgin-like in the
brides, nor hopeful or energetic in the bridegrooms;--they were, in short,
the mere rags and tatters of the human race, whom some east-wind of evil
omen, howling along the streets, had chanced to sweep together into an
unfragrant heap. Each and all of them, conscious of his or her individual
misery, had blundered into the strange miscalculation of supposing that
they could lessen the sum of it by multiplying it into the misery of
another person. All the couples (and it was difficult, in such a confused
crowd, to compute exactly their number) stood up at once, and had
execution done upon them in the lump, the clergyman addressing only small
parts of the service to each individual pair, but so managing the larger
portion as to include the whole company without the trouble of repetition.
By this compendious contrivance, one would apprehend, he came dangerously
near making every man and woman the husband or wife of every other; nor,
perhaps, would he have perpetrated much additional mischief by the
mistake; but, after receiving a benediction in common, they assorted
themselves in their own fashion, as they only knew how, and departed to
the garrets, or the cellars, or the unsheltered street-corners, where
their honeymoon and subsequent lives were to be spent. The parson smiled
decorously, the clerk and the sexton grinned broadly, the female attendant
tittered almost aloud, and even the married parties seemed to see
something exceedingly funny in the affair; but for my part, though
generally apt enough to be tickled by a joke, I laid it away in my memory
as one of the saddest sights I ever looked upon.

Not very long afterwards, I happened to be passing the same venerable
Cathedral, and heard a clang of joyful bells, and beheld a bridal party
coming down the steps towards a carriage and four horses, with a portly
coachman and two postilions, that waited at the gate. The bridegroom's
mien had a sort of careless and kindly English pride; the bride floated
along in her white drapery, a creature so nice and delicate that it was a
luxury to see her, and a pity that her silk slippers should touch anything
so grimy as the old stones of the church-yard avenue. The crowd of ragged
people, who always cluster to witness what they may of an aristocratic
wedding, broke into audible admiration of the bride's beauty and the
bridegroom's manliness, and uttered prayers and ejaculations (possibly
paid for in alms) for the happiness of both. If the most favorable of
earthly conditions could make them happy, they had every prospect of it.
They were going to live on their abundance in one of those stately and
delightful English homes, such as no other people ever created or
inherited, a hall set far and safe within its own private grounds, and
surrounded with venerable trees, shaven lawns, rich shrubbery, and
trimmest pathways, the whole so artfully contrived and tended that summer
rendered it a paradise, and even winter would hardly disrobe it of its
beauty; and all this fair property seemed more exclusively and inalienably
their own, because of its descent through many forefathers, each of whom
had added an improvement or a charm, and thus transmitted it with a
stronger stamp of rightful possession to his heir. And is it possible,
after all, that there may be a flaw in the title-deeds? Is, or is not, the
system wrong that gives one married pair so immense a superfluity of
luxurious home, and shuts out a million others from any home whatever? One
day or another, safe as they deem themselves, and safe as the hereditary
temper of the people really tends to make them, the gentlemen of England
will be compelled to face this question.

* * * * *

PAUL BLECKER.

PART III.

[Conclusion.]

"Skin cool, damp. Pha! pha! I thought that camphor and morphine last night
would cure you. Always good for sudden attacks."

The little woman's stumpy white fingers were very motherly, touching
Grey's forehead.

"I promised Doctor Blecker you would see him in half an hour."

"It is not best," the girl said, standing up, leaning against the
mantel-shelf.

"It is best. Yes. You say you will not consent to the marriage: are going
with me to-night. So, so. I ask no questions. No, child. Hush!"--with a
certain dignity. "I want no explanations. Sarah Sheppard's rough, maybe;
but she keeps her own privacy, and regards that of others. But you must
see him. He is your best friend, if nothing more. A woman cannot be wrong,
when she acts in that way from the inherent truth of things. That was my
mother's rule. In half an hour,"--putting her forefinger on Grey's temple,
and pursing her mouth. "Pulse low. Sharp seven the train goes. I'll bring
a bottle of nitre in my bag,"--and she bustled out.

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