Chapter III: Part 3

“Well, who would have thought it? Next week Mrs. Bezzle’s business was to sell. The week after, it was sold. The week after that, Mrs. Bezzle and her son Tom, and Tom’s wife, and Tom’s brother Sam, and Mrs. Bezzle’s eldest daughter, and little James, and Sarah, and Mary Ann, and the two little urchins, were on board a ship, at Liverpool, bound for Port Philip. That’s a year, come Michaelmas, ago.

“But, drat ’em, why didn’t they pay the postage? Two-and-two is a consideration when butter (best fresh) is a rising a penny a pound every week. Not but what I was glad to hear from Mrs. Bezzle. Tom and his wife, and his brother Sam, are settled in a ‘run;’ and though there was some words I couldn’t make out, I dare say they didn’t explain how a ‘run’ could be a settlement. ‘Quite the reverse!’ as Mrs. Jenks said—(I have made it up with her, though she did insinuate the gingerbread nuts the mad bull made me buy gave her babby the cholera; and, bless it! it was only the teeth after all). Mrs. Bezzle has settled herself in the mutton-pie and cheesecake line, and has no fear of opposition; and as in Port Philip there is good digestions and plenty of ’em, pies is popular. Prices, too, is better,—penny pies being tuppence. James is on the ‘run,’ along with his eldest brother. Sarah an’t married yet,—for out of six offers, a young gal of seventeen has a right to be puzzled for six months or so, and more dropping in every week. Mary Anne is family governess to a rich copper-man, with plenty of stock—I suppose by that he is in the soup line. However, all is doing well.

“Well, Mr. Conductor, it was all owing to that bull, wasn’t it? If I hadn’t improved that solemn occasion, where would Mrs. Bezzle, and four out of six of her helpless offspring have been by this time?—why, in the workhus.”

LUNGS FOR LONDON.

Travellers describe nothing to be so much dreaded by the people of the East as a flight of locusts, except indeed a settlement of locusts. When those devouring insects alight on the fields and pastures, they begin from a centre composed of myriads, and eat up everything green within radii extending over not acres, but miles. They fall upon gardens and leave them deserts; and upon a field they do not permit so much as a blade of grass to indicate where grass was.

Although, in fact, these little devastators do not trouble us; in effect, Londoners are the victims of equally efficient destroyers of their green places.

Bricklayers are spreading the webs and meshes of houses with such fearful rapidity in every direction, that the people are being gradually confined within narrow prisons, only open at the top for the admission of what would be air if it were not smoke. Suburban open spaces are being entombed in brick-and-mortar mausoleums for the suffocation as well as for the accommodation of an increasing populace; who, if they wish to get breath, can find nowhere to draw it from, short of a long journey. The Lungs of London have undergone congestion, and even their cells are underground.

Of all the neighbourhoods of which London is a collection, Finsbury and Islington have suffered most. Within the recollection of middle-aged memories, Clerkenwell Green was of the right colour; Moorfields, Spafields, and the East India Company’s Fields, were adorned with grass; and he must be young indeed who cannot remember cricket-playing in White Conduit, Canonbury, Shepherd and Shepherdess, Rhodes, and Laycock’s, besides countless acres of other “Fields,” which are now blotted out from the face of the Country to become Town, in the densest sense of the word. Thanks to the window tax and the bricklayer, fresh air will be thoroughly bricked out, unless a vigorous effort be made to stop the invasion of burnt clay and water.

Mr. Lloyd, a gentleman of Islington who dreamt a few years since that he lived in the country, but has recently awoke to the conviction that his once suburban residence has been completely incorporated with the town, determined, if possible, to arrest the invasion of habitations. His plan is to dam out the flood of encroachment by emparking a large space at Islington for the behoof of the Borough of Finsbury, which contains a population of three hundred thousand panting souls. This space is, according to his plan, that which surrounds the village of Highbury, one of the highest and airiest suburbs of London. It is within two miles of the City, and might be rendered accessible to Victoria Park in the east, and to Regent’s Park in the west. The proposed enclosure will take in a good portion of the course of the New River, and a large quantity of ground so well and picturesquely wooded, that a paling and a name are only requisite to convert it at once into a park. In shape the enclosure would be a triangle, the base of which is the Holloway Road and Hopping Lane, and the apex, a point at which the Seven Sisters’ Road joins the Green Lanes. The extent of these grounds is about three hundred acres, and the total cost of securing them to the public is not more than one hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

Mr. Lloyd has been vigorously agitating this matter for more than nine years, and yet—such is the pace at which the public are apt to move in affairs in which the public alone is itself concerned—it is only lately that he has obtained an attentive hearing for his plan.

A prospect of success appears now, however, to dawn. Public meetings have been lately held in every district concerned, in which every sort of co-operation has been promised. A single difficulty seems to stand in the way; one little thing needful is only required to turn the project into an accomplished fact, and that is, the money,—one hundred and fifty thousand pounds merely. Mr. Lloyd and his coadjutors have, we believe, mentioned their little difficulty at the Treasury, and are awaiting an answer. This state of things would form a curious problem for De Morgan, Quetelet, or others learned in the doctrine of probabilities: given, official routine multiplied by systematic delay, what are the chances of the cash required within the present generation?

A park for Finsbury is too urgent a demand for a dense population to allow of much time being wasted in knocking at the door of the Treasury. The public must bestir _themselves_ in the scheme, and it will soon be accomplished and carried out.

THE LOVE OF NATURE.

Where the green banners of the forest float,
Where, from the Sun’s imperial domain,
Armour’d in gold, attentive to the note
Of piping birds, the sturdy trees remain,
Those never-angered armies; where the plain
Boasts to the day its bosom ornaments
Of corn and fruitage; where the low refrain
Of seaside music song on song invents,
Laden with placid thought, whereto the heart assents,
Often I wander. Nor does the light Noon,
Garrulous to man’s eye, declaring all
That Morning pale (watched by her spectre moon,
Or solemn Vesper, seated near the pall
Of Day) holds unrevealed; nor does the fall
Of curtain on our human pantomime,
The sweeping by of Day’s black funeral
Through Night’s awe-stricken realms, with tread sublime,
Chiefly delight my heart; beauty pervades all time.
Morning: the Day is innocent, and weeps;
Noon: she is wedded and enjoys the Earth;
Evening: wearied of the world she sleeps.
Night watches till another Day has birth.
The innocence of Morning, and the mirth
Of Noon, the holy calm of Eventide,
The watching while Day is not, there is dearth
Of joy within his soul who hath not cried:
“I welcome all, O God,—share all Thou wilt provide!”

THE PRESERVATION OF LIFE FROM SHIPWRECK.

It is a difficult matter to reconcile with the sympathy, which it is well-known the sufferings of the unfortunate always receive in England, the apparent apathy which exists among the public, on a subject so important as the preservation of Life from Shipwreck. Several pleas in extenuation have been urged by those most interested. In the first place, there is that natural hardihood and contempt of danger in the English sailor, which it is, occasionally, impossible to tame down to anything like prudence and forethought. This indomitable spirit of emulation and daring, is found to be the greatest enemy to the adoption of any of those appliances which science has rendered available. The Deal boatman trusts his life in precisely the same sort of craft that his father, and his father’s father, did before him. Confident in, and proud of, the skill which he has inherited from them, he scorns to tarnish, as he falsely reasons, his name by the habitual use of buoy or belt, lest those of his comrades who are firmly entrenched behind their ancient prejudices, should set him down as faint-hearted, and unworthy the honourable name of a “Deal boatman.”

The still more inaccessible Scotch fisherman, with his four thousand piscatory brethren, “shoots his nets” on the exposed coast of Caithness, in the open boat used by his ancestors, notwithstanding the evil consequences which have often ensued. The latest example of the ill effects of this tenacity of opinion occurred two years since, when a fearful gale, which did more or less damage along the whole eastern face of England and Scotland, wrecked and damaged a hundred and twenty-four of their boats, drowned a hundred men, and occasioned a loss to the fishing community of above seven thousand pounds, which, although a large sum, will not bear any comparison with the misery and destitution thus entailed upon the widows and orphans of the lost.

It is impossible to say how many of these unfortunate men might have been saved, had they had proper harbours to run for, with lights and beacons to warn, and life-boats to afford assistance; proper boats to keep the sea, and buoys and belts, as a last resource; but surely we are warranted in thinking that fully one half would have been left among us.

In both these examples, it must be acknowledged that it would be a useless effort to attempt any sudden innovations on these deeply-seated prejudices; the only thing that can be done, in either case, is to let the new principle quietly work of itself. Let us find a life-belt for the Deal boatman, which he can wear and work in, until in it he recognises his best friend; let the Scotch fisherman have ocular demonstration that the “model” boat prosecutes the fishery with equal success, and far greater safety and comfort in bad weather, and we shall soon have a different system of things.

In the course of each year an average of something like six hundred ship disasters occur on the shores of this kingdom alone,—some wrecked through stress of weather; some by carelessness, and other disgraceful causes; some through mistaking lights, or having been lured to destruction by useless ones; some through actual rottenness of timber; some dashed to pieces on the very rock for which they were anxiously looking half a mile further a-head, where it _ought_ to have been, according to the chart; and some from other causes, more or less easily averted. These losses are attended by the almost incredible destruction of a thousand lives, and the value of tens of thousands of pounds sterling.

The shocking wreck of the Orion—not, we say with sorrow, the last occurrence of the kind—startled, for a moment, the public from their culpable apathy. But the shock passed away; and attention to this subject is gradually subsiding into the usual indifference. The details of this catastrophe ought to have had a more permanent effect on the public mind. In the moment of danger, the gear of the boats was so imperfect, that these could only be released from their davits by capsizing their human cargoes into the deep. Even when they righted, they immediately filled, for the plug-holes were actually unstopped. The most ordinary precautions for saving life were not at hand, as precautions. The hen-coops, barrels, seats, combings, and other means of escape, by which many were saved, were purely accidental life-preservers.

Every English ship, before leaving port, should be submitted to a supervising power similar to the inspection that emigrant ships undergo, in order that it should be certified that means, both simple and efficacious, for the safety of the passengers and crew, exist on board—boats, belts, mattresses, rafts; everything, in short, that can add to the security of those about to “go down to the sea in ships.”

That this sort of supervision is effectual, is proved by the few disasters which happen to the vessels of the Royal Navy. In these ships, everything is not only kept in its proper place, to be ready when wanted, but each man is constantly exercised in what he is to do with it when no danger is apprehended, that he may be in a state of prompt efficiency when it is. The Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean squadron can step on board any one of his ships in the middle of the night; and although three-fourths of its crew are asleep in their hammocks, he can, by ordering the “beat to quarters,” make sure of every man being at his post in seven minutes, ready for action or for any sudden disaster. This sort of discipline it is which is so much required in the merchant navy. In case of a ship striking, a dozen men rush to do one thing,—perhaps to release a boat from one of her davits,—and, consequently, swamp the boat, by leaving the stern rope untouched. Captain Basil Hall, in his “Fragments of Voyages and Travels,” describes the vigilant precaution daily made even against the loss of one life. To each life-buoy there is as regular a “service” as to any other part or apparatus of the ship. He says:—

“On the top of the mast is fixed a port-fire, calculated to burn, I think, twenty minutes or half-an-hour; this is ignited most ingeniously by the same process which lets the buoy down into the water. So that a man falling overboard at night, is directed to the buoy by the blaze on the top of its pole or mast, and the boat sent to rescue him also knows in what direction to pull. Even supposing, however, the man not to have gained the life-buoy, it is clear that, if above the surface at all, he must be somewhere in that neighbourhood; and if he shall have gone down, it is still some satisfaction, by recovering the buoy, to ascertain that the poor wretch is not left to perish by inches. The method by which this excellent invention is attached to the ship, and dropped into the water in a single instant, is perhaps not the least ingenious part of the contrivance. The buoy is generally fixed amidships over the stern, where it is held securely in its place by being strung, or threaded, as it were, on two strong perpendicular iron rods fixed to the taffrail, and inserted in holes piercing the framework of the buoy. The apparatus is kept in its place by what is called a slip-stopper, a sort of catch-bolt or detent, which can be unlocked at pleasure, by merely pulling a trigger. Upon withdrawing the stopper, the whole machine slips along the rods, and falls at once into the ship’s wake. The trigger which unlocks the slip-stopper is furnished with a lanyard, passing through a hole in the stern, and having at its inner end a large knob, marked ‘Life-Buoy;’ this alone is used in the day-time. Close at hand is another wooden knob, marked ‘Lock,’ fastened to the end of a line fixed to the trigger of a gun-lock primed with powder: and so arranged, that when the line is pulled, the port-fire is instantly ignited, while, at the same moment, the life-buoy descends, and floats merrily away, blazing like a lighthouse. It would surely be an improvement to have both these operations always performed simultaneously, that is, by one pull of the string. The port-fire would thus be lighted in every case of letting go the buoy; and I suspect the smoke in the day-time would often be as useful in guiding the boat, as the blaze always is at night. The gunner who has charge of the life-buoy lock sees it freshly and carefully primed every evening at quarters, of which he makes a report to the captain. In the morning the priming is taken out, and the lock uncocked. During the night a man is always stationed at this part of the ship, and every half-hour, when the bell strikes, he calls out ‘Life-buoy!’ to show that he is awake and at his post, exactly in the same manner as the lookout-men abaft, on the beam, and forward, call out ‘Starboard quarter!’ ‘Starboard gangway!’ ‘Starboard bow!’ and so on, completely round the ship, to prove that they are not napping.”

We should like to hear of Government experimenting with rockets and mortars, with a view to their improvement. Often the safety of a whole ship’s company has depended upon the strength of a light cord, attached to a rocket, which has been lying in store for years; often it has happened that this very cord has been _just_ a few feet too short! or has snapped, or has got entangled, or something else equally simple, but equally fatal. Let us look also to our _quasi_ life-boats, some so heavy that they cannot be launched, or so dangerous as to drown their own crews—some constructed one way, some another—none on any recognised and universal principle. We are very proud of our name of Englishmen, and lay the flattering unction to our soul, that we are a highly civilised and reasonable community; but whilst we grow magniloquent in praises of our country and her commerce, we forget that we owe it all to the poor Jack Tar, for whose life and comfort we don’t seem to care a fig. Else why have these inquiries not been before instituted? What is the use of our Trinity Boards, and Ballast Boards, and Lighthouse Boards, and all other Boards, if the seaman is not to know one light from another when he sees it, or if it is to be placed so that he _cannot_ see it? What is the use of our keeping up a Hydrographic department, at an expense little short of thirty thousand a-year, if the surveys, and charts, and valuable data, the result of its labours, are to be so little appreciated? The truth is, that the masters of many of the mercantile marine are incapable of taking advantage of them, and of other improvements in nautical science, from incompetence. We trust, however, that the bill intended to remedy _that_ defect, lately introduced by the Ministry into the House of Commons, will, if passed, have the desired object. Although it has been abandoned “at this late period of the session” out of respect to the approaching 12th of August and 1st of September, we trust it will be taken up again soon after the next meeting of Parliament.

WINGED TELEGRAPHS.

Magnetic Electricity for telegraphic purposes has nearly superseded pigeons. Till very recently a regular “service” of Carrier Pigeons existed between London and Paris, for the quick conveyance of such intelligence as was likely to affect the funds. The French capital was the focus of the system, in exemplification of the adage that “all roads lead to Paris,” and pigeon expresses branched off in all directions from that city even to St. Petersburg. Relays of them are still kept up between Paris and Madrid, besides a few other places. The most celebrated relays of winged messengers were those which bore intelligence between Antwerp, Brussels, and Paris. In the former city a society of pigeon fanciers, for amusement and emulation, keeps up an establishment of them. Their doings are amusingly chronicled in Kohl’s last book of Travels, _Reisen in den Neiderlanden_.

Having been invited to join some members of the Society of Antwerp Pigeon Fanciers, he wended his way about five o’clock one morning through the silent streets of the ancient city. A few members of the association, he says, who directed the expedition, were followed by servants carrying two flat baskets, in which the pigeons, about to be dispatched, were carefully deposited. As we proceeded along, my companions related to me some particulars concerning the carrier pigeons, or “_pigeons voyageurs_,” as these winged messengers are designated. The carriers are a peculiar race of pigeons endowed with powers of memory and observation which enable them to find their way to any place by a course along which they have once flown. Every kind of pigeon is not capable of being taught to do this. Of the methods adopted by the Antwerp association for training and teaching these carriers, I learnt the following particulars.

Supposing a dispatch of pigeons is to be sent off from Antwerp to Brussels or Paris, the birds are kept for some time at the place of arrival or terminus, and during that interval are plentifully fed and carefully tended. By little excursive flights, taken day by day, they are gradually familiarised with different parts of the town in which they have been nurtured, and with places in its vicinity. When sufficiently practised in finding their way to short distances, the pigeons are conveyed to a station some leagues from their dove-cote. Here they are kept for a time without food, and then set to flight. On taking wing, they rapidly soar to a vast height, scanning the line of the horizon to discern the church spires, or other lofty points which enable them to distinguish their home. Some of the less intelligent birds lose their way, and are seen no more. Those who return home (to Paris, or wherever else it may be), are again plentifully fed. Then after a little space of time they are carried in baskets some miles further in the direction of Antwerp; again they are put on a short allowance of food and negligently tended. When the pigeons depart on their next flight, the Parisian church spires have sunk far beneath the horizon; however, they soon succeed in combining that portion of the route with which they are acquainted with the part as yet unknown to them. They hover round and round in the air, seeking to catch one or other thread that is to guide them through the labyrinth. Some find it; others do not.

In this manner the carrier pigeons are practised bit by bit along the whole distance between Paris and Antwerp. They attentively observe, or study, and learn by heart, each conspicuous object which serves them as a land-mark on the way. It is usual to exercise particular pigeons between the two cities, which it is wished to connect by this sort of postal communication; and it is necessary to have a certain number for going, and others for returning. After the birds have been accustomed to inhabit a certain district, and to travel by a particular route, it is not found easy to divert them from their wonted course, and to make them available in any other direction.

My friends, the members of the Antwerp Society, assured me that their pigeons had frequently flown from Paris to Antwerp in six or seven hours; consequently in a much shorter time than that in which the same journey is performed by the railway train. By bird’s flight, the distance between the two cities is forty miles (German[1]), and therefore it follows that these carrier pigeons must travel at the rate of from twenty to thirty English miles an hour. It is scarcely conceivable that they should possess the strength of wing and vigour of lungs requisite for such a flight; and it is no unfrequent occurrence for several of them to die on arriving at their journey’s end. In stormy weather the loss of two-thirds of the birds dispatched on such a long flight, is a disaster always to be counted on. It is, therefore, usual to send off a whole flock, all bearing the same intelligence, so as to ensure the chance of one at least reaching its destination.

Footnote 1:

The German mile includes nearly three and a half English miles.

The pigeon expedition which I saw dispatched from Antwerp, consisted of about thirty birds. The point of departure was a somewhat elevated site in the outskirts of the city. A spot like this is always made choice of, lest the pigeons, on first taking flight, should lose themselves amidst the house-tops and church spires of the city with which they are unacquainted; and by having the open country before them, they are enabled to trace out their own land-marks. When the pigeons are to be sent off on lengthened journeys, it is usual to convey them to the point of departure at a very early hour in the morning:—by this means they are dispatched in quietude, unmolested by an assemblage of curious gazers, and they have the light of a whole day before them for their journey. Carrier pigeons do not pursue their flight after night-fall, being then precluded by the darkness from seeing the surrounding country with sufficient distinctness to enable them to discern their resting-places, or stations. In the obscurity of night the whole flock might light on strange dove-cotes, and be captured; an accident which would occasion the total failure of a postal expedition, for the few pigeons who might escape capture, would, on the return of morning, be bewildered, and unable to recombine their plan of route.

Pigeons are not suited for postal communication between places so remote one from another that the journey cannot be completed in a single day. If it can be accomplished in one flight, so much the better. Antwerp and Paris are, I believe, the extreme points of distance within which carrier pigeons are capable of journeying with certainty.

Herr Kohl gives no account of these stations or stages. We once saw one at Montrieul, the first station beyond Dover, towards Paris. The town stands on a high eminence, and is well adapted for the purpose. The cote was on the roof of a _café_. It was a square apartment with a flat ceiling, in which was cut a small door or trap: on the inside of this was fixed a small bell. If a Dover pigeon had alighted on the trap, the bell would have rung, and called the attention of an attendant always in waiting. The pigeon would have been secured, the dispatch taken from under its wing, and the messenger put into its cage. In a twinkling the cyphered paper would be fastened under the wing of the Beauvais or Amiens pigeon, and it would be sent off. On arriving at its destination, the same formula would be gone through, and the Paris pigeon would take the dispatch to its destination. Although several pigeons, even in fine weather, are entrusted with the same message, two seldom arrive at the common destination at the same time, so that at each place the operation we have described is frequently repeated, in order that at least one of many dispatches may be certain of arriving at the destination.

These establishments were costly. Besides the great number of pigeons necessary to be kept at each station, some of the single birds were valuable. Fifty and sixty pounds was sometimes given for a clever pigeon. Those between Dover and Montrieul, and _vice versâ_, were among the most valuable, for none but sharp-sighted messengers could find their way across the Channel; few flights were sent away without some members of it being lost.

But to return to the Antwerp pigeons—and to Mr. Kohl. Having, he continues, reached the open, elevated spot before-mentioned, the flat baskets carried by the servants were uncovered, and the little _voyageurs_ rapidly winged their way upwards. The intelligence they were to convey to Paris was written in little billets, fastened under their wings. The pigeons I saw sent off had been brought in covered baskets from Paris, and were as yet totally unacquainted with Antwerp and its environs. Their ignorance of the locality was manifest in the wavering uncertainty of their movements when they first took wing. On rising into the air, they gathered closely together, like foreigners in a strange country, and presently they steered their course along the confines of the city, in a direction quite contrary to that of Paris. They then soared upwards, spirally, and after several irregular movements (during which they seemed to be looking for the right way, and hesitating which course to take), they all suddenly darted off to south-west, directing their rapid flight straight to Paris, as if gladly quitting inhospitable Antwerp, where they had been scantily fed and carelessly tended.

As soon as the birds were fairly out of sight, the pigeon-trainers proceeded homeward, not a little gratified by the conviction that their fleet messengers, with the intelligence they bore under their wings, would outstrip the speed of a railway train which had started some time before them.

To me the most interesting point in the whole scene was the interval (about the space of a quarter of an hour) during which the pigeons wavered to and fro, seeking their way in a state of uncertainty. That appeared to me to be a wonderful manifestation of intelligence on the part of the birds. It is frequently affirmed that the carrier pigeon finds its way without the exercise of intelligence or observation, and merely by the aid of some incomprehensible instinct; but, from my own observations of the Antwerp pigeons, I am convinced that this is a mistake. Another circumstance tending to show that the birds are guided by something more than mere instinct, is, that during foggy weather the employment of carrier pigeons is found to be almost as impracticable as the use of the optical telegraph. But though it is not the practice to dispatch carrier pigeons at times when the atmosphere is very thickly obscured by fog, yet, owing to the keenness and accuracy of the visual power of these birds, which is much more perfect than that of man, they have an advantage over the telegraph. The latter is wholly useless when the atmosphere is only slightly obscured; but carrier pigeons frequently soar quite above the region of mist, and are thus enabled to trace their course without interruption. Stations of carrier pigeons are established in most of the principal towns of Belgium.

The members of the Antwerp pigeon-training society, whom I accompanied on the occasion above described, were citizens of the middle class of society. But in Belgium, pigeon-training has its attractions even for persons of rank and wealth, many of whom are enthusiastic pigeon fanciers; indeed, pigeon-flying is as fashionable an amusement in Belgium as horse racing in England. Prizes, consisting of sums of money as high as sixty thousand francs, are frequently won in matches of pigeons—to say nothing of the betting to which those matches give occasion.

* * * * *

Monthly Supplement of “HOUSEHOLD WORDS,”
Conducted by CHARLES DICKENS.

_Price 2d., Stamped, 3d._,

THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Renumbered footnotes. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in 1^{st}).