Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Once he wished to drink my health, and would have proclaimed his whole story to the coffee-room assembly, in a raving style. When I left he almost wept in terror at the idea of losing sight of me. But, allowing for these ebullitions—the natural result of such a whirl of events—he was wonderfully calm and self-possessed.

The next day, his first care was to distribute fifty pounds among his friends the cadgers, at a house of call in Westminster, and formally to dissolve his connection with them; those present undertaking for the “fraternity,” that for the future he should never be noticed by them in public or private.

I cannot follow his career much further. Adversity had taught him nothing. He was soon again surrounded by the well-bred vampires who had forgotten him when penniless; but they amused him, and that was enough. The ten thousand pounds were rapidly melting when he invited me to a grand dinner at Richmond, which included a dozen of the most agreeable, good-looking, well-dressed dandies of London, interspersed with a display of pretty butterfly bonnets. We dined deliciously, and drank as men do of iced wines in the dog-days—looking down from Richmond Hill.

One of the pink bonnets crowned Fitz-Roy with a wreath of flowers; he looked—less the intellect—as handsome as Alcibiades. Intensely excited and flushed, he rose with a champagne glass in his hand to propose my health.

The oratorical powers of his father had not descended on him. Jerking out sentences by spasms, at length he said, “I was a beggar—I am a gentleman—thanks to this——”

Here he leaned on my shoulder heavily a moment, and then fell back. We raised him, loosened his neckcloth—

“Fainted!” said the ladies—

“Drunk!” said the gentlemen—

He was _dead_!

CHIPS.

FAMILY COLONISATION LOAN SOCIETY.

If on any Saturday you should chance to find your way to Charlton Crescent, an obscure thoroughfare lying between the road from Islington to Holloway and the New River, not far from the Angel, you will see several men and women dropping into a small house, the parlour window of which contains a printed bill with the above words. The callers are chiefly of the decent mechanic class, and not a few travellers from the country,—pilgrims in search of truth about emigration. Saturday is the day on which the subscriptions of emigrants desiring to avail themselves of the Family Colonisation Loan Society are received.

And what is the Colonisation Loan Society? The question is worth asking.

It is an association—devised by Mrs. Chisholm, and to be speedily carried out extensively with the aid of several philanthropists, and the advice of two eminent actuaries—for establishing a self-supporting system of emigration, for assisting industrious people, and for promoting practically the spread of sound moral principles in a much neglected colony.

Persons desirous of emigrating form themselves into “groups,” after being mutually satisfied of their respective suitability and respectability. Each intending emigrant pays, either in one sum or by weekly instalments, as much as will amount to half the passage money to Australia. The philanthropists of the society lend the other half to be repaid by four annual instalments,—each family becoming jointly bound for the sums lent to each member of that family, and each group being publicly pledged to assist in enforcing punctual repayments.

The details for securing repayment of the loans have been arranged by Mrs. Chisholm, and are the result of her large practical experience. Each emigrant, when he has paid back his loan, will have the privilege of nominating a relation or friend to be assisted in emigrating with the same amount of money. Thus, the original charitable fund will work in a circle of colonisation, at the mere sacrifice of annual interest. That emigrants among the humble classes are willing to remit for the purpose of assisting their friends and relations to follow them, is proved by the fact that, within the last three years, upwards of one million sterling has been remitted by the Irish emigrants from the United States alone, in small sums, to pay the passage of parents, brothers, sisters, wives, or sweethearts in Ireland. Australia, in proportion to its population, affords even greater opportunities of earning money wages than the United States.

Mrs. Chisholm’s plan offers several advantages of an important character. It will enable many to emigrate who, though frugal and industrious, are not only unable to raise _the whole_ passage money; but, during temporary trade-depressions, would be consuming their savings. It will keep families united, and cherish an honourable, independent spirit. It will secure a class of emigrants calculated to improve the moral tone of the colony; for, as the character of each emigrant will be investigated by his fellows, there will be no room for the deceptions practised on the wealthy charitable. The certificate of shop-mates with whom a man has worked, is more to be trusted than that of the clergyman who has only seen him in his Sunday clothes. It will afford the best kind of protection for young girls or single women desirous of joining friends in Australia, because each ship will be filled with “groups” previously acquainted and mutually _sifted_. Among minor advantages, the cost of passage and outfit, by the aid of co-operation and communication, will be much diminished.

The two following instances will display the practical working of Mrs. Chisholm’s plan. Among the applicants to join the Society (for already the working-classes are prepared to subscribe two thousand pounds) was an artisan in the North, belonging to a trade which “strikes” periodically. When contemplating these “strikes,” the leaders of the trade base their financial arrangements for supporting the body while out of work, upon the savings made by the more frugal of their associates. The artisan in question being a Teetotaller and skilful, had three times been able to save from fifteen to twenty pounds, with the express design of emigrating; but twice his stock of cash had been melted in the common treasury during strikes. With the assistance of a loan from the Society, he will now be able to emigrate. There can be no fear of such a man not repaying it honourably. Had he been able to emigrate a few years ago, he must have been wealthy by this time, and in a position to help all his relatives to join him.

Again, a benevolent Dowager Countess has subscribed two hundred and twenty-five pounds to this Society; a sum which has been appropriated to assisting the following parties in making up their passage money to Australia. Let us see what this money will do:—

It will send three wives with nine children, out to join husbands in
Australia.

Two aged widows who have children there.

Ditto a man and wife, who have children there.

M. and wife, with five children.

H. and wife.

P. and wife, with three children.

L. and wife, with seven children. (This man has received the
insufficient sum of fifty pounds to pay his passage from a brother in
Australia.)

W. and wife, with four children (have received twenty-five pounds from
Australia for same purpose).

Five young men, of whom three have relations in the Colony.

Nine friendless young women, of whom four have relations there.

Thus it will be seen this two hundred and twenty-five pound loan affords

A passage, to Adults 31
Children 28
——
Total 59

At the end of the first year after the arrival of these persons, there will be available for assisting other friends and relatives of this batch of fifty-nine to join them, about forty pounds; at the end of the second year, about sixty pounds; third year, about eighty pounds; fourth year, about one hundred and twenty pounds.

This system sacrifices no independence; incurs scarcely any weight of obligation. It affords the best possible kind of assistance; for it helps those who help themselves, and puts it in their power to help their fellows.

THE STRANGERS’ LEAF FOR 1851.

Among the myriads of products of art, science, and manufactures, to be congregated under Mr. Paxton’s great glass house in Hyde Park next year, it is to be hoped that the newspaper press will not be unrepresented. We do not mean model morning papers, displaying several square acres of advertisements, or news conveyed from the other hemisphere, by steam and electricity, since the previous morning; but a modest sheet, in the humble guise of a miniature Morning Post (like the Morning Post of old), for the registry of the names and “up-puttings” of the tens of thousands of strangers who will inevitably be thrusting themselves into London, like needles in bundles of hay, where nobody can find them. Such a humble record as we propose already exists, and we will describe it:—

About three years since, a brother of the well-known German philosopher, Heine, established a paper in Vienna, called the “_Fremden Blatt_,” or “Strangers’ Leaf.” One of its chief objects is to give the names and residences of such strangers as arrive daily in the capital, and the dates of their departure. It is printed on a sheet about the size of a lady’s pocket-handkerchief. It costs rather less than a penny; the expenses of conducting it are trifling, and its circulation is very extensive. There is not an hotel or coffee-house, not a lounge, or a pastry-cook’s shop (the chief place of resort in Vienna), which does not take it in, and indeed, among the idlers and triflers—a very large class of every population—it is the only paper read at all.

It will, perhaps, however, give a better idea of it to analyse the contents of the number for July 31st, 1850, now before us. The first column, and two-thirds of the second, is devoted to intelligence connected with Austria and the provinces; all short paragraphs, most of them of only three or four lines. Their matter concerns the movements of persons of note, and such military and civil appointments, promotions, and retirements, as are likely to be of general interest. If they touch upon any other news, the bare fact is related without comment of any kind. In the next column, Foreign news—including the exciting intelligence from Schleswig Holstein—are disposed of in a dozen paragraphs, containing, however, quite as much as it is necessary to know to be on equal terms with one’s friends after dinner. Then come the domestic _on dits_ of Vienna with the current topics of conversation and a spice or two of scandal; by no means to be imitated here, or anywhere else. Births, deaths, marriages, accidents and offences, follow. All this is, however, merely the prelude. The rise and fall of nations, the mere change of a dynasty, or the details of an earthquake, are but accessories to the grand aim, end, and purpose of the Fremden Blatt’s existence. As Sarah Battle relaxed from the serious business of whist, to unbend over a book, so the editor of the Strangers’ Leaf dallies with the great globe itself and its most terrific catastrophes to recreate the minds of his readers previous to the study of—“arrivals and departures.” Upon these the editor fastens all his care—all his genius. They are alphabetically arranged with great precision. They are his leading article. Should a mistake occur in geography, or should he be a few thousands out in his statistics, it is nothing; but the accidental mis-spelling of a title of ten syllables; if he happen to leave out a “z” in the name of Count Sczorowszantzski; he inserts, next morning, an apologetic “erratum” of great length.

The utility of such a register in London, at the approaching Industrial Fair, as we presume to call it, is easily seen. Let us suppose Count Smorltork arriving in England with the intention of writing an account of the Exposition. He has only a few days to make his observations; and it is not till he has driven half over London, that he discovers of Lord Tomnoddy and Sir Carnaby Jenks—from whom he expects to derive his chief information—that one is at Leamington, and the other in Scotland. Or we may imagine Dr. Dommheit, with the grave Senor Eriganados, and their volatile coadjutor, M. de Tête-vide, arriving in our capital on a scientific excursion. It costs them a month’s income in messengers and cab-fares, and a week’s waiting while their strangely spelt letters are decyphered at the Post-Office, before they learn that Mr. Crypt is off with Lord Rhomboid and the Chrononhotonthologos Society, somewhere in the provinces; Dr. Dryasdust is looking for antiquities in the Hebrides; and the oracle of their tribe, Earl Everlasting—having been left alone with the secretary and the porter at the sixth hour of the reading of his paper on the antediluvian organisms of a piece of slate—has gone down to his “place” in Dorsetshire in a huff. On the other hand, the famous Dr. Ledern Langweile, Monsieur de Papillon-Sauvage, and the great Condé Hermosa-Muchacha-Quieres, are going crazy because they cannot find each other; yet all are perhaps dwelling within a stone’s throw of each other; perhaps in the same street or square—most probably Leicester Square, which they have been given to understand is the most fashionable quarter of the town. This is exactly the condition of things which may be expected without such a register of names and addresses as we suggest.

To our own men about town, also, or to “ladies of condition,” as Addison’s Spectator has it, the Strangers’ Leaf will be invaluable. None have so little time as the idle; and how severely Indolence will have to work for the benefit of its foreign and provincial friends in 1851, it must tremble to anticipate. To relieve it a little, some such means as we suggest should be adopted, for allowing Indolence to find out easily those strangers who have been recommended to his attention and good offices. One glance at a list of “arrivals” would save it a world of trouble.

The duties of the editor of the “London Strangers’ Leaf” would not be very onerous. The names and intended addresses of every individual coming from abroad it will not be difficult to obtain. To reach us Islanders every visitor must arrive by sea, and at each port we are blessed with a customhouse. The captain of every steamer is bound for customhouse purposes to have the name of each of his passengers set down in a sort of Way-bill; and, for a slight consideration, the person who performs that office (generally the steward), would doubtless learn and add the address to which each of the passengers is going in London. An arrangement with a customhouse clerk at each of the ports could be made for forwarding daily a copy of the list. Thus a complete record of arrivals from abroad could be obtained with little trouble. The names and lodgings of persons from the provinces would be more difficult of access; but a good understanding with hotel-keepers, and some assistance from the “Lodging-house Committee” (for of course there will be one,) of the Executive of the Great Congress, would insure the editor a tolerably complete “List of the Company” who assemble, even from the country. The “Strangers’ Leaf” might be published early each afternoon so as to give the arrivals of the morning.

It is not to be doubted that at the essentially Industrial Meeting of 1851, the _Chevaliers d’Industrie_ of all nations will make it their especial business to attend in large numbers. _Their_ names, personal appearance, addresses, and achievements, it would be very useful to record in “the Strangers’ Leaf.” To our excellent friends the Detectives the benefit would be great and reciprocal: for they would not only derive, but contribute much useful information. As a kind of “Hue and Cry,” of a more refined and fashionable kind, the proposed sheet would be invaluable.

Should any enterprising gentleman, literary or otherwise, make the experiment, it may possibly turn out not only useful but profitable. Should such a speculation be deemed too undignified, we would silence the objection with a remark from Macaulay’s Essay on the life of Bacon, to the effect that Nothing is too insignificant for the attention of the wisest, which may be of advantage to the smallest in the community.

NO HOSPITAL FOR INCURABLES.

It is an extraordinary fact that among the innumerable medical charities with which this country abounds, there is not one for the help of those who of all others most require succour, and who must die, and do die in thousands, neglected, unaided. There are hospitals for the cure of every possible ailment or disease known to suffering humanity, but not one for the reception of persons past cure. There are, indeed, small charities for incurables scattered over the country—like the asylum for a few females afflicted with incurable diseases, at Leith, which was built, and solely supported by Miss Gladstone; and a few hospital wards, like the Cancer ward of Middlesex, and the ward for seven incurable patients in the Westminster; but a large hospital for incurables, does not exist.

The case of a poor servant girl which lately came to our knowledge, is the case of thousands. She was afflicted with a disease to which the domestics of the middle classes, especially, are very liable—white swelling of the knee. On presenting herself at the hospitals, it was found that an operation would be certain death; and that, in short, being incurable, she could not be admitted. She had no relations; and crawling back to a miserable lodging, she lay helpless till her small savings were exhausted. Privations of the severest kind followed; and despite the assistance of some benevolent persons who learnt her condition when it was too late, she died a painful and wretched death.

It is indeed a marvellous oversight of benevolence that sympathy should have been so long withheld from precisely the sufferers who most need it. Hopeless pain, allied to hopeless poverty, is a condition of existence not to be thought of without a shudder. It is a slow journey through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, from which we save even the greatest criminals.

When the law deems it necessary to deprive a human being of life, the anguish, though sharp, is short. We do not doom him to the lingering agony with which innocent misfortune is allowed to make its slow descent into the grave.

SORROWS AND JOYS.

Bury thy sorrows, and they shall rise
As souls to the immortal skies,
And then look down like mothers’ eyes.

But let thy joys be fresh as flowers,
That suck the honey of the showers,
And bloom alike on huts and towers.

So shall thy days be sweet and bright,—
Solemn and sweet thy starry night,—
Conscious of love each change of light.

The stars will watch the flowers asleep,
The flowers will feel the soft stars weep,
And both will mix sensations deep.

With these below, with those above,
Sits evermore the brooding Dove,
Uniting both in bonds of love.

Children of Earth are these; and those
The spirits of intense repose—
Death radiant o’er all human woes.

For both by nature are akin;—
Sorrow, the ashen fruit of sin,
And joy, the juice of life within.

O, make thy sorrows holy—wise—
So shall their buried memories rise,
Celestial, e’en in mortal skies.

O, think what then had been their doom,
If all unshriven—without a tomb—
They had been left to haunt the gloom!

O, think again what they will be
Beneath God’s bright serenity,
When thou art in eternity!

For they, in their salvation, know
No vestige of their former woe,
While thro’ them all the Heavens do flow.

Thus art thou wedded to the skies,
And watched by ever-loving eyes,
And warned by yearning sympathies.

THE HOME OF WOODRUFFE THE GARDENER.

IN EIGHT CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.

“How pleased the boy looks, to be sure!” observed Woodruffe to his wife, as his son Allan caught up little Moss (as Maurice had chosen to call himself before he could speak plain) and made him jump from the top of the drawers upon the chair, and then from the chair to the ground. “He is making all that racket just because he is so pleased he does not know what to do with himself.”

“I suppose he will forgive Fleming now for carrying off Abby,” said the mother. “I say, Allan, what do you think now of Abby marrying away from us?”

“Why, I think it’s a very good thing. You know she never told me that we should go and live where she lived, and in such a pretty place, too, where I may have a garden of my own, and see what I can make of it—all fresh from the beginning, as father says.”

“You are to try your hand at the business, I know,” replied the mother, “but I never heard your father, nor any one else, say that the place was a pretty one. I did not think new railway stations had been pretty places at all.”

“It sounds so to him, naturally,” interposed Woodruffe. “He hears of a south aspect, and a slope to the north for shelter, and the town seen far off; and that sounds all very pleasant. And then, there is the thought of the journey, and the change, and the fun of getting the ground all into nice order, and, best of all, the seeing his sister so soon again. Youth is the time for hope and joy, you know, love.”

And Woodruffe began to whistle, and stepped forward to take his turn at jumping Moss, whom he carried in one flight from the top of the drawers to the floor. Mrs. Woodruffe smiled, as she thought that youth was not the only season, with some people, for hope and joy.

Her husband, always disposed to look on the bright side; was particularly happy this evening. The lease of his market-garden ground was just expiring. He had prospered on it; and would have desired nothing better than to live by it as long as he lived at all. He desired this so much that he would not believe a word of what people had been saying for two years past, that his ground would be wanted by his landlord on the expiration of the lease, and that it would not be let again. His wife had long foreseen this; but not till the last moment would he do what she thought should have been done long before—offer to buy the ground. At the ordinary price of land, he could accomplish the purchase of it; but when he found his landlord unwilling to sell, he bid higher and higher, till his wife was so alarmed at the rashness, that she was glad when a prospect of entire removal opened. Woodruffe was sure that he could have paid off all he offered at the end of a few years; but his partner thought it would have been a heavy burden on their minds, and a sad waste of money; and she was therefore, in her heart, obliged to the landlord for persisting in his refusal to sell.

When that was settled, Woodruffe became suddenly sure that he could pick up an acre or two of land somewhere not far off. But he was mistaken; and, if he had not been mistaken, market-gardening was no longer the profitable business it had been, when it enabled him to lay by something every year. By the opening of a railway, the townspeople, a few miles off, got themselves better supplied with vegetables from another quarter. It was this which put it into the son-in-law’s head to propose the removal of the family into Staffordshire, where he held a small appointment on a railway. Land might be had at a low rent near the little country station where his business lay; and the railway brought within twenty minutes’ distance a town where there must be a considerable demand for garden produce. The place was in a raw state at present; and there were so few houses, that, if there had been a choice of time, the Flemings would rather have put off the coming of the family till some of the cottages already planned had been built; but the Woodruffes must remove in September, and all parties agreed that they should not mind a little crowding for a few months. Fleming’s cottage was to hold them all till some chance of more accommodation should offer.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Woodruffe, after standing for some time, half whistling and thinking, with that expression on his face which his wife had long learned to be afraid of, “I’ll write to-morrow—let’s see—I may as well do it to-night;” and he looked round for paper and ink. “I’ll write to Fleming, and get him to buy the land for me at once.”

“Before you see it?” said his wife, looking up from her stocking mending.

“Yes. I know all about it, as much as if I were standing on it this moment; and I am sick of this work—of being turned out just when I had made the most of a place, and got attached to it. I’ll make a sure thing of it this time, and not have such a pull at my heartstrings again. And the land will be cheaper now than later; and we shall go to work upon it with such heart, if it is our own! Eh?”

“Certainly, if we find, after seeing it, that we like it as well as we expect. I would just wait till then.”

“As well as we expect! Why, bless my soul! don’t we know all about it? It is not any land-agent or interested person, that has described it to us; but our own daughter and her husband; and do not they know what we want? The quantity at my own choice; the aspect capital; plenty of water (only too much, indeed); the soil anything but poor, and sand and marl within reach to reduce the stiffness; and manure at command, all along the railway, from half-a-dozen towns; and osier beds at hand (within my own bounds if I like) giving all manner of convenience for fencing, and binding, and covering! Why, what would you have?”

“It sounds very pleasant, certainly.”

“Then, how can you make objections? I can’t think where you look, to find any objections?”

“I see none now, and I only want to be sure that we shall find none when we arrive.”

“Well! I do call that unreasonable! To expect to find any place on earth altogether unobjectionable! I wonder what objection could be so great as being turned out of one after another, just as we have got them into order. Here comes our girl. Well, Becky, I see how you like the news! Now, would not you like it better still if we were going to a place of our own, where we should not be under any landlord’s whims? We should have to work, you know, one and all. But we would get the land properly manured, and have a cottage of our own in time; would not we? Will you undertake the pigs, Becky?”

“Yes, father; and there are many things I can do in the garden too. I am old and strong, now; and I can do much more than I have ever done here.”

“Aye; if the land was our own,” said Woodruffe, with a glance at his wife. She said no more, but was presently upstairs putting Moss to bed. She knew, from long experience, how matters would go. After a restless night, Woodruffe spoke no more of buying the land without seeing it; and he twice said, in a meditative, rather than a communicative, way, that he believed it would take as much capital as he had to remove his family, and get his new land into fit condition for spring crops.