side, the sun; on the top of the Cross, the letters I.H.S.; on the
left arm, a man and woman dancing, with an effort to delineate the
female's dress; under which, initials.' Another seaman 'had, on
the lower part of the right arm, the device of a sailor and a
female; the man holding the Union Jack with a streamer, the folds
of which waved over her head, and the end of it was held in her
hand. On the upper part of the arm, a device of Our Lord on the
Cross, with stars surrounding the head of the Cross, and one large
star on the side in Indian Ink. On the left arm, a flag, a true
lover's knot, a face, and initials.' This tattooing was found
still plain, below the discoloured outer surface of a mutilated
arm, when such surface was carefully scraped away with a knife. It
is not improbable that the perpetuation of this marking custom
among seamen, may be referred back to their desire to be
identified, if drowned and flung ashore.
It was some time before I could sever myself from the many
interesting papers on the table, and then I broke bread and drank
wine with the kind family before I left them. As I brought the
Coast-guard down, so I took the Postman back, with his leathern
wallet, walking-stick, bugle, and terrier dog. Many a heart-broken
letter had he brought to the Rectory House within two months many;
a benignantly painstaking answer had he carried back.
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As I rode along, I thought of the many people, inhabitants of this
mother country, who would make pilgrimages to the little churchyard
in the years to come; I thought of the many people in Australia,
who would have an interest in such a shipwreck, and would find
their way here when they visit the Old World; I thought of the
writers of all the wreck of letters I had left upon the table; and
I resolved to place this little record where it stands.
Convocations, Conferences, Diocesan Epistles, and the like, will do
a great deal for Religion, I dare say, and Heaven send they may!
but I doubt if they will ever do their Master's service half so
well, in all the time they last, as the Heavens have seen it done
in this bleak spot upon the rugged coast of Wales.
Had I lost the friend of my life, in the wreck of the Royal
Charter; had I lost my betrothed, the more than friend of my life;
had I lost my maiden daughter, had I lost my hopeful boy, had I
lost my little child; I would kiss the hands that worked so busily
and gently in the church, and say, 'None better could have touched
the form, though it had lain at home.' I could be sure of it, I
could be thankful for it: I could be content to leave the grave
near the house the good family pass in and out of every day,
undisturbed, in the little churchyard where so many are so
strangely brought together.
Without the name of the clergyman to whom - I hope, not without
carrying comfort to some heart at some time - I have referred, my
reference would be as nothing. He is the Reverend Stephen Roose
Hughes, of Llanallgo, near Moelfra, Anglesey. His brother is the
Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes, of Penrhos, Alligwy.
CHAPTER III - WAPPING WORKHOUSE
My day's no-business beckoning me to the East-end of London, I had
turned my face to that point of the metropolitan compass on leaving
Covent-garden, and had got past the India House, thinking in my
idle manner of Tippoo-Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my
little wooden midshipman, after affectionately patting him on one
leg of his knee-shorts for old acquaintance' sake, and had got past
Aldgate Pump, and had got past the Saracen's Head (with an
ignominious rash of posting bills disfiguring his swarthy
countenance), and had strolled up the empty yard of his ancient
neighbour the Black or Blue Boar, or Bull, who departed this life I
don't know when, and whose coaches are all gone I don't know where;
and I had come out again into the age of railways, and I had got
past Whitechapel Church, and was - rather inappropriately for an
Uncommercial Traveller - in the Commercial Road. Pleasantly
wallowing in the abundant mud of that thoroughfare, and greatly
refiners, the little masts and vanes in small back gardens in back
streets, the neighbouring canals and docks, the India vans
lumbering along their stone tramway, and the pawnbrokers' shops
where hard-up Mates had pawned so many sextants and quadrants, that
I should have bought a few cheap if I had the least notion how to
use them, I at last began to file off to the right, towards
Wapping.
Not that I intended to take boat at Wapping Old Stairs, or that I
was going to look at the locality, because I believe (for I don't)
in the constancy of the young woman who told her sea-going lover,
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to such a beautiful old tune, that she had ever continued the same,
since she gave him the 'baccer-box marked with his name; I am
afraid he usually got the worst of those transactions, and was
frightfully taken in. No, I was going to Wapping, because an
Eastern police magistrate had said, through the morning papers,
that there was no classification at the Wapping workhouse for
women, and that it was a disgrace and a shame, and divers other
hard names, and because I wished to see how the fact really stood.
For, that Eastern police magistrates are not always the wisest men
of the East, may be inferred from their course of procedure
respecting the fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at St.
George's in that quarter: which is usually, to discuss the matter
at issue, in a state of mind betokening the weakest perplexity,
with all parties concerned and unconcerned, and, for a final
expedient, to consult the complainant as to what he thinks ought to
be done with the defendant, and take the defendant's opinion as to
what he would recommend to be done with himself.
Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself up as having lost my
way, and, abandoning myself to the narrow streets in a Turkish
frame of mind, relied on predestination to bring me somehow or
other to the place I wanted if I were ever to get there. When I
had ceased for an hour or so to take any trouble about the matter,
I found myself on a swing-bridge looking down at some dark locks in
some dirty water. Over against me, stood a creature remotely in
the likeness of a young man, with a puffed sallow face, and a
figure all dirty and shiny and slimy, who may have been the
youngest son of his filthy old father, Thames, or the drowned man
about whom there was a placard on the granite post like a large
thimble, that stood between us.
I asked this apparition what it called the place? Unto which, it
replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound like gurgling water in its
throat:
'Mr. Baker's trap.'
As it is a point of great sensitiveness with m
e on such occasions
to be equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation, I
deeply considered the meaning of this speech, while I eyed the
apparition - then engaged in hugging and sucking a horizontal iron
bar at the top of the locks. Inspiration suggested to me that Mr.
Baker was the acting coroner of that neighbourhood.
'A common place for suicide,' said I, looking down at the locks.
'Sue?' returned the ghost, with a stare. 'Yes! And Poll.
Likewise Emily. And Nancy. And Jane;' he sucked the iron between
each name; 'and all the bileing. Ketches off their bonnets or
shorls, takes a run, and headers down here, they doos. Always a
headerin' down here, they is. Like one o'clock.'
'And at about that hour of the morning, I suppose?'
'Ah!' said the apparition. 'THEY an't partickler. Two 'ull do for
THEM. Three. All times o' night. On'y mind you!' Here the
apparition rested his profile on the bar, and gurgled in a
sarcastic manner. 'There must be somebody comin'. They don't go a
headerin' down here, wen there an't no Bobby nor gen'ral Cove, fur
to hear the splash.'
According to my interpretation of these words, I was myself a
General Cove, or member of the miscellaneous public. In which
modest character I remarked:
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'They are often taken out, are they, and restored?'
'I dunno about restored,' said the apparition, who, for some occult
reason, very much objected to that word; 'they're carried into the
werkiss and put into a 'ot bath, and brought round. But I dunno
about restored,' said the apparition; 'blow THAT!' - and vanished.
As it had shown a desire to become offensive, I was not sorry to
find myself alone, especially as the 'werkiss' it had indicated
with a twist of its matted head, was close at hand. So I left Mr.
Baker's terrible trap (baited with a scum that was like the soapy
rinsing of sooty chimneys), and made bold to ring at the workhouse
gate, where I was wholly unexpected and quite unknown.
A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch of keys in her
hand, responded to my request to see the House. I began to doubt
whether the police magistrate was quite right in his facts, when I
noticed her quick, active little figure and her intelligent eyes.
The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the worst first.
He was welcome to see everything. Such as it was, there it all
was.
This was the only preparation for our entering 'the Foul wards.'
They were in an old building squeezed away in a corner of a paved
yard, quite detached from the more modern and spacious main body of
the workhouse. They were in a building most monstrously behind the
time - a mere series of garrets or lofts, with every inconvenient
and objectionable circumstance in their construction, and only
accessible by steep and narrow staircases, infamously ill-adapted
for the passage up-stairs of the sick or down-stairs of the dead.
A-bed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there (for a
change, as I understood it) on the floor, were women in every stage
of distress and disease. None but those who have attentively
observed such scenes, can conceive the extraordinary variety of
expression still latent under the general monotony and uniformity
of colour, attitude, and condition. The form a little coiled up
and turned away, as though it had turned its back on this world for
ever; the uninterested face at once lead-coloured and yellow,
looking passively upward from the pillow; the haggard mouth a
little dropped, the hand outside the coverlet, so dull and
indifferent, so light, and yet so heavy; these were on every
pallet; but when I stopped beside a bed, and said ever so slight a
word to the figure lying there, the ghost of the old character came
into the face, and made the Foul ward as various as the fair world.
No one appeared to care to live, but no one complained; all who
could speak, said that as much was done for them as could be done
there, that the attendance was kind and patient, that their
suffering was very heavy, but they had nothing to ask for. The
wretched rooms were as clean and sweet as it is possible for such
rooms to be; they would become a pest-house in a single week, if
they were ill-kept.
I accompanied the brisk matron up another barbarous staircase, into
a better kind of loft devoted to the idiotic and imbecile. There
was at least Light in it, whereas the windows in the former wards
had been like sides of school-boys' bird-cages. There was a strong
grating over the fire here, and, holding a kind of state on either
side of the hearth, separated by the breadth of this grating, were
two old ladies in a condition of feeble dignity, which was surely
the very last and lowest reduction of self-complacency to be found
in this wonderful humanity of ours. They were evidently jealous of
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each other, and passed their whole time (as some people do, whose
fires are not grated) in mentally disparaging each other, and
contemptuously watching their neighbours. One of these parodies on
provincial gentlewomen was extremely talkative, and expressed a
strong desire to attend the service on Sundays, from which she
represented herself to have derived the greatest interest and
consolation when allowed that privilege. She gossiped so well, and
looked altogether so cheery and harmless, that I began to think
this a case for the Eastern magistrate, until I found that on the
last occasion of her attending chapel she had secreted a small
stick, and had caused some confusion in the responses by suddenly
producing it and belabouring the congregation.
So, these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of the grating -
otherwise they would fly at one another's caps - sat all day long,
suspecting one another, and contemplating a world of fits. For
everybody else in the room had fits, except the wards-woman; an
elderly, able-bodied pauperess, with a large upper lip, and an air
of repressing and saving her strength, as she stood with her hands
folded before her, and her eyes slowly rolling, biding her time for
catching or holding somebody. This civil personage (in whom I
regretted to identify a reduced member of my honourable friend Mrs.
Gamp's family) said, 'They has 'em continiwal, sir. They drops
without no more notice than if they was coach-horses dropped from
the moon, sir. And when one drops, another drops, and sometimes
there'll be as many as four or five on 'em at once, dear me, a
rolling and a tearin', bless you! - this young woman, now, has 'em
dreadful bad.'
She turned up this young woman's face with her hand as she said it.
This young woman was seated on the floor, pondering in the
foreground of the afflicted. There was nothing repellent either in
her face or head. Many, apparently worse, varieties of epilepsy
and hysteria were about her,
but she was said to be the worst here.
When I had spoken to her a little, she still sat with her face
turned up, pondering, and a gleam of the mid-day sun shone in upon
her.
- Whether this young woman, and the rest of these so sorely
troubled, as they sit or lie pondering in their confused dull way,
ever get mental glimpses among the motes in the sunlight, of
healthy people and healthy things? Whether this young woman,
brooding like this in the summer season, ever thinks that somewhere
there are trees and flowers, even mountains and the great sea?
Whether, not to go so far, this young woman ever has any dim
revelation of that young woman - that young woman who is not here
and never will come here; who is courted, and caressed, and loved,
and has a husband, and bears children, and lives in a home, and who
never knows what it is to have this lashing and tearing coming upon
her? And whether this young woman, God help her, gives herself up
then and drops like a coach-horse from the moon?
I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children, penetrating
into so hopeless a place, made a sound that was pleasant or painful
to me. It was something to be reminded that the weary world was
not all aweary, and was ever renewing itself; but, this young woman
was a child not long ago, and a child not long hence might be such
as she. Howbeit, the active step and eye of the vigilant matron
conducted me past the two provincial gentlewomen (whose dignity was
ruffled by the children), and into the adjacent nursery.
There were many babies here, and more than one handsome young
mother. There were ugly young mothers also, and sullen young
mothers, and callous young mothers. But, the babies had not
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appropriated to themselves any bad expression yet, and might have
been, for anything that appeared to the contrary in their soft
faces, Princes Imperial, and Princesses Royal. I had the pleasure
of giving a poetical commission to the baker's man to make a cake
with all despatch and toss it into the oven for one red-headed
young pauper and myself, and felt much the better for it. Without
that refreshment, I doubt if I should have been in a condition for
'the Refractories,' towards whom my quick little matron - for whose
adaptation to her office I had by this time conceived a genuine