him up, and testify to the multitude that each of those points was
a clincher.
But, in respect of the large Christianity of his general tone; of
his renunciation of all priestly authority; of his earnest and
reiterated assurance to the people that the commonest among them
could work out their own salvation if they would, by simply,
lovingly, and dutifully following Our Saviour, and that they needed
the mediation of no erring man; in these particulars, this
gentleman deserved all praise. Nothing could be better than the
spirit, or the plain emphatic words of his discourse in these
respects. And it was a most significant and encouraging
circumstance that whenever he struck that chord, or whenever he
described anything which Christ himself had done, the array of
faces before him was very much more earnest, and very much more
expressive of emotion, than at any other time.
And now, I am brought to the fact, that the lowest part of the
audience of the previous night, WAS NOT THERE. There is no doubt
about it. There was no such thing in that building, that Sunday
evening. I have been told since, that the lowest part of the
audience of the Victoria Theatre has been attracted to its Sunday
services. I have been very glad to hear it, but on this occasion
of which I write, the lowest part of the usual audience of the
Britannia Theatre, decidedly and unquestionably stayed away. When
I first took my seat and looked at the house, my surprise at the
change in its occupants was as great as my disappointment. To the
most respectable class of the previous evening, was added a great
number of respectable strangers attracted by curiosity, and drafts
from the regular congregations of various chapels. It was
impossible to fail in identifying the character of these last, and
they were very numerous. I came out in a strong, slow tide of them
setting from the boxes. Indeed, while the discourse was in
progress, the respectable character of the auditory was so manifest
in their appearance, that when the minister addressed a
supposititious 'outcast,' one really felt a little impatient of it,
as a figure of speech not justified by anything the eye could
discover.
The time appointed for the conclusion of the proceedings was eight
o'clock. The address having lasted until full that time, and it
being the custom to conclude with a hymn, the preacher intimated in
a few sensible words that the clock had struck the hour, and that
those who desired to go before the hymn was sung, could go now,
without giving offence. No one stirred. The hymn was then sung,
in good time and tune and unison, and its effect was very striking.
A comprehensive benevolent prayer dismissed the throng, and in
seven or eight minutes there was nothing left in the Theatre but a
light cloud of dust.
That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good things, I do not
doubt. Nor do I doubt that they will work lower and lower down in
the social scale, if those who preside over them will be very
careful on two heads: firstly, not to disparage the places in
which they speak, or the intelligence of their hearers; secondly,
not to set themselves in antagonism to the natural inborn desire of
the mass of mankind to recreate themselves and to be amused.
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There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, to which my
remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended. In the New
Testament there is the most beautiful and affecting history
conceivable by man, and there are the terse models for all prayer
and for all preaching. As to the models, imitate them, Sunday
preachers - else why are they there, consider? As to the history,
tell it. Some people cannot read, some people will not read, many
people (this especially holds among the young and ignorant) find it
hard to pursue the verse-form in which the book is presented to
them, and imagine that those breaks imply gaps and want of
continuity. Help them over that first stumbling-block, by setting
forth the history in narrative, with no fear of exhausting it. You
will never preach so well, you will never move them so profoundly,
is the better interest: Christ's choice of twelve poor men to help
in those merciful wonders among the poor and rejected; or the pious
bullying of a whole Union-full of paupers? What is your changed
philosopher to wretched me, peeping in at the door out of the mud
of the streets and of my life, when you have the widow's son to
tell me about, the ruler's daughter, the other figure at the door
when the brother of the two sisters was dead, and one of the two
ran to the mourner, crying, 'The Master is come and calleth for
thee'? - Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget himself and
remember no individuality but one, and no eloquence but one, stand
up before four thousand men and women at the Britannia Theatre any
Sunday night, recounting that narrative to them as fellow
creatures, and he shall see a sight!
CHAPTER V - POOR MERCANTILE JACK
Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and keeps watch
on life of poor Jack, commissioned to take charge of Mercantile
Jack, as well as Jack of the national navy? If not, who is? What
is the cherub about, and what are we all about, when poor
Mercantile Jack is having his brains slowly knocked out by pennyweights,
aboard the brig Beelzebub, or the barque Bowie-knife -
when he looks his last at that infernal craft, with the first
officer's iron boot-heel in his remaining eye, or with his dying
body towed overboard in the ship's wake, while the cruel wounds in
it do 'the multitudinous seas incarnadine'?
Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard the brig
Beelzebub or the barque Bowie-knife, the first officer did half the
damage to cotton that he does to men, there would presently arise
from both sides of the Atlantic so vociferous an invocation of the
sweet little cherub who sits calculating aloft, keeping watch on
the markets that pay, that such vigilant cherub would, with a
winged sword, have that gallant officer's organ of destructiveness
out of his head in the space of a flash of lightning?
If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable of men, for
I believe it with all my soul.
This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at Liverpool,
keeping watch on poor Mercantile Jack. Alas for me! I have long
outgrown the state of sweet little cherub; but there I was, and
there Mercantile Jack was, and very busy he was, and very cold he
was: the snow yet lying in the frozen furrows of the land, and the
north-east winds snipping off the tops of the little waves in the
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Mersey, and rolling them into hailstones to pelt him with.
Mercantile Jack was hard at it, in the hard weather: as he mostly
is in all weathers, poor Jack. He was girded to ships' masts and
funnels of steamers, like a forester to a great oak, scraping and
painting; he was lying out on yards, furling sails that tried to
beat him off; he was dimly discernible up in a world of giant
cobwebs, reefing and splicing; he was faintly audible down in
holds, stowing and unshipping cargo; he was winding round and round
at capstans melodious, monotonous, and drunk; he was of a
diabolical aspect, with coaling for the Antipodes; he was washing
decks barefoot, with the breast of his red shirt open to the blast,
though it was sharper than the knife in his leathern girdle; he was
looking over bulwarks, all eyes and hair; he was standing by at the
shoot of the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks in trade
of several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured down into
the ice-house; he was coming aboard of other vessels, with his kit
in a tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the very last moment
of his shore-going existence. As though his senses, when released
from the uproar of the elements, were under obligation to be
confused by other turmoil, there was a rattling of wheels, a
clattering of hoofs, a clashing of iron, a jolting of cotton and
hides and casks and timber, an incessant deafening disturbance on
the quays, that was the very madness of sound. And as, in the
midst of it, he stood swaying about, with his hair blown all manner
of wild ways, rather crazedly taking leave of his plunderers, all
the rigging in the docks was shrill in the wind, and every little
steamer coming and going across the Mersey was sharp in its blowing
off, and every buoy in the river bobbed spitefully up and down, as
if there were a general taunting chorus of 'Come along, Mercantile
Jack! Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed, entrapped,
anticipated, cleaned out. Come along, Poor Mercantile Jack, and be
tempest-tossed till you are drowned!'
The uncommercial transaction which had brought me and Jack
together, was this:- I had entered the Liverpool police force, that
I might have a look at the various unlawful traps which are every
night set for Jack. As my term of service in that distinguished
corps was short, and as my personal bias in the capacity of one of
its members has ceased, no suspicion will attach to my evidence
that it is an admirable force. Besides that it is composed,
without favour, of the best men that can be picked, it is directed
by an unusual intelligence. Its organisation against Fires, I take
to be much better than the metropolitan system, and in all respects
it tempers its remarkable vigilance with a still more remarkable
discretion.
Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, and I had taken,
for purposes of identification, a photograph-likeness of a thief,
in the portrait-room at our head police office (on the whole, he
seemed rather complimented by the proceeding), and I had been on
police parade, and the small hand of the clock was moving on to
ten, when I took up my lantern to follow Mr. Superintendent to the
traps that were set for Jack. In Mr. Superintendent I saw, as
anybody might, a tall, well-looking, well-set-up man of a soldierly
bearing, with a cavalry air, a good chest, and a resolute but not
by any means ungentle face. He carried in his hand a plain black
walking-stick of hard wood; and whenever and wherever, at any
after-time of the night, he struck it on the pavement with a
ringing sound, it instantly produced a whistle out of the darkness,
and a policeman. To this remarkable stick, I refer an air of
mystery and magic which pervaded the whole of my perquisition among
the traps that were set for Jack.
We began by diving into the obscurest streets and lanes of the
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port. Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheerful discourse, before a
dead wall, apparently some ten miles long, Mr. Superintendent
struck upon the ground, and the wall opened and shot out, with
military salute of hand to temple, two policemen - not in the least
surprised themselves, not in the least surprising Mr.
Superintendent.
'All right, Sharpeye?'
'All right, sir.'
'All right, Trampfoot?'
'All right, sir.'
'Is Quickear there?'
'Here am I, sir.'
'Come with us.'
'Yes, sir.'
So, Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent and I went next,
and Trampfoot and Quickear marched as rear-guard. Sharp-eye, I
soon had occasion to remark, had a skilful and quite professional
way of opening doors - touched latches delicately, as if they were
keys of musical instruments - opened every door he touched, as if
he were perfectly confident that there was stolen property behind
it - instantly insinuated himself, to prevent its being shut.
Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were set for Jack, but
Jack did not happen to be in any of them. They were all such
miserable places that really, Jack, if I were you, I would give
them a wider berth. In every trap, somebody was sitting over a
fire, waiting for Jack. Now, it was a crouching old woman, like
the picture of the Norwood Gipsy in the old sixpenny dream-books;
now, it was a crimp of the male sex, in a checked shirt and without
a coat, reading a newspaper; now, it was a man crimp and a woman
crimp, who always introduced themselves as united in holy
matrimony; now, it was Jack's delight, his (un)lovely Nan; but they
were all waiting for Jack, and were all frightfully disappointed to
see us.
'Who have you got up-stairs here?' says Sharpeye, generally. (In
the Move-on tone.)
'Nobody, surr; sure not a blessed sowl!' (Irish feminine reply.)
'What do you mean by nobody? Didn't I hear a woman's step go upstairs
when my hand was on the latch?'
'Ah! sure thin you're right, surr, I forgot her! 'Tis on'y Betsy
White, surr. Ah! you know Betsy, surr. Come down, Betsy darlin',
and say the gintlemin.'
Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep staircase is
in the room) with a forcible expression in her protesting face, of
an intention to compensate herself for the present trial by
grinding Jack finer than usual when he does come. Generally,
Sharpeye turns to Mr. Superintendent, and says, as if the subjects
of his remarks were wax-work:
'One of the worst, sir, this house is. This woman has been
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indicted three times. This man's a regular bad one likewise. His
real name is Pegg. Gives himself out as Waterhouse.'
'Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me back, thin, since I was in
this house, bee the good Lard!' says the woman.
Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes exceedingly
round-shouldered, and pretends to read his paper with rapt
attention. Generally, Sharpeye directs our observation with a
look, to the prints and
pictures that are invariably numerous on
the walls. Always, Trampfoot and Quickear are taking notice on the
doorstep. In default of Sharpeye being acquainted with the exact
individuality of any gentleman encountered, one of these two is
sure to proclaim from the outer air, like a gruff spectre, that
Jackson is not Jackson, but knows himself to be Fogle; or that
Canlon is Walker's brother, against whom there was not sufficient
evidence; or that the man who says he never was at sea since he was
a boy, came ashore from a voyage last Thursday, or sails tomorrow
morning. 'And that is a bad class of man, you see,' says Mr.
Superintendent, when he got out into the dark again, 'and very
difficult to deal with, who, when he has made this place too hot to
hold him, enters himself for a voyage as steward or cook, and is
out of knowledge for months, and then turns up again worse than
ever.'
When we had gone into many such houses, and had come out (always
leaving everybody relapsing into waiting for Jack), we started off
to a singing-house where Jack was expected to muster strong.
The vocalisation was taking place in a long low room up-stairs; at
one end, an orchestra of two performers, and a small platform;
across the room, a series of open pews for Jack, with an aisle down
the middle; at the other end a larger pew than the rest, entitled
SNUG, and reserved for mates and similar good company. About the
room, some amazing coffee-coloured pictures varnished an inch deep,
and some stuffed creatures in cases; dotted among the audience, in
Sung and out of Snug, the 'Professionals;' among them, the
celebrated comic favourite Mr. Banjo Bones, looking very hideous
with his blackened face and limp sugar-loaf hat; beside him,
sipping rum-and-water, Mrs. Banjo Bones, in her natural colours - a
little heightened.
It was a Friday night, and Friday night was considered not a good
night for Jack. At any rate, Jack did not show in very great force
even here, though the house was one to which he much resorts, and
where a good deal of money is taken. There was British Jack, a
little maudlin and sleepy, lolling over his empty glass, as if he
were trying to read his fortune at the bottom; there was Loafing
Jack of the Stars and Stripes, rather an unpromising customer, with
his long nose, lank cheek, high cheek-bones, and nothing soft about
him but his cabbage-leaf hat; there was Spanish Jack, with curls of