Household Words, No. 12, June 15, 1850

The Magician in “Aladdin” may possibly have neglected the study of men, for the study of alchemical books; but it is certain that in spite of his profession he was no conjuror. He knew nothing of human nature, or the everlasting set of the current of human affairs. If, when he fraudulently sought to obtain possession of the wonderful Lamp, and went up and down, disguised, before the flying-palace, crying New Lamps for Old ones, he had reversed his cry, and made it Old Lamps for New ones, he would have been so far before his time as to have projected himself into the nineteenth century of our Christian Era.

This age is so perverse, and is so very short of faith—in consequence, as some suppose, of there having been a run on that bank for a few generations—that a parallel and beautiful idea, generally known among the ignorant as the Young England hallucination, unhappily expired before it could run alone, to the great grief of a small but a very select circle of mourners. There is something so fascinating, to a mind capable of any serious reflection, in the notion of ignoring all that has been done for the happiness and elevation of mankind during three or four centuries of slow and dearly-bought amelioration, that we have always thought it would tend soundly to the improvement of the general public, if any tangible symbol, any outward and visible sign, expressive of that admirable conception, could be held up before them. We are happy to have found such a sign at last; and although it would make a very indifferent sign, indeed, in the Licensed Victualling sense of the word, and would probably be rejected with contempt and horror by any Christian publican, it has our warmest philosophical appreciation.

In the fifteenth century, a certain feeble lamp of art arose in the Italian town of Urbino. This poor light, Raphael Sanzio by name, better known to a few miserably mistaken wretches in these later days, as Raphael (another burned at the same time, called Titian), was fed with a preposterous idea of Beauty—with a ridiculous power of etherealising, and exalting to the very Heaven of Heavens, what was most sublime and lovely in the expression of the human face divine on Earth—with the truly contemptible conceit of finding in poor humanity the fallen likeness of the angels of God, and raising it up again to their pure spiritual condition. This very fantastic whim effected a low revolution in Art, in this wise, that Beauty came to be regarded as one of its indispensable elements. In this very poor delusion, Artists have continued until this present nineteenth century, when it was reserved for some bold aspirants to “put it down.”

The Pre-Raphael Brotherhood, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the dread Tribunal which is to set this matter right. Walk up, walk up; and here, conspicuous on the wall of the Royal Academy of Art in England, in the eighty-second year of their annual exhibition, you shall see what this new Holy Brotherhood, this terrible Police that is to disperse all Post-Raphael offenders, has “been and done!”

You come—in this Royal Academy Exhibition, which is familiar with the works of Wilkie, Collins, Etty, Eastlake, Mulready, Leslie, Maclise, Turner, Stanfield, Landseer, Roberts, Danby, Creswick, Lee, Webster, Herbert, Dyce, Cope, and others who would have been renowned as great masters in any age or country—you come, in this place, to the contemplation of a Holy Family. You will have the goodness to discharge from your minds all Post-Raphael ideas, all religious aspirations, all elevating thoughts; all tender, awful, sorrowful, ennobling, sacred, graceful, or beautiful associations; and to prepare yourselves, as befits such a subject—Pre-Raphaelly considered—for the lowest depths of what is mean, odious, repulsive, and revolting.

You behold the interior of a carpenter’s shop. In the foreground of that carpenter’s shop is a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-headed boy, in a bed-gown; who appears to have received a poke in the hand, from the stick of another boy with whom he has been playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be holding it up for the contemplation of a kneeling woman, so horrible in her ugliness, that (supposing it were possible for any human creature to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in 266the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England. Two almost naked carpenters, master and journeyman, worthy companions of this agreeable female, are working at their trade; a boy, with some small flavor of humanity in him, is entering with a vessel of water; and nobody is paying any attention to a snuffy old woman who seems to have mistaken that shop for the tobacconist’s next door, and to be hopelessly waiting at the counter to be served with half an ounce of her favourite mixture. Wherever it is possible to express ugliness of feature, limb, or attitude, you have it expressed. Such men as the carpenters might be undressed in any hospital where dirty drunkards, in a high state of varicose veins, are received. Their very toes have walked out of Saint Giles’s.

This, in the nineteenth century, and in the eighty-second year of the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Art, is the Pre-Raphael representation to us, Ladies and Gentlemen, of the most solemn passage which our minds can ever approach. This, in the nineteenth century, and in the eighty-second year of the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Art, is what Pre-Raphael Art can do to render reverence and homage to the faith in which we live and die! Consider this picture well. Consider the pleasure we should have in a similar Pre-Raphael rendering of a favourite horse, or dog, or cat; and, coming fresh from a pretty considerable turmoil about “desecration” in connexion with the National Post Office, let us extol this great achievement, and commend the National Academy!

In further considering this symbol of the great retrogressive principle, it is particularly gratifying to observe that such objects as the shavings which are strewn on the carpenter’s floor are admirably painted; and that the Pre-Raphael Brother is indisputably accomplished in the manipulation of his art. It is gratifying to observe this, because the fact involves no low effort at notoriety; everybody knowing that it is by no means easier to call attention to a very indifferent pig with five legs, than to a symmetrical pig with four. Also, because it is good to know that the National Academy thoroughly feels and comprehends the high range and exalted purposes of Art; distinctly perceives that Art includes something more than the faithful portraiture of shavings, or the skilful colouring of drapery—imperatively requires, in short, that it shall be informed with mind and sentiment; will on no account reduce it to a narrow question of trade-juggling with a palette, palette-knife, and paint-box. It is likewise pleasing to reflect that the great educational establishment foresees the difficulty into which it would be led, by attaching greater weight to mere handicraft, than to any other consideration—even to considerations of common reverence or decency; which absurd principle, in the event of a skilful painter of the figure becoming a very little more perverted in his taste, than certain skilful painters are just now, might place Her Gracious Majesty in a very painful position, one of these fine Private View Days.

Would it were in our power to congratulate our readers on the hopeful prospects of the great retrogressive principle, of which this thoughtful picture is the sign and emblem! Would that we could give our readers encouraging assurance of a healthy demand for Old Lamps in exchange for New ones, and a steady improvement in the Old Lamp Market! The perversity of mankind is such, and the untoward arrangements of Providence are such, that we cannot lay that flattering unction to their souls. We can only report what Brotherhoods, stimulated by this sign, are forming; and what opportunities will be presented to the people, if the people will but accept them.

In the first place, the Pre-Perspective Brotherhood will be presently incorporated, for the subversion of all known rules and principles of perspective. It is intended to swear every P. P. B. to a solemn renunciation of the art of perspective on a soup-plate of the willow pattern; and we may expect, on the occasion of the eighty-third Annual Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art in England, to see some pictures by this pious Brotherhood, realising Hogarth’s idea of a man on a mountain several miles off, lighting his pipe at the upper window of a house in the foreground. But we are informed that every brick in the house will be a portrait; that the man’s boots will be copied with the utmost fidelity from a pair of Bluchers, sent up out of Northamptonshire for the purpose; and that the texture of his hands (including four chilblains, a whitlow, and ten dirty nails) will be a triumph of the Painter’s art.

A Society, to be called the Pre-Newtonian Brotherhood, was lately projected by a young gentleman, under articles to a Civil Engineer, who objected to being considered bound to conduct himself according to the laws of gravitation. But this young gentleman, being reproached by some aspiring companions with the timidity of his conception, has abrogated that idea in favour of a Pre-Galileo Brotherhood now flourishing, who distinctly refuse to perform any annual revolution round the Sun, and have arranged that the world shall not do so any more. The course to be taken by the Royal Academy of Art in reference to this Brotherhood is not yet decided upon; but it is whispered that some other large Educational Institutions in the neighbourhood of Oxford are nearly ready to pronounce in favour of it.

Several promising Students connected with the Royal College of Surgeons have held a meeting, to protest against the circulation of the blood, and to pledge themselves to treat all the patients they can get, on principles condemnatory of that innovation. A Pre-Harvey-Brotherhood 267is the result, from which a great deal may be expected—by the undertakers.

In literature, a very spirited effort has been made, which is no less than the formation of a P. G. A. P. C. B., or Pre-Gower and Pre-Chaucer-Brotherhood, for the restoration of the ancient English style of spelling, and the weeding out from all libraries, public and private, of those and all later pretenders, particularly a person of loose character named Shakespeare. It having been suggested, however, that this happy idea could scarcely be considered complete while the art of printing was permitted to remain unmolested, another society, under the name of the Pre-Laurentius Brotherhood, has been established in connexion with it, for the abolition of all but manuscript books. These Mr. Pugin has engaged to supply, in characters that nobody on earth shall be able to read. And it is confidently expected by those who have seen the House of Lords, that he will faithfully redeem his pledge.

In Music, a retrogressive step, in which there is much hope, has been taken. The P. A. B., or Pre-Agincourt Brotherhood has arisen, nobly devoted to consign to oblivion Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and every other such ridiculous reputation, and to fix its Millennium (as its name implies) before the date of the first regular musical composition known to have been achieved in England. As this Institution has not yet commenced active operations, it remains to be seen whether the Royal Academy of Music will be a worthy sister of the Royal Academy of Art, and admit this enterprising body to its orchestra. We have it on the best authority, that its compositions will be quite as rough and discordant as the real old original—that it will be, in a word, exactly suited to the pictorial Art we have endeavoured to describe. We have strong hopes, therefore, that the Royal Academy of Music, not wanting an example, may not want courage.

The regulation of social matters, as separated from the Fine Arts, has been undertaken by the Pre-Henry-the-Seventh Brotherhood, who date from the same period as the Pre-Raphael Brotherhood. This society, as cancelling all the advances of nearly four hundred years, and reverting to one of the most disagreeable periods of English History, when the Nation was yet very slowly emerging from barbarism, and when gentle female foreigners, come over to be the wives of Scottish Kings, wept bitterly (as well they might) at being left alone among the savage Court, must be regarded with peculiar favour. As the time of ugly religious caricatures (called mysteries), it is thoroughly Pre-Raphael in its spirit; and may be deemed the twin brother to that great society. We should be certain of the Plague among many other advantages, if this Brotherhood were properly encouraged.

All these Brotherhoods, and any other society of the like kind, now in being or yet to be, have at once a guiding star, and a reduction of their great ideas to something palpable and obvious to the senses, in the sign to which we take the liberty of directing their attention. We understand that it is in the contemplation of each Society to become possessed, with all convenient speed, of a collection of such pictures; and that once, every year, to wit upon the first of April, the whole intend to amalgamate in a high festival, to be called the Convocation of Eternal Boobies.

It is exactly fifty years ago since the clergyman of a little town in Bucks circulated among the poorer part of his parishioners a proposal, which excited the ridicule of many and the apprehension of not a few. “If any inhabitant of Wendover chooses,” said he, “to entrust me with any amount of his savings, in sums of not less than twopence at a time, I shall be happy to receive the money, and to repay the sum to him next Christmas, with an addition of one-third upon the amount of his deposit.” It was some time before the population of Wendover could be brought to understand the value of the proposal; but it was still longer before its universal application became appreciated. Five years elapsed ere any similar institution rose into existence: then a “Charitable Bank” was opened at Tottenham, by a lady named Priscilla Wakefield, assisted by six gentlemen, who undertook from their private purses to allow five per cent. interest on the deposits. Three years passed, and another society upon the same principle was formed at Bath. After this, the eyes of the public began to be opened; and by 1816, there were established in England seventy different Savings’ Banks; whilst Wales boasted of four, and Ireland of five. At present the number of Savings’ Banks in operation in Great Britain, is five hundred and eighty-four. Those doing the largest amount of business are of course in London; and some idea may be formed of the magnitude of their transactions, when it is stated that the St. Martin’s Bank, near Trafalgar Square, alone, has on its books at present, forty thousand depositors, whose investments amount to upwards of a million and a quarter sterling. Since this establishment was first commenced in 1816, it has opened one hundred and seventy-three thousand accounts for nearly eight millions of money. The bank which approaches the nearest to the St. Martin’s Bank in magnitude, is the Bishopsgate Bank in Moorfields. That bank has three-quarters of a million invested in it. The Bloomsbury Bank has half a million: the Marylebone Bank about 300,000l. There are banks as large as the last, at Newcastle, Nottingham, Norwich, Bristol, Hull, Devonport, Leeds, and Birmingham. The Liverpool and Manchester Banks have 268deposits of half a million each. In Exeter there is a bank with thirty-five thousand depositors, and half a million of money.

This immense amount of business is done at no very great cost. For the five hundred and eighty-four banks, there are altogether only eleven hundred and forty paid officers. The salaries of these officers amount to no more than seventy-five thousand pounds a year; and they manage the business of more than a million of depositors, whose accounts exceed twenty-eight millions sterling—a sum equal to the capital of the Bank of England.

The mere fact of any institution having to deal with so enormous a capital, renders it one of great importance commercially. But when it is remembered that the vast aggregate is made up of small savings; and that additions to, or withdrawals from it, furnish a clue to the fluctuations between the prosperity and depression of the largest, most useful, and least wealthy among us—the thews and sinews of the nation—the administration and management of Savings’ Banks cannot be too jealously watched.

Unhappily a painful interest has been lately imparted to the system by the abstraction of large sums by certain local managers; and by the discovery that to make these defalcations good, there exists no government liability. Indeed by law (the act of 1844) even the Trustees are not liable; but honour has always, as we shall see, proved with them stronger than the statute. A clear understanding of the actual connection of the State with Savings’ Banks is of vital importance, not only to depositors, but to those who interest themselves in promoting the banking system among the humbler classes; a system, which, it may be safely affirmed, has hitherto proved of the utmost benefit not only to the worldly prosperity, but to the morals of the working bees of our Great Hive.

Savings’ Banks were first established from motives of benevolence. They soon, however, came to involve such great responsibility that the managers were anxious that the State should give them the benefit of its support. The State was nothing loth, for it saw the advantage of having such large amounts of money in possession. Accordingly, in 1817, there was opened at the National Debt Office, a “Fund for the Banks for Savings,” and an act was passed compelling the Trustees to pay in their deposits to that Fund, receiving a debenture which bore interest at the rate of 4l. 10s. per cent.

The Government, therefore, is only responsible for the money after it is paid to the National Debt Office: it is not accountable for deficiencies arising in the course of Savings’ Bank transactions, or from the embezzlement or mismanagement of local officers. Still depositors are seldom defrauded; for when such defaults have happened, the Trustees and Managers of the Bank concerned have stepped in to cover the deficiencies, except in a case which occurred in Wales in 1824, and in other instances subsequently in Ireland. In no one case, on the other hand, has the Government ever rendered assistance to the value of a farthing. Why, will be seen when the dealings between the local authorities of these banks and the National Debt Office are explained. They are simply as follows:—The accumulated deposits of each Savings’ Bank, are paid over to some neighbouring banker, or other person, who acts gratuitously as treasurer. The treasurer pays the money, by check or otherwise, to the National Debt Commissioners, who invest it in Exchequer Bills or Stock. At the end of the year they allow an interest upon the amount deposited. Out of this interest the Savings’ Banks Trustees are authorised by law to pay interest to the depositors at the rate of not less than 2l. 15s., nor more than 3l. 0s. 10d. per cent. per annum. The Banks vary in the precise rate; the average rate of interest afforded by all the Banks in the United Kingdom is 2l. 17s. 6d. Thus 7s. 6d. per cent.—which constitutes the difference between 2l. 17s. 6d. and the 3l. 5s.—forms the fund out of which is defrayed the charges of management.

In the majority of Banks, there is only one paid officer; but of course the number varies according to the amount of business. The St. Martin’s Bank is the most complete establishment of the kind, and consists of sixteen persons. Some Banks have only one remunerated official. In every case, the National Debt Commissioners have power to make such regulations, under the Savings’ Bank Act, as enforce each paid officer giving heavy security for his honesty.

It is of great consequence that the public should understand that the defalcations which have of late caused some distrust in the stability of Savings’ Banks, have not arisen from any defect of the great principles, but only in the details, and from the abuses of the system. They have happened chiefly in consequence of the culpably loose and irregular conduct of the local managers; but partly from the carelessness or ignorance of depositors. The chief manager of an Institution in default—as in the latest case which has come before the public—has left everything to the actuary or cashier, who did precisely as he pleased, and he is blamable for laxity. On the other hand, most of the monies of which depositors were plundered never passed through a Savings’ Bank at all. They were paid to the Officers of the Banks at their own abodes, and these officers never gave any account of them to the Managers. The only way to stop this, is to make it criminal for any officer of a Bank to receive the money of any depositor, at any other time or place than at the Bank during the regular Bank hours. The fact is that there have rarely, if ever, hitherto been any genuine frauds upon Savings’ Banks. The frauds have taken 269place upon irregular transactions out of doors. Hence it is that the National Debt Commissioners repudiate all liability to the depositors.

Against, however, the National Debt Office itself there is a very serious charge. As we have stated, it is bound to invest, in the public securities, the monies paid over to them by the Trustees and Treasurers of Savings’ Banks. It appears, from parliamentary returns, that at different periods the Commissioners have accumulated large sums of this money, and dealt with it in different classes of securities; although the necessities of Savings’ Banks did not require any such operations. The result has been very unfortunate. The National Debt Commissioners appear, by their accounts, to have less stock by two millions of money, than the capital paid to them ought to represent. This glaring fact appears on the face of the public accounts. No explanation has ever been given; no reasons have ever been assigned. The belief is, that the operations by which the Savings’ Banks fund so seriously suffered, were necessitated by the financial exigencies of government some years since. They commenced in 1834 and continued down to 1843, when they were discovered and checked by public opinion. As, then, for this amount the Government is responsible, the nation will be, ultimately, obliged to pay it up to the depositors.

But a calm review of these facts—startling as some of them are—should not essentially affect the stability of Savings’ Banks, and alarm is comparatively groundless. Firstly, the defalcations of officers are generally made good by their sureties, or by the local trustees; and secondly, the deficiency of two millions is not likely to be called for so suddenly as to inconvenience the public purse.

It is now necessary to point out how—to glance at the opposite page of the account—the law guards against frauds attempted by the public upon Savings’ Banks. The only way in which they could be so abused, would be by attempts, on the part of the comparatively wealthy, to obtain a higher rate of interest, for investments, than they could get elsewhere. But an average interest, 2l. 17s. 6d. per cent. with a maximum of 3l. 0s. 10d., would seem a sufficient bar to such deposits. But in order to guard against such a possibility, the law has enacted that no one person shall be permitted to deposit more than 30l. in any one year, or more than 150l. pounds in the whole; and if his principal and interest together ever amounts to 200l., then the payment of all further interest is stopped. These restrictions are effectual in preserving Savings’ Banks to the sole object of savings—the savings of the poor.

As regards actual frauds and attempts at fraud by the public, we have been obliged with the experience of the St. Martin’s Bank, which very probably speaks for that of all the Savings’ Banks in England:—“Since this Bank was instituted, in 1816,” says our informant, “there have been only five attempts at fraud, by forgery of depositors’ signatures, or otherwise. In two of those five cases the forgery was detected and no loss ensued. In the other three cases the Bank sustained the loss, which amounted in the whole to less than 50l. Attempts at personation seldom succeed,—nor are these always fraudulent; absent depositors are often consenting parties, in order to save themselves the trouble of attending personally. Such cases lead to dispute; but two such cases which have occurred here are rather curious. In 1847 a man married a female depositor, and induced her to withdraw the whole of her money (exceeding 100l), of which having possessed himself, he abandoned her. Subsequently he deposited 90l.., part of this money, in three different Savings’ Banks, our own among the number. The wife having stated her case to us, we took advantage of the law which prohibited him from depositing in more than one Bank, and refused to allow him to withdraw. The case was referred; and the barrister appointed by act of Parliament to settle such questions awarded that, under the statute, the deposits were forfeited to the Commissioners of the National Debt. The Lords of the Treasury, upon the wife’s memorial, ordered the restitution of the money to her, for her own separate use, free from her husband’s control; and this arrangement we had the pleasure of carrying into effect.—The other case was equally singular. In 1848 the Painters’ and Glaziers’ Friendly Society had an account with us. They sought to eject one of the trustees of their fund from the benefits of their Society, on the ground that on the ‘10th of April’ he had acted as a Special Constable, contrary to the rule prohibiting him from ‘voluntarily entering Her Majesty’s service.’ The trustee protested to us, and we objected to pay the Society’s money without his signature to the order. Thereupon ‘the Painters and Glaziers’ caused the case to be referred, and the barrister awarded that the funds should not be transferred or withdrawn without the trustee’s consent.”

From the same quarter we ascertained, in reference to unclaimed money, a remarkable circumstance. The amount of unclaimed deposits in the St. Martin’s Place Bank has of late decreased instead of increased. In 1842 the Bank held 10,800l., which had been unclaimed for seven years. In 1849, although its business had so amazingly augmented, the amount which had remained unclaimed for seven years was 9898l. or nearly 1000l. less. This is accounted for by the great pains taken to trace and summon the depositors and their representatives. It certainly is remarkable that out of transactions to the extent of more than eight and a half millions of money, only 9900l. should remain unclaimed.

From what we have stated on this subject it will be seen that although Savings’ Banks 270are not on a satisfactory footing as between the Government and depositors, or as between the latter and the local managers; yet, on the whole, the system is so well contrived, that no good reason has lately been revealed for the public to withdraw their confidence from them. The cure of the more glaring defects is now under the consideration of Government, and this paper will be best concluded by a sketch of the proposed remedy. The bill introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer deals with all the defects we have pointed out: perhaps it introduces some new ones, but these it will be purged of probably in Committee. One of the chief evils is that exemption from liability which was extended to trustees in 1844: and it is proposed, for wilful or neglectful losses, to restore this liability. These officers are now unpaid; and it is proposed to pay them, Government being responsible for their acts, and having the privilege of appointing. To prevent fraud, occasioned by the treasurer or actuary receiving monies at his own house, it is intended that the treasurer alone shall receive money, and that he shall attend at certain stated times for that purpose. A local banker is to fill the office, who will not be wholly unremunerated. For any other person than the treasurer to receive money as a savings’ bank deposit, will be a misdemeanour. Daily accounts are to be rendered to the Commissioners of the National Debt; and those Commissioners will appoint auditors, who shall exercise a constant revision of the accounts, subject to supervision by special inspectors despatched at discretion. These arrangements will necessarily entail greater expence, and to meet it, the rate of interest allowed to depositors, is to be reduced to 2l. 15s., and deposits limited to 100l. Above that amount, Government will either hold the money without interest, or, at the depositor’s option, invest it in the funds free of charge.

Those in whom the appetite for news on which we have already commented is very strong, must wonder how our forefathers existed without newspapers; for so it happened that the lieges of these realms did get on very well without them up to the days of the first of the Stuarts. But although they had no printed newspapers, they could not and did not do without news; conveyed orally in the form of gossip, or by means of manuscript intelligencers. Friendly communications containing the gossip of the town for the enlightenment of cousins in the country are as old as pen and ink, and much older than paper; for many, still extant in the British Museum, were written on vellum. By-and-bye, the writing of such letters became a profession, and every country family of pretension could boast of “our own correspondent.” These writers were generally disbanded military officers, younger sons very much “about town,” and, not unfrequently, clergymen. Shirley in his “Love Tricks” draws the portrait of one of these antecedents of the present race of Editors.

“Easparo. I tell you, Sir, I have known a gentleman that has spent the best part of a thousand pounds while he was prentice to the trade in Holland, and out of three sheets of paper, which was his whole stock, (the pen and ink-horn he borrowed,) he set up shop, and spent a hundred pounds a year. It has been a great profession. Marry, most commonly they are soldiers; a peace concluded is a great plague upon them, and if the wars hold we shall have store of them. Oh, they are men worthy of commendation. They speak in print.

“Eas. Faith so they would be thought, though indeed they are but mongrels, not worthy of that noble attribute. They are indeed bastards, not sons of war and true soldiers, whose divine souls I honour, yet they may be called great spirits too, for their valour is invisible; these, I say, will write you a battle in any part of Europe at an hour’s warning, and yet never set foot out of a tavern; describe you towns, fortifications, leaders, the strength of the enemy, what confederates, every day’s march. Not a soldier shall lose a hair, or have a bullet fly between his arms, but he shall have a page to wait on him in quarto. Nothing destroys them but want of a good memory, for if they escape contradiction they may be chronicled.”

By the time James the First began to reign, this employment had so completely moulded itself into a regular craft, that news-writers set up offices and kept “emissaries,” or reporters, to bring them accounts of what was going on in various parts of the metropolis. These reports were sifted, collected, and arranged by the master of the office, or “Register,” who acted as Editor. To Nathaniel Butter, a news-writer of that period, was the British public indebted for the first printed newspaper. Ben Jonson in his 271“Staple of News” gives a vivid picture of Mr. Butter’s office before he took to printing.

To have served his gaping customers too quickly, would have seemed as though the News was made instead of being collected; so thought the Register.

Respecting the first English printed newspaper, the public have lain under a mistake for nearly a century. Some ten years ago, however, Mr. Thomas Watts of the British Museum exploded the long prevalent fallacy that the “English Mercurie,” dated in 1588, was originally the progenitor of modern journals. A copy of such a paper exists in the Birch Collection; but it is a manifest forgery, the concoction of which was traced to the second Lord Hardwicke. It pretends to give news from the expedition against the Spanish Armada; but, besides a host of blunders in dates, it is printed on paper made posterior to the date it bears. The truth is that no periodically printed newspaper appeared till thirty years after.

When the reign of James the First was drawing to a close; when Ben Jonson was poet laureate, and the personal friends of Shakspeare were lamenting his then recent death; when Cromwell was trading as a brewer at Huntingdon; when Milton was a youth of sixteen, just trying his pen at Latin verse, and Hampden a quiet country gentleman in Buckinghamshire; London was solicited to patronise its first Newspaper. There is now no reason to doubt that the puny ancestor of the myriads of broad sheets of our time was published in the metropolis in 1622, and that the most prominent of the ingenious speculators who offered the novelty to the world was Nathaniel Butter. His companions in the work appear to have been Nicholas Bourne, Thomas Archer, Nathaniel Newberry, William Sheffard, Bartholomew Downes, and Edward Allde. All these different names appear in the imprints of the early numbers of the first Newspaper—The Weekly Newes.^[1] This prime, original progenitor of the acres of news which are now rolled out from the press failed, after many lapses and struggles, chiefly occasioned by the Star Chamber. Its end was untimely. The last number appeared on the 9th of January, 1640. Could it have survived a little longer it might have run a long career, for the incubus which smothered it was itself stifled—the Star Chamber was abolished in 1641.

Butter’s print was succeeded by a host of “Mercuries,” but none of them were long-lived. They were started for particular objects, to advocate certain views, and sometimes to circulate the likeliest lies that could be invented to serve the cause espoused. Each of these was laid down when its mission was accomplished. During the civil war, nearly thirty thousand journals, pamphlets, and papers were issued in this manner. In the heat of hostilities, each army carried its printing-press as part of its munitions of war. Leaden types were employed with as much rancour and zeal as leaden bullets. These were often headed as News, such as “Newes out of Worcestershire,” “Newes of a bloody battle,” fought at such a place, &c. In 1662 a regular periodical, called the “Kingdom’s Intelligencer,” was started, and in the following year the “Intelligencer, published for the satisfaction and information of the people,” was set up by Sir Roger L’Estrange.

All these were superseded by a journal, which has stood its ground so well that the last number came out only yesterday. This was the “Oxford Gazette,” set up in that city in 1665, and now known as the “London Gazette.” For many years after the Restoration this was the only newspaper; for the law restricted any man from publishing political news without the consent of the Crown. Charles and James the Second withheld that consent whenever it suited them, and put those who took “French leave” into the pillory.

As a specimen of a newspaper, when these restrictions were abated, after the flight of James the Second, we may instance the “Universal Intelligencer.” It was small in size, and meagre in contents. It appeared only twice a week, and consisted of two pages; that is to say, one leaf of paper a little larger than the page on which the reader’s eye now rests, and with hardly so much matter. The number for December 11, 1688, boasts two advertisements. A small paragraph amongst 272its News describes the seizing of Judge Jefferies, in his attempt to escape from the anger of his enemies. Besides this interesting morsel of intelligence, the paper has sixteen lines of News from Ireland, and eight lines from Scotland; whilst under its News of England, we have not very much more. One of the items tells us, that “on the 7th inst. the Prince of Orange supt at the Bear Inn, Hungerford.” There are other headings, such as “Forrain News” and “Domestick News.” Each item of intelligence is a mere skeleton—more in the nature of memoranda, or notifications of events, than accounts of them. “Further particulars” had not been invented then.

By Anne’s time, journalism had improved, and—when the victories of Marlborough and Rooke, the political contests of Godolphin and Bolingbroke, and the writings of Addison, Pope, Prior, Congreve, Steele, and Swift, created a mental activity in the nation which could not wait from week to week for its News—the first daily paper was started. This was the Daily Courant, which came out in 1709. Other such journals followed; but three years afterwards, they received a severe check by the imposition of the Stamp Duty. “All Grub Street,” wrote Swift to Stella, “is ruined by the Stamp Act.” On the 7th of August, 1712, he writes:—

“Do you know that Grub Street is dead and gone last week? No more ghosts or murders now for love or money. I plied it pretty close the last fortnight, and published at least seven penny papers of my own, besides some of other people’s, but now every single half-sheet pays a halfpenny to the Queen. The ‘Observator’ is fallen; the ‘Medleys’ are jumbled together with the ‘Flying Post;’ the ‘Examiner’ is deadly sick; the ‘Spectator’ keeps up, and doubles its price; I know not how long it will hold. Have you seen the red stamp the papers are marked with? Methinks it is worth a halfpenny the stamping.”

Grub Street was not, however, so easily put down; and from that time to the days of Dr. Johnson, newspapers had considerably increased in number and influence. In the Idler the Doctor says:—“No species of literary men has lately been so much multiplied as the writers of News. Not many years ago, the nation was content with one Gazette, but now we have not only in the metropolis Papers for every morning and every evening, but almost every large town has its weekly historian, who regularly circulates his periodical intelligence, and fills the villagers of his district with conjectures on the events of war, and with debates on the true interests of Europe.”

In Dr. Johnson’s day, the newspaper press was fairly set upon its legs, and it has gone on with some few vicissitudes to its present condition. As illustrations of the antecedents of the modern newspaper, we now purpose giving, at random, a few curious extracts from the earliest of them.

The Daily Courant, dated March 1, 1711, contains the following announcement of a publication which is still read with delight, and which was destined to play an important part in the reform of the coarse social manners of the time. It runs thus:—

“A paper entitled The Spectator, which will be continued every day. Printed for James Buckley, at the Dolphin in Little Britain, and sold by A. Baldwin, in Warwick Lane.”

In the first number thus announced, which was written by Addison, the Spectator says:—“As my friends have engaged me to stand in the front, those who have a mind to correspond with me may direct their letters to Mr. Buckley’s, in Little Britain.”

Hogarth never painted a more graphic picture of a horseman of the last century than that drawn in the Postman of Saturday, August 10, 1710. It is presented in the form of a hue and cry after a stolen horse.

“A Full Face, Round shoulder Middle sized Man, with a light Bob Goat’s Hair Wig, a snuff-coloured Secretary Drugget coat, the trimming the same colour, 2 waistcoats, one of Black cloath, the other blue, trimmed with silver lace, Black cloath breeches, a Mourning Hatband, wears a cane with a silver Head, made to screw at the top, a seafaring man, stammering in his speech, his name William Tunbridge but goes by the name of William Richardson, rode away from 7 Oaks in Kent the 20th of July last, with a Sorrel Horse full 14 hands high, a star in his forehead, white feet behind, high mettled, loth to have his hind feet taken up, Bob Tail, a black saddle stitched with silver, Tan Leather stirrup Leathers with a slit crupper buckled on the saddle with 2 buckles. Whoever gives notice of man or horse to Mr. Adams, Postmaster of Seven Oaks, shall have a guinea reward and reasonable charges.”

The Daily Courant of Thursday, March 15, 1711, puts forth the announcement of a performance at the Haymarket Theatre, “on the 1st of April,” to which the Bottle Conjuror’s promised feat must sink into a mere common occurrence. A gentleman was to sup off several children “to the music of kettledrums.” The same advertisement appeared in the Spectator on the day after, namely, Friday, March 16:—

“On the first of April will be performed at the play house in the Hay Market an Opera called the Cruelty of Atræus. N. B. The scene wherein Thyestes eats his own children is to be performed by the famous Mr. Psalmanazaar, lately arrived from Formosa, the whole supper being set to kettle drums.”

Scattered through the journals of 1712 are advertisements of a patent medicine, which has not wholly ceased to be imbibed by the ailing of 1850. The Spectator of April 18th has it thus:—

“Daffy’s famous Elixir Salutis prepared by Catherine Daffy, the finest now exposed for sale, 273prepared from the best drugs and the original receipt which my Father Mr. Thomas Daffy having experienced the virtues of it imparted it to Mr. Anthony Daffy who published the same to his own great advantage. This very original receipt is now in my possession, left me by my father under his own bond. My brother Mr. Daniel Daffy, late apothecary in Nottingham, made this Elixir from the same receipt and sold it there during his life. Those who know me will believe me, and those who do not know me may be convinced I am no counterfeit by the colour, taste, smell and just operation of my Elixir. Sold at the Hand and Pen, Maiden-lane, Covent Garden, London, and in many other places in Town and Country.”

Mist’s weekly journal of Saturday, March 6th, 1725, contains an artful paragraph most likely emanating from a despairing author whose play had not succeeded:—

“Mrs. Graspall, who has been our customer two years, desires us to inform the masters of Drury Lane playhouse, that if they please to play the comedy, called A Wife to be Let, within ten days, they will oblige her and a great many of the quality to whom she has communicated her design.”

We find by subsequent numbers that Mrs. Graspall’s request was not complied with.

There is an anecdote of historical interest in the St. James’s Evening Post of Sept. 17th, 1734. It relates to the Chevalier St. George, afterwards the rash but chivalric “Pretender” to the British throne. It appears that when the Spaniards made the Conquest of Italy, and were sailing for Sicily, the Chevalier was on board one of their ships with the young King of Naples, the latter, doubtless, a prisoner;—

“When the fleet set sail,” says the ‘special correspondent,’ “a blast of wind blew the young Chevalier St. George’s hat off his head into the sea. Immediately there were several officious enough to endeavour to take it up; but the young Chevalier called out, Let it alone, let it alone; I will go and get another in England. Whereupon the young King of Naples threw his hat into the sea, and said, and I will go along with you. But they may happen to go bare-headed a long time; if they get no hats till they come amongst you: for we are well assured that they will find none in England that will fit their heads.”

The designs of young Charles Edward must have been deeply rooted to have been entertained so early—for he was then only fourteen years old—and so long before they were fulfilled. At the end of his ’45 adventures, he did indeed go bare-headed for months without a hat or a roof to cover him.

The Daily Post of Thursday, August 17th, 1738, must be a priceless treasure in the eye of the collector for two remarkable paragraphs with which it is enriched. On one of them was founded the most pathetic and popular of Scott’s novels—The Heart of Mid-Lothian. The story of the girl “of a fine soul,” even as told by the paragraphist is touching. The communication is dated “Edinburgh, August 20th, 1738.”

“Isabel Walker, under sentence of death at Dumfries for child-murder, has actually got a remission. This unhappy creature was destitute of friends, and had none to apply for her but an only sister, a girl of a fine soul, that overlooked the improbability of success, helpless and alone went to London to address the Great, and solicit so well (sic) that she got for her, first, a reprieve, and now a remission. Such another instance of onerous friendship can scarce be shown; it well deserved the attention of the greatest who could not but admire the virtue, and on that account engage in her cause.”

The other paragraph records the death of Joe Miller, posthumous sponsor of the most profitable jest book ever published. He was as innocent of it as of any one of the jokes; the collection—having been benevolently made by his friend Jack Mottley for the benefit of Miller’s widow—eventually proved to be the best benefit ever known in the theatrical world. The obituary is brief but complimentary:—

“Yesterday morning died Jo: Miller, Comedian, of merry memory. Very few of his profession have gained more applause on the stage, and few have acted off it with so much approbation from their neighbours.”

The London Daily Post (there were three “Posts” in those days) of the same date gives more information on the mournful subject. It says:—

“Yesterday morning died of Pleurisy, Mr. Joseph Miller, a celebrated Comedian belonging to the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane; much admired for his performances in general, but particularly in the character of Teague, in The Committee, or the Faithful Irishman.”

The papers from which this mélange of extracts has been culled are pigmies beside the present race of Giants. There is about as much matter in a single modern London morning newspaper as was contained in a year’s contents of the Postman, before it had two leaves. To present the contrast between to-day’s monsters of the press and their antecedents the more forcibly, we shall conclude with an extract from a paper recently read by Mr. E. Cowper at the Institution of Civil Engineers, relative to the Times:—

“On the 7th of May, 1850, the Times and Supplement contained 72 columns, or 17,500 lines, made up of upwards of a million pieces of type, of which matter about two-fifths were written, composed, and corrected after seven o’clock in the evening. The Supplement was sent to press at 7 50 P. M., the first form of the paper at 4 15 A. M.; and the second form at 4 45 A. M.; on this occasion, 7000 papers were published before 6 15 A. M., 21,000 papers before 7 30 A. M., and 34,000 before 8 45 A. M., or in about four hours. The greatest number of copies ever printed in one day was 54,000, and the greatest quantity of printing in one day’s publication was 274on the 1st of March, 1848, when the paper used weighed 7 tons, the weight usually required being 4½ tons; the surface to be printed every night, including the Supplement, was 30 acres; the weight of the fount of type in constant use was 7 tons; and 110 compositors and 25 pressmen were constantly employed.”

At the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne, we question whether so many operatives as are now required, with the help of its extraordinary machinery, to produce the “Times,” found employment on the whole then existing newspaper press.

The Commission appointed to enquire into and report upon the state of Rotten Row, was entirely unpaid. The right honourable gentleman on whom the appointment of the Commissioners devolved, took great credit to himself that the members of a Commission whose report was likely to prove of such infinite value to society, and especially to metropolitan equestrians, had undertaken all the laborious duties appertaining to their office without expressing the slightest desire for remuneration or reward. “He believed,” he said, “that all the charges connected with the performance of this great public duty would begin and terminate with the mere cost of the indispensable official staff, and he undertook to pledge his word that the expenses connected with that department should all be settled at the lowest practicable scale.”

In accordance with this declaration, the Honourable Augustus Aigulet, first cousin of the right hon. gentleman aforesaid, was shortly after appointed Secretary to this indispensable Commission, at a salary of 1400l. per annum, and Mr. Slaney, of Somerset House, under a Special Minute of my Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, was promoted to perform the active duties of clerk to the Commission, at an increased salary of 60l. a year, “in accordance with the scale of savings recently effected in the public service.”

These economic views were further carried out by the saving of rent. The Rotten Row Commission was to be accommodated in certain new buildings, recently erected at a small charge of 300,000l. The apartments consisted of an office, a Secretary’s apartment, and a Board-room. Mr. Slaney took possession of his desk in the office, having instructions to prepare the large room for the meeting of a Board, which instructions he duly performed by arranging the inkstands in the centre of a table, and by spreading sundry sheets of blotting-paper, with a due proportion of foolscap and official pens, at equal distances on either side. The Board was to meet at two o’clock. At half-past one the Honourable Augustus Aigulet opened the door of the office, and proceeded to instal himself as Secretary. By the time he had taken possession of the key of a great despatch box, on which was emblazoned, in gilt letters, the words

the Chairman and three of the Commissioners arrived. Her Majesty’s Commissioners for enquiring into the state and condition of Rotten Row, Hyde Park, did not commence business immediately; but began an ardent gossip about things in general. The noble President was in the midst of a discussion with his colleagues respecting the exact circumference of Carlotta Grisi’s ancle, when there came from the chimney an enormous volume of smoke. With prompt alacrity, Mr. Aigulet rose from behind the despatch box, rang the bell, summoned the clerk to his presence, and desired him to poke the fire. This was done; but the result was overwhelming. The smoke was so dense, that the noble chairman could scarcely find his way to the chair; but having succeeded, and a board having been formed, he addressed the secretary.

“These rooms” he said, “are excessively ill-ventilated; the air is positively pestilential; we must at once draw up a minute to the Treasury for alteration.”

Mr. Aigulet took a sheet of paper, folded it lengthways, to make a margin; and proceeded to write as his superior instructed him.

Her Majesty’s Commissioners represent to my Lords, that with a view to a complete and satisfactory discharge of the important duties devolved upon them opportunity is necessary for calm consideration of the varied subjects into which it is committed to them to inquire:—That such opportunity is totally denied them in the apartments assigned by my Lords, in which no suitable provision exists for ventilation, and in which the Smoke appears to come down the Chimney, instead of ascending in conformity with custom. In order to the due performance of their duties to the public Her Majesty’s Commissioners, therefore, request that my Lords will make an order for the attendance and inspection of the Ventilator-General, with instructions to consider and report upon a plan for improving the ingress of air, and egress of smoke, to and from the said apartments of Her Majesty’s Commissioners.

The document was then handed to Mr. Slaney, who made a fine copy thereof, on an 275extremely large and thick sheet of cream-coloured foolscap, enclosed it in a ditto envelope, sealed it with an enormous official signet, rang the bell for the messenger, and dispatched the document to the Assistant Secretary of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury.

In two hours a reply was returned. This sufficiently demonstrates the extraordinary despatch which all matters of this sort receive at the hands of “my Lords,” and at once exhibits the fallacy and absurdity of the constant and therefore unreasonable complaints, which are made by poor widows, orphans, and other troublesome and disagreeable complainants concerning the delays which they suppose that they encounter in getting even the most reasonable claims attended to.

My Lords having taken into consideration the minute of Her Majesty’s Commissioners appointed specially to enquire into the state and condition of the district known as Rotten Row, in which statement is made of the important duties devolving on them, of the necessity for calm opportunity to consider the subjects committed to their inquiry; and of the imperfect provision for ventilation, &c., in those apartments placed at their disposal: are pleased to order that the Ventilator-General be instructed to inspect and report upon the condition of the said ventilation, and to propose a plan to be approved by Her Majesty’s Commissioners, and by them submitted to my Lords for improving the ingress and egress of air to and from the said apartments.

“Communicate this minute to the Ventilator-General, and direct him to prepare estimate.

The Treasury minute was acted on, and this was the first day’s work of the Rotten Row Commission.

The Ventilator-General, who was thus instructed to attend to the wishes and directions of her Majesty’s Commission, applied the next day and Mr. Aigulet formed “a Board” for his reception. He took a survey of the office, and declared that all the architectural arrangements were so utterly erroneous in principle, as to place it beyond all possible skill to render the ventilation perfect. He demonstrated most completely that for the purposes of ventilation the door ought to have been precisely where the chimney was, and that the chimney should have stood exactly where the window was. The window itself he proposed to abrogate altogether, supplying its place either by oil burners, or by a fan-light opening into a dark passage, neither of which arrangements would interfere with the process of ventilation. He suggested, in addition, “a breathing floor,” which he thought it would be easy to obtain even in the present ill-constructed edifice; and to obviate the smoke, he proposed to place a hot air apparatus under Mr. Slaney’s desk, whereby, he said, the necessity of a chimney would be dispensed with altogether. A new shaft, communicating with an apparatus in the ceiling would, he said, carry off all the foul gases generated in the room; and if the height of the shaft outside was such as to injure the general effect of the building, why, the fault would not be his so much as that of the architect who had not adapted the edifice so as to anticipate this necessary erection. Upon the whole, his opinion was that the Rotten Row Commissioners would do well to postpone their sittings until early in the ensuing year, in order to enable him, during the interval, to carry out his designs for reconstructing the building with a view to its efficient ventilation.

Had this recommendation been made at the close of a Session, and the commencement of the grouse shooting, it is difficult to say whether the great and important business of the Rotten Row Commission might not have stood adjourned for six months, as the Ventilator-General suggested. But as the Opera season was still at its height, and as Mr. Augustus Aigulet had before his eyes the fear of an awkward question from some of those busybodies who occasionally interfere about other people’s business in the House of Commons, the secretary thought it desirable to recommend the Board to resolve at present only to adjourn to that day week. Adjourned accordingly.

On the day of re-assembling, the Hon. Mr. Augustus Aigulet found the following official communication from the chief of the ventilating department.

The Ventilator-General presents his compliments to the Hon. Augustus Aigulet, and begs to inform him of a serious abuse of Mr. Aigulet’s authority, discovered in the office of the Rotten Row department, this morning.

It is reported to the Ventilator-General that in the absence of Mr. Aigulet, the clerk of the department, Mr. Slaney caused the chimney to be swept, and the window to be thrown open. The Ventilator-General submits that this is an interference with his peculiar duty which the Secretary to the Rotten Row Commission will not sanction.

It is also reported to the Ventilator-General that the clerk has had the consummate assurance to object to the proposed formation of an apparatus for heating air immediately under his own desk: an obstruction to the Ventilator-General’s proceedings which calls for marked reprobation.

The Ventilator-General repeats the occurrences to Mr. Aigulet, in order that the fact may be duly laid before my lords.

The Commissioners having assembled, their secretary read the letter, and the Chairman 276ordered in the Clerk. Mr. Slaney appeared, trembled a little, and thought he had done something dreadful. The following dialogue ensued:—

Clerk. The chimney was very foul, and the rooms not having been recently used, the window had apparently not been opened for some time. The sash line was broken, and there is a little difficulty about opening it.

Blushing to the very forehead, and feeling as if his ears were setting his hair on fire, Mr. Slaney retired.

After some discussion at the Board, the following minute to the Lords of the Treasury, was dictated to the Secretary.

Her Majesty’s Commissioners having had from the Ventilator-General his report upon the state of ventilation in the apartments allotted to them in the Treasury Chambers, are of opinion that the adoption of his plans would involve very considerable expense, and would cause a delay seriously prejudicial to the business of the Commission. Her Majesty’s Commissioners, therefore, request that my lords will be pleased to dispense with the services of the Ventilator-General in this case, as granted under their lordships’ minute, referred to in the margin, and instead thereof, that they will pass a minute authorising the attendance of the Treasury carpenter to repair a line in a window, which does not at present open with all the facility desirable.

The fourth day was occupied in receiving counter instructions from the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury in accordance with the Rotten Row Board’s minute, No. 2—and in communicating with the official carpenter. The result was, that this humble individual superseded in half an hour the threatened six months’ labour of the Ventilator-General.

At its fifth meeting, the Royal Commission drew up a list of witnesses to be examined. The sixth day was wholly occupied in granting the summonses, and as the Board has not yet finished examining its first witness, the report will not, it is expected, be ready for the Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in May, 1851.

“Water, and nothing but water!” exclaimed Mr. John Diggs, the great sugar-baker (everybody knows old John Diggs), “Water, I say, is the natural enemy of fire; and any man who dares to say otherwise is no better that a fool or a charlatan. I should like to knock such a fellow down. I know more about fire than all the learned talking chaps in England, and it’s of no use to tell me when a house is in a blaze, that any thing but water can put it out. Not a bit of it. Don’t attempt to say so; I won’t hear it!”

Mr. Diggs gave vent to his feelings in the above oracular form at his Club, on Thursday evening last, on which occasion he happened to be the Chairman. It was in consequence of one of the junior members reading a passage from a scientific Journal, to the effect that water was almost as much a friend to fire, as an enemy—and that, at any rate, they were near of kin—quoting Mr. Phillips, the Inventor of the Fire Annihilator, as a practical authority on the subject. This was what had so enraged Mr. Diggs, sugar-baker, and chairman of the Albert Rock and Toffee Club.

Mr. John Diggs is a man who always carries his will before him, like a crown on a cushion, while his reason follows like a page, holding up the skirts of his great coat. Honest-hearted, and not without generosity, he is much esteemed in spite of his many perversities. He possesses a shrewd observation, and a good understanding, when once you can get at it; but his energies and animal spirits commonly carry him out of all bounds, so that to bring him back to rational judgment is a work of no small difficulty. He is open to conviction, as he always says, but he is a tip-top specimen of the class who commonly use that expression; his open door is guarded by all the bludgeons of obstinacy, behind which sits a pig-headed will, with its eyes half shut.

This is the man, and in the condition of mind which may be conjectured from his speech in the chair, just quoted, who drove up in his gig last Friday, as the clock struck four, to the gates of the London Gas Works, Vauxhall, in order to hear, with his own ears, Mr. Phillips dare to say he could extinguish the most violent flames without the use of water; and to see, with his own eyes, the total failure of the attempt, and the exposure of the humbug.

To make sure of entire sympathy in all his perversities, Mr. Diggs had brought his wife with him; and to insure a ready assistance in the detection of any tricks, his foreman, Mr. White, had been sent on by the steamer. A real reason lay at the bottom of all this; for the work-place and warehouse of Mr. Diggs were worth 60,000l.; part of which sum, no insurance could cover; and his stock in trade as well as his works, he but too well knew, were of a most combustible nature. No laughing matter—therefore not a thing to be trifled with.

Mr. Diggs met his foreman in the yard, waiting for his arrival; and the party having displayed their tickets, were ushered across and around, till they came to a large brick building, with a long row of arched window holes along the top, apparently for the ready escape of volumes of smoke. The window holes all looked very black about the edges. So did the door-posts. The walls were very dingy and besmutched. Mrs. Diggs had put on her best spring bonnet with orange ribbons, and her pink and fawn-coloured silk shawl. She had a sudden misgiving, but it couldn’t be helped now.

They were ushered through a large, smutty door, into a brick building, paved with bricks, and having arched recesses, here and there, at the lower part. Commodious retreats, in case the flames put forth their tongues beyond their usual range, and advanced towards the centre of the building,—as Mr. Diggs devoutly hoped they might. At one end, the wooden frame-work of a house, with ground-floor, and first and second floor, presented its front. It was black and charred from recent fire, with sundry repairs of new planks, which “brought out” the black of the rest, both without and within, to the greatest advantage. Level with the lowest window was a sort of lecturer’s stage of rough planks, at the back of which lay the model of a ship’s hull, some six or seven feet in length; and to the right of this, the model of a house, with lower and upper floor, of about two feet and a half in height.

Fronting this stage, model ship, model house, and actual house, was a semicircle of chairs and benches—not too near—with ample room left at the sides for the sudden flight of visitors who had seated themselves in an incredulous and unimaginative state of mind, nearer than subsequent events seemed to warrant. Then, there were the arched recesses; then, a low stage with seats; then, a broad flight of wooden stairs at the opposite end, by which visitors could ascend to a high platform, leading also to side 278galleries, on the same level. The whole place was most eloquent to the olfactory nerves of coal-tar, pitch, resin, turpentine, &c. A light sprinkling of sawdust completed the furnishing of this hall, in which one of the most extraordinary of all our modern discoveries (provided it prove thoroughly efficient) was about to be subjected to trial.

Mr. Diggs having planted his foreman at one horn of the crescent of chairs, and dragging his wife (whose thoughts of her handsome bonnet and shawl were written in shady lines all over her face) to a dirty-seated bench, on the other, he darted straight across to the scene of action, and without a moment’s hesitation or ceremony, ascended the lecturer’s stage, and diving with nose and hands into the model of the ship’s hull, began to explore its contents.

The hold, and, indeed, all the interior of the hull, he found to be full of patent fire-wood, for the rapid kindling of fire, each separate piece being sufficient to light an ordinary fire; but here, there was nothing else. He passed on to the model house; opened the door, and looked in. Here, also, he found a quantity of patent fire-wood, lying on both floors. A trap-door was left open in the roof to allow of the escape of the smoke. Mr. Diggs now descended from the little stage, and advanced to the door of the house which was to be set on fire. He entered the door-way, and immediately found himself in a dark chamber filled with charred planks, pitched planks, cross-pieces of new wood, blackened beams, and a variety of hangings and festoons made of shavings saturated with coal-tar, resin, and turpentine. A staircase, or, rather, a broad charred ladder, led up to the first floor. Mr. Diggs forthwith ascended, and stepped upon a flooring perfectly black; in fact, the whole room seemed made of charcoal, with here and there a new plank laid across, or slanting upwards, smeared with coal-tar, and adorned like the ground-floor, with shavings steeped in resin, pitch, turpentine, and other combustible matter. “Well,” thought Mr. Diggs, “at all events, there’ll be flames enough.” A second charred ladder formed a staircase leading to the top floor; but this was so dilapidated and rotten from recent burning, that our sceptical sugar-baker could venture to do no more than clamber up, and rest his chin on the blackened boards of the floor above, in which position he clung by the smutty tips of his fingers, and stared around, above him, and on all sides. He then slowly descended, and as he made his way out of the front door, he hugged himself with the firm belief that if the house were fairly set on fire (as he determined it should be), and the flames were allowed to get into full play, nothing could stop them till they had burned the house to the ground, and communicated with the brick building—when the regular fire-engines, with their torrents of water, would, of course, be sent for, with all imaginable speed.

Meantime, a considerable number of people of all ranks had assembled, many of them of the aristocratic class, to judge by the row of liveries, coachmen, and footmen, who lined one of the side galleries. Mrs. Diggs comforted herself with the sight of many elegantly-dressed ladies, who seated themselves on the chairs and benches in front of the little stage, or platform. Perhaps the smoke and smuts might not be so very bad, after all, or might be driven back by the wind. Of this it was rational to entertain some hopes, as the whole building was in a thorough draught, evinced by many a sneeze and cough,—a condition some of the visitors thought very unnecessary to be endured before the conflagration commenced.

Mr. Phillips now ascended the platform, and commenced his brief lecture. He said he had no sort of intention to undervalue the real service of water in cases of fire, but only to show that water was by no means the most efficient agent. The more active part of fire was flame; all fire commenced with flame, and upon this, when at a great height, water in any portable quantities, was comparatively powerless. Moreover, there were many materials, forming the staple commodity of various trades, which, being ignited, not only defied the power of water, but their state of combustion was actually increased by the application of water. This was the case with oil or turpentine, when on fire, with tar, gas, ardent spirits, &c. Every distiller must know this—and so must every sugar-baker.

Mr. Diggs suddenly shifted his pose from the right to the left leg; but said nothing. This was not the point at issue.

In illustration of his last remark, Mr. Phillips called upon his audience to imagine the hull of the model ship to be a ship at sea with a large crew, many passengers, and a valuable cargo on board,—part of the cargo consisting of highly combustible materials. The ship takes fire! The alarm is given, all hands called on deck, the fire-engine got out, the pumps set to work! But before this has been done, it happens that a cask of spirits of turpentine has taken fire! (So saying, Mr. Phillips sets light to a quantity of spirits of turpentine in an iron vessel in the ship). The flames rise rapidly!—terrifically—they ascend the fore-rigging, which, being all tarred, is quickly in a blaze! Now all is dismay and confusion, more especially among the passengers. Some of these, however, retain sufficient presence of mind to be able to assist the sailors in pumping. They drench the ship with water,—they pour a continual stream from the engine upon the flames of the turpentine! (At these words Mr. Phillips dips a jug in a bucket of water, and pours it upon the flames.) But it only increases them—(it does so)—more water is dashed upon the flames by the men (Mr. Phillips suits the action to the word) and by the boldest of the passengers, but with no better result. Now, 279the fire communicates with a second barrel of spirits of turpentine; the flames rise on all sides, and ascend with a continuous roar to the rigging of the mainmast, which is rapidly in a blaze. (The model ship is literally all in a blaze.) In despair and madness, buckets of water are flung at random—nobody knows what he is doing; all rush wildly about, preparing to leap overboard at the very moment they scream loudest for the boats!—the boats!—when an individual suddenly recollects, as by a flash of thought, that there is a machine on board called a Fire Annihilator. (Here Mr. Phillips seizes upon a small brass machine, out of which he causes a white vapour to issue.) In a second or two the flames are half extinguished;—he carries the machine to the other flaming mast, and to the casks in the forehold,—the flames are gone!

And so they are! Of the volume of flames in the model ship, which by this time had risen to the height of eight or nine feet, not a flash remains,—they were annihilated in four or five seconds. The machine which wrought this wonder was like a brass shaving-pot, or bachelor’s coffee-pot, and certainly not larger.

But how was Mr. Diggs affected by this? Did the worthy sugar-baker look peculiarly wise, or did he stand rather aghast at his own wisdom? Neither the one, nor the other. Had Mr. Phillips been a fine actor, the foregoing scene, with its fiery illustration, and the frantic yet fruitless use of water, would have had a tremendous effect; but his manner was not sufficiently excited, and, worse than this, he very much damaged the effect, and the conviction it would have carried with it, by turning his back towards the audience when he poured the water upon the flames, so that “standing in his own light,” it was impossible for many people to see whether the water was really poured into the model ship, or over the other side, unless they could have seen through his body. This was not lost upon John Diggs, who loudly murmured his dissatisfaction, accordingly, in opposition to the general applause of those who did see, which followed the rapid extinction of the flames. How this was accomplished Mr. Diggs did not know; he simply considered that water had not had fair play. He suspected some trick.

“The existence of water,” pursued Mr. Phillips, “is continuous, flowing, not quickly to be destroyed; the life of fire is momentary. (He explodes a large lucifer-match.) Now you see it at its height! (He dashes it into water). Now it is nothing! Its life is from instant to instant. Why has it become nothing? Because water is its natural antagonist? No—but because fire cannot exist without a certain quantity of air; and when it is entirely immersed in water, this requisite quantity of air is suddenly withdrawn, and the fire as instantly dies. The very same result would follow if I were to dash a lighted match into oil.”

“Let us see!” exclaimed Mr. Diggs; but he was called to order by a number of voices.

Mr. Phillips had been led many years ago, as he now informed us, to consider the nature of fire and water. It so chanced that he had witnessed most of the great conflagrations which have happened in London during the last twenty or thirty years. The destruction to the Royal Exchange, the Houses of Parliament—the fire at the Tower, theatres, great warehouses—he was present at them all; and he could not but observe amidst the prodigious efforts made to save them, that water was comparatively powerless upon violent flames; and therefore inadequate to the task it was called upon to perform. He was also witness of a series of terrible volcanic eruptions. He was in a seventy-four gun-ship in the Mediterranean at the time. For thirty or forty days there was an eruption, and sometimes two or three, almost daily. The most terrific of these—and by which they were nearly lost, having been driven towards it, and only saved by a sudden change of wind—was of such force, that the shock was felt throughout the south of Europe,—from the Rock of Gibraltar, to Stromboli. A volcanic island was thrown up in the middle of the sea, from a depth of four or five hundred feet. This island was of molten lava, and rose in the form of a crescent with an open crater, into which the sea continually rushed like a cataract. But the fire within was not extinguished. At each successive eruption, the water was ejected with a force that sent it up two miles, and sometimes three miles high—again to descend in thousands of tons upon the crater, but without extinguishing the fire. The sea was boiling for a quarter of a mile on one side of the island: the fire was completely beyond its power. Instead of extinguishing fire, the water was made to boil. But he observed this further phenomenon. A dense cloud of vapour was sometimes generated; and whenever the wind bore this vapour into the flames, they were immediately extinguished.

A consideration of these phenomena led Mr. Phillips to the following conclusions. Fire and water are not natural enemies, but very near relations. They are each composed of the same elements; and in the same proportions; the component parts of water can be turned into fire; and when fire ceases to be fire, it becomes water. (This latter proposition caused Mr. Diggs to prick up his ears, but he said nothing.) The two elements had by no means the direct and immediate power over each other that was generally supposed. Water was a compact body, and acting in this body, it could not act simultaneously on the particles of gases which produce flame; but a gaseous vapour being of an equally subtle nature with the gases it has to attack, can instantly intermix with them. Find, therefore, a gaseous vapour, which shall intercept the contact of the gases of flame, and thus prevent 280their chemical union, their inflammatory forces are thereby destroyed, and the flame is at once extinguished.

The means of immediately generating this gaseous vapour had, after numerous experiments during many years, been discovered by Mr. Phillips. With this composition, his machine, called the Fire Annihilator, was charged.

He pointed to the small model house. It was made of iron, and filled with combustible materials. He had had the honour of exhibiting it before many crowned heads.

“Like the Wizard of the North!” muttered Mr. Diggs, looking contemptuously at the model.

The fuel within it, is now ignited. The flames rapidly spread, and ascend to the upper floor. A thick smoke issues from the trap-door on the roof.

“Here,” said Mr. Phillips, “is a house on fire! Some of the inmates are trying to escape by the trap-door on the roof. They make their way out. The fire-escapes of the Royal Society are in attendance with their usual promptitude; their courageous men are ascending the ladders to assist the inmates in their descent. But where are the inmates? Two of them have fallen down somewhere, another has actually got back into the attic. The reason is, that life cannot exist in that smoke which the fire generates.”

A lighted match being held in it, instantly went out. This was repeated quickly, once or twice. It always went out. The interior of the house was full of flames. One of the little Fire Annihilators was now applied to the door of the model. The flames sunk to nothing almost immediately. A thick vapour was left in their place. But in this vapour life can exist. Mr. Phillips again lights a match, and applies it to the vapour issuing through the trap-door. The match continues to burn. Mr. Phillips then thrusts his arm through the door, and holds the match in the interior of the house, where it still continues to burn amidst the vapour. In this vapour human life can equally exist.

“Don’t believe it!” muttered Mr. Diggs, amidst the otherwise unanimous applause, in which was lost his additional request,—“Set fire to the real house, and have done with it!”

Mr. Phillips here described his machine. Its various complications had been reduced to a simple form and action. As he has printed this for general circulation, it will be sufficient to state that the ordinary size is less than that of a small upright iron coal-skuttle, and its weight not greater than can be easily carried by man or woman to any part of the house. It is charged with a compound of charcoal, nitre, and gypsum, moulded into the form of a large brick. The igniter is a glass tube inserted in the top of the brick, inclosing two phials—one filled with a mixture of chlorate of potassa and sugar, the other containing a few drops of sulphuric acid. A slight blow upon a knob drives down a pin, which breaks the phials, and the different mixtures coming in contact, ignite the whole; and the gas of this, acting upon a water chamber contained in the machine, produces a steam, and the whole escapes forcibly in a dense and expanding cloud.

Preparations were now made for setting fire to the three-roomed house. A “sensation” passed over the room, and several ladies began to rise from their chairs, and retire from the semicircle in front of the lecture-stage. Mr. Phillips assured them there was no danger, as he had a perfect command over the flames; at the same time, he requested the company to observe that he had purposely arranged that every disadvantage should be against him. The house was full of combustible materials—the whole building was in a thorough draught (it was indeed) and they would observe that the commencement of the full force of the fire would be almost immediate, and without any of the gradual advances which were usual in almost all conflagrations. Lastly, he called upon them to take note that the fury of the flames would be such that no life could exist near them for a single instant.

Without further words a lighted match is applied to one of the tarred and turpentined shavings that hang in the ground-floor of the house.

It sparkles—blazes—and in one moment the lower room is full of flames! In the next, they have risen to the floor above—they crackle, roar, and beat about, springing up to the roof, and darting out tongues and forks to the right and left of the building, while a dense hot cloud of smoke, full of red fragments of shavings and other embers comes floating and dancing over the heads of the assembled company. Everybody has arisen from his seat,—ladies—gentlemen,—and now all the visitors, are crowding towards the other end of the building! The whole place is filled with the roar of flames, the noise of voices, hurrying feet, and rustling garments—and clouds of hot smoke!

But suddenly a man enters the building from a side-door, bearing a portable Fire Annihilator of the size we have mentioned; he is followed by a second. The machines are vomiting forth a dense white vapour. They enter just within the door-way of the blazing house. A change instantly takes place in the colour and action of the flames, as though they grew pale in presence of their master. They sink. There is nothing but darkness—and the dense white vapour coiling about in triumph.

“Life can now exist!” cries Mr. Phillips, rushing into the house, and ascending the blackened stairs. Mr. Diggs (hoping he might be suffocated) instantly follows. He gains the top of the ladder, and plants one foot on the floor. He cannot see for the thick vapour. The hand of Mr. Phillips assists him, and they both go to the window 281and look out upon the company. Mr. Diggs coughs a little, but, to his disappointment, is not suffocated. In another second or two, he can take his breath freely. Very odd.

Mr. Diggs is more than staggered by such a proof. He begins to suspect there may be something in it. As Mr. Phillips assists the worthy sugar-baker over a piece of very burnt and precarious-looking flooring, out at a side hole in the house, as the stairs are no longer safe, Mr. Diggs thanks him very civilly for his attention, and—he almost adds—for the satisfactory result of this last experiment; but he checked himself. Time would show.

Meanwhile, all was pleasant confusion, and applause, and wonder, and satisfaction, and congratulation, and the re-arrangement of habiliments, and the polishing of smutty faces, and laughing and good humour among the company. With some difficulty, Mr. Diggs discovered his wife, and with almost equal difficulty recognised her after he had found her. She had been honoured more than almost any one else, with the falling embers and black smut of the conflagration. Her pink and fawn-coloured silk shawl was spotted all over, and looked like a leopard-skin; the orange ribbons on her bonnet were speckled, and otherwise toadied, while her face, after a diligent use of her handkerchief (having no glass, or friend to ask), had a complete shady tint all over it, giving her the appearance of one of those complexions of lead colour, presented by unfortunate invalids who have had occasion to undergo a course of nitrate of silver. Many other persons were in a spotty and smutted predicament, but none so bad as poor Mrs. Diggs, except, indeed her husband; but he was insensible to such matters.

Issuing forth into the spacious yard of the gas works, a final demonstration was about to be given to the visitors on their way out. A circular pool, of eighteen feet in circumference, was filled with tar and naphtha. This thick liquid mixture was ignited, and in a few seconds the whole surface sent up a prodigious blaze of great brilliancy. A boy of about eleven years of age (apparently a stranger to the machine, to judge from his awkwardness) was desired to strike down the knob which put the portable Fire Annihilator in action. He did so; and immediately the thick white vapour began to gush forth. The boy carried the machine, with very little effort, to within four or five feet of the flames. Instantly the flames changed colour, as though with a sort of ghastly purple horror of their destroyer—and, in a few seconds, down they sank, and became nothing. There lay the black mixture, looking as if it had never been disturbed. But the machine, meantime, went on vomiting forth its vapour, with surplus power, like the escape-pipe of a steam-engine, and the boy being in a state of confusion, was bringing the machine back among the company assembled round, who all begun to retreat, when somebody connected with the Works told him to let it off against the dead wall. While this was taking place, the same individual remarked aloud, that the vapour could not only be breathed after it had ascended and extinguished a fire, but would not burn even as it gushed forth fresh and furious from the machine. As he said this, he passed his hand through it once or twice. Mr. Diggs suddenly thought he had a last chance,—and, rushing forward, passed his hand (hoping he might be dreadfully scorched) through the fierce vapour as it rushed out. Actually, he was not at all scorched. It was only rather hot. He passed his hand backwards and forwards twice more—a sort of greasy and rather dirty warm moisture covered his hand—this was all. John Diggs was fairly conquered—admitted it to himself—and, seeking out Mr. Phillips, went honestly up to him, and shook him heartily by the hand—saying, with a laugh, that if all was fairly done, and no necromancy, he had witnessed a great fact, and he congratulated him.

Still—in a friendly way—he could not help asking Mr. Phillips for a word of explanation as to his assertion that fire and water were of the same family—in fact, convertible, each into the other. Mr. Phillips accordingly favoured Mr. Diggs with the following remarks:—“Fire,” said he, “is mainly composed of eight parts of oxygen, and one part of hydrogen; thus making a whole of nine parts. When fire ceases to be fire, it becomes water, retaining the same elements and proportions, viz., eight of oxygen and one of hydrogen, and will weigh (if the measure has been in pounds) nine pounds or parts. If you decompose these nine pounds of water by voltaic battery, the gases generated will render eight pounds of oxygen and one of hydrogen. Moreover, this law of nature cannot be deranged or disturbed by human agency. If, to make fire, you take eight parts of oxygen, and two of hydrogen, the false proportion will not prevent the product of fire; for the principle of fire, as if by instinct, will elect its own proper proportions, become fire, and throw over the excess, whether the error be an excess of oxygen or hydrogen.”

“Thank you, Sir—thank you!” said Mr. John Diggs;—but he determined to take a glass of punch with a friend of his, an experimental chemist, that same evening.

Now, taking it for granted that there is no necromancy in all this, it may be asked, how will the discovery affect, not only the Fire Brigade of London, but the use of fire-engines (with hose and water) all over the country, and the civilised world. Will they not be superseded? We answer without hesitation, we think they will by no means be superseded. One great value of this magnificent discovery of Mr. Phillips, consists in its immediate command over the active part of fire, viz., flame: whereby a fire in a large building 282full of combustible materials, a private dwelling, a theatre, or a ship at sea, may be extinguished before it has time to make any very destructive advances. But in all cases where a fire has gained any ascendancy, and extended over a considerable space, the use of water after the flames have been extinguished, continues as important as ever. The red heat which remains on the smouldering and heated materials, may re-ignite; and it is to prevent this, that water is still an imperative requisition. Moreover, water is necessary to drench adjoining chambers, partywalls, or adjoining houses and premises, to prevent their liability to taking fire from the conflagration that has already commenced. We earnestly trust, therefore, that the greatest unanimity will exist in all branches of this great Fire and Water Question, and that they will cordially receive the new Vapour into amicable partnership and co-operation. Fully recognising the immense importance to the community at large, of a body of brave, well-trained, and skilful men, like those of the Fire Brigade, and those who compose the staff of the Fire-Escapes of the Royal Society (and two more efficient and admirable staffs do not exist in this country, or any other country); we think, after Mr. Phillips’s invention has passed through every test that can reasonably be required, that all Fire-engines, and every Fire-escape, would do well to have one or more of these Fire Annihilators with them as a regular part of their apparatus.

Of the Fire-escapes of the Royal Society, the promptitude of their action (they are almost always first at a fire), and the many lives saved by them every year—nay, sometimes, in the course of a week—we had contemplated a substantive account, but have been withheld by the impossibility of doing justice to the various patents without accurate drawings and diagrams. However, as these are already before the public, we may content ourselves by saying, that, whether the Royal Society make use of the Fire-escape invented by Winter and Sons, by Wivell, or by Davies, the humane exertions of the Society have attained a success which commands the admiration, and ensures the gratitude, of society at large.

Respecting the annihilating properties of water, much may be said, and will be said; but all in vain, until the water companies are brought to their senses, and the utter abolition of domestic cisterns and water-butts is effected. Without the continuous supply system—till all the water-pipes in all the houses and all the streets are kept always fully charged at high pressure, conflagrations never will, and never can, be promptly put out by the agency of what the penny-a-liners have lately taken to call the “antagonistic element.” Fire-engines, if not wholly laid aside, must be only kept for exceptional cases, and the Fire Brigade—well conducted, efficient, courageous as it is—may, some of these days, be turned into a corps of reserve. With the mains ever charged, with water at high service, no engines will be required. At the first alarm of fire, the policeman pulls up the fire plug—which should be opposite every sixth or eighth house—fixes the hose, and out spouts a cataract in two minutes. Assistance arrives; trails of hoses are made to lead from the rows of plugs on either side, or in other streets, and in five minutes a deluge—and no more fire.

For the extinguishing of fire, time is a most important consideration. A few gallons of water would be effective if used at once, where thousands of gallons would effect little after ten or fifteen minutes had elapsed. The average time the Brigade engines take in arriving at a fire after the first alarm is ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, rapid as are their movements. The Parish engines are far more numerous, but always last—and seldom of any use when they do come. Conceive a parish beadle at a fire!

In some towns in the north—among others Preston, Oldham, Ashton, Bolton, Bury, and Manchester—the continuous water supply system has been in use for some time with manifest benefit to the inhabitants. The fire plug and jet, without engines, have, in these places, already done great execution. Under recent improvements, also, the same plans have been adopted in Hamburgh; Philadelphia and other American towns have, in their wisdom, “done likewise.” On one occasion, at Liverpool, a fire was extinguished by a hose which was promptly applied; a fire-engine arrived presently after, when the engine-man, finding the fire had been extinguished, knocked the hoseman down, as an impertinent fellow.

In factories, and other large buildings, if an arrangement of the above kind were adopted, on the first alarm of fire a man would only have to unwind a hose, and turn a cock. This, with one of the Fire Annihilators at hand, would probably render the building quite secure.

These improvements and precautions carry with them a variety of interesting consequences,—such as the check to incendiarism, the effect on insurances, the benefit to health by the plug and hose being used daily in washing the streets, and thus destroying foul exhalations after a storm, &c.

While bringing this paper to a conclusion, we learn that Mr. John Diggs has determined to have a self-acting Fire Annihilator fixed in a central position of his warehouse; so that if a fire should burst out in the night, the flames would melt one or other of a series of leaden wires, any one of which being thus divided, would liberate a heavy weight, which would instantly run down an iron wire leading to the knob and pin of his special Annihilator—ignite the contents of the machine, and destroy the flames in his sugar-bakery, while he slept soundly in his bed.

IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER VIII.

The spectacle of carrying the Good Lady up to the brow was more terrifying to the people of Bleaburn than any of the funerals they had seen creeping along by the same path,—more even than the passage of the laden cart, with the pall over it, on the morning of the opening of the new burying-grounds. The people of Bleaburn, extremely ignorant, were naturally extremely superstitious. It was not only the very ignorant who were superstitious. The fever itself was never supposed to be more catching than a mood of superstition; and so it now appeared in Bleaburn. For many weeks past the Good Lady had been regarded as a sort of talisman in the people’s possession. She breathed out such cheerfulness wherever she turned her face, that it seemed as if the place could not go quite to destruction while she was in it. Some who would not have admitted to themselves that they held such an impression were yet infected with the common dismay, as well as with the sorrow of parting with her. If Mary had had the least idea of the probable effect of her departure, she would have been less admired by the Kirbys for her docility,—for she would certainly have insisted on staying where she was.

“I declare I don’t know what to do,” the doctor confessed in confidence to the clergyman. “Every patient I have is drooping, and the people in the street look like creatures under doom. The comet was bad enough; and, before we have well done with it, here is a panic which is ten times worse.”

“I tried to lend a hand to help you against the comet,” replied Mr. Kirby. “I think I may be of some use again now. Shall I tell them it is a clear case of idolatry?”

“Why, it is in fact so, Mr. Kirby; but yet, I shrink from appearing to cast the slightest disrespect on her.”

“Of course; of course. The thing I want to show them is what she would think,—how shocked she would be if she knew the state of mind she left behind.”

The Doctor replied by a look, which made Mr. Kirby shake his head. Neither of them liked to say in words how awful was the state of things.

“It is such weather you see,” said the Doctor. “Damp and disagreeable as it is, this December is as warm as September.”

“Five-and-twenty sorts of flowers out in my garden,” observed Mr. Kirby. “I set the boys to count them yesterday. We shall have as many as that on Christmas-day. A thing unheard of!”

“I don’t know that. My wife and I were talking it over yesterday. We think * * Well, my boy,” to a little fellow who stood pulling his forelock, “what have you to say to me? I am wanted at home, am I? Is Mrs. Kirby there?”

The Doctor heard him say to himself, “Thank God!” when they saw the lady coming out of a cottage near. The Doctor had long suspected that the clergyman and his wife were as sensible of one another’s danger as the most timid person in Bleaburn was of his own; and now he was sure of it. Henceforth, he understood that they were never easy out of one another’s sight; and that when the clergyman was sent for from the houses he was passing, his first idea always was that his wife was taken ill. It was so. They were not people of sentiment. They had settled their case with readiness and decision, when it first presented itself to them; and they never looked back. But it did not follow that they did not feel. They agreed, with the smallest possible delay, that they ought to succeed to the charge of Bleaburn on Mr. Finch’s death; that they ought to place their boys at school, and their two girls with their aunt till Bleaburn should be healthy again; and that they must stand or fall by the duty they had undertaken. As for separating, that was an idea mentioned only to be dismissed. They now nodded across the little street, as Mrs. Kirby proceeded on her round of visits, and her husband went home, to see who wanted him there.

In the corner of the little porch was a man sitting, crouching and cowering as if in bodily pain. Mr. Kirby went up to him, stooped down to see his face (but it was covered with his hands), and at last ventured to remove his hat. Then the man looked up. It was a square, hard face, which from its make would have seemed immovable; but it was anything but that now. It is a strange sight, the working of emotion in a countenance usually as hard as marble!

“Not yet, Sir; not yet, Mr. Kirby. But Lord save us! we know nothing of how soon it may be so.”

“Exactly so: that has been the case of every man, woman, and child, hour by hour since Adam fell.”

“Yes, Sir; but the present time is something different from that. I came, Sir, to say * * I came, Mr. Kirby, because I can get no peace or rest, day or night; for thoughts, Sir; for thoughts.”

Neale followed him in; but instead of sitting down, he walked straight to the window, and seemed to be looking into the garden. Mr. Kirby, who had been on foot all the morning, sat down and waited, shaving away at a pen meanwhile.

284“On Sunday, Sir,” said Neale at last, in a whispering kind of voice, “you read that I have kept back the hire of the labourers that reaped down my fields, and that their cry has entered into the ears of the Lord.”

“That you kept back the hire of the labourer?” exclaimed Mr. Kirby, quickly turning in his seat, so as to face his visitor. He laid his hand on the pocket-bible on the table, opened at the Epistle of James, and, with his finger on the line, walked to the window with it.

“Yes, Sir, that is it,” said Neale. “I would return the hire I kept back,—(I can’t exactly say by fraud, for it was from hardness)—I would pay it all willingly now; but the men are dead. The fever has left but a few of them.”

“I see,” said Mr. Kirby. “I see how it is. You think the fever is dogging your heels, because the cries of your labourers have entered into the ears of the Lord. You want to buy off the complaints of the dead, and the anger of God, by spending now on the living. You are afraid of dying; and you would rather part with your money, dearly as you love it, than die; and so you are planning to bribe God to let you live.”

When they came to look closely into the matter, it was clear enough. Neale, driven from his accustomed methods and employments, and from his profits, and all his outward reliances, was adrift and panic-stricken. When the Good Lady was carried out of the hollow, the last security seemed gone, and the place appeared to be delivered over to God’s wrath; his share of which, his conscience showed him to be pointed out in the words of scripture which had so impressed his mind, and which were ringing in his ears, as he said, day and night.

“As for the Good Lady,” said Mr. Kirby, “I am sure I hope she will never hear how some of the people here regard her, after all she has done for them. If anything could bow her spirit, it would be that.” Seeing Neale stare in surprise, he went on. “One would think she was a kind of witch or sorceress; that there was some sort of magic about her; instead of her being a sensible, kind-hearted, fearless woman, who knows how to nurse, and is not afraid to do it when it is most wanted.”

“Certainly; as he sent the Doctor, and my wife and me: as he sends people to each other whenever they meet. I am sure you never heard the Good Lady say that she was specially sent.”

“She is so humble,—so natural, Sir,—she was not likely to say such a thing.”

“Very true: and she is too wise to think it. No—there is nothing to be frightened about in her going away. She could have done no good here, while unable to walk or sit up; and she will recover better where she is gone. If she recovers, as I expect she will, she will come and see us; and I shall think that as good luck as you can do; not because she carries luck about with her, but because there is nothing we so much want as her example of courage, and sense and cheerfulness.”

“To be sure,” said Neale, in a meditative way, “she could not keep the people from dying.”

“No indeed,” observed Mr. Kirby; “you and some others took care that she should not.”

“I know them well,—too well. Neale, your conscience accuses you about the hire of your labourers: but you have done worse things than oppress them about wages. Part of the mischief you may be unaware of; but I know you are not of all. I know that Widow Slaney speaks to you, year by year, about repairing that wretched place she lives in. Have you done it yet? Not you! I need not have asked; and yet you screw that poor woman for her rent till she cannot sleep at night for thinking of it. You know in your heart that what she says is true,—that if her son was alive,—(and it was partly your hardness that sent him to the wars, and to his terrible fate)—”

“Stop, Sir! I cannot bear it!” exclaimed Neale. “Sir, you should not bear so hard on me. I have a son that met another bad fate at the wars: and you know it, Mr. Kirby.”

“To be sure I do. And how do you treat him? You drove him away by harshness; and now you say he shall not come back, because you cannot be troubled with a cripple at home.”

“Not now, Sir. I say no such thing now. When I said that, I was in a bad mood. I mean to be kind to him now: and I have told him so:—that is, I have said so to the girl he is attached to.”

“You have? You have really seen her, and shown respect to the young people?”

“Well: that is so far good. That is some foundation laid for a better future.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Kirby, shaking his head; “that is what can never be done. The people, as you say, are dead: the misery is suffered: the mischief is done, and cannot be undone. It is a lie, and a very fatal one, to say that past sins may be atoned for.”

“I must say it, because it is true. You said yourself that you cannot make it up to those you have injured, because the men are 285dead. What is that you are saying? that you wish the fever had taken you; and you could go now and shoot yourself? Before you dare to say such things, you should look at the other half of the case. Is not the future greater than the past, because we have power over it? And is there not a good text somewhere about forgetting the things that are behind, and pressing forwards to those that are before?”

“Well: you see you have scripture warrant for trying. But then the pressing forwards to better things must go with it. If you forget the past, and go on the same as ever, you might as well be in hell at once. Then, I don’t know that your shooting yourself would do much harm to anybody.”

“But, Sir, I am willing to do all I can. I am willing to spend all I have. I am, indeed.”

“Well, spend away,—money, time, thought, kindness,—till you can fairly say that you have done by everybody as you would be done by! It will be time enough then to think what next. And, first, about these cottages of yours. If no more people are to die in them, murdered by filth and damp, you have no time to lose. You must not sit here, talking remorse, and planning fine deeds, but you must set the work going this very day. Come! let us go and see.”

Farmer Neale walked rather feebly through the hall: so Mr. Kirby called him into the parlour, and gave him a glass of wine. Still, as they went down the street, one man observed to another, that Neale looked ten years older in a day. He looked round him, however, with some signs of returning spirits, when he saw the boys at their street-cleaning, and observed, that hereabouts things looked wholesome enough.

“Mere outside scouring,” said Mr. Kirby. “Better than dirt, as far as it goes; unless, indeed, it makes us satisfied to have whited sepulchres for dwellings. Come and see the uncleanness within.”

Mr. Kirby did not spare him. He took him through all the seven cottages, for which he had extorted extravagant rents, without fulfilling any conditions on his own part. He showed him every bit of broken roof, of damp wall, of soaked floor. He showed him every heap of filth, every puddle of nastiness caused by there being no drains, or other means of removal of refuse. He advised him to make a note of every repair needed; and, when he saw that Neale’s hand shook so that he could not write, took the pencil from his hand, and did it himself. Two of the seven cottages he condemned utterly: and Neale eagerly agreed to pull them down, and rebuild them with every improvement requisite to health. To the others he would supply what was wanting, and especially drainage. They stood in such a cluster that it was practicable to drain them all into a gully of the rock which, by being covered over, by a little building up at one end, and a little blasting at one side, might be made into a considerable tank, which was to be closed by a tight-fitting, and very heavy slab at top. Mr. Kirby conceded so much to the worldly spirit of the man he had to deal with, as to point out that the manure thus saved would so fertilise his fields as soon to repay the cost of this batch of drainage. Neale did not care for this at the moment. He was too sore at heart at the spectacle of these cottages and their inmates,—too much shaken by remorse and fear,—for any idea of profit and loss: but Mr. Kirby thought it as well to point out the fact, as it might help to animate the hard man to proceed in a good work, when his present melting mood should be passing away.

“Well: I think this is all we can do to-day,” said Mr. Kirby, as they issued from the seventh cottage. “The worst of it is, the workmen from O—— will not come,—I am afraid no builder will come, even to make an estimate—till we are declared free of fever. But there is a good deal that your own people can do.”

“They can knock on a few slates before dark, Sir; and those windows can be mended to-day. I trust, Mr. Kirby, you will give me encouragement; and not be harder than you can help.”

“Why, Neale; the thing is this. You do not hold your doom from my hand; and you ought not to hang upon my words. You come to me to tell me what you feel, and to ask what I think. All I can do is to be honest with you, and (as indeed I am) sorry for you. Time must do the rest. If you are now acting well from fear of the fever only, time will show you how worthless is the effort; for you will break off as soon as the fright has passed away. If you really mean to do justly and love mercy, through good and bad fortune, time will prove you there, too: and then you will see whether I am hard, or whether we are to be friends. This is my view of the matter.”

Neale touched his hat, and was slowly going away, when Mr. Kirby followed him, to say one thing more.

“It may throw light to yourself, on your own state of mind, to tell you that it is quite a usual one among people who have deeply sinned, when any thing happens to terrify them. Histories of earthquakes and plagues tell of people thinking and feeling as you do to-day. I dare say you think nobody ever felt the same before; but you are not the only one in Bleaburn.”

“Far from it. A person who has often robbed your poultry-yard, and taken your duck eggs, thought that I was preaching at him, last Sunday; though I knew nothing about it. He wished to make reparation; and he asked me if I thought you would 286forgive him. Do you really wish to know my answer? I told him I thought you would not: but that he must confess and make reparation, nevertheless.”

“I did: and I think so now, thus far. You would say and believe that you forgave him: but, at odd times, for years to come, you would show him that you had not forgotten it, and remind him that you had a hold over him. If not,—if I do you injustice in this, I should——”

“Well, just think it over, before he comes to you. This is the only confession made to me which it concerns you to hear: but I assure you, I believe there is not an evil doer in Bleaburn that is not sick at heart as you are; and for the same reason. We all have our pains and troubles; and yours may turn out a great blessing to you,—or a curse, according as you persevere or give way.”

Neale said to himself as he went home, that Mr. Kirby had surely been very hard. If a man hanged for murder was filled with hope and triumph, and certainty of glory, there must be some more speedy comfort for him than the pastor had held out. Yet, in his inmost heart, he felt that Mr. Kirby was right; and he could not for the life of him, keep away from him. He managed to meet him every day. He could seldom get a word said about the state of his mind; for Mr. Kirby did not approve of people’s talking of their feelings,—and especially of those connected with conscience: but in the deeds which issued from conscientious feelings, he found cordial assistance given. And Farmer Neale sometimes fancied that he could see the time,—far as it was ahead—when Mr. Kirby and he might be, as the pastor had himself said,—friends.

The amount of confession and remorse opened out to the pastor was indeed striking, and more affecting to him than he chose to show to anybody but his wife; and not even to her did he tell many of the facts. The mushroom resolutions spawned in the heat of panic were offensive and discouraging to him: but there were better cases than these. A man who had taken into wrath with a neighbour about a gate, and had kept so for years, and refused to go to church lest he should meet him there, now discovered that life is too short for strife, and too precarious to be wasted in painful quarrels. A little girl whispered to Mr. Kirby that she had taken a turnip in his field without leave, and got permission to weed the great flower-bed without pay, to make up for it. Simpson and Sally asked him to marry them; and for poor Sally’s sake, he was right glad to do it. They were straightforward enough in their declaration of their reasons. Simpson thought nobody’s life was worth a halfpenny now, and he did not wish to be taken in his sins: while Sally said it would be worse still if the innocent baby was taken for its parents’ sin. They had to hear the publication of banns, at a time when other people were thinking of anything but marriage; and, when the now disused church was unlocked to admit them to the altar,—just themselves and the clerk,—it was very dreary; but they immediately after felt the safer and better for it. Sally thought the Good Lady would have gone to church with her, if she had been here; and she wished she could let her know that Simpson had fulfilled his promise at last. Other people besides Sally wished they could let the Good Lady know how they were going on;—how frost came at last, in January, and stopped the fever;—how families who had lived crowded together now spread themselves into the empty houses; and how there was so much room that the worst cottages were left uninhabited, or were already in course of demolition, to make airy spaces, or afford sites for better dwellings; and how it was now certain that above two-thirds of the people of Bleaburn had perished in the fever, or by decline, after it. But they did not think of getting anybody who could write to tell all this to the Good Lady: nor did it occur to them that she might possibly know it all. The men and boys collected pretty spars for her; and the women and girls knitted gloves and comforters, and made pincushions for her, in the faith that they should some day see her again. Meanwhile, they talked of her every day.

CHAPTER IX, AND LAST.

It was a fine spring day when the Good Lady re-appeared at Bleaburn. There she was, perfectly well, and glad to see health on so many of the faces about her. Some were absent whom she had left walking about in the strength of their prime; but others whom she had last seen lying helpless, like living skeletons, were now on their feet, with a light in their eyes, and some little tinge of colour in their cheeks. There were sad spectacles to be seen of premature decrepitude, of dreadful sores, of deafness, of lameness, left by the fever. There were enough of these to have saddened the heart of any stranger entering Bleaburn for the first time, but to Mary, the impression was that of a place risen from the dead. There was much grass in the churchyard, and none in the streets: the windows of the cottages were standing wide, letting it be seen that the rooms were white-washed within. There was an indescribable air of freshness and brightness about the whole place, which made her feel and say that she hardly thought the fever could harbour there again. As she turned into the lane leading to her aunt’s, the sound of the hammer, and the chipping of stone were heard; and some workmen whom she did not know, turned from their work of planing boards, to see why a crowd could be coming round the corner. These were workmen from O——, building Neale’s new cottages, in capital style. And, for a moment, two young ladies 287entering from the other end, were equally perplexed as to what the extraordinary bustle could mean. Their mother, however, understood it at a glance, and hastened forward to greet the Good Lady, sending a boy to fetch Mr. Kirby immediately. Mrs. Kirby’s dryness of manner broke down altogether when she introduced her daughters to Mary. “Let them say they have shaken hands with you,” said she, as she herself kissed the hand she held.

It was not easy for Mary to spare a hand, so laden was she with pincushions and knitted wares; but the Kirbys took them from her, and followed in her train, till the Widow Johnson appeared on her threshold, pale as marble, and grave as a monument, but well and able to hold out her arms to Mary. Poor Jem’s excitement seemed to show that he was aware that some great event was happening. His habits were the same as before his illness, and he had no peace till he had shut the door when Mary entered. Everybody then went away for the time; plenty of eyes, however, being on the watch for the moment when the Good Lady should be visible again.

In a few minutes, the movements of Jem’s head showed his mother that, as she said, something was coming. Jem’s hearing was uncommonly acute: and what he now heard, and what other people heard directly after, was a drum and fife. Neighbour after neighbour came to tell the Johnsons what their ears had told them already,—that there was a recruiting party in Bleaburn again; and Jem went out, attracted by the music.

“It is like the candle to the moth to him,” said his mother. “I must go and see that nobody makes sport of him, or gives him drink.”

“Sit still, Aunty; I will go. And there is Warrender, I see, and Ann. We will take care of Jem.”

And so they did. Ann looked so meaningly at Mary, meantime, as to make Mary look inquiringly at Ann.

“Only, Ma’am,” said Ann, “that Sally Simpson is standing yonder. She does not like to come forward, but I know she would be pleased.”

“Her name is Simpson? How glad I am he has married her!” whispered Mary, as she glanced at the ring which Sally was rather striving to show. “I hope you are happy at last, Sally.”

“Oh, Ma’am, it is such a weight gone! And I do try to make him happy at home, that he may never repent.”

Mary thought the doubt should be all the other way—whether the wife might not be the most likely to repent having bound herself to a man who could act towards her as Simpson had done. Widow Slaney was not to be seen. The fife and drum had sent her to the loft. She came down to see Mary; but her agitation was so great that it would have been cruelty to stay. They heard her draw the bolt as they turned from the door.

“She does not like seeing Jack Neale any more than hearing the drum,” observed the host of the Plough and Harrow, who had come forth to invite the Good Lady in, ‘to take a glass of something.’ “That is Jack Neale, Ma’am; that wooden-legged young man. He is married, though, for all his being so crippled. The young woman loved him before; and she loves him all the more now; and they married last week, and live at his father’s. It must be a sad sight to his father; but he says no word about it. Better not; for Britons must be loyal.”

“And why not?” said the Doctor, who had hastened in from the brow, on seeing that something unusual was going forward below, and had ventured to offer the Good Lady his arm, as he thought an old comrade in the conflict with sickness and death might do.

“Why not?” said the Doctor. “We make grievous complaints of the fatality of war; and it is sad to see the maiming and hear of the slaughter. But we had better spend our lamentations on a fatality that we can manage. It would take many a battle of Albuera to mow us down, and hurt us in sense and limb, as the fever has done.”

“True, yes,” continued the Doctor. “I don’t like the sight of a recruiting party, or the sound of the drum much better than the poor woman in yonder house, who will die of heart-break after all—of horror and pining for her son. But there is something that I like still less; the first giddiness and trembling of the strong man, the sinking feebleness of the young mother, the dimming of the infant’s eyes; and the creeping fog along the river-bank, the stench in the hot weather, and the damp in the cold, that tell us that fever has lodged among us. I know then that we shall have, many times over, the slaughter of war, without any comfort from thoughts of glory to ourselves or duty to our country. There is neither glory nor duty in dying like vermin in a ditch.”

“I don’t see,” said Warrender, “that the sergeant will carry off any of our youngsters now. If he had come with his drum three months since, some might have gone with him to get away from the fever, as a more terrible thing than war; but at present I think he will find that death has left us no young men to spare.”

And so it proved. The sergeant and his party soon marched up to the brow, and disappeared, delivering the prophecy that Bleaburn would now lose its reputation for eagerness to support king and country. And in truth, Bleaburn was little heard of from that time till the peace.

Mary could not stay now. She had been detained very long from home—in America—and somebody was waiting very impatiently 288there to give her a new and happy home. This is said as if we were speaking of a real person—and so we are. There was such a Mary Pickard; and what she did for a Yorkshire village in a season of fever is TRUE.

A CHILD’S TALE.

An old woman went into a wood to gather fagots. As she was breaking, with much difficulty, one very long, tough branch across her knee, a splinter went into her hand. It made a wound from which the blood flowed, but she bound her hand up with a ragged handkerchief, and went home to her hut.

Now this old woman was very cross, because she had hurt herself; and therefore when she arrived home and saw her little granddaughter, Ellie, singing and spinning, she was very glad that there was somebody to punish. So she told little Ellie that she was a minx, and beat her with a fagot. But the old woman had for a long time depended for support upon her granddaughter, and the daily bread had never yet been wanting from her table.

Then this old woman told little Ellie that she was to untie the handkerchief and dress the wound upon her hand.

And that was a thing not to be wondered at, for when the bandage was unrolled, one half of it was found to be made of a thick golden tissue. And there was a lump of gold in the old woman’s hand, where otherwise a blood clot might have been.

At all this Ellie was not much surprised, because she knew little of gold, and as her grandmother was very yellow outside, it appeared to her not unlikely that she was yellow the whole way through.

But the sun now shone into the little room, and Ellie started with delight: “Look at the beautiful bright beetles there among the fagots!” She had often watched the golden beetles, scampering to and fro, near a hot stone upon the rock. “Ah, this is very odd!” said little Ellie, seeing that the bright specks did not move. “These poor insects must be all asleep!”

But the old woman, who had fallen down upon her knees before the wood, bade Ellie go into the town and sell the caps that she had finished; not forgetting to bring home another load of flax.

Grannie, when left to herself, made a great many curious grimaces. Then she scratched another wound into her hand, and caused the blood to drop among the fagots. Then she hobbled and screamed, endeavouring, no doubt, all the while to dance and sing. It was quite certain that her blood had the power of converting into gold whatever lifeless thing it dropped upon.

For many months after this time little Ellie continued to support her grandmother by daily toil. The old woman left off fires, although it was cold winter weather, and the snow lay thick upon the cottage roof. Ellie must jump to warm herself, and her grandmother dragged all the fagots into her own bedroom. Ellie was forbidden ever again to make Grannie’s bed, or to go into the old woman’s room on any account whatever. Grannie’s head was always in a bandage; and it never required dressing. Grannie could not hurt Ellie so much now when she used the stick, her strength was considerably lessened.

One day, this old woman did not come out to breakfast; and she made no answer when she was called to dinner; and Ellie, when she listened through a crevice, could not hear her snore. She always snored when she was asleep, so Ellie made no doubt she must be obstinate.

When the night came, Ellie was frightened, and dared not sleep until she had peeped in.

There was a stack of golden fagots; and her grandmother was on the floor quite white and dead.

When she alarmed her neighbours they all came together, and held up their hands and said, “What a clever miser this old woman must have been!” But when they looked at little Ellie, as she sat weeping on the pile of gold, they all quarrelled among each other over the question, Who should be her friend?

A good spirit came in the night, and that was Ellie’s friend; for in the morning all her fagots were of wood again.

Nobody then quarrelled for her love; but she found love, and was happy; because nobody thought it worth while to deceive her.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Household Words, No. 12, June 15, 1850

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

OLD LAMPS FOR NEW ONES.

SAVINGS’ BANK DEFALCATIONS.

THE SUMMER SABBATH.

NEWSPAPER ANTECEDENTS.

THE ROYAL ROTTEN ROW COMMISSION.

A VILLAGE TALE.

THE FIRE ANNIHILATOR

THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.

IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX, AND LAST.

THE REVENGE OF ÆSOP.

THE GOLDEN FAGOTS.

A CHILD’S TALE.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Household Words, No. 12, June 15, 1850

HOUSEHOLD WORDS. A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

OLD LAMPS FOR NEW ONES.

SAVINGS’ BANK DEFALCATIONS.

THE SUMMER SABBATH.

NEWSPAPER ANTECEDENTS.

THE ROYAL ROTTEN ROW COMMISSION.

A VILLAGE TALE.

THE FIRE ANNIHILATOR

THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.

IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX, AND LAST.

THE REVENGE OF ÆSOP.

THE GOLDEN FAGOTS.

A CHILD’S TALE.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.