The Sister of Charity; or, From Bermondsey to Belgravia

Chapter I

The Pawnbroker's Shop— The Railway "Rough"— The Gin Palace — The Poor Parson — The Magdalen that can't be — The Starving Artist and his chef-d'oeuvre. On a bleak night of November, a few people stood round the doorway of a house in one of the most poverty-stricken neighbourhoods of London. This doorway was the entrance of sin and woe; of the latter as the frequent precursor to the former : — in fact, it was a pawnbroker's shop. Tears now dropped on its threshold from the eyes of a young, but emaciated woman, whose shoulders were scarcely covered by a patched and faded gown. In her arms she clutched a sleeping babe; a shawl partly screened the little unconscious one from the cold wind; but the next moment it was suddenly VOL. I. B pulled off by the mother, who, with fearful reso lution, a resolution that burnt up her tears and caused her eye to gleam in its sunken socket, exchanged this, her best garment, for the means wherewith to buy a morsel of bread.

As she came out, she met a man dressed in a worn and dirty suit of corduroy; but, despite this, and a face telling a tale of gin and rum, it needed not the agricultural implements he carried to identify his stalwart figure with the notion of one of England's peasantry. He would have passed the woman without noticing her ; but, pulling him by the sleeve, and drawing him beneath the light of the street-lamp, she looked, with a wild smile, into his face, and showed him the little pieces of silver in her hand. " You won't take those there to-night, husband ?" she said in a low husky voice, first pointing to the tools he held, and then to the shop, " see, here is enough for the children and us until to-morrow," and again she rattled together the few small coins. "With a half inaudible oath, he broke away from her feeble grasp, and entered the pawnbroker's. Eor a moment she stood still, but was aroused by the wail of the child, who seemed about to awaken beneath the influence of the cold ; involuntarily, as it were the mother hushed it ; then, as by a sharp sudden pang of recollection, and with a hysteric sob, hurried away through the gloom.

The whole truth was easy to conjecture at a glance. The man had been tempted by higher wages to leave the country, and work at the railway, not a hundred yards from this squalid street ; that he had had his discharge, with other supernumeraries a few days since, and now, having spent his wages in the manner so easily and fatally suggested in this huge metropolis, he wanted more money. To do what with? To feed that worn and wretched woman with the infant at her breast ? To carry nourishment to the half-naked children, grovelling together on the floor of the one sickly chamber ? To emancipate them from the overcrowded lodging-house, and carry them back to the country, to the green fields and the blue sky, away from the stifling, fever-laden, and utterly demoralizing air they breathe ? No, he wanted it as the passport back again to the infernal region he had just quitted, as the means to stand again beneath the bright intoxicating glare of the gas lights, to listen once more to the prostituted and, therefore, soul polluting schemes of liberty and equality suggested there ; in short, he wanted it as the refuge of despair at the gin palace.

The wife, in the meanwhile, divided the loaf at home — if home for childhood that may be deemed where irreverence, debauchery, and drunkenness abound. And now, reader, if not too much disconcerted b by the gloom, the cold, the poverty, and the vice, you will staDd with me beneath the very lamp which just now threw its gleam on the wretched woman and her husband, watching who next crosses that fatal threshold. A middle aged man approaches in a rusty suit of black. Around his throat is a limp, ill-tied, once white 'kerchief. He pauses as if fearful of observation, and as he turns his face, you may observe how different is its expression from that of the last customer; aye, different as the cut and colour of his coat. Suffering — deep, long, anxious, and terrible, may be read there at a glance, but not a trace of vice.

In fact, the intelligence also legible there, might, possibly, alone have preserved him from the moral degradation of self indulgence : nevertheless, I can scarcely admit this as a probability. How many instances may be quoted of the impatience, the cunning, the danger, of intelligence alone, when unsupported and animated by a higher grace ! That the latter has been given to this man may be inferred from his calling. His calling ? Y"es ! you well may start — he is an ordained Priest of the Church of England. His sad story may be told by a few strokes • alas ! that pen and pencil should so often have to draw such from the life! First, the vain efforts to be just, charitable, and even liberal as an under-paid, over-tasked curate; then an abortive attempt to gain pupils in this great city of competition (even in the hiring out brains) where so many have arrived in hope and died in despair ; the utter inadequacy of the paltry pittance doled out once a week by a plethoric pluralist, as remunerative for all release from labour in his rich corner of the Vineyard ; a delicate, sensitive, yet hard work ing wife ; and children half starving, are a few of the horrors, the incongruities, the seeming anomalies, by which we, in this so vaunted high state of civilization, are surrounded.

Well, here is the sequel to this chapter of every day life in the fact of this poor clergyman, stealing, beneath the shades of night, to part with his watch at the pawnbroker's shop. The tradesman and his customer think they are unobserved; but, it is easy for us, by the magic of truth, to see the cold speculation, the long chilled callous heart on one side the counter, and the tremulous shame, varying the hue of the sunken cheek, on the other; of sorrow, too, (a childish regret it may seem to some to find a place amid so many stern miseries) in parting with the old companion, the monitor of college hours, of happier times, of bridal hopes, of many serious duties. The watch is pawned. Pass on, poor minister ! Go on your way home ! Defray your landlord's demands for the humble roof which shelters you, the citizen of another world, for whom, it may be, a mansion above is prepared.

Who knows but you are one of those, still to inherit the earth? Who knows but that bright angels are hovering near you in your passage through this miserable alley? Go on, thou man, ordained to bless your fellow mortals, to speak to them the glad tidings of the Eternal Truth — and, ye rich men, will ye 'howl and weep?' Now, perhaps, you are tired of waiting for more revelations of poverty ; perhaps you would rather sink down in the soft cushioned chair of the pros perous man's library, from whence this poor brother's wrongs are carefully excluded, or taught to tread softly on the thick carpet, and are kept in the back ground of luscious half-subdued light? If so, let me not weary by detaining you here longer, although I am determined to wait and see if any one else come this way to-night. You will still be my com. panion?

Very well— then look yonder. Alas! are uot these bye streets free from the footfall of dis honoured woman ? Two approach, whose appearance and calling cannot be doubted, though different types of their most unhappy class ; — the one, bold, painted, tawdry ; the other wan, delicate, and fragile. The only bond linking these females together, is their common degradation, and yet, though equally branded by Society, what discrepancy is evident between them ! The one resembles Jezabel ; her evil power over man is, and her end may probably be the same. Will the other become a Magdalen? Will there not appear, in the good time, the fitting means to save her, to pull her forth from the deep dark abyss ? Woman holy ! is surely the appropriate earthly instrument to rescue woman fallen. A sister's support, sympathy, courage, gentleness, self-denial, and utmost self-abnegation are needed here.

This poor deluded one needs all these to aid her in forsaking and repenting; necessity, the recklessness of the sex when outraged, of forsaken love, and crushed hopes ; nay, even the commands and threats of the demoniacal into whose hands she has fallen, impel her forward in her wretched course. Think of this, your mighty work, daughters of England. Think of the power and responsibility vested in you, Christian Mothers, chaste Matrons. Think, above all, oh ! ye vain, exacting, or lovers of competition and low prices in the mart and the work-room, think of your share in adding to the foul dregs of this iniquity. Enlarge your hearts and sympathies ; fling from you your narrow-minded prejudices ; blush not only, but frame, devise, enlarge, prevent, and rescue. Your co-operation is mostly needed here.

In the meanwhile, the two women have entered the pawnbroker's. In answer to a rough hint from her companion, the frail girl unclasps a pair of rings from ears moulded delicately enough to tell a tale of gentle parentage. After a minute, with a sigh and half abstracted look, she hands their value to the other woman. The latter now presents, with a guilty, furtive glance, a dozen fine cambric handkerchiefs. It is not this tradesman's custom to ask questions ; but, while he looks in their corners for signs of ownership, a cunning look of intuitive comprehension passes over his face. He seems glad to add them to his varied hoard, and his customers depart. Scarcely have they gone, than another takes their place, carrying a square and seemingly heavy parcel. His figure is almost too slight; his countenance peculiarly attractive to any who know how to read it as the history of the soul within.

Scarcely looking towards the owner and occupant of the shop, he proceeds, with the precision of painful determination, to remove the wrapper of his recent burthen ; which turns out to be a picture. For a moment, he gazes on it lovingly, remorse fully, then, as if startled, or rebuked by the impatient voice of his companion, he turns himself and his treasure towards the light. And what a double subject of contemplation is thus revealed ! First, the artist, with his slightly drooping and attenuated form, needing not the pale cheek to tell of anxious thought, of profound study, of frequent physical want. A real artist, he looks, in every sense of the word ; not from the affectation of singularity in small outward things, by which so many young students pretend to demonstrate their calling, but by the evident absence of that thought of self, the presence of which such affectation betrays.

The deep, earnest, sunken eye looks as if often in communion with nature and her sublime mys teries ; as if accustomed, too, to look upward to the eternal source of these. The lofty brow is stamped by the just uses of affliction, and the triumph of self abnegation; even now, in such a place, in the moment of some extreme and evident necessity, there rests not one shade of shame upon it. No, by the power of some inward strength, he seems to rise beyond it, and even to tower above the refinement of a sensitive nature which has helped, undoubtedly, to blend the soft and exquisite tints of the landscape he exposes to view. The product of his pencil is beau tiful. The clouds, the trees, the water, the sunlight, and the shadows, are pourtrayed by the masterly hand of the unwearying and constant student of all these. b Even the critic to whom they are now unfolded seems, for an instant, startled by the force of genius, and turns the gas-light harshly on its subject, as if hoping, for his pocket's sake, to find or produce, a flaw.

But this, even artificial light and cunning cannot do, or pretend ; so, sullenly, as if foiled by superior power, he hands some gold to the artist, and clutches that which is worth, even if estimated by money value alone, more than twenty times the amount. The painter, however, does not complain, nor does he speak at all. With one more glance towards his picture, he silently takes the gold, and walks away. Whither ? I, for one, shall follow him. I am in pursuit of life scenes, and may as well go this man's way as any other. Better, for he is modest and heroic. I