CHAPTER EIGHT. The people of the abyss, | ||
8. CHAPTER EIGHT.
The Carter and the Carpenter.
It is not to die, nor even to die of hunger, that makesa man wretched. Many men have died; all men must die. But
it is to live miserable, we know not why; to work sore, and
yet gain nothing; to be heart-worn, weary, yet isolated,
unrelated, girt in with a cold universal Laissez-faire.
-CARLYLE.
THE CARTER, WITH HIS clean-cut face, chin beard, and shaved upper lip, I should have taken in the United States for anything from a master workman to a well-to-do farmer. The Carpenter- well, I should have taken him for a carpenter. He looked it, lean and wiry, with shrewd, observant eyes, and hands that had grown twisted to the handles of tools through forty-seven years' work at the trade. The chief difficulty with these men was that they were old, and that their children, instead of growing up to take care of them, had died. Their years had told on them, and they had been forced out of the whirl of industry by the younger and stronger competitors who had taken their places.
These two men, turned away from the casual ward of Whitechapel Workhouse, were bound with me for Poplar Workhouse. Not much of a show,
But, O dear, soft people, full of meat and blood, with white beds
and airy rooms waiting you each night, how can I make you know what it
is to suffer as you would suffer if you spent a weary night on
But when the dawn came, the nightmare over, you would hale you home to refresh yourself, and until you died you would tell the story of your adventure to groups of admiring friends. It would grow into a mighty story. Your little eight-hour night would become an Odyssey and you a Homer.
Not so with these homeless ones who walked to Poplar Workhouse
with me. And there are thirty-five thousand of them, men and women, in
London Town this night. Please don't remember it as you go to bed;
if you are as soft as you ought to be,
I walked up Mile End Road between the Carter and the Carpenter. Mile End Road is a wide thoroughfare, cutting the heart of East London, and there were tens of thousands of people abroad on it. I tell you this so that you may fully appreciate what I shall describe in the next paragraph. As I say, we walked along, and when they grew bitter and cursed the land, I cursed with them, cursed as an American waif would curse, stranded in a strange and terrible land. And, as I tried to lead them to believe, and succeeded in making them believe, they took me for a 'seafaring man,' who had spent his money in riotous living, lost his clothes (no unusual occurrence with seafaring men ashore), and was temporarily broke while looking for a ship. This accounted for my ignorance of English ways in general and casual wards in particular, and my curiosity concerning the same.
The Carter was hard put to keep the pace at which we walked (he told me that he had eaten
From the slimy sidewalk, they were picking up bits of orange peel, apple skin, and grape stems, and they were eating them. The pips of green gage plums they cracked between their teeth for the kernels inside. They picked up stray crumbs of bread the size of peas, apple cores so black and dirty one would not take them to be apple cores, and these things these two men took into their mouths, and chewed them, and swallowed them; and this, between six and seven o'clock in the evening of August 20, year of our Lord 1902, in the heart of the greatest, wealthiest, and most powerful empire the world has ever seen.
These two men talked. They were not fools. They were merely old. And, naturally, their guts a-reek with pavement offal, they talked of bloody revolution. They talked as anarchists, fanatics,
Being a foreigner, and a young man, the Carter and the Carpenter explained things to me and advised me. Their advice, by the way, was brief and to the point; it was to get out of the country. 'As far as God'll let me,' I assured them; 'I'll hit only the high places, till you won't be able to see my trail for smoke.' They felt the force of my figures, rather than understood them, and they nodded their heads approvingly.
'Actually make a man a criminal against 'is will,' said the Carpenter. ''Ere I am, old, younger men takin' my place, my clothes gettin' shabbier an' shabbier, an' makin' it 'arder every day to get a job. I go to the casual ward for a bed. Must be there by two or three in the afternoon or I won't get in. You saw what happened to-day.
'Used to be a toll-gate 'ere,' said the Carter. 'Many's the time I've paid my toll 'ere in my cartin' days.'
'I've 'ad three 'a' penny rolls in two days,' the Carpenter announced, after a long pause in the conversation.
'Two of them I ate yesterday, an' the third to-day,' he concluded, after another long pause.
'I ain't 'ad anything to-day,' said the Carter. 'An' I'm fagged out. My legs is hurtin' me something fearful.'
'The roll you get in the "spike" is that 'ard you can't eat it nicely with less'n a pint of water,' said
But what surprised me was that he should have the word 'cant' in his vocabulary, a vocabulary that I found was no mean one before we parted.
I asked them what I might expect in the way of treatment, if we succeeded in getting into the Poplar Workhouse and between them I was supplied with much information. Having taken a cold bath on entering, I would be given for supper six ounces of bread and 'three parts of skilly.' 'Three parts' means three-quarters of a pint, and 'skilly' is a fluid concoction of three quarts of oatmeal stirred into three buckets and a half of hot water.
'Milk and sugar, I suppose, and a silver spoon?' I queried.
'No fear. Salt's what you'll get, an' I've seen some places where you'd not get any spoon. 'Old 'er up an' let 'er run down, that's 'ow they do it.'
'You do get good skilly at 'Ackney,' said the Carter.
'Oh, wonderful skilly, that,' praised the Carpenter, and each looked eloquently at the other.
'Flour an' water at St. George's in the East,' said the Carter.
The Carpenter nodded. He had tried them all.
'Then what?' I demanded.
And I was informed that I was sent directly to bed. 'Call you at half after five in the mornin', an' you get up an' take a "sluice"- if there's any soap. Then breakfast, same as supper, three parts o' skilly an' a six-ounce loaf.'
''Tisn't always six ounces,' corrected the Carter.
''Tisn't, no; an' often that sour you can 'ardly eat it. When first I started I couldn't eat the skilly nor the bread, but now I can eat my own an' another man's portion.'
'I could eat three other men's portions,' said the Carter. 'I 'aven't 'ad a bit this blessed day.'
'Then what?'
'Then you've got to do your task, pick four pounds of oakum, or clean an' scrub, or break ten to eleven hundredweight o' stones. I don't 'ave to break stones; I'm past sixty, you see. They'll make you do it, though. You're young an' strong.'
'What I don't like,' grumbled the Carter, 'is to be locked up in a cell to pick oakum. It's too much like prison.'
'But suppose, after you've, had your night's sleep, you refuse to pick oakum, or break stones, or do any work at all?' I asked.
'No fear you'll refuse the second time; they'll run you in,' answered the Carpenter. 'Wouldn't advise you to try it on, my lad.'
'Then comes dinner,' he went on. 'Eight ounces of bread, one and a arf ounces of cheese, an' cold water. Then you finish your task an' 'ave supper, same as before, three parts o' skilly an' six ounces o' bread. Then to bed, six o'clock, an' next mornin' you're turned loose, provided you've finished your task.'
We had long since left Mile End Road, and after traversing a gloomy maze of narrow, winding streets, we came to Poplar Workhouse. On a low stone wall we spread our handkerchiefs, and each in his handkerchief put all his worldly possessions with the exception of the 'bit o' baccy' down his sock. And then, as the last light was fading from the drab-colored sky, the wind blowing cheerless and cold, we stood, with our pitiful little bundles in our hands, a forlorn group at the workhouse door.
Three working girls came along, and one looked pityingly at me; as she passed I followed her with my eyes, and she still looked pityingly back at me. The old men she did not notice. Dear Christ, she pitied me, young and vigorous and strong, but she had no pity for the two old men who stood by my side! She was a young woman, and I was a young man, and what vague sex promptings impelled her to pity me put her sentiment on the lowest plane. Pity for old men is an altruistic feeling, and besides, the workhouse door is the accustomed place for old
On one side the door was a bell handle, on the other side a press button.
'Ring the bell,' said the Carter to me.
And just as I ordinarily would at anybody's door, I pulled out the handle and rang a peal.
'Oh! Oh!' they cried in one terrified voice. 'Not so 'ard!'
I let go, and they looked reproachfully at me, as though I had imperilled their chance for a bed and three parts of skilly. Nobody came. Luckily, it was the wrong bell, and I felt better.
'Press the button,' I said to the Carpenter.
'No, no, wait a bit,' the Carter hurriedly interposed.
From all of which I drew the conclusion that a poorhouse porter, who commonly draws a yearly salary of from thirty to forty dollars, is a very finicky and important personage, and cannot be treated too fastidiously by paupers.
So we waited, ten times a decent interval, when the Carter stealthily advanced a timid forefinger to the button, and gave it the faintest, shortest possible push. I have looked at waiting men where life and death was in the issue; but anxious suspense
He came. He barely looked at us. 'Full up,' he said, and shut the door.
'Another night of it,' groaned the Carpenter. In the dim light the Carter looked wan and gray.
Indiscriminate charity is vicious, say the professional philanthropists. Well, I resolved to be vicious.
'Come on; get your knife out and come here,' I said to the Carter, drawing him into a dark alley.
He glared at me in a frightened manner, and tried to draw back. Possibly he took me for a latter day Jack-the-Ripper, with a penchant for elderly male paupers. Or he may have thought I was inveigling him into the commission of some desperate crime. Anyway, he was frightened.
It will be remembered, at the outset, that I sewed a pound inside my stoker's singlet under the armpit. This was my emergency fund, and I was now called upon to use it for the first time.
Not until I had gone through the acts of a contortionist, and shown the round coin sewed in, did I succeed in getting the Carter's help. Even then his hand was trembling so that I was afraid he would cut me instead of the stitches, and I was forced to take the knife away and do it myself.
Of course I had to explain to them that I was merely an investigator, a social student, seeking to find out how the other half lived. And at once they shut up like clams. I was not of their kind; my speech had changed, the tones of my voice were different, in short, I was a superior, and they were superbly class conscious.
'What will you have?' I asked, as the waiter came for the order.
'Two slices an' a cup of tea,' meekly said the Carter.
'Two slices an' a cup of tea,' meekly said the Carpenter.
Stop a moment, and consider the situation. Here were two men, invited by me into the coffee-house. They had seen my gold piece, and they could understand that I was no pauper. One had eaten a ha penny roll that day, the other had eaten nothing. And they called for 'two slices an' a cup of tea!' Each man had given a tu'penny order. 'Two slices,' by the way, means two slices of bread and butter.
This was the same degraded humility that had characterized their attitude toward the poorhouse porter. But I wouldn't have it. Step by step I
'First cup o' tea I've 'ad in a fortnight,' said the Carter.
'Wonderful tea, that,' said the Carpenter.
They each drank two pints of it, and I assure you that it was slops. It resembled tea less than lager beer resembles champagne. Nay, it was 'water-bewitched,' and did not resemble tea at all.
It was curious, after the first shock, to notice the effect the food had on them. At first they were melancholy, and talked of the divers times they had contemplated suicide. The Carter, not a week before, had stood on the bridge and looked at the water, and pondered the question. Water, the Carpenter insisted with heat, was a bad route. He, for one, he knew, would struggle. A bullet was ''andier,' but how under the sun was he to get hold of a revolver? That was the rub.
They grew more cheerful as the hot 'tea' soaked in, and talked more about themselves. The Carter had buried his wife and children, with the exception of one son, who grew to manhood and helped him in his little business. Then the thing happened. The son, a man of thirty-one, died of the
The Carpenter had been born in the army, where his father had served twenty-two years. Likewise, his two brothers had gone into the army; one, troop sergeant-major of the Seventh Hussars, dying in India after the Mutiny; the other, after nine years under Roberts in the East, had been lost in Egypt. The Carpenter had not gone into the army, so here he was, still on the planet.
'But 'ere, give me your 'and,' he said, ripping open his ragged shirt. 'I'm fit for the anatomist, that's all. I'm wastin' away, sir, actually wastin' away for want of food. Feel my ribs an' you'll see.'
I put my hand under his shirt and felt. The skin was stretched like parchment over the bones, and the sensation produced was for all the world like running one's hand over a washboard.
'Seven years o' bliss I 'ad,' he said. 'A good missus and three bonnie lassies. But they all died. Scarlet fever took the girls inside a fortnight.'
'After this, sir,' said the Carter, indicating the spread, and desiring to turn the conversation into more cheerful channels; 'after this, I wouldn't be able to eat a workhouse breakfast in the morning.'
'Nor I,' agreed the Carpenter, and they fell to discussing belly delights and the fine dishes their respective wives had cooked in the old days.
'I've gone three days and never broke my fast,' said the Carter.
'And I, five,' his companion added, turning gloomy with the memory of it. 'Five days once, with nothing on my stomach but a bit of orange peel, an' outraged nature wouldn't stand it, sir, an' I near died. Sometimes, walkin' the streets at night, I've ben that desperate I've made up my mind to win the horse or lose the saddle. You know what I mean, sir- to commit some big robbery. But when mornin' come, there was I, too weak from 'unger an' cold to 'arm a mouse.'
As their poor vitals warmed to the food, they
One last incident, as I bade them good-by on the corner, happy with a couple of shillings in their pockets and the certain prospect of a bed for the night. Lighting a cigarette, I was about to throw away the burning match when the Carter reached for it. I proffered him the box, but he said, 'Never mind, won't waste it, sir.' And while he lighted the cigarette I had given him, the Carpenter hurried with the filling of his pipe in order to have a go at the same match.
'It's wrong to waste,' said he.
'Yes,' I said, but I was thinking of the washboard ribs over which I
had run my hand.
CHAPTER EIGHT. The people of the abyss, | ||