Authors: George W. M. Reynolds,James Malcolm Rymer
having used such language in your
apartment, and in your presence."
Count Alteroni bowed politely to the banker, and, darting a
withering glance of mingled contempt and indignation upon the abashed and
astounded Greene wood, took his departure.
"He talks of things which are quite new to me,"
said Greenwood, recovering an outward appearance of composure, though inwardly
he was chagrined beyond description.
Tomlinson made no reply: he was too much occupied with his
own affairs to be able to afford attention to those of others.
Greenwood shortly took his leave - delighted at having
effectually settled his pecuniary obligation with the count, in such a manner
that it could never again be the means of molestation in respect to himself, -
but vexed at the discovery which the Italian nobleman had evidently made in
respect to his conduct towards Eliza Sydney.
Immediately after Mr. Greenwood had left the bank-parlour,
old Michael entered. This time he carried his snuff-box open in his left hand;
and at every two paces he took a copious pinch with the fore-finger and thumb
of his right. This was a fearful omen; and Tomlinson trembled.
"Well, Michael - well?"
"Not a deposit this morning. Draughts come in like
wild-fire," said the old cashier. "There is but a hundred pounds left
in the safe!"
"A hundred pounds!" ejaculated the banker,
clasping his hands together: "and is it come to this at length, Michael?"
"Yes," said the cashier, gruffly.
"Then let us post a notice at once," cried
Tomlinson: "the establishment must be closed without another moment's
delay."
"Will you write out the notice of stoppage of payment,
or shall I?" inquired Michael.
"Do it yourself, my good old friend - do it for
me!" said the banker, whose countenance was ashy pale, and whose limbs
trembled under him, as if he expected the officers of justice to drag him to
a place. of execution.
The old cashier seated himself at the table, and wrote out
the announcement that the bank was unfortunately compelled to suspend its
payments. He then read it to the ruined man who was now pacing the apartment
with agitated steps.
"Will that do?"
"Yes," answered the banker; "but, in mercy,
let me leave the house ere that notice be made public."
Tomlinson was about to rush distractedly out of the room,
when the cashier was summoned into the public department of the establishment.
Five minutes elapsed ere his return - five minutes which
appeared five hours to James Tomlinson.
At length the old man came back; and this time he did not
carry his snuff-box in his hand.
Without uttering a word, he took the "notice of
stoppage" off the table, crushed it in his hand, and threw it into the
fire.
"Saved once more," he murmured, as he watched the
paper burning to tinder; and when it was completely consumed, he took a long
and hearty pinch of snuff.
"Saved!" echoed Tomlinson: "do you mean that
we are saved again?"
"Seven thousand four hundred and sixty-seven - pounds
just paid in to Dobson and Dobbins's account," answered the cashier,
coolly and leisurely, as if he himself experienced not the slightest emotion.
In another hour there were fifteen thousand pounds in the
safe; and when the bank closed that evening at the usual time, this sum had
swollen up to twenty thousand and some hundreds.
This day was a specimen of the life of James Tomlinson, the
banker.
Readers, when you pass by the grand commercial and financial
establishments of this great metropolis, pause and reflect ere you envy their
proprietors! In the parlours and offices of those reputed emporiums of wealth
are men whose minds are a prey to the most agonising feelings - the most poignant
emotions.
There is no situation so full of responsibility as that of a
banker -n o trust so sacred as that which is confided to him. When he falls, it
is not the ruin of one man which is accomplished: it is the ruin of hundreds -
perhaps thousands. The effects of that one failure are ramified through a wide
section of society: widows and orphans are reduced to beggary - and those who
have been well and tenderly nurtured are driven to the workhouse.
And yet the law punishes not the great banker who fails, and
who involves thousands in his ruin. The petty trader who breaks for fifty
pounds is thrown into prison, and is planed at the tender mercy of the
Insolvents' Court, which perhaps remands him to a debtor's gaol for a year, for
having contracted debts without a reasonable chance of paying them. But the
great banker, who commenced business with a hundred thousand pounds, and who
has dissipated five hundred thousand belonging to others, applies to the
Bankruptcy Court, never sees the inside of a prison at all, and in due time
receives a certificate, which clears him of all his liabilities, and enables
him to begin the world anew. The petty trader passes a weary time in gaol, and
is then merely emancipated from his confinement - but not from his debts. His
future exertions are clogged by an impending weight of liability. One system or
the other is wrong :-decide, O ye legislators who vaunt "the wisdom of
your ancestors," which should be retained, and which abolished, - or
whether both should be modified!
* * * * * * *
In the course of the evening the Earl of Warrington called upon
Mr.. Arlington, with whom he passed a few minutes alone in the drawing-room.
When his lordship had taken his departure, Diana returned to
Eliza whom she had left in another apartment, and, placing a quantity of
letters, folded, but unsealed, in her hands, said, "These are the
means of introduction to some of the first families in Montoni. They are
written, I am informed, by an Italian nobleman of great influence, and whose
name will act like a talisman in your behalf. They are sent unsealed according
to usage; but the earl has earnestly and positively desired that their contents
be not examined in this country. He gave this injunction very seriously,"
added Diana, with a smile, "doubtless because he supposed that he has to
deal with two daughters of Eve whose curiosity is invincible. He, however,
charged me to deliver this message to you as delicately as possible."
"These letters," answered Eliza, glancing over
their superscriptions, "are addressed to strangers and not to me; and
although I know that they refer to me, I should not think of penetrating into
their contents, either in England or elsewhere. But did you express to the earl
all the gratitude that I feel for his numerous and signal deeds of
kindness?"
"The earl is well aware of your grateful
feelings,"
replied Mrs. Arlington. "Can you suppose that I would forget
to paint all you experience for what he has already done, and what he will
still do for you? He will see you for a moment era your departure to-morrow, to
bid you farewell."
"I appreciate that act of condescension on his
part," observed Eliza, affected even to tears, "more than all else he
has ever yet done for me!"
* * * * * * *
On the following day Eliza Sydney, accompanied
by the faithful Louisa, and attended by an elderly valet who had been for years
in the service of the Earl of Warrington, took her departure from London, on
her way to the Grand Duchy of Castelcicala.
MISERIMMA!!!
WE now come to a sad episode in our history - and yet one in which
there is perhaps less romance and more truth than in any scene yet depicted.
We have already warned our reader that he will have to
accompany us amidst appalling scenes of vice and wretchedness:- we are now
about to introduce him to one of destitution and suffering - of powerful
struggle and unavailing toil - whose details are so very sad, that we have been
able to find no better heading for our chapter than
miserrima
, or "very miserable
things."
The reader will remember that we have brought our narrative,
in preceding chapters, up to the end of 1838:- we must now go back for a period
of two years, in order to commence the harrowing details of our present
episode.
In one of the low dark rooms of a gloomy house in a court
leading out of Golden Lane, St. Luke's, a young girl of seventeen sate at work.
It was about nine o'clock in the evening; and a single candle lighted the
miserable chamber, which was almost completely denuded of furniture. The cold
wind of December whistled through the ill-closed casement and the broken panes,
over which thin paper had been pasted to repel the biting chill. A small deal
table, two common chairs, and a mattress were all the articles of furniture
which this wretched room contained. A door at the end opposite the window
opened into another and smaller chamber: and this latter one was furnished with
nothing, save an old mattress. There were no blankets - no coverlids in either
room. The occupants had no other covering at night than their own clothes;- and
those clothes - God knows they were thin, worn, and scanty enough!
Not a spark of fire burned in the grate ;- and yet that
front room in which the young girl was seated was as cold as the nave of a vast
cathedral in the depth of winter.
The reader has perhaps experienced that icy chill which
seems to strike to the very marrow of the bones, when entering a huge stone
edifice :- the cold which prevailed in that room, and in which the young creature
was at work with her needle, was more intense - more penetrating - more bitter
- more frost-like than even that icy chill!
Miserable and cheerless was that chamber: the dull light of
the candle only served to render its nakedness the more apparent, without
relieving it of my of its gloom. And as the cold draught from the wretched
casement caused the flame of that candle to flicker and oscillate, the poor
girl was compelled to seat herself between the window and the table, to protect
her light from the wind. Thus, the chilling December blast blew upon the back
of the young sempstress, whose clothing was so thin and scant:- so very scant!
The sempstress was, as we have before said, about seventeen
years of age. She was very beautiful; and her features, although pale with
want, and wan with care end long vigils, were pleasing and agreeable. The cast
of her countenance was purely Grecian - the shape of her head eminently
classical - and her form was of a perfect and symmetrical mould. Although clothed
in the most scanty and wretched manner, she was singularly neat and clean in
her appearance; and her air and demeanour were far above her humble occupation
and her impoverished condition.
She had, indeed, seen better days! Reared in the lap of luxury
by fond, but too indulgent parents, her education had been of a high order; and
thus her qualifications were rather calculated to embellish her in prosperity
than to prove of use to her in adversity. She had lost her mother at the age of
twelve; and her father - kind and fond, and proud of his only child - had
sought to make her shine in that sphere which she had then appeared destined a
to adorn. But misfortunes came upon them like a thunderbolt: and when poverty -
grim poverty - stared them in the face - this poor girl had no resource, save
her needle! Now and then her father earned a trifle in the City, by making out
accounts or copying deeds ;- but sorrow and ill-health had almost entirely
incapacitated him from labour or occupation of any kind ;- and his young and
affectionate daughter was compelled to toil from sunrise until a late hour in
the night to earn even a pittance.
One after another, all their little comforts, in the shape
of furniture and clothing, disappeared; and after vainly endeavouring to
maintain a humble lodging in a cheap but respectable neighbourhood, poverty
compelled them to take refuge in that dark, narrow, filthy court leading out of
Golden Lane.
Such was the sad fate of Mr. Munroe and his daughter Ellen.
At the time when we introduce the latter to our readers, her
father was absent in the City. He had a little Occupation in a counting-house,
which was to last three days, which kept him hard at work from nine in the
morning till eleven at night, and for which he was to receive a pittance so
small we dare not mention its amount! This is how it was:- an official assignee
belonging to the Bankruptcy Court had some heavy accounts to make up by a
certain day: he was consequently compelled to employ an accountant to aid him;
the accountant employed a petty scrivener to make out the balance-sheet; and
the petty scrivener employed Monroe to ease him of a portion of the toil. It is
therefore plain that Monroe was not to receive much for his three days' labour.
And so Ellen was compelled to toil and work, and work and
toil - to rise early and go to bed late - so late that she had scarcely fallen
asleep, worn out a with fatigue, when it appeared time to get up again; - and
thus the roses forsook her cheeks - and her health suffered - and her head
ached - and her eyes grew dim-and her limbs were stiff with the chill!
And so she worked and toiled, and toiled and worked.
We said it was about nine o'clock in the evening.
Ellen's fingers were almost paralysed with cold and labour;
and yet the work which she had in her hands must be done that night; else no
supper then - and no breakfast on the morrow; for on the shelf
in that cheerless chamber there
was not a morsel of bread!
And for sixteen hours had that poor girl fasted already; for
she had eaten a crust at five in the morning, when she had risen from her hard
cold couch in the back chamber. She had left the larger portion of the bread
that then remained, for her father; and she had assured him that she had a few
halfpence to purchase more for herself - but she had therein deceived
him! Ah! how noble and generous was that deception;- and how often - how very
often did that poor girl practise it!
Ellen had risen at five that morning to embroider a silk
shawl with eighty flowers. She had calculated upon finishing it by eight in the
evening; but although she had worked, and worked, and worked hour after hour,
without ceasing, save for a moment, at long intervals to rest her aching head
and stretch her cramped fingers, eight had struck - and nine had struck also -
and still the blossoms were not all embroidered.
It was a quarter to ten when the last stitch was put into
the last flower.
But then the poor creature could not rest :- not to her was
it allowed to repose after that severe day of toil! She was hungry - she was
faint - her stomach was sick for want of food; and at eleven her father
would come home, hungry, faint, and sick at stomach also!
Rising from her chair - every limb stiff, cramped, and aching
with cold and weariness - the poor creature put on her modest straw bonnet with
a faded riband, and her thin wretched shawl, to take home her work.
Her employer dwelt upon Finsbury Pavement; and as it was now
late, the poor girl was compelled to hasten as fast as her aching limbs would
carry her.
The shop to which she repaired was brilliant with lamps and
gas-lights. Articles of great variety and large value were piled in the
windows, on the counters, on the shelves. Upwards of twenty young men were
busily employed in serving the customers. The proprietor of that establishment
was at that moment entertaining a party of friends up stairs, at a champagne
supper!
The young girl walked timidly into the vast magazine of
fashions, and, with downcast eyes, advanced towards an elderly woman who was
sitting at a counter at the farther end of the shop. To this female did she
present the shawl.
"A pretty time of night to come!" murmured the
shopwoman. "This ought to have been done by three or four o'clock."
"I have worked since five this morning, without
ceasing," answered Ellen; "and I could not finish it before."
"Ah! I see," exclaimed the shopwoman, turning the
shawl over, and examining it critically; "there are fifty or sixty
flowers, I see."
"Eighty," said Ellen; "I was ordered to
embroider that number."
"Well, Miss - and is there so much difference between
sixty and eighty?"
"Difference, ma'am!" ejaculated the young girl,
the tears starting into her eyes; "the difference is more than four hours'
work!"
"Very likely, very likely, Miss. And how much do you
expect for this?"
"I must leave it entirely to you, ma'am."
The poor girl spoke deferentially to this cold-hearted
woman, in order to make her generous. Oh! poverty renders even the innocence of
seventeen selfish, mundane, and calculating!
"Oh! you leave it to me, do you?" said the woman,
turning the shawl over and over, and scrutinising it in all points; but she
could not discover a single fault in Ellen's work. "You leave it to me?
Well, it isn't so badly done - very tolerably for a girl of your age and
inexperience! I presume," she added, thrusting her hand into the till
under the counter, and drawing forth sixpence, "I presume that this is sufficient."
"Madam," said Ellen, bursting into tears, "I
have worked nearly seventeen hours at that shawl —"
She could say no more: her voice was lost in sobs.
"Come, come," cried the shopwoman harshly, -
"no whimpering here! Take up your money, if you like it - and if you
don't, leave it. Only decide one way or another, and make haste!"
Ellen took up the sixpence, wiped her eyes, and hastily
turned to leave the shop.
"Do you not want any more work?" demanded the
shopwoman abruptly.
The fact was that the poor girl worked well, and did not
"shirk" labour; and the woman knew that it was the interest of her
master to retain that young creature's services.
Those words, "Do you not want any more work?"
reminded Ellen that she and her father must live - that they could not starve!
She accordingly turned towards that uncouth female once more, and received
another shawl, to embroider in the same manner, and at the same price!
Eighty blossoms for sixpence!
Sixteen hours' work for sixpence!!
A farthing and a half per hour!!!
The young girl returned to the dirty court in Golden Lane,
after purchasing some food, coarse and cheap, on her way home.
On the ground-floor of a house in the same court dwelt an
old woman - one of those old women who are the moral sewers of great towns -
the sinks towards which flow all thee impurities of the human passions. One of
those abominable hags was she who dishonour the sanctity of old age. She had
hideous wrinkles upon her face; and as she stretched out her huge, dry, and
bony hand, and tapped the young girl upon the shoulder, as the latter hurried
past her door, the very touch seemed to chill the maiden even through her
clothes.
Ellen turned abruptly round, and shuddered - she scarcely
knew why - when she found herself confronting that old hag by the dim lustre of
the lights which shone through the windows in the narrow court.
That old woman, who was the widow of crime, assumed as
pleasant an aspect as her horrible countenance would allow her to put on, and
addressed the timid maiden in a strain which the latter scarcely comprehended.
All that Ellen could understand was that the old woman suspected how hardly she
toiled and how badly she was paid, and offered to point out a more pleasant and
profitable mode of earning money.
Without precisely knowing why, Ellen shrank from the contact
of that hideous old hag, and trembled at the words which issued from the
crone's mouth.
"You do not answer me," said the wretch.
"Well, well; when you have no bread to eat - no work - no money to pay
your rent - and nothing but the workhouse before you, you will think better of
it and come to me."
Thus saying, the old hag turned abruptly into her own den,
the door of which she banged violently.
With her heart fluttering like a little bird in its
cage, poor Ellen hastened to her
own miserable abode.
She placed the food upon the table, but would not touch it
until her father should return. She longed for a spark of fire, for she was so
cold and so wretched - and even in warm weather misery makes one shiver! But
that room was as cold as an icehouse - and the unhappiness of that poor girl
was a burden almost too heavy for her to bear.
She sate down, and thought. Oh! how poignant is meditation
in such a condition as hers. Her prospects were utterly black and hopeless.
When she and her father had first taken those lodgings, she
had obtained work from a "middle-woman." This middle-woman was one
who contracted with great drapery and upholstery firms to do their needle-work
at certain low rates. The middle-woman had to live, and was therefore compelled
to make a decent profit upon the work. So she gave it out to poor creatures
like Ellen Monroe, and got it done for next to nothing.
Thus for some weeks had Ellen made shirts - with the
collars, wristband., and fronts all well stitched - for four-pence the shirt.
And it took her twelve hours, without intermission to make a
shirt and it cost her a penny for needles, and thread, and candle.
She therefore had three-pence for herself!
Twelve hours' unwearied toil for three-pence!!
One farthing an hour!!!
Sometimes she had made dissecting-trousers, which were sold
to the medical students at the hospitals; and for those she was paid two-pence
half-penny each.
It occupied her eight hours to make one pair of those
trousers!
At length the middle-woman had recommended her to the
linen-draper's establishment on Finsbury Pavement; and there she was told that
she might have plenty of work, and be well paid.
Well paid!
At the rate of a farthing and a half per hour!!
Oh! it was a mockery - a hideous mockery, to give that young
creature gay flowers and blossoms to work - she, who was working her own
winding-sheet!
She sate, shivering with the cold, awaiting her father's
return. Ever and anon the words of that old crone who had addressed her in the
court, rang in her ears. What could she mean? How could she - stern in her own
wretchedness herself and