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_ By the side of most railways out of London, one may see Alms-Houses
and Retreats (generally with a Wing or a Centre wanting, and
ambitious of being much bigger than they are), some of which are
newly-founded Institutions, and some old establishments
transplanted. There is a tendency in these pieces of architecture
to shoot upward unexpectedly, like Jack's bean-stalk, and to be
ornate in spires of Chapels and lanterns of Halls, which might lead
to the embellishment of the air with many castles of questionable
beauty but for the restraining consideration of expense. However,
the manners, being always of a sanguine temperament, comfort
themselves with plans and elevations of Loomings in the future, and
are influenced in the present by philanthropy towards the railway
passengers. For, the question how prosperous and promising the
buildings can be made to look in their eyes, usually supersedes the
lesser question how they can be turned to the best account for the
inmates.
Why none of the people who reside in these places ever look out of
window, or take an airing in the piece of ground which is going to
be a garden by-and-by, is one of the wonders I have added to my
always-lengthening list of the wonders of the world. I have got it
into my mind that they live in a state of chronic injury and
resentment, and on that account refuse to decorate the building
with a human interest. As I have known legatees deeply injured by
a bequest of five hundred pounds because it was not five thousand,
and as I was once acquainted with a pensioner on the Public to the
extent of two hundred a year, who perpetually anathematised his
Country because he was not in the receipt of four, having no claim
whatever to sixpence: so perhaps it usually happens, within
certain limits, that to get a little help is to get a notion of
being defrauded of more. 'How do they pass their lives in this
beautiful and peaceful place!' was the subject of my speculation
with a visitor who once accompanied me to a charming rustic retreat
for old men and women: a quaint ancient foundation in a pleasant
English country, behind a picturesque church and among rich old
convent gardens. There were but some dozen or so of houses, and we
agreed that we would talk with the inhabitants, as they sat in
their groined rooms between the light of their fires and the light
shining in at their latticed windows, and would find out. They
passed their lives in considering themselves mulcted of certain
ounces of tea by a deaf old steward who lived among them in the
quadrangle. There was no reason to suppose that any such ounces of
tea had ever been in existence, or that the old steward so much as
knew what was the matter;--he passed HIS life in considering
himself periodically defrauded of a birch-broom by the beadle.
But it is neither to old Alms-Houses in the country, nor to new
Alms-Houses by the railroad, that these present Uncommercial notes
relate. They refer back to journeys made among those common-place,
smoky-fronted London Alms-Houses, with a little paved court-yard in
front enclosed by iron railings, which have got snowed up, as it
were, by bricks and mortar; which were once in a suburb, but are
now in the densely populated town; gaps in the busy life around
them, parentheses in the close and blotted texts of the streets.
Sometimes, these Alms-Houses belong to a Company or Society.
Sometimes, they were established by individuals, and are maintained
out of private funds bequeathed in perpetuity long ago. My
favourite among them is Titbull's, which establishment is a picture
of many. Of Titbull I know no more than that he deceased in 1723,
that his Christian name was Sampson, and his social designation
Esquire, and that he founded these Alms-Houses as Dwellings for
Nine Poor Women and Six Poor Men by his Will and Testament. I
should not know even this much, but for its being inscribed on a
grim stone very difficult to read, let into the front of the centre
house of Titbull's Alms-Houses, and which stone is ornamented a-top
with a piece of sculptured drapery resembling the effigy of
Titbull's bath-towel.
Titbull's Alms-Houses are in the east of London, in a great
highway, in a poor, busy, and thronged neighbourhood. Old iron and
fried fish, cough drops and artificial flowers, boiled pigs'-feet
and household furniture that looks as if it were polished up with
lip-salve, umbrellas full of vocal literature and saucers full of
shell-fish in a green juice which I hope is natural to them when
their health is good, garnish the paved sideways as you go to
Titbull's. I take the ground to have risen in those parts since
Titbull's time, and you drop into his domain by three stone steps.
So did I first drop into it, very nearly striking my brows against
Titbull's pump, which stands with its back to the thoroughfare just
inside the gate, and has a conceited air of reviewing Titbull's
pensioners.
'And a worse one,' said a virulent old man with a pitcher, 'there
isn't nowhere. A harder one to work, nor a grudginer one to yield,
there isn't nowhere!' This old man wore a long coat, such as we
see Hogarth's Chairmen represented with, and it was of that
peculiar green-pea hue without the green, which seems to come of
poverty. It had also that peculiar smell of cupboard which seems
to come of poverty.
'The pump is rusty, perhaps,' said I.
'Not IT,' said the old man, regarding it with undiluted virulence
in his watery eye. 'It never were fit to be termed a pump. That's
what's the matter with IT.'
'Whose fault is that?' said I.
The old man, who had a working mouth which seemed to be trying to
masticate his anger and to find that it was too hard and there was
too much of it, replied, 'Them gentlemen.'
'What gentlemen?'
'Maybe you're one of 'em?' said the old man, suspiciously.
'The trustees?'
'I wouldn't trust 'em myself,' said the virulent old man.
'If you mean the gentlemen who administer this place, no, I am not
one of them; nor have I ever so much as heard of them.'
'I wish _I_ never heard of them,' gasped the old man: 'at my time
of life--with the rheumatics--drawing water-from that thing!' Not
to be deluded into calling it a Pump, the old man gave it another
virulent look, took up his pitcher, and carried it into a corner
dwelling-house, shutting the door after him.
Looking around and seeing that each little house was a house of two
little rooms; and seeing that the little oblong court-yard in front
was like a graveyard for the inhabitants, saving that no word was
engraven on its flat dry stones; and seeing that the currents of
life and noise ran to and fro outside, having no more to do with
the place than if it were a sort of low-water mark on a lively
beach; I say, seeing this and nothing else, I was going out at the
gate when one of the doors opened.
'Was you looking for anything, sir?' asked a tidy, well-favoured
woman.
Really, no; I couldn't say I was.
'Not wanting any one, sir?'
'No--at least I--pray what is the name of the elderly gentleman who
lives in the corner there?'
The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the door I indicated, and
she and the pump and I stood all three in a row with our backs to
the thoroughfare.
'Oh! HIS name is Mr. Battens,' said the tidy woman, dropping her
voice.
'I have just been talking with him.'
'Indeed?' said the tidy woman. 'Ho! I wonder Mr. Battens talked!'
'Is he usually so silent?'
'Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here--that is to say, the oldest
of the old gentlemen--in point of residence.'
She had a way of passing her hands over and under one another as
she spoke, that was not only tidy but propitiatory; so I asked her
if I might look at her little sitting-room? She willingly replied
Yes, and we went into it together: she leaving the door open, with
an eye as I understood to the social proprieties. The door opening
at once into the room without any intervening entry, even scandal
must have been silenced by the precaution.
It was a gloomy little chamber, but clean, and with a mug of
wallflower in the window. On the chimney-piece were two peacock's
feathers, a carved ship, a few shells, and a black profile with one
eyelash; whether this portrait purported to be male or female
passed my comprehension, until my hostess informed me that it was
her only son, and 'quite a speaking one.'
'He is alive, I hope?'
'No, sir,' said the widow, 'he were cast away in China.' This was
said with a modest sense of its reflecting a certain geographical
distinction on his mother.
'If the old gentlemen here are not given to talking,' said I, 'I
hope the old ladies are?--not that you are one.'
She shook her head. 'You see they get so cross.'
'How is that?'
'Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive us of any little
matters which ought to be ours by rights, I cannot say for certain;
but the opinion of the old ones is they do. And Mr. Battens he do
even go so far as to doubt whether credit is due to the Founder.
For Mr. Battens he do say, anyhow he got his name up by it and he
done it cheap.'
'I am afraid the pump has soured Mr. Battens.'
'It may be so,' returned the tidy widow, 'but the handle does go
very hard. Still, what I say to myself is, the gentlemen MAY not
pocket the difference between a good pump and a bad one, and I
would wish to think well of them. And the dwellings,' said my
hostess, glancing round her room; 'perhaps they were convenient
dwellings in the Founder's time, considered AS his time, and
therefore he should not be blamed. But Mrs. Saggers is very hard
upon them.'
'Mrs. Saggers is the oldest here?'
'The oldest but one. Mrs. Quinch being the oldest, and have
totally lost her head.'
'And you?'
'I am the youngest in residence, and consequently am not looked up
to. But when Mrs. Quinch makes a happy release, there will be one
below me. Nor is it to be expected that Mrs. Saggers will prove
herself immortal.'
'True. Nor Mr. Battens.'
'Regarding the old gentlemen,' said my widow slightingly, 'they
count among themselves. They do not count among us. Mr. Battens
is that exceptional that he have written to the gentlemen many
times and have worked the case against them. Therefore he have
took a higher ground. But we do not, as a rule, greatly reckon the
old gentlemen.'
Pursuing the subject, I found it to be traditionally settled among
the poor ladies that the poor gentlemen, whatever their ages, were
all very old indeed, and in a state of dotage. I also discovered
that the juniors and newcomers preserved, for a time, a waning
disposition to believe in Titbull and his trustees, but that as
they gained social standing they lost this faith, and disparaged
Titbull and all his works.
Improving my acquaintance subsequently with this respected lady,
whose name was Mrs. Mitts, and occasionally dropping in upon her
with a little offering of sound Family Hyson in my pocket, I
gradually became familiar with the inner politics and ways of
Titbull's Alms-Houses. But I never could find out who the trustees
were, or where they were: it being one of the fixed ideas of the
place that those authorities must be vaguely and mysteriously
mentioned as 'the gentlemen' only. The secretary of 'the
gentlemen' was once pointed out to me, evidently engaged in
championing the obnoxious pump against the attacks of the
discontented Mr. Battens; but I am not in a condition to report
further of him than that he had the sprightly bearing of a lawyer's
clerk. I had it from Mrs. Mitts's lips in a very confidential
moment, that Mr. Battens was once 'had up before the gentlemen' to
stand or fall by his accusations, and that an old shoe was thrown
after him on his departure from the building on this dread errand;-
-not ineffectually, for, the interview resulting in a plumber, was
considered to have encircled the temples of Mr. Battens with the
wreath of victory,
In Titbull's Alms-Houses, the local society is not regarded as good
society. A gentleman or lady receiving visitors from without, or
going out to tea, counts, as it were, accordingly; but visitings or
tea-drinkings interchanged among Titbullians do not score. Such
interchanges, however, are rare, in consequence of internal
dissensions occasioned by Mrs. Saggers's pail: which household
article has split Titbull's into almost as many parties as there
are dwellings in that precinct. The extremely complicated nature
of the conflicting articles of belief on the subject prevents my
stating them here with my usual perspicuity, but I think they have
all branched off from the root-and-trunk question, Has Mrs. Saggers
any right to stand her pail outside her dwelling? The question has
been much refined upon, but roughly stated may be stated in those
terms.
There are two old men in Titbull's Alms-Houses who, I have been
given to understand, knew each other in the world beyond its pump
and iron railings, when they were both 'in trade.' They make the
best of their reverses, and are looked upon with great contempt.
They are little, stooping, blear-eyed old men of cheerful
countenance, and they hobble up and down the court-yard wagging
their chins and talking together quite gaily. This has given
offence, and has, moreover, raised the question whether they are
justified in passing any other windows than their own. Mr.
Battens, however, permitting them to pass HIS windows, on the
disdainful ground that their imbecility almost amounts to
irresponsibility, they are allowed to take their walk in peace.
They live next door to one another, and take it by turns to read
the newspaper aloud (that is to say, the newest newspaper they can
get), and they play cribbage at night. On warm and sunny days they
have been known to go so far as to bring out two chairs and sit by
the iron railings, looking forth; but this low conduct, being much
remarked upon throughout Titbull's, they were deterred by an
outraged public opinion from repeating it. There is a rumour--but
it may be malicious--that they hold the memory of Titbull in some
weak sort of veneration, and that they once set off together on a
pilgrimage to the parish churchyard to find his tomb. To this,
perhaps, might be traced a general suspicion that they are spies of
'the gentlemen:' to which they were supposed to have given colour
in my own presence on the occasion of the weak attempt at
justification of the pump by the gentlemen's clerk; when they
emerged bare-headed from the doors of their dwellings, as if their
dwellings and themselves constituted an old-fashioned weather-glass
of double action with two figures of old ladies inside, and
deferentially bowed to him at intervals until he took his
departure. They are understood to be perfectly friendless and
relationless. Unquestionably the two poor fellows make the very
best of their lives in Titbull's Alms-Houses, and unquestionably
they are (as before mentioned) the subjects of unmitigated contempt
there.
On Saturday nights, when there is a greater stir than usual
outside, and when itinerant vendors of miscellaneous wares even
take their stations and light up their smoky lamps before the iron
railings, Titbull's becomes flurried. Mrs. Saggers has her
celebrated palpitations of the heart, for the most part, on
Saturday nights. But Titbull's is unfit to strive with the uproar
of the streets in any of its phases. It is religiously believed at
Titbull's that people push more than they used, and likewise that
the foremost object of the population of England and Wales is to
get you down and trample on you. Even of railroads they know, at
Titbull's, little more than the shriek (which Mrs. Saggers says
goes through her, and ought to be taken up by Government); and the
penny postage may even yet be unknown there, for I have never seen
a letter delivered to any inhabitant. But there is a tall,
straight, sallow lady resident in Number Seven, Titbull's, who
never speaks to anybody, who is surrounded by a superstitious halo
of lost wealth, who does her household work in housemaid's gloves,
and who is secretly much deferred to, though openly cavilled at;
and it has obscurely leaked out that this old lady has a son,
grandson, nephew, or other relative, who is 'a Contractor,' and who
would think it nothing of a job to knock down Titbull's, pack it
off into Cornwall, and knock it together again. An immense
sensation was made by a gipsy-party calling in a spring-van, to
take this old lady up to go for a day's pleasure into Epping
Forest, and notes were compared as to which of the company was the
son, grandson, nephew, or other relative, the Contractor. A thick-
set personage with a white hat and a cigar in his mouth, was the
favourite: though as Titbull's had no other reason to believe that
the Contractor was there at all, than that this man was supposed to
eye the chimney stacks as if he would like to knock them down and
cart them off, the general mind was much unsettled in arriving at a
conclusion. As a way out of this difficulty, it concentrated
itself on the acknowledged Beauty of the party, every stitch in
whose dress was verbally unripped by the old ladies then and there,
and whose 'goings on' with another and a thinner personage in a
white hat might have suffused the pump (where they were principally
discussed) with blushes, for months afterwards. Herein Titbull's
was to Titbull's true, for it has a constitutional dislike of all
strangers. As concerning innovations and improvements, it is
always of opinion that what it doesn't want itself, nobody ought to
want. But I think I have met with this opinion outside Titbull's.
Of the humble treasures of furniture brought into Titbull's by the
inmates when they establish themselves in that place of
contemplation for the rest of their days, by far the greater and
more valuable part belongs to the ladies. I may claim the honour
of having either crossed the threshold, or looked in at the door,
of every one of the nine ladies, and I have noticed that they are
all particular in the article of bedsteads, and maintain favourite
and long-established bedsteads and bedding as a regular part of
their rest. Generally an antiquated chest of drawers is among
their cherished possessions; a tea-tray always is. I know of at
least two rooms in which a little tea-kettle of genuine burnished
copper, vies with the cat in winking at the fire; and one old lady
has a tea-urn set forth in state on the top of her chest of
drawers, which urn is used as her library, and contains four
duodecimo volumes, and a black-bordered newspaper giving an account
of the funeral of Her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte. Among
the poor old gentlemen there are no such niceties. Their furniture
has the air of being contributed, like some obsolete Literary
Miscellany, 'by several hands;' their few chairs never match; old
patchwork coverlets linger among them; and they have an untidy
habit of keeping their wardrobes in hat-boxes. When I recall one
old gentleman who is rather choice in his shoe-brushes and
blacking-bottle, I have summed up the domestic elegances of that
side of the building.
On the occurrence of a death in Titbull's, it is invariably agreed
among the survivors--and it is the only subject on which they do
agree--that the departed did something 'to bring it on.' Judging
by Titbull's, I should say the human race need never die, if they
took care. But they don't take care, and they do die, and when
they die in Titbull's they are buried at the cost of the
Foundation. Some provision has been made for the purpose, in
virtue of which (I record this on the strength of having seen the
funeral of Mrs. Quinch) a lively neighbouring undertaker dresses up
four of the old men, and four of the old women, hustles them into a
procession of four couples, and leads off with a large black bow at
the back of his hat, looking over his shoulder at them airily from
time to time to see that no member of the party has got lost, or
has tumbled down; as if they were a company of dim old dolls.
Resignation of a dwelling is of very rare occurrence in Titbull's.
A story does obtain there, how an old lady's son once drew a prize
of Thirty Thousand Pounds in the Lottery, and presently drove to
the gate in his own carriage, with French Horns playing up behind,
and whisked his mother away, and left ten guineas for a Feast. But
I have been unable to substantiate it by any evidence, and regard
it as an Alms-House Fairy Tale. It is curious that the only proved
case of resignation happened within my knowledge.
It happened on this wise. There is a sharp competition among the
ladies respecting the gentility of their visitors, and I have so
often observed visitors to be dressed as for a holiday occasion,
that I suppose the ladies to have besought them to make all
possible display when they come. In these circumstances much
excitement was one day occasioned by Mrs. Mitts receiving a visit
from a Greenwich Pensioner. He was a Pensioner of a bluff and
warlike appearance, with an empty coat-sleeve, and he was got up
with unusual care; his coat-buttons were extremely bright, he wore
his empty coat-sleeve in a graceful festoon, and he had a walking-
stick in his hand that must have cost money. When, with the head
of his walking-stick, he knocked at Mrs. Mitts's door--there are no
knockers in Titbull's--Mrs. Mitts was overheard by a next-door
neighbour to utter a cry of surprise expressing much agitation; and
the same neighbour did afterwards solemnly affirm that when he was
admitted into Mrs. Mitts's room, she heard a smack. Heard a smack
which was not a blow.
There was an air about this Greenwich Pensioner when he took his
departure, which imbued all Titbull's with the conviction that he
was coming again. He was eagerly looked for, and Mrs. Mitts was
closely watched. In the meantime, if anything could have placed
the unfortunate six old gentlemen at a greater disadvantage than
that at which they chronically stood, it would have been the
apparition of this Greenwich Pensioner. They were well shrunken
already, but they shrunk to nothing in comparison with the
Pensioner. Even the poor old gentlemen themselves seemed conscious
of their inferiority, and to know submissively that they could
never hope to hold their own against the Pensioner with his warlike
and maritime experience in the past, and his tobacco money in the
present: his chequered career of blue water, black gunpowder, and
red bloodshed for England, home, and beauty.
Before three weeks were out, the Pensioner reappeared. Again he
knocked at Mrs. Mitts's door with the handle of his stick, and
again was he admitted. But not again did he depart alone; for Mrs.
Mitts, in a bonnet identified as having been re-embellished, went
out walking with him, and stayed out till the ten o'clock beer,
Greenwich time.
There was now a truce, even as to the troubled waters of Mrs.
Saggers's pail; nothing was spoken of among the ladies but the
conduct of Mrs. Mitts and its blighting influence on the reputation
of Titbull's. It was agreed that Mr. Battens 'ought to take it
up,' and Mr. Battens was communicated with on the subject. That
unsatisfactory individual replied 'that he didn't see his way yet,'
and it was unanimously voted by the ladies that aggravation was in
his nature.
How it came to pass, with some appearance of inconsistency, that
Mrs. Mitts was cut by all the ladies and the Pensioner admired by
all the ladies, matters not. Before another week was out,
Titbull's was startled by another phenomenon. At ten o'clock in
the forenoon appeared a cab, containing not only the Greenwich
Pensioner with one arm, but, to boot, a Chelsea Pensioner with one
leg. Both dismounting to assist Mrs. Mitts into the cab, the
Greenwich Pensioner bore her company inside, and the Chelsea
Pensioner mounted the box by the driver: his wooden leg sticking
out after the manner of a bowsprit, as if in jocular homage to his
friend's sea-going career. Thus the equipage drove away. No Mrs.
Mitts returned that night.
What Mr. Battens might have done in the matter of taking it up,
goaded by the infuriated state of public feeling next morning, was
anticipated by another phenomenon. A Truck, propelled by the
Greenwich Pensioner and the Chelsea Pensioner, each placidly
smoking a pipe, and pushing his warrior breast against the handle.
The display on the part of the Greenwich Pensioner of his
'marriage-lines,' and his announcement that himself and friend had
looked in for the furniture of Mrs. G. Pensioner, late Mitts, by no
means reconciled the ladies to the conduct of their sister; on the
contrary, it is said that they appeared more than ever exasperated.
Nevertheless, my stray visits to Titbull's since the date of this
occurrence, have confirmed me in an impression that it was a
wholesome fillip. The nine ladies are smarter, both in mind and
dress, than they used to be, though it must be admitted that they
despise the six gentlemen to the last extent. They have a much
greater interest in the external thoroughfare too, than they had
when I first knew Titbull's. And whenever I chance to be leaning
my back against the pump or the iron railings, and to be talking to
one of the junior ladies, and to see that a flush has passed over
her face, I immediately know without looking round that a Greenwich
Pensioner has gone past. _
Read next: CHAPTER XXX - THE RUFFIAN
Read previous: CHAPTER XXVIII - MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION
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