Chapter I: DO not mean the old wall of London, that which was built by the (1)

Romans, was rebuilt by Alfred, was repaired and maintained at great cost until the sixteenth century, when it began to be neglected, as it was no longer of any use in the defense of the City. For two hundred years more the gates still stood, but the wall was pulled down and built upon, no one interfering. That wall is gone, save for fragments here and there. I speak of another wall, and one of even greater importance.

No one knows when this other wall was first built. It was so early that all record of its building has been lost. It is the wall by which the low-lying marshes of the Thames, once overflowed by every high tide, were protected from the river and converted into pastures and meadow-land and plow-land. It is the wall which runs all along the north bank of the river and is carried round the marshy Essex shores and round those Essex islands which were once broad expanses of mud at low tide, and at high tide shallow and useless stretches of water. It protects also the south bank wherever the marsh prevails. It has been a work of the highest importance, to London first, and to the country next. It has converted a vast malarious belt of land into a fertile country, and it has made East London possible, because a great part of East London is built upon the reclaimed marsh, now drained and dry. In order to understand what the wall means, what it is, what it has done, and what it is doing, we must get beyond the houses and consider it as it runs along the riverside, with fields on the left hand and the flowing water many feet higher than the fields on the right.

In order to get at the wall, then, we must take the train to Barking, about eight miles from London Bridge. This ancient village, once the seat of a rich nunnery, some remains of which you may still see there, is on the little river Roding; we walk down its banks to its confluence with the Thames. There, after suffering a while from the fumes of certain chemical works, we find ourselves on the wall, with no houses before us; we leave the works behind us, and we step out upon the most curious walk that one may find within the four seas that encompass our island.

No one ever walks upon this wall; once beyond the chemical works we are in the most lonely spot in the whole of England; no one is curious about it; no one seems to know that this remarkable construction, extending for about a hundred and fifty miles, even exists; you will see no one in the meadows that lie protected by the wall; you may walk mile after mile along it in a solitude most strange and most mysterious. Even the steamer which works her noisy way up the broad river, even the barge with its brown sail, crawling slowly up the stream with the flowing tide, does not destroy the sense of silence or that of solitude. We seem not to hear the screw of the steamer or even the scream of the siren; overhead the lark sings; there are no other birds visible about the treeless fields; the tinkle of a sheep-bell reminds one of Dartmoor and its silent hillsides.

Presently there falls upon the pilgrim a strange feeling of mystery. The wall belongs to all the centuries which have known London; it is a part of the dead past; it speaks to him of things that have been; it reminds him of the Vikings and the Danes when they came sweeping up the river in their long, light ships, the shields hanging outside, the fair-haired, blue-eyed fighting men thirsting for the joy of battle; they are on their way to besiege London; they will pull down part of the bridge, but they will not take the City. The fresh breeze that follows with the flood reminds him of the pageant and procession, the splendid pageant, the never-ending procession, of the trade which is the strength and the pride and the wealth of London, which has been passing before this wall for all these centuries, and always, as it passes now, unseen and unregarded, because no one ever stands upon the wall to see it.

A strange, ghostly place. If one were to tell of a murder, this would be a fitting place for the crime. Perhaps, however, it might be difficult to persuade his victim to accompany him. The murderer would choose the time between the passing of two ships; no one could possibly see him; he would conduct his victim along the wall, conversing pleasantly, till the favorable moment arrived. The deed accomplished, he would leave the wall and strike across the fields till he found a path leading to the haunts of man. Any secret or forbidden thing might be conveniently transacted on the wall; it would be a perfectly safe place for the conjuration of conspirators and the concoction of their plans, or it would be a place to hide a stolen treasure, or a place where a hunted man could find refuge.

Let us stand still for a moment and look around. The wall is about fifteen feet high; at the base it is perhaps thirty feet wide; the sides slope toward the path on the top, which is about seven feet across; the outside is faced with stone; the inside is turfed. Looking south the river runs at our feet, the broad and noble river which carries to the port of London treasures from the uttermost ends of the earth and sends out other treasures in exchange. There are many rivers in the world which are longer and broader,—for instance, the Danube and the Rhine, even the Oronoco and the Amazon,—but if we consider the country through which the river flows, the wealth which it creates, the wealth which it distributes, the long history of the Thames, then, surely, it is the greatest of all rivers. As we stand over it we mark how its waters are stirred into little waves by the fresh breeze which never fails with the flood of the tide; how the sun lights up the current rolling upward in full stream, so that we think of strong manhood resolved and purposed; it is not for nothing that the tide rolls up the stream. Then we mark the ships that pass, ships of all kinds, great and small; the ships and the barges, the fishing smacks and the coasters, some that sail and some that steam; the heavy timber ship from the Baltic, the Newcastle collier, the huge liner; they pass in succession along the broad highway, one after the other. This splendid pageant of London trade is daily offered for the admiration of those upon the wall. But it is a procession with no spectators; day after day it passes unregarded, for no one walks upon the wall. And if a stray traveler stands to look on, the pageant presently becomes a thing of the imagination, a dream, an effect of animated photographs.

On the land side lie the fields which have been rescued from this tidal flow; they are obviously below the level of the river; one understands, looking across them, how the river ran of old over these flats, making vast lagoons at high tide. It is useful to see the fact recorded in a book or on a map; but here one sees that it really must have been so. Gradually, as one passes along the wall and looks landward, the history of the reclamation of the marsh unfolds itself; we see in places, here and there, low mounds, which are lines of former embankments; these are not all parallel with the river; they are thrust forward, protected by banks at the side, small pieces rescued by some dead and gone farmer, who was rewarded by having as his own, with no rent to pay, the land he had snatched from the tide. Perhaps it was long before rent was thought of; perhaps it was easier to build the bank and to take a slip of the foreshore and the marsh, with its black and fertile soil, than it was to cut down the trees in the forest and to clear the land; perhaps these embankments were constructed by the lake dwellers, who made their round huts upon piles driven into the mud, and after many thousands of years made the discovery that it was better to be dry than wet, and better to have no marsh fevers to face than to grow inured to them.

When was this wall built? How long has it been standing? Is it the first original wall? Have there been rebuildings? Learned antiquaries have proved that long before the advent of the Romans the south of Britain was occupied by people who had learned such civilization as Gauls had to teach them. This was no small advance, as you would acknowledge if you looked into the subject; they knew many arts; they already had many wants; they had arrived at a certain standard of comfort; they carried on an extensive trade.

How long ago? It is quite impossible to answer that question. But there are other facts ascertained. Let us sum them up in order.

1. South Britain, at least, and probably the Midland as well, had the same religion, the same arts, the same customs, the same forms of society, as Gaul.

2. There was an extensive trade between Britain and Gaul—of what antiquity no one knows.

3. When we first hear of London it was a place of resort for many foreign merchants.

4. Tessellated pavements of Roman date have been found in Southwark at a level lower than that of the river.

5. Tacitus made Galgacus, the British leader, indignant because the Britons were compelled by the Romans to expend their strength and labor on fencing off woods and marshes.

6. Roman buildings are found behind the wall in Essex. To this point I will return immediately.

7. No settlement or building or cultivation whatever was possible beside the river anywhere near London until the wall had been built.

8. Are we to believe that a city possessing a large trade, attracting many foreign merchants, would have continued to stand in the midst of a vast malarious swamp?

9. Indications have been found of an older wall, consisting of trunks of trees laid beside each other, the interstices crammed with small branches. Such a rude wall might be effective in keeping back the great body of water.

10. In order to arrive at the civilization represented by a large foreign trade and a trading city there must have been many years of communication and intercourse. In fact, I see no reason why London should not have existed as a trading-place for centuries after Thorney was practically deserted, having ferries instead of a bridge, and centuries before the coming of the Romans.

These considerations show the conclusion to which I have arrived. For centuries there had been a constant intercourse between the Gauls and the southern Britons; trading centers had been established, notably in Thorney Island, at Southampton, at Lymne, which was afterward an important Roman station, and at Dover. When the ships began to sail up the Thames the superior position of London was discovered, and that port quickly took over the greater part of the trade by the Thorney route. When London grew, it became important to reclaim the malarious marsh and the wasted miles of mud. Some kind of embankment, perhaps that old kind with trunks of trees, was constructed. At first they put up the wall on the opposite side, which the Saxons afterward called the South Work (Southwark), meaning the river wall and not a wall of fortification; then they pushed out branches on the north side and they carried the wall gradually, not all at once, but taking years, even centuries, over the work, down the Thames, along the Essex shores and round the mud islands, but the last not till modern times.

At the end of the Essex wall there is an instructive place at which to consider its probable date.

It is a very lovely and deserted place, about a mile and a half from a picturesque little village, five or six miles from a railway station, called Bradwell—I suppose the meaning of the name is the broad wall. When the visitor reaches the seashore he finds the wall running along, a fine and massive earthwork; but behind the wall, and evidently built after the wall, there are the earthworks of a Roman fortress; you can still trace the ramparts after all these years though the interior is now plowed up; this was one of the forts by means of which the count of the Saxon shore (Comes littoris Saxonici) kept the country safe from the pirates, always on the watch for the chance of a descent; his ships patrolled the narrow seas, but always, up the creeks and rivers, all the way from Ostend to Norway, lay the pirate,—Saxon, Dane, Viking,—watching, waiting, ready to cross over if those police ships relaxed their watchfulness, ready to harry and to murder. You may stand on the wall, where the Roman sentinel kept watch; you may strain your eyes for a sight of the pirate fleet, fifty ships strong and every ship stout, clinker built, sixty feet long and carrying a hundred men. As soon as the Romans took their ships away they did come, and they came to stay, and as soon as the Saxons forgot their old science of navigation the Danes came, and after the Danes, or with them, the men of Norway. Long after this Roman fortress had been deserted and forgotten, so that to the people it was nothing more than a collection of mounds round which clung some vague tradition of terror, a person, whose very name is now unknown, built here a chapel dedicated to St. Peter; the chapel, still called St. Peter’s on the Wall, is now a barn. Ruined chapel, ruined fortress, both stand beside the wall, which still fulfils its purpose and keeps out the waters from the lowlands within.

Why do I mention this chapel? What has it to do with East London? Well, consider two or three facts in connection with this chapel. If you walk along the wall you presently come to a little village church; it is called the Church of West Thurrock; the church, like that old chapel of St. Peter, stands beside, or on, the wall; it is a venerable church; it has its venerable churchyard; it is filled with the graves of rustics brought here to lie in peace for a thousand years and more. And there is no village, or hamlet, or farm, or anything within sight. It was built beside the wall. Again, they built two churches at least, beside, or on, the wall of London City, not to speak of the churches built at five gates of the City; they built a hermitage beside the wall at Wapping; another by the city wall at Aldgate; on London Bridge they built a chapel; on the wall in Essex, as we have seen, they built a chapel. I see in all these churches and chapels built beside, or on, a wall, so many chapels erected for prayers for the preservation of the wall; at West Thurrock the people of the farmhouses made the chapel their parish church, and so it has continued to the present day. But it was originally a chapel on the wall, intended to consecrate and protect the wall. Perhaps there are others along the wall, but I do not know of any.

I have said that it is possible that the wall stands upon the site of earlier attempts to rescue the land and to keep out the water. For instance, when the excavations were made for the foundation of the new London Bridge, three separate sets of piles for rescuing more and more of the foreshore were laid bare, and lower down the river, as I have said, the workmen found, in repairing the wall, a very curious arrangement of trunks of trees laid one upon the other, with branches and brushwood between, evidently part of a wooden work meant for a dam or tidal wall.

The maintenance of the wall has always been a costly business; the tides find out the weak places, and bore into them and behind them like a gimlet that grows every day larger and longer and more powerful. For instance, there was a flourishing monastery near the junction of the Lea with the Thames; it was called the House of Stratford Langthorne. One morning the brethren woke to find that the river wall had given way and that their pastures and meadows, their cornlands and their gardens were all three feet deep in water. They had to get away as fast as they could and to remain in a much smaller and more uncomfortable cell, on higher ground, until the wall could be patched up again. In the fifteenth century the pious ladies of Barking Nunnery made a similar discovery; their portion of the river wall had broken down. They had no funds for its repair. Then King Richard, the third of that name, came to their assistance. This pious monarch had got through with most of his enemies and nearly all his relations, and was just then going off to settle matters with his cousin, Henry the Welshman, when this misfortune to the Barking nuns happened.

Fifty years later the Plumstead marshes were “drowned” by the breaking of the wall. In 1690 the Grays Marsh, lower down the river, was overflowed by the same accident; in 1707 the wall gave way at a place called Dagenham; it took nearly twenty years to repair the wall, which was carried away time after time; the receding tide carried out into the bed of the river so much earth that a bank was formed in mid-channel, and it seemed as if the river would be choked. At last, however, it was found possible to construct a wall which would stand the highest tide. If we walk along this part of the wall we observe a large black pool of water; this was left behind when the wall shut out the river; the lake still remains and is full of fish, and on Sundays it is surrounded by anglers, who stand all day long intent upon expectations which are seldom rewarded. Out of this lake and its fishing originated the ministerial white-bait dinner. It began when the occupant of a house beside this lake invited William Pitt to dine with him in order to taste the eels of the pond and the white-bait of the river. Pitt brought other members of the Cabinet, the dinner became a yearly institution, the place was presently transferred from Dagenham to Greenwich, and the ministerial white-bait dinner was held every year, in June or July, until ten or twelve years ago, when the pleasant institution was stopped.

To return to the date of the wall. We have seen that nobody knows when it was put up, that it must have been there in some form or other for a very long time. It is tolerably certain that the wall was either built by the Romans or that it existed before their time. My own belief is, as I have stated, that it was put up here and there as occasion or necessity served, that some of the land was rescued strip by strip, each time by a new wall advanced before the others. Embankments, mounds, and traces of a more ancient wall can be observed, as I have said, at many points; it is worthy of note that in the county of Lincoln, where there is also the necessity of a sea-wall, there are two, one standing at a distance of half a mile in advance of the other. And I think that this process of rescuing the land has gone on at intervals to the present day. Even now there are broad stretches of mud along the Essex shore which might be reclaimed; at the present moment there are projects afloat for reclaiming the whole of the Wash, but the conditions of agriculture in England are no longer such as to encourage any attempts to add more acres to estates which at present seem unable to pay either landlord or farmer.

I have said enough, however, to show that this earthwork, so much neglected and so little known, is really a most important structure; that it has made East London possible, and London itself healthy, while it has converted miles and miles of barren swamp into smiling meadows and fertile farms.

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V

THE FACTORY GIRL

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V

THE FACTORY GIRL

EAST LONDON—one cannot repeat it too often—is a city of working bees. As we linger and loiter among the streets multitudinous, we hear, as from a hive, the low, contented murmur of continuous and patient work. There are two millions of working-people in this city. The children work at school; the girls and boys, and the men and women, work in factory, in shop, and at home, in dock and in wharf and in warehouse; all day long and all the year round, these millions work. They are clerks, accountants, managers, foremen, engineers, stokers, porters, stevedores, dockers, smiths, craftsmen of all kinds. They are girls who make things, girls who sew things, girls who sell things. There are among them many poor, driven, sweated creatures, and the sweaters themselves are poor, driven, sweated creatures, for sweating once begun is handed on from one to the other as carefully and as religiously as any holy lamp of learning. They work from early morning till welcome evening. The music of this murmur, rightly understood, is like the soft and distant singing of a hymn of praise. For the curse of labor has been misunderstood; without work man would be even as the beasts of the field. It is the necessity of work that makes him human; of necessity he devises and discovers and invents, because he would die if he did not work; and because he has to subdue the animal within him. The animal is solitary; the man must be gregarious. He must make a friend of his brother, he must obey the stronger, he must make laws, he must fight with nature, and compel her to give up her secrets. It is only by means of work that man can rise; it is his ladder; in the sweat of his face he eats his bread—yea, the bread of life. It is not with any pity that we should listen to this murmur. It should be with pure contentment and gratitude, for the murmur, though it speaks partly of the whirr of ten thousand wheels and partly of those who stand and serve those wheels, speaks also of this blessed quality of work, that it enables men to use the body for the sake of the soul. Man must work.

Imagine, if you can, what would follow if you held up your hand and said: “Listen, all. There will be no more work. You may stop the engines, or they may run down of their own accord. You may take off your aprons and wash your hands. You may all sit down for the rest of your lives. Your food will be waiting for you when you want it. Eat, drink, and be happy if you can.” If they can! But can they, with nothing to do—no work to do, only, like the sheep in the field, to browse, or, like the wolves of the forest, to rend and tear and slay?

If you can use your eyes as well as your ears, look about you. It is really like looking at a hive of bees, is it not? There are thousands of them, and they are all alike; they are all doing the same thing; they are all living the same lives; they wake and work and rest and sleep, and so life passes by. If you look more closely you will observe differences. No two human creatures, to begin with, are alike in face. More closely still, and you will discover that in the greatest crowd, where the people are, like sheep in a fold, huddled together, every one is as much for himself—there is as much individuality here—as in the places where every one stands by himself and has room to move in and a choice to make.

Let us take a single creature out of these millions. Perhaps if we learn how one lives, how one regards the world, we may understand, in some degree, this agitated, confused, restless, incoherent, inarticulate mass.

I introduce you to a baby. Her name is Liz. She has as yet but a few days of life behind her. She is hardly conscious of hunger, cold, or uneasiness, or any of the things with which life first makes its beginning apparent to the half-awakened brain. She opens eyes that understand nothing—neither form, nor distance, nor color, nor any differences; she sees men, like trees, walking. When she is hungry she wails; when she is not hungry she sleeps. We will leave the child with her mother, and we will stand aside and watch while the springs and summers pass, and while she grows from an infant to a child, a girl, a woman.

The room where the baby lies is a first-floor front, in a house of four rooms and a ruinous garret, belonging to a street which is occupied, like all the streets in this quarter, wholly by the people of the lower working-class. This is London Street, Ratcliffe. It is a real street, with a real name, and it is in a way typical of East London of the lower kind. The aristocracy of labor, the foremen and engineers of shipyards and works, live about Stepney Church, half a mile to the north. Their streets are well kept, their doorsteps are white, their windows are clean, there are things displayed in the front windows of their houses. Here you will see a big Bible, here a rosewood desk, here a vase full of artificial flowers, here a bird-cage with foreign birds,—Avvadavats, Bengalees, love-birds, or a canary,—here a glass case containing coral or “Venus’s fingers” from the Philippines, here something from India carved in fragrant wood, here a piece of brasswork from Benares. There is always something to show the position and superiority of the tenant. It is the distinctive mark of the lower grades of labor that they have none of these ornaments. Indeed, if by any chance such possessions fell in their way they would next week be in the custody of the pawnbroker; they would “go in.”

We are, then, in a first-floor front. Look out of the window upon the street below: meanwhile the baby grows. The street contains forty houses. Each house has four rooms, two or three have six; most of the people have two rooms. There are, therefore, roughly speaking, about one hundred families residing in this street. The door-steps, the pavement, and the roadway are swarming with children; the street is their only playground. Here the little girl of six bears about in her arms, staggering under the weight, but a careful nurse, her little sister, aged twelve months; here the children take their breakfast and their dinner; here they run and play in summer and in winter. It seems to be never too hot or too cold for them. They are ragged, they are bareheaded, they are barefooted and barelegged, their toys are bits of wood and bones and oyster-shells, transformed by the imagination of childhood into heaven knows what of things precious and splendid. Of what they have not they know nothing; but, then, they mind nothing, therefore pity would be thrown away upon them. It is the only world they know; they are happy in their ignorance; they are feeling the first joy of life. By their ruddy faces and sturdy limbs you can see that the air they breathe is wholesome, and that they have enough to eat.

The room is furnished sufficiently, according to the standards of the family. There is a table, with two chairs; there is a chest of drawers with large glass handles. On this chest stands a structure of artificial flowers under a glass shade. This is the sacred symbol of respectability. It is for the tenement what the Bible or the coral in the window is for the house. So long as we have our glass shade with its flowers we are in steady work, and beyond the reach of want. On each side of the glass shade are arranged the cups and saucers, plates and drinking-glasses, belonging to the family. There are also exhibited with pride all the bottles of medicine recently taken by the various members. It is a strange pride, but one has observed it among people of a more exalted station. There are also set out with the bottles certain heart-shaped velvet pincushions, made by the sailors, and considered as decorations of the highest æsthetic value. The chest of drawers is used for the clothes of the family—the slender supplement of what is on the family back. It is also the storehouse for everything that belongs to the daily life. There is a cupboard beside the chimney, with two shelves. Any food that may be left over, and the small supplies of tea and sugar, are placed on the upper shelf, coals on the lower. On the table stands, always ready, a teapot, and beside it a half-cut loaf and a plate with margarine, the substitute for butter. Margarine is not an unwholesome compound. It is perhaps better than bad butter; it is made of beef fat, clarified and colored to resemble butter. I am told that other people eat it in comfortable assurance that it is butter.

When the child grows old enough to observe things she will remark, from time to time, the absence of the chest of drawers. At other times she will discover that the drawers are empty. These vacuities she will presently connect with times of tightness. When money is scarce and work is not to be got things “go in” of their own accord; the pawnbroker receives them.

She will learn more than this; she will learn the great virtue of the poor, the virtue that redeems so many bad habits—generosity. For the chest of drawers and the best clothes are more often “in” to oblige a neighbor in difficulties than to relieve their own embarrassments. The people of Ratcliffe are all neighbors and all friends; to be sure, they are frequently enemies, otherwise life would be monotonous. Always some one is in trouble, always some of the children are hungry, always there is rent to pay, always there is some one out of work. Liz will learn that if one can help, one must. She will learn this law without any formula or written code, not out of books, not in church, not in school; she will learn it from the daily life around her. Generosity will become part of her very nature.

You will perceive, however, that this child is not born of the very poor; her parents are not in destitution; her father is, in fact, a docker, and, being a big, burly fellow, born and brought up in the country, he gets tolerably regular employment and very fair wages. If he would spend less than the third or the half of his wages in drink his wife might have a four-roomed cottage. But we must take him as he is. His children suffer no serious privation. They are clothed and fed; they have the chance of living respectably, and with such decencies as belong to their ideals and their standards. In a word, Liz will be quite a commonplace, average girl of the lower working-class.

The first duty of a mother is to “harden” the baby. With this view, Liz was fed, while still a tiny infant, on rusks soaked in warm water, and when she was a year old her mother began to give her scraps of beefsteak, slightly fried, to suck; she also administered fish fried in oil—the incense and fragrance of this delicacy fills the whole neighborhood, and hangs about the streets day and night like a cloud. For drink she gave the baby the water in which whiting had been boiled; this is considered a sovereign specific for building up a child’s constitution. Sometimes, it is true, the treatment leads to unforeseen results. Another child, for instance, about the same age as Liz, and belonging to the same street, was fed by its mother on red herring, and, oddly enough, refused to get any nourishment out of that delightful form of food. They carried it to the Children’s Hospital, where the doctor said it was being starved to death, and made the most unkind remarks about the mother—most unjust as well, for the poor woman had no other thought or intention than to “harden the inside” of her child, and all the friends and neighbors were called in to prove that plenty of herring had been administered.

As soon as Liz was three years of age she had the same food as her parents and elder sisters. You shall dine with the family presently. For breakfast and tea and supper, and for any occasional “bever” or snack, she had a slice of bread and margarine, which she cut for herself when, like Mrs. Gamp, so disposed. It was indeed terrifying to see the small child wielding a bread-knife nearly as big as herself. She got plenty of pennies when work was regular; nobody is so generous with his pennies as the man who needs them most. She spent these casual windfalls in sweets and apples, passing the latter round among her friends for friendly bites, and dividing the former in equal portions. This cheap confectionery for the children of the kerb and the door-step supplies the place of sweet puddings, for the mystery of the pudding is unfortunately little known or understood by the mothers of Ratcliffe.

In the matter of beer, Liz became very early in life acquainted with its taste. There is a kind of cheap porter, sold at three farthings a pint, considered grateful and comforting by the feminine mind of Ratcliffe. What more natural than that the child should be invited to finish what her mother has left of the pint? It would not be much. What more motherly, when one is taking a little refreshment in a public house, than to give a taste to the children playing on the pavement outside? And what more natural than for the children to look for these windfalls, and to gather round the public house expectant? It seems rough on the little ones to begin so early; it is contrary to modern use and custom, but we need not suppose that much harm is done to a child by giving it beer occasionally. Formerly all children had beer for breakfast, beer for dinner, and beer for supper. In Belgium very little children have their bock for dinner. The mischief in the case of our Liz and her friends was that she got into the habit of looking for drink more stimulating than tea, and that the habit remained with her and grew with her.

At three years of age Liz passed, so to speak, out of the nursery, which was the door-step and the kerb, into the school-room. She was sent to the nearest Board-school, where she remained under instruction for eleven long years. She began by learning certain highly important lessons; first, that she had to obey; next, that she had to be quiet; and, thirdly, that she had to be clean. As regards the first and second, obedience and order were not enforced in the nursery of London Street. They were, it is true, sometimes enjoined with accompaniment of a cuff and a slap, not unkindly meant, in the home. As for cleanliness, one wash a week, namely, on Sunday morning, had hitherto been considered sufficient. It was, however, a thorough wash. The unkempt locks, brown with the dust and grime of a week’s street play, came out of the tub a lovely mass of light-brown, silky curls; the child’s fair skin emerged from its coating of mud; her rosy cheeks showed their natural color; her round, white arms fairly shone and glowed in the sunshine. On Sunday morning Liz presented the appearance of a very pretty child, clean and fair and winsome. As soon as she went to school, however, she had to undergo the same process every morning except Saturday. If she appeared in school unwashed she had to go home again; not only that, but there was often unpleasantness in the matter of pinafore. Saturday is a school holiday, therefore no one washes on Saturday, and face and hands and pinafore may all go grimy together.

Liz remained at school from three to fourteen years of age. What she learned I do not exactly know. Some years ago I looked through some “readers” for Board-schools, and came to the conclusion that nothing at all could be learned from them, counting scraps as worth nothing. But I hear that they have altered their “readers.” Still, if you remember that no one has any books at all in London Street, that even a halfpenny paper is not often seen there, that no talk goes on which can instruct a child in anything, you will own that a child may be at school even for eleven years and yet learn very little. And since she found no means of carrying on her education after she left school, no free libraries, no encouragement from her companions, you will not be surprised to hear that all she had learned from books presently dropped from her like a cloak or wrapper for which she had no further use. Let us be reasonable. The Board-school taught her, besides a certain small amount of temporary and short-lived book-lore, some kind of elementary manners—a respect, at least, for manners; the knowledge of what manners may mean. The clergy and the machinery of the parish cannot teach these things. It can be done only at the Board-school. It is the school, and not the church, which softens manners and banishes some of the old brutality, because, you see, they do not go to church, and they must go to school. How rough, how rude, the average girl of Ratcliffe was before the Board-schools were opened, Liz herself neither knows nor comprehends. These schools have caused the disappearance of old characteristics once thought to be ingrained habits. Their civilizing influence during the last thirty years has been enormous. They have not only added millions to the numbers of those who read a great deal and perhaps—but this is doubtful—think a little, but they have abolished much of the old savagery. I declare that the life of this street as it was thirty or forty years ago simply could not be written down with any approach to truth in these pages.

Let me only quote the words of Professor Huxley, who began life by practising as a medical man in this quarter. “I have seen the Polynesian savage,” I once heard him say in a speech, “in his primitive condition, before the missionary or the blackbirder or the beach-comber got at him. With all his savagery, he was not half so savage, so unclean, so irreclaimable, as the tenant of a tenement in an East London slum.” These words open the door to unbounded flights of imagination. Leave that vanished world, leave the savage slum of Huxley’s early manhood, to the region of poetry and fancy, to the unwritten, to the suggested, to the half-whispered. It exists no longer; it has been improved.

Liz passed through school, then, from one standard to the next. We have seen that she learned manners, order, obedience, and the duty of cleanly clothes and cleanly language. She learned also to love teacher and school. Teacher came to see her when she was ill, and brought her nice things. Teacher kissed her. There were others, however, who took a mean advantage of her affectionate nature, and used it as a means of keeping her out of mischief—ladies who went in and out of the streets and houses, not afraid of anything; who gathered the children together on Sundays, and sang with them and talked to them, and gave them oranges. These ladies knew all the children. When they walked down the streets the very little ones ran after them, clinging to their skirts, catching at their hands, in the hope of a word and a kiss. Liz, among the rest, was easily softened by kindness. She had two schools,—that provided by the country and that provided by these ladies, who taught her more than books can teach,—and both schools, if you please, were provided for nothing. Whatever may happen to Liz in after life, her respect for manners and for the life of order will remain. And sometimes, when things look very black and there is real cause for sadness and repentance, this respect may be the poor girl’s most valuable asset.

At the age of fourteen, when she had to leave school, she was a sturdy, well-built girl, square-shouldered, rather short, but of a better frame than most of her companions, because her father was country-born; her features were sharp, her face was plain, but not unpleasing; her gray eyes were quick and restless, her lips were mobile; her cheek was somewhat pale, but not worn and sunken. She looked abounding in life and health; she was full of fun, and quick to laugh on the smallest provocation; she was ready-witted and prompt with repartee and retort; she danced as she went along the street, because she could not walk sedately; if a barrel-organ came that way she danced in the road, knowing half a dozen really pretty steps and figures. She had something in her quick movements, in the restlessness of her eyes, in the half-suspicious turn of the head, of the street sparrow, the only bird which she knew. If you grow up among street sparrows there is every reason for the adoption of some of their manners; the same resemblance to the sparrow, which is an impudent, saucy bird, always hungry, always on the lookout for something more, may be observed in other street children. She was affectionate with her companions, but always watchful for her own chance.

In her views of the conduct of life she was no strict moralist. She was ready to condone some things which more rigid maidens condemn. She would not, for instance, bear malice because her brother, for one of the smaller crimes, such as gambling on the pavement, got into trouble; nor would she judge him harshly if he was found in the possession of things “picked up”—unconsidered trifles; nor would she resent being knocked down by her brother when in drink. She had too often seen her mother cuffed by her father when he came home drunk to feel any resentment about such a trifle. In sober moments her brother did not use his fist upon her, nor did her father, except under the provocation of drink, drive the whole family flying into the street by “taking the strap” to everybody.

What did she know about the outer world? From her books and her school little enough. Her own country, like every other country, was to her a geographical expression. Even of London she knew nothing, though from the river stairs and foreshore she could see a good deal of it. Once a year, however, she had been taken for a day in the country, either by train to the nearest seaside place, or by brakes and wagonettes to Epping Forest. She was therefore by no means ignorant of green fields. Why, there was the “Island Garden,” in the Isle of Dogs, close at hand. But of trees and flowers and birds individually she knew nothing, and she never would know anything. A bird was a bird, a tree was a tree to her. On the whole of nature her mind was a blank. About her own country, its history, its position, its achievements, she had learned something, but it was rapidly becoming a vague and dim memory; of literature she knew nothing. She had learned a little singing, and had an ear for melody. She never read either newspapers or books, not even penny story-books, therefore she added nothing to her scanty knowledge.

What did she think about and what did she talk about? When one lives in a crowded street, where every family lives in one room, or in two at the most, there is an unfailing, perennial stream of interest in the fortune and the conduct, the good luck and the bad luck, of the neighbors. Liz and her companions did exactly what other people do in country towns much duller than London Street—they talked about one another and the people about them. They talked also of the time when they, like their elder sisters, would go about as they pleased: to the Queen’s Music-hall and to the Pavilion Theatre; when they could enjoy the delights of walking up and down their favorite boulevard—it is called Brook Street—all the long winter evening, each with her young man. The young girls always talk about the life before them. They know perfectly what it is going to be; they see it all round them. Who are they that they should expect anything but the common round, the common lot? They also, like their elder sisters, talk of dress. Already they plan and contrive for some extra bit of finery. Let us not believe that Liz was ever troubled with vacuity of mind or with lack of interest in her thoughts and conversation. There is in London Street even too much incident. Where there are always in the street men out of work, families whose “sticks” are all “in,” children who are kept alive by the generosity of other people, only not quite so poor as themselves; where there is always sickness, always violence, always drunkenness, always lads taken away by the man in blue, and always the joy of youth and the animation of children and young girls—why, Piccadilly is a waste by comparison, and Berkeley Square is like unto Tadmor in the desert.

In the case of Liz and her friends there was an additional interest in the river and the craft of all kinds. The children would stand on Ratcliffe Cross Stairs and gaze out upon the rushing tide and upon the ships that passed up and down. At low tide they ran out upon the mud, with bare feet, and picked up apronfuls of coal to carry home. Needs must that a child who lives within sight of ships should imagine strange things and get a sense of distance and of mystery. And sometimes a sailor would find his way to London Street—a sailor full of stories of strange lands across the seas, such as would make even the dullest of Ratcliffe girls launch out in imagination beyond the dim and dusty street.

Once, for instance, a cousin came. It was at Christmas. Never was such a Christmas. He was a sailor. He came from the West India docks—or was it from Limehouse Basin? It was the only time; he never came again. But could any one privileged to be present ever forget the celebration of that home-coming? He had money in his pocket—lots of money. He threw it all upon the table—nine pounds in gold, Liz remembered, and a heap of silver and copper. On Christmas eve the feast began. Relations and far-off cousins were found and invited. The family had two rooms. The company, with the guests, numbered twenty-one. A barrel of beer and any quantity of whisky and gin were laid in for the occasion. No more joyful family reunion was ever known. Outside, there were the usual Christmas rejoicings. In the street the drunken men reeled about; there was an occasional fight; the houses were all lighted up, but nowhere was a nobler spread or a longer feast or a more joyous Christmas known than in those two rooms. It took three days and three nights. From Friday, which was Christmas eve, till Monday, which was Boxing-day, this feast continued. During all this time not one among them, man, woman, or child, undressed or went to bed. The children fell asleep, with flushed faces and heavy heads, in corners, on the landing, anywhere; the others feasted and drank, danced and sang, for three days and three nights. Now and then one would drop out and fall prone upon the floor; the others went on regardless. Presently the sleeper awoke, sat up, recovered his wandering wits, and joined the revelers again.

For plenty and profusion it was like unto the wedding-feast of Camacho. There were roast geese and roast ducks, roast turkey and roast beef, roast pork and sausages and ham, and everything else that the shops at this festive season could supply.

On the third day, toward three in the afternoon of Monday, lo, a miracle! For the money was all gone, and the barrel of beer was empty, and the bottles were empty, and the bones of the geese and the turkeys were all that was left of the feast. The company broke up, the cousin departed, the family threw themselves upon the beds and slept the clock twice round. Who could forget this noble Christmas? Who could forget a feast that lasted for three whole days and three long nights?

Liz had got through her school-time; she must go to work.

Of course, she knew all along what awaited her. She must do as the others did, she must enter a factory. She contemplated the necessity without any misgiving. Why should she not go into a factory? It was all in the natural order of things, like getting hungry or waking up in the morning. Every girl had to be cuffed, every girl had to get out of the way when her father was drunk, every girl had to go to work as soon as she left school.

There is apparently a choice of work. There are many industries which employ girls. There is the match-making, there is the bottle-washing, there is the box-making, there is the paper-sorting, there is the jam-making, the fancy confectionery, the cracker industry, the making of ornaments for wedding-cakes, stockings for Christmas, and many others. There are many kinds of sewing. Virtually, however, this child had no choice; her sisters were in the jam factory, her mother had been in the jam factory, she too went to the jam factory.

There are many branches of work more disagreeable than the jam factory. Liz found herself at half-past seven in the morning in a huge building, where she was one among a thousand working women and girls, men and boys, but chiefly girls. The place was heavily laden with an overpowering fragrance of fruit and sugar. In some rooms the fruit was boiling in great copper pots; in some girls were stirring the fruit, after it had been boiled, to get the steam out of it; in some machinery crushed and ground the sugar till it became as fine as flour. The place was like a mill. The flour of sugar hung about the room in a cloud of dust; it lay in such dust on the tables and the casks; it got into the girls’ hair, so that they were fain to tie up their heads with white caps; it covered their clothes, and made them sticky; it made tables, benches, floor, all alike sticky. There were other developments of sugar; sometimes it lay on tables in huge, flat cakes of soft gray stuff like gelatine; they turned this mass, by their craft and subtlety, into innumerable threads of fine white silk; they drew it through machines, and brought it out in all the shapes that children love. Then there were rooms full of cocoanut. They treated casks full of dessicated cocoanut till that also became like flour. There were other rooms full of almonds, which they stripped and bleached and converted also into fine flour; or they turned boxes of gelatine into Turkish delight and jujubes. All day long and all the year round they made crackers; they made ornaments for wedding-cakes; they made favors; they made caramels; they made acidulated drops; they made things unnamed except by children. In all these rooms girls worked by hundreds, some sitting at long tables, some boiling the sugar, filling the pots with jam, stirring the boiling fruit, feeding machinery, filling molds; all were as busy as bees and as mute as mice. Some of them wore white caps to cover their hair, some wore white aprons, some wore coarse sacking tied all round for a skirt to keep off stickiness. All day long the machinery whirred and pulsed an accompaniment to the activity and industry of the place.

“I like the smell,” said Liz. First impressions are the best; she continued to like the smell and the factory and the work.