Chapter I: Part 1

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

NO. 1

------------------------------------------------------------------------

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.

--------------------------------

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

------------------------------------------------------------
Nº. 1.] SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------

A PRELIMINARY WORD.

The name that we have chosen for this publication expresses, generally, the desire we have at heart in originating it.

We aspire to live in the Household affections, and to be numbered among the Household thoughts, of our readers. We hope to be the comrade and friend of many thousands of people, of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions, on whose faces we may never look. We seek to bring into innumerable homes, from the stirring world around us, the knowledge of many social wonders, good and evil, that are not calculated to render any of us less ardently persevering in ourselves, less tolerant of one another, less faithful in the progress of mankind, less thankful for the privilege of living in this summer-dawn of time.

No mere utilitarian spirit, no iron binding of the mind to grim realities, will give a harsh tone to our Household Words. In the bosoms of the young and old, of the well-to-do and of the poor, we would tenderly cherish that light of Fancy which is inherent in the human breast; which, according to its nurture, burns with an inspiring flame, or sinks into a sullen glare, but which (or woe betide that day!) can never be extinguished. To show to all, that in all familiar things, even in those which are repellant on the surface, there is Romance enough, if we will find it out:—to teach the hardest workers at this whirling wheel of toil, that their lot is not necessarily a moody, brutal fact, excluded from the sympathies and graces of imagination; to bring the greater and the lesser in degree, together, upon that wide field, and mutually dispose them to a better acquaintance and a kinder understanding—is one main object of our Household Words.

The mightier inventions of this age are not, to our thinking, all material, but have a kind of souls in their stupendous bodies which may find expression in Household Words. The traveller whom we accompany on his railroad or his steamboat journey, may gain, we hope, some compensation for incidents which these later generations have outlived, in new associations with the Power that bears him onward; with the habitations and the ways of life of crowds of his fellow creatures among whom he passes like the wind; even with the towering chimneys he may see, spirting out fire and smoke upon the prospect. The swart giants, Slaves of the Lamp of Knowledge, have their thousand and one tales, no less than the Genii of the East; and these, in all their wild, grotesque, and fanciful aspects, in all their many phases of endurance, in all their many moving lessons of compassion and consideration, we design to tell.

Our Household Words will not be echoes of the present time alone, but of the past too. Neither will they treat of the hopes, the enterprises, triumphs, joys, and sorrows, of this country only, but, in some degree, of those of every nation upon earth. For nothing can be a source of real interest in one of them, without concerning all the rest.

We have considered what an ambition it is to be admitted into many homes with affection and confidence; to be regarded as a friend by children and old people; to be thought of in affliction and in happiness; to people the sick room with airy shapes ‘that give delight and hurt not,’ and to be associated with the harmless laughter and the gentle tears of many hearths. We know the great responsibility of such a privilege; its vast reward; the pictures that it conjures up, in hours of solitary labour, of a multitude moved by one sympathy; the solemn hopes which it awakens in the labourer’s breast, that he may be free from self-reproach in looking back at last upon his work, and that his name may be remembered in his race in time to come, and borne by the dear objects of his love with pride. The hand that writes these faltering lines, happily associated with _some_ Household Words before to-day, has known enough of such experiences to enter in an earnest spirit upon this new task, and with an awakened sense of all that it involves.

Some tillers of the field into which we now come, have been before us, and some are here whose high usefulness we readily acknowledge, and whose company it is an honour to join. But, there are others here—Bastards of the Mountain, draggled fringe on the Red Cap, Panders to the basest passions of the lowest natures—whose existence is a national reproach. And these, we should consider it our highest service to displace.

Thus, we begin our career! The adventurer in the old fairy story, climbing towards the summit of a steep eminence on which the object of his search was stationed, was surrounded by a roar of voices, crying to him, from the stones in the way, to turn back. All the voices _we_ hear, cry Go on! The stones that call to us have sermons in them, as the trees have tongues, as there are books in the running brooks, as there is good in everything! They, and the Time, cry out to us Go on! With a fresh heart, a light step, and a hopeful courage, we begin the journey. The road is not so rough that it need daunt our feet: the way is not so steep that we need stop for breath, and, looking faintly down, be stricken motionless. Go on, is all we hear, Go on! In a glow already, with the air from yonder height upon us, and the inspiriting voices joining in this acclamation, we echo back the cry, and go on cheerily!

LIZZIE LEIGH.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.

When Death is present in a household on a Christmas Day, the very contrast between the time as it now is, and the day as it has often been, gives a poignancy to sorrow,—a more utter blankness to the desolation. James Leigh died just as the far-away bells of Rochdale Church were ringing for morning service on Christmas Day, 1836. A few minutes before his death, he opened his already glazing eyes, and made a sign to his wife, by the faint motion of his lips, that he had yet something to say. She stooped close down, and caught the broken whisper, ‘I forgive her, Anne! May God forgive me.’

‘Oh my love, my dear! only get well, and I will never cease showing my thanks for those words. May God in heaven bless thee for saying them. Thou’rt not so restless, my lad! may be—Oh God!’

For even while she spoke, he died.

They had been two-and-twenty years man and wife; for nineteen of those years their life had been as calm and happy, as the most perfect uprightness on the one side, and the most complete confidence and loving submission on the other, could make it. Milton’s famous line might have been framed and hung up as the rule of their married life, for he was truly the interpreter, who stood between God and her; she would have considered herself wicked if she had ever dared even to think him austere, though as certainly as he was an upright man, so surely was he hard, stern, and inflexible. But for three years the moan and the murmur had never been out of her heart; she had rebelled against her husband as against a tyrant, with a hidden sullen rebellion, which tore up the old land-marks of wifely duty and affection, and poisoned the fountains whence gentlest love and reverence had once been for ever springing.

But those last blessed words replaced him on his throne in her heart, and called out penitent anguish for all the bitter estrangement of later years. It was this which made her refuse all the entreaties of her sons, that she would see the kind-hearted neighbours, who called on their way from church, to sympathise and condole. No! she would stay with the dead husband that had spoken tenderly at last, if for three years he had kept silence; who knew but what, if she had only been more gentle and less angrily reserved he might have relented earlier—and in time!

She sat rocking herself to and fro by the side of the bed, while the footsteps below went in and out; she had been in sorrow too long to have any violent burst of deep grief now; the furrows were well worn in her cheeks, and the tears flowed quietly, if incessantly, all the day long. But when the winter’s night drew on, and the neighbours had gone away to their homes, she stole to the window, and gazed out, long and wistfully, over the dark grey moors. She did not hear her son’s voice, as he spoke to her from the door, nor his footstep as he drew nearer. She started when he touched her.

‘Mother! come down to us. There’s no one but Will and me. Dearest mother, we do so want you.’ The poor lad’s voice trembled, and he began to cry. It appeared to require an effort on Mrs. Leigh’s part to tear herself away from the window, but with a sigh she complied with his request.

The two boys (for though Will was nearly twenty-one, she still thought of him as a lad) had done everything in their power to make the house-place comfortable for her. She herself, in the old days before her sorrow, had never made a brighter fire or a cleaner hearth, ready for her husband’s return home, than now awaited her. The tea-things were all put out, and the kettle was boiling; and the boys had calmed their grief down into a kind of sober cheerfulness. They paid her every attention they could think of, but received little notice on her part; she did not resist—she rather submitted to all their arrangements; but they did not seem to touch her heart.

When tea was ended,—it was merely the form of tea that had been gone through,—Will moved the things away to the dresser. His mother leant back languidly in her chair.

‘Mother, shall Tom read you a chapter? He’s a better scholar than I.’

‘Aye, lad!’ said she, almost eagerly. ‘That’s it. Read me the Prodigal Son. Aye, aye, lad. Thank thee.’

Tom found the chapter, and read it in the high-pitched voice which is customary in village-schools. His mother bent forward, her lips parted, her eyes dilated; her whole body instinct with eager attention. Will sat with his head depressed, and hung down. He knew why that chapter had been chosen; and to him it recalled the family’s disgrace. When the reading was ended, he still hung down his head in gloomy silence. But her face was brighter than it had been before for the day. Her eyes looked dreamy, as if she saw a vision; and by and by she pulled the bible towards her, and putting her finger underneath each word, began to read them aloud in a low voice to herself; she read again the words of bitter sorrow and deep humiliation; but most of all she paused and brightened over the father’s tender reception of the repentant prodigal.

So passed the Christmas evening in the Upclose Farm.

The snow had fallen heavily over the dark waving moorland, before the day of the funeral. The black storm-laden dome of heaven lay very still and close upon the white earth, as they carried the body forth out of the house which had known his presence so long as its ruling power. Two and two the mourners followed, making a black procession, in their winding march over the unbeaten snow, to Milne-Row Church—now lost in some hollow of the bleak moors, now slowly climbing the heaving ascents. There was no long tarrying after the funeral, for many of the neighbours who accompanied the body to the grave had far to go, and the great white flakes which came slowly down, were the boding fore-runners of a heavy storm. One old friend alone accompanied the widow and her sons to their home.

The Upclose Farm had belonged for generations to the Leighs; and yet its possession hardly raised them above the rank of labourers. There was the house and out-buildings, all of an old-fashioned kind, and about seven acres of barren unproductive land, which they had never possessed capital enough to improve; indeed they could hardly rely upon it for subsistence; and it had been customary to bring up the sons to some trade—such as a wheelwright’s, or blacksmith’s.

James Leigh had left a will, in the possession of the old man who accompanied them home. He read it aloud. James had bequeathed the farm to his faithful wife, Anne Leigh, for her life-time; and afterwards, to his son William. The hundred and odd pounds in the savings’-bank was to accumulate for Thomas.

After the reading was ended, Anne Leigh sat silent for a time; and then she asked to speak to Samuel Orme alone. The sons went into the back-kitchen, and thence strolled out into the fields regardless of the driving snow. The brothers were dearly fond of each other, although they were very different in character. Will, the elder, was like his father, stern, reserved, and scrupulously upright. Tom (who was ten years younger) was gentle and delicate as a girl, both in appearance and character. He had always clung to his mother, and dreaded his father. They did not speak as they walked, for they were only in the habit of talking about facts, and hardly knew the more sophisticated language applied to the description of feelings.

Meanwhile their mother had taken hold of Samuel Orme’s arm with her trembling hand.

‘Samuel, I must let the farm—I must.’

‘Let the farm! What’s come o’er the woman?’

‘Oh, Samuel!’ said she, her eyes swimming in tears, ‘I’m just fain to go and live in Manchester. I mun let the farm.’

Samuel looked, and pondered, but did not speak for some time. At last he said—

‘If thou hast made up thy mind, there’s no speaking again it; and thou must e’en go. Thou’lt be sadly pottered wi’ Manchester ways; but that’s not my look out. Why, thou’lt have to buy potatoes, a thing thou hast never done afore in all thy born life. Well! it’s not my look out. It’s rather for me than again me. Our Jenny is going to be married to Tom Higginbotham, and he was speaking of wanting a bit of land to begin upon. His father will be dying sometime, I reckon, and then he’ll step into the Croft Farm. But meanwhile’—

‘Then, thou’lt let the farm,’ said she, still as eagerly as ever.

‘Aye, aye, he’ll take it fast enough, I’ve a notion. But I’ll not drive a bargain with thee just now; it would not be right; we’ll wait a bit.’

‘No; I cannot wait, settle it out at once.’

‘Well, well; I’ll speak to Will about it. I see him out yonder. I’ll step to him, and talk it over.’

Accordingly he went and joined the two lads, and without more ado, began the subject to them.

‘Will, thy mother is fain to go live in Manchester, and covets to let the farm. Now, I’m willing to take it for Tom Higginbotham; but I like to drive a keen bargain, and there would be no fun chaffering with thy mother just now. Let thee and me buckle to, my lad! and try and cheat each other; it will warm us this cold day.’

‘Let the farm!’ said both the lads at once, with infinite surprise, ‘Go live in Manchester!’

When Samuel Orme found that the plan had never before been named to either Will or Tom, he would have nothing to do with it, he said, until they had spoken to their mother; likely she was ‘dazed’ by her husband’s death; he would wait a day or two, and not name it to any one; not to Tom Higginbotham himself, or may be he would set his heart upon it. The lads had better go in and talk it over with their mother. He bade them good day, and left them.

Will looked very gloomy, but he did not speak till they got near the house. Then he said,—

‘Tom, go to th’ shippon, and supper the cows. I want to speak to mother alone.’

When he entered the house-place, she was sitting before the fire, looking into its embers. She did not hear him come in; for some time she had lost her quick perception of outward things.

‘Mother! what’s this about going to Manchester?’ asked he.

‘Oh, lad!’ said she, turning round, and speaking in a beseeching tone, ‘I must go and seek our Lizzie. I cannot rest here for thinking on her. Many’s the time I’ve left thy father sleeping in bed, and stole to th’ window, and looked and looked my heart out towards Manchester, till I thought I must just set out and tramp over moor and moss straight away till I got there, and then lift up every downcast face till I came to our Lizzie. And often, when the south wind was blowing soft among the hollows, I’ve fancied (it could but be fancy, thou knowest) I heard her crying upon me; and I’ve thought the voice came closer and closer, till at last it was sobbing out “Mother” close to the door; and I’ve stolen down, and undone the latch before now, and looked out into the still black night, thinking to see her,—and turned sick and sorrowful when I heard no living sound but the sough of the wind dying away. Oh! speak not to me of stopping here, when she may be perishing for hunger, like the poor lad in the parable.’ And now she lifted up her voice and wept aloud.

Will was deeply grieved. He had been old enough to be told the family shame when, more than two years before, his father had had his letter to his daughter returned by her mistress in Manchester, telling him that Lizzie had left her service some time—and why. He had sympathised with his father’s stern anger; though he had thought him something hard, it is true, when he had forbidden his weeping, heart-broken wife to go and try to find her poor sinning child, and declared that henceforth they would have no daughter; that she should be as one dead, and her name never more be named at market or at meal time, in blessing or in prayer. He had held his peace, with compressed lips and contracted brow, when the neighbours had noticed to him how poor Lizzie’s death had aged both his father and his mother; and how they thought the bereaved couple would never hold up their heads again. He himself had felt as if that one event had made him old before his time; and had envied Tom the tears he had shed over poor, pretty, innocent, dead Lizzie. He thought about her sometimes, till he ground his teeth together, and could have struck her down in her shame. His mother had never named her to him until now.

‘Mother!’ said he at last. ‘She may be dead. Most likely she is.’

‘No, Will; she is not dead,’ said Mrs. Leigh. ‘God will not let her die till I’ve seen her once again. Thou dost not know how I’ve prayed and prayed just once again to see her sweet face, and tell her I’ve forgiven her, though she’s broken my heart—she has, Will.’ She could not go on for a minute or two for the choking sobs. ‘Thou dost not know that, or thou wouldst not say she could be dead,—for God is very merciful, Will; He is,—He is much more pitiful than man,—I could never ha’ spoken to thy father as I did to Him,—and yet thy father forgave her at last. The last words he said were that he forgave her. Thou’lt not be harder than thy father, Will? Do not try and hinder me going to seek her, for it’s no use.’

Will sat very still for a long time before he spoke. At last he said, ‘I’ll not hinder you. I think she’s dead, but that’s no matter.’

‘She is not dead,’ said her mother, with low earnestness. Will took no notice of the interruption.

‘We will all go to Manchester for a twelvemonth, and let the farm to Tom Higginbotham. I’ll get blacksmith’s work; and Tom can have good schooling for awhile, which he’s always craving for. At the end of the year you’ll come back, mother, and give over fretting for Lizzie, and think with me that she is dead,—and, to my mind, that would be more comfort than to think of her living;’ he dropped his voice as he spoke these last words. She shook her head, but made no answer. He asked again,—

‘Will you, mother, agree to this?’

‘I’ll agree to it a-this-ns,’ said she. ‘If I hear and see nought of her for a twelvemonth, me being in Manchester looking out, I’ll just ha’ broken my heart fairly before the year’s ended, and then I shall know neither love nor sorrow for her any more, when I’m at rest in the grave—I’ll agree to that, Will.’

‘Well, I suppose it must be so. I shall not tell Tom, mother, why we’re flitting to Manchester. Best spare him.’

‘As thou wilt,’ said she, sadly, ‘so that we go, that’s all.’

Before the wild daffodils were in flower in the sheltered copses round Upclose Farm, the Leighs were settled in their Manchester home; if they could ever grow to consider that place as a home, where there was no garden, or outbuilding, no fresh breezy outlet, no far-stretching view, over moor and hollow,—no dumb animals to be tended, and, what more than all they missed, no old haunting memories, even though those remembrances told of sorrow, and the dead and gone.

Mrs. Leigh heeded the loss of all these things less than her sons. She had more spirit in her countenance than she had had for months, because now she had hope; of a sad enough kind, to be sure, but still it was hope. She performed all her household duties, strange and complicated as they were, and bewildered as she was with all the town-necessities of her new manner of life; but when her house was ‘sided,’ and the boys come home from their work, in the evening, she would put on her things and steal out, unnoticed, as she thought, but not without many a heavy sigh from Will, after she had closed the house-door and departed. It was often past midnight before she came back, pale and weary, with almost a guilty look upon her face; but that face so full of disappointment and hope deferred, that Will had never the heart to say what he thought of the folly and hopelessness of the search. Night after night it was renewed, till days grew to weeks and weeks to months. All this time Will did his duty towards her as well as he could, without having sympathy with her. He staid at home in the evenings for Tom’s sake, and often wished he had Tom’s pleasure in reading, for the time hung heavy on his hands, as he sat up for his mother.

I need not tell you how the mother spent the weary hours. And yet I will tell you something. She used to wander out, at first as if without a purpose, till she rallied her thoughts, and brought all her energies to bear on the one point; then she went with earnest patience along the least known ways to some new part of the town, looking wistfully with dumb entreaty into people’s faces; sometimes catching a glimpse of a figure which had a kind of momentary likeness to her child’s, and following that figure with never wearying perseverance, till some light from shop or lamp showed the cold strange face which was not her daughter’s. Once or twice a kind-hearted passer-by, struck by her look of yearning woe, turned back and offered help, or asked her what she wanted. When so spoken to, she answered only, ‘You don’t know a poor girl they call Lizzie Leigh, do you?’ and when they denied all knowledge, she shook her head, and went on again. I think they believed her to be crazy. But she never spoke first to any one. She sometimes took a few minutes’ rest on the door-steps, and sometimes (very seldom) covered her face and cried; but she could not afford to lose time and chances in this way; while her eyes were blinded with tears, the lost one might pass by unseen.

One evening, in the rich time of shortening autumn-days, Will saw an old man, who, without being absolutely drunk, could not guide himself rightly along the foot-path, and was mocked for his unsteadiness of gait by the idle boys of the neighbourhood. For his father’s sake Will regarded old age with tenderness, even when most degraded and removed from the stern virtues which dignified that father; so he took the old man home, and seemed to believe his often-repeated assertions that he drank nothing but water. The stranger tried to stiffen himself up into steadiness as he drew nearer home, as if there were some one there, for whose respect he cared even in his half-intoxicated state, or whose feelings he feared to grieve. His home was exquisitely clean and neat even in outside appearance; threshold, window, and window-sill, were outward signs of some spirit of purity within. Will was rewarded for his attention by a bright glance of thanks, succeeded by a blush of shame, from a young woman of twenty or thereabouts. She did not speak, or second her father’s hospitable invitations to him to be seated. She seemed unwilling that a stranger should witness her father’s attempts at stately sobriety, and Will could not bear to stay and see her distress. But when the old man, with many a flabby shake of the hand, kept asking him to come again some other evening and see them, Will sought her downcast eyes, and, though he could not read their veiled meaning, he answered timidly, ‘If it’s agreeable to everybody, I’ll come—and thank ye.’ But there was no answer from the girl to whom this speech was in reality addressed; and Will left the house liking her all the better for never speaking.

He thought about her a great deal for the next day or two; he scolded himself for being so foolish as to think of her, and then fell to with fresh vigour, and thought of her more than ever. He tried to depreciate her; he told himself she was not pretty, and then made indignant answer that he liked her looks much better than any beauty of them all. He wished he was not so country looking, so red-faced, so broad-shouldered; while she was like a lady, with her smooth colourless complexion, her bright dark hair and her spotless dress. Pretty, or not pretty, she drew his footsteps towards her; he could not resist the impulse that made him wish to see her once more, and find out some fault which should unloose his heart from her unconscious keeping. But there she was, pure and maidenly as before. He sat and looked, answering her father at cross-purposes, while she drew more and more into the shadow of the chimney-corner out of sight. Then the spirit that possessed him (it was not he himself, sure, that did so impudent a thing!) made him get up and carry the candle to a different place, under the pretence of giving her more light at her sewing, but, in reality, to be able to see her better; she could not stand this much longer, but jumped up, and said she must put her little niece to bed; and surely, there never was, before or since, so troublesome a child of two years old; for, though Will staid an hour and a half longer, she never came down again. He won the father’s heart, though, by his capacity as a listener, for some people are not at all particular, and, so that they themselves may talk on undisturbed, are not so unreasonable as to expect attention to what they say.

Will did gather this much, however, from the old man’s talk. He had once been quite in a genteel line of business, but had failed for more money than any greengrocer he had heard of; at least, any who did not mix up fish and game with greengrocery proper. This grand failure seemed to have been the event of his life, and one on which he dwelt with a strange kind of pride. It appeared as if at present he rested from his past exertions (in the bankrupt line), and depended on his daughter, who kept a small school for very young children. But all these particulars Will only remembered and understood, when he had left the house; at the time he heard them, he was thinking of Susan. After he had made good his footing at Mr. Palmer’s, he was not long, you may be sure, without finding some reason for returning again and again. He listened to her father, he talked to the little niece, but he looked at Susan, both while he listened and while he talked. Her father kept on insisting upon his former gentility, the details of which would have appeared very questionable to Will’s mind, if the sweet, delicate, modest Susan had not thrown an inexplicable air of refinement over all she came near. She never spoke much; she was generally diligently at work; but when she moved it was so noiselessly, and when she did speak, it was in so low and soft a voice, that silence, speech, motion and stillness, alike seemed to remove her high above Will’s reach into some saintly and inaccessible air of glory—high above his reach, even as she knew him! And, if she were made acquainted with the dark secret behind, of his sister’s shame, which was kept ever present to his mind by his mother’s nightly search among the outcast and forsaken, would not Susan shrink away from him with loathing, as if he were tainted by the involuntary relationship? This was his dread; and thereupon followed a resolution that he would withdraw from her sweet company before it was too late. So he resisted internal temptation, and staid at home, and suffered and sighed. He became angry with his mother for her untiring patience in seeking for one who, he could not help hoping, was dead rather than alive. He spoke sharply to her, and received only such sad deprecatory answers as made him reproach himself, and still more lose sight of peace of mind. This struggle could not last long without affecting his health; and Tom, his sole companion through the long evenings, noticed his increasing languor, his restless irritability, with perplexed anxiety, and at last resolved to call his mother’s attention to his brother’s haggard, care-worn looks. She listened with a startled recollection of Will’s claims upon her love. She noticed his decreasing appetite, and half-checked sighs.

‘Will, lad! what’s come o’er thee?’ said she to him, as he sat listlessly gazing into the fire.

‘There’s nought the matter with me,’ said he, as if annoyed at her remark.

‘Nay, lad, but there is.’ He did not speak again to contradict her; indeed she did not know if he had heard her, so unmoved did he look.

‘Would’st like to go back to Upclose Farm?’ asked she, sorrowfully.

‘It’s just blackberrying time,’ said Tom.

Will shook his head. She looked at him awhile, as if trying to read that expression of despondency and trace it back to its source.

‘Will and Tom could go,’ said she; ‘I must stay here till I’ve found her, thou know’st,’ continued she, dropping her voice.

He turned quickly round, and with the authority he at all times exercised over Tom, bade him begone to bed.

When Tom had left the room he prepared to speak.

VALENTINE’S DAY AT THE POST-OFFICE.

Late in the afternoon of the 14th of February last past, an individual who bore not the smallest resemblance to a despairing lover, or, indeed, to a lover in any state of mind, was seen to drop into the box of a Fleet Street receiving-house two letters folded in flaming covers. He did not look round to see if he were observed, but walked boldly into the shop with a third epistle, and deposited thereon one penny. Considering the suspicious appearance of this document—for its envelope was green—he retired from the counter with extraordinary _nonchalance_, and coolly walked on towards Ludgate Hill.

Long paces soon brought him to St. Martin’s-le-Grand, for he strode like a man who had an imminent appointment. Sure enough, under the clock of the General Post-Office, he joined another, who eagerly asked,—

‘Have you done it?’

The answer was, ‘I have!’

‘Very well. Let us now watch the result.’

Most people are aware that the Great National Post-Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand is divided into halves by a passage, whose sides are perforated with what is called the ‘Window Department.’ Here huge slits gape for letters, whole sashes yawn for newspapers, or wooden panes open for clerks to frame their large faces, like giant visages in the slides of a Magic Lanthorn; and to answer inquiries, or receive unstamped paid letters. The southern side is devoted to the London District Post, and the northern to what still continues to be called the ‘Inland Department,’ although foreign, colonial, and other outlandish correspondence now passes through it. It was with the London District Branch that the two gentlemen first appeared to have business.

Having been led through a maze of offices and passages more or less dark, they found themselves—like knights-errant in a fairy tale—‘in an enormous hall, illumined by myriads of lights.’ Without being exactly transformed into statues, or stricken fast asleep, the occupants of this hall (whose name was Legion) appeared to be in an enchanted state of idleness. Among a wilderness of long tables, and of desks not unlike those on which butter-men perform their active parts of legerdemain in making ‘pats’—only these desks were covered with black cloth—they were reading books, talking together, wandering about, lying down, or drinking coffee—apparently quite unused to doing any work, and not at all expectant of ever having anything to do, but die.

In a few minutes, and without any preparation, a great stir began at one end of this hall, and an immense train of private performers, in the highest state of excitement, poured in, getting up, on an immense scale, the first scene in the ‘Miller and his Men.’ Each had a sack on his back; each bent under its weight; and the bare sight of these sacks, as if by magic, changed all the readers, all the talkers, all the wanderers, all the liers-down, all the coffee-drinkers, into a colony of human ants!

For the sacks were great sheepskin bags of letters tumbling in from the receiving-houses. Anon they looked like whole flocks suddenly struck all of a heap, ready for slaughter; for a ruthless individual stood at a table, with sleeves tucked up and knife in hand, who rapidly cut their throats, dived into their insides, abstracted their contents, and finally skinned them. ‘For every letter we leave behind,’ said the bag-opener, in answer to an inquiry, ‘we are fined half-a-crown. That’s why we turn them inside out.’

The mysterious visitors closely scrutinised the letters that were disgorged. These were _from_ all parts of London _to_ all parts of London and to the provinces and to the far-off quarters of the globe. An acute postman might guess the broad tenour of their contents by their covers:—business letters are in big envelopes, official letters in long ones, and lawyers’ letters in none at all; the tinted and lace-bordered mean Valentines, the black-bordered tell of grief, and the radiant with white enamel announce marriage. When the Fleet Street dispatch appeared, the visitors tracked it, and the operations of the clerk who separated the three bundles of which it consisted were closely followed. With the prying curiosity which now only began to show itself, one of the intruders actually took a copy of the bill which accompanied the letters. It set forth in three lines that there were so many ‘Stamped,’ so many ‘Prepaid,’ and so many ‘Unpaid.’

The clerk counted the stamped letters like lightning, and a flash of red gleaming past showed the inquirers that one of their epistles was safe. Suddenly the motion was stopped; the official had instinctively detected that one letter was insufficiently adorned with the Queen’s profile, and he weighed and taxed it double in a twinkling. Having proved the number of stamped letters to be exactly as per account rendered, he went on checking off the prepaid, turning up the sender’s green missive in the process. He then dealt with the unpaid, amongst which the lookers-on perceived their yellow one. The cash column was computed and cast in a single thought, and a short-hand mark, signifying ‘quite correct,’ dismissed the Fleet Street bill upon a file, for the leisurely scrutiny of the Receiver-General’s office. All the other letters, and all the other bills of all the other receiving-houses, were going through the same routine at all the other tables; and these performances are repeated ten times in every day, all the year round, Sundays excepted!

‘You perceived,’ said one of the two friends, ‘that in the rapid process of counting, our stamped letter gleamed past like a meteor, whilst our money-paid and unpaid epistles remained long enough under observation for a careful reading of the superscriptions.’

‘That delay,’ said an intelligent official, ‘is occasioned because the latter are unstamped. Such letters cause a great complication of trouble, wholly avoided by the use of Queen’s heads. Every officer through whose hands they pass—from the receiving-house-keeper to the carriers who deliver them at their destinations—has to give and take a cash account of each. If the public would put stamps on _all_ letters, it would save us, and therefore _itself_, some thousands a-year.’

‘What are the proportions of the stamped to the prepaid and unpaid letters which pass through all the post-offices during the year?’

‘We can tell within a very near approximation to correctness:—337,500,000 passed through the post-offices of the United Kingdom during last year, and to every 100 of them about fifty had stamps; 46 were prepaid with pennies; and only 4 were committed to the box unpaid.’

While one of the visitors was receiving this information, the other had followed his variegated letters to the next process; which was that of stamping on the sealed face, in red ink, the date and hour of despatch. The letters are ranged in a long row, like a pack of cards thrown across a table, and so fast does the stamper’s hand move, that he can mark 3000 in an hour. While defacing the Queen’s heads on the other side, he counts as he thumps, till he enumerates fifty, when he dodges his stamp on one side to put his black mark on a piece of plain paper. All these memoranda are afterwards collected by the president, who, reckoning fifty letters to every black mark, gets a near approximation to the number that have passed through the office.

It was by this means that our friends obtained the following account of the number of district letters that passed through this office on St. Valentine’s Day:—

|----------------------------------------------------|
| Feb. 14th, | Paid. | Unpaid. |Stamped.| Total. |
| 1850. | | | | |
|----------------------------------------------------|
| | 1d. | 1d. | 2d. | | |
|----------------------------------------------------|
|Collections.| | | | | |
| 8 o’clock. | 6,872 | 52 | 1,216 | 20,082 | 28,222 |
|10 ” | 6,212 | 19 | 607 | 13,629 | 20,467 |
|12 ” | 7,069 | 36 | 612 | 15,240 | 22,957 |
| 1 ” | 2,989 | 17 | 277 | 6,395 | 9,678 |
| 2 ” | 6,520 | 39 | 535 | 13,696 | 20,790 |
| 3 ” | 2,456 | 36 | 328 | 6,909 | 9,729 |
| 4 ” | 4,873 | 36 | 375 | 13,478 | 13,478 |
| 5 ” | 3,340 | 28 | 317 | 8,207 | 11,892 |
| 6 ” | 9,300 | 129 | 958 | 27,950 | 38,337 |
| 8 ” | 3,903 | 32 | 812 | 6,650 | 11,487 |
|----------------------------------------------------|
| |53,624 | 424 | 6,037 |126,952 |187,037 |
|----------------------------------------------------|

To this total are to be added 6,000 ‘bye’ letters—or those which passed from village to village within the suburban limits of the district post without reaching the chief office—and 100,000 destined for the provinces and places beyond sea, which were transferred to the Inland Department. The grand total for the day, therefore, rose to nearly 300,000. Thus the sacrifices to the fane of St. Valentine—consisting of hearts, darts, Cupid peeping out of paper-roses, Hymen embowered in hot-pressed embossing, swains in very blue coats and nymphs in very opaque muslin, coarse caricatures and tender verses—caused an augmentation to the revenue on this anniversary equal to about 70,000 missives; 123,000 being the usual daily average for district and ‘byes’ during the month of February. This increase, being peculiar to cross and district posts, does not so much affect the Inland Office, for lovers and sweethearts are generally neighbours. The entire correspondence of the three kingdoms is augmented on each St. Valentine’s day to the extent of about 400,000 letters.

‘Is it possible?’ exclaimed one of the visitors, regarding the piles of epistles on the numerous tables, ‘that this mass of letters can be arranged and sent away to their respective addresses in time to receive the next collection, which will arrive in less than an hour?’

‘Quite,’ replied an obliging informant, ‘I’ll tell you how we do it. We have divided London into seventeen sections. There they are, you perceive.’ He then pointed to the tables with pigeon-holes numbered from one to seventeen; one marked ‘blind,’ with a nineteenth labelled ‘general.’ It was explained that the proper arrangement of the letters in these compartments constitutes the first sorting. They are then sorted into sub-divisions; then into districts, and finally handed over to the letter-carriers, who, in another room, arrange them for their own convenience into ‘walks.’ As the visitors looked round they perceived their coloured envelopes—which were all addressed to Scotland—suddenly emerge from a chaotic heap, and lodge in the division marked ‘general,’ as magically as a conjurer causes any card you may choose to fly out of the whole pack. ‘These letters,’ remarked the expositor, ‘being for the country will be presently passed into the Inland Office through a tunnel under the hall. The “blind” letters have superscriptions which the sorters cannot decypher, and are sent to the “blind” table where a gentleman presides, to whom, from the extreme sharpness of his vision, we give the _lucus à non lucendo_ name of the “blind clerk.” You will have a specimen of his powers presently.’

While this dialogue was going on there was a general abatement of the noise of stamping, and shuffling letters, and when the visitors looked round, the place had relapsed into its former tranquillity. It was scarcely credible that from 30,000 to 40,000 letters had been received, stamped, counted, sorted, and sent away in so short a time. ‘A judicious division of labour,’ remarked one of our friends, ‘must work these miracles.’

‘Yes, sir,’ was the reply of an official, ‘and there are from 1200 to 1700 of us to do the work of the district post alone. When it was removed from Gerard Street to this building there was not a quarter of that number. For instance—then, three carriers sufficed for the Paddington district; but, by the dispatch you have just seen completed, we have sent off 2000 letters to that single locality by the hands of twenty-five carriers.’

‘The increase is attributable to the penny system?’ interrogated one of our inquiring friends.

‘Entirely.’

The questioner then referred to a Parliamentary paper of which he had obtained possession. It showed him the history of general postal increase since the era of dear distance rates. In 1839—under the old system—the number of letters which passed through the post was 76,000,000. In 1840 came the uniform penny, and for that year the number was 162,000,000, or an increase of 93,000,000, equal to 123 per cent. That was the grand start; afterwards the rate of increase subsided from 36 per cent. in 1841, to 16 per cent. in 1842 and 1843. In 1845, and the three following years, the increase was respectively, 39, 37, and 30 per cent. Then succeeded a sudden drop; perhaps the culminating point had been attained. The Post-Office is, however, a thermometer of commerce: during the depressing year 1848, the number of letters increased no more than 9 per cent. But last year 37,500,000 epistles passed through the office, being an augmentation of 8,500,000 upon the preceding year, or 11 per cent. of progressive increase. Another Parliamentary document shows, that, although the business is now exactly four-and-a-half times more than it was in 1839, the expense of doing it has only doubled. In the former year the cost of the establishment was not quite 690,000_l._; in 1849 it was about 1,400,000_l._

While one visitor was poring over these documents, the other deliberately watched the coloured envelopes. They were, with about 2000 other General Post letters, put into boxes and taken to the tunnel to be conveyed into the Inland Office upon a horizontal band worked by a wheel. The two friends now took leave of the District Department to follow the objects of their pursuit.

It was a quarter before six o’clock when they crossed the Hall—six being the latest hour at which newspapers can be posted without fee.

It was then just drizzling newspapers. The great window of that department being thrown open, the first black fringe of a thunder-cloud of newspapers impending over the Post-Office was discharging itself fitfully—now in large drops, now in little; now in sudden plumps, now stopping altogether. By degrees it began to rain hard; by fast degrees the storm came on harder and harder, until it blew, rained, hailed, snowed, newspapers. A fountain of newspapers played in at the window. Water-spouts of newspapers broke from enormous sacks, and engulphed the men inside. A prodigious main of newspapers, at the Newspaper River Head, seemed to be turned on, threatening destruction to the miserable Post-Office. The Post-Office was so full already, that the window foamed at the mouth with newspapers. Newspapers flew out like froth, and were tumbled in again by the bystanders. All the boys in London seemed to have gone mad, and to be besieging the Post-Office with newspapers. Now and then there was a girl; now and then a woman; now and then a weak old man: but as the minute hand of the clock crept near to six, such a torrent of boys, and such a torrent of newspapers came tumbling in together pell-mell, head over heels, one above another, that the giddy head looking on chiefly wondered why the boys springing over one another’s heads, and flying the garter into the Post-Office with the enthusiasm of the corps of acrobats at M. Franconi’s, didn’t post themselves nightly, along with the newspapers, and get delivered all over the world.

Suddenly it struck six. Shut Sesame! Perfectly still weather. Nobody there. No token of the late storm—Not a soul, too late!

But what a chaos within! Men up to their knees in newspapers on great platforms; men gardening among newspapers with rakes; men digging and delving among newspapers as if a new description of rock had been blasted into those fragments; men going up and down a gigantic trap—an ascending and descending-room worked by a steam-engine—still taking with them nothing but newspapers! All the history of the time, all the chronicled births, deaths, and marriages, all the crimes, all the accidents, all the vanities, all the changes, all the realities, of all the civilised earth, heaped up, parcelled out, carried about, knocked down, cut, shuffled, dealt, played, gathered up again, and passed from hand to hand, in an apparently interminable and hopeless confusion, but really in a system of admirable order, certainty, and simplicity, pursued six nights every week, all through the rolling year! Which of us, after this, shall find fault with the rather more extensive system of good and evil, when we don’t quite understand it at a glance; or set the stars right in their spheres?

The friends were informed that 70,000,000 newspapers pass through all the post-offices every year. Upwards of 80,000,000 newspaper-stamps are distributed annually from the Stamp-Office; but most of the London papers are conveyed into the country by early trains. On the other hand, frequently the same paper passes through the post several times, which accounts for the small excess of 10,000,000 stamps issued over papers posted. In weight, 187 tons of paper and print pass up and down the ingenious ‘lift’ every week, and thence to the uttermost corners of the earth—from Blackfriars to Botany Bay, from the Strand to Chusan.

As to the rooms, revealed through gratings in the well, traversed by the ascending and descending-room, and walked in by the visitors afterwards,—those enormous chambers, each with its hundreds of sorters busy over their hundreds of thousands of letters—those dispatching places of a business that has the look of being eternal and never to be disposed of or cleared away—those silent receptacles of countless millions of passionate words, for ever pouring through them like a Niagara of language, and leaving not a drop behind—what description could present them? But when a sorter goes home from these places to his bed, does he dream of letters? When he has a fever (sorters _must_ have fevers sometimes) does he never find the Welch letters getting into the Scotch divisions, and the London letters going to Jericho? When he gets a glass too much, does he see no double letters mis-sorting themselves unaccountably? When he is very ill, do no dead letters stare him in the face? And yonder dark, mysterious, ground-glass balcony high up in the wall, not unlike a church organ without the pipes—the screen from whence an unseen eye watches the sorters who are listening to temptation—when he has a nightmare, does he never dream of _that_?

Then that enormous table upon which the public shoot their letters through the window-slits—do the four men who sit at it never fancy themselves playing at whist, gathering up an enormous pack of red aces, with here and there a many-hued Valentine to stand for a Court card? Their duty is termed ‘facing,’ or turning the ace-like seals downwards, ready for stamping.

The system of stamping, sorting, and arranging, is precisely similar to that in the District Branch, and by his recently acquired knowledge of it, the person who posted the coloured letters was able to trace them through every stage, till they were tied up ready to be ‘bagged,’ and sent away. While thus employed, his companion made the following observations:—

In an opposite side of the enormous apartment, a good space and a few officials are devoted to repairing the carelessness of the public, which is—in amount and extent—scarcely credible. Upon an average, 300 letters per day pass through the General Post-Office totally unfastened; chiefly in consequence of the use of what stationers are pleased to call ‘adhesive’ envelopes. Many are virgin ones, without either seal or direction; and not a few contain money. In Sir Francis Freeling’s time, the sum of 5000_l._ in Bank notes was found in a ‘blank.’ It was not till after some trouble that the sender was traced, and the cash restored to him. Not long since, an humble post-mistress of an obscure Welch post-town, unable to decipher the address on a letter, perceived, on examining it, the folds of several Bank notes protruding from a torn edge of the envelope. She securely re-enclosed it to the secretary of the Post-Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand; who found the contents to be 1500_l._, and the superscription too much even for the hieroglyphic powers of the ‘blind clerk.’ Eventually the enclosures found their true destination.

It is estimated that there lies, from time to time, in the Dead-Letter Office, undergoing the process of finding owners, some 11,000_l._ annually, in cash alone. In July, 1847, for instance—only a two months’ accumulation—the post-haste of 4658 letters, all containing property, was arrested by the bad superscriptions of the writers. They were consigned—after a searching inquest upon each by that efficient coroner, the ‘blind clerk’—to the Post-Office _Morgue_. There were Bank notes of the value of 1010_l._, and money-orders for 407_l._ 12_s._ But most of these ill-directed letters contained coin in small sums, amounting to 310_l._ 9_s._ 7_d._ On the 17th of July, 1847, there were lying in the Dead-Letter Office bills of Exchange for the immense sum of 40,410_l._ 5_s._ 7_d._!