The last rays of the sun, contending with clouds of smoke that driftedacross the country, partially illumined a peculiar landscape. Far asthe eye could reach, and the region was level, except where a range oflimestone hills formed its distant limit, a wilderness of cottages ortenements that were hardly entitled to a higher name, were scattered formany miles over the land; some detached, some connected in little rows,some clustering in groups, yet rarely forming continuous streets, butinterspersed with blazing furnaces, heaps of burning coal, and pilesof smouldering ironstone; while forges and engine chimneys roared andpuffed in all directions, and indicated the frequent presence of themouth of the mine and the bank of the coal-pit. Notwithstandingthe whole country might be compared to a vast rabbit warren, it wasnevertheless intersected with canals crossing each other at variouslevels, and though the subterranean operations were prosecuted with somuch avidity that it was not uncommon to observe whole rows ofhouses awry, from the shifting and hollow nature of the land, still,intermingled with heaps of mineral refuse or of metallic dross, patchesof the surface might here and there be recognised, covered, as if inmockery, with grass and corn, looking very much like those gentlemen'ssons that we used to read of in our youth, stolen by the chimneysweepsand giving some intimations of their breeding beneath their grimylivery. But a tree or a shrub--such an existence was unknown in thisdingy rather than dreary region.
It was the twilight hour; the hour at which in southern climes thepeasant kneels before the sunset image of the blessed Hebrew maiden;when caravans halt in their long course over vast deserts, and theturbaned traveller bending in the sand, pays his homage to the sacredstone and the sacred city; the hour, not less holy, that announces thecessation of English toil, and sends forth the miner and the collier tobreathe the air of earth, and gaze on the light of heaven.
They come forth: the mine delivers its gang and the pit its bondsmen;the forge is silent and the engine is still. The plain is coveredwith the swarming multitude: bands of stalwart men, broad-chested andmuscular, wet with toil, and black as the children of the tropics;troops of youth--alas! of both sexes,--though neither their raiment northeir language indicates the difference; all are clad in male attire;and oaths that men might shudder at, issue from lips born to breathewords of sweetness. Yet these are to be--some are--the mothers ofEngland! But can we wonder at the hideous coarseness of their languagewhen we remember the savage rudeness of their lives? Naked to the waist,an iron chain fastened to a belt of leather runs between their legs cladin canvas trousers, while on hands and feet an English girl, for twelve,sometimes for sixteen hours a-day, hauls and hurries tubs of coals upsubterranean roads, dark, precipitous, and plashy: circumstances thatseem to have escaped the notice of the Society for the Abolition ofNegro Slavery. Those worthy gentlemen too appear to have been singularlyunconscious of the sufferings of the little Trappers, which wasremarkable, as many of them were in their own employ.
See too these emerge from the bowels of the earth! Infants of four andfive years of age, many of them girls, pretty and still soft and timid;entrusted with the fulfilment of most responsible duties, and the natureof which entails on them the necessity of being the earliest to enterthe mine and the latest to leave it. Their labour indeed is not severe,for that would be impossible, but it is passed in darkness and insolitude. They endure that punishment which philosophical philanthropyhas invented for the direst criminals, and which those criminals deemmore terrible than the death for which it is substituted. Hour afterhour elapses, and all that reminds the infant Trappers of the worldthey have quitted and that which they have joined, is the passage of thecoal-waggons for which they open the air-doors of the galleries, and onkeeping which doors constantly closed, except at this moment of passage,the safety of the mine and the lives of the persons employed in itentirely depend.
Sir Joshua, a man of genius and a courtly artist, struck by the seraphiccountenance of Lady Alice Gordon, when a child of very tender years,painted the celestial visage in various attitudes on the same canvass,and styled the group of heavenly faces--guardian angels!
We would say to some great master of the pencil, Mr Landseer or Mr Etty,go thou to the little trappers and do likewise!
A small party of miners approached a house of more pretension than thegenerality of the dwellings, and announcing its character by a veryflagrant sign of the Rising Sun. They entered it as men accustomed, andwere greeted with smiles and many civil words from the lady at the bar,who inquired very cheerfully what the gentlemen would have. They soonfound themselves seated in the tap, and, though it was not entirelyunoccupied, in their accustomed places, for there seemed a generalunderstanding that they enjoyed a prescriptive right.
With hunches of white bread in their black hands, and grinning withtheir sable countenances and ivory teeth, they really looked like a gangof negroes at a revel.
The cups of ale circulated, the pipes were lighted, the preliminarypuffs achieved. There was at length silence, when he who seemed theirleader and who filled a sort of president's seat, took his pipe from hismouth, and then uttering the first complete sentence that had yet beenexpressed aloud, thus delivered himself.
"The fact is we are tommied to death."
"You never spoke a truer word, Master Nixon," said one of hiscompanions.
"It's gospel, every word of it," said another.
"And the point is," continued Master Nixon, "what are we for to do?"
"Ay, surely," said a collier; "that's the marrow."
"Ay, ay," agreed several; "there it is."
"The question is," said Nixon, looking round with a magisterial air,"what is wages? I say, tayn't sugar, tayn't tea, tayn't bacon. I don'tthink it's candles; but of this I be sure, tayn't waistcoats."
Here there was a general groan.
"Comrades," continued Nixon, "you know what has happened; you know ashow Juggins applied for his balance after his tommy-book was paid up,and that incarnate nigger Diggs has made him take two waistcoats. Nowthe question rises, what is a collier to do with waistcoats? Pawn 'emI s'pose to Diggs' son-in-law, next door to his father's shop, and sellthe ticket for sixpence. Now there's the question keep to the questionthe question is waistcoats and tommy; first waistcoats and then tommy."
"I have been making a pound a-week these two months past," said another,"but as I'm a sinner saved, I have never seen the young queen's pictureyet."
"And I have been obliged to pay the doctor for my poor wife in tommy,"said another. "'Doctor,' I said, says I, 'I blush to do it, but all Ihave got is tommy, and what shall it be, bacon or cheese?' 'Cheese attenpence a pound,' says he, 'which I buy for my servants at sixpence.Never mind,' says he, for he is a thorough Christian, 'I'll take thetommy as I find it.'"
"Juggins has got his rent to pay and is afeard of the bums," said Nixon"and he has got two waistcoats!"
"Besides," said another, "Diggs' tommy is only open once a-week, and ifyou're not there in time, you go over for another seven days. And it'ssuch a distance, and he keeps a body there such a time--it's always aday's work for my poor woman; she can't do nothing after it, whatwith the waiting and the standing and the cussing of Master JosephDiggs,--for he do swear at the women, when they rush in for the firstturn, most fearful."
"They do say he's a shocking little dog."
"Master Joseph is wery wiolent, but there is no one like old Diggs forgrabbing a bit of one's wages. He do so love it! And then he says younever need be at no loss for nothing; you can find everything under myroof. I should like to know who is to mend our shoes. Has Gaffer Diggs acobbler's stall?"
"Or sell us a penn-orth of potatoes," said another. "Or a ha'porth ofmilk."
"No; and so to get them one is obliged to go and sell some tommy, andmuch one gets for it. Bacon at ninepence a-pound at Diggs', which youmay get at a huckster's for sixpence, and therefore the huckster can'tbe expected to give you more than fourpence halfpenny, by which tokenthe tommy in our field just cuts our wages atween the navel."
"And that's as tr
ue as if you heard it in church, Master Waghorn."
"This Diggs seems to be an oppressor of the people," said a voice from adistant corner of the room.
Master Nixon looked around, smoked, puffed, and then said, "I shouldthink he wor; as bloody-a-hearted butty as ever jingled."
"But what business has a butty to keep a shop?" inquired the stranger."The law touches him."
"I should like to know who would touch the law," said Nixon "not Ifor one. Them tommy shops is very delicate things; they won't stand nohandling, I can tell you that."
"But he cannot force you to take goods," said the stranger; "he must payyou in current coin of the realm, if you demand it."
"They only pay us once in five weeks," said a collier; "and how is a manto live meanwhile. And suppose we were to make shift for a month or fiveweeks, and have all our money coming, and have no tommy out of the shop,what would the butty say to me? He would say, 'do you want e'er a notethis time' and if I was to say 'no,' then he would say, 'you've no callto go down to work any more here.' And that's what I call forsation."
"Ay, ay," said another collier; "ask for the young queen's picture, andyou would soon have to put your shirt on, and go up the shaft."
"It's them long reckonings that force us to the tommy shops," saidanother collier; "and if a butty turns you away because you won't takeno tommy, you're a marked man in every field about."*
*A Butty in the mining districts is a middleman: a Doggyis his manager. The Butty generally keeps a Tommy or Truckshop and pays the wages of his labourers in goods. Whenminers and colliers strike they term it, "going to play."
"There's wus things as tommy," said a collier who had hitherto beensilent, "and that's these here butties. What's going on in the pit isknown only to God Almighty and the colliers. I have been a consistentmethodist for many years, strived to do well, and all the harm I haveever done to the butties was to tell them that their deeds would notstand on the day of judgment.
"They are deeds of darkness surely; for many's the morn we work fornothing, by one excuse or another, and many's the good stint that theyundermeasure. And many's the cup of their ale that you must drink beforethey will give you any work. If the queen would do something for us poormen, it would be a blessed job."
"There ayn't no black tyrant on this earth like a butty, surely," said acollier; "and there's no redress for poor men."
"But why do not you state your grievances to the landlords and lessees,"said the stranger.
"I take it you be a stranger in these parts, sir," said Master Nixon,following up this remark by a most enormous puff. He was the oracle ofhis circle, and there was silence whenever he was inclined to addressthem, which was not too often, though when he spoke, his words, as hisfollowers often observed, were a regular ten-yard coal.
"I take it you be a stranger in these parts, sir, or else you would knowthat it's as easy for a miner to speak to a mainmaster, as it is for meto pick coal with this here clay. Sir, there's a gulf atween 'em. I wentinto the pit when I was five year old, and I count forty year in theservice come Martinmas, and a very good age, sir, for a man what doeshis work, and I knows what I'm speaking about. In forty year, sir, a mansees a pretty deal, 'specially when he don't move out of the same spotand keeps his 'tention. I've been at play, sir, several times inforty year, and have seen as great stick-outs as ever happened in thiscountry. I've seen the people at play for weeks together, and so clammedthat I never tasted nothing but a potatoe and a little salt for morethan a fortnight. Talk of tommy, that was hard fare, but we were holdingout for our rights, and that's sauce for any gander. And I'll tell youwhat, sir, that I never knew the people play yet, but if a word hadpassed atween them and the main-masters aforehand, it might not havebeen settled; but you can't get at them any way. Atween the poor manand the gentleman there never was no connection, and that's the witalmischief of this country.
"It's a very true word, Master Nixon, and by this token that when wewent to play in --28, and the masters said they would meet us; what didthey do but walk about the ground and speak to the butties. The buttieshas their ear."
"We never want no soldiers here if the masters would speak with the men;but the sight of a pitman is pison to a gentleman, and if we go up tospeak with 'em, they always run away."
"It's the butties," said Nixon "they're wusser nor tommy."
"The people will never have their rights," said the stranger, "untilthey learn their power. Suppose instead of sticking out and playing,fifty of your families were to live under one roof. You would livebetter than you live now; you would feed more fully, and he lodged andclothed more comfortably, and you might save half the amount of yourwages; you would become capitalists; you might yourselves hire yourmines and pits from the owners, and pay them a better rent than they nowobtain, and yet yourselves gain more and work less."
"Sir," said Mr Nixon, taking his pipe from his mouth, and sending fortha volume of smoke, "you speak like a book."
"It is the principle of association," said the stranger; "the want ofthe age."
"Sir," said Mr Nixon, "this here age wants a great deal, but what itprincipally wants is to have its wages paid in the current coin of therealm."
Soon after this there were symptoms of empty mugs and exhausted pipes,and the party began to stir. The stranger addressing Nixon, enquired ofhim what was their present distance from Wodgate.
"Wodgate!" exclaimed Mr Nixon with an unconscious air.
"The gentleman means Hell-house Yard," said one of his companions.
"I'm at home," said Mr Nixon, "but 'tis the first time I ever heardHell-house Yard called Wodgate."
"It's called so in joggraphy," said Juggins.
"But you hay'nt going to Hell-house Yard this time of night!" said MrNixon. "I'd as soon think of going down the pit with the windlass turnedby lushy Bob."
"Tayn't a journey for Christians," said Juggins.
"They're a very queer lot even in sunshine," said another.
"And how far is it?" asked the stranger.
"I walked there once in three hours," said a collier, "but that was tothe wake. If you want to see divils carnal, there's your time of day.They're no less than heathens, I be sure. I'd be sorry to see even ourbutty among them, for he is a sort of a Christian when he has taken aglass of ale."
Book 3 Chapter 2
Sybil, Or, The Two Nations Page 23