The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  bed.

  'Is he out of work?'

  'Oh, yes, sir! and work's at all times very, very scanty with him;

  and now he's laid up.'

  'It's my legs,' said the man upon the bed. 'I'll unroll 'em.' And

  immediately began.

  'Have you any older children?'

  'I have a daughter that does the needle-work, and I have a son that

  does what he can. She's at her work now, and he's trying for

  work.'

  'Do they live here?'

  'They sleep here. They can't afford to pay more rent, and so they

  come here at night. The rent is very hard upon us. It's rose upon

  us too, now, - sixpence a week, - on account of these new changes

  in the law, about the rates. We are a week behind; the landlord's

  been shaking and rattling at that door frightfully; he says he'll

  turn us out. I don't know what's to come of it.'

  Page 203

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  The man upon the bed ruefully interposed, 'Here's my legs. The

  skin's broke, besides the swelling. I have had a many kicks,

  working, one way and another.'

  He looked at his legs (which were much discoloured and misshapen)

  for a while, and then appearing to remember that they were not

  popular with his family, rolled them up again, as if they were

  something in the nature of maps or plans that were not wanted to be

  referred to, lay hopelessly down on his back once more with his

  fantail hat over his face, and stirred not.

  'Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that cupboard?'

  'Yes,' replied the woman.

  'With the children?'

  'Yes. We have to get together for warmth. We have little to cover

  us.'

  'Have you nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread I see

  there?'

  'Nothing. And we had the rest of the loaf for our breakfast, with

  water. I don't know what's to come of it.'

  'Have you no prospect of improvement?'

  'If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he'll bring it home. Then

  we shall have something to eat to-night, and may be able to do

  something towards the rent. If not, I don't know what's to come of

  it.'

  'This is a sad state of things.'

  'Yes, sir; it's a hard, hard life. Take care of the stairs as you

  go, sir, - they're broken, - and good day, sir!'

  These people had a mortal dread of entering the workhouse, and

  received no out-of-door relief.

  In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very decent

  woman with five children, - the last a baby, and she herself a

  patient of the parish doctor, - to whom, her husband being in the

  hospital, the Union allowed for the support of herself and family,

  four shillings a week and five loaves. I suppose when Thisman,

  M.P., and Thatman, M.P., and the Public-blessing Party, lay their

  heads together in course of time, and come to an equalization of

  rating, she may go down to the dance of death to the tune of

  sixpence more.

  I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I could not

  bear the contemplation of the children. Such heart as I had

  summoned to sustain me against the miseries of the adults failed me

  when I looked at the children. I saw how young they were, how

  hungry, how serious and still. I thought of them, sick and dying

  in those lairs. I think of them dead without anguish; but to think

  of them so suffering and so dying quite unmanned me.

  Down by the river's bank in Ratcliff, I was turning upward by a

  side-street, therefore, to regain the railway, when my eyes rested

  on the inscription across the road, 'East London Children's

  Hospital.' I could scarcely have seen an inscription better suited

  to my frame of mind; and I went across and went straight in.

  Page 204

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  I found the children's hospital established in an old sail-loft or

  storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the simplest means.

  There were trap-doors in the floors, where goods had been hoisted

  up and down; heavy feet and heavy weights had started every knot in

  the well-trodden planking: inconvenient bulks and beams and

  awkward staircases perplexed my passage through the wards. But I

  found it airy, sweet, and clean. In its seven and thirty beds I

  saw but little beauty; for starvation in the second or third

  generation takes a pinched look: but I saw the sufferings both of

  infancy and childhood tenderly assuaged; I heard the little

  patients answering to pet playful names, the light touch of a

  delicate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms for me to pity;

  and the claw-like little hands, as she did so, twined themselves

  lovingly around her wedding-ring.

  One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael's angels. The

  tiny head was bandaged for water on the brain; and it was suffering

  with acute bronchitis too, and made from time to time a plaintive,

  though not impatient or complaining, little sound. The smooth

  curve of the cheeks and of the chin was faultless in its

  condensation of infantine beauty, and the large bright eyes were

  most lovely. It happened as I stopped at the foot of the bed, that

  these eyes rested upon mine with that wistful expression of

  wondering thoughtfulness which we all know sometimes in very little

  children. They remained fixed on mine, and never turned from me

  while I stood there. When the utterance of that plaintive sound

  shook the little form, the gaze still remained unchanged. I felt

  as though the child implored me to tell the story of the little

  hospital in which it was sheltered to any gentle heart I could

  address. Laying my world-worn hand upon the little unmarked

  clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a silent promise that I would

  do so.

  A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have bought and

  fitted up this building for its present noble use, and have quietly

  settled themselves in it as its medical officers and directors.

  Both have had considerable practical experience of medicine and

  surgery; he as house-surgeon of a great London hospital; she as a

  very earnest student, tested by severe examination, and also as a

  nurse of the sick poor during the prevalence of cholera.

  With every qualification to lure them away, with youth and

  accomplishments and tastes and habits that can have no response in

  any breast near them, close begirt by every repulsive circumstance

  inseparable from such a neighbourhood, there they dwell. They live

  in the hospital itself, and their rooms are on its first floor.

  Sitting at their dinner-table, they could hear the cry of one of

  the children in pain. The lady's piano, drawing-materials, books,

  and other such evidences of refinement are as much a part of the

  rough place as the iron bedsteads of the little patients. They are

  put to shifts for room, like passengers on board ship. The

  dispenser of medicines (attracted to them not by self-interest, but

  by their own magnetism and that of their cause) sleeps in a recess

  in the dining-room, and has his washing
apparatus in the sideboard.

  Their contented manner of making the best of the things around

  them, I found so pleasantly inseparable from their usefulness!

  Their pride in this partition that we put up ourselves, or in that

  partition that we took down, or in that other partition that we

  moved, or in the stove that was given us for the waiting-room, or

  in our nightly conversion of the little consulting-room into a

  smoking-room! Their admiration of the situation, if we could only

  get rid of its one objectionable incident, the coal-yard at the

  Page 205

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  back! 'Our hospital carriage, presented by a friend, and very

  useful.' That was my presentation to a perambulator, for which a

  coach-house had been discovered in a corner down-stairs, just large

  enough to hold it. Coloured prints, in all stages of preparation

  for being added to those already decorating the wards, were

  plentiful; a charming wooden phenomenon of a bird, with an

  impossible top-knot, who ducked his head when you set a counter

  weight going, had been inaugurated as a public statue that very

  morning; and trotting about among the beds, on familiar terms with

  all the patients, was a comical mongrel dog, called Poodles. This

  comical dog (quite a tonic in himself) was found characteristically

  starving at the door of the institution, and was taken in and fed,

  and has lived here ever since. An admirer of his mental endowments

  has presented him with a collar bearing the legend, 'Judge not

  Poodles by external appearances.' He was merrily wagging his tail

  on a boy's pillow when he made this modest appeal to me.

  When this hospital was first opened, in January of the present

  year, the people could not possibly conceive but that somebody paid

  for the services rendered there; and were disposed to claim them as

  a right, and to find fault if out of temper. They soon came to

  understand the case better, and have much increased in gratitude.

  The mothers of the patients avail themselves very freely of the

  visiting rules; the fathers often on Sundays. There is an

  unreasonable (but still, I think, touching and intelligible)

  tendency in the parents to take a child away to its wretched home,

  if on the point of death. One boy who had been thus carried off on

  a rainy night, when in a violent state of inflammation, and who had

  been afterwards brought back, had been recovered with exceeding

  difficulty; but he was a jolly boy, with a specially strong

  interest in his dinner, when I saw him.

  Insufficient food and unwholesome living are the main causes of

  disease among these small patients. So nourishment, cleanliness,

  and ventilation are the main remedies. Discharged patients are

  looked after, and invited to come and dine now and then; so are

  certain famishing creatures who were never patients. Both the lady

  and the gentleman are well acquainted, not only with the histories

  of the patients and their families, but with the characters and

  circumstances of great numbers of their neighbours - of these they

  keep a register. It is their common experience, that people,

  sinking down by inches into deeper and deeper poverty, will conceal

  it, even from them, if possible, unto the very last extremity.

  The nurses of this hospital are all young, - ranging, say, from

  nineteen to four and twenty. They have even within these narrow

  limits, what many well-endowed hospitals would not give them, a

  comfortable room of their own in which to take their meals. It is

  a beautiful truth, that interest in the children and sympathy with

  their sorrows bind these young women to their places far more

  strongly than any other consideration could. The best skilled of

  the nurses came originally from a kindred neighbourhood, almost as

  poor; and she knew how much the work was needed. She is a fair

  dressmaker. The hospital cannot pay her as many pounds in the year

  as there are months in it; and one day the lady regarded it as a

  duty to speak to her about her improving her prospects and

  following her trade. 'No,' she said: she could never be so useful

  or so happy elsewhere any more; she must stay among the children.

  And she stays. One of the nurses, as I passed her, was washing a

  baby-boy. Liking her pleasant face, I stopped to speak to her

  charge, - a common, bullet-headed, frowning charge enough, laying

  hold of his own nose with a slippery grasp, and staring very

  solemnly out of a blanket. The melting of the pleasant face into

  Page 206

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  delighted smiles, as this young gentleman gave an unexpected kick,

  and laughed at me, was almost worth my previous pain.

  An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called 'The

  Children's Doctor.' As I parted from my children's doctor, now in

  question, I saw in his easy black necktie, in his loose buttoned

  black frock-coat, in his pensive face, in the flow of his dark

  hair, in his eyelashes, in the very turn of his moustache, the

  exact realisation of the Paris artist's ideal as it was presented

  on the stage. But no romancer that I know of has had the boldness

  to prefigure the life and home of this young husband and young wife

  in the Children's Hospital in the east of London.

  I came away from Ratcliff by the Stepney railway station to the

  terminus at Fenchurch Street. Any one who will reverse that route

  may retrace my steps.

  CHAPTER XXXIII - A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR

  It fell out on a day in this last autumn, that I had to go down

  from London to a place of seaside resort, on an hour's business,

  accompanied by my esteemed friend Bullfinch. Let the place of

  seaside resort be, for the nonce, called Namelesston.

  I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, pleasantly

  breakfasting in the open air in the garden of the Palais Royal or

  the Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the open air in the Elysian

  Fields, pleasantly taking my cigar and lemonade in the open air on

  the Italian Boulevard towards the small hours after midnight.

  Bullfinch - an excellent man of business - has summoned me back

  across the Channel, to transact this said hour's business at

  Namelesston; and thus it fell out that Bullfinch and I were in a

  railway carriage together on our way to Namelesston, each with his

  return-ticket in his waistcoat-pocket.

  Says Bullfinch, 'I have a proposal to make. Let us dine at the

  Temeraire.'

  I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the Temeraire? inasmuch as I

  had not been rated on the books of the Temeraire for many years.

  Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of recommending the

  Temeraire, but on the whole was rather sanguine about it. He

  'seemed to remember,' Bullfinch said, that he had dined well there.

  A plain dinner, but good. Certainly not like a Parisian dinner

  (here Bullfinch obviously became the prey of want of confidence),

  but of its kind very fair.

  I appeal to Bullfinch's intimate knowledge of my wants and ways tor />
  decide whether I was usually ready to be pleased with any dinner,

  or - for the matter of that - with anything that was fair of its

  kind and really what it claimed to be. Bullfinch doing me the

  honour to respond in the affirmative, I agreed to ship myself as an

  able trencherman on board the Temeraire.

  'Now, our plan shall be this,' says Bullfinch, with his forefinger

  at his nose. 'As soon as we get to Namelesston, we'll drive

  straight to the Temeraire, and order a little dinner in an hour.

  And as we shall not have more than enough time in which to dispose

  of it comfortably, what do you say to giving the house the best

  Page 207

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  opportunities of serving it hot and quickly by dining in the

  coffee-room?'

  What I had to say was, Certainly. Bullfinch (who is by nature of a

  hopeful constitution) then began to babble of green geese. But I

  checked him in that Falstaffian vein, urging considerations of time

  and cookery.

  In due sequence of events we drove up to the Temeraire, and

  alighted. A youth in livery received us on the door-step. 'Looks

  well,' said Bullfinch confidentially. And then aloud, 'Coffeeroom!'

  The youth in livery (now perceived to be mouldy) conducted us to

  the desired haven, and was enjoined by Bullfinch to send the waiter

  at once, as we wished to order a little dinner in an hour. Then

  Bullfinch and I waited for the waiter, until, the waiter continuing

  to wait in some unknown and invisible sphere of action, we rang for

  the waiter; which ring produced the waiter, who announced himself

  as not the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and who didn't wait a

  moment longer.

  So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melodiously

  pitching his voice into a bar where two young ladies were keeping

  the books of the Temeraire, apologetically explained that we wished

  to order a little dinner in an hour, and that we were debarred from

  the execution of our inoffensive purpose by consignment to

  solitude.

  Hereupon one of the young ladies ran a bell, which reproduced - at

  the bar this time - the waiter who was not the waiter who ought to

  wait upon us; that extraordinary man, whose life seemed consumed in

  waiting upon people to say that he wouldn't wait upon them,

  repeated his former protest with great indignation, and retired.