“Bless you, my dear love! you feel better now, don’t you?” said the affectionate old woman.
“Yes, dear nurse — much better. The air is delicious to-night.”
“It was too much for you, my dear child, that dreadful scene this morning! My dear Miss Brotherton you must be reasonable, indeed you must, or instead of making me the very happiest being in the world as you do now, my life will become one of continual terror and alarm. You can do no good, my dear, in putting yourself in such places as we were in to-day.”
Mary reflected for a moment before she answered her, and then said, “Are you quite sure, nurse Tremlett that a young woman without any natural ties whatever, and with a fortune so large as mine, can do no good by making themselves acquainted with the condition of their poor neighbours!”
“Oh! no, Miss Mary dear, I never said that. You do a great deal of good by putting the gardener’s, and under-gardener’s children to school; and by all the help you give them and every body else that works about the place, and I dearly love to see you do it, and I have no doubt in the world, that it keeps many from sending their children to the mills, and it will bring a blessing upon your head, my dear. But that’s nothing to do with poking yourself into such a place as you got into to-day. You never heard any thing so dreadful as what Sir Matthew Dowling was telling me about them, before you came out the first time.”
Mary shuddered, as she heard his name.
“You will promise me dear, won’t you, never to go to such a horrid place again,” resumed the old woman.
“We will not talk about that now, my dear Mrs. Tremlett, I want you to tell me what you think I could do that would be most useful for those poor young girls. I know what it is to lose a mother, dear nurse, and it makes me feel for them.”
“God bless your kind heart, my dear! That is just like you, and I wish with all my heart and soul, that you lived somewhere among the farming people, for there you would have some reward for your charity. But God help me! If one half of what Sir Matthew told me is true, these horrid girls are worse than it is decent to tell you, and the father’s as bad.”
“But don’t you think my good friend, considering that I am more than come to years of discretion, and that you are a good deal older still, don’t you think it might be as well for us, in a case of such importance as this, to see and judge for ourselves, instead of taking Sir Matthew Dowling’s word for it?” said the heiress, while a slight frown contracted her brow.
“Why yes, Miss Mary — only it is so difficult to come at the truth,” replied Mrs. Tremlett.
“Surely there is one truth that it is easy enough to come at — I suppose you have no doubt upon your mind that these people are in dreadful distress?”
“Wicked people almost always are, Miss Mary.”
“Then it is my duty Mrs. Tremlett,” replied Mary almost sternly, “to endeavour, at least in the case of such very young people, to amend, or prevent their wickedness. It would be a frightful sin — worse in me, burdened as I feel myself with riches earned by the labour of such miserable little creatures as those whom we saw to-day — if I should look upon such utter destitution, let it be mixed up with what frailty it may, and pass along on the other side. I will not do it, Mrs. Tremlett, so never ask it more. At present all I know is, that I have seen misery. Its cause I have yet to learn — This may be the work of time, and I do not mean to wait till I have acquired such knowledge before I relieve the want and woe I have witnessed. I left word that the eldest girl was to come up to me. She will hardly delay doing so, poor creature, therefore I must again postpone my intended visit to Hoxley-lane, for I will not go out to-morrow till I have seen her.”
All this was very contrary to Mrs. Tremlett’s judgment, for she had a very natural dread lest the warm heart of her young charge, should be imposed upon by the designing and depraved. Nevertheless there was a feeling of respect that came upon her involuntarily, and as it were unawares, as she listened to the firmly-spoken purpose of the young girl whom as yet she could hardly persuade herself was more than a child.
In pursuance of the resolution thus declared, Miss Brotherton did not stir from home during the whole of the following day. Lady Clarissa Shrimpton, Mrs. Gabberly, and one or two more distant neighbours called, but she was denied to them all, from the fear that her anticipated interview with Sophy Drake, might be interrupted.
But the precaution was unnecessary; the long morning wore away without the girl’s making her appearance, and it was not till past eight o’clock in the evening, that a servant entered the drawing-room, and informed Miss Brotherton that a very dirty girl and two little children were at the gate, who said she had given them orders to call.
“It is very true,” replied the young lady. “These are the people I told you to let in.” The man retired in silence, but paid himself for his forbearance by the vehemence of his wondering commentary in the servants’ hall.
Mary Brotherton was sitting at an open window, with the last light of evening falling upon her and the volume she held in her hand.
She had been making what proved but an idle effort to read, even when that light was stronger; but now, the volume hung listlessly from her hand, while her eyes, fixed on the brightly tinted vapours in the west, seemed to look athwart them, and like the worthy gentleman on the platform before Tilbury Fort, to gaze on many things, that were “not yet in sight.” Mrs. Tremlett, with the happy indifference to the increasing twilight peculiar to the sisterhood of knitters, continued at another window to manœuvre her bright weapons, and vary the successive fronts of her phalanx with no louder note of command, than was occasionally produced by the gentle clicking of her needles against each other. It was nearly an hour since a word had been exchanged between them, but now as the footman left the room, Mary turned towards her, and said—” This is poor Sophy, Mrs. Tremlett. Come and sit near me, will you? I want you to hear all she says.”
Her old friend moved her place accordingly, and had just seated herself by the side of Miss Brotherton when the door again opened, and Sophy Drake, leading a little sister in each hand, entered the drawing-room. —
It required no force of contrast to render the miserable, squalid, unhealthy appearance of these poor girls most painfully striking; if it had, the elegant apartment into which they now entered would have furnished it. Mary’s heart smote her as she gazed upon them. “So young — so pretty too!” thought she, “and yet so painful to look upon!”
The eldest of the three looked languid, weary, spirit-broken, and inanimate, hardly throwing a glance at the novel objects around her, and looking more fit to lie down and rest the aching limbs she slowly dragged along, than to indulge any feeling of curiosity. The little ones had the same unsteady tired gait, but they looked up with an expression of wonder, and almost of awe, on every object as they passed along.”
“How are you all, my poor girls?” said Mary kindly, as they drew near to her. The eldest girl dropped a courtesy but made no audible reply.
“It is so sad and hopeless a grief to lose a mother,” continued Miss Brotherton, “that I can say not one word to check your grief. But if there is any thing that I can do to make you more comfortable, I shall be glad to do it. You seem all of you greatly in want of clothes. How comes that, when so many of the family work, and get “The wages isn’t enough to buy us bread, ma’am,” replied the eldest girl, and help pay lodging rent.
This statement seemed so very incredible, that Mary felt a painful conviction that the young creature before her was not speaking truth. She remained silent for a minute or two, and then said, “I suppose when you say bread, you mean food of all kinds? — and tea, and sugar, and butter, and so on?” said Mary.
“I have not had the taste of meat in my mouth for above these two years,” replied Sophy colouring, and in a voice that seemed to indicate something like indignation—” and as to sugar in our tea, or butter on our bread, no factory child is brought up to it.”
Mary coloured too. Sh
e longed to get accurate information respecting their manner of living, and the reasons why incessant labour failed to supply the necessaries of life; but she knew not well how to set about it.
“Do not be angry with me, Sophy,” said she, “if I ask questions that seem unfeeling and very ignorant. I really know little or nothing about the manner in which poor people live, and I want to know. Not merely from curiosity, but because I should like to help them if I could.”
“And God knows we want help bad enough, ma’am,” replied the girl, while tears started to her eyes. “Father has got the money you gave yesterday, and we shall never hear any more of that.”
“Is he a bad father to you then?”
“Not bad to beat us. But he drinks terrible.” —
“Then I suppose his wages go partly in that?”
“His wages, and our’n too, ma’am. He baint always able to get work. The old hands are often out, and then in course he takes our’n.”
“Then if he was a temperate, steady man, you would do a great deal better?”
“In course we should, ma’am. But mother said he took to it, as most of the others do in all the mills, on account of hating to come home so, when we young ones comes in from work. I have heard mother say that father cried when I, that was the biggest, com’d home first beaten and bruised with the strap and the billy-roller.”
“What is the billy-roller, Sophy,” inquired Miss Brotherton, in an accent denoting considerable curiosity.
“It’s a long stout stick, ma’am, that’s used often and often to beat the little ones employed in the mills when their strength fails — when they fall asleep, or stand still for a minute.”
“Do you mean, that the children work till they are so tired as to fall asleep standing?”
“Yes, ma’am. Dozens and dozens of ’em every day in the year except Sundays, is strapped, and kicked, and banged by the billy-roller, because they falls asleep.”
“But, surely, parents are greatly to blame, to let children young enough for that, go to work at all?”
“They must just starve, ma’am, if they didn’t,” replied the girl.
“How many years have you worked in the factory yourself, Sophy?”
“Just twelve, ma’am, this last spring.”
“And how old are you?”
“Seventeen, ma’am.”
“Twelve from seventeen? — You mean to say that you began to work at the factory when you were five years old?” said Mary, with some appearance of incredulity.
“I was five years and three months, ma’am,” answered the girl firmly.
Miss Brotherton looked at Mrs. Tremlett, but perceived no appearance of incredulity on her countenance. “Is this possible, Mrs. Tremlett?” said she.
“Yes, my dear, I believe that it is very common,” replied the old woman. “I have often heard it spoken of among the servants.”
“Have you ever been at school, Sophy?”
“Yes, ma’am. Afore father changed his mill and took work under Sir Matthew we all — father, mother, Grace, Dick, and all, worked for the great Quaker gentleman, Joseph Tell, and he had a school in the factory for Sundays.”
“And you learnt to read there of course?”
“No, ma’am, I didn’t;” replied the girl, shaking her head.
“Whose fault was that, my dear? — Surely if you were put to school, you ought to have learnt to read!”
“I couldn’t, ma’am, I couldn’t — and it was not my fault neither,” replied the girl with considerable agitation.
“We was often and often kept going till twelve o’clock on a Saturday night, and when the Sunday comed we couldn’t sit down upon the bench, neither Grace, nor Dick, nor I, without falling dead asleep. ’Twas the only right good sleep we had, that before Sundays I mean, ‘cause father was always obligated to wake us every other morning afore five o’clock, summer and winter, and earlier than that too, when we worked night-work. So keeping our eyes open Sundays wasn’t possible, ‘cause they didn’t strap us.”
“Then there is not one of you can read?”
“No, ma’am, not one.” —
“Can your father read?” —
“Yes, ma’am, he can. That is he could, he says, when he was younger, but he has almost forgot now. He says, in his young days, the machinery improvements was nothing like what they be now, and that the piecer children hadn’t not half so far or so fast to walk as they have now, and he learnt to read of his own mother when he comed home at nights.” —
“And why doesn’t he do the same for his children, as his mother did for him?” said Miss Brotherton.
“Because we couldn’t keep our eyes open for two minutes together when we comes home at night. I have seen poor mother, as is dead and gone, lay little Becky here, down upon the bundle of straw that she and I sleeps upon, ‘cause she couldn’t keep up to eat her supper when she comed from the mill — and I have seen her put the sopped bread in her mouth when she was so dead asleep, that she couldn’t get her to swallow it — and how could she or the rest of us learn to read, ma’am?”
Mary made no reply, but sat for a moment or two, with her eyes fixed on the ground, in very painful uncertainty as to what she could say or do, that could be of effectual service to the miserable group before her. She felt, that though poor Sophy might perhaps be telling nothing but the truth in this dismal description of her wretched family, it was not from her that any general information could be obtained. It was, as she thought, utterly impossible that it could apply to the hundreds of thousands whom she had heard it stated, as a matter of national pride, by some of her rich neighbours, were employed in the factories of England and Scotland. A moment’s thought sufficed to convince her (as it has done multitudes of amiable-minded ladies and gentlemen besides), that it was perfectly impossible such horrors could exist on the glorious soil of Britain, unless indeed, as in the case before her, the unhappy drunkenness of the father plunged his helpless family into a degree of poverty, which nothing, perhaps, but the unnatural degree of labour described by this poor motherless girl, could avert.
“I must clothe them all,” thought she, “and put the little ones to school. Perhaps, too, I may find a place in my own kitchen for poor Sophy. But as to learning from her any thing that can be depended upon respecting the system by which the factory labour is regulated, that is quite hopeless.”
She felt, however, that the weary-looking group ought not to return empty-handed after their walk, with no reward for it but her promises; and turning to Mrs. Tremlett, asked her in a half whisper what she could give them, that might be made immediately useful in the way of clothing; their garments being in a condition that it was painful to her to behold.
“You might give them that piece of dark cotton, my dear, that you bought the other day for the coachman’s children. There is no great hurry you know about them, for they are not to go to school till next month.”
“Very true. — It is just the thing,” replied Mary; and having rung the bell and ordered her maid to appear, she gave orders to have it brought to her.
“I do not exactly know how much there is of it, Sophy,” said she, putting it into her hand, “but enough, I think, for one or two of you, and I will get more of the same sort when next I go to Ashleigh.”
Sophy took it with a courtesy; but having held it for a moment said, “Please, ma’am, this won’t be no use to me, unless I may pawn part to get the rest made.”
“Can you not make a gown for yourself and your sisters, my good girl?” demanded Mary.
“Please, ma’am, I never was learnt to sew,” replied the girl, blushing.
More convinced than ever, that her first effort to assist the poor operatives, had led her by an unlucky chance into a family, whose unthrifty habits made it almost hopeless to attempt doing them any essential service, Mary drew forth her purse, and giving half-a-crown to each of them, took the useless material back, saying, “I will send you some more decent clothes to wear, Sophy — and the
n we must think what further can be done for you and these poor little ones. But, indeed, my dear girl, I greatly fear that unless your habits are improved, and that you can be taught to use your needle like all other decent young women, in making and mending what is given you, it will be impossible for me, or for any one to do you much good.”
Poor Sophy Drake looked both sorry and ashamed as she listened to this reproof, — but she attempted not to answer it, and again courtesying as she received the money, she turned away without again speaking, and left the room.
“This is very, very dreadful! nurse Tremlett,” said Mary, as soon as they were alone. “I could not have believed that it was possible in such a country as England, to find human beings in a state of such degraded ignorance as that poor girl. Did you ever meet with any thing like it before?”
“I can’t say, Miss Mary, that I ever before came within reach of hearing a factory-girl speak so much as I have heard to-day. But I can’t pretend to say that I am a bit surprised. I told you, my dear, from the beginning, that you would only get yourself into trouble, and do no good. From the very first of my coming to this country, which was but a month before I came to live with your mamma, I always heard the same history of the factory folks. And you know, my dear, what every body says, must be true.”
Mary, as she listened to this, looked harassed, puzzled, and wretched. “But is it not something unheard of in the history of the world,” said she, “that thousands and hundreds of thousands of persons should exist, all labouring, young and old, with unceasing industry to support themselves, and that this their painful labour should subject them to such habits of inevitable ignorance and degradation, that all decent and respectable persons must be taught to shun them?”
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 186