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THE
STRAND MAGAZINE.

FEBRUARY, 1891.

CONTENTS

The Pistol Shot.
A Night with the Thames Police.
The Maid of Treppi.
Our Money Manufactory.
Slap-Bang.
Portraits of Celebrities at different times of their Lives.
Letters from Artists on Ladies’ Dress.
How the Redoubt was Taken.
Actors’ Dressing Rooms.
The Minister’s Crime.
At the Children’s Hospital.
Fac-simile of the Notes of a Speech by John Bright.
A Passion in the Desert.
Barak Hageb and His Wives

[Pg 114]

[Pg 115]

“SILVIO! YOU KNEW SILVIO?”

The Pistol Shot.

From the Russian of Alexander Pushkin.

E were stationed at the little
village of Z. The life of an
officer in the army is well
known. Drill and the riding
school in the morning; dinner
with the colonel or at the
Jewish restaurant; and in the evening
punch and cards.

At Z. nobody kept open house, and
there was no girl that anyone could think
of marrying. We used to meet at each
other’s rooms, where we never saw anything
but one another’s uniforms. There was
only one man among us who did not belong
to the regiment. He was about thirty-five,
and, of course, we looked upon him as an
old fellow. He had the advantage of
experience, and his
habitual gloom,
stern features, and
his sharp tongue
gave him great
influence over his
juniors. He was
surrounded by a
certain mystery.
His looks were
Russian, but his
name was foreign.
He had served in
the Hussars, and
with credit. No
one knew what
had induced him
to retire and settle
in this out of the
way little village,
where he lived in
mingled poverty and
extravagance. He always
went on foot, and
wore a shabby black
coat. But he was always ready
to receive any of our officers;
and, though his dinners, cooked
by a retired soldier, never consisted of more
than two or three dishes, champagne flowed
at them like water. His income or how he
got it no one knew; and no one ventured
to ask. He had a few books on military
subjects and a few novels, which he
willingly lent and never asked to have
returned. But, on the other hand, he never
returned the books he himself borrowed.

His principal recreation was pistol-shooting.
The walls of his room were riddled
with bullets—a perfect honeycomb. A rich
collection of pistols was the only thing
luxurious in his modestly furnished villa.
His skill as a shot was quite prodigious. If
he had undertaken to shoot a pear off some
one’s cap, not a man in our regiment would
have hesitated to act as target. Our conversation
often turned on duelling. Silvio—so
I will call him—never joined in it. When
asked if he had ever fought, he answered
curtly, “Yes.” But he gave no particulars,
and it was evident that he disliked such
questions. We concluded that the memory
of some unhappy victim of his terrible
skill preyed heavily upon his conscience.
None of us could ever have suspected him
of cowardice. There are men whose look
alone is enough to repel such a suspicion.

“THE OFFICER SEIZED A BRASS CANDLESTICK.”

An unexpected incident fairly astonished
us. One afternoon about ten officers were
dining with Silvio. They drank as usual;
that is to say, a great deal. After dinner
we asked our host to make a pool. For a[Pg 116]
long time he refused on the ground that he
seldom played. At last he ordered cards to
be brought in. With half a hundred gold
pieces on the table we sat round him, and
the game began. It was Silvio’s habit not
to speak when playing. He never disputed
or explained. If an adversary made a mistake
Silvio without a word chalked it
down against him. Knowing his way, we
always let him have it.

But among us on this occasion was an
officer who had but lately joined. While
playing he absent-mindedly scored a point
too much. Silvio took the chalk and corrected
the score in his own fashion. The
officer, supposing him to have made a mistake,
began to explain. Silvio went on
dealing in silence. The officer, losing
patience, took the brush and rubbed out
what he thought was wrong. Silvio took
the chalk and recorrected it. The officer,
heated with wine and play, and irritated by
the laughter of the company, thought himself
aggrieved, and, in a fit of passion, seized
a brass candlestick and threw it at Silvio,
who only just managed to avoid the missile.
Great was our confusion. Silvio got up,
white with rage, and said, with sparkling
eyes—

“Sir! have the goodness to withdraw,
and you may thank God that this has happened
in my own house.”

We could have no doubt as to the consequences,
and we already looked upon our
new comrade as a dead man. He withdrew
saying that he was ready to give satisfaction
for his offence in any way desired.

The game went on for a few minutes.
But feeling that our host was upset we
gradually left off playing and dispersed,
each to his own quarters. At the riding
school next day, we were already asking
one another whether the young lieutenant
was still alive, when he appeared among us.
We asked him the same question, and were
told that he had not yet heard from Silvio.
We were astonished. We went to Silvio’s
and found him in the court-yard popping
bullet after bullet into an ace which he had
gummed to the gate. He received us as
usual, but made no allusion to what had
happened on the previous evening.

Three days passed, and the lieutenant was
still alive. “Can it be possible,” we asked
one another in astonishment, “that Silvio
will not fight?”

Silvio did not fight. He accepted a flimsy
apology, and became reconciled to the man
who had insulted him. This lowered him
greatly in the opinion of the young men,
who, placing bravery above all the other
human virtues and regarding it as an excuse
for every imaginable vice, were ready to
overlook anything sooner than a lack of
courage. However, little by little all was
forgotten, and Silvio regained his former
influence. I alone could not renew my friendship
with him. Being naturally romantic I
had surpassed the rest in my attachment to
the man whose life was an enigma, and who
seemed to me a hero of some mysterious
story. He liked me; and with me alone
did he drop his sarcastic tone and converse
simply and most agreeably on many subjects.
But after this unlucky evening the
thought that his honour was tarnished, and
that it remained so by his own choice,
never left me; and this prevented any
renewal of our former intimacy. I was
ashamed to look at him. Silvio was too
sharp and experienced not to notice this
and guess the reason. It seemed to vex
him, for I observed that once or twice he
hinted at an explanation. But I wanted
none; and Silvio gave me up. Thenceforth
I only met him in the presence of
other friends, and our confidential talks
were at an end.

The busy occupants of the capital have
no idea of the emotions so frequently experienced
by residents in the country and
in country towns; as, for instance, in awaiting
the arrival of the post. On Tuesdays
and Fridays the bureau of the regimental
staff was crammed with officers. Some
were expecting money, others letters or
newspapers. The letters were mostly
opened on the spot, and the news freely interchanged,
the office meanwhile presenting
a most lively appearance.

Silvio’s letters used to be addressed to
our regiment, and he usually called for them
himself. On one occasion, a letter having
been handed to him, I saw him break the
seal and, with a look of great impatience,
read the contents. His eyes sparkled. The
other officers, each engaged with his own
letters, did not notice anything.

“Gentlemen,” said Silvio, “circumstances
demand my immediate departure. I leave
to-night, and I hope you will not refuse to
dine with me for the last time. I shall expect
you, too,” he added, turning towards
me, “without fail.” With these words he
hurriedly left, and we agreed to meet at
Silvio’s.

I went to Silvio’s at the appointed time,
and found nearly the whole regiment with[Pg 117]
him. His things were already packed. Nothing
remained but the bare shot-marked
walls. We sat down to table. The host
was in excellent spirits, and his liveliness
communicated itself to the rest of the
company. Corks popped every moment.
Bottles fizzed, and tumblers foamed incessantly,
and we, with much warmth, wished
our departing friend a pleasant journey and
every happiness. The evening was far
advanced when we rose from table. During
the search for hats, Silvio wished everybody
good-bye. Then, taking me by the hand,
as I was on the
point of leaving,
he said in a low
voice,

“I want to
speak to you.”

I stopped behind.

The guests had
gone and we were
left alone.

Sitting down
opposite one
another, we
lighted our pipes.
Silvio was much
agitated; no
traces of his former
gaiety remained.
Deadly
pale, with sparkling
eyes, and a
thick smoke issuing
from his
mouth, he looked
like a demon.
Several minutes
passed before he
broke silence.

“Perhaps we
shall never meet
again,” he said.
“Before saying good-bye I want to have a
few words with you. You may have remarked
that I care little for the opinions of
others. But I like you, and should be sorry
to leave you under a wrong impression.”

He paused, and began refilling his pipe.
I looked down and was silent.

“You thought it odd,” he continued,
“that I did not require satisfaction from
that drunken maniac. You will grant,
however, that being entitled to the choice
of weapons I had his life more or less in
my hands. I might attribute my tolerance
to generosity, but I will not deceive
you. If I could have chastised him
without the least risk to myself, without
the slightest danger to my own life, then I
would on no account have forgiven him.”

I looked at Silvio with surprise. Such a
confession completely upset me. Silvio
continued:—

“Precisely so: I had no right to endanger
my life. Six years ago I received a slap
in the face, and my enemy still lives.”

My curiosity was greatly excited.

“Did you not fight him?” I inquired.
“Circumstances probably separated you?”

“I did fight
him,” replied Silvio,
“and here is
a memento of our
duel.”

“HERE IS A MEMENTO OF OUR DUEL.”

He rose and
took from a cardboard
box a red
cap with a gold
tassel and gold
braid.

“My disposition
is well
known to you. I
have been accustomed
to be first
in everything.
From my youth
this has been my
passion. In my
time dissipation
was the fashion,
and I was the
most dissipated
man in the army.
We used to boast
of our drunkenness.
I beat at
drinking the celebrated
Bourtsoff,
of whom Davidoff
has sung in his
poems. Duels in our regiment were of
daily occurrence. I took part in all of
them, either as second or as principal. My
comrades adored me, while the commanders
of the regiment, who were constantly being
changed, looked upon me as an incurable
evil.

“I was calmly, or rather boisterously, enjoying
my reputation, when a certain young
man joined our regiment. He was rich, and
came of a distinguished family—I will not
name him. Never in my life did I meet
with so brilliant, so fortunate a fellow!—young,
clever, handsome, with the wildest[Pg 118]
spirits, the most reckless bravery, bearing a
celebrated name, possessing funds of which
he did not know the amount, but which
were inexhaustible. You may imagine the
effect he was sure to produce among us.
My leadership was shaken. Dazzled by my
reputation, he began by seeking my friendship.
But I received him coldly; at which,
without the least sign of regret, he kept
aloof from me.

“I took a dislike to him. His success in
the regiment and in the society of women
brought me to despair. I tried to pick a
quarrel with him. To my epigrams he replied
with epigrams which always seemed
to me more pointed and more piercing
than my own, and which were certainly
much livelier; for while he joked, I was
raving.

“Finally, at a ball at the house of a
Polish landed proprietor, seeing him receive
marked attention from all the ladies,
and especially from the lady of the house,
who had formerly been on very friendly
terms with me, I whispered
some low insult in his ear.
He flew into a passion, and
gave me a slap on the cheek.
We clutched our swords; the
ladies fainted; we were separated;
and the same night
we drove out to fight.

“It was nearly daybreak.
I was standing at the appointed
spot with my three
seconds. How impatiently I
awaited my opponent! The
spring sun had risen, and it
was growing hot. At last I
saw him in the distance. He
was on foot, accompanied by
only one second. We advanced
to meet him. He
approached, holding in his
hand his regimental cap,
filled full of black cherries.

“The seconds measured
twelve paces. It was for me
to fire first. But my excitement
was so great that I
could not depend upon the
certainty of my hand; and,
in order to give myself time
to get calm, I ceded the first
shot to my adversary. He
would not accept it, and we
decided to cast lots.

“The number fell to him;
constant favourite of fortune
that he was! He aimed, and put a bullet
through my cap.

“It was now my turn. His life at last was
in my hands; I looked at him eagerly, trying
to detect if only some faint shadow of uneasiness.
But he stood beneath my pistol,
picking out ripe cherries from his cap and
spitting out the stones, some of which fell
near me. His indifference enraged me.
‘What is the use,’ thought I, ‘of depriving
him of life, when he sets no value upon
it.’ As this savage thought flitted through
my brain I lowered the pistol.

“‘You don’t seem to be ready for death,’
I said; ‘you are eating your breakfast, and
I don’t want to interfere with you.’

“‘You don’t interfere with me in the
least,’ he replied. ‘Be good enough to
fire. Or don’t fire if you prefer it; the
shot remains with you, and I shall be at
your service at any moment.’

“WE CLUTCHED OUR SWORDS.”

“I turned to the seconds, informing them
that I had no intention of firing that day;
and with this the duel ended. I resigned[Pg 119]
my commission and retired to this little
place. Since then not a single day has
passed that I have not thought of my revenge;
and now the hour has arrived.”

Silvio took from his pocket the letter he
had received that morning, and handed it
to me to read. Someone (it seemed to be
his business agent) wrote to him from
Moscow, that a certain individual was soon
to be married to a young and beautiful girl.

“You guess,” said Silvio, “who the certain
individual is. I am starting for Moscow.
We shall see whether he will be as
indifferent now as he was some time ago,
when in presence of death he ate cherries!”

“HIS LIFE AT LAST WAS IN MY HANDS.”

With these words Silvio rose, threw his
cap upon the floor, and began pacing up and
down the room like a tiger in his cage. I
remained silent. Strange contending feelings
agitated me.

The servant entered and announced that
the horses were ready. Silvio grasped my
hand tightly. He got into the telega, in
which lay two trunks—one containing his
pistols, the other some personal effects.
We wished good-bye a second time, and the
horses galloped off.

II.

Many years passed, and family circumstances
obliged me to settle in the poor
little village of N. Engaged in farming,
I sighed in secret for my former merry,
careless existence. Most difficult of all I
found it to pass in solitude the spring and
winter evenings. Until the dinner hour I
somehow occupied the time, talking to the
starosta, driving round to see how the
work went on, or visiting the new buildings.
But as soon as evening began to draw in, I
was at a loss what to do with myself. My
books in various bookcases, cupboards, and
storerooms I knew by heart. The housekeeper,
Kurilovna, related to me all the
stories she could remember. The songs of
the peasant women made me melancholy.
I tried cherry brandy, but that gave me the
headache. I must confess, however, that I
had some fear of becoming a drunkard from
ennui, the saddest kind of drunkenness
imaginable, of which I had seen many examples
in our district.

I had no near neighbours with the exception
of two or three melancholy ones,
whose conversation consisted mostly of
hiccups and sighs. Solitude was preferable
to that. Finally I decided to go to bed as
early as possible, and to dine as late as
possible, thus shortening the evening and
lengthening the day; and I found this
plan a good one.

Four versts from my place was a large
estate belonging to Count B.; but the[Pg 120]
steward alone lived there. The Countess
had visited her domain once only, just after
her marriage; and she then only lived
there about a month. However, in the
second spring of my retirement, there was
a report that the Countess, with her
husband, would come to spend the summer
on her estate; and they arrived at the
beginning of June.

The advent of a rich neighbour is an important
event for residents in the country.
The landowners and the people of their
household talk of it for a couple of months
beforehand, and for three years afterwards.
As far as I was concerned, I must confess,
the expected arrival of a young and
beautiful neighbour affected me strongly.
I burned with impatience to see her; and
the first Sunday after her arrival I started
for the village, in order to present myself
to the Count and Countess as their near
neighbour and humble servant.

The footman showed me into the Count’s
study, while he went to inform him of my
arrival. The spacious room was furnished
in a most luxurious manner. Against the
walls stood enclosed bookshelves well furnished
with books, and surmounted by
bronze busts. Over the marble mantelpiece
was a large mirror. The floor was
covered with green cloth, over which were
spread rugs and carpets.

Having got unaccustomed to luxury in
my own poor little corner, and not having
beheld the wealth of other people for a
long while, I was awed; and I awaited the
Count with a sort of fear, just as a petitioner
from the provinces awaits in an ante-room
the arrival of the minister. The doors
opened, and a man, about thirty-two, and
very handsome, entered the apartment.
The Count approached me with a frank and
friendly look. I tried to be self-possessed,
and began to introduce myself, but he forestalled
me.

We sat down. His easy and agreeable
conversation soon dissipated my nervous
timidity. I was already passing into my
usual manner, when suddenly the Countess
entered, and I became more confused than
ever. She was, indeed, beautiful. The Count
presented me. I was anxious to appear
at ease, but the more I tried to assume an
air of unrestraint, the more awkward I felt
myself becoming. They, in order to give
me time to recover myself and get accustomed
to my new acquaintances, conversed
with one another, treating me in good
neighbourly fashion without ceremony.
Meanwhile, I walked about the room,
examining the books and pictures. In
pictures I am no connaisseur; but one of
the Count’s attracted my particular notice.
It represented a view in Switzerland. I was
not, however, struck by the painting, but
by the fact that it was shot through by two
bullets, one planted just on the top of the
other.

“A good shot,” I remarked, turning to
the Count.

“Yes,” he replied, “a very remarkable
shot.”

“Do you shoot well?” he added.

“Tolerably,” I answered, rejoicing that
the conversation had turned at last on a
subject which interested me. “At a distance
of thirty paces I do not miss a card;
I mean, of course, with a pistol that I am
accustomed to.”

“Really?” said the Countess, with a
look of great interest. “And you, my
dear, could you hit a card at thirty paces?”

“Some day,” replied the Count, “we
will try. In my own time I did not shoot
badly. But it is four years now since I
held a pistol in my hand.”

“Oh,” I replied, “in that case, I bet,
Count, that you will not hit a card even at
twenty paces. The pistol demands daily
practice. I know that from experience. In
our regiment I was reckoned one of the
best shots. Once I happened not to take a
pistol in hand for a whole month: I had
sent my own to the gunsmith’s. Well,
what do you think, Count? The first time
I began again to shoot I four times running
missed a bottle at twenty paces. The captain
of our company, who was a wit, happened
to be present, and he said to me:
‘Your hand, my friend, refuses to raise
itself against the bottle!’ No, Count, you
must not neglect to practise, or you will
soon lose all skill. The best shot I ever
knew used to shoot every day, and at least
three times every day before dinner. This
was as much his habit as the preliminary
glass of vodka.”

The Count and Countess seemed pleased
that I had begun to talk.

“And what sort of a shot was he?”
asked the Count.

“This sort, Count: if he saw a fly
settle on the wall——You smile, Countess,
but I assure you it is a fact. When he saw
the fly, he would call out, ‘Kouska, my
pistol!’ Kouska brought him the loaded
pistol. A crack, and the fly was crushed
into the wall!”

[Pg 121]

“That is astonishing!” said the Count.
“And what was his name?”

“Silvio was his name.”

“Silvio!” exclaimed the Count, starting
from his seat. “You knew Silvio?”

“How could I fail to know him?—we
were comrades; he was received at our
mess like a brother-officer. It is now about
five years since I last had tidings of him.
Then you, Count, also knew him?”

“I knew him very well. Did he never
tell you of one very extraordinary incident
in his life?”

“Do you mean the slap in the face,
Count, that he received from a blackguard
at a ball?”

“He did not tell you the name of this
blackguard?”

“No, Count, he did not. Forgive me,”
I added, guessing the truth, “forgive me—I
did not—could it really have been
you?”

“It was myself,” replied the Count,
greatly agitated; “and the shots in the
picture are a memento of our last meeting.”

“I FIRED AND HIT THAT PICTURE.”

“Oh, my dear,” said the Countess, “for
God’s sake, do not relate it! It frightens
me to think of it.”

“No,” replied the Count; “I must tell
him all. He knows how I insulted his
friend. He shall also know how Silvio
revenged himself.” The Count pushed a
chair towards me, and with the liveliest
interest I listened to the following story:—

“Five years ago,” began the Count, “I
got married. The honeymoon I spent here,
in this village. To this house I am indebted
for the happiest moments of my life, and
for one of its saddest remembrances.

“One afternoon we went out riding
together. My wife’s horse became restive.
She was frightened, got off the horse,
handed the reins over to me, and walked
home. I rode on before her. In the yard
I saw a travelling carriage, and I was told
that in my study sat a man who would not
give his name, but simply said that he
wanted to see me on business. I entered
the study, and saw in the darkness a man,
dusty and unshaven. He stood there, by
the fireplace. I approached him trying to
recollect his face.

“‘You don’t remember me, Count?’ he
said, in a tremulous voice.

“‘Silvio!’ I cried, and I confess, I felt
that my hair was standing on end.

“‘Exactly so,’ he added. ‘You owe me
a shot; I have come to claim it. Are[Pg 122]
you ready?’ A pistol protruded from his
side pocket.

“MASHA THREW HERSELF AT HIS FEET.”

“I measured twelve paces, and stood
there in that corner, begging him to fire
quickly, before my wife came in.

“He hesitated, and asked for a light.
Candles were brought in. I locked the
doors, gave orders that no one should enter,
and again called upon him to fire. He
took out his pistol and aimed.

“I counted the seconds…. I thought of
her…. A terrible moment passed! Then
Silvio lowered his hand.

“‘I only regret,’ he said, ‘that the
pistol is not loaded with cherry-stones.
My bullet is heavy; and it always seems to
me that an affair of this kind is not a duel,
but a murder. I am not accustomed to
aim at unarmed men. Let us begin again
from the beginning. Let us cast lots as to
who shall fire first.’

“My head went round. I think I objected.
Finally, however, we loaded another
pistol and rolled up two pieces of paper.
These he placed inside his cap; the one
through which, at our first meeting, I had
put the bullet. I again drew the lucky
number.

“‘Count, you have the devil’s luck,’ he
said, with a smile which I shall never forget.

“I don’t know what I was about, or how it
happened that he succeeded in inducing me.
But I fired and hit that picture.”

The Count pointed with his finger to the
picture with the shot-marks. His face had
become red with agitation. The
Countess was whiter than her own
handkerchief: and I could not
restrain an exclamation.

“I fired,” continued the Count,
“and, thank heaven, missed.
Then Silvio—at this moment he
was really terrible—then Silvio
raised his pistol to take aim at
me.

“Suddenly the door flew open,
Masha rushed into the room. She
threw herself upon my neck with
a loud shriek. Her presence restored
to me all my courage.

“‘My dear,’ I said to her,
‘don’t you see that we are
only joking? How frightened
you look! Go and
drink a glass of water and
then come back; I will introduce
you to an old friend
and comrade.’

“Masha was still in doubt.

“‘Tell me, is my husband speaking the
truth?’ she asked, turning to the terrible
Silvio; ‘is it true that you are only
joking?’

“‘He is always joking, Countess,’ Silvio
replied. ‘He once in a joke gave me a slap
in the face; in joke he put a bullet through
this cap while I was wearing it; and in
joke, too, he missed me when he fired just
now. And now I have a fancy for a joke.’
With these words he raised his pistol as if
to shoot me down before her eyes!

“Masha threw herself at his feet.

“‘Rise, Masha! For shame!’ I cried in
my passion; ‘and you, sir, cease to amuse
yourself at the expense of an unhappy
woman. Will you fire or not?’

“‘I will not,’ replied Silvio. ‘I am satisfied.
I have witnessed your agitation;
your terror. I forced you to fire at me.
That is enough; you will remember me.
I leave you to your conscience.’

“He was now about to go. But he stopped
at the door, looked round at the picture
which my shot had passed through, fired at[Pg 123]
it almost without taking aim, and disappeared.

“My wife had sunk down fainting. The
servants had not ventured to stop Silvio,
whom they looked upon with terror. He
passed out to the steps, called his coachman,
and before I could collect myself drove off.”

The Count was silent. I had now heard
the end of the story of which the beginning
had long before surprised me. The hero of
it I never saw again. I heard, however,
that Silvio, during the rising of Alexander
Ipsilanti, commanded a detachment of insurgents
and was killed in action.

[Pg 124]

A Night with the Thames Police.

HEADQUARTERS AT WAPPING.

HERE was a time when the
owners of craft on the Thames
practically left their back-doors
open and invited the
river-thieves to enter, help
themselves, and leave unmolested
and content. The barges lay in
the river holding everything most coveted,
from precious cargoes of silk to comfortable-looking
bales of tobacco, protected only
from wind, weather, and wicked fingers by
a layer of tarpaulin—everything ready and
inviting to those who devoted their peculiar
talents and irrepressible instincts to the
water. Goods to the value of a million
sterling were being neatly appropriated
every year. The City merchants were at
their wits’ end. Some of the more courageous
and determined of them ventured out themselves
at night; but the thieves—never at
a loss in conceiving an ingenious and ready
means of escape—slipped, so to speak, out
of their would-be captors’ hands by going[Pg 125]
semi-clothed about their
work, greasing their flesh
and garments until they
were as difficult to catch
as eels.

So the merchants held
solemn conclave, the result
of which was the formation,
in 1792, of “The Preventative
Service,” a title which
clung to the members thereof
until 1839, when they were
embodied with the Metropolitan
Police with the special
privilege of posing as City
constables. Now they are a
body of two hundred and
two strong, possessing twenty-eight
police galleys and a trio
of steam launches. From a
million pounds’ worth of
property stolen yearly a hundred years
ago, they have, by a persistent traversing
of a watery beat, reduced it to one
hundred pounds. Smuggling is in
reality played out, though foggy nights
are still fascinating to those so inclined;
but now they have to be content with
a coil or two of old rope, an ingot of
lead, or a few fish. Still the river-policeman’s
eye and the light of his lantern are
always searching for suspicious
characters and guilty-looking craft.

IN THE CELLS.

In High-street, Wapping, famous
for its river romances,
and within five hundred
yards of the Old Stairs,
the principal station of
the Thames Police is to
be found. The traditional
blue lamp projects
over a somewhat
gloomy passage leading
down to the river-side
landing stage. To us,
on the night appointed
for our
expedition, it is
a welcome beacon
as to the whereabouts
of law and
order, for only a
few minutes previously
half a
dozen worthy
gentlemen standing
at the top of
some neighbouring
steps, wearing
slouched hats and
anything but a
comforting expression
on their faces
gruffly demanded, “Do you want a boat?”
Fortunately we did not. These estimable
individuals had only just left the dock of
the police station, where they had been
charged on suspicion, but eventually discharged.

INSPECTOR FLETCHER.

It is a quarter to six o’clock. At six
we are to start for our journey up the
river as far as Waterloo and back again
to Greenwich; but there is time to
take a hasty survey of the interior of the
station, where accommodation is provided
for sixteen single men, with a library,
reading-room, and billiard-room at their
disposal.

“Fine night, sir; rather cold, though,”
says a hardy-looking fellow dressed in a
reefer and a brightly glazed old-time man-o’-war’s
hat. He is one of the two oldest
men in the force, and could tell how he lost
his wife and all his family, save one lad,
when the Princess Alice went down in
1878. He searched for ten days and ten
nights, but they were lost to him. Another
of these river guardians has a never-to-be-forgotten
reminiscence of that terrible
disaster, when the men of the Thames[Pg 126]
police were on duty for four or five nights
at a stretch. He was just too late to catch
the ill-fated vessel! He was left behind on
the pier at Sheerness, and with regret
watched it leave, full of merrymakers.
What must have been his thoughts when
he heard the news?

A NIGHT CHARGE.

You may pick out any of these thick-set
fellows standing about. They have one
and all roamed the seas over. Many are
old colonials, others middle-aged veterans
from the navy and merchant service—every
one of them as hard as a rock, capable of
rowing for six or eight hours at a stretch
without resting on the oar.

“Don’t be long inside, sir,” shouts a
strapping fellow, buttoning up his coat to
his neck.

“Aye, aye, skipper,” we shout, becoming
for the moment quite nautical.

Inside the station-house you turn sharply
to the right, and there is the charge-room.
Portraits of Sir Charles Warren and other
police authorities are picturesquely arranged
on the walls. In front of the desk, with
its innumerable little wooden rails, where
sits the inspector in charge, is the prisoners’
dock, from the ground of which rises the
military measurement in inches against
which the culprit testifies as to his height.
The hands of the clock above are slowly
going their rounds. In a corner, near the[Pg 127]
stout steel rails of the dock, lie a couple of
bargemen’s peak caps. They are labelled
with a half-sheet of notepaper. Their history?
They have been picked up in the
river, but the poor fellows who owned them
are—missing! It will be part of our
duties to assist in the search for them
to-night.

Just in a crevice by the window are the
telegraph instruments. A clicking noise is
heard, and the inspector hurriedly takes
down on a slate a strange but suggestive
message.

“Information received of a prize-fight
for £2 a side, supposed to take place between
Highgate and Hampstead.”

What has Highgate or Hampstead to do
with the neighbourhood of Wapping, or
how does a prize-fight affect the members
of the Thames police, who are anything
but pugilistically inclined? In
our innocence we learn that it is customary
to telegraph such information to all the
principal stations throughout London. The
steady routine of the force is to be
admired.

GOING ON DUTY.

There are countless coats, capes, and
caps hanging in a room through which we
pass on our way to the cells—cosy, clean,
and convenient apartments, and decidedly
cheap to the temporary tenant. There are
two of them, one being specially retained for
women. They are painted yellow, provided
with a wash-basin, towel, a supply of soap,
and a drinking cup. Heat is supplied
through hot-water pipes; a pillow and rug
are provided for the women; and, like “desirable
villa residences,” the apartments are
fitted with electric bells.

Here the occupier is lodged for the time
being, allowed food at each meal to the
value of fourpence, and eventually tried at
the Thames Police-court. Look at the
doors. They bear countless dents from the
boot-tips of young men endeavouring to
perform the clever acrobatic feat of kicking
out the iron grating over the door through
which the gas-jet gives them light. Those
of a musical nature ring the electric bell
for half an hour at a time, imagining that
they are disturbing the peace of the officer
in a distant room. But our smart constable,
after satisfying himself that all is well, disconnects
the current, and sits smiling at his
ease. Some of the inmates, too, amuse themselves
by manufacturing streamers out of the
blankets. They never do it a second
time.

Now we are on our way to the riverside.
We descend the wooden steps, soaked
through with the water which only a few
hours previously has been washing the
stairs. Our boat is in waiting, manned by
three sturdy fellows, under the charge of an
inspector. It is a glorious night; the moon[Pg 128]
seems to have come out just to throw a light
upon our artist’s note-book, and to provide
a picture of the station standing out in
strong relief. The carpenter—for they repair
their own boats here—looks out from
his shop door, and shouts a cheery “Good-night.”
Our galley receives a gentle push
into the water, and we start on a long beat
of seven and a half miles.

POLICE LAUNCH “ALERT.”

Save for the warning of a passing tug,
the river is as a place of the dead. How
still and solemn! But a sudden
“Yo-ho” from the inspector breaks the
quietude.

It is the method of greeting as one police
galley passes another.

“Yo-ho!” replies the man in charge of
the other boat.

“All right. Good-night.”

These river police know every man who
has any business on the water at night. If
the occupant of a boat was questioned, and
his “Yo-ho” did not sound familiar, he
would be “towed” to the station.

A simple “Yo-ho” once brought about
a smart capture. The rower was mystified
at the magic word, got mixed in his
replies, and accordingly was accommodated
with a private room at the station for the
night. It transpired that this river purloiner
had stolen the boat, and, being of a
communicative disposition, was in the habit
of getting on friendly terms with the watchmen
of the steamers, and so contrived to
gain an entrance to the cabins, from which
money and watches disappeared. This piece
of ingenuity was rewarded with ten years’
penal servitude.

Our little craft has a lively time amongst
the fire-floats—for fires are just as likely to
occur on the river as on the land, and accordingly
small launches are dotted about here
and there, fulfilling the same duties as the
more formidable-looking engines on
terra firma. A red light signifies their
whereabouts, and they usually lie alongside
the piers, so as to be able to telephone
quickly should a fire occur. If the police
saw flames, they would act exactly as their
comrades do on land, and hurry to the
nearest float to give the alarm.

It blows cold as we spin past Traitor’s
Gate at the Tower, but our men become
weather-beaten on the Thames, and their
hands never lose the grip of the oar.
They need a hardy frame, a robust constitution,
for no matter what the weather,
blinding snow or driving rain, these water
guardians come out—the foggiest night detains
them not; they have to get through
the fog and their allotted six hours. At
the time of the Fenian scare at the House
of Correction, thirty-six hours at a stretch
was considered nothing out of the way.

Now the lights of Billingsgate shine out,
and we experience a good deal of dodging
outside the Custom House. The wind is
getting up, and the diminutive sprat-boats
are taking advantage of the breeze to return
home. Some are being towed along. And
as the oars of our little craft touch the
water, every man’s eyes are fixed in order[Pg 129]
to catch sight of anything like the appearance
of a missing person. A record of the
missing, as well as the found, is kept at the
station we have just left a mile or two down
the river. Ten poor creatures remain yet
to be discovered. What stories, thrilling
and heartrending, we have to listen to! Yet
even in such pitiful occurrences as these,
much that is grimly humorous often surrounds
them. Many are the sad recognitions
on the part of those “found drowned.”
Experience has taught the police to stand
quietly behind those who must needs
go through such a terrible ordeal, and who
often swoon at the first sight. Where
is a more touching story than that of the
little girl who tramped all the way from
Camden Town to Wapping, for the purpose
of identifying her father, who had been
picked up near the Old Stairs?
She was a brave little lass, and
looked up into the policeman’s face
as he took her by the hand and
walked with her towards the mortuary.
As they reached the door
and opened it, the bravery of the
child went to the man’s heart. He
was used to this sort of thing, but,
when he thought of the orphan,
the tears came to his eyes; he
turned away for a moment, lest his
charge should see them and lose
what strength her tiny frame possessed.
He hesitated before he
let her go in.

“You’re not frightened,
are you, policeman?”
she asked innocently.

He could not move,
and she went in alone.
When the constable
followed, he found the
child with her arms
round her dead father’s
neck, covering his face
with tears and kisses.

We shoot beneath
London Bridge, and the commotion
brought about by a passing tug
causes our men to rest their oars
as we are lifted like a cork by the
disturbed waves. And as the great
dome of St. Paul’s appears in sight,
standing out solemnly against the
black night, we pull our wraps
around us, as a little preliminary
to a story volunteered by the
captain of our crew. The river
police could tell of many a remarkable clue
to identification—a piece of lace, or the
button of a man’s trousers. But the inspector
has a curious story of a watch to
relate—true every word of it.

“Easy!” he cries to his men—”look to
it—now get along,” and to the steady swing
of the oars he commences.

THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.

“It all turned on the inscription engraved
on a watch,” he says. “When I came to
search the clothing of the poor fellow
picked up, the timekeeper was found in
his pocket. It was a gold one, and on the
case was engraved an inscription, setting
forth that it had been given to a sergeant
in the Marines. Here was the clue sought
after—the drowned man had evidently been
in the army. The following morning I
was on my way to Spring Gardens, when in[Pg 130]
passing down the Strand I saw a marine,
whom I was half inclined to question. I
did not, however, do so, but hurried on my
sorrowful mission.

RESCUED!

“On my arrival, I asked if they knew
anything of Sergeant ——. Yes, they
did. I must have passed him in the Strand,
for he had gone to Coutts’ Bank! I was
perfectly bewildered. Here was the very
man found drowned, still alive!

“I could only wait until his return. Then
the mystery was soon explained. It seemed
that the sergeant had sold his gold watch
in order to get a more substantial silver
one, on condition that the purchaser should
take the inscription off. This he failed to
do, and he in his turn parted with the
timekeeper to another buyer, who had finally
committed suicide with the watch still in
his pocket.”

Our police galley is now alongside the
station, just below Waterloo Bridge. It is
not far to seek why it has been found
necessary to establish a depôt here. We
look up at the great bridge which spans
the river at this point, named alas! with
only too much truth, “The Bridge of Sighs.”
The dark water looks inviting to those
burdened with trial and trouble, a place to
receive those longing for rest and yearning
for one word of sympathy. More suicides
occur at this spot than at any other along
the whole length of the river,
though Whitehall Stairs and Adelphi
Stairs are both notorious places,
where such poor creatures end their
existence. Some twenty-one suicides
have been attempted at this
point during the past
year, and twenty-five
bodies found.

As we step on the timber
station the sensation
is extremely curious to
those used to the firm
footing of the pavement.
But Inspector Gibbons—a
genial member of the
river force—assures us
that one soon becomes
accustomed to the incessant
rocking. Waterloo
Police Station—familiar
to all river pedestrians
during the summer
months, owing to the
picturesque appearance it
presents with its pots of
geraniums and climbing
fuchsias—is a highly interesting corner.

Just peep into the Inspector’s room, and
make friends with “Dick,” the cat, upon
whose shoulders rests the weight of four
years and a round dozen pounds. Dick is
a capital swimmer, and has been in the
water scores of times. Moreover, he is a
veritable feline policeman, and woe betide
any trespassers of his own race and breed.
When a cat ventures within the sacred precincts
of the station, Dick makes friends
with the intruder for the moment, and, in
order to enjoy the breeze, quietly edges him
to the extreme end of the platform, and
suddenly pushes him overboard. “Another
cat last night,” is a common expression
amongst the men here.

The Waterloo Police Station on occasion
becomes a temporary hospital and a home
together.

Only half an hour previous to our arrival
there had been an attempted suicide, and in[Pg 131]
a little room, at the far end of the pier,
there was every sign that efforts had only
recently been successfully made to restore
animation to a young fellow who had thrown
himself off Blackfriars Bridge. He
had been picked up by a passing
skiff, and his head held above water
until a steamboat passed by and took
him on board.

Here is a bed in the corner, with
comfortable-looking pillow and thick,
warm blankets, where the
unfortunate one is put to
bed for a period, previous to
being sent to the Infirmary,
and afterwards charged.
Close at hand is a little
medicine chest, containing
numerous medicine phials, a
flask of stimulants, and a
smelling-bottle. A dozen or
so of tins, of all shapes and
sizes, are handy. These are
filled with hot water and
placed in contact with the
body of the person rescued
from the river.

It is often an hour before
anything approaching animation
makes itself visible,
and even four hours have
elapsed before any sign has
been apparent. The rescued
one is laid upon a wooden
board, below which is a bath,
and rubbed by ready hands
according to Dr. Sylvester’s method, whose
instructions are prominently displayed upon
the wall, and are understood by all the police.

AN UNRULY PRISONER.

It will be noticed in the picture that two
men are apparently about to undress the
hapless creature who has attempted her own
life. The first thought that will occur to
the reader on looking at the illustration
is, that a member of her own sex ought to
to do this work. It must be remembered,
however, that weeks may elapse without
any such event, and there is no place at
Waterloo Bridge where a woman could be
kept constantly in waiting. Still, it is
clearly not right that the men should do
this duty, and we think they might be enabled
to go to some house in the neighbourhood,
in which arrangements had been made for
the services of a woman in cases of emergency.
We do not forget that great
promptness is required at such times in
order to resuscitate the body. But, when
we remember that every branch in the
police system on the Thames is so perfect,
it seems a pity that some means cannot be
devised.

Many remarkable things might be told
about people who have been in this room.
One poor fellow was once an inmate who
was humorous to the last. When he was
brought in, a pair of dumb-bells were found
in his pocket, and a piece of paper on which
was scrawled in charcoal the following:—

“Dear Bob,—I am going to drown myself.
You will find me somewhere near
Somerset House. I can’t part with my old
friends, Bob, so I’m going to take them with
me. Good-bye.”

The man was evidently an athlete, and
the “old friends” referred to were the
weighty dumb-bells.

Many have been picked up with their
pockets full of granite stones or a piece of
lead. One was found with the hands tied
together with a silk handkerchief—a love-token
which the forsaken one had used[Pg 132]
so pitifully. A woman, too, was discovered
with a summons in her pocket,
which was put down as the cause of her
untimely end.

Remarkable are the escapes of would-be
suicides. In one instance a woman threw
herself off one of the bridges, and instead of
falling into the water, jumped into a passing
barge. She had a child in her arms. The
little one died at Guy’s Hospital, but the
mother recovered. Some time ago a woman
jumped off Westminster Bridge, and floated
safely down to the Temple Stairs, where she
was picked up. She had gone off the bridge
feet first, the wind had caught her clothes,
and by this means her head was kept up,
and she was saved.

Perhaps, however, the strangest case and
one of the most romantic, was that of Alice
Blanche Oswald. Previous to committing
suicide she wrote letters to herself, purporting
to come from wealthy people in America,
and setting forth a most heartrending
history. Her death aroused a vast amount
of public sympathy. A monument to her
memory was suggested, and subscriptions
were already coming in, when inquiries
proved that her supposed friends in America
did not exist, and that the story contained
in the missives was a far from truthful one.
She was nothing more than an adventuress.

As we glance in at the solitary cell, built
on exactly the same principle as those at
Wapping, in which eleven enterprising individuals
have been accommodated at one
time, we learn of the thousand and one
odds and ends that are washed up—revolvers
and rifles, housebreaking instruments
which thoughtful burglars have got
rid of; the plant of a process for manufacturing
counterfeit bank-notes, with some of
the flimsy pieces of paper still intact. A
plated cup was once picked up at Waterloo,
which turned out to be the proceeds of a
burglary at Eton College; it is probable
the cup floated all the way from the
Thames at Windsor to Waterloo.

Forty-eight men are always on duty at
this station, including four single men,
whose quarters are both novel and decidedly
cosy. This quartet of bachelors sleep in
bunks, two above the others. The watch of
one of the occupants is ticking away in one
berth, whilst a clock is vieing with it next
door. These men have each a separate
locker for their clothes, boot-brushes, tea-pot,
coffee-pot, food, &c. The men do all
their own cleaning and cooking; if you will,
you may look into a kitchen in the corner,
in which every pot and pan is as bright as
a new pin.

But our time is up; the chiming of “Big
Ben” causes the genial inspector gently to
remind us that we must be off, and once
more we are seated in the boat, and, cutting
right across the river, move slowly on our
way to Greenwich, where the old Royalist
is transformed into a station, a familiar institution
some sixteen or seventeen years
ago at Waterloo.

The whole scene is wonderfully impressive—not
a sound is to be heard but the
distant rumbling of the vehicles over
London Bridge. Our men pause for a
moment and rest their oars. The great
wharves are deserted, the steamers and
barges appear immovable as they lie alongside—there
is no life anywhere or any sign
of it. Again we get along, halting for a
moment to look up at the old man-o’-war,
the famous Discovery, which ventured out
to the Arctic regions under Captain Nares.
The old three-mast schooner—for the vessel
is nothing more now, being used as a river
carrier of the stores from the Victualling
Yard at Deptford to the various dockyards—had
on board when she went to colder
regions a future member of the Thames
Police: hence he was called “Arctic Jack”
by his companions, a near relation to
“Father Neptune,” a cognomen bestowed
upon another representative of the force,
owing to the wealth of white beard which
he possessed.

Past Deptford Cattle Market, the red
lamps on the jetties light up the water; a
good pull and we are at Greenwich Steps,
near to which is “The Ship,” ever associated
with the name of “whitebait.” Our
beat is ended, and a hearty “Good-night”
is re-echoed by the men as we stand watching
them on the river steps whilst they
pull the first few strokes on their way home
to Wapping.

[Pg 133]

The Maid of Treppi.

From the German of Paul Heyse.

(Continued from page 69.)

E had not gone very far from
her before he found himself
between rocks and bushes
and without a path; for however
much he might deny it
to himself, the words of this
extraordinary girl had made him anxious at
heart, and all his thoughts were centred on
himself. However, he still saw the shepherd’s
fire on the opposite meadow, and
worked his way through manfully, trying to
get down to the plain below. He reckoned by
looking at the sun that it must be about ten
o’clock. But when he had climbed down the
steep mountain side, he came upon a shady
road, and then to a wooden bridge across a
fresh stream. This seemed to lead up the
other side, and out on to the meadow. He
followed it, and at first the path was a very
steep one, but then went winding along the
mountain side. He soon saw that it would
not bring him very quickly to his destination;
but large overhanging rocks above
prevented his taking a straighter direction,
and he was obliged to trust himself to his
path, unless he turned back altogether.
He walked on rapidly, and at first as
though loosed from bonds, glancing now
and then up at the hut, which did not seem
to draw near. By and by, when his blood
began to cool, he recalled all the details of
the scene he had just gone through. He
saw the lovely girl’s face bodily before him,
and not as before through the mist of his
anger. He could not help feeling full of
pity for her. “There she sits,” he said to
himself, “poor crazy thing, and trusts to
her magic arts. That was why she left the
hut by moonlight, to pluck who knows
what harmless plant. Why, yes; my
brave contrabandists showed me the strange
white flowers growing between the rocks,
and told me they were sure always to evoke
mutual love. Innocent flowers, what things
are imputed to you! And that, too, was
why the wine was so bitter on my tongue.
How everything child-like, the older it is,
becomes the stronger and more honoured!
She stood before me like a sibyl, stronger
and surer in her faith than any of those
Roman ones who cast their books into
the flames. Poor heart of woman, how
lovely, yet how wretched in delusion!”

The further he went on his way, the more
he felt the touching grandeur of her love,
and the power of her beauty enhanced by
the separation. “I ought not to have made
her suffer for wishing in all good faith to
save me by freeing me from inevitable
duties. I ought to have taken her hand
and to have said: ‘I love you Fenice, and, if
I live, I will come back to you and take you
home.’ How blind of me not to think of
that suggestion! a disgrace for any lawyer!
I ought to have taken leave of her with a
lover’s kisses, and then she would never have
suspected I was deceiving her. Instead of
which I tried to be straightforward where
she was defiant, and I only made things
worse.”

Then he buried himself in thoughts of
such a leave-taking, and seemed to feel her
breath and the pressure of her red lips on
his own. It was as though he heard his
name called. “Fenice!” he answered
eagerly, and stood still with beating heart.
The stream flowed on below him, the
branches of the fir trees hung motionless;
far and near was a vast, shady wilderness.

Once again her name rose to his lips, but
shame in time sealed his mouth—shame
and a sort of terror as well. He struck his
forehead with his hand. “Am I already so
far gone that waking I dream of her?” he
exclaimed. “Is she right, and can no man
under the sun resist her charm? Then I
were no better than she would make me
out to be, worthy only to be called a
woman’s man all my life long. No, away
with you, you lovely, treacherous fiend!”

He had regained his composure for the
time being, but he now perceived that he
had utterly and entirely strayed from the
path. He could not go back without
running into the arms of danger. So he
decided at all hazards to climb to some high
point from which he could look about him
for the shepherd’s hut. Where he was
walking, the one bank of the rushing stream
below was too steep and precipitous. So
he fastened his coat round his neck, chose
a safe spot, and at one bound had leapt
across to the other side of the chasm, the
walls of which at that place nearly met. With
fresh courage he climbed the precipice on
the other side and soon stood out in the sun.

[Pg 134]

It scorched his head, and his tongue was
dry, as he worked his way upward with
great exertion. Then, suddenly, he was
seized with the fear that, after all his
trouble, he would not be able to reach his
destination. The blood went to his head
more and more; he abused the infernal
wine that he had swallowed in the morning,
and was forced to think of the white
blossoms that had been pointed out to him
the day before. They grew here too. He
shuddered. What if it were true, he
thought, that there were powers which
enthrall our heart and senses, and bend a
man’s will to a girl’s whim? better any
extremity than such a disgrace! rather
death than slavery! “But no, no! a lie
can only conquer one who believes in it.
Be a man, Filippo; forward, the summit is
before you; but a short while, and this
cursed haunted mountain will be left
behind for ever!”

And yet he could not calm the fever in
his veins. Each stone, each slippery place,
every bare pine-branch hanging before
him, were obstacles which he surmounted
only by an almost superhuman effort
of will. When he at last arrived at the
top, and still holding to the last bush,
swung himself on to the summit, he could
not look about him for the rapid coursing
of the blood to his head, and the blinding,
dazzling light of the sun on the yellow
rocks around. Furiously he rubbed his
forehead, and passed his fingers through his
tangled hair as he lifted his hat. But then
he heard his name again in real earnest,
and gazed horror-struck in the direction
from which came the sound. And there, a
few paces from him, Fenice sat on a rock
just as he had left her, gazing at him with
intensely happy eyes.

“At last you have come, Filippo!” she
said, earnestly. “I expected you sooner.”

“Spirit of evil,” he shrieked, beside himself,
and inwardly torn in two by horror
and attraction, “do you still mock me who
have been wandering distressed in these
forsaken places, and with the sun beating
down into my very brain? Is it any
triumph for you that I am forced to see you,
only to curse you once again? By heaven,
though I have found you, I have not
sought you, and you will lose me yet.”

She shook her head with a strange smile.
“Something attracts you without your
knowledge,” she said. “You would find
me though all the mountains in the world
were between us, for I mixed with your
wine seven
drops of the
dog’s heart-blood.
Poor
Fuoco! He
loved me and
hated you.
Thus will you
hate the Filippo
who so lately
cast me off, and
will find peace
only if you love
me. Do you
see now, Filippo, that I have conquered
you at last? Come, now I will again show
you the way to Genoa, my darling, my
beloved, my husband!”

“HE FELL BACK INTO THE RAVINE.”

And she stood up and would have
embraced him; but the sight of his face
suddenly startled her. He turned all at
once pale as death, only the white of the
eyes was red; his lips moved, but no sound
came; his hat had fallen from his head, and
with his hands he violently waved off her
approach.

“A dog! a dog!” were the first words
he with difficulty ejaculated. “No, no,
no! you shall not conquer—demon that
you are. Better a dead man than a living
dog!” Thereupon he burst into a peal
of terrible laughter, and slowly, as though
he fought hard for each step, his eyes fixed
and staring at the girl, he staggered and
fell back into the ravine behind him.

For an instant her head swam, and all
seemed dark around her. She pressed her
hands to her heart, and when she saw the
tall form disappear over the edge of the
rock, she gave a scream which resounded
through the ravine like the cry of a falcon.
She tottered forward a few steps, and then
stood straight and upright, her hands still
pressed to her heart. “Madonna!” she
exclaimed mechanically.

[Pg 135]

Still looking before her she rapidly drew
near the edge, and began to climb down the
stony wall between the fir trees. Words
without sense or meaning broke from her
trembling lips. One hand she pressed against
her heart, while with the other she helped
herself down by branches and stones. Thus
she reached the foot of the trees.

“THERE HE LAY.”

There he lay, his eyes closed, his hair and
forehead covered with blood, his back against
the foot of an old tree. His coat was torn,
and his right leg seemed hurt. She could
not tell whether he was still alive. She
took him in her arms, and then felt that
he still moved. “Praised be the Lord!”
she said, and breathed more freely. She
seemed to be endowed with a giant’s
strength as she began to climb the steep
ascent, carrying the helpless man in her
arms. But it was a weary way. Four
times she laid him down on the mossy
rocks. He was still unconscious.

When at last she gained the summit with
her hapless burden, she too sank down,
and lay for a moment fainting and oblivious.
Then she got up and went in the direction
of the shepherd’s hut. As soon as she
was near enough, she gave a shrill cry across
the valley. She was answered
first by echo only, then by a man’s
voice. She repeated her cry and
then turned back without waiting
for the answer. When she stood
again beside the senseless man, she
groaned aloud, and lifting him,
carried him into the shade of the
rock, where she herself had been
sitting waiting for him.

When he awoke to consciousness,
and slowly opened his eyes
again, he found himself still there.
He saw two shepherds beside him,
an old man and a lad of about
seventeen. They were throwing
water in his face and rubbing his
temples. His head was pillowed
softly. He little knew that it was
in the girl’s lap. He seemed altogether
to have forgotten her. He
drew a long breath, which made
his whole frame quiver, and again
closed his eyes. At last he said in
trembling tones, “Will one of you
good people go down—quickly, to
Pistoja. I am expected there. May
God, in His mercy, reward whoever
will tell the landlord of the
Fortuna—what has happened to
me. My name is——” but here
his voice failed him. He had fainted again.

“I will go,” said the girl. “Meanwhile,
you two must carry the gentleman to Treppi
and lay him in the bed which Nina will
show you. She must send for the
chiaruccia, the old woman, and let her
attend to the gentleman and dress his
wounds. Lift him up; you take the shoulders,
Tommaso; you, Bippo, take the legs. When
you go uphill, you must go first, Tommaso.
Now, raise him gently, gently! and, stay—dip
this in water and lay it on his forehead,
and wet it again at every spring. Do you
understand?”

She tore off a great piece of the linen
kerchief on her head, dipped it in water and
laid it on Filippo’s bleeding brow. Then
they lifted him, and the men started to
carry him to Treppi. Fenice, after watching[Pg 136]
them some time with anxious, straining eyes,
gathered up her skirts and went rapidly
down the rough and stony mountain path.

It was nearly three in the afternoon when
she reached Pistoja. The Fortuna Inn was
some hundred paces outside the town, and
at this hour of siesta there was not much
life about the place. Carriages, with the
horses taken out, stood in the shade under
the overhanging roof, the drivers fast asleep
on the cushions; opposite, too, at the great
smithy, work had stopped; and not a breath
of air penetrated through the
dusty trees along the high
road. Fenice went up to the
fountain before the house,
the busy jet of water flowing
ceaselessly down into the
great stone trough, and there
refreshed her hands and face.
Then she took a long slow
drink to satisfy both thirst
and hunger, and went into
the inn.

The landlord got up
sleepily from the bench at
the bar, but sat down again
when he saw that it was
only a girl from the hills
who thus disturbed his rest.

“What do you want?”
he said to her sharply. “If
you want anything to eat, or
wine to drink, go to the
kitchen.”

“Are you the landlord?”
she asked quietly.

“I should think so; I should think
everyone knew me—Baldassare Tizzi,
of the Fortuna. What do you bring
me, my good girl?”

“A message from the lawyer,
Signor Filippo Mannini.”

“Eh, what? Indeed? That’s another
matter,” and he got up hurriedly. “Is he
not coming himself, child? There are some
gentlemen here waiting for him.”

“Then take me to them.”

“What, secrets? May I not know what
message he sends to these gentlemen?”

“No.”

“Well, well, my child, well, well.
Each one has his own secrets—your pretty
little obstinate head as well as old Baldassare’s
hard pate. So he is not coming?
The gentlemen will not be pleased at that;
they evidently have important business with
him.”

He stopped and looked at the girl with a
sidelong glance. But as she did not show
any signs of taking him further into her confidence,
and went to open the door, he put
on his straw hat and went with her, shaking
his head all the time.

AT THE FORTUNA INN.

There was a small vineyard at the back
of the inn, which they walked through, the
old man keeping up a continued flow of
questions and exclamations, to which the
girl did not deign to reply. At the further
end of the middle walk stood a poor-looking
summerhouse; the shutters were closed,
and inside a thick curtain hung behind
the glass door. The landlord made
Fenice stop a little way from this pavilion,
and went up to the door, which was opened
when he knocked. Fenice noticed how
the curtain was then drawn on one side, and
a pair of eyes looked out at her. Then the
old man came back to her and said that the
gentlemen would speak to her.

As Fenice entered the pavilion, a man,
who had been sitting at the table with his
back to the door, rose from his seat and gave
a sharp and penetrating look at her. Two
other men remained seated. On the table
she saw bottles of wine and glasses.

[Pg 137]

“Is Signor Filippo, the lawyer, not coming
according to promise?” asked the man
before whom she stood. “Who are you,
and what verification have you of your
message?”

“I am Fenice Cattaneo, sir; a maiden
from Treppi. Verification? I have none,
except that I am speaking the truth.”

“Why is he not coming? We thought
he was a man of honour.”

“And he is so still; but he has fallen
from a rock and hurt his head and legs,
and is unconscious.”

Her interlocutor exchanged looks with
the other man, and then said:

“You betray the truth at all events,
Fenice Cattaneo, because you do not understand
how to lie. If he had lost consciousness,
how could he send you here to tell us
of it?”

“IS SIGNOR FILIPPO NOT COMING?”

“Speech came back to him at intervals.
And he then said that he was expected
here at the inn; I was to let you know
what had happened to him.”

One of the other men gave a short, dry
laugh. “You see,” said the speaker,
“these gentlemen do not believe much of
your tale either. Certainly it is easier to
play the poet than the man of honour.”

“If, Signor, you mean by that that Signor
Filippo has not come here out of cowardice,
then it is an abominable falsehood, and may
heaven reckon it to you!” She said this
fiercely, and looked at them all three in
succession.

“You wax warm, little one,” scoffed the
man. “You are doubtless Signor Filippo’s
sweetheart, eh?”

“No, the Madonna knows I am not!”
replied she in her deepest voice. The men
whispered together, and she heard one of
them say: “That nest up there is Tuscan
still.”—”You don’t seriously believe in this
dodge?” asked the third. “He is no more
at Treppi than——”

Their whispering was interrupted by
Fenice: “Come and see for yourselves!
But you must not carry arms if I am to be
your guide.”

“Foolish child,” said the first speaker,
“do you think that we would take the life
of so pretty a creature as you?”

“No, but his life; I feel sure you would.”

“Have you any other conditions to make,
Fenice Cattaneo?”

“Yes, that you take a surgeon with you.
Perhaps you already have one with you,
signors?”

No one answered her. But the three
men put their heads together in eager talk.
“When we arrived I saw him by chance in
the front part of the house,” said one of
them; “I hope he has not yet gone back
to the town,” and then he left the pavilion.
He came back shortly with a fourth individual,
who did not seem to know the
rest of the party.

“Will you do us the favour to go up to
Treppi with us?” asked the first speaker.
“You have probably been told what it is all
about.”

The other bowed in silence, and they all[Pg 138]
left the pavilion. As they passed the kitchen,
Fenice asked for some bread, and ate
a few mouthfuls. Then she went on in
front of the party, and took the road to the
mountains. She paid no heed to her companions,
who were talking eagerly together,
but hurried on as fast as she could; sometimes
they had to call to her, or she would
have been lost to sight. Then she stood
still, and gazed into space in a hopeless,
dreamy way, her hand firmly pressed to her
heart. The evening
had closed in before
they reached the
heights.

“SHE WENT ON IN FRONT OF THE PARTY.”

The little village
of Treppi looked no
livelier than usual.
A few children’s
faces peered
curiously out at the
open windows, and
one or two women
came out to their
doors, as Fenice
went past with her
companions. She
spoke to no one as
she drew near her
home, returning the
neighbours’ greeting
with a hasty
wave of the hand.
A group of men
stood talking before
the door, others were
busy with some
heavily-laden
horses, and contrabandists
hurried to
and fro. A sudden
silence came over
the people, as they
saw the strangers
approaching. They
stepped on one side, and allowed them to
pass. Fenice exchanged a few words with
Nina in the big room, and then opened her
own chamber door.

The wounded man lay stretched on the
bed in the dimly-lighted room. An old, old
woman, from the village, sat on the floor
beside him.

“How goes it, chiaruccia?” asked
Fenice.

“Not so badly, praised be the Madonna!”
answered the old woman, measuring with
rapid glances the gentlemen who followed
the girl into the room.

Filippo started suddenly out of his sleep,
his pale face glowing. “Is it you?” he
asked.

“Yes; I have brought with me the gentleman
with whom you were to fight, that
he may see for himself that you could not
go. And there is a surgeon here, too.”

The dull eye of the wounded man slowly
surveyed the four strange faces. “He is
not one of them,” he said. “I know
none of these gentlemen.”

When he had said
this, and was about
to close his eyes
again, the chief
spokesman stepped
forward: “It is
sufficient that we
know you,” he said,
“Signor Filippo
Mannini. We had
orders to await you
and arrest you.
Letters of yours
have been found,
from which it appears
that it is not
only to fight a duel
that you have come
back to Tuscany,
but to renew certain
connections through
which your party
will receive advances.
You see
before you the commissary
of police,
and here are my
orders.” He took
a paper out of his
pocket, and held it
out to Filippo. But
he only stared at it
as if he had not
understood a word,
and fell back again into a half-stunned
state.

“Examine his wounds, doctor,” said the
commissary, turning to the surgeon. “If his
state in any way permits, we must have this
gentleman transported down without delay.
I saw horses outside. We shall be enforcing
the law in two ways if we take possession of
them, for they are laden with smuggled
goods. It is a good thing to know what
kind of people visit Treppi, if one really
wishes for the information.”

As he said this, and the surgeon
approached the bed, Fenice disappeared out[Pg 139]
of the room. The old chiaruccia sat on
quietly where she was, muttering to herself.
Voices were heard outside, and a great
bustle of people coming and going, faces
looked in at the hole in the wall, but disappeared
again quickly.

“It is just possible,” said the surgeon,
“that we can get him conveyed
down, if his wounds are well and
firmly bandaged. Of course, he would get
well much quicker if he were left here
quietly in the care of this old witch, whose
herbs and balsams would put to shame the
most learned physician. His life might be
endangered by wound-fever on the way,
and I will on no account take any responsibility.”

“It is not necessary—not at all,” returned
the commissary. “The way we get
rid of him need not be taken into consideration.
Put your bandages on him as tightly
as you can, that nothing be wanting, and
then forward! It is moonlight, and we
will take a guide. Go you outside, Molza,
and make sure of the horses.”

“THE CONSTABLE STOOD PETRIFIED.”

The constable to whom this order was
addressed opened the door quickly, and
would have gone out, but stood petrified at
the unexpected sight that met his view.
The adjoining room was filled by a band
of villagers, with two contrabandists at their
head. Fenice was still talking to them as
the door opened. She now advanced to her
own chamber door, and said with ringing
tones:—

“Gentlemen, you must leave this room
immediately, and without the wounded
man, or you will never see Pistoja again.
No blood has ever been shed in this house as
long as Fenice Cattaneo has been mistress
of it, and may the Madonna ever preserve
us from such horrors. Nor must you
attempt to come back again with a stronger
force. Remember the place where the
rocky steps wind up between the cliffs.
A child could defend that pass, if the
stones that lie on the top were rolled over
the edge. We will keep a watch posted
there until this gentleman is in safety. Now
you can go, and boast of your heroic deed,
that you deceived a girl, and would have
murdered a wounded man.”

The faces of the constables grew paler
and paler, and a pause ensued after her last
words. Then all three of them drew pistols
out of their pockets, and the commissary
said calmly: “We come in the name
of the law. If you do not respect it
yourselves, would you prevent others from
enforcing it? It may cost the lives of six of
you, if you oblige us to carry out the law by
force.”

[Pg 140]

A murmur ran through the group.

“Silence, friends!” exclaimed the determined
girl. “They dare not do it. They
know that for each one they shoot down,
his murderer would die a six-fold death.
You speak like a fool,” she went on, turning
to the commissary. “The fear depicted
on your faces is a more sensible spokesman.
Do as it suggests to you. The way is open
to you, gentlemen!”

“THEY MARCHED THROUGH THE EXCITED BAND OF VILLAGERS.”

She stepped back, pointing with her left
hand to the door of the house. The men
in the bedroom whispered together a little;
then, with tolerable composure, they
marched through the excited band of
villagers, whose parting curses waxed louder
and louder as the strangers left the house.
The surgeon seemed uncertain whether to
go too, but, on an authoritative sign from
the girl, he hastily joined his companions.

The wounded man in bed had followed
the entire scene with wide-open eyes. The
old woman now went to him and settled
his pillows. “Lie still, my son!” she said.
“There is no danger. The old chiaruccia
keeps watch, and our Fenice, blessed child,
will see that you are safe. Sleep, sleep!”

She hushed him to slumber like a
child, singing monotonously until he slept.
But the face of Fenice was with him in
his dreams.

For ten days Filippo had been up in the
mountains, nursed by the old woman. He
slept soundly at night, and in the daytime
he sat at the open door enjoying the fresh
air and the solitude. As soon as he was
able to write once more, he sent a messenger
to Bologna with a letter, to which
he received an answer the next day;
but his pale countenance did not show
whether it was satisfactory or not. He
spoke to no one except his old nurse
and the children from the village. Fenice
he saw only in the evening, when she was
busy at her fireside, for she left the house
with the rising sun and remained away the
whole day in the mountains. He gathered
from chance remarks that this was not her
usual custom. But even when she was in
the house there was no opportunity of
talking to her. Altogether, she seemed not
to notice his presence in the very least, and
her life went on as before. But her face
had become like stone, and the light had
faded from her eyes.

One day, enticed on by the lovely
weather, Filippo had gone further than
usual from the house, and for the first
time, conscious of returning strength, was
climbing up a gentle slope, when, turning a
corner of a rock, he was startled to see Fenice
sitting on the moss beside a spring. She
had a distaff and a spindle in her hands,
and as she spun was lost in thought. She
looked up when she heard Filippo’s footsteps,
but did not utter a word, nor did the
expression of her face alter. She rose up[Pg 141]
quickly and began to collect her
things. She went away, too, without
heeding that he called her, and was
soon lost to sight.

The morning after this meeting he
had just risen, and his thoughts had
flown to her again, when the door of
his room was opened and Fenice
walked in quietly. She remained
standing at the door, and waved him
back haughtily when he would have
hurried up to her.

“You are now quite cured,” she
said, coldly. “I have spoken to the
old woman. She thinks that you are
strong enough to travel, in
short stages and on horseback.
You will, therefore,
leave Treppi to-morrow
morning early, and never
again return. I demand
this promise from you.”

“I will give you the promise,
Fenice, but on one
condition only.”

She was silent.

“That you will go with
me, Fenice!” he exclaimed
in unrestrained emotion.

Her brows knit in anger.
But she controlled herself,
and, holding the door-handle,
said: “How have I
merited your mockery? You
must make the promise without
a condition; I exact it
from your sense of honour,
Signor.”

“A DISTAFF AND SPINDLE IN HER HANDS.”

“Would you thus
cast me off after causing
your love-potion
to enter my very
marrow, and make
me yours for ever,
Fenice?”

“HE FLUNG HIMSELF ON THE STONES AT HER FEET.”

She quietly
shook her head.
“From henceforth
there is no
more magic between
us,” she said, gloomily. “You had
lost blood before the potion had had time to
take effect; the spell is broken. And it is
well, for I see that I did wrong. Let us
speak no more about it, and say only that
you will go. A horse will be
ready and a guide for wherever
you wish to go.”

“And if it be no longer the
same magic which binds me to
you, it must be some other which
you know not of, Fenice. As sure as God
is over us.”

“Silence!” she interrupted, and curled
her lip scornfully. “I am deaf to any
speeches you can make. If you think
you owe me anything and would take pity
on me—then leave me, and that will settle
our account. You shall not think that this
poor head of mine can learn nothing. I[Pg 142]
know now that one can buy a man no more
by humble services than by seven long years
of waiting, which are also, in the sight of
God, a matter of no moment. You must not
think that you have made me miserable—you
have cured me! Go! and my thanks go
with you!”

“Answer me, in God’s name!” he
exclaimed, beside himself as he drew
nearer, “have I cured you, also, of your
love?”

“No,” she said, firmly. “Why do you
ask about it? It belongs to me; you have
neither power nor right over it. Go!”

Thereupon she stepped back across the
threshold. The next moment he had flung
himself on the stones at her feet, and clasped
her knees.

“If what you say be true,” he cried,
overcome with grief, “then save me, take
me to yourself, or this head of mine, saved
by a miracle, will go to pieces like my
heart, which you reject and spurn. My
world is a void, my life a prey to hatred
and revenge, my old and my new homes
banish me—what is there left for me to live
for if I must lose you, too?”

Then he raised his eyes to her and saw
the tears streaming down her cheeks. Her
face was still immovable; she drew a long
breath and opened her eyes; her lips
moved, but no sound came; the life in her
seemed to awaken with one burst. She
bent down and raised him with her powerful
arms. “You are mine,” she said, with
trembling voice. “Then I, too, will be
yours!”

When the sun rose the following day, the
pair were on their way to Genoa, whither
Filippo had decided to retire from the persecutions
of his enemies. The pale, tall
man rode on a steady horse, which his
betrothed led by the bridle. On either side
the hills and valleys of the beautiful
Apennines lay bright in the clear autumnal
air, the eagles were circling overhead, and
far in the distance shone the deep-blue sea.
And bright and tranquil like the far-off ocean
the travellers’ future lay before their eyes.

[Pg 143]

Our Money Manufactory.

UMISMATICS is a science in
which the vast majority of
people probably take but the
faintest interest. Yet the
history of coinage, its developments,
its ramifications, is
bound up indissolubly with the history of
the human race. It is the history of
money; and money, as Carlyle said of his
own time, is the one certain nexus as
between man and man. Money is the
determining factor in four-fifths of our relationships.
It has made the world what
it is; on the one hand it has brutalised
mankind, and on the other it has given man
unrivalled opportunities of winning popular
esteem. Money has ruined and created
individuals, families, States. Equally often
it has brought worldly happiness and
worldly misery; it has broken hearts, unhinged
reasons, undone great enterprises;
it has shed light in dark places, secured
comfort for the weary and the suffering,
and involved all that heart can desire.
Noble knees have bent before “Lucre’s
sordid charms”;
the humble and
the struggling
have exalted
themselves to
place and power
by its means.
Pope gives us an
idea not only of
the use but of the
abuse to which
riches may be
put, from the
hiring of the dark
assassin to the
corruption of a
friend, and the
bribing of a
Senate.

RUNNING SILVER INTO MOULDS.

Money in the
form of cash has been
infinitely more to civilisation
than mere barter
and exchange ever
were to barbarous races content to accept
one article in payment for another. It is,
in fact, only necessary to let the mind
dwell for a period on all that the possession
or want of coin means to a people, individually
and collectively, to render any
inquiry into the working of our money
manufactory one of considerable fascination.
The attractions of the Mint for the
ordinary sightseer have, it would seem,
yearly become greater, and in 1889, according
to the Report of the Deputy Master, the
number of visitors was larger than in any
previous year, no less than 7,912 persons—that
is, an average of twenty-five a day—having
been shown over the establishment
on Tower Hill. Vivid an idea of the place
as the illustrations which accompany this
article will convey to those who have never
been to the Mint, it may at once be said,
that to thoroughly grasp the actual work
done there, a visit is essential. It is an institution
round which centres so much
human energy and scientific achievement
that a picture should certainly make most
people anxious to know something more
about it.

The Mint, as one approaches it on Tower
Hill, suggests that it may be a barrack, and
the sentry pacing up and down outside
lends colour to
this view, until
one finds one’s
passage through
the entrance gate
blocked by a sturdy
policeman. Unless
you happen to be
fully armed with
credentials, or orders,
you will not
easily run the
gauntlet of the
keeper of the peace
and the gate,
affable gentleman
though he is. To
be shown over the
Mint you must
get an order from
the Deputy Master, and then
everything is clear.

Once within the precincts of
the establishment, your education—if
it is a first visit, as this of ours
is—begins. You have probably, when
pocketing your salary at the end of the
week, never given a moment’s thought
as to the process by which money comes[Pg 144]
into the world. The pounds (if you
have any), the shillings, and the pence
which you carry in your pockets are the
result of a combination of experience and
skill which you, perhaps, little suspect.

When the bullion—the metal in its pure
state—arrives at the Mint, it is assayed—that
is, tested. It is then passed on to the
Melting-room, and, together with the baser
metal which forms the alloy necessary to
reduce it to the proper standard, placed in
the crucible, or melting-pot. Let us take
the coining of silver as an example. The
crucible used is made of mixed clay and
graphite, each vessel holding about three
thousand ounces. On two sides of the
Melting-room are coke furnaces, and into
one of these the crucible is dropped.

IN THE ROLLING-ROOM.

Here it remains until the metal is at a
molten heat, when it is lifted by means of
a crane on to an apparatus shown in our
illustration. This forms a pretty sight.
The crucible is red-hot, and the boiling
metal, as it is stirred vigorously by one of
the men with an iron rod, emits a lovely
bluish flame. The apparatus tilts the pot,
and the metal runs into a series of moulds
which move on a carriage underneath.
These moulds being well oiled, the metal
has no chance of becoming part of them.
The bars formed in this way are twelve
inches long and three-eighths of an inch
thick. When removed from the moulds
their edges are ragged, but a revolving file
soon makes them smooth, and the bars are
ready to be again assayed. A piece is
chipped from one of them, and if the
necessary standard of fineness has been
secured, the bars pass to the next department.

This is the Rolling-room. The metal,
it must be understood, is far from hard,
and the reduction of the thickness and
consequent increase in the length, due to
the rolling of the bars, are not so difficult
a matter as to the uninitiated they may
seem. The bars are placed between adjustable
cylinders and rolled into strips, or
“fillets” as they are called.

They pass several times through the
machine, being reduced the one-nineteenth
part of an inch in each rolling at first, but,
finally, only the one-hundredth part of an
inch. Naturally the process makes the
metal very hard, and it has to be annealed—that
is, heated and softened—constantly
until it is the right thickness. We need
only state that the strips from which half-sovereigns
are made must not vary more
than 1-20,000th part of an inch—in other
words, they must be within 1-10,000th part
of an inch of the nominal thickness—to[Pg 145]
give an idea of the minute care with which
every stage of the development of the coin
has to be watched. Two-tenths of a grain
is the divergence allowed in the weight of
the sovereign, but even this margin may
mean a difference of more than £3,000
on a million sovereigns.

MARKING MACHINE.

The strips, as they leave the Rolling-room,
are about four feet long and double
the width of the shilling. They are taken
to the Cutting-room, and here for the first
time we get something approaching a piece
of money. The “fillets” are placed in
the cutting-machines, by a man who feeds
two at a time. No doubt many persons
have formed the idea that the coin
is cut, cucumber-fashion, from a metal rod;
we have, indeed, heard people suggest as
much. Well, the foregoing is sufficient to
dispel any such notion. The fillet passes
beneath two punches, and over holes the
size of the coin. As the former descend
with swift, sharp, irresistible force, they
punch the “blanks” of the coin out of the
strip. The blanks fall through a tube into a
tray or pan, and what remains of the strips is
sent back to the Melting-room, to be turned
again into bars. In the case of shillings,
two blanks are forced out at once. In the
case of copper, five disappear at a blow, but
in the case of large silver coins, only one
blank is cut at a time. The blanks of the
shilling are produced at the rate of some 300
an hour.

CUTTING MACHINE.

Having secured the blank, it might
well be imagined that there was nothing
more to be done but to impress it with the
proper device on its obverse and reverse.
But we are not yet more than half-way on
the road to the coin which can be sent to
the Bank, there to be handed over
the counter to the public.

Close by the cutting-machine is
what is called a marking-machine.
The special function of this is to
raise the edge which all coins
possess for the protection of their
face. The blank is run into a
groove in a rapidly revolving disc,
and edges are produced at the
rate of between six and seven
hundred an hour; in fact, almost
as quickly as the man can feed the
machine.

We cannot help but listen pensively
for a moment to the thud,
thud, of the cutting machine as the
punches strike the fillet, and watch
with keen interest the express rate
at which the marking is accomplished.
To see the blank being
turned out at this pace is to make
one’s mouth literally water, and
one’s heart and pocket wish that it[Pg 146]
were so easy and so mechanical a business
to “make money” in one’s daily
doings. And then it strikes us: What do
these men, with their usually grimy aprons
and often blackened faces, get for their
work in turning out so much coin of the
realm? They seem to have a very good
time of it on the whole, and the conditions
of light, warmth,
and safety under
which they labour
are certainly in
striking contrast
to the trials, the
dangers, and the
dreariness of the
lives of those who
unearth the metal.

On an average,
each workman in
the operative department
of the
Mint makes his
£2 10s. a week.
He enters the service
of the department as
a boy, and remains there
through his working life,
if he cares to do so and
proves trustworthy. No
one is accepted for employment
after sixteen years
of age, and every precaution
is taken by the
authorities against the weakness of human
nature. Each room is under a separate
official, without whose assistance in the
unlocking of doors no employé can leave.

There is no hardship in this daily imprisonment,
every department being fitted
up with all conveniences for cooking, eating,
&c.; and, judging from what we have
seen, we should say the lives of the operatives
at the Mint are not unenviable. Of
one thing we can speak very positively, and
that is as to their natures: their geniality is
a characteristic they share in common with
their chief superintendent. If one had
seriously contemplated becoming an operative,
they could not have taken more pains
to initiate one into the mysteries of the
coinage.

We now make our way to the Annealing-room.
Here the scene changes entirely.
The buzz, the whirr, and bang of the all
powerful machinery give place to several furnaces.
The blanks are brought in in bags, are
emptied into an iron tray, and shoved along
an elongated sort of oven, of which our
illustration gives an excellent impression.
It shows the man standing with the iron
rod and hook in hand ready to push the
tray to the farther end of the oven.

We venture modestly to suggest that the
structure would do admirably for the purposes
of cremation.

“Quite right, sir, it would! I suppose
you wouldn’t like to try it?”

We frankly and honestly confess
we should not.

ANNEALING FURNACE.

After a few minutes the blanks are
sufficiently baked. If one’s own valuable
carcase had been in that red-hot oven
for ever so short a time, it would have come
out charred and hardened. Not so the
metal, which is considerably softened.

The blanks are now tipped into a perforated
sort of basin, which is picked up by a man
from another room and carried away.

We have during all this time been standing
in a heat which would do credit to a
Turkish bath.

But now, again, the conditions change
entirely, and we are in a room filled with
steam, and cold enough to refrigerate one.
Here the blanks are plunged into a tank of
cold water, which hisses and spits like a
dozen angry snakes as the hot metal touches
it. From the cooling bath the blanks go
to the acid bath. Into this latter they disappear
black with the oxide of copper clinging
to them. Pears’ Soap or Sapolio, or
whatever means to cleanliness we may employ,
would hardly accomplish the wonders
in an hour’s application to the human skin,[Pg 147]
which a few seconds of the sulphuric
solution accomplishes with
the blank of the coin. They emerge
from their bath in every sense
white as snow.

The blanks are, of course, wet,
and before they can assume the
full honours of the complete coin
they have to be dried. How is this
done? By blowing on them with
a bellows? By wiping each blank
separately with a cloth? By
placing them in front of a fire or
even in the oven again? No.
They are simply emptied into a
revolving box containing beech-wood
sawdust. A turn about in
this, and they and the sawdust are
emptied into a sieve, from which
the sawdust escapes with a little
shaking. The sawdust is dried on
a hot slab or bench, and is used
again; the blanks are ready for
the Press or Die room.

In the illustration of this room the man is
standing with a handful of blanks feeding a
small tube or shoot, from which they drop
on to a sliding plate and are conveyed into a
collar, as it is called. We see the piece a
blank for the last time. Once in the collar,
if the machinery is in motion, nothing can
save that smooth-faced blank from becoming,
in appearance at least, a coin of the
realm. The blank rests on a die and beneath
a die. The latter descends with precision and
force, and the blank finds itself for an instant
in a grip more powerful than miser ever gave
his hoard. It would, if it could, spread itself
out to the thinnest possible substance.
But as it seeks to escape under the pressure
its edge comes in contact with the sides of
the collar. These are milled or lettered,
and whatever they contain appears on the
coin. It is not generally known that the
object of this milling or lettering is to prevent
the clipping or debasement of the
money. In Queen Elizabeth’s time, and on
to the reign of William III.—during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—the
operations of the clippers were very serious.
Men made fortunes by paring a small piece
from every coin in their possession, and even
the death penalty failed to check the evil.
A year or two before the beginning of the
eighteenth century a mill, worked by horses,
was started in the Tower of London to replace
the old system of making money by
the hand-wielded hammer. The edge of
the coin was made to bear an inscription,
and the operations of the clipper were
rendered practically impossible. Even to-day
offences in connection with the currency
are numerous. In 1889 110 persons were
convicted out of 194 charged with issuing
counterfeit coins, having them in their
possession, or actually making them. The
more ingenious the device on the coin produced
by the Imperial mint, the less likely
is a counterfeit to pass muster for long.

DRYING BLANKS.

The coin leaves the Press-room complete,
and has to pass only one other ordeal,
that, namely, of the Weighing-room. Here
it is placed on a wonderful automatic
balance. If it is too light it falls into a
drawer on one side, if correct into a drawer
in the centre, if too heavy into a drawer on
the other side. The average of coins which
are either too heavy or too light, and consequently
have to be returned to the melting
pot, is, owing to the smallness of
the “remedy” or margin of weight allowed,
as much as 13 per cent.

There are thirty of these little machines
employed, and their workmanship may be
judged by the fact that each one costs
£300. Bronze coins are not subjected to
this severe test, but are weighed in bulk in
a huge scale. Every year there is what
is called “The Trial of the Pyx”—the[Pg 148]
pyx being the chest containing sample
coins. A coin is taken, without preference,
from every “journey weight” of gold, a
“journey weight” being 15 lb. troy, or 701
sovereigns, or 1,402 half sovereigns. The
work of testing is performed by a jury,
composed of freemen of the Goldsmiths’
Company in the presence
of the Queen’s
Remembrancer, and
the report of the jury
is laid before the
Treasury. The yearly
verdict shows how
wonderfully and uniformly
accurate the
standard of fineness
has remained, averaging,
as it did in
1889, according to the
Deputy Master’s Report,
916·657, the precise
standard being
916·6. As regards
silver, the English
standard of 925 is,
with the exception of
certain coins, averaging
945 in the Netherlands,
the highest in
the world, the average
in France being 835,
and in Germany and
the United States, 900.

COINING PRESS.

The Deputy Master’s Report for 1889
was rendered especially interesting from the
fact that it was the twentieth issued under
the present system of Mint administration.
It was only in 1870 that the Mastership of
the Mint ceased to be a separate office, and
the Chancellor of the Exchequer became
ex officio Master, with the Deputy Master as
principal executive officer. The Mint was
removed to its present site from the Tower
of London in 1810. With the increase of
its labours, the buildings afforded quite insufficient
accommodation, and from 1871 to
1881 several Bills were introduced into the
House of Commons with a view to acquiring
a new site on the Thames Embankment.
The governor of the Bank of England,
however, having in 1881 declared that no
inconvenience would arise if all gold coinage
were suspended for a year, it was determined
to improve the existing structure.
The changes were commenced on February
1, 1882, and ended early in the following
December. The result has been to place
the department in a position to meet almost
any demands which may be made upon it.
The machinery was nearly all renewed, and
the arrangements now admit of the simultaneous
coinage of two metals. During
July, 1889, the producing capabilities of the
Mint were put to the test, and one million
perfect sovereigns were struck and issued
in a week. The coinage
in that year of
£9,746,538, to which
previous reference has
been made, was nearly
four times the average
of the previous ten
years. Even this enormous
sum does not
represent the whole of
the coinage operations
of the country in 1889.
A considerable portion
of the Colonial
coins required were
turned out by a firm
formerly known as
Ralph Heaton & Sons,
but now called “The
Mint, Birmingham,
Limited.”[A] Messrs.
Heaton were for many
years a sort of Imperial
Mint Auxiliary. The
idea once got abroad
that all bronze coins
stamped with the
letter “H” were counterfeit, whereas the
initial simply denoted that their manufacture
had been entrusted to Messrs. Heaton.
The Mint, Birmingham, does most of the
coinage for small foreign States which look
to England to convert their ingots to
money.

The Imperial Mint, in the words of so
many company prospectuses, is a going
concern. It levies a seigniorage which
brings in a handsome revenue. This seigniorage
was abolished by Charles II., but
restored by an Act of George III., which
required every pound of silver to be coined
into 66 shillings instead of 62—the extra
four shillings to go to defray the expenses
of the establishment. During five out of
the 18 years, 1872 to 1889, the Mint was
worked at a loss; but, taking the whole 18
years, the average net profit was as much[Pg 149]
as £83,724. The profit made in 1889
amounted to no less than £780,691 12s. 5d.
What the record for 1890 will be it is too
early yet to know, but 1889 will, in every
respect, take a lot of beating.

The Mint does not confine itself to the
production of coins, but strikes thousands
of medals every year for the War Office,
the Board of Trade, the University of
London, the Royal and other Societies.
It may be remembered that Pope addressed
some admirable lines to Addison à propos
of one of his dialogues, on the historic
virtues of the medal. He pictures all the
glories and triumphs of the Imperial
ambition of Rome shrunk into a coin. “A
narrow orb each conquest keeps,” he says,
and he demands when Britain shall
“in living medals see her wars enrolled,”
and “vanquished realms supply recording
gold.” The historian must always bear
grateful testimony to the assistance derivable
from the metallic tokens of a country,
no matter whether they show “a small
Euphrates,” or merely an inscription, and
the head of the sovereign. They are
imperishable witnesses in the cause of
accuracy and truth.

WEIGHING ROOM.

[Pg 150]

Slap-Bang.

From the French of Jules Claretie.

[Jules Claretie was born at Limoges, in 1840, and is still a well-known figure in the literary world of
Paris. No man is more prolific; histories, novels, articles, short stories, plays, pour without cessation from his
pen. Jules Claretie is a man of the most varied gifts. His best known achievement is his “History of the
Revolution,” in five volumes—a monumental work. But there are those (and we confess ourselves among
them) who would rather be the author of the lovely little story of child-life which we lay before our readers
under the title of “Slap-Bang.”]

I.

HE little boy lay pale and listless
in his small white cot,
gazing, with eyes enlarged by
fever, straight before him,
with the strange fixity of illness
which seems to see
already more than is visible to living eyes.
His mother, sitting at the bottom of the
bed, biting her fingers to keep back a cry,
noted how the symptoms deepened on the
ghostly little face; while his father, a
strong workman,
brushed away his
burning tears.

The day was
breaking; a calm,
clear, lovely day
of June. The
light began to
steal into the
poor apartment
where little
Francis, the son
of Jacques and
Madeline Legrand,
lay very
near death’s
door. He was
seven years old;
three weeks ago,
a fair-haired,
rosy, little boy, as
happy as a bird.
But one night,
when he came
home from
school, his head
was giddy and
his hands were
burning. Ever
since he had lain
there in his cot.
To-night he did not wander in his mind;
but for two days his strange listlessness had
alarmed the doctor. He lay there sad and
quiet, as if at seven years old he was already
tired of life; rolling his head upon the bolster,
his thin lips never smiling, his eyes
staring at one knew not what. He would
take nothing—neither medicine, syrup, nor
beef-tea.

“Is there anything that you would like?”
they asked him.

“No,” he answered, “nothing.”

“This must be remedied,” the doctor
said. “This torpor is alarming. You are
his parents, and you know him best. Try to
discover what will interest and amuse him.”
And the doctor
went away.

“‘THIS MUST BE REMEDIED,’ THE DOCTOR SAID.”

To amuse him!
True, they knew
him well, their
little Francis.
They knew how
it delighted him,
when he was well,
to go into the
fields, and to come
home, loaded with
white hawthorn
blossoms, riding
on his father’s
shoulders.
Jacques had already
bought him
gilded soldiers,
figures, “Chinese
shadows,” to be
shown upon a
screen. He placed
them on the sick
child’s bed, made
them dance before
his eyes, and,
scarcely able to
keep back his
tears, strove to
make him laugh.

“Look, there is the Broken Bridge.
Tra-la-la! And there is a general. You
saw one once at Boulogne Wood, don’t you
remember? If you drink your medicine[Pg 151]
like a good boy, I will buy you a real one,
with a cloth tunic and gold epaulettes.
Would you like to have a general?”

“No,” said the sick child, his voice dry
with fever.

“Would you like a pistol and bullets, or
a crossbow?”

“No,” replied the little voice, decisively.

And so it was with everything—even with
balloons and jumping-jacks. Still, while the
parents looked at each other in despair, the
little voice responded, “No! No! No!”

“But what is there you would like, then,
darling?” said his mother. “Come, whisper
to me—to mamma.” And she laid her
cheek beside him on the pillow.

The sick boy raised himself in bed, and,
throwing out his eager hands towards some
unseen object, cried out, as in command and
in entreaty, “I want Slap-bang!”

II.

“Slap-bang!”

The poor mother looked at her husband
with a frightened glance. What was the
little fellow saying? Was the terrible delirium
coming back again? “Slap-bang!”
She knew not what that signified. She was
frightened at the strangeness of the words,
which now the sick boy, with the perversity
of illness—as if, having screwed his
courage up to put his dream in words, he
was resolved to speak of nothing else—repeated
without ceasing:—

“Slap-bang! I want Slap-bang!”

“What does he mean?” she said, distractedly,
grasping her husband’s hand.
“Oh, he is lost!”

But Jacques’ rough face wore a smile of
wonder and relief, like that of one condemned
to death who sees a chance of liberty.

Slap-bang! He remembered well the
morning of Whit-Monday, when he had
taken Francis to the circus. He could hear
still the child’s delighted laughter, when the
clown—the beautiful clown, all be-starred
with golden spangles, and with a huge
many-coloured butterfly glittering on the
back of his black costume—skipped across
the track, tripped up the riding-master by
the heels, took a walk upon his hands, or
threw up to the gas-light the soft felt caps,
which he dexterously caught upon his skull,
where, one by one, they formed a pyramid;
while at every trick and every jest, his large
droll face expanding with a smile, he uttered
the same catch-word, sometimes to a roll of
music from the band, “Slap-bang!” And
every time he uttered it the audience roared
and the little fellow shouted with delight.

Slap-bang! It was this Slap-bang, the
circus clown, he who kept half the city
laughing, whom little Francis wished to see,
and whom, alas! he could not see as he lay
pale and feeble in his little bed.

That night Jacques brought the child a
jointed clown, ablaze with spangles, which
he had bought at a high price. Four days’
wages would not pay for it; but he would
willingly have given the price of a year’s
labour, could he have brought a smile to the
thin lips of the sick boy.

The child looked for a moment at the
toy which sparkled on the bed-quilt. Then
he said, sadly, “That is not Slap-bang. I
want to see Slap-bang!”

If only Jacques could have wrapped him
in the bed-clothes, borne him to the circus,
shown him the clown dancing under the
blazing gas-lights, and said, “Look there!”

But Jacques did better still. He went to
the circus, obtained the clown’s address, and
then, with legs tottering with nervousness
and agitation, climbed slowly up the stairs
which led to the great man’s apartment. It
was a bold task to undertake! Yet actors,
after all, go sometimes to recite or sing at
rich men’s houses. Who knew but that the
clown, at any price he liked, would consent
to go to say good-day to little Francis? If
so, what matter his reception?

But was this Slap-bang, this charming
person, called Monsieur Moreno, who
received him in his study like a doctor,
in the midst of books and pictures, and all
the luxury of art! Jacques looked at him,
and could not recognise the clown. He
turned and twisted his felt hat between his
fingers. The other waited. At last the
poor fellow began to stammer out excuses:
“It was unpardonable—a thing unheard of—that
he had come to ask; but the fact
was, it was about his little boy—such a
pretty little boy, sir! and so clever! Always
first in his class—except in arithmetic,
which he did not understand. A dreamy
little chap—too dreamy—as you may see”—Jacques
stopped and stammered; then
screwing up his courage he continued with
a rush—”as you may see by the fact that he
wants to see you, that he thinks of nothing
else, that you are before him always, like a
star which he has set his mind on——”

Jacques stopped. Great beads stood on
his forehead and his face was very pale. He
dared not look at the clown, whose eyes
were fixed upon him. What had he dared[Pg 152]
to ask the great Slap-bang? What if the
latter took him for a madman, and showed
him to the door?

“Where do you live?” demanded Slap-bang.

“Oh! close by. The Rue des Abbesses!”

“Come!” said the other; “the little
fellow wants to see Slap-bang—well, he
shall see him.”

CHAPTER III.

When the door opened before the clown,
Jacques cried out joyfully, “Cheer up,
Francis! Here is Slap-bang.”

The child’s face beamed with expectation.
He raised himself upon his mother’s arm,
and turned his head towards the two men
as they entered. Who was the gentleman
in an overcoat beside his father, who
smiled good-naturedly, but whom he did
not know? “Slap-bang,” they told him.
It was all in vain. His head fell slowly
back upon the pillow, and his great sad
blue eyes seemed to look out again beyond
the narrow chamber walls, in search,
unceasing search, of the spangles and the
butterfly of the Slap-bang of his dreams.

“No,” he said, in a voice which sounded
inconsolable; “no; this is not Slap-bang!”

The clown, standing by the little bed,
looked gravely down upon the child with
a regard of infinite kind-heartedness. He
shook his head, and looking at the anxious
father and the mother in her agony, said
smiling, “He is right. This is not Slap-bang.”
And he left the room.

“I shall not see him; I shall never
him again,” said the child, softly.

But all at once—half an hour had not
elapsed since the clown had disappeared—the
door was sharply opened, and behold,
in his black spangled tunic, the yellow tuft
upon his head, the golden butterfly upon
his breast and back, a large smile opening
his mouth like a money-box, his face white
with flour, Slap-bang, the true Slap-bang,
the Slap-bang of the circus, burst into view.
And in his little white cot, with the joy of
life in his eyes, laughing, crying, happy,
saved, the little fellow clapped his feeble
hands, and, with the recovered gaiety of
seven years old, cried out:

“BRAVO, SLAP-BANG!”

“Bravo! Bravo, Slap-bang! It is he
this time! This is Slap-bang! Long live
Slap-bang! Bravo!”

CHAPTER IV.

When the doctor called that day, he found,
sitting beside the little patient’s pillow, a
white-faced clown, who kept him in a constant
ripple of laughter, and who was
observing, as he stirred a lump of sugar at
the bottom of a glass of cooling drink:

“You know, Francis, if you do not drink
your medicine, you will never see Slap-bang
again.”

And the child drank up the draught.

“Is it not good?”

[Pg 153]

“Very good. Thank you, Slap-bang.”

“THANK YOU, SLAP-BANG.”

“Doctor,” said the clown to the physician,
“do not be jealous, but it seems to me that
my tomfooleries have done more good than
your prescriptions.”

The poor parents were both crying; but
this time it was with joy.

From that time till little Francis was on
foot again, a carriage pulled up every day
before the lodging of the workman in the
Rue des Abbesses; a man descended, wrapped
in a greatcoat with the collar turned up to
his ears, and underneath arrayed
as for the circus, with his gay
visage white with flour.

“What do I owe you,
sir?” said Jacques to the
good clown, on the day
when Francis left the house
for the first time. “For I
really owe you everything!”

The clown extended to the parents his
two hands, huge as those of Hercules:

“A shake of the hand,” he said. Then,
kissing the little boy on both his rosy
cheeks, he added, laughing, “And permission
to inscribe on my visiting-cards,
‘Slap-bang, doctor-acrobat, physician in
ordinary to little Francis!'”

[Pg 154]

Portraits of Celebrities at different times of their Lives.

AGE 4. From a Miniature.

AGE 36. From a Painting by G. Richmond, R.A.

CARDINAL MANNING.

Born 1808.

AGE 81. From a Photo by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.

HENRY EDWARD MANNING,
at the age of four, had
his portrait taken by a miniature-painter,
who depicted
him upon a cliff above the
sea, absorbed in listening to
the murmur of a shell. This most interesting
picture of the future Cardinal, together
with companion portraits of his little
brothers and sisters, long hung upon the
wall of the library of his father’s house at
Totteridge. But one night the house was
broken into by a gang of burglars, and,
among other valuables, the miniatures were
carried off. The vexation of the family
was extreme; but by a curious freak of
fortune the portraits were at length discovered
in an old curiosity shop in London,
and, after years of absence, resumed their
old position on the library wall. The
second of our portraits shows the future
Cardinal as Archdeacon of Chichester, at a
time when he was universally regarded as
one of the strongest pillars of the English
Church. Alas for human foresight! Seven
years later, on Passion Sunday, 1851, he
felt himself compelled to make the great
renunciation, and laid before the footstool
of the Pope the costly offering of such a
character as in its blend of saintly life, of
strength of intellect, of eloquence alike of
tongue and pen, and of unrivalled knowledge
of the world, has rarely been bestowed
on any of the sons of men.

For these portraits we are indebted to the
courtesy of Cardinal Manning, of Mr. Wilfred
Meynell, and of Messrs. Henry Graves
& Co., Pall Mall.

[Pg 155]

JOHN RUSKIN.

Born 1819.

Top: AGE 38.
From a Drawing
by G. Richmond,
R.A.
Middle: AGE 48.
From a Photo. by
Messrs. Elliott & Fry.
Bottom: AGE 63. From a Photo. by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.

T the age of twenty,
Mr. Ruskin, then at
Christ Church, Oxford, had
just won the Newdigate prize
poem. Two years later the
first volume of “Modern
Painters” showed that a new poet had indeed
arisen, though a poet who was destined
not to cast his thoughts in verse, but in
“the other harmony of prose.” At eight-and-thirty
“Stones of Venice” had appeared.
At eight-and-forty (as in
our second portrait) he had recently
been elected Rede Lecturer at Cambridge,
and was in the height of
his great combat with the world he
lives in—a world which, in his eyes,
is given up almost beyond redemption
to canters, money-grubbers, inventors
of improved machinery, and every
kind of charlatan. In volume after
volume, he was putting forth—in the
midst of much which reason found
fantastic—bursts of satire
fierce as Juvenal’s, and word-pictures
more gorgeous than
the tints of Turner, conveyed
in that inimitable style which
is as strong and sweet
as Shelley’s verse. In
these latter days (as
our last portrait shows
him) Mr. Ruskin, like
a prophet in a hermitage, has become
more and more of a recluse, though now
and then his voice is still audible in a
wrathful letter to the papers, like a voice
heard crying in the wilderness that all
is lost.

[Pg 156]

From an Engraving by W. Walker.
AGE 28.

AGE 45.
From Photo. by Cameron of a Painting by G. F. Watts, R.A.

THE RIGHT HON. W. E.
GLADSTONE, M.P.

Born 1809.

AGE 80. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.

HESE portraits represent
Mr. Gladstone at three
important epochs in his
career. At twenty-eight
he was the henchman of
Sir Robert Peel, and it
was at this time that Macaulay described
him as “the rising hope of the
stern, unbending Tories.” He had just
produced his work on “Church and
State,” which attracted a great deal of
attention. Our second portrait shows
what he was like at the time when, as
Chancellor of the Exchequer, he put forth
the first of the long series of his famous
Budgets. The third picture is the one
which is now so familiar, representing the
illustrious statesman as he is at the present
time. It will be observed that the high
collars which are inseparable from every
picture of Mr. Gladstone, whether serious
or comic, have been favourites with him
all his life. Like Peel, Palmerston, and
Beaconsfield, he is a striking instance of the
fact that the toils and cares of responsible
statesmanship seem with some constitutions
to tend to vigorous old age.

[Pg 157]

MRS. LANGTRY.

AGE 18. From a Photo. by Ouless, Jersey.

AGE 23. From a Photo. by Ouless, Jersey.

AGE 23 (WITH MR. LANGTRY).
From a Photo. by Ouless, Jersey.

PRESENT DAY. From a Photo. by Lafayette, Dublin.

HIS page enables one to
trace the blooming of
the Jersey Lily from the
bud to the full flower;
from the lovely Miss Le
Breton, the daughter of
the Dean, to the newly-married bride,
and from the belle of London drawing-rooms
to the charming actress who
has won on both sides of the world
applause which is not gained by loveliness
alone, even when, like Mrs. Langtry’s, it is
of that rare kind, statuesque yet blooming,
which is adapted equally to represent the
chiselled grace of Galatea, or the burning
beauty of the Queen of Egypt.

[Pg 158]

AGE 28. From a Photo. by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.

AGE 40. From a Photo. by Barraud.

AGE 44. From a Photo. by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.

JOHN HARE.

Born 1844.

R. HARE, as most people
have the pleasure of knowing
from experience, is the finest
actor of old men at present
on the stage—if not, indeed,
the finest ever seen. It seems
strange, as we regard the strong young
face of our first portrait, that Mr.
Hare was then, or very little later,
acting Sir Peter Teazle to the very
life. Mr. Hare as an old man is old
all over. Yet no two of his old
men are like each other; no characters
bear less resemblance than
Lord Kilclare in “A Quiet
Rubber,” and Benjamin Goldfinch
in “A Pair of Spectacles,” but
which is the most life-like it is
difficult to say. Mr. Hare, indeed,
prefers his present part to any of
his rôles, as may be learnt, with
other facts of interest, by a reference
to page 182 of this number; and
certainly a more delightful piece of
character-acting it is impossible to
conceive than that which represents
the dear old gentleman whose faith
in waiters, bootmakers, butlers,
brothers, friends, and wives, is so
rudely shaken and so happily
restored. At his present age, of
which our last portrait is a speaking
likeness, Mr. Hare is a familiar figure,
not only on the stage, but on horseback
in the Row, or, more delightful still to
his acquaintances, talking from an easy-chair
as no one but himself can talk, or
rising after dinner to make one of his
inimitable speeches.

For permission to reproduce these
portraits we have to thank the courtesy of
Mr. Hare.

[Pg 159]

Top Left: AGE 23.
From a Photograph by W. Keith, Liverpool.
Top Right: AGE 37.
From a Photograph by Window & Grove.
Center: From a Photograph by Barraud.
Bottom Left: AGE 18.
From a Photograph by Window & Grove.
Bottom Right: AGE 27.
From a Photograph by Walker & Sons.

MR. AND MRS. BANCROFT.

Y the kindness of Mr. and
Mrs. Bancroft we are able to
present our readers with their
portraits at an age when they
had not yet met each other—when
Marie Wilton was
the life and soul of the burlesques at the
“Strand” Theatre, and when Mr. Bancroft
was still studying in the provinces the art
with which he was to charm the audiences
of the “Prince of Wales’s.” In our second
portraits Marie Wilton was still Marie
Wilton, but was on the eve of becoming
Mrs. Bancroft; and finally, in the centre,
we have them both as at the present day.

[Pg 160]

AGE 31. From a Photograph.

AGE 45. From a Photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

Born 1825.

AGE 64. From a Photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.

T is, unfortunately, impossible
to obtain a portrait of Professor
Huxley in the days
when he was not yet a professor—when
he was catching
sticklebacks and chasing butterflies
at his father’s school at Ealing—for
at thirty-one, the age at which his earliest
photograph was taken, he was already a
professor of two sciences—of Natural History
at the Royal School of Mines, and of
Physiology at the Royal Institute. As
assistant-surgeon to H.M.S. Rattlesnake he
had spent three years in studying natural
history off the Australian coasts, and had
written out the record of his observations
in the earliest of his books. The
Admiralty refused to pay a penny of the
publishing expenses; the young assistant-surgeon’s
salary was seven-and-sixpence a
day; and the volume only saw the light
some five years later, when it was issued by
the Ray Society. But, from the days of
his first fight with fortune, Professor Huxley’s
fame rose steadily, and by the time at
which our second portrait shows him he
had been President of the British Association,
and had developed that limpidity of
style and strength of logic which
makes him both the most redoubtable
antagonist in the literary arena, and
the most popular exponent of the
discoveries of science. Professor
Huxley’s health, never of the very
best, has latterly compelled him to
withdraw entirely from the active
duties of the many posts which he has
held; but the magazine articles which
he occasionally puts forth show all his early
faculties as strong as ever.

For the above interesting early photograph
we are indebted to the kindness of
Professor and Mrs. Huxley.

[Pg 161]

AGE 8. From a Photograph, New York.

ADELINA PATTI.

F ever an artist was “cradled
in song,” that artist was
Adelina Patti. Before she
could utter a word she could
hum every air she had heard
her mother rehearsing for the
opera. Her musical precocity was so extraordinary
that she could detect the least
falsity of intonation in any vocal performance,
and on one occasion when she had
been admitted behind the scenes to the
dress rehearsal of a new opera in New York,
she managed to startle the leading lady—a
singer of some reputation—very considerably,
by running up to her and exclaiming,
in her little shrill Yankee accent, “I guess
you don’t know the proper way to trill,
you rest too long on the first note. Listen
to me, and try to do it as I do!” And from
her baby lips issued a trill so
long-sustained and so pure of
intonation, that the whole
company of artists applauded
with surprise and rapture. The
appearance of Adelina was
much what would be imagined—always
tiny for her age, but
lithe and straight, with her
thick, black locks braided on
either side of her face, her eyes
keen as a hawk’s, whilst her
clear brow, mobile mouth, and
determined chin each in turn
emphasised the expression with
which she was animated at the
moment. The street arabs of
New York nicknamed her “the
little Chinee girl,” because of
her big, black eyes and somewhat
yellow skin, when she
used to run up and down
Broadway bowling her hoop.
Of her phenomenal success,
when she appeared as a prima-donna
of seven summers at
Niblo’s Garden in New York,
it would be idle to repeat an
oft-told tale. But we are fortunately
able to reproduce a
photograph of the little prima-donna;
for which, as well as
for the notes above, we are indebted
to the kindness of a friend
of the great singer. The signature
across the photograph is
Adelina Patti’s own.

PRESENT DAY. From a Photograph by Messrs. Elliot & Fry.

[Pg 162]

Letters from Artists on Ladies’ Dress.

UESTIONS of Fashion are,
perhaps, more open to debate
and difference of opinion than
any others. But those who
ridicule the commands of
Fashion, as well as those who
worship them, must find an equal interest
in the views of the best judges of what is
beautiful and what is ugly—that is to say,
of artists. In this belief, we have asked a
number of our leading painters to state
their views upon the subject, in the form of
a reply to the succeeding questions:—

“What is your opinion of the present
style of ladies’ dress? What are its chief
defects, and what its merits, from an artist’s
point of view? What is your ideal of a
beautiful woman, beautifully dressed?”

Our invitation has been most cordially
responded to, and we are now in a position
to publish the replies received.

Sir Frederic Leighton.

Ladies, who are, of course, the keenest
votaries of fashion, will be delighted, and
we think surprised, to find Sir Frederick
Leighton on their side.

Hôtel Royal, Rome.

Dear Sir,—Whatever may be the criticisms
to which the dress of a lady in our
day is open, there is a vast amount of nonsense
talked about it. Titian and Velasquez
would probably have been very happy
to paint it.—Believe me, dear Sir, yours
faithfully,

Frederic Leighton.

Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A.

Little Holland House,
Kensington, W.

Dear Sir,—I don’t know that the present
style of “ladies’ dress,” when not pushed
to extremes and exaggerations, can be very
much objected to. Mr. du Maurier, in
Punch, is able, without violating truth, to
make it look very graceful and charming.
Such portions as are easily put on and taken
off need not be soberly, much less severely,
criticised. It is natural, and even right,
that considerable elasticity should be claimed
by fashion—fancy and trade are encouraged.
All, however, that is calculated to effect permanent
injury to health must be very severely
condemned. Tight lacing, pointed shoes,
and high heels—these, unless the fashion
changes (which, being very ugly, it probably
will not), leave permanent disastrous results.
No lady can be really well and beautifully
dressed if what she wears outrages Nature’s
intentions in the structure of the human
frame. Such outrages are: a waist like a
stove pipe, shoes that compress the toes
into a crumpled mass of deformity,
and, it might even be added, gloves that
confine the hand till it looks little better
than a fin—but as this inflicts no permanent
injury, it does not matter—but the foot is
irredeemably ruined, to the destruction of
spring and grace in movement, and to no
inconsiderable injury to health. It is a
very common thing to hear a lady say,
“The foot is an ugly thing!” Her shapeless
shoe has told her this; but it will be
seen how untrue it is if one looks at a cast
from the foot of an Indian woman, or the
drawing of a foot by Sir Frederic Leighton.
No doubt the crumpled clump of
deformity common from wearing modern
abominations, is a thing an ancient Greek
would have shuddered at; and this is to be
the more lamented as the modern young
lady is often of splendid growth and form,
such as probably the ancient Greek never
saw.

Perhaps, the real test of the highest taste
in dress would be, whether it could be put
into sculpture; but that would be too rigid
a rule. One may say, however, that no
lady can be well dressed who, for the sake
of tasteless vanity, decks herself in the spoils
of the most beautiful of created creatures,
cruelly indifferent to such destruction; or
sticks reptiles and repulsive insects about her.

To your question, “What is your ideal of
a beautiful woman?” I would answer, That
form which, tall or short, or of light
or dark colour, most emphasises human characteristics
furthest removed from suggestions
of the inferior creatures—a principle so well
understood and acted upon by the great
Greek artists. How beautiful when, in the
words of Ruskin, “Fairest, because purest
and thoughtfullest, trained in all high knowledge,
as in all courteous art—in dance, in
song, in sweet wit, in lofty learning, in
loftier courage, in loftiest love—able alike
to cheer, to enchant, or save the souls of
men.”

This would, I think, do for an ideal.—Very
truly yours,

G. F. Watts.

In a second letter Mr. Watts adds:[Pg 163]—

“It is impossible that we should be unaffected
by the impressions the mind receives
through the medium of dress; we
ought not to be so. The indifference in
modern times to grace and harmony in
dress is a strong reason for concluding that
pleasure in what is beautiful—or, which
may sometimes be accepted as an equivalent,
interesting—a sense so strong in
former ages, is extinct.

“I think I said that it was more easy to
say what should not be, than what should be.
Good taste must be outraged when deformity
is suggested, but even that may be
passed over when such things are perfectly
extraneous. When they tend to produce
permanent deformity, it is a pity they cannot
be suppressed by law, as unquestionably
the race suffers. No healthy, well-made
young girl ought to be allowed to wear
stays compressing the ribs; after thirty,
there may be reasons; and by that time
nature would have asserted herself, and no
great harm would be done. But as long as
men have the degraded taste to prefer a
pipe to the beautiful flexible line, which
might always, with the greatest delicacy, be
evident, there can
be no hope. Again,
this thing is hardly
short of wicked.
Put together, you have this—uncommonly
like a cloven hoof. I wish the ladies joy
of it!”

Mr. G. D. Leslie, R.A.

Riverside, Wallingford.

Dear Sir,—I alluded to the subject of
ladies’ dress in an address I delivered at
Southampton on Art. It is a short allusion,
but if you care to publish it I have no
objection, and could send you a copy.—I
am, dear Sir, yours faithfully,

G. D. Leslie.

The passage runs as follows:—

“The results of female art education are
not quite satisfactory in the matter of dress,
as here woman is so apt, by nature, to
become the slave of fashion; but still I
think much can be done by right-minded
girls, by careful selection and wholesome
reform in such things as tight-lacing and
high heels. I care not for the so-called
high art school of millinery. Dresses that
look like bed-gowns of green serge, and
little girls smothered in Kate Greenaway
flopperty hats, seem to me, however
picturesque intrinsically, in bad taste from
their eccentricity. A young lady of real
taste can always find amidst the prevailing
fashions some that suit her individuality;
and those that have this taste invariably
seem to do so.”

Hon. John Collier.

4, Marlborough Place, N.W.

Sir,—I should hardly venture to express
an opinion on the delicate subject of modern
female dress, were it not that in my double
capacity of husband and portrait-painter I
have been obliged to devote a great deal of
attention to it.

FIG. 1.

I think the outlook is, on the whole, encouraging.
To begin with, there is much
greater variety of style and freedom of choice
than has obtained for a very long time.
Indeed, it is probable that in no country or
period since dress was invented has there
been such a wide scope for individual taste
as in England at the present day.

This is an enormous advantage, for women
vary so much that a hard and fast style,[Pg 164]
however good in itself, is certain to be unsuitable
to at least half the sex. It is true
that this freedom of choice is not always
wisely exercised, but it is a subject to which
women devote so much time and thought
that they are mostly good judges in the
matter.

FIG. 2.

Then, again, there is at present a happy
absence of those monstrosities that have first
offended, and then corrupted, our ideal of
feminine form; the crinoline has long disappeared,
and at length the bustle—perhaps
the most odious of all these misshapements—has
followed suit. Of course they may
both re-appear, and probably will do so;
but freedom of choice is now so firmly
established, that no one will be considered
eccentric or unwomanly for refusing to
adopt them.

We may take it once for all that the
extreme tyranny of fashion is broken down—a
glorious triumph that we mainly owe
to the much-abused æsthetic movement.

But although much has been achieved,
much still remains to be done. There are
two deadly sins in modern female dress
which seem to defy all considerations of
beauty and convenience. Tight waists and
high heels are still so common that the
courageous protests of the emancipated pass
almost unnoticed.

My own opinion is that female dress will
never be thoroughly satisfactory until women
have realised that they have no waists.
Nature has not endowed them with waists,
which are artificial forms produced by
compressing the body.

This seeming paradox is easily proved by
considering that the waist of woman has
been placed by fashion in every conceivable
position, from under the armpits to half-way
down the hips. Obviously it cannot
correspond to any natural formation, or it
could not wander about in this extraordinary
manner.

Of course, the Greek lady never supposed
she had a waist. She often, for the sake of
convenience, tied a string round her body,
but only just tightly enough to keep her
clothes in place, and then nearly always let
some folds of the drapery fall over and hide
the unsightly line (Fig. 1). If there must be
a waist, I distinctly prefer the one placed
under the armpits, in the fashion of the
beginning of this century, for it is physically
impossible to tie it so tightly as to much
alter the form, and having the division high
up tends to minimise the most common
defect of the English female figure, a want
of length in the leg (Fig. 2).

FIG. 3.

Of course, it is this very want of length[Pg 165]
that has led to the high heels, but the
remedy is worse than the disease. It does
not really give the impression of long-leggedness,
and it does alter and spoil the
whole carriage of the body.

The high heels also help to deform the
feet by pressing the toes forward into the
pointed ends of those terrible boots that
are another disgrace to our civilisation.
Painters and sculptors have good cause to
know that the modern female foot is a
hideous object—our vitiated taste has become
accustomed to it when clothed, but
when seen in its naked deformity it is a
thing to shudder at.

It occurs to me that there are two fundamental
rules of dress.

First, wherever the dress is tight it
should show the true natural form of the
body beneath, and should not suggest, and
still less produce, some entirely unnatural
and artificial form. (This rule, of course,
only applies to tolerably good figures.)

Secondly, where the dress is loose it
should be allowed to fall in its own natural
folds, and should not be gathered up into
the horrible convolutions miscalled drapery
by the milliners.

FIG. 4.

The old Greek dress fulfilled these conditions
in the highest degree, and, I have no
doubt, was the noblest form of clothing
ever invented. All other forms of dress
have abounded in monstrosities of one kind
or another, but in looking over the history
of costume one now and then comes across
some simple and artistic form which seems
to have sprung up by chance, as it were, or
as a transition between two opposite
exaggerations. Here is a fine example
from the early middle ages (Fig. 3). And
here, again, is a good design from a much
later period (Fig. 4).

FIG. 5.

Just before the introduction of the enormous
hoops in the early part of the eighteenth
century, which, perhaps, are the high-water
mark of monstrosity in dress, there
was a brief period of comparative simplicity,
to which has been given a perhaps factitious
charm by the genius of Watteau (Fig. 5).

And then, again, we come to the costume
of 1800 and the neighbouring years, to
which I have already alluded, and which
was, perhaps, the simplest and most graceful
dress that European women have worn
since the classical period (Fig. 6), but which
soon, alas! gave way to the succession of
nightmares from which, at last, we seem to
have awakened.

But from many styles besides these there
are hints to be gathered for the benefit of
modern dress, and, fortunately, the tolerance[Pg 166]
of the age enables us to pick and choose
from any source we like. I have great
hopes of the future of female costume
(male costume seems, from the artistic side,
to be past praying
for), but a great
deal depends
upon the artists.
The average
man is as bad as
the average woman;
he likes
pretty little waists
and neat little
feet quite as much
as the recipient
of his misplaced
admiration. Indeed,
as I think
it is incontestable
that women dress
more to please
men than to
please themselves,
we men
are probably more
to blame than the
women for the
vagaries of female
costume. But the
artists have, or
ought to have, a
better taste in
these matters
than the outside
public. They all
affect to admire
the masterpieces
of classical art,
and they are, few
of them, entirely
ignorant of what
the human form
ought to be. It
is to them that
we must look for
protests against
its disfigurement.—I
am, Sir, yours
faithfully,

John Collier.

FIG. 6.

Mr. G. H. Boughton, A.R.A.

West House,
Campden Hill-road, W.

Dear Sir,—The questions you send me
regarding my opinion of the present style
of ladies’ dress cover too large and varied a
field to be disposed of in a moment—that
is, if one could dispose of them even after
many and many a month, let alone moments.
The one virtue of the women’s
dress of to-day is its variety and individuality.
Those
who are really
dressed and not
merely clothed,
have their dresses
“created” for
them, and they
belong to each
other. The fair
and the dark, the
lean and the reverse,
do not now
bedeck themselves
with the
same all pervading
tint or cut,
whether it suits
them well or ill,
just because it is
“all the go.”
Even the almost
universal cut of
to-day is most
usually graceful
and of quiet tone.
And somehow
girls seem to be
of taller growth,
and of better
health and colour,
and to walk
better than ever
before. The
adoption of bits
of bygone fashions
is now and
then deplorable.
One sees queer
jumbles of Marie
Stuart ruffs and
“Empire” bonnets,
or of any
other period except
of the Marie
Stuart head-gear.
Suppose a poor
simple masher of
the male kind should try some historical
head-gear—say a cocked hat or a Charles
II. with a wreath of feathers and lace—and
mount a jewelled sword, as a new incident
to his usual Piccadilly attire? It would be
in no worse taste than the various mixture
of “periods” that some of the dear creatures
of to-day startle the student of costume[Pg 167]
with now and then. My ideal of “a
beautiful woman, beautifully dressed,” is
not yet defined. I am not very narrow-minded
with regard to either point. From
the Princess in gold and white samite, to
the nut-brown maid with her gown of
hodden gray and her bare feet, there are
thousands that are good enough for me.
The only bad ones are the pretentious and
vulgar (dirt and fine feathers). I saw a
little “æsthetic” creature the other day,
with a sad, woe-begone costume in flabby
colours, a mop of tousled hair, a painted
mask of a face, all in keeping, except the
boots—”side-spring,” if you please (if anything
so squashy could have a spring).
She was only a passing vision—but enough.
I could but repeat with Madame Roland
under the guillotine (was it Roland?)
“O Liberty (and Co.), what crimes are
committed in thy name!”

The subject is a fascinating one; but
there are limits.—Yours faithfully,

Geo. H. Boughton, A.R.A.

Mr. G. A. Storey, A.R.A.

39, Broadhurst Gardens, N.W.

Sir,—It is difficult to pass an opinion
upon “ladies’ dress,” because its chief characteristic
seems to be that it is ever changing.
We no sooner see a really pretty
fashion than we hear ominous rumours—from
Paris (?)—that some abomination such
as the crinoline is coming in again, or the
Gainsborough hat is to give place to the
Pork-pie, or a small copy of the Toriodero’s
head-gear. We are told that costume indicates
the phase or current of thought of the
period and of the country in which it is
worn; that it becomes sumptuous in rich
communities and in prosperous times, but is
sad and impoverished in times of war and
depression; that it marks the degree of civilisation,
of culture, of taste, and of wealth;
and, like the other fine arts, has its glorious
periods as well as its decadence and restoration.
Perhaps it reached its lowest stage of
ugliness, in this country, some thirty or
forty years ago, when corkscrew ringlets,
high foreheads, flat bandeaus plastered down
the cheeks, evening dresses cut straight
across the collar bones, flounces and crinolines,
and all the other horrors that John
Leech has so cleverly depicted in the early
volumes of Punch were the fashions that
set off our types of beauty. May we then
conclude that taste has improved since
those days, and not only taste, but common
sense? At the present moment we see
nothing outrageous to find fault with, and
much that is pretty to admire. It would
take up too much space to go into detail:
to discourse on hats alone would require a
separate letter of some pages. I should
have to show how some set off the face and
others do not, and how it often happens
that the success of a hat depends very much
upon the face that looks out from under it.
And so with the way the hair is dressed,
&c.; and I need scarcely say that a pretty,
graceful woman will make almost any costume
look well if she puts it on with taste,
whereas there are certain other figures that
require special treatment.

There are some, whom I would not
offend, but who nevertheless are deficient in
those graceful curves that Nature bestows
upon her best art, who require farthingales,
hoops, improvers, and even flounces to disguise
the angularity of their structure, whilst
others go the other extreme of rotundity,
such as a lady I knew, who was taller when
she sat down than when she stood up, and
must baffle the most ingenious contrivers
of European costume, and whom nothing
but a Chinese or loose Japanese gown could
make at all presentable.

I think female dress may be either very
gorgeous, or very simple—gorgeous as a
Venetian lady when Titian and Paul Veronese
delighted to depict her in rich brocades
and a wealth of pearls and jewellery,
or simple as in England a hundred years
ago, when our great-grandmothers wore
muslin gowns with short waists and silk
sashes, the beauty and refinement of their
faces making their chief attraction, and the
simplicity of the dress leaving full scope for
the gracefulness of the figure to display
itself, as we see in the pictures of Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Gainsborough, George Morland,
Romney, and others.

But the great artists seldom adhere to
the passing fashions; they arrange the dress
or reconstruct it so that it shall be most becoming
to their sitters and at the same time
make a good composition of colour and
form for their pictures. This is also done
by ladies of taste, who will often turn some
freak of fashion into a thing of beauty, and,
regardless of their milliner and dressmaker,
will adopt some modification of the passing
style if it seems to them more suitable and
becoming.

The sense of fitness in dress as in everything
else, should, I think, guide the fair
sex of whatever degree—and I must say that
there are fewer costumes more suitable and,[Pg 168]
at the same time, much prettier than those
of some of our domestic servants, who, with
their white caps, bibs and aprons and black
dresses make quite dainty little pictures,
often reminding us of that well-known print
of “La Belle Chocolatière.”

Whether this idea of fitness could be
carried out in the cases of lady Town Councillors,
female clerks, &c., &c., I do not
know. I must leave that and many other
matters connected with this subject to more
competent judges,—and remain, Yours
obediently,

G. A. Storey.

Mr. Wyke Bayliss, P.R.B.A.

Sir,—You ask me to give you, in the
form of a letter, my ideas on the subject of
ladies’ dress.

It is not without considerable hesitation
that I venture to approach so sacred a
mystery. I should indeed be disposed to
decline your courteous invitation to be
“drawn” upon the question, on the ground
that I am not a figure painter, but for the
consideration that although unhappily an
artist is obliged in his work to limit the
range of his vision, yet the beauty that
exists in the world is the common
heritage of us all, and every artist is, or
should be, equally appreciative of the loveliness
of our companions in life, and jealous
of the safety and honour of the shrine at
which we all worship.

Replying to your letter, therefore, not as
a specialist, but simply as an artist, I would
say:

The first essential in a woman’s dress
should be that the beauty of it must be a
beauty that shall always be beautiful. I do
not deprecate fashion—on the contrary,
change is in itself pleasant to the eyes. But
it must be a change from one loveliness to
another. To see a rose is always an exquisite
delight; so it is to see a lily. But
we are not called upon to decide once for all
which we prefer, and if we choose the rose
to kill all the lilies. Thus it should be with
dress: change is desirable, but it must be
on the understanding that no ugly thing
shall be tolerated for the sake of fashion.

That is, I think, the first great principle;
and attention to it would rid us for ever of
the danger of the recurrence of those monstrosities
that have brought the very name
of “fashion” into contempt. There have
been vagaries in dress to which our countrywomen
have submitted, not because they
had an imperfect perception of what is
really beautiful and took the false for true,
but because, in obedience to the inexorable
laws of fashion, they accepted regretfully
what they knew to be ugly. I hope the
time will never come again when we may
be tempted to lay a finger on her ladyship’s
hoops, and ask, as the little maid did,
“Pray, madam, is that all yourself?” The
leaders of fashion in Europe see clearly
enough that to mutilate a woman’s foot, as
the Chinese do, is a barbarous custom; but
they do not perceive that to make European
ladies walk painfully on stilts and tiptoe is
barbarism of the same kind. But the truth
is that every attempt to modify the human
form is an act of savagery, and any form of
dress that simulates a modification, whether
worn in Pekin or in Paris, or in London,
is a savage dress, and carries with it the
additional shame of being a sham. Let us
be content with women as God made them.
Let them be dressed, not altered. In a word,
no dress can be really beautiful that suggests
a personal deformity.

Secondarily to this reverence for the
human form should be fair treatment of the
fabric of which the dress is made. Velvet,
silk, linen,—each has its own natural way
of falling into folds; and the shape that
a dress should take should be the natural
result of the folding of the material, and
not the result of an artificial construction.
This principle may also be expressed in
the simple form of a negative. No dress
can be really beautiful that suggests the
carrying about of a machine.

Then as to colour. I think the present
taste for soft, tertiary colours is altogether
favourable. Strong colours, in a mass, are
destructive to the delicacy of colour and expression
in a woman’s face. The vermilion
of her lips should not have to fight the red
that is suitable enough for pillar-posts. The
blue of her eyes should not have to compete
with that of Reckitt. The missing colour,
yellow, should not be flaunted against her
carnations and azure and pearly white. A
woman is worth more than to be subordinated
to an aniline dye. The primary or
secondary colours should be used (like brass
instruments in a fine orchestra) very sparingly.

These are, of course, very general principles.
But I am not an expert in millinery,
and can only speak generally.

I think, however, that there is a tolerably
safe test that might be applied in carrying
them out, viz., What will the dress look
like in a picture? Artists are every day[Pg 169]
finding their inspirations more and more in
the living men and women of their own
time. Women are every day making more
history for men to paint. Let them dress
so as to be paintable. Dress how they will,
they are always admired, and reverenced,
and loved. But I cannot say the same of
their dress. The time has been when, in
order to paint a woman, the first necessity
for the artist was to get possession of her
great-grandmother’s gown. Under such
circumstances the painting of contemporary
life must be limited to portraiture; and
everything that limits the range of art,
limits its splendour and the hold it should
have on our affections.

There are only a few words that I care to
add.

I think we lose something as a nation in
not having a distinctive dress for our peasantry
and the bourgeoises of our provincial
towns—nothing, I mean, to correspond with
the square of linen folded on the head, of
which the Roman woman is so justly proud,
or the white caps of Normandy and Holland,
varying in shape according to the township.
The picturesque way in which the
shawl is used by our Lancashire lasses is,
indeed, some approach to it. But I recognise
the impossibility of the Continental
system being established amongst us.

Would it, however, be too much to hope
that the ladies of England may see fit to
adopt the beautiful custom of wearing a
special garment for church services? It
would be in itself so seemly; it would add
so much to the grace and dignity of our worship;
it would be so agreeable a contrast to
the parterre of bonnets in the lecture-room,
and the pretty grouping of black and brown
and golden hair—yes, and of silver, too—in
the opera-house, that I believe the suggestion
has only to be fairly considered to be
accepted.

I ask, “Will the ladies see fit to do this?”
because, after all, it is a woman’s question.
Men have a right to be considered, but a
woman’s dress, to be beautiful, must be the
expression of a woman’s mind, and the work
of a woman’s hand.—I am, Sir, yours faithfully,

Wyke Bayliss.

Mr. John Absolon, R.I.

52, Chetwynd-road, N.W.

Dear Sir,—All padding, unless to hide
a positive deformity, is a mistake. Fashion
must be constantly changing, or how would
dressmakers live? I remember taking my
wife to a friend’s in the country. Next
morning the young ladies were invisible,
but appeared in the afternoon without crinolines.
I never submitted to that abomination,
and my wife, to please me, never put
one on. The young ladies thought Mrs.
Absolon brought the last London change!—Truly
yours,

John Absolon, R.I.

Lastly, let us hear the opinion of a lady
artist. Madame Starr Canziani—for years
one of the best known lady exhibitors at the
Royal Academy, to whom we owe the following
designs—writes as follows:—

Madame Starr Canziani.

DESIGN FOR A TENNIS DRESS.

3, Palace-green, W.

Sir,—I have been asked to give my
opinion of modern dress, its merits and demerits,
from an artist’s point of view. It
seems to me that while much at the present
time is picturesque and quaint in the
extreme, the highest laws of beauty demand
fitness as well, and while we have no fixed
principles to guide our fashions, however
beautiful and sensible they may happen to
be at any given moment, there must always[Pg 170]
be the danger that at the next moment they
may relapse into the inconvenient and
ridiculous.

Considering how much has been done of
late years to encourage all other forms of
art, I cannot help wondering why in the
Art Schools now existing all over the
country, no classes have been instituted in
which the principles of hygiene and fitness,
harmony of colour, proportion, and beauty
are taught. Architecture and decorative
design are taught in the schools, but dress,
which has existed since the world began,
has no guiding laws,
and sways from the
severely ugly and
matter-of-fact to the
wildest extravagance of
form and colour in a
manner truly grotesque,
were it not so sad to
those who love ideal
beauty, and whose eyes
are daily outraged by
flagrant sins against
the laws of beauty and
common sense.

There never was a
time in which there
was a greater abundance
and variety of
materials, rich and
simple, exquisite embroideries,
and lovely
combinations of colour;
but of what avail are
all these beautiful
materials if they are
erroneously employed?
At the present moment—alas!
that we only
dare speak for the absolute
moment—some
of the forms of dress
are, on the whole,
simple and practical,
and express the natural
figure fairly well; but who can say what
wild vagaries the next caprice of the
fashion-giver may bring forth?

If the laws of health and beauty were
more generally understood, would it be
possible that such enormities could exist as
tight lacing, and high heels, and pointed
toes? I am far from holding in abhorrence
all corsets whatever. There are few figures
which can do entirely without some stay;
but tidiness and a neat, well-fitting gown
are very different things from the walking
hour-glass that seems as if it would snap in
two at a touch.

DESIGN FOR A BALL DRESS.

But though the stay, when properly used,
may be upheld, there is nothing that can be
said in excuse of the wicked fashion—wicked,
because the cause of much deformity and
disease—of the high heel and pointed toe.
We all know the mischief done by the very
high heel, and from an artistic point of
view it is to be condemned, making, as it
does, the prettiest foot look like a hoof and
destroying all freedom and dignity of gait.
The pointed toe distorts the foot from its
natural shape and gives
the idea of the front
claw of a vulture protruding
from the gown,
and while it miserably
fails in making the foot
look small, succeeds
only too well in making
it hideous. If one
sees the whole foot, its
width appears very
much greater than it
really is, by contrast
with the point, and the
joint of the big toe is
brought into most
aggressive prominence.
If one sees only the
end of the shoe peeping
from under the
dress, in many cases the
point with its rapidly
diverging lines suggests
that the foot
hidden by the gown
may continue to any
width, however enormous.

With the square-toed
shoe, on the contrary,
one has a fair idea of
the whole width of the
foot at once. It cannot
go much beyond that,
and the ideas of discomfort and pain are
not constantly forced into one’s mind.

Characteristic dresses of the period are
the riding habit and tailor-made gown. I
humbly confess that I dislike them both,
for while they are simple, practical, plain,
neat, warm, and on a slender unexaggerated
figure, modest—they fail in the quality of
womanliness, and therefore cannot be
beautiful.

They are not womanly in sentiment.
First because (a reason which has little to[Pg 171]
do with the scope of this letter) a woman’s
clothes should be made by a woman only,
and all who are loyal to their own sex would
employ each other in an occupation so
feminine.

Then they are unwomanly because they
imitate men’s dress, and I don’t know that
I should make a sin of this, were it not that
at the present time men’s dress is too truly
hideous to be imitated even by a savage of
darkest Africa!

It is for this reason that I find the riding
habit so ugly and inartistic. Practical it is,
but it apes the coat and the hat (!) of the
man, and now that his cardboard shirt and
collar are often added, I have no words
strong enough that I may use to express
the depths of my dislike.

I do not agree with the general opinion
that a good-looking woman never looks so
well as on her horse. If she do look well, I
believe it to be in spite of her habit and not
because of it, and that all the charm which
a well-cut, appropriate, and simple garment
can give to a graceful figure could perfectly
well be retained, and yet that slightly more
liberty might be allowed as to texture of
material and colour (though the colour
should always be quiet and mellow) and
appropriate ornamentation by braiding the
body and sleeves of the habit. By these
means its hard severity would be somewhat
softened, and without destroying the simple
lines it would be rendered more feminine,
and the fitness of the garment for its purpose
would by no means be interfered with.

My objection to tailor-made gowns is that
they give no scope for graceful, natural
movement. In these the figure is made to
fit the dress, and not the dress the figure,
and if the wearer lift her arm above her
head she must burst—or one feels that,
having originally begun as a human being,
well, she ought to burst if she doesn’t. I
am not fond of inventing sins, and think we
already have enough for all our needs, and
I cannot see—to save my life I cannot see—the
harm of moving if one wants to do so.
The whole costume is a failure so far as
beauty and picturesqueness are concerned,
but it claims to be practical, and if there
were only a little more room in it for all the
purposes of life I should say it succeeded
well.

It also succeeds in something else. It
paints truly the character of the women of
the age. Matter-of-fact, sharp, full of
common sense, with an eye to the main
chance they are, and their tailor-made
gowns express this most clearly. Not much
room seemingly is there for romantic or
motherly love, for devotion and self-sacrifice,
in those tightly-fitting cases.

How different are the women of Sir
Joshua Reynolds’ time! Delicate, ethereal
creatures, with swaying, soft movements,
not fit for this hard every-day world.
These exquisite beings went out in thinnest
of evening shoes into the wet grass. They
never wore anything more practical than
soft white satin, even in a thunderstorm,
and they never saw the thunderstorm
coming. They knew not of homespun nor
of heavy boots, and when their true loves
went to the wars, they did not wait until
they came back, but went into consumption
and died. At least many of them did,
though some lived to be our great-grandmothers.

At any rate it was the proper thing to do
in those days, and it is not the proper thing
now. No—our maidens no longer faint,
and pine, and die, nor do they wait either—they
marry someone else!

I confess to a feeling of wonder when I
look at Sir Joshua Reynolds and Romney’s
beautiful women. I wonder how they are
going to get away from the pedestal or tree
against which they are leaning without distressing
very much their soft draperies
when they move. But—how tender, how
graceful, how refined, how fascinating, how
pure and faithful and womanly these gentle
beings are! Their dresses were the outcome
of the character and customs of the
period, but although very feminine and
beautiful were not practical, and would not
be adapted to our present needs.

And this brings me to what I want to
ask. What constitutes fitness and womanliness
in dress? Do the dresses of the
period possess these qualities? I certainly
think not always, and without fitness and
womanliness no dress can be artistically
beautiful.

To be beautiful, it should be the expression
of a beautiful mind, a beautiful body,
and of perfect health and ease, and of natural
delight in movement.

Also, it should have no association with
pain.

No dress can be beautiful that is disfigured
by an innocent animal wantonly
sacrificed to the vanity and egotism of the
wearer.

What womanly woman would wear real
astracan on her jacket (if she knows what
real astracan is), or the corpses of gulls,[Pg 172]
doves, humming-birds, swallows, &c., in
her hair? No one with a heart could do it,
or, having a heart, the brain must be wanting
which would enable her to think of the
unjustifiable cruelty to which she gives her
sanction.

If I were a man, nothing would induce
me to marry a girl who would wear a bird
in her hat. I should think: “Either she is
selfish and cold, and through life would sacrifice
everything to her own vanity or interests,
or else she has so little mind and
judgment that she would be ill able to
conduct the affairs of life with discretion.”

I should say that never was a pretty face
rendered one whit the prettier by the body
of a dead animal above it, but that on the
contrary the attention is distracted from the
living beauty beneath, and the mind is
saddened and disgusted by the association
of cruelty, and death, and decay, with the
tender and beautiful
womanhood which
should rightly only
call forth deepest feelings
of admiration
and respect.

From these examples
it would
appear that unless
restrained by more
general knowledge of
guiding principles,
dress, as hitherto, will
always err by the
want of some one
necessary quality or
another, be it that of
beauty or of utility,
or by indulgence in
the vulgar, masculine,
or grotesque.

How lately have we
been subjected to the
most illogical treatment
of fine materials.
Magnificent velvets
and brocades cut up
into “panels” of all
sizes and all shapes,
expressing nothing
unless deformity.
Tapering “gores” put
wide end up on the
skirt, or crossways, or
any way except one in which they might
help to express the shape—if the human
form could be expressed by patches! Add
to these the folds gathered into the aforesaid
panels across, sideways, upside down,
and the hump behind in the wrong place,
and the hats like a huge dish stuck on in
front with nothing behind, so that the
wearer looks as if she must topple forward
for want of balance, and we wonder what
the good of civilisation and education can
be if they only bring us to this. Truly,
that savage in Africa can have little to learn
from us in the way of adornment.

DESIGN FOR A TEA GOWN.

Still, we must thankfully acknowledge
that at the present moment, amongst the
better classes, there is much that is ideal in
dress. How simple and how lovely are
some of the afternoon gowns, how picturesque
the hats and cloaks, and what
romances of colour and form may one not
find among tea and evening gowns? The
tea gown especially lends itself to grace of
line and beauty of colour and material.

I should like, before concluding, to say a
few words about the
most beautiful dress
of all times and countries—the
Greek. I
cannot see why it
should not be adopted
in England for evening
dress, or at any
time when the wearer
is not exposed to wind
and weather. Then,
I am fain to confess,
the clinging, voluminous
draperies and the
long skirts would be
sadly in the way, and
be no longer practical
nor beautiful. But I
do think that the
principles governing
classical Greek dress
should be our guide
in all costume. Our
garments should be
garments with a
meaning and a purpose.
We should
never contradict Nature’s
simple lines by
false protuberances or
exaggerations. To be
beautiful, clothes
should, by their shape,
express the figure underneath;
any cutting about of material
a manner as to contradict the
natural lines of the shape must be wrong.[Pg 173]
If the figure be ungainly, the lines of the
dress should be so discreetly managed as to
apparently lessen its defects and suggest
better proportions to the eye.

The gown should also be in harmony
with the character of the mind and form of
the wearer, and while quaintness of cut and
even frippery (in a sense) may be appropriate
to a merely pretty woman, and,
discreetly used, may give interest to a plain
one, only the very simplest and most flowing
forms are worthy of the noblest type of
beauty. No one could imagine the Venus
of Milo in ribbons or frills, but wrap her in
a sheet and her beauty will still dominate
the world.

Dress need not be Greek in form to be
Greek in spirit. I think we only need look,
and we shall find the following noble
qualities in Greek dress:—Fitness and
honesty, simplicity, modesty, and dignity.—I
am, Sir, your truly,

Louisa Starr Canziani.

It will be seen that, on the whole, the
verdict of the artists on the present style of
ladies’ dress is considerably more favourable
than might have been anticipated from the
adverse criticism to which it is so commonly
exposed. Indeed, the consensus of opinion
is one which cannot fail to gratify our lady
readers, since, in reality, it affirms not only
that they are themselves, as ever, the delight
of painters, but that—tomfooleries of tight-lacing
and high heels apart—their everyday
attire may be so also.

[Pg 174]

How the Redoubt was Taken.

From the French of Prosper Mérimée.

[Prosper Mérimée was born in 1803 and died in 1870. His father was a painter—but Prosper started
life upon a lawyer’s stool. Before thirty he was made Inspector-General of Historic Monuments, and in the
pleasant occupation of this office he travelled over most of Europe, and afterwards described his travels in a
book. Then he began to write short stories—among them “Carmen,” which the opera founded on its plot
has made a household word. These little masterpieces—he never tried his hand at a long tale—exquisite in
style, and full of life and action, gained his election to the French Academy. And he deserved his fame.
He has the magic art which makes the things of fancy real as life itself, we know not how. “How the
Redoubt was Taken” is in length a very little story—but to read it is to be present with the storming-party,
in their mad rush to victory and death.]

FRIEND of mine, a soldier,
who died in Greece of fever
some years since, described to
me one day his first engagement.
His story so impressed
me that I wrote it down from
memory. It was as follows:—

I joined my regiment on September 4.
It was evening. I found the colonel in the
camp. He received me rather brusquely,
but having read the general’s introductory
letter he changed his manner, and addressed
me courteously.

“I FOUND THE COLONEL IN THE CAMP.”

By him I was presented to my captain,
who had just come in from reconnoitring.
This captain, whose acquaintance I had
scarcely time to make, was a tall, dark
man, of harsh, repelling aspect. He had
been a private soldier, and had won his
cross and epaulettes upon the field of
battle. His voice, which was hoarse
and feeble, contrasted strangely with
his gigantic stature. This voice of
his he owed, as I was told, to a
bullet which had passed completely
through his body at the battle of
Jena.

On learning that I had just
come from college at Fontainebleau,
he remarked, with a wry
face, “My lieutenant died last
night.”

I understood what he implied—”It
is for you to take his
place, and you are good for
nothing.”

A sharp retort was on my
tongue, but I restrained it.

The moon was rising behind
the redoubt of Cheverino, which
stood two cannon-shots from
our encampment. The moon
was large and red, as is common
at her rising; but that night
she seemed to me of extraordinary
size. For an instant
the redoubt stood out coal-black
against the glittering disk. It
resembled the cone of a volcano
at the moment of eruption.

An old soldier, at whose side
I found myself, observed the
colour of the moon.

“She is very red,” he said.
“It is a sign that it will[Pg 175]
cost us dear to win this wonderful
redoubt.”

I was always superstitious, and this piece
of augury, coming at that moment, troubled
me. I sought my couch, but could not
sleep. I rose, and walked about awhile,
watching the long line of fires upon the
heights beyond the village of Cheverino.

When the sharp night air had thoroughly
refreshed my blood I went back to the fire.
I rolled my mantle round me, and I shut
my eyes, trusting not to open them till daybreak.
But sleep refused to visit me. Insensibly
my thoughts grew doleful. I told
myself that I had not a friend among the
hundred thousand men who filled that plain.
If I were wounded, I should be placed in
hospital, in the hands of ignorant and careless
surgeons. I
called to mind
what I had heard
of operations. My
heart beat violently,
and I
mechanically arranged,
as a kind
of rude cuirass,
my handkerchief
and pocket-book
upon my breast.
Then, overpowered
with
weariness, my
eyes closed
drowsily, only to
open the next
instant with a
start at some
new thought of
horror.

Fatigue, however,
at last
gained the day.
When the drums
beat at daybreak
I was fast asleep.
We were drawn
up in rank. The
roll was called,
then we stacked
our arms, and
everything announced
that we
should pass another
uneventful
day.

But about three o’clock an aide-de-camp
arrived with orders. We were commanded
to take arms.

Our sharp-shooters marched into the
plain. We followed slowly, and in twenty
minutes we saw the outposts of the Russians
falling back and entering the redoubt. We
had a battery of artillery on our right,
another on our left, but both some distance
in advance of us. They opened a sharp fire
upon the enemy, who returned it briskly,
and the redoubt of Cheverino was soon
concealed by volumes of thick smoke. Our
regiment was almost covered from the
Russians’ fire by a piece of rising ground.
Their bullets (which besides were rarely
aimed at us, for they preferred to fire upon
our cannoneers) whistled over us, or at worst
knocked up a shower of earth and stones.

Just as the order to advance was given,
the captain looked at me intently. I stroked
my sprouting
moustache with
an air of unconcern;
in truth, I
was not frightened,
and only
dreaded lest I
might be thought
so. These passing
bullets aided my
heroic coolness,
while my self-respect
assured
me that the danger
was a real
one, since I was
veritably under
fire. I was delighted
at my self-possession,
and
already looked
forward to the
pleasure of describing in Parisian drawing-rooms
the capture of the redoubt of
Cheverino.

“A SHELL KNOCKED OFF MY SHAKO.”

[Pg 176]

The colonel passed before our company.
“Well,” he said to me, “you are going
to see warm work in your first action.”

I gave a martial smile, and brushed my
cuff, on which a bullet, which had struck
the earth at thirty paces distant, had cast a
little dust.

It appeared that the Russians had discovered
that their bullets did no harm, for
they replaced them by a fire of shells, which
began to reach us in the hollows where we
lay. One of these, in its explosion, knocked
off my shako and killed a man beside me.

“I congratulate you,” said the captain,
as I picked up my shako. “You are safe
now for the day.”

I knew the
military superstition
which believes
that the
axiom non bis in
idem is as applicable
to the battlefield
as to the
courts of justice. I replaced my shako with
a swagger.

“That’s a rude way to make one raise
one’s hat,” I said, as lightly as I could. And
this wretched piece of wit was, in the circumstances,
received as excellent.

“I compliment you,” said the captain.
“You will command a company to-night;
for I shall not survive the day. Every time
I have been wounded the officer below me
has been touched by some spent ball; and,”
he added, in a lower tone, “all their names
began with P.”

I laughed sceptically; most people
would have done the same; but most would
also have been struck, as I was, by these
prophetic words. But, conscript though I
was, I felt that I could trust my thoughts
to no one, and that it was my duty to seem
always calm and bold.

At the end of half an hour the Russian
fire had sensibly diminished. We left our
cover to advance on the redoubt.

Our regiment was composed of three
battalions. The second had to take the
enemy in flank; the two others formed the
storming party. I was in the third.

On issuing from behind the cover, we
were received by several volleys, which did
but little harm. The whistling of the
balls amazed me. “But after all,” I
thought, “a
battle is less
terrible than I
expected.”

“OUR SOLDIERS RUSHED ACROSS THE RUINS.”

We advanced
at a smart run, our musketeers in front.
All at once the Russians uttered three
hurras—three distinct hurras—and then
stood silent, without firing.

“I don’t like that silence,” said the
captain. “It bodes no good.”

I began to think our people were too
eager. I could not help comparing, mentally,
their shouts and clamour with the
striking silence of the enemy.

We quickly reached the foot of the redoubt.
The palisades were broken and
the earthworks shattered by our balls.
With a roar of “Vive l’Empereur!” our
soldiers rushed across the ruins.

I raised my eyes. Never shall I forget[Pg 177]
the sight which met my view. The smoke
had mostly lifted, and remained suspended,
like a canopy, at twenty feet above the
redoubt. Through a bluish mist could be
perceived, behind their shattered parapet,
the Russian Grenadiers, with rifles lifted,
as motionless as statues. I can see them
still—the left eye of every soldier glaring
at us, the right hidden by his lifted gun.
In an embrasure at a few feet distant, a
man with a fusee stood by a cannon.

I shuddered. I believed that my last
hour had come.

“Now for the dance to open!” cried the
captain. These were the last words I heard
him speak.

There came from the redoubt a roll of
drums. I saw the muzzles lowered. I shut
my eyes; I heard a most appalling crash of
sound, to which succeeded groans and cries.
Then I looked up, amazed to find myself
still living. The redoubt was once more
wrapped in smoke. I was surrounded by
the dead and wounded. The captain was
extended at my feet; a ball had carried off
his head, and I was covered
with his blood. Of all the
company, only six men, except
myself, remained erect.

This carnage was succeeded
by a kind of stupor. The
next instant the colonel,
with his hat on his sword’s
point, had scaled the parapet with a cry of
“Vive l’Empereur!” The
survivors followed him.
All that succeeded is to
me a kind of dream. We rushed into the
redoubt, I know not how; we fought
hand to hand in the midst of smoke so
thick that no man could perceive his
enemy. I found my sabre dripping blood;
I heard a shout of “Victory”; and, in
the clearing smoke, I saw the earthworks
piled with dead and dying. The cannons
were covered with a heap of corpses. About
two hundred men in the French uniform
were standing, without order, loading their
muskets or wiping their bayonets. Eleven
Russian prisoners were with them.

The colonel was lying, bathed in blood,
upon a broken cannon. A group of soldiers
crowded round him. I approached them.

“Who is the oldest captain?” he was
asking of a sergeant.

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders
most expressively.

“Who is the oldest lieutenant?”

“This gentleman, who came last night,”
replied the sergeant, calmly.

The colonel smiled bitterly.

“Come, sir,” he said to me, “you are
now in chief command. Fortify the gorge
of the redoubt at once with waggons, for
the enemy is out in force. But General
C—— is coming to support you.”

“PISH, MY DEAR FELLOW! THE REDOUBT IS TAKEN!”

“Colonel,” I asked him, “are you badly
wounded?”

“Pish, my dear fellow! The redoubt is
taken!”

[Pg 178]

Actors’ Dressing Rooms.

HE robing apartments of
actors are pleasant retreats.
Quaint old prints, autographed
portraits and pictures,
highly-prized programmes,
letters from celebrities
are as numerous as they are interesting,
whilst every actor bids “good
luck” cross his threshold by exhibiting his
own particular horse-shoe in a conspicuous
corner.

Where is a more picturesque room than
that which Henry Irving enters nightly?
Scarcely a dozen square inches of wall
paper is to be seen—pictures are everywhere.
The eminent tragedian has a
private entrance in Burleigh-street, and you
may know when the actor is not far away,
for “Fussie,” a pet fox-terrier, always
heralds his approach. “Fussie” has his
own mat to sit on, and here he waits during
the whole of the performance until after the
second act, when he regularly looks up for
his customary biscuit. It was “Fussie” who
was lost at Southampton when Mr. Irving
was on his way to America. He turned
up, however, at the Lyceum stage door four
days afterwards, and it remains a mystery
to this day as to whether “Fussie” came by
road or rail.

MR. IRVING’S DRESSING-ROOM.

Henry Irving’s room is a comfortable
apartment. The floor is covered with oilcloth,
and a huge rug imparts a cosy appearance.
Irving always uses the same
chair to sit in when making up. It has
broken down a score of times, but has been
patched up again and again. In fact, the actor
has almost a reverence for anything which
is a connecting link with old associations.

Look at the costumes, for instance, hanging
behind a door which leads to a very
unpretentious-looking wash-basin. There
hangs the clothing of The Master of
Ravenswood. The two Spanish hats with
long feathers, the velvet coat and waistcoat
with innumerable buttons, a quaint old
crimson waistcoat, with elaborate silver
work. Mr. Irving clings to an old coat so
long as it will cling to him. He makes his
clothes old—wears them during the day.[Pg 179]
That old beaver hat was worn in “Charles
I.” and “The Dead Heart”—now it is the
characteristic head-gear of The Master of
Ravenswood. The hat worn in the last
act did duty ten years ago in “The Corsican
Brothers.”

There, just by the long pier glass, is the
old fashioned oak dressing-table, of a pattern
associated with the days of King Arthur—in
fact, the table has done duty in
“Macbeth” in one of the banqueting
scenes. Handle some of the veritable
curiosities on it. The very looking-glass is
tied up with string—it has reflected its
owner’s face for fourteen
years, and went across the
Atlantic with him. The old
pincushion went as well.
On a chair are the actor’s
eye-glasses, which he always
uses when making up. Scissors,
nail parers, &c., are
about, whilst the paints lie
in a little side cabinet by
the looking-glass, and four
diminutive gallipots are conspicuous,
filled with the
colours mostly used. A great
tin box of crepe hair is also
at hand, for Mr. Irving makes
all his own moustaches. He
gums a little hair on where
needed and then works in colour to get the
effect.

The wicker hand-basket is interesting.
The dresser carries this to “the wings”
when the actor needs a rapid change of
“make-up.” It has three compartments,
holding a glass of water, powder puff,
saucer containing fuller’s earth, cold cream,
hare’s foot, lip salve, rouge, and a remarkably
old comb and brush. Here is a
striking collection of rings; a great emerald—only
a “stage” gem, alas!—is worn in
“Louis XI.” and “Richelieu,” whilst here is
one worn as Doricourt in the “Belle’s
Stratagem,” the space where the stone
ought to be being ingeniously filled up with
blue sealing wax. These long pear-shaped
pearl earrings are worn as Charles I., such
as all gay cavaliers were wont to wear.

You can handle the quaint old bull’s-eye
lantern which tradition says Eugene Aram
carried on the night of the murder—for it
is on the table. A piece of wick still
remains and grease is visible—not as the
morbid Aram left it, but as last used. The
lantern itself is of stamped metal. The
glass on either side is there, though that
through which the light was seen in the
centre has long since left. It is a highly
interesting relic.

EUGENE ARAM’S LANTERN.

Be careful not to step into a big flower-pot
saucer just close by, where “Fussie”
drinks; mind not to overturn what looks
like a magnified pepper-box near the fireplace,
but which, after all, only contains the
dust which is “peppered” on to the actor’s
long boots, to make them look travel-stained
and worn. Then walk round the
room and admire the treasures.

There is a little gift sent from Denmark.
In a neat oak frame is a picture of Elsinore,
sprays of leaves from
“Ophelia’s brook,” and a
number of tiny stones and
pebbles from “Hamlet’s
Grave.” Here again is Kean,
by Sir Thomas Lawrence, a
small “Maclise,” a sketch by
Charles Matthews, Fechter—who
used to dress in this
very room himself—as The
Master of Ravenswood, Ellen
Terry as Ophelia, Sara Bernhardt,
and John L. Toole.
Variety is found in a pair of
horseshoes, one of which Mr.
Irving carried with him to
America.

Over the crimson plush
mantel-board is “Garrick in the Green-room,”
and on either side a pair of ancient
coloured prints of the one and only Joey
Grimaldi, one of which represents him “as
he appeared when he took his farewell
benefit at Drury Lane Theatre on June 27,
1828,” with pan and soap in his lap, arrayed
in highly coloured garments, wonderfully
made, and wearing a remarkably broad
smile on his face. But to mention every
one of Mr. Irving’s treasures would be
impossible.

The play over, he is in walking costume,
cigar alight, and away in less than a quarter
of an hour—”Fussie” with him, following
faithfully in his steps.

Mr. Toole’s room is exactly what everybody
imagines it to be—cosy and homely,
like its genial occupant. The casual
passer-by over the iron grating in King
William-street little thinks that he is
throwing a momentary shadow over the
very corner where Toole’s washstand, soap
and towel find a convenient lodging.

How simple everything is! The little
table in the centre where Toole sits down[Pg 180]
and religiously “drops a line,” during the
time he is not wanted in the piece, to all
those unknown “young friends” who
would tempt good fortune on the stage;
the sofa covered with flowered cretonne;
and in close proximity to the fireplace a
ricketty arm-chair in brown leather. The
springs are broken, but what matter? That
chair is Toole’s, sir, and Royalty has occupied
it many a time. Yes, nothing could
be more simple than our own comedian’s
dressing-room. It is just a cosy parlour,
and with Toole in the chair by the fire-side
one would be loth to leave it.

MR. TOOLE’S DRESSING-ROOM.

The mantel-board has a clock in the
centre, an ornament or two, and a bust of
the occupant in his younger days. In a
corner is the veritable umbrella used in
Paul Pry. What a priceless collection of
theatrical reminiscences meet the eye everywhere!
There is a portrait group of a company
of young actors who appeared in the
original production of “Dearer than Life,”
at the New Queen’s Theatre, Long-acre—Henry
Irving, Charles Wyndham,
John Clayton, Lionel Brough, John L.
Toole, and Miss Henrietta Hodson, who
afterwards became Mrs. Labouchere. A
tolerably good cast! And here are portraits
of a few actors taken years ago at
Ryde, Isle of Wight, showing W. Creswick
in a great Inverness cape, Benjamin
Webster, S. Phelps, Paul Bedford, and a
rising young actor who had only recently
made his appearance—J. L. Toole by name.

Near a capital character sketch of
Henry J. Byron, by Alfred Bryan, is an old
playbill in a black ebony frame. This was
the programme for one night:—

THEATRE ROYAL, HAYMARKET.
Merchant of Venice.

The Drama in 3 Acts:
Mind Your Own Business.

Keeley Worried by Buckstone.

To conclude with the laughable farce,
The Spitalfields Weaver.

Many a white satin programme is about,
and the tenant of the little dressing-room
of King William-street is represented
in many parts. Just by the
door is Mr. Liston as Paul Pry, arrayed in
bottle-green coat, big beaver hat, and armed
with the inevitable umbrella—”just called
to ask you how your tooth was.”

An excellent portrait represents John
Billington as John Peerybingle in “Dot,”
underneath which are penned some noteworthy
lines: “I don’t want anybody to[Pg 181]
tell me my fortune. I’ve got one of the
best little wives alive, a happy home over
my head, a blessed baby, and a cricket on
my hearth.”

Certainly what Mr. W. S. Gilbert would
term “a highly respectable” entrance is
that which leads to Mr. Beerbohm Tree’s
dressing-room. The stage door is in Suffolk-street,
and until Mr. Tree’s tenancy of the
Haymarket Theatre, there was an old clause
in the lease setting forth that whenever
Royalty visited the theatre they should
have the right to enter by that way. Buckstone
lived here—his dressing-room still
remains. It is a quaint
corner near the stage,
now used by the actors
as a smoking-room. The
walls are covered with
red paper, relieved by
one or two decidedly
ancient paintings. Buckstone’s
iron safe—wherein
the renowned comedian
was wont to store his
money—is still
visible; but the
money-bags are
there no longer;
their place being
occupied by sundry
jars of tobacco
and a churchwarden
or two.
Only on one occasion
has Mr.
Tree found it
necessary to use
this room. The
corpulency of the
bibulous Falstaff
prevented the
actor from conveniently coming down the
stairs which lead from his own room to the
stage—hence Falstaff was attired in this
apartment.

The sound of the overture is just beginning
as we hurriedly follow Mr. Tree in the
direction of his room. Though he has been
singled out as a very master of the art of
transferring the face into the presentment
of character, it is a fact that Mr. Tree
never sits down to dress until the overture
has started, and attaches less importance to
his make-up than to any other portion of
the actor’s art.

MR. BEERBOHM TREE’S DRESSING-ROOM.

He throws himself into a chair of a
decided “office” pattern, in front of a triple
glass which reflects all positions of his face.
The sticks of paint are arranged on a small
Japanese tray, and the various powders in
tin boxes. Everything about the room is
quiet and unassuming—a washstand near
the window, a few odd wooden-back chairs.
The room is regarded rather as a workshop
than a lounging-room, and it certainly
possesses that appearance, though not
without a certain pleasant cosiness.

The actor’s fingers have evidently been
recently at work on the lengthy pier-glass.
Young Mr. Irving has just been in. He
wanted some idea of a make-up for King
John. Mr. Tree gave him one by taking a
stick of grease paint and sketching it in
outline on the glass. A number of still
unanswered letters are lying about—some
of them delightfully humorous missives
from “stage-struck” young people. One
is positively from a footman. It runs:—

“Dear Sir,—I want to be an actor, so
thought I would write to you. I am tall
and dark, and have been a footman for five
years in a nobleman’s family. I have just
had a hundred pounds left me, and if you
will give me a part in one of your pieces I
will give you fifty pounds of it. Write by
return, as I have already given notice.—Your
obedient servant,

——.

“P.S.—Mark the letter private.”

[Pg 182]

MR. HARE’S DRESSING-ROOM.

In a corner lies the peak cap worn as
Demetrius in “The Red Lamp”; here the
cloth cap, gaily decorated with poppies,
corn and feathers, used in “The Ballad
Monger.” Over the door is a gigantic
horseshoe, measuring at least a couple of
feet from top to bottom. This was placed
here by Mrs. Bancroft.

Just at this moment a magnificent bull-dog—whose
appearance we had not previously
noticed—turns lazily on a mat
under the dressing-table. This is “Ned,”
rechristened “Bully Boy.” The dog plays
a prominent part in the piece now running
at the Haymarket.

A tap at the door. A voice cries, “Mr.
Tree”—and hurriedly applying a line here
and there about the eyes, as we accompany
the actor to the stage, he has something
interesting to say regarding “making-up.”
He rather laughs at the idea, and is perplexed
to understand the reason why his
facial paintings are so commented upon.
He is always the last to reach the theatre.
“The less make-up, the better,” he observes.
“The art of acting is not a matter of painting
the face, for a very plain person can in
a few seconds become extremely good-looking
and vice versâ; it is what comes from
within—what the player feels. It is his
imagination which really illuminates the
face, and not what he has put on it with
hare’s foot and pencil.”

A peculiar interest is attached to the visit
which we made to Mr. John Hare’s room
at the Garrick Theatre. Mr. Hare has been
on the stage for twenty-six years, and previous
to our finding him seated in his great
arm-chair by the fireplace, had never been
interviewed. Hence the few words he said,
as he played with a cigarette, become particularly
notable.

“I have been acting now for twenty-six
years. I was for ten years with Mrs.
Bancroft at the Prince of Wales’s, and have
been some twelve or thirteen years in
management.”

“What is your favourite part, Mr.
Hare?”

“The present one in ‘A Pair of Spectacles,'”
is the reply. “I take about a
month to study up a character. I always
wear the clothes I am going to play in for
some time previously, so as to get them to
my figure. The longest time I ever bestowed
on a make-up was in ‘The Profligate.’
I took half an hour over it.”

Mr. Hare has really two rooms. The[Pg 183]
big one is used for an office as much as
possible, where the actor does all his correspondence.
Note the old-fashioned high
wire fender, the heavy plush curtains, and
elaborate rosewood furniture. It is a most
artistic apartment. Those speaking-tubes
communicate with the stage door, prompter,
box office, and acting manager.

The pictures which adorn the walls are
as varied as they are valuable. Here may be
found Leslie Ward’s caricature of Corney
Grain and of George Grossmith, together
with an old engraving of Garrick, after R.
E. Pine, published in 1818. Just by the
glass is one of the few photos of Compton,
in frock coat and plaid tie. Many a reminiscence
of the Hare and Kendal management
is about, and on the mantel-board of
ebony and gold—over which rests the customary
horse-shoe with the initials J. H.
in the centre—portraits in silver frames of
members of Mr. Hare’s family are to be seen.

MR. HARE’S INNER ROOM.

But by far the most attractive corner is
a little room, scarcely large enough for two
people to stand in, which branches off from
the more spacious apartment. There,
hanging up, is the light suit worn as Benjamin
Goldfinch, with the long black coat
which flaps about so marvellously—the actor
finds plenty of “character” even in a coat—and
the shepherd’s-plaid trousers.

The looking-glass is of walnut, with electric
lights on either side shaded with metal
leaves. In front of this he sits, amidst a
hundred little oddments. Here are tiny
bottles of medicine and quinine—for the
actor being is a firm believer in the properties
of this traditional strength-reviver.
The little room is as comfortable as it well
can be, and has a thoroughly domesticated
air about it.

There are many things to notice as we
pass through the passages on our way toward
Mr. Charles Wyndham’s room at the
Criterion; programmes and play-bills in
German and Russian of “David Garrick”—in
fact the passages are literally decorated
with mementoes of the clever comedian’s
admirable impersonation of this character.
A bronze of the actor as Davy raising the
glass on high, and a massive silver loving
cup, engraved “Garrick,” is mounted on a
pedestal bearing the inscription “Charles
Wyndham, Von Direktor Lautenberg,
Residenz Theatre, Berlin, December,
1887.” Prints and pictures typical of Russian
life are freely displayed. And here is
an exceptional curiosity, and one which is
doubtless highly treasured. In a modest
oak frame is a piece of paper which once
served to settle a little dispute, which is
historical among things theatrical:—

“Mr. Bedford wages two gallons of claret
with Mr. Williams, that Mr. Garrick did
not play upon ye stage in ye year 1732 or
before.”

Then follows the suggestive word
“Paid,” and below it are the words:—

“I acted upon Goodman’s Fields Theatre
for ye first time in ye year 1741.

“D. Garrick.

Mr. Wyndham’s room has one thing
about it which distinguishes it from all
similar apartments in London. It is next
to the stage, and by pulling up a little red
blind he can see through an aperture just
what is going on, and know exactly when
his services are required.

The room is square, divided by a curtain.
Strange to say, not a single portrait of a
brother actor is apparent; but, whilst the
actor paints his face, he can see many an
invitation to dinner negligently thrust in
the edges of the gilt frame. The dressing-table
which occupies nearly the whole
length of one end of the room is fully[Pg 184]
supplied with countless colours, whilst a
little tray is positively brimming over with
all patterns of collar studs. An egg is
handy; it is intended for the hair, as Mr.
Wyndham and wigs have never agreed.
There is a writing-table and a chair or two,
and an elaborate inlaid rosewood escritoire
is in a corner, against which Mr. Wyndham
stands for his portrait in the character of
Dazzle, with his flowered waistcoat, frilled
front, and hanging fob.

Nor must the apartment in which Mr.
Wyndham entertains his friends be passed
unnoticed. This is a room overlooking
Piccadilly, and capable of seating some
twenty or twenty-five persons. It was dark
when we entered, but the next instant the
electric light was switched on, and an
apartment was presented which may be
singled out as the only one of its kind ever
built.

We were standing in the middle of a first-class
cabin of a ship. Not a solitary item
was wanting to complete the illusion. The
ceiling was built low, and every article of
furniture was made on sea-going principles,
even down to the table. The walls are of
walnut, the panels between being lined
with exquisite sateen. Though one or two
windows look out on to Piccadilly Circus,
there are many port-holes about, all draped
with old gold plush curtains. The upholstery
consists principally of a series of
settees of light blue plush, which go round
the sides of the room.

The looking-glass over the mantelpiece
is typical of a cabin. It is surrounded, in
the form of a framework, by a cable, the
ends of which are fastened off by diminutive
anchors. Exactly in the centre, in an
elaborate frame, is the programme used on
the occasion of the performance of “David
Garrick,” which Mr. Wyndham and his
brother actors gave before the Prince and
Princess of Wales at Sandringham some
years ago.

The very lamps suspended from the
ceiling are made to sway to and fro in case
of rough and windy weather. The whole
thing is an ingenious idea, delightfully
carried out, and to-night Mr. Wyndham’s
cabin is seen at its best. There is to be a
supper-party at the conclusion of the performance
downstairs, and the tables for the
time being are burdened down with every
luxury. Fairy lamps are peeping out
amongst the pines and hot-house grapes,
and the lamps hanging from the roof are
surrounded with flowers and ferns, whilst
the electric light shines out brilliantly from
amongst the blossoms.

MR. WYNDHAM’S DRESSING-ROOM.

[Pg 185]

The Minister’s Crime.

By Maclaren Cobban.

I.

HERE is really little use in
my continuing to call,” said
the doctor; “it will only be
running you into useless expense.
I may go on prescribing
and prescribing till I
get through the whole pharmacopœia, but I
can do him no good; what he needs is not
drugs but air—a bracing air. Get him
away out of this, and let him run wild in the
country, or—if your engagements won’t let
you get to the country—remove to some
open suburb north or south.”

The doctor sat in a little parlour, in a
shabby-genteel street of close-packed
middle London. Opposite him was the
patient, a child of three or four, on his
mother’s knee and clasped about with his
mother’s arms, while his father, the Rev.
James Murray, stood anxiously listening.
The boy—the first-born, and the only
child of his parents—had a month or two
before been stricken down with an infant’s
ailment, and though that had passed, he continued
so weak that the doctor had tested
the soundness of heart and lungs, and the
outcome of his examination was that the
only hope for the child was change of
air.

THE DOCTOR’S VISIT.

“I only wish,” said the father, “that I
could take him away. I must try, though
I don’t see at present how I am to do it.”

He turned away to the window to hide
the emotion that would rise to choke him
when he met the large, weary blue eyes of
his boy bent on him, as if in appeal that he
might not be allowed to fade and wither
and die, like a flower before it has fairly
bloomed.

“Can’t you at least send the boy away
with his mother?” asked the doctor.

“I must try,” said the father without
turning round. “I must see what can be
done.”

“In the meantime,” said the doctor,[Pg 186]
rising, “go on with the cod-liver oil and
malt extract.”

The doctor went, and still the Rev.
James Murray stood by the window, striving
to keep down the emotion that demanded
to have its way. The wife rose with the
child in her arms and went close to her
husband.

“James, my dear,” said she in a low voice
(and she took his hand), “don’t, my dear!”

James turned with the impulse of all his
passionate love for his wife and child, and
drew them together to his breast and bent
his head over them. And one great sob of
anguish broke from him, and one tear of
bitter agony sprang in his eye, and fell hot
upon his wife’s hand.

“Oh, James, my darling!” she cried,
clinging to him. “Don’t! God will be
good to us!”

They stood thus for some seconds, while
no sound was heard but the loud ticking of
the cheap lodging-house clock on the
mantelpiece. The wife sobbed a little in
sympathy with her husband; not that she
considered at all how her own heart was
wrung, but that she felt how his was.
Seeing and hearing her, he recovered himself.

“Come, my dear,” said he, “this does no
good. Let us sit down, and see what can
be arranged.”

He led her back to her seat. He sat
down beside her, transferred the boy to his
own lap, and held her hand.

“Come now, Jim,” said he to his boy,
“how am I going to get you and your
mammy to the country? Eh?”

“Daddy come, too,” said the child, putting
his arm about his father’s neck.

“I would, Jim, I would,” said he, with
the faintest suspicion of a painful catch in
his voice still; “but I have no money.
And I don’t know how mammy and you
are to go, unless some kind friend offers to
take you in.”

“Oh, James dear!” exclaimed the wife,
impulsively, catching her husband’s hand
to her cheek. “It’s I who have taken you
from kind friends! I am a burden to you,
and nothing but a burden!”

“My dear wife,” said he, bending to her,
“you are the sweetest burden that man
could bear, and I’d rather have you than all
else the world could give.”

“It’s beautiful, my dear,” said she, “to
hear you say so. It’s like sweet music to
me; but it’s not true. If you had married
another—if you had married differently,
and as you were expected to have married—you
would not be here now; and if you
had a sick boy, like our dear, poor Jim,
there would have been no difficulty in
getting to the country, or in getting anything
that was needed for him! But you
married me, and—my poor, dear love!—you
bear the penalty!”

“Mary,” said he, with a certain touch of
solemnity in his voice, “I have not for one
instant regretted that we loved each other,
and married each other, and, whatever may
come, I shall not regret it. The complete
love of a woman like you is more precious
than rubies. Your love, my darling,”—and
he caressed the head crowned with a
glory of bright hair—”is the joy of my life—God
forgive me!”

She drew again his hand to her cheek,
and pressed it there, and said no word more.
And so they sat for a few seconds longer,
while the vulgar, intrusive clock, with a
kind of limp in its noisy tick, seemed to say,
“It’s time! It’s time!“

Let us take the opportunity of this pause
to explain how the Reverend James Murray
got into the anxious position in which we
find him. He was a minister of a well-known
denomination of Nonconformists.
When he left college he had been reckoned
a young man of great promise and of considerable
powers of persuasive eloquence,
and he was expected to become a famous
preacher. He was invited to be the
minister of a large and wealthy congregation
in a northern manufacturing town.
He accepted the invitation, and for two or
three years he was a great favourite with
his people; never, they declared, had they
heard so fine a preacher (though he was
sometimes so “fine” that they did not
understand him), and never had they known
a better man. His praise was in everybody’s
mouth; the men admired him and
the women adored him. But he was a
bachelor, and there was not an unmarried
lady in the congregation who did not aspire
to be his wife, which put him in the
awkward and invidious position of having
to prefer one out of many. He astonished
and offended all the well-to-do ladies, by
falling in love with and marrying the pretty,
shy governess of one of the wealthiest
families—a girl who had not been regarded
as having the smallest chance of occupying
the proud position of minister’s wife. His
marriage alienated the women, and through
them cooled the ardour of the men. The
situation was strained; but it might have[Pg 187]
gradually returned to its former easy condition,
had not the minister soon after his
marriage become what is termed “broad”
in his religious views and uncompromising
in his expression of them. His people grew
alarmed, and his deacons remonstrated—(with
less friendliness of feeling, probably, than if
he had not offended them by his marriage)—but
the minister declared he could not do
otherwise than preach what he believed to
be the truth. Then some people left him,
and others would not speak to him, and his
position became so difficult and finally so
unbearable that he could do nothing but
send in his resignation. He shook the
dust and the grime of that northern town
off his feet, and with sore heart and slender
purse journeyed to London. He was
resolved to labour among “the masses”; if
the arrogant and wealthy people of the
north would not hear him, he was sure the
poor of London, bending beneath the weary
burden of life, would hear him gladly. He
had not been in London long
when he became minister of
a venerable, half-deserted
chapel in one of those curiously
quiet corners made by
the rushing currents and the
swirling eddies of the life of
our huge metropolis. It was
close to the heart of London,
and yet no one knew it was
there but the handful of small
shop-keepers and their families
and the few devout and
destitute old women who made
up its congregation. These
poor people were fluttered
with pride when they got so
clever and beautiful a preacher
for their own; they looked
to see ere long the old chapel
crowded with an attentive congregation
as it had been in
other days; and the chapel-keeper
(who was also a painter)
had put all the magnificent
hopes of himself and his
friends in the fresh inscription
he made on the faded notice-board
in the fore-court:
“Minister, The Rev. James
Murray, M.A.,” in letters of gold.

“THE PRETTY GOVERNESS.”

A year had passed since then, and the
minister’s heart was sad. He had spent
himself for the benefit of the poor that
sweltered round that old chapel, and the
poor did not seem to want him or his
ministrations any more than the wealthy:
they would gather round him if he spread
a tea for them, but they would not come
to hear him preach; so the chapel remained
as empty as when he first ascended its pulpit.
Most harassing and wearing anxiety of all,
he was desperately poor. How he and his
wife and child had lived during the year it
would be difficult to tell; from the treasurer
of the chapel funds he had received less than
sixty pounds, and he was in debt for his
lodgings, in debt to the doctor, his and
his wife’s clothes were become painfully
shabby, and his child was sick unto death.

What now was to be done?

“If I had only two or three pounds in
hand,” said he, “or if I could raise them, I
could send you and Jim away to some quiet
seaside place; but everything is gone—everything!”

“Don’t be cast down, my dear,” said his
wife, raising her head, and bravely smiling.
“It is always darkest and coldest before the
dawn. Something may come
to us just when we least expect
it.”

“I am angry with myself,”
said he, “for being so cast
down; but I can’t help it. I
care nothing for myself—nothing
at all, you know, Mary:
I have good health, and I can
live on little. It’s seeing you,
my dear, and poor little Jim,
going without things you
ought to have, that goes to
my heart; and to know now
that the boy’s life would be
saved if I could do something
which I have no hope of
doing!—oh! it maddens me!
I ask myself over and over
again if I’ve done wrong to
anyone that we should be at
this desperate pass!”

“My dear, dear husband!”
exclaimed his wife, again
caressing his hand. “You
done wrong to anyone? You
could not hurt a fly! We
must be patient and brave, my
dear, and bear it. And Jim,
poor boy, may really be improving:
doctors sometimes make mistakes.”

But it needed only to look at the child’s
thin, limp figure, his transparent skin, and
his large, sad, lustreless eyes, to be convinced
that there the doctor had made no mistake.
The boy would die unless he could be taken[Pg 188]
into the fresh, stimulating air of the seaside
or the country. The parents glanced at the
boy, and then looked involuntarily each into
the sad face of the other, and turned their
heads away.

At that moment there came a loud,
double “rat-tat” at the street door, which
made them both jump. Their sitting-room
was on the ground-floor. The minister
rose, pale and expectant. He heard no one
coming to answer the summons.

“I wonder if it’s for me?” he said.

“Go and see,” said his wife.

He went into the passage and opened the
door.

“Murray?” said the telegraph-boy, and,
on being answered “Yes,” handed a reply-paid
telegram.

The minister’s fingers trembled so, he
could scarcely tear the envelope open. He
took the telegram in to his wife and read it
aloud:—

“Can you supply Upton Chapel on Sunday
next? Letter to follow.“

That was all, with the name and address
of the sender appended. Both the minister
and his wife knew the Upton Chapel, and
perceived at once that that was the most
hopeful thing that had happened to them
for more than a year.

“Yes,” wrote the minister on the reply-form,
which he handed to the telegraph-boy.

“Thank God for that, Mary,” said he,
when he returned to her. “Now I can
send you and Jim away for at least a week!
Thank God, my dear!”

He kissed her, and then set himself in his
agitation to walk up and down the little room.

“That will mean five pounds for us, I
believe; I don’t want to count the fee I shall
get, but I can’t help it now. It’s a rich congregation,
and I think I must get that.
And, Mary,” he went on, “what if they
should ask me to be their minister? You
know they are without one. Perhaps the
‘letter to follow’ will say something. Upton
is a beautiful, bracing suburb, and Jim—our
own little Jim!”—and he raised him in
his arms—”would get strong there!”

“Ah, my dear,” said his wife, “it is too
tempting. I am afraid to hope. But I am
sure when once they hear you they will
like you. Now let us think: what sermons
will you take?”

II.

The “letter to follow” came by a late
post, but it was only a fuller and politer
version of the telegram. It hoped that Mr.
Murray would be able to give the Upton
congregation the pleasure of listening to
him, it apologised for the short notice (it
was then Friday), and it invited the minister
to dine with the writer on Sunday. It thus
gave no hint that the eye of the Upton
congregation might be on Mr. Murray, but
at the same time it did not completely dash
the hope that it might be.

On Saturday the minister sat down and
wrote one sermon expressly for the occasion,
and with that and another in his pocket he
set off on Sunday morning to fulfil his
engagement with some trepidation.

The aspect of the Upton Chapel was
itself cheerful and inspiriting. It was nearly
new, and it was large and handsome in a
semi-Gothic, open-raftered style; moreover,
it was well filled, without being crowded.
It was a complete contrast to the place
where Mr. Murray usually ministered,
where most of the high-backed musty
pews were quite empty, where a kind of fog
hung perpetually, and where the minister,
perched aloft in the pulpit, was as “a voice
crying in the wilderness.” Then in the
Upton Chapel there was a fine organ, and
good singing by a well-trained choir. When
the minister, therefore, rose to preach his
sermon, it was with a sense of exaltation and
inspiration which he had not felt for years.
He delivered himself with effect, and he
was listened to with wakeful attention and
apparent appreciation. When the service
was over, and one leader of the congregation
after another came to the vestry to
shake him warmly by the hand and to
thank him for his “beautiful discourse,” he
thanked God and took courage, and wished
that his Mary were with him, instead of
sitting lonely and anxious in their little
lodging with their sick boy.

He went in good spirits to the home of
his host, who was a merchant in the city,
and he sat down with the family to the
ample Sunday dinner. He sat next his
hostess, a gentle, motherly lady, who asked
him if he was married, and if he had any
children; and he told her of Mary and the
child. His host was a shrewd man, of
middle age, who had clearly read much and
thought a good deal, and all his family
(three grown sons and two daughters) were
intelligent and cultivated, and took a modest,
but sufficient, share in the conversation of
the table, and all listened to such opinions
as the minister uttered with attention and
understanding. Mr. Murray, therefore, felt[Pg 189]
he was in a sociable, frank, and refined
atmosphere, and he thought within himself:
“What a place of brightness and pleasant
endeavour this would be after my rude and
stormy experience of the north and this
terrible year in London! And, oh, what a
haven of rest and health for my darling
wife and boy!”

So it was with unaffected joy, when he
walked round the large garden with his
host after dinner, that he heard him
say:—

“I think, Mr. Murray, absolute frankness
in these matters is best. Let me ask you,
if you were invited to become our minister,
would you be willing? Would you like to
come to us?”

“As frankly as you put the question,”
said Mr. Murray, “I answer that, from all
I know and have seen of the Upton congregation,
I should
like to be your minister.
Of course, it
would be pleasanter
for me and for all if
the invitation were
as nearly unanimous
as may be.”

“HE DELIVERED HIMSELF WITH EFFECT.”

“Quite so,” said
his host. “I ought
to say that, though
I am the chairman,
I have at present no
authority to speak for any but myself and
my family. But we have heard a good
report of you, Mr. Murray, and I know
that many of our people have been much
impressed by you this morning.” Then,
unconsciously, he went on to dash somewhat
the minister’s lively hopes. “There
is a young man—Mr. Lloyd: you may
know him. No? Well—some of our
people are very much taken with him. He
is a brilliant, popular sort of young fellow;
but he is young—he has only been some
two years or so a minister—and he is unmarried,
and—and well, I don’t want to
say anything against him—but he is just a
little flighty, and we older folk doubt how
we should get on with him. I am glad,
however, to have your assurance that you
would come if you were asked.”

He put his arm within the minister’s, and
thus they returned into the house. And—as
if that had been a sign of consent
agreed upon—all the company (and there
were now a good many guests assembled)
beamed upon them as they entered the
drawing-room.

“I am so glad,” said the eldest daughter
of the house, bringing Mr. Murray a cup
of tea and sitting down by him, “to know
that you are willing to be our minister!”

“How do you know I am?” he asked,
with a smile.

“Oh,” she answered with a blush and a
light laugh, “we arranged for a sign from
my father, so that we should all know at
once. You are willing, are you not?”

“I am,” he answered, “quite.”

“And I hope—I do hope—you will be
asked.”

Presently there came to him an unknown
young man, and said: “I don’t often go to
chapel or church, but if you often preach
sermons like this morning’s, I should always
go to hear you, I think.”

That was a flattering tribute, and the
minister showed his appreciation
of it.

“Well, I confess,” he
said, “it is at least pleasant
to hear you say so.”

Thus the time passed till
the hour came for evening
service. The gas was lit,
and floor and galleries were
crowded with people. The
minister had chosen a simple
and pathetic theme for his
evening discourse: “He took
little children in His arms
and blessed them;” and he spoke out of the
fulness of experience and with the tender
feeling of the father of a sick child, insomuch
that all were moved, many even to
sobs and tears. There was no doubt that he
carried his audience with him; and, as in[Pg 190]
the morning, he had to shake many hands
and receive many thanks.

Last of all, his host of the day came and
asked him to take also the services of the
next Sunday; and then he hastened home
by train to his wife with hopeful, grateful
heart.

“ISN’T HE A JOLLY FELLOW?”

“There, Mary,
my dear,” said he,
giving her the
£5 note in an
envelope as it
had been slipped
into his hand;
“that’s for you
and Jim. I’ll
take you both
down to Margate
to-morrow—the
air of Margate is
the most bracing
in England—and
you can stay for
two or three
weeks at least,
and the boy will
begin to grow strong.”

For answer Mary threw herself into her
husband’s arms, and sobbed upon his breast.

“Oh, how good God is, James! Let us
be thankful, my dear! Oh, let us be thankful!”

Next day the minister took his wife and
child to Margate, and placed them in lodgings
on the breezy cliff-top. On Tuesday
he returned to town; for he had much to
do to prepare for his second Sunday at
Upton and to fill the vacancy at the old,
deserted chapel. In spite of his occupation
he began, before the week was out, to feel
lonely and depressed; for he and his wife
had not separated before, save for a day or
two, since the hour of their marriage. In
the solitude of his close and dingy lodging
he restlessly and morbidly meditated on his
desire to go to Upton, and his chances of
going. Had he any right to go, with such
mercenary motives as moved him? But
was the health of wife and child a mercenary
motive? Was the desire to see them
free from a narrow and blighting poverty a
mercenary motive? And had he not other
motives also—motives of truth and duty?
If it was wrong to seek to go to Upton for
these reasons, then God forgive him! for
he could not help longing to go!

It was in something of that depressed and
troubled mood that he went to fulfil his
second Sunday. The congregation was
larger than on the previous Sunday
morning, and the minister felt that many
must have come expressly to hear him;
and, therefore, he had less brightness and
freedom of delivery than on the Sunday
before. He felt, when the service was over,
that he had not acquitted himself well, and
he began anew
to torture himself
with the thoughts
of what would
become of Mary
and Jim if he
should miss his
chance of Upton.

To add discomfort
to discomfort,
and constraint
to constraint,
he was
introduced in the
vestry to the
Reverend Mr.
Lloyd—his rival,
as he felt bound
to consider him;
and to his host for the day—a stout, loud-spoken,
rather vulgar-looking man, who
dropped his h’s.

When they reached the home of his host
(who clearly was a wealthy man, for the
house was large and furnished with substantial
splendour), he discovered that his
rival also was to be a guest. That did not
serve to put him more at his ease, the less
that he perceived host and rival seemed on
very friendly, if not familiar, terms. They
called one another “Lloyd” and “Brown,”
and slapped each other on the back.
“Brown” said something, and “Lloyd”
flatly and boisterously contradicted and
corrected him, and then “Brown” laughed
loudly, and seemed to like it. Thus dinner
wore away, while Mr. Murray said little
save to his hostess—a pale, thin, and somewhat
depressed woman, grievously overburdened,
it was clear, with a “jolly”
husband, and a loud and healthy young
family. After dinner “Lloyd” romped
and rollicked in and out of the house with
the troop of noisy children, while Mr. Murray
kept his hostess and her very youngest
company, and the attention of his host was
divided between duty and inclination—the
duty of sitting by his wife and guest,
and the inclination of “larking with
‘Lloyd.'”

“Look at him!” he exclaimed once.
“Isn’t he a jolly fellow? I do think he’s a[Pg 191]
capital fellow! Oh, yes; and he has a
nice mind.”

It was all very depressing and saddening
to Mr. Murray, though he appeared only to
be very quiet. For he thought: “A large
congregation like this of Upton must
necessarily have more people like these
Browns than like my friends of last
Sunday; and it must, therefore, needs be
that this Mr. Lloyd—who has no harm in
him, I daresay, but who is little more than
a rough, noisy, presumptuous boy not long
from school—it must be that he should be
preferred by the majority to me. I may as
well, then, give up all hope of coming here.
But what then of Mary and the boy—the
boy?”

He was scarcely more satisfied with
himself after the evening service (though he
held the attention again of a crowded
congregation), and he went back to his
lonely lodging with a sore and doubting
heart. He wrote, however, cheerfully (he
thought) to his wife; but next day she
replied to his letter and showed that his
assumed cheerfulness had not deceived the
watchful sense of love.

“You are not in good spirits, my dear,”
she wrote; “don’t pretend you are. If
you are not better to-day I shall come home
to you, though little Jim is beginning to
show the benefit of the change.”

“Poor little chap!” the father thought.
“He is beginning to improve. They must
not come back, and I must not go down to
them. My glum face would frighten Mary,
and I should have to tell her all my fears.
Besides, I cannot afford it. Oh, that it
might be settled I’m to go to Upton!”

That was the refrain of his thoughts all
that day. “Oh, that I might go to
Upton!” It was a kind of prayer, and
surely as worthy a prayer, and springing
from as pure and loving a desire as any
prayer that is uttered. He could do nothing
more, however, to attain the desired end;
he could only wait. Monday passed, and
Tuesday, and still no word from Upton.
On Wednesday came a letter from his first
host—the Chairman of Committee. It
contained little, but that little was charged
with meaning and anxiety for the minister.
Nothing, it declared, was yet absolutely decided;
but on Thursday evening there was
to be held a certain debate in the Lecture-room,
in which it had been resolved that
both Mr. Murray and Mr. Lloyd should be
asked to take part.

“I am not officially instructed,” continued
the writer, “to say this to you, but I
think I ought to tell you that there is a disposition
among a good many to form their
final choice for you or for Mr. Lloyd, on the
conclusion of the debate.”

III.

It was put gently and carefully, but the
meaning of the communication to the
minister plainly was that it had come to a
contest between him and the young Mr.
Lloyd, and that whichever should acquit himself
in this debate most to the satisfaction
and admiration of the audience would
straightway be chosen as minister.

It was a terrible situation for the minister—how
terrible none but himself knew, and
none, not even the wife of his bosom, could
ever sufficiently understand. He was a bad
debater, and, worse than that, he was the
most nervous, hesitating, and involved extempore
speaker in the world. His sermons
and discourses were always written, but he
delivered them so well that very few would
have guessed that he had manuscript before
him. With his writing in his hand he was
easy, vigorous, and self-possessed; but when
he had to speak extempore a panic of fear
shook him; he had neither ideas nor words,
and he was completely lost.

It was simply a question of nerves with
him, and whenever he knew beforehand
that he was expected to speak extempore
the strain upon him was crueller than man
can tell. The strain imposed now upon a
body weakened by the past year’s privations
and anxiety could not have been crueller if
he had been under sentence of death; and,
indeed, life or death seemed to his overwrought
nerves to hang upon the issue. If
he failed, and he feared he would fail, fail
signally, for he did not doubt but that the
young and boisterous Mr. Lloyd was without
nerves, and was a glib and self-confident
talker—then Upton was lost, and his wife
was condemned for Heaven alone knew how
long to grievous poverty, and his child to
a lingering death. If he succeeded—but he
had no reason to hope he would—then Upton
was won, and with it life and health and
happiness for those he loved.

It was Wednesday morning when he
got the letter, and all that day he considered,
with a frequent feeling of panic at
the heart, and a constant fluttering of the
nerves, what he could possibly do to ensure
success. He thought he would write down
something on the subject of the debate,
and commit it to memory. He had sat[Pg 192]
down and written a little, when he bethought
him that he did not know when he
would be called upon to speak, nor whether
he might not have to expressly answer
someone. He threw down the pen, and
groaned in despair; there was nothing to
be done; he must trust to the inspiration
and self-possession of the moment.

When he went to bed his sleep was a
succession of ghastly nightmares. He
dreamt his wife and child were struggling
and choking in a dark and slimy sea, that
Mr. Lloyd stood aloof unconcernedly looking
on, and that he, the husband and father,
lay unable to stir hand or foot or tongue!
Then he awoke with a sharp cry, trembling
with dread and bathed in perspiration, and
found, lo! it was but a dream!

So the night passed and the day came
with its constant wearing fear and anxiety.
He could not eat, he could not drink, he
could not rest; and thus the day passed and
the hour came when he must set out for the
fatal meeting. As he passed along the
street people paused to glance at him: he
appeared so pale and scared.

When he entered the Lecture-room at
Upton he was met by his friend, the Chairman
of Committee, who looked at him and
said:—

“Don’t you feel well, Mr. Murray? You
look very faint and pale. Let me get you
a glass of wine.”

“No, thank you,” said the minister. “I
am really quite well.”

“We shall have a good debate, I think,”
said his friend, then leading the way forward.

“I hope so,” said the minister, “though
I am afraid I can do little; I am the worst
extempore speaker you can imagine.”

“Is that so?” The friend turned quickly
and considered him. “I should not have
thought so. Ah, well, never mind.”

But the minister felt that his friend’s hope
of his success was considerably shaken.

The chief persons of the assembly were
gathered about a table at the upper end of
the room. The chairman introduced the
matter for debate; one man rose and spoke
on the affirmative side, and another rose
and spoke on the negative. The minister
listened, but he scarce knew what was said;
he drank great gulps of water to moisten
his parched mouth (which, for all the water,
remained obstinately dry) and he felt his
hour was come. He glanced round him,
but saw only shadows of men. One only
he saw—the man opposite him, the very
young and boisterous Mr. Lloyd, who clapped
his hands and lustily said “Hear,
hear!” when anything was said of which
he approved or which he wished to deride.
The minister’s eyes burned upon him till he
seemed to assume threatening, demoniac
proportions as the boastful and
blatant Apollyon whom Christian
fought in the Valley.

THE DEBATE.

At length young Mr. Lloyd rose,
large and hairy, and then the minister listened
with all his ears. He missed nothing the
young man uttered—none of the foolish
and ignorant opinions, none of the coarse
and awkward phrases—and as he listened
amazement seized him, and then anger, and
he said to himself: “This is the man, this is
the conceited and ignorant smatterer, who
would supplant me, and rob my wife and child
of health and happiness!” He rose at once
in his anger to answer him, to smash and
pulverise him. What he said in his anger[Pg 193]
he did not know; but when he had finished
he sat down and buried his face in his hands
and was sure he had made an egregious ass
of himself. He felt very faint and drank
more water, and it was all over. In a dazed
and hurried
fashion he said
his adieux and
went away to the
train, convinced
he should never
see Upton more.

He had entered
a carriage and
sunk back with
body exhausted,
but with brain on
fire; the train
was starting, when
the door was flung
open, and Mr.
Lloyd burst in
and sat down
opposite him.

“THE DOOR SWUNG OPEN.”

“Halloa!” he
cried. “I did not
think to find you
here. What a
splendid debate
it was, wasn’t it?”
He did not wait for an answer, but hurried
on in his loquacity, “I think I woke them
up. They need waking up, and I’ll do it
when I’m their minister.”

It clearly did not occur to him that his
vis-à-vis might be minister instead; and
Mr. Murray, in his exaggerated dread and
humility, thought that the question who was
to be minister must really have been settled
before the young man left. Mr. Murray
said nothing, but that did not embarrass
Mr. Lloyd.

“I shall soon settle,” he continued, “the
hash of some of those frightened old fogies
who want things to go on in the old, humdrum
way. It’s a fine place, and a magnificent
chapel, and can be made a popular
cause: and I’ll make it, too, when I’m
among them. Good, rousing, popular stuff—that’s
the thing to make a success; don’t
you think so, Murray?”

“No doubt,” said Murray, scarce knowing
or caring what he said in his bitterness and
despair; “only make noise enough.”

Young Mr. Lloyd merely laughed boisterously,
and Mr. Murray only kept saying to
himself: “This is the man who has robbed
me of my chance, and my wife and child of
health and happiness! But for this ignorant,
conceited, and incompetent braggart I
should be minister!”

And incontrollable dislike—and in his
nervous, over-strained condition, hatred even—rose
in him against the young man.

As Lloyd went
on with his ding-dong,
maddening
talk, Mr. Murray,
who could have
cried aloud in his
pain and despair
of the loss he
believed he had
endured, observed
absently that the
inner handle of
the door showed
that the catch
was open. The
train slowed
down, for some
reason, in the
middle of a
tunnel, and Lloyd
rose in his lusty,
boisterous way,
banged down the
window, and
looked out.

“These trains,” quoth he, “are confoundedly
slow.”

Mr. Murray kept his eye on the brass
handle of the door. It was a dangerous
position for Mr. Lloyd; if he leaned too
heavily, or if the train went on with a jerk,
he was likely to be thrown out. Should he
warn him? Should he say, “Take care:
you may fall in your rashness.” Yet why
did not the foolish, unobservant young man
see for himself the condition of the door?

Still, the handle of the door fascinated
the minister’s eye, and he kept silence. At
that moment the train started off again
with a jerk and a screech; the door swung
open, and Lloyd fell, and as the minister
put out his hands and head to catch him,
with a horrified “Oh!” he saw the fiery
eye of a train rushing down upon him from
the opposite direction. It came on with
thunderous roar and passed, and the
minister sank back in the carriage alone,
and fainted!

IV.

He came to himself only outside the
London terminus at which he had to arrive,
when the train drew up, and a man came
along for the collection of tickets. In a half-dazed[Pg 194]
condition (which the ticket-collector
probably considered intoxication), he surrendered
his ticket without a word, and
then the train went on, and presently
he was on the platform, stumbling out
of the station on his way home, but no
more in touch with the people and things
he passed among than a man in a dream.

What had he done? What had he done?
To what a depth of misery and infamy had
he cast himself? It was impossible to sound
the black bottom of it.

“I have slain a man to my wounding; a
young man to my hurt.“

The old words rose in his mind unbidden—rose
and sank, rose and sank again. He
felt that the young man must be lying
crushed across those rails. And it was his
doing: he had not warned the young man
of his danger; he had consented to his
death, and, therefore, he had killed him!
Oh, the horror! Oh, the pity of it!

When he reached his lonely lodging it
was late, and he was dull and tired. He
was conscious of having walked a long way
round, and to and fro, but where he did
not know. The strain was now off his
nerves, and dull, dead misery was upon him.
He mechanically undressed, and went to
bed and sank to sleep at once; but his sleep
was unrefreshing: it was troubled all the
night through with alarms and terrors, with
screeching and roaring trains, and falling
bodies; and when in the morning he was
fully awake, his misery settled upon him
like a dense fog of death.

The morning postman brought a letter
from his wife. She was in good spirits, and
the boy was improving rapidly. Then tears—bitter,
bitter tears!—came to his relief,
and he sobbed in agony. What had possessed
him? What fiend of anger and hate had
entered into him to make him commit that
deed? He was aghast at the atrocious
possibilities of his own nature. He felt as
if he could not look in the face of his wife
again, or again venture to take her in his
arms. Would she not shrink from him
with horror when she knew? And would
not his boy—his little Jim!—when he grew
up (if he ever grew up) be ashamed of the
father who had so dishonoured his name?

“Oh, my God!” he cried in his misery
and grief. “Let me bear the utmost punishment
of my sin, but spare them! Punish
not the innocent with the guilty! Let my
dear wife and child live in peace and honour
before Thee!”

He could not eat a morsel of breakfast—he
had scarcely tasted food or drink for
two whole days—and he could not rest in
the lodgings. He wandered out with his
load of misery upon him. He was a man
who seldom read the newspapers, and he
did not think of buying one now, nor did
it even occur to him to scan the contents-bills
set outside the newsvendors’ shops.
He merely wandered on and round, revolving
the horrible business that had
brought him so low, and then he wandered
back in the afternoon faint with exhaustion.

When he entered the sitting-room he saw
a letter set for him on the mantelpiece. It
was from his friend at Upton, and it declared
with delight that, after the stirring
debate on Thursday evening, he (Murray)
had been “unanimously elected” minister.
That was the most unlooked-for stroke
of retribution! To think that he had committed
his sin—nay, his crime!—in headlong
wantonness! To think that at the
very moment when he had committed it he
was being elected to the place which he had
believed the young man had been chosen
to fill! Bitter, bitter was his punishment
beginning to be; for, of course, he could
not, with the stain of crime on his soul if
not on his hands, accept the place—not
even to save his wife and child from
want!

The writer further said that it was desired
he (Murray) should occupy next
Sunday the pulpit which was henceforward
to be his. What was to be done? Clearly
but one thing: at all costs to occupy the
pulpit on Sunday morning, to lay bare his
soul to the people who had “unanimously”
invited him, and to tell them he could
never more be minister either there or elsewhere.

He sat thus with the letter in his hand,
when the door opened and his wife came in
with the boy asleep in her arms: he had
omitted to write to her since Wednesday.
He rose to his feet, and stood back against
the fire-place.

“Oh, my poor dear!” she cried, when
she saw him. “How terribly ill you look!
Why didn’t you tell me? I felt there was
something wrong with you when I had no
word.” She carefully laid the sleeping
child on the couch and returned to embrace
her husband.

“Don’t, Mary!” said he, keeping her
back.

“Oh, James dear!” she said, clasping
her hands. “What has gone wrong? You
look worn to death!”

[Pg 195]

“Everything’s gone wrong, Mary!” he
answered. “My whole life’s gone wrong!”

“What do you mean?” she asked in
breathless terror. “What have you in your
hand?”

He held out to her the letter, and sat
down and covered his face.

“Oh, but this is good news, James!”
she exclaimed. “You are elected minister
at Upton!”

“I can’t go, Mary! I can no longer be
minister there or anywhere!”

“James, my darling!” She knelt beside
him, and put her arms about him.
“Something has happened to you! Tell
me what it is!” But he held his peace.
“Remember, my dear, that we are all the
world to each other; remember that when
we were married we said we should never
have any secret from each other! Tell me
your trouble, my dear!”

He could not resist her appeal: he told
her the whole story.

“My poor, dear love!” she cried. “How
terribly tried you have been! And I did
not know it!”

“DON’T, MARY!”

“And you don’t shrink from me, Mary?”
said he.

“Shrink from you, my dear husband?”
she demanded. “How can you ask me?
Oh, my darling!”

She kissed his hands and his face, and
covered him with her love and wept over
him.

They sat in silence for a while, and then
he told her what he proposed to do. She
agreed with him that that was the proper
thing.

“We must do the first thing that is right,
whatever may happen to ourselves. Write
and say that you do not feel you can take
more than the morning service. I’ll go
with you, and you shall do as you say—and
the rest is with God.”

Thus it was arranged. And on Sunday
morning they set off together for Upton,
leaving the boy in the care of the landlady.
They had no word to say to each other in
the train, but they held close each other’s
hand. They avoided greetings, and introductions,
and felicitations save from one or
two by keeping close in the vestry till the
hour struck, and the
attendant came to usher
the minister to the pulpit.
He went out and up the
pulpit stairs with a firm
step, but his face was very
pale, his lips were parched,
and his heart was thumping
hard, till he felt as if
it would burst. The first
part of the service was
gone through, and the
minister rose to deliver
his sermon. He gave out
his text, “And Cain
said unto the Lord, ‘My
punishment is greater
than I can bear!’” and
glanced round upon the
congregation, who sat up
wondering what was to
come of that. He repeated
it, and happening
to look down, saw seated
immediately below the
pulpit, looking as well
and self-satisfied as usual,
the young man whom he
had imagined crushed in
the tunnel! The revulsion
of feeling was too
great; the minister put up his hand to his
head, with a cry something between sob and
sigh, tottered, and fell back!

There was a flutter and a rustle of dismay[Pg 196]
throughout the congregation. The
minister’s wife was up the pulpit stairs in
an instant, and she was followed by the
chairman and the young Mr. Lloyd.
Between them they carried the minister
down into the vestry, where a few others
presently assembled.

“Will you run for a doctor, Mr. Lloyd?”
said the chairman.

Hearing the name “Lloyd,” and seeing a
man in minister’s attire, Mrs. Murray
guessed the truth at once.

“I think,” said she, “there is no need for
a doctor, my husband has only fainted. He
has been terribly worried all the year, and
the last week or two especially has told on
him.”

“I thought the other night,” said the
chairman, “that he looked ill.”

“He has not been well since,” said she;
and she continued, turning to Mr. Lloyd,
“I believe he was the more upset that he
thought an accident had happened to you in
the train, Mr. Lloyd.”

“Oh,” said the young man, “it was
nothing. It really served me right for
leaning against a door that was unlatched.
I picked myself up all right.”

The chairman and the others stared;
they clearly had heard nothing of that.

“He is coming round,” said the wife. “If
someone will kindly get me a cab, I’ll take
him home.”

That is the story of the unconfessed crime
of the minister of Upton Chapel, who is
to-day known as a gentle, sweet, and somewhat
shy man, good to all, and especially
tender and patient with all wrong-doers.

[Pg 197]

At the Children’s Hospital.

CONVALESCENT HOME, HIGHGATE.

E want to move Johnny to
a place where there are
none but children; a place
set up on purpose for sick
children; where the good
doctors and nurses pass
their lives with children, talk to none but
children, touch none but children, comfort
and cure none but children.”

Who does not remember that chapter in
“Our Mutual Friend” in which Charles
Dickens described Johnny’s removal—with
his Noah’s Ark and his noble wooden steed—from
the care of poor old Betty to that
of the Hospital for Sick Children in Great
Ormond-street? Johnny is dead—he died
after bequeathing all his dear possessions,
the Noah’s Ark, the gallant horse, and the
yellow bird, to his little sick neighbour—and
his large-hearted creator is dead too;
but the Hospital in Great Ormond-street
still exists—in a finer form than Dickens
knew it—and still receives sick children to
be comforted and cured by its gentle
nurses and good doctors.

And this is how the very first Hospital
for Children came to be founded. Some
fifty years ago, Dr. Charles West, a physician
extremely interested in children and
their ailments, was walking with a companion
along Great Ormond-street. He
stopped opposite the stately old mansion
known as No. 49, which was then “to
let,” and said, “There! That is the future
Children’s Hospital. It can be had cheap,
I believe, and it is in the midst of a district
teeming with poor.” The house was known
to the Doctor as one with a history. It
had been the residence of a great and
kindly man—the famous Dr. Richard
Mead, Court Physician to Queen Anne and
George the First, and it is described by a
chronicler of the time as a “splendidly-fitted
mansion, with spacious gardens looking out
into the fields” of St. Pancras. Another
notable tenant of the mansion was the Rev.
Zachary Macaulay, father of Lord Macaulay,
and a co-worker with Clarkson and Wilberforce
for the abolition of slavery.

Dr. Charles West pushed his project for[Pg 198]
turning the house into a hospital for sick
children with such effect that a Provisional
Committee was formed, which held its first
recorded meeting on January 30, 1850,
under the presidency of the philanthropic
banker Joseph Hoare. As a practical outcome
of these and other meetings, the
mansion and grounds were bought, and the
necessary alterations were made to adapt
them for their purpose. A “constitution”
also was drawn up—which obtains to this
day—and in that it was set down that the
object of the Hospital was threefold:—”(1)
The Medical and Surgical Treatment of
Poor Children; (2) The Attainment and
Diffusion of Knowledge regarding the
Diseases of Children; and (3) The Training
of Nurses for Children.” So, in the
February of 1852—exactly nine-and-thirty
years ago—the Hospital for Sick Children
was opened, and visitors had displayed to
them the curious sight of ailing children
lying contentedly in little cots in the
splendid apartments still decorated with
flowing figures and scrolls of beautiful blue
on the ceiling, and bright shepherds and
shepherdesses in the panels of the walls—rooms
where the beaux and belles of Queen
Anne and King George, in wigs and
buckle-shoes, in frills and furbelows, had
been wont to assemble; where the kindly
Dr. Mead had learnedly discussed with his
brethren, and where Zachary Macaulay had
presided at many an anti-slavery meeting.
It was, indeed, a haunted house that the
poor sick children had been carried into—haunted,
however, not by hideous spirits of
darkness and crime, but by gentle memories
of Christian charity and loving-kindness.

For some time poor people were shy of
the new hospital. In the first month only
eight cots were occupied out of the ten
provided, and only twenty-four out-patients
were treated. The treatment of these,
however, soon told upon the people, and
by and by more little patients were
brought to the door of the Hospital than
could be received. The place steadily
grew in usefulness and popularity, so that
in five years 1,483 little people occupied its
cots, and 39,300 passed through its out-patient
department. But by 1858 the
hearts of the founders and managers misgave
them; for funds had fallen so low
that it was feared the doors of the Hospital
must be closed. No doubt the anxious and
terrible events of the Crimean War and the
Indian Mutiny had done much to divert
public attention from the claims of the little
folk in 49, Great Ormond-street, but the
general tendency of even kindly people to
run after new things and then to neglect
them had done more. It was then that
Charles Dickens stood the true and practical
friend of the Hospital. He was appealed
to for the magic help of his pen and
his voice. He wrote about the sick children,
and he spoke for them at the annual
dinner of 1858 in a speech so potent to
move the heart and to untie the purse-strings
that the Hospital managers smiled
again; the number of cots was increased to
44, two additional physicians were appointed,
and No. 48 was added to No. 49,
Great Ormond-street.

From that date the institution prospered
and grew, till, in 1869, Cromwell House, at
the top of Highgate-hill (of which more
anon) was opened as a Convalescent Branch
of the Hospital, and in 1872 the first stone
of the present building was laid by the
Princess of Wales, in the spacious garden of
Number Forty-Nine. The funds, however,
were insufficient for the completion of the
whole place, and until 1889 the Hospital
stood with but one wing. Extraordinary
efforts were made to collect money, with
the result that last year the new wing was
begun on the site of the two “stately mansions”
which had been for years the home
of the Hospital. With all this increase, and
the temptation sometimes to borrow rather
than slacken in a good work, the managers
have never borrowed nor run into debt.
They have steadily believed in the excellent
advice which Mr. Micawber made a present
of to his young friend Copperfield, “Annual
income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
nineteen nineteen six: result, happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
twenty pounds ought and six:
result, misery”; and, as a consequence,
they are annually dependent on the voluntary
contributions of kind-hearted people
who are willing to aid them to rescue ailing
little children from “the two grim nurses,
Poverty and Sickness.”

But, in order to be interested in the work
of the Hospital and its little charges, there
is nothing like a personal visit. One
bitterly cold afternoon a little while before
Christmas, we kept an appointment with the
courteous Secretary, and were by him led
past the uniformed porter at the great door,
and up the great staircase to the little
snuggery of Miss Hicks, the Lady Superintendent.
On our way we had glimpses
through glass doors into clean, bright[Pg 199]
wards, which gave a first impression at once
cheerful and soothing, heightened by contrast
with the heavy black cold that oppressed all
life out of doors. By the Secretary we
were transferred to the guidance of Miss
Hicks, who has done more than can here
be told for the prosperity of the Hospital
and the completion of the building. She
led us again downstairs, to begin our tour of
inspection at the very beginning—at the
door of the out-patients’ department. That
is opened at half-past eight every week-day
morning, and in troop crowds of poor
mothers with children of all ages up to
twelve—babies in arms and toddlekins led
by the hand. They pass through a kind of
turnstile and take their seats in the order
of their arrival on rows of benches in a large
waiting-room, provided with a stove, a
lavatory, and a drinking-fountain, with an
attendant nurse and a woman to sell cheap,
wholesome buns baked in the Hospital; for
they may have to wait all the morning
before their turn arrives to go in to the
doctor, who sits from nine to twelve seeing
and prescribing for child after child; and, if
the matter is very serious, sending the poor
thing on into the Hospital to occupy one of
the cosy cots. All the morning this stream
of sad and ailing mothers and children
trickles on out of the waiting-room into the
presence of the keen-eyed, kindly doctor,
out to the window of the great dispensary
(which stretches the whole length of the
building) to take up the medicine ordered,
on past a little box on the wall, which requests
the mothers to “please spare a
penny,” and so out into the street again.
There are two such out-patient departments—one
at either end of the great building—and
there pass through them in a year between
eighteen and nineteen thousand
cases, which leave grateful casual pennies in
the little wall-box to the respectable amount
of £100 a year. It does not need much
arithmetic to reckon that that means no less
than 24,000 pence.

DAISY.

Leaving that lower region (which is, of
course, deserted when we view it in the
afternoon) we re-ascend to look at the little
in-patients. From the first ward we seek
to enter we are admonished by our own
senses to turn back. We have barely
looked in when the faint, sweet odour of
chloroform hanging in the air, the hiss of
the antiseptic-spray machine, and the screens
placed round a cot inform us that one of
the surgeons is conducting an operation.
The ward is all hushed in silence, for the
children are quick to learn that, when the
big, kind-eyed doctor is putting a little
comrade to sleep in order to do some clever
thing to him to make him well, all must be
as quiet as mice. There is no more touching
evidence of the trust and
faith of childhood than the
readiness with which these
children yield themselves to
the influence of chloroform,
and surrender themselves
without a pang of fear into
the careful hands of the doctor.
Sometimes, when an
examination or an operation
is over, there is a little flash
of resentment, as in the case
of the poor boy who, after
having submitted patiently to
have his lungs examined, exclaimed
to the doctor, “I’ll
tell my mother you’ve been
a-squeezing of me!”

We cross to the other side
and enter the ward called after
Queen Victoria. The ward
is quiet, for it is one of those
set apart for medical cases.
Here the poor mites of
patients are almost all lying
weak and ill. On the left,
not far from the door, we come[Pg 200]
upon a pretty and piteous sight. In a cot
roofed and curtained with white, save on
one side, lies a little flaxen-haired girl—a
mere baby of between two and three—named
“Daisy.” Her eyes are open, but
she does not move when we look at her;
she only continues to cuddle to her bosom
her brush and comb, from which, the nurse
tells us, she resolutely refuses to be parted.
She is ill of some kind of growths in the
throat, and on the other side of her cot
stands a bronchial kettle over a spirit-lamp,
thrusting its long nozzle through the
white curtain of the cot to moisten and
mollify the atmosphere breathed by the
little patient. While our artist prepares to
make a sketch, we note that the baby’s
eyes are fixed on the vapours from the
kettle, which are curling and writhing, and
hovering and melting over her. What
does she think of them? Do they suggest
to her at all, child though she is, the dimness
and evanescence of that human life
which she is thus painfully beginning?
Does she wonder what it all means—her
illness, the curling vapour, and the people
near her bed? Poor Daisy! There are
scores of children like her here, and tens
of thousands out of doors, who suffer thus
for the sins of society and the sins of their
parents. It is possible to pity her and
them without reserve, for they have done
nothing to bring these sufferings on themselves.
Surely, then, their parents and
society owe it to them that all things possible
should be done to set them in the
way of health.

And much is certainly done in this
Hospital for Sick Children. We look
round the ward—and what we say of this
ward may be understood to apply to all—and
note how architectural art and sanitary
and medical skill have done their utmost
to make this as perfect a place as can be
contrived for the recovery of health. The
ward is large and lofty, and contains
twenty-one cots, half of which are for boys
and half for girls. The walls have been
built double, with an air space in the
midst, for the sake of warming and
ventilation. The inner face of the walls
is made of glazed bricks of various colours,
a pleasant shade of green being the chief.
That not only has an agreeable effect, but
also ensures that no infection or taint can
be retained—and, to make that surety
doubly sure, the walls are once a month
washed down with disinfectants. Every
ward has attached to it, but completely
outside and isolated, a small kitchen, a
clothes-room, a bath-room, &c. These
are against the several corners of the
ward, and combine to form the towers
which run up in the front and back of
the building. Every ward also has a
stove with double open fireplace, which
serves, not only to warm the room in the
ordinary way, but also to burn, so to say,
and carry away the vitiated air, and, moreover,
to send off warm through the open
iron-work surrounding it fresh air which
comes through openings in the floor from
ventilating shafts communicating with the
outer atmosphere. That is what architectural
and sanitary art has done for
children. And what does not medical and
nursing skill do for them? And tender
human kindness, which is as nourishing to
the ailing little ones as mother’s milk? It
is small reproach against poor parents to
say that seldom do their children know real
childish happiness, and cleanliness, and
comfort, till they are brought into one of
these wards. It is in itself an invigoration
to be gently waited upon and fed by sweet,
comely young nurses, none of whom is
allowed to enter fully upon her duties till she
has proved herself fond of children and
deft to manage them. And what a delight
it must be to have constantly on your bed
wonderful picture-books, and on the tray
that slides along the top rails of your cot
the whole animal creation trooping out of
Noah’s Ark, armies of tin soldiers, and
wonderful woolly dogs with amazing barks
concealed in their bowels, or—if you happen
to be a girl—dolls, dressed and undressed,
of all sorts and sizes! And, lastly, what a
contrast is all this space, and light, and pure
air—which is never hot and never cold—to
the low ceilings and narrow walls, the
stuffiness, and the impurity of the poor
little homes from which the children come.
There, if they are unwell only, they cannot
but toss and cry and suffer on their bed,
exasperate their hard-worked mother, and
drive their home-coming father forth to
drown his sorrows in the flowing bowl:
here they are wrapped softly in a heavenly
calm, ministered to by skilful, tender hands,
and spoken to by soft and kindly voices:
so that they wonder, and insensibly are
soothed and cease to suffer. Until he has
been in a children’s hospital, no one would
guess how thoughtful, and good-tempered,
and contented a sick child can be amid his
strange surroundings.

But we linger too long in this ward.[Pg 201]
With a glance at the chubby, convalescent
boy, “Martin,” asleep in his arm-chair before
the fire—whom we leave our artist companion
to sketch—we pass upstairs to
another medical ward, which promises to
be the liveliest of all; for, as soon as we are
ushered through the door, a cheery voice
rings out from somewhere near the stove:—

“Halloa, man! Ha, ha, ha!”

MARTIN.

We are instantly led with a laugh to the
owner of the voice, who occupies a cot
over against the fire. He is called “Freddy,”
and he is a merry little chap, with dark
hair, and bright twinkling eyes—so young
and yet so active that he is tethered by the
waist to one of the bars at the head of his
bed lest he should fling himself out upon
the floor—so young, and yet afflicted with
so old a couple of ailments. He is being
treated for “chronic asthma and bronchitis.”
He is a child of the slums; he is
by nature strong and merry, and—poor
little chap!—he has been brought to this
pass merely by a cold steadily and ignorantly
neglected. Let us hope that “Freddy”
will be cured, and that he will become a
sturdy and useful citizen, and keep ever
bright the memory of his childish experience
of hospital care and tenderness.

Next to “Freddy” is another kind of
boy altogether. He has evidently been the
pet of his mother at home, as he is the pet
of the nurses here. He is sitting up in his
cot, playing in a serious, melancholy way
with a set of tea-things. He is very pretty.
He has large eyes and a mass of fair curls,
and he looks up in a pensive way that
makes the nurses call him “Bubbles,” after
Sir John Millais’ well-known picture-poster.
He has a knack of saying droll things with
an unconscious seriousness which makes
them doubly amusing. He is shy, however,
and it is difficult to engage him in conversation.
We try to wake his friendliness
by presenting him with a specimen of a
common coin of the realm, but for some
time without effect. For several
seconds he will bend his powerful
mind to nothing but the important
matter of finding a receptacle
for the coin that will be safe, and
that will at the same time constantly
exhibit it to his delighted
eye. These conditions
being at
length fulfilled, he
condescends to
listen to our questions.

Does he like
being in the Hospital?

“Yes. But I’m
goin’ ‘ome on
Kismas Day. My
mother’s comin’ for me.”

We express our pleasure at the news. He
looks at us with his large, pensive eyes, and
continues in the same low, slow, pensive
tone:—

“Will the doctor let me? Eh? Will
he let me? I’ve nearly finished my
medicine. Will I have to finish it all?”

We reluctantly utter the opinion that
very likely he will have to “finish it all”
in order to get well enough to go home.
And then after another remark or two we
turn away to look at other little patients;
but from afar we can see that the child is
still deeply pondering the question. Presently
we hear the slow, pensive voice
call:—

“I say!”

We go to him, and he inquires: “Is
Kismas in the shops? Eh? Is there toys
and fings?”

We answer that the shops are simply
overflowing with Christmas delights, and
again we retire; but by and by the slow,
pensive voice again calls:—

“I say!”

Again we return, and he says: “Will
the doctor come to me on Kismas morning[Pg 202]
and say, ‘Cheer up, Tommy; you’re goin’
‘ome to-day?’ Will he? Eh?”

Poor little boy! Though the nurses
love him, and though he loves his nurses,
he longs for his mother and the “Kismas”
joys of home. And though he looks so
healthy, and has only turned three years,
he has incipient consumption, and his
“Kismas” must be spent either here or in
the Convalescent Home on the top of
Highgate-hill.

CHARLIE, ROBIN, AND CARRIE.

It is impossible, and needless, to go
round all the little beds; it is a constant
tale of children innocently and cheerfully
bearing the punishment of the neglect,
the mistakes, or the sins of their parents,
or of society. Here is a mere baby suffering
from tuberculosis because it has been
underfed; there, and there, and there are
children, boys and girls—girls more frequently—afflicted
with chorea, or St. Vitus’
dance, because their weak nerves have
been overwrought, either with fright at
home or in the streets, or with overwork
or punishment at school; and so on, and
so on, runs the sad and weary tale. But,
before we leave the ward, let us note one
bright and fanciful little picture, crowning
evidence of the kindness of the nurses to
the children, and even of their womanly
delight in them. Near the cheerful glow
of one of the faces of the double-faced
stove, in a fairy-like bassinette—a special gift
to the ward—sit “Robin” and “Carrie,”
two babies decked out as an extraordinary
treat in gala array of white frocks and
ribbons. These gala dresses, it must be
chronicled, are bought by the nurses’ own
money and made in the nurses’ own time
for the particular and Sunday decoration
of their little charges. On the other side
of the stove sits Charlie, a pretty little
fellow, on his bed-sofa.