Ten years in a Portsmouth slum

The sight of true heroism is the best incentive to learn to be heroic oneself, a virtue, as you may guess, greatly needed in a house like ours. The heroism of the soldier who dies on the battle-field is as nothing compared with the true heroism of one who endures long agonies of pain and suffering without murmur, who prays in the morning, “Oh, that it were evening,” and in the evening, “Oh, that it were morning.” Oftentimes it is this sight which is the only witness for God in the lives of the poor. “It is expedient that one man die for the people.” And God granted to us, during several years of our work, this sight of a living death. His father had been a staff-sergeant in the army, but his mother had married again into great poverty and distress. He had struggled as a tram-conductor as long as there was breath in his body, and then crawled into a wretched bed in a wretched room, shared with other members of his family, to die without one single comfort, one alleviation of all his intolerable pain. But even this loneness in the midst of his own was forbidden him, and impatiently he was told to go to the workhouse to die. I shall never forget his look of thankfulness, when I said, “If you don’t mind the noise and racket of our house, come and die with us.” And as he crossed our threshold the spirit of peace came with him; and I think it has never altogether passed away. The good food and wine, and better medical attendance, above all, the loving unceasing attention of Mary, our housekeeper, brought him back again from the grave. He lived altogether six years with us, every summer strengthening into a little activity of body, tending our little garden across the street, sometimes almost crawling there on his hands and knees. The very flowers seemed to know him; they have never grown so luxuriantly since. Surely flowers recognise love more quickly than men, and respond to it more truly. But then the whole house was his garden, and so gently, and wisely, and lovingly did he treat the roughest and most degraded, that they all seemed to respond to the magic of his touch. Oftentimes, when the whole house was in bed, he would crawl down from his room to tell me of someone’s trouble which his love had discovered. Through all the winter he was in agonies of pain, dreading every breath, and yet welcoming each breath lest he should suffocate; above all things utterly unconscious of his own influence, until the day of his death bewailing the expense and trouble that he was to others, never measuring that in a true and real sense he was God’s angel of peace dwelling amongst us, for it often seemed to us as if one single breath would have carried him to that resting-place which he needed so grievously. No pleasure was so great in those hours of agony, when he could not speak or move, as to know that some poor obstinate, hopeless one, was learning the only lesson his dull soul could learn by watching his pain. So trusted was he that everyone in all the house gave their money into his care, not only the boys, but myself as well, for he kept all the Parish Collections, until they were large enough to go down to the bank. No one would have dared to have stolen from him. And then when the end was very near, and the last Sacrament had been received, he asked to be left alone. After a quarter of an hour or so I opened, as silently as I could, the door, and found him kneeling beside his bed praying as I thought his last prayer; but he had learned that divinest of all secrets, that prayer must perfect itself in service, and so his poor death-chilled hands had gathered each one’s little money into its own heap, lest he should even seem to have been unfaithful. As we carried him through the streets to the church the night before his funeral, there was not a dry eye in all the parish. All the next morning when the Masses for his repose were being said, the church was crowded as on a Sunday, factory girls and Dockyar-dmen giving up their day’s work. His memory was perpetuated in the new church by the beautifying of the little altar, which in the old church he had loved so well, for the people had collected over £14 for that purpose. Ah! would that Bishop Thorold had lived only two months longer, for his eyes filled with tears, and his heart, so long a parish priest’s, could realise exactly the importance of such a memory.

Shall I tell you of another of our saints? If some ten years ago you had passed down the Hard at Portsmouth, you would have seen William Dore, a mudlark, searching for pennies in the filthy mud of the harbour for the amusement of good-natured stupids, who throw them to such-like boys. Thus he earned the pennies which were eagerly taken from him when he gained his home. He was what our boys would call a little “off,” else he would not have been so imposed on by a wretched step-father. The mother, blind and paralysed, lying on a few rags in a corner of the room, strove to put some thoughts of decency into two wayward girls—one older and one younger than Willie—earning, as girls do in that part of Portsmouth, sometimes a shilling or sixpence a night, and yet with a curious pathos striving to keep from the blind mother the knowledge of how it was earned. There is a court near called White’s Row, the most disgraceful place in that most disgraceful part of the town; but it is redeemed by a little chapel belonging to the mother church of Holy Trinity, where Mr. Marriott, I think, first, and afterwards Mr. Lloyd, attracted Willie. He was one of those extraordinary natures in whom religion seems to come spontaneously; for they had hardly taught him one fact when he seemed to have grasped the whole of religion. The first consequence was that he must leave his home. He had become too old to be a mudlark. The only other living open to him was a kind of hanging about and picking up odd sixpences from people whom he knew, money which was gained by sin. Then the mother died, so he came to us altogether. Whether it was inherited from her, or due to the awful exposure of his early years, the nerves of his eyes weakened, and he too became blind. But I think the pathos of his blindness was almost as great an influence for good as Ross’s more apparent suffering. His one idea, to give amusement, was his method of repaying the little we did for him, and so he would learn comic songs, and sing them after dinner. Often when he knew I was troubled, I would hear his tap at the door, for he could find his way everywhere about the house, and he would say, “I think I could make you laugh if you would let me sing”; and then he would put his hands upon your head, just as a little child would do, and say, “Your head is better now.” It is such faith that works miracles of healing to-day. Sometimes strange boys in the house, who did not know him, would gibe at him, or, with the horrid cruelty of boys, because he was blind, push or pinch him. Then a burst of ungoverned temper, and then an equal terror of remorse. I have found him oftentimes lying on the floor in front of the altar, having groped his way into church in penitence for these sins. His one desire, to do something for the Mission, was gratified by allowing him to become organ-blower, though, indeed, it was an arrangement open to objection, especially when there were strangers in the church. He sat in a place in which everybody saw him, and his poor blind eyes staring into the unknown, and his thick-lipped mouth forming all manner of grimace as he sang, moved people almost to laughter. We never knew how he learned psalms and hymns and chants. I have thought myself that some angel must have taught him. During catechising, too, when all the rest of the school had failed, Willie could nearly always give the correct answer. God did not will that he should die with us, for at last the doctor said that he must go to the imbecile ward in the union. The day before he died, coming out of a trance of many hours, he said, “Give my love to the Sunday School children; tell them I have answered every question,” and then drawing my head quite close down to his mouth, “You will wear the black cope at my funeral.”

“There is a little boy just come into Alfred Street,” the district visitor said one day. “He is fourteen, but he looks like a child of five, and lives and sleeps in a little perambulator. There is no one to look after him, for his mother is in a lunatic asylum, and his father goes out at six in the morning, and does not come back till night.” And so exactly I found him, our dear little Harry, all alone in this dark room in his perambulator, and on a little shelf, which his poor twisted hands could reach, his cold and wretched meals apportioned for the day. At first when we brought him to the house he was very timid and very nervous, but he soon brightened up. He never really lived with us, for his father loved him so dearly that he had to go home at night to be with him, but he was with us all day, and his little tender thread was soon woven into the woof of our common life, and on all our rough people his influence was as the influence of a little child. Sometimes, when all else fails, the roughest beasts are led by a little child. His face would wince with pain, when any boy spoke harshly to another, and I have come in and found him almost in an agony of fear, when some rough horse-play was going on amongst them. I am sure Dr. Fearon will never forget wheeling him in his little perambulator up to the altar, to be confirmed by the Bishop. I do not think I have ever seen such devotion to the Blessed Sacrament as in that little soul. In it he saw not only Jesus, but our Father, and even heaven as well. Strange, wonderful stories he told me of what he had seen there, for sometimes he would doze all day by the fire in the dining-room, in my study, or in Mary’s kitchen, and then only say, “I was dreaming of the Blessed Sacrament. Do you think someone would wheel me to Mass to-morrow morning?” I remember so well kissing away the last tears I saw in his eyes, as he held up in his little shrunken hands some woollen slippers, which he had made for me, a little secret for my birthday, and found that there was not work enough done, and then fell back saying, “I shall never live to finish them,” and died that night.

These were but a few of the saints who have influenced our home. But out in the parish there were just as saintly lives lived, women’s lives, so we could not bring them in to die with us. Moore’s Square is the most unhealthy spot in our district. It has never been free from typhoid fever since I went there, and it is no wonder, for there are slaughter-houses all round it. All of the houses are poor and squalid, and more or less out of repair. Martha lived in the Square. Her husband was a rough sailor, who coasted about. Often away from home he would get converted, and clergymen would write to me about him, but he generally signalled his return with an outburst of drunkenness. More than once I have known all the furniture broken up, and once her arm badly burnt, because a lighted paraffin lamp had been knocked down. She had never heard anything about religion, till she came into church by chance one day and heard me preaching about the Blessed Sacrament. Very often our sermons consisted of saying the same thing over and over again, and this day I was speaking of the Sacrament as “the Blood of God.” I must have said the words very often, for she came round to my house that night to ask me if it was really true that God had shed His very Blood for her. It was a revelation to her of a love so pure and so true, a love that had forced the Eternal out of compassion for us to take to Himself Blood that he might shed it for our sakes. She could neither read nor write, and as she was suffering from cancer, she had not much time to learn. Once she was operated on, and as she went off under the chloroform she whispered to me, “God’s Blood.” But it soon began to grow again, and day by day we could see her bodily strength decaying; such horrid decay. When you read the lives of the Saints you think that kissing the sores of the lepers is an exaggeration, but it is being done continually by the poor for the poor. Their rough hands are soothed to tenderest nursing, and their rude, vulgar, boisterous ways taught true refinement by the compassion which they feel. Hers was a very tedious case, and neighbours have children of their own, and cannot watch all day, though oftentimes all night, and so the little daughter of twelve, who would rather have been playing than tending her mother, was tied to the table. One day a neighbour, hearing cries, ran in, and the child explained, “Mother is silly: she is crying for the Blood of God.” How grateful I was that the Blessed Sacrament was reserved that day! It was in truth her “viaticum.”

We could never make out why, however ill she was, an old woman—Maria I will call her—would never allow us to go up to her bedroom. She was always huddled up in a little chair, covered with a thin old shawl; sometimes one doubted whether there was anything beneath it. She was quite a lady, with a beautiful pinched face, bright cheerful eyes, yet so sunken that the light was as stars seen from a well. So gracious, always doing the honours of her little home, and yet so reticent about the room upstairs; till one day suddenly taken ill at night, a neighbour discovered she had no bed—had not had one for many years. She had kept a little school, and many of the women round had been her pupils; she could not bear that they should know she needed, else they would stint themselves for her. I shall never forget how she kissed my hands the first time I saw her in the bed we got for her, and said, “I pray God you may never be as thankful for a bed as I am for this.” And then, after a little while, when we passed by, she would not let us in, saying, “I can go to church and hear you, so I won’t trouble you to-day. I know you are very busy.” And the same thing to the district visitors, till my sister Geraldine, who, because she is the shortest, is the bravest of us all, found the bed was pawned. The poor old lady held down her head, and looked so ashamed, and would not talk about it, till a man across the street cried out, “That d——d ruffian of a grandson came out of gaol the other day, and has pawned it.” Not only did he pawn the bed, but, by his badness, he drove her to such sorrow that she lost all hope; her old body could bear no more, and, falling downstairs, she was wounded past recovery. The neighbours called in the police, but the old woman’s last words were—“He did not push me.” But though the coroner and jury acquitted him, the neighbours look askance at him to-day.

Many cases like this forced upon me the need of some kind of alms-houses, where I could put old ladies whose only other home was the workhouse. And so we turned the cottages standing on the intended site of the new church into homes for five or six old ladies, and when these had to be pulled down we bought other ones, so that the Mission possesses to-day twelve houses, in which five old couples and nine or ten old ladies live. It has been a part of our work most blessed; and as I have never been able to get away, owing to stress of work, for the last five years, and people have kindly given me money for my holidays, this holiday money has bought most of the alms-houses. Dear old ladies, I wonder if they miss me to-day as much as I miss them. I believe the purest happiness I have ever had in all my whole life is knowing and seeing their happiness. The houses are all freehold, and the old souls pay sixpence or a shilling a week, so there is enough to pay taxes and repairs, sometimes even a balance over. Granny is not always honoured in England as she is in Germany; she does not always get the warmest seat by the fire, or the first helping from the dish; she is sometimes the drudge of the whole family; minding the baby and the little children; even when her head is splitting, the children with that shrill voice which discovers every aching nerve, cry, “It is only granny, she does not matter.” Sometimes, when the house is full, she is put in the corner, where, in the days far gone, she used to put that strong, stalwart man, who now does not take the trouble to defend her.

Thank God, the workhouse is far more humane to-day in England than it was, but the remembrance of what it was, has left a feeling, a sentiment, if you like to call it so, which renders it abhorrent to every honest and earnest man and woman. I pray God the time is coming when we shall recognise out-door relief a great deal more. The Portsmouth Guardians were wonderfully good in this respect; they tried to keep people out of the house by allowing out-door relief. And I cannot speak in too high praise of the parish doctor, Mr. Colt, and our two relieving officers, Mr. Gardiner and Mr. Vine. There is no man more admirable than the conscientious poor-law doctor. Think of attending people who never obey any of your directions, who take your medicine three doses at a time, and then come for more, who send for you continually. And though our Union was, I think, as good as most—I was on the Board of Guardians for a considerable time—I wonder whether any of us Guardians would desire to go into it ourselves. Thank God we have now four or five lady Guardians in Portsmouth, who will do for the women and children what we never could do. I remember discovering after weeks of visiting in the schools, hideous and horrid things that a woman’s eye would have seen at once. I had to see three girls who were going out to service. I noticed they used their aprons instead of their pocket-handkerchiefs, and when I made enquiries, thinking this would be an obstacle to their becoming servants, they told me that they were only allowed pocket-handkerchiefs one day in the year, when they went out for their annual treat. One day at four o’clock I found them all at tea, and floating on the top of the liquid so called were lumps of grease and fat. I discovered that they had eaten their dinner of soup at one o’clock, and that tea was being served in the same porringer. A little lad broke his arm on a Saturday, and though he was bathed and dressed by the attendants, it was not known till the Tuesday. Indeed, the whole system of the schools was wrong. They ought to have been in the country, miles away from the main house. Better still, the children ought to have been boarded out. I doubt if any institutions for children are right, but I have no doubt at all that our present barrack-system is altogether inhuman and scandalous. And the same thing might be said of the Infirmary, in which there were several hundred patients, and only one trained nurse to look after them. The very sick and dying were left to the tender mercies of any old porter who had wit enough to gain a few extra pence by becoming a wardsman or wardswoman. Difficult surgical cases were nursed by these utterly inefficient persons; people were left to die alone, without anyone to moisten their lips. I am very proud to think that this has been mended now, and that there are certified nurses, though, perhaps, not yet a sufficient number.

The real difficulty of the whole workhouse system consists in the want of classification. There are numbers of people who spend their lives in workhouses, going from one to another. In many cases the Union is actually a premium on idleness. You and I cannot imagine a man who could like this sort of life, but such people will remain with us, until there is some system of registration, some method by which those, who are just entering on the life, may be checked and stopped at the critical moment, when a helping hand would prevent them becoming casuals. Above all we must separate from these loafers those who are forced in old age to go into the workhouse. A great deal, I know, is being done, but it is all being done in an institutional way, without any individualising, without any humanity. If there is one place in the world where the miserable divisions amongst Christian people are most manifest, it is in the workhouse. It is this, I am sure, that prevents it being worked on a Christian method. The Church of England would be jealous if it were done by Dissenters, the Dissenters equally jealous if it were done by the Church of England. So long as this ministering to the poor, which is the highest and most Christ-like of all Christian duties, is done by officials, it cannot ever be done in a Christian way to any extent, though I know, of course, there are many exceptions. And however desirous the officials are under present circumstances, there rises the question of the rates, rates managed by Guardians, who are often recklessly extravagant in all the outward part of their organisation, which is seen by the public, and shockingly mean as regards the small expenditure which makes all the difference between comfort and discomfort.

Honestly, one’s deepest disappointment about the working man, is his utter want of interest and understanding at all times of municipal and other elections. The new method of electing Guardians may alter this, but I very much doubt it. I suppose it is wrong to be impatient with people only recently enfranchised, and, perhaps, not yet understanding their responsibilities; but surely it is the part of the clergy to preach, in season and out of season, the grave duty of every man who has a vote for an office in the town in which he lives, that every man must recognise that God will hold him responsible for that vote, and that, if he gives it wrongly, it will be no excuse that his political club, or the kindly Primrose lady, advised him so to give it. I am very grateful indeed for the experience I gained both on the Board of Guardians and on the School Board. It brought me in contact with many men of very different opinions to my own, who treated me with great kindness and consideration, and for the majority of whom I entertain a very deep and true respect. But sometimes I could not help feeling that on the School Board we were not all educationalists, and on the Board of Guardians some were rather the guardians of the rates than the guardians of the poor. Above all, the expenses of management and the creation of plant were altogether out of proportion to the amount expended on the objects which we had in view. I venture to hope that the day is not far distant when that fetish of red tape, which strangles almost all English enthusiasm, will cease to dominate us, and when simple Christian common sense will become the method by which, at any rate, two of the most important of our duties, the educating of our children and the caring for our poor, are carried out. But it will not be done until electors choose the best man for either post—the only consideration being to get the best man—and we rid ourselves of that hateful thought that everyone desires some gain, either for himself, or for the church or party to which he belongs, by taking office.

And surely, if every citizen has his municipal duty, he has an imperial duty as well. I know that many people were very displeased with me, because I took what is called an active part in politics. Does a doctor or a lawyer cease to be a politician because he has got clients? Why then should a clergyman, because he has got parishioners? I quite hold that it would be wrong for him to canvass or to influence his people privately as to their votes; but I believe, on the other hand, that if he is conscious that he has anything to say worth saying on the question of politics, or that might help his neighbours to form a truer, better, or nobler judgment on these questions, it is his bounden duty to say it. This was a policy I always endeavoured to pursue. I never once asked a single person to vote my way, but I did, when opportunity occurred, go upon the platform and tell people what my opinions were, and I am not the least ashamed of having done so.