Workhouse Characters Part 1

Workhouse Characters.

by Margaret Wynne Nevinson.

PREFACE

These sketches have been published in various papers during the last thirteen years. Many of the characters are life portraits, and the wit and wisdom of the common people have been faithfully recorded in a true Boswellian spirit; others are _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ (if one may still quote Goethe), but all have been suggested by actual fact and experience.

During the last ten years great reforms have been taking place in the country. In 1908 the Old Age Pensions Act came into force, and the weekly miracle of 5s. a week (now 7s. 6d.) changed the world for the aged, giving them the liberty and independence, which ought to be the right of every decent citizen in the evening of life.

The order by which a pauper husband had the right to detain his wife in the workhouse by "his marital authority" is now repealed. A case some years ago of this abominable breach of the law of Habeas Corpus startled the country, especially the ratepayers, and even the House of Commons were amazed at their own laws. The order was withdrawn in 1913 on the precedent of the judgment given in the case of the Queen _v._ Jackson (1891), when it was decided "that the husband has no right, where his wife refuses to live with him, to take her person by force and restrain her of her liberty" (60 L. J. Q. B. 346).

Many humane reforms and regulations for the cla.s.sification of inmates were made in 1913, and the obnoxious words "pauper" and "workhouse" have been abolished; but before the authorities rightly grasped the changes the war was upon us, the workhouses were commandeered as military hospitals, the inmates sent into other inst.i.tutions, and all reforms lapsed in overcrowded and understaffed buildings.

Once again the Poor Law is in the melting-pot, and it seems as if now it will pa.s.s into the limbo of the past with other old, unhappy far-off things.

EUNICE SMITH--DRUNK

The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes, But Here and There as strikes the Player goes; And He that toss'd you down into the Field, _He_ knows about it all--He knows--_He_ knows.

"Eunice Smith, drunk, brought by the police."

The quaint Scriptural name, not heard for years, woke me up from the dull apathy to which even the most energetic Guardian is reduced at the end of a long Board meeting, and I listened intently as the Master of the workhouse went on to explain that the name Smith had been given by the woman, but her clothes and a small book, which the doctor said was Homer, in Greek, were marked Eunice Romaine.

Eunice Romaine--the name took me back down long vistas of years to a convent school at Oxford, to the clanging bells of Tom Tower, to the vibrant note of boys' voices in college chapels, to the scent of flowers and incense at early celebrations, to the high devotions and ideals of youth, to its pa.s.sionate griefs and joys. Eunice Romaine had been the genius of our school--one of those gifted students in whom knowledge seems innate; her name headed every examination list, and every prize in the form fell to her; other poor plodders had no chance where she was.

From school she had gone with many a scholarship and exhibition to Cambridge, where she had taken a high place in the Cla.s.sical Tripos; later I heard she had gone as Cla.s.sical Mistress to one of the London High Schools, then our paths had separated, and I heard no more.

I went down to the Observation Ward after the meeting, where between a maniacal case lying in a strait-waistcoat, alternately singing hymns and blaspheming, and a tearful melancholic who begged me to dig up her husband's body in the north-east corner of the garden, I saw my old friend and cla.s.smate.

She was lying very quiet with closed eyes; her hair had gone grey before her time, and her face was pinched and scored with the deep perpendicular lines of grief and disappointment; but I recognized the school-girl Eunice by the broad, intellectual brow and by the delicate, high-bred hands.

"She is rather better," said the nurse in answer to my question, "but she has had a very bad night, screaming the whole time at the rats and mice she thought she saw, and the doctor fears collapse, as her heart is weak; but if she can get some sleep she may recover."

Sleep in the crowded Mental Ward, with maniacs shrieking and shouting around! But exhausted Nature can do a great deal, and when I called some days later I found my old friend discharged to the General Sick Ward, a placard above her head setting forth her complaint as "chronic alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver, and cardiac disease."

She recognized me at once, but with the apathy of weakness she expressed neither surprise nor interest at our meeting, and only after some weeks had pa.s.sed I found her one evening brighter and better, and anxious to go out. Over an impromptu banquet of grapes and cakes we fell into one of those intimate conversations that come so spontaneously but are so impossible to force, and I heard the short history of a soul's tragedy.

"Just after I left Cambridge mother died. She told me on her death-bed that I had the taint of drink in the blood, and urged me never to touch alcohol. My father--a brilliant scholar and successful journalist--had killed himself with drink whilst we were all quite young; mother had kept us all away at school, so that we should not know, and had borne her burden alone. I promised light-heartedly; I was young and strong, and had not known temptation. After mother died I was very lonely: both my brothers had gone to Canada. My father's cla.s.sical and literary abilities had come only to me: their talents were purely mechanical and they had never been able to acquire book knowledge. I was not very happy teaching. Cla.s.sics had come to me so easily--hereditary question again--that I never could understand the difficulties of the average girl, and I had very little patience with dullness and stupidity.

However, very soon I became engaged to be married, and lived for some time in a fool's paradise of love and joy. My _fiance_ was a literary man--I will not tell you his name, as he is one of those who have arrived--but it is difficult to start, and we waited about two years before he got an appointment sufficiently secure to make marriage possible. I was very busy; we had taken a flat, and I was engaged in choosing furniture and preparing my humble trousseau. I had given notice at the school, and the wedding-day was within a fortnight, when one morning I got a letter from my _fiance_, couched in wild, allegorical language, bemoaning his unworthiness, but asking me to release him from his engagement, as he found his love for me had been a mirage now that he had come across his twin-soul. I read the letter over and over again, hardly grasping the meaning, when there fell from the envelope a little newspaper cutting that I had overlooked--it was the announcement of his marriage three days before to his twin-soul.

"Still I was unable to realize what had happened. I kept saying over and over to myself, 'Charlie is married,' but in my heart I did not believe it. That afternoon the head-mistress came to see me; she was very kind, and took me herself to a brain specialist, who said I had had a nervous shock, that I ought to have a rest, and mountain air would be best for me. The council of my school agreed to take me back again, and allow me a term's holiday on full pay. One of my colleagues (it was holiday-time) came with me to Switzerland, and there, amid the ice and snow of the high lat.i.tudes, the full understanding of what had come to me dawned upon my mind, and I realized the pangs of despised love, of jealousy, and hate. A _Nachschein_ of Christianity suddenly made me rush back to England in terror of what might happen; it is easy to commit suicide in Switzerland, and a certain black precipice near the hotel drew me ever towards it with baleful fascination. Some one dragged me again to Harley Street, and this time the great specialist advised sea air and cheerful society. The latter prescription is not available for lonely and jilted high-school mistresses in London, but I tried sea air, and it did me good. I don't think for a moment that the doctor realized that I was practically off my head; the terribly obsession of love and jealousy had me in its grip. It had taken me some time to fall in love, and I could not fall out again to order, whilst the knowledge that the man who had broken his promise to me now belonged to another woman was driving me to madness. One day I went down to bathe, and suddenly determined to end my woe. I swam out far to sea--so far that I judged it beyond my force ever to get back; but though my will commanded my limbs to cease their work they refused to obey. I was always a very strong swimmer, and I landed again more humiliated than ever: I had not even the pluck to end my sorrows.

"After that I went back to work; mountains and sea had no message for me. I was better sitting at my desk in the cla.s.s-room, trying to drill Latin and Greek into the unresponsive brains of girls.

"I got through the days, but the nights were terrible; all the great army of forsaken lovers know that the nights are the worst. I used to lie awake hour after hour, sobbing and crying for mercy and strength to endure, and I used to batter my head against the floor, not knowing any one could hear. One night a fellow-lodger, who slept in the next room, came in and begged me to be quiet; she had her work to do, and night after night I kept her awake with my sobbing. 'I suppose it is all about some wretched man,' she observed coolly; 'but, believe me, they are not worth the love we give them. I left my husband some years ago, finding that he had been carrying on with a woman who called herself my friend.

At first I cried and sobbed just as you do now; but I felt such a fool making such a fuss about a man who had played it down so low, that I made up my mind I would forget him; and in time you will get over this, and give thanks that you have been delivered from a liar and a traitor.'

"She gave me a gla.s.s of strong brandy and water; it was the first I had ever tasted, and I remember how it ran warm through my veins, and how I slept as I had not slept for months.

"My fellow-lodger and I became great friends; she was quite an uneducated woman, the matron of a laundry, but she braced me up like a tonic with her keen humour and experience of life.

"How strange it seems for a middle-aged drunkard in a pauper infirmary to be telling this ancient love-tale, and posing as one of 'the aristocracy of pa.s.sionate souls,' But _tout pa.s.se tout ca.s.se_, and after years of anguish and strife I woke up one bright spring morning and felt that I was cured and for ever free of the wild pa.s.sion of love. That day always stands out as the happiest of my life. I shall never forget it.

It was Sat.u.r.day, and a holiday; and I got on my bicycle and rode off for miles far into the country singing the _Benedicite_ for pure joy. I lunched at a little inn on the Thames, and ordered some champagne to celebrate the recovery of my liberty.

"But by strange irony of fate the very day I escaped from the toils of love I fell under another tyranny--that of alcohol. Now, Peg"--I started at the unfamiliar old nickname of my school days--"I believe you are crying. Having shed more than my own share of tears, nothing irritates me so much as to see other women cry, and if you don't stop I'll not say another word."

I drew my handkerchief across my eyes and admitted to a cold in the head.

"Shortly afterward I received notice to leave the High School. I did not mind--I always hated teaching, and I found that I had the power of writing; an article that I could flash off in a few hours would keep me for a week, and I could create my own paradise for half a crown--now, Peg, you are crying again. But of late life was not so bad. I enjoyed writing, and shall always be thankful I can read Greek; besides, I was not always drunk; the craving only takes me occasionally, and at its worst alcohol is a kinder master than love. I shall be well enough to go out in a few days; bring me some pens and paper, and my editor will advance me some money. I am going to write an article on workhouse infirmaries that will startle the public. What do you know of workhouses? You are only a Guardian; 'tis we musicians (or rather inmates) who know."

The article never got written. The next day I found Eunice very ill; she was unconscious and delirious till her death, reeling off sonorous hexameters from Homer and Virgil and stately pa.s.sages from the Greek tragedians.

We spared her a pauper funeral, and a few old school and college friends gathered round the grave. A white-haired professor of world fame was there also, and he shook hands with us as we parted at the cemetery gates. "Poor Eunice!" he said, his aged face working painfully. "One of the best Greek scholars of the day, and the daughter of my oldest friend. Both of them geniuses, and both of them with the same taint in the blood; but I feel I ought not to have let her come to this."

I think we all felt the same as we walked sadly home.

DETAINED BY MARITAL AUTHORITY

(By the law of England the mothers of illegitimate children are often in a better position than their married sisters.)

An unusual sense of expectancy pervaded the young women's ward; Mrs.

Cleaver had gone down "to appear before the Committee," and though the ways of committees are slow, and pauper-time worthless, it was felt that her ordeal was being unduly protracted.

"She's having a dose, she is," said a young woman walking up and down, futilely patting the back of a shrieking infant. "I 'ate appearing afore them committees; last time I was down I called the lady 'Sir' and the gentleman 'Mum,' and my 'eart went pitter-patter in my breast so that you might have knocked me down with a feather. 'Ere she is--well, my dear, and you do look bad----"

"Them committees allus turn me dead sick, and, being a stout woman, my boots feel too tight for me, and I goes into a perspiration, and the great drops go rolling off my forehead. Well, 'e's kept 'is word, and got the law and right of England behind 'im."

What reporters call a "sensation" made itself felt through the ward; the inmates gathered closer round Mrs. Cleaver, and screaming infants were rocked and patted and soothed with much vigour and little result.

"Well," said Mrs. Cleaver, sinking on to the end of a bed, "I went afore the Committee and I says, 'I want to take my discharge,' I says; I applied last week to the Master, but mine got at 'im first, and Master up and says--

"'No, Mrs. Cleaver, you can't go,' he says; 'your 'usband can't spare you,' he says, 'wants you to keep 'im company in 'ere,' he says.

"'Is that true, Master?' says the little man wot sits lost in the big chair.

"'That is so, sir,' says Master, and then 'e outs with a big book and reads something very learned and brain-confusing that I did not rightly understand, as to how a 'usband may detain his wife in the workhouse by his marital authority.

"'Good 'eavens!' says the little lady Guardian 'er wot's dressed so shabby. 'Is that the law of England?'