The Seven Curses of London. James Greenwood
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that it’s lucky.”
It is the expense attending the process that makes matrimony the exception and not the rule amongst these people. At least this is their invariable excuse. And here, as bearing directly on the question of “neglected infants,” I may make mention of a practice that certain well-intentioned people are adopting with a view to diminishing the prevalent sin of the unmarried sexes herding in their haunts of poverty, and living together as man and wife.
The said practice appears sound enough on the surface. It consists simply in marrying these erring couples gratis. The missionary or scripture reader of the district who, as a rule, is curiously intimate with the family affairs of his flock, calls privately on those young people whose clock, if they have one, ticks to a barren wall, and makes the tempting offer—banns put up, service performed, beadle and pew opener satisfied, and all free! As will not uncommonly happen, if driven into a corner for an excuse, the want of a jacket or a gown “to make a ’spectable ’pearance in” is pleaded; the negociator makes a note of it, and in all probability the difficulty is provided against, and in due course the marriage is consummated.
This is all very well as far as it goes, but to my way of thinking the scheme is open to many grave objections. In the first place the instinct that incites people to herd like cattle in a lair is scarcely the same as induces them to blend their fortunes and live “for better, for worse” till the end of their life. It requires no great depth of affection on the man’s part to lead him to take up with a woman who, in consideration of board and lodging and masculine protection will create some semblance of a home for him. In his selection of such a woman he is not governed by those grave considerations that undoubtedly present themselves to his mind when he meditates wedding himself irrevocably to a mate. Her history, previous to his taking up with her, may be known to him, and though perhaps not all that he could wish, she is as good to him as she promised to be, and they get along pretty well and don’t quarrel very much.
Now, although not one word can be urged in favour of this iniquitous and shocking arrangement, is it quite certain that a great good is achieved by inducing such a couple to tie themselves together in the sacred bonds of matrimony? It is not a marriage of choice as all marriages should be. If the pair had been bent on church marriage and earnestly desired it, it is absurd to suppose that the few necessary shillings, the price of its performance, would have deterred them. If they held the sacred ceremony of so small account as to regard it as well dispensed with as adopted, it is no very great triumph of the cause of religion and morality that the balance is decided by a gown or a jacket, in addition to the good will of the missionary (who, by-the-bye, is generally the distributor of the alms of the charitable) being thrown into the scale.
To be sure the man is not compelled to yield to the persuasions of those who would make of him a creditable member of society; he is not compelled to it, but he can hardly be regarded as a free agent. If the pair have children already, the woman will be only too anxious to second the solicitation of her friend, and so secure to herself legal protection in addition to that that is already secured to her through her mate’s acquired regard for her. Then it is so difficult to combat the simple question, “Why not?” when all is so generously arranged—even to the providing a real gold ring to be worn in place of the common brass make-believe—and nothing remains but to step round to the parish church, where the minister is waiting, and where in a quarter of an hour, the great, and good, and lasting work may be accomplished. The well-meaning missionary asks, “Why not?” The woman, urged by moral or mercenary motives, echoes the momentous query, and both stand with arms presented, in a manner of speaking, to hear the wavering one’s objection. The wavering one is not generally of the far-seeing sort. In his heart he does not care as much as a shilling which way it is. He does not in the least trouble himself from the religious and moral point of view. When his adviser says, “Just consider how much easier your conscience will be if you do this act of justice to the woman whom you have selected as your helpmate,” he wags his head as though admitting it, but having no conscience about the matter he is not very deeply impressed. Nine times out of ten the summing-up of his deliberation is, “I don’t care; it won’t cost me nothing; let ’em have their way.”
But what, probably, is the upshot of the good missionary’s endeavours and triumph? In a very little time the gilt with which the honest adviser glossed the chain that was to bind the man irrevocably to marriage and morality wears off. The sweat of his brow will not keep it bright; it rusts it. He feels, in his own vulgar though expressive language, that he has been “bustled” into a bad bargain. “It is like this ’ere,” a matrimonial victim of the class once confided to me; “I don’t say as she isn’t as good as ever, but I’m blowed if she’s all that better as I was kidded to believe she would be.”
“But if she is as good as ever, she is good enough.”
“Yes, but you haven’t quite got the bearing of what I mean, sir, and I haint got it in me to put it in the words like you would. Good enough before isn’t good enough now, cos it haint hoptional, don’t you see? No, you don’t. Well, look here. S’pose I borrer a barrer. Well, it’s good enough and a conwenient size for laying out my stock on it. It goes pooty easy, and I pays eighteen pence a week for it and I’m satisfied. Well, I goes on all right and without grumbling, till some chap he ses to me, ‘What call have you got to borrer a barrer when you can have one of your own; you alwis want a barrer, don’t you know, why not make this one your own?’ ‘Cos I can’t spare the money,’ I ses. ‘Oh,’ he ses, ‘I’ll find the money and the barrer’s yourn, if so be as you’ll promise and vow to take up with no other barrer, but stick to this one so long as you both shall live.’ Well, as aforesaid, it’s a tidy, useful barrer, and I agrees. But soon as it’s mine, don’t you know, I ain’t quite so careless about it. I overhauls it, in a manner of speaking, and I’m more keerful in trying the balance of it in hand when the load’s on it. Well, maybe I find out what I never before troubled myself to look for. There’s a screw out here and a bolt wanted there. Here it’s weak, and there it’s ugly. I dwells on it in my mind constant. I’ve never got that there barrer out of my head, and p’raps I make too much of the weak pints of it. I gets to mistrust it. ‘It’s all middling right, just now, old woman—old barrer, I mean,’ I ses to myself, ‘but you’ll be a playing me a trick one day, I’m afraid.’ Well, I go on being afraid, which I shouldn’t be if I was only a borrower.”
“But you should not forget that the barrow, to adopt your own ungallant figure of speech, is not accountable for these dreads and suspicions of yours; it will last you as long and as well as though you had continued a borrower; you will admit that, at least!”
“I don’t know. Last, yes! That’s the beggaring part of it. Ah, well! p’raps it’s all right, but I’m blest if I can stand being haunted like I am now.”
Nothing that I could say would add force to the argument of my costermonger friend, as set forth in his parable of the “barrer.” Applying it to the question under discussion, I do not mean to attribute to the deceptiveness of the barrow or to its premature breaking down, the spilling into the gutter of all the unhappy children there discovered. My main reason for admitting the evidence in question was to endeavour to show that as a pet means of improving the morality of our courts and alleys, and consequently of diminishing the gutter population, the modern idea of arresting fornication and concubinage, by dragging the pair there and then to church, and making them man and wife, is open to serious objections. The state of matrimony is not good for such folk. It was never intended for them. It may be as necessary to healthful life as eating is, but no one would think of taking a man starved, and in the last extremity for lack of wholesome aliment, and setting before him a great dish of solid food. It may be good for him by-and-by, but he must be brought along by degrees, and fitted for it. Undoubtedly a great source of our abandoned gutter children may be found in the shocking herding together of the sexes in the vile “slums” and back places of London, and it is to be sincerely hoped that some wise man will presently devise a speedy preventive.
In a recent report made to the Commissioners of Sewers for London, Dr. Letheby says: “I have been at much pains during the last three months to ascertain the precise conditions of the dwellings, the habits, and the diseases of the poor.