Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1. No 1, June 1850

She turned it; she folded and unfolded: it would not do. The miserable shawl seemed to give way under her hands. It was already so excessively shabby that she was ashamed to go out in it; and it seemed as if it was ready to fall to pieces in sundry other places, this dingy, thin, brown, red, and green old shawl. Mend it would not: besides, she was pressed for time; so, with the appearance of considerable reluctance, she put her hand into the drawer, and took out another shawl.

This was a different affair. It was a warm, and not very old, plaid shawl, of various colors, well preserved and clean looking, and, this cold morning, so tempting.

Should she borrow it? Myra was still asleep, but she would be horridly cold when she got up, and she would want her shawl, perhaps; but then Lettice must go out, and must be decent, and there seemed no help for it.

But if she took the shawl, had she not better light the fire before she went out? Myra would be so chilly. But then, Myra seldom got up till half-past eight or nine, and it was now not seven.

An hour and a half's, perhaps two hour's, useless fire would never do. So after a little deliberation, Lettice contented herself with "laying it," as the housemaids say; that is, preparing the fire to be lighted with a match: and as she took out coal by coal to do this, she perceived with terror how very, very low the little store of fuel was.

"We must have a bushel in to-day," she said. "Better without meat and drink than fire, in such weather as this."

However, she was cheered with the reflection that she should get a little more than usual by the work that she had finished. It had been ordered by a considerate and benevolent lady, who, instead of going to the ready-made linen warehouses for what she wanted, gave herself a good deal of trouble to get at the poor workwomen themselves who supplied these houses, so that they should receive the full price for their needle-work, which otherwise must of necessity be divided.

What she should get she did not quite know, for she had never worked for this lady before; and some ladies, though she always got more from private customers than from the shops, would beat her down to the last penny, and give her as little as they possibly could.

Much more than the usual price of such matters people can not, I suppose, habitually give; they should, however, beware of driving hard bargains with the very poor.

Her bonnet looked dreadfully shabby, as poor little Lettice took it out from one of the dilapidated band-boxes that stood upon the chest of drawers; yet it had been carefully covered with a sheet of paper, to guard it from the injuries of the dust and the smoke-loaded air.

The young girl held it upon her hand, turning it round, and looking at it, and she could not help sighing when she thought of the miserably shabby appearance she should make; and she going to a private house, too: and the errand! – linen for the trousseau of a young lady who was going to be married.

What a contrast did the busy imagination draw between all the fine things that young lady was to have and her own destitution! She must needs be what she was – a simple-hearted, God-fearing, generous girl, to whom envious comparisons of others with herself were as impossible as any other faults of the selfish – not to feel as if the difference was, to use the common word upon such occasions, "very hard."

She did not take it so. She did not think that it was very hard that others should be happy and have plenty, because she was poor and had nothing. They had not robbed her. What they had was not taken from her. Nay, at this moment their wealth was overflowing toward her. She should gain in her little way by the general prosperity. The thought of the increased pay came into her mind at this moment in aid of her good and simple-hearted feelings, and she brightened up, and shook her bonnet, and pulled out the ribbons, and made it look as tidy as she could; bethinking herself that if it possibly could be done, she would buy a bit of black ribbon, and make it a little more spruce when she got her money.

And now the bonnet is on, and she does not think it looks so very bad, and Myra's shawl, as reflected in the little threepenny glass, looks quite neat. Now she steals to the bed in order to make her apologies to Myra about the shawl and fire, but Myra still slumbers. It is half-past seven and more, and she must be gone.

The young lady for whom she made the linen lived about twenty miles from town, but she had come up about her things, and was to set off home at nine o'clock that very morning. The linen was to have been sent in the night before, but Lettice had found it impossible to get it done. It must per force wait till morning to be carried home. The object was to get to the house as soon as the servants should be stirring, so that there would be time for the things to be packed up and accompany the young lady upon her return home.

Now, Lettice is in the street. Oh, what a morning it was! The wind was intensely cold the snow was blown in buffets against her face; the street was slippery: all the mud and mire turned into inky-looking ice. She could scarcely stand; her face was blue with the cold; her hands, in a pair of cotton gloves, so numbed that she could hardly hold the parcel she carried.

She had no umbrella. The snow beat upon her undefended head, and completed the demolition of the poor bonnet; but she comforted herself with the thought that its appearance would now be attributed to the bad weather having spoiled it. Nay (and she smiled as the idea presented itself), was it not possible that she might be supposed to have a better bonnet at home?

So she cheerfully made her way; and at last she entered Grosvenor-square, where lamps were just dying away before the splendid houses, and the wintry twilight discovered the garden, with its trees plastered with dirty snow, while the wind rushed down from the Park colder and bitterer than ever. She could hardly get along at all. A few ragged, good-for-nothing boys were almost the only people yet to be seen about; and they laughed and mocked at her, as, holding her bonnet down with one hand, to prevent its absolutely giving way before the wind, she endeavored to carry her parcel, and keep her shawl from flying up with the other.

The jeers and the laughter were very uncomfortable to her. The things she found it the most difficult to reconcile herself to in her fallen state were the scoffs, and the scorns, and the coarse jests of those once so far, far beneath her; so far, that their very existence, as a class, was once almost unknown, and who were now little, if at all, worse off than herself.

The rude brutality of the coarse, uneducated, and unimproved Saxon, is a terrible grievance to those forced to come into close quarters with such.

At last, however, she entered Green-street, and raised the knocker, and gave one timid, humble knock at the door of a moderate-sized house, upon the right hand side as you go up to the Park.

Here lived the benevolent lady of whom I have spoken, who took so much trouble to break through the barriers which in London separate the employers and the employed, and to assist the poor stitchers of her own sex, by doing away with the necessity of that hand, or those many hands, through which their ware has usually to pass, and in each of which something of the recompense thereof must of necessity be detained.

She had never been at the house before; but she had sometimes had to go to other genteel houses, and she had too often found the insolence of the pampered domestics harder to bear than even the rude incivility of the streets.

So she stood feeling very uncomfortable; still more afraid of the effect her bonnet might produce upon the man that should open the door, than upon his superiors.

But "like master, like man," is a stale old proverb, which, like many other old saws of our now despised as childish ancestors, is full of pith and truth.

The servant who appeared was a grave, gray-haired man, of somewhat above fifty. He stooped a little in his gait, and had not a very fashionable air; but his countenance was full of kind meaning, and his manner so gentle, that it seemed respectful even to a poor girl like this.

Before hearing her errand, observing how cold she looked, he bade her come in and warm herself at the hall stove; and shutting the door in the face of the chill blast, that came rushing forward as if to force its way into the house, he then returned to her, and asked her errand.

"I come with the young lady's work. I was so sorry that I could not possibly get it done in time to send it in last night; but I hope I have not put her to any inconvenience. I hope her trunks are not made up. I started almost before it was light this morning."

"Well, my dear, I hope not; but it was a pity you could not get it done last night. Mrs. Danvers likes people to be exact to the moment and punctual in performing promises, you must know. However, I'll take it up without loss of time, and I dare say it will be all right."

"Is it come at last?" asked a sweet, low voice, as Reynolds entered the drawing-room. "My love, I really began to be frightened for your pretty things, the speaker went on, turning to a young lady who was making an early breakfast before a noble blazing fire, and who was no other a person than Catherine Melwyn.

"Oh, madam! I was not in the least uneasy about them, I was quite sure they would come at last."

"I wish, my love," said Mrs. Danvers, sitting down by the fire, "I could have shared in your security. Poor creatures! the temptation is sometimes so awfully great. The pawnbroker is dangerously near. So easy to evade all inquiry by changing one miserably obscure lodging for another, into which it is almost impossible to be traced. And, to tell the truth, I had not used you quite well, my dear; for I happened to know nothing of the previous character of these poor girls, but that they were certainly very neat workwomen; and they were so out of all measure poor, that I yielded to temptation. And that you see, my love, had its usual effect of making me suspicious of the power of temptation over others."

Mrs. Danvers had once been one of the loveliest women that had ever been seen: the face of an angel, the form of the goddess of beauty herself; manners the softest, the most delightful. A dress that by its exquisite good taste and elegance enhanced every other charm, and a voice so sweet and harmonious that it made its way to every heart.

Of all this loveliness the sweet, harmonious voice alone remained. Yet had the sad eclipse of so much beauty been succeeded by a something so holy, so saint-like, so tender, that the being who stood now shorn by sorrow and suffering of all her earthly charms, seemed only to have progressed nearer to heaven by the exchange.

Her life had, indeed, been one shipwreck, in which all she prized had gone down. Husband, children, parents, sister, brother – all! – every one gone. It had been a fearful ruin. That she could not survive this wreck of every earthly joy was expected by all her friends: but she had lived on. She stood there, an example of the triumph of those three: faith, hope, and charity, but the greatest of these was charity.

In faith she rested upon the "unseen," and the world of things "seen" around her shrunk into insignificance. In hope she looked forward to that day when tears should be wiped from all eyes, and the lost and severed meet to part never again. In charity – in other words, love – she filled that aching, desolate heart with fresh affections, warm and tender, if not possessing the joyous gladness of earlier days.

Every sorrowing human being, every poor sufferer, be they who they might, or whence they might, found a place in that compassionate heart. No wonder it was filled to overflowing: there are so many sorrowing sufferers in this world.

She went about doing good. Her whole life was one act of pity.

Her house was plainly furnished. The "mutton chops with a few greens and potatoes" – laughed at in a recent trial, as if indifference to one's own dinner were a crime – might have served her. She often was no better served. Her dress was conventual in its simplicity. Every farthing she could save upon herself was saved for her poor.

You must please to recollect that she stood perfectly alone in the world, and that there was not a human creature that could suffer by this exercise of a sublime and universal charity. Such peculiar devotion to one object is only permitted to those whom God has severed from their kind, and marked out, as it were, for the generous career.

Her days were passed in visiting all those dismal places in this great city, where lowly want "repairs to die," or where degradation and depravity, the children of want, hide themselves. She sat by the bed of the inmate of the hospital, pouring the soft balm of her consolations upon the suffering and lowly heart. In such places her presence was hailed as the first and greatest of blessings. Every one was melted, or was awed into good behavior by her presence. The most hardened of brandy-drinking nurses was softened and amended by her example.

The situation of the young women who have to gain their livelihood by their needle had peculiarly excited her compassion, and to their welfare she more especially devoted herself. Her rank and position in society gave her a ready access to many fine ladies who had an immensity to be done for them: and to many fine dress-makers who had this immensity to do.

She was indefatigable in her exertions to diminish the evils to which the young ladies – "improvers," I believe, is the technical term – are in too many of these establishments exposed. She it was who got the work-rooms properly ventilated, and properly warmed. She it was who insisted upon the cruelty and the wretchedness of keeping up these poor girls hour after hour from their natural rest, till their strength was exhausted; the very means by which they were to earn their bread taken away; and they were sent into decline and starvation. She made fine ladies learn to allow more time for the preparation of their dresses; and fine ladies' dress makers to learn to say, "No."

One of the great objects of her exertions was to save the poor plain-sewers from the necessary loss occasioned by the middlemen. She did not say whether the shops exacted too much labor, or not, for their pay; with so great a competition for work, and so much always lying unsold upon their boards, it was difficult to decide. But she spared no trouble to get these poor women employed direct by those who wanted sewing done; and she taught to feel ashamed of themselves those indolent fine ladies who, rather than give themselves a little trouble to increase a poor creature's gains, preferred going to the ready-made shops, "because the other was such a bore."

In one of her visits among the poor of Mary-lebone, she had accidentally met with these two sisters, Lettice Arnold and Myra. There was something in them both above the common stamp, which might be discerned in spite of their squalid dress and miserable chamber; but she had not had time to inquire into their previous history – which, indeed, they seemed unwilling to tell. Catherine, preparing her wedding clothes, and well knowing how anxious Mrs. Danvers was to obtain work, had reserved a good deal for her; and Mrs. Danvers had entrusted some of it to Lettice, who was too wretchedly destitute to be able to give any thing in the form of a deposit. Hence her uneasiness when the promised things did not appear to the time.

And hence the rather grave looks of Reynolds, who could not endure to see his mistress vexed.

"Has the workwoman brought her bill with her, Reynolds?" asked Mrs. Danvers.

"I will go and ask."

"Stay, ask her to come up; I should like to inquire how she is going on, and whether she has any other work in prospect."

Reynolds obeyed; and soon the door opened, and Lettice, poor thing, a good deal ashamed of her own appearance, was introduced into this warm and comfortable breakfast-room, where, however, as I have said, there was no appearance of luxury, except the pretty, neat breakfast, and the blazing fire.