Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIII.—April, 1852.—Vol. IV.

IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND IN 1851

FROM THE LETTERS AND MEMORANDA OF FREDRIKA BREMER

THE CHOLERA IN LONDON

It is two years since I first found myself in England. When I was in England in the autumn of 1849, the cholera was there. A dense, oppressive atmosphere rested over its cities, as of a cloud pregnant with lightning. Hearses rolled through the streets. The towns were empty of people; for all who had the means of doing so had fled into the country; they who had not were compelled to remain. I saw shadowy figures, clad in black, stealing along the streets, more like ghosts than creatures of flesh and blood. Never before had I seen human wretchedness in such a form as I beheld it in Hull and in London. Wretchedness enough may be found, God knows, even in Stockholm, and it shows itself openly enough there in street and market. But it is there most frequently an undisguised, an unabashed wretchedness. It is not ashamed to beg, to show its rags or its drunken countenance. It is a child of crime; and that is perhaps the most extreme wretchedness. But it is less painful to behold, because it seems to be suffering only its own deserts. One is more easily satisfied to turn one's head aside, and pass on. One thinks, "I can not help that!"

In England, however, misery had another appearance; it was not so much that of degradation as of want, pallid want. It was meagre and retiring; it ventured not to look up, or it looked up with a glance of hopeless beseeching – so spirit-broken! It tried to look respectable. Those men with coats and hats brushed till the nap was gone; those pale women in scanty, washed-out, but yet decent clothes – it was a sight which one could hardly bear. In a solitary walk of ten minutes in the streets of Hull, I saw ten times more want than I had seen in a ten months' residence in Denmark.

The sun shone joyously as I traveled through the manufacturing districts; saw their groups of towns and suburbs; saw their smoking pillars and pyramids towering up every where in the wide landscape – saw glowing gorges of fire open themselves in the earth, as if it were burning – a splendid and wonderfully picturesque spectacle, reminding one of fire-worshipers, of ancient and modern times, and of their altars. But I heard the mournful cry of the children from the factories; the cry which the public voice has made audible to the world; the cry of the children, of the little ones who had been compelled, by the lust of gain of their parents and the manufacturers, to sacrifice life, and joy, and health in the workshops of machinery; the children who lie down in those beds which never are cold, the children who are driven and beaten till they sink insensibly into death or fatuity – that living death; I heard the wailing cry of the children, which Elizabeth Barrett interpreted in her affecting poem; and the wealthy manufacturing districts, with their towns, their fire-columns, their pyramids, seemed to me like an enormous temple of Moloch, in which the mammon-worshipers of England offered up even children to the burning arms of their god – children, the hope of the earth, and its most delicious and most beautiful joy!

I arrived in London. They told me there was nobody in London. It was not the season in which the higher classes were in London. Besides which, the cholera was there; and all well-to-do people, who were able, had fled from the infected city. And that, indeed, might be the reason why there seemed to me to be so many out of health – why that pale countenance of want was so visible. Certain it is, that it became to me as a Medusa's head, which stood between me and every thing beautiful and great in that great capital, the rich life and physiognomy of which would otherwise have enchanted me. But as it was, the palaces, and the statues, and the noble parks, Hampstead and Piccadilly, and Belgravia and Westminster, and the Tower, and even the Thames itself, with all its everchanging life, were no more than the decorations of a great tragedy. And when, in St. Paul's, I heard the great roar of the voice of London – that roar which, as it is said, never is silent, but merely slumbers for an hour between three and four o'clock in the morning – when I heard that voice in that empty church, where there was no divine worship, and looked up into its beautiful cupola, which was filled by no song of praise, but only by that resounding, roaring voice, a dark chaotic roar, then seemed I to perceive the sound of the rivers of fate rolling onward through time over falling kingdoms and people, and bearing them onward down into an immeasurable grave! – It was but for a moment, but it was a horrible dream!

One sight I beheld in London which made me look up with rejoicing, which made me think "that old Ygdrasil is still budding." This was the so-called metropolitan buildings; a structure of many homes in one great mass of building, erected by a society of enlightened men for the use of the poorer working class, to provide respectable families of that class with excellent dwellings at a reasonable rate, where they might possess that which is of the most indispensable importance to the rich, as well as to the poor, if they are to enjoy health both of body and soul – light, air, and water, pure as God created them for the use of mankind. The sight of these homes, and of the families that inhabited them, as well as of the newly-erected extensive public baths and wash-houses for the same class, together with the assurance that these institutions already, in the second year of their establishment, returned more than full interest to their projectors, produced the happiest impression which I at this time received of England. These were to me as the seed of the future, which gave the promise of verdant shoots in the old tree.

evertheless, when I left the shores of England, and saw thick autumnal fog enveloping them, it was with a sorrowful feeling for the OLD world; and with an inquiring glance of longing and hope, I turned myself to the NEW.

Two years passed on – a sun-bright, glowing dream, full of the vigor of life! – it was again autumn, and I was again in England. Autumn met me there with cold, and rain, and tempest, with the most horrible weather that can be imagined, and such as I had never seen on the other side of the globe. But in social life, every where throughout the mental atmosphere, a different spirit prevailed. There, I perceived with astonishment and joy, there it was that of spring.

Free-trade had borne fruit, and under its banners manufacture and trade had shot forth into new life; the price of all kinds of grain had fallen, bread had become cheap. This tree of liberty, planted by Cobden and Peel, had, with a strong and vigorous vitality, penetrated, as it were, the life of the English people, and I heard on every hand the soughing of its leaves in the free wind. The Crystal Palace was its full-blown, magnificent blossom – and like swarms of rejoicing bees flew the human throng upon the wings of steam, backward and forward, to the great world's blossom; there all the nations met together, there all manufactures, there all industry, and every kind of product unfolded their flowers for the observation and the joy of all … a Cactus grandiflora, such as the world had never till then seen.

I perceived more clearly every day of my stay in England, that this period is one of a general awakening to a new, fresh life. In the manufacturing districts, in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, every where I heard the same conversation among all classes; prosperity was universal and still advancing. That pale countenance of want, which had on my first visit appeared to me so appalling, I now no longer saw as formerly; and even where it was seen stealing along, like a gloomy shadow near to the tables of abundance, it appeared to me no longer as a cloud filled with the breath of cholera, darkening the face of heaven, but rather as one of those clouds over which the wind and sun have power, and which are swallowed up, which vanish in space, in the bright ether…

THE RAGGED SCHOOLS

In Liverpool I visited the so-called Ragged Schools – the schools where are collected from the streets vagabond, neglected, and begging children, who are here taught to read and so on – who here receive the first rudiments of instruction, even in singing. These schools are, some of them evening, others day schools, and in some of them, "the Industrial Ragged Schools," children are kept there altogether; receive food and clothing, and are taught trades. When the schools of this class were first established in Liverpool, the number of children who otherwise had no chance of receiving instruction, amounted to about twenty thousand. Right-minded, thinking men saw that in these children were growing up in the streets, those "dangerous classes," of which so much has been said of late times; these men met together, obtained means to cover the most necessary outlay of expense, and then, according to the eloquent words of Lord Ashley, that "it is in childhood that evil habits are formed and take root; it is childhood which must be guarded from temptation to crime;" they opened these ragged schools with the design of receiving the most friendless, the most wretched of society's young generation – properly, "the children of rags, born in beggary, and for beggary."

I visited the Industrial Ragged School for boys, intended for the lowest grade of these little children, without parents, or abandoned by them to the influences of crime. There I saw the first class sitting in their rags, upon benches in a cold room, arranging, with their little frost-bitten fingers, bristles for the brush-maker. The faces of the boys were clean; many of them I remarked were handsome, and almost universally they had beautiful and bright eyes. Those little fingers moved with extraordinary rapidity; the boys were evidently wishful to do their best; they knew that they by that means should obtain better clothing, and would be removed to the upper room, and more amusing employment. I observed these "dangerous classes" – just gathered up from the lanes, and the kennels, on their way to destruction; and was astonished when I thought that their countenances might have borne the stamp of crime. Bright glances of childhood, for that were you never designed by the Creator! "Suffer little children to come unto me." These words, from the lips of heaven, are forever sounding to earth.

In the upper room a great number of boys were busy pasting paper-bags for various trades, confectioners, etc., who make use of such in the rapid sale of their wares; here, also, other boys were employed in printing upon the bags the names and residences of the various tradesmen who had ordered them. The work progressed rapidly, and seemed very amusing to the children. The establishment for their residence, and their beds, were poor; but all was neat and clean, the air was fresh, and the children were cheerful. The institution was, however, but yet in its infancy, and its means were small.

Half-a-dozen women, in wretched clothes, sate in the entrance-room with their boys, for whom they hoped to gain admittance into the school, and were now, therefore, waiting till the directors of the establishment made their appearance.

THE POORER CLASSES

A few days later I visited some different classes of poor people – namely, the wicked and the idle; they who had fallen into want through their own improvidence, but who had now raised themselves again; and the estimable, who had honorably combated with unavoidable poverty. In one certain quarter of Liverpool it is that the first class is especially met with. Of this class of poor, in their wretched rooms, with their low, brutalized expression, I will not speak; companion-pieces to this misery may be met with every where. Most of those whom I saw were Irish. It was a Sunday noon, after divine service. The ale-houses were already open in this part of the town, and young girls and men might be seen talking together before them, or sitting upon the steps.

Of the second class I call to mind, with especial pleasure, one little household. It was a mother and her son. Her means of support, a mangle, stood in the little room in which she had lived since she had raised herself up again. It was dinner-time. A table, neatly covered for two persons, stood in the room, and upon the iron stand before the fire was placed a dish of mashed potatoes, nicely browned, ready to be set on the table. The mother was waiting for her son, and the dinner was waiting for him. He was the organ-blower in the church during divine service, and he returned while I was still there. He was well dressed, but was a little, weakly man, and squinted; the mother's eyes, however, regarded him with love. This son was her only one, and her all. And he, to whom mother Nature had acted as a step-mother, had a noble mother's heart to warm himself with, which prepared for him an excellent home, a well-covered table, and a comfortable bed. That poor little home was not without its wealth.

As belonging to the third and highest class, I must mention two families, both of them shoe-makers, and both of them inhabiting cellars. The one family consisted of old, the other of young people. The old shoemaker had to maintain his wife, who was lame and sick, from a fall in the street, and a daughter. The young one had a young wife, and five little children to provide for; but work was scanty and the mouths many. At this house, also, it was dinner-time, and I saw upon the table nothing but potatoes. The children were clean, and had remarkably agreeable faces; but – they were pale; so was also the father of the family. The young and pretty, but very pale mother said, "Since I have come into this room I have never been well, and this I know – I shall not live long?" Her eyes filled with tears; and it was plain enough to see that this really delicate constitution could not long sustain the effects of the cold damp room, into which no sunbeam entered. These two families, of the same trade, and alike poor, had become friends in need. When one of the fathers of the family wanted work, and was informed by the Home-missionary who visited them that the other had it, the intelligence seemed a consolation to him. Gladdening sight of human sympathy, which keeps the head erect and the heart sound under the depressing struggle against competition! But little gladdening to me would have been the sight of these families in their cellar-homes, had I not at the same time been aware of the increase of those "Model Lodging-houses," which may be met with in many parts of England, and which will remove these inhabitants of cellars, they who sit in darkness, into the blessing of the light of life – which will provide worthy dwellings for worthy people.

BEE-HIVES

In my imagination Manchester was like a colossal woman sitting at her spinning-wheel, with her enormous manufactories; her subject towns, suburbs, villages, factories, lying for many miles round, spinning, spinning, spinning clothes for all the people on the face of the earth. And there, as she sate, the queen of the spindle, with her masses of ugly houses and factories, enveloped in dense rain-clouds, as if in cobwebs, the effect she made upon me was gloomy and depressing. Yet even here, also, I was to breathe a more refreshing atmosphere of life; even here was I also to see light. Free trade had brought hither her emancipating spirit. It was a time of remarkable activity and prosperity. The workpeople were fully employed; wages were good, and food was cheap. Even here also had ragged-schools been established, together with many institutions for improving the condition of the poor working-classes. In one of these ragged-schools the boys had a perfectly organized band of music, in which they played and blew, so that it was a pleasure – and sometimes a disadvantage to hear them. The lamenting "cry of the children" was no longer heard from the factories. Government had put an end to the cruelties and oppressions formerly practiced on these little ones by the unscrupulous lust of gain. No child under ten years old can now be employed in the factories, and even such, when employed, must of necessity be allowed part of the day for school. Every large factory has now generally its own school, with a paid master for the children. The boys whom I saw in the great rooms of the factories, and with whom I conversed, looked both healthy and cheerful.

Two ideas were impressed upon my mind at this place: how dangerous it is, even amid a high degree of social culture, to give one class of men unrestrained power over another; and how easily a free people, with a powerful public spirit and accustomed to self-government, can raise themselves out of humiliating circumstances. This spirit has done much already in England, but it has yet more to do.

Upon one of those large gloomy factories in Manchester, I read, inscribed in iron letters, "The great Beehive;" and in truth a good name for these enormous hives of human industrial toil, in which people have sometimes forgotten, and still forget, that man is any thing more than a working bee, which lives to fill its cell in the hive and die. I visited several of these huge beehives. In one of them which employed twelve hundred work-people, I saw, in a large room, above three hundred women sitting in rows winding cotton on reels. The room was clean, and so also were all the women. It did not appear to be hard work; but the steadfastly-fixed attention with which these women pursued their labor seemed to me distressingly wearisome. They did not allow themselves to look up, still less to turn their heads or to talk. Their life seemed to depend upon the cotton thread.

In another of these great beehives, a long low room, in which were six hundred power-looms, represented an extraordinary appearance. What a snatching to and fro, what a jingling, what an incessant stir, and what a moist atmosphere there was between floor and ceiling, as if the limbs of some absurd, unheard-of beast, with a thousand arms, had been galvanized! Around us, from three to four hundred operatives, women and men, stood among the rapid machinery, watching and tending. The twelve o'clock bell rung, and now the whole throng of work-people would go forth to their various mid-day quarters; the greatest number to their respective dwellings in the neighborhood of the factory. I placed myself, together with my conductor, in the court outside the door of the room, which was on lower ground, in order that I might have a better view of the work-people as they came out.

Just as one sees bees coming out of a hive into the air, two, three, or four at a time – pause, as it were, a moment from the effects of open air and light, and then with a low hum, dart forth into space, each one his own way; so was it in this case. Thus came they forth, men and women, youths and girls. The greater number were well dressed, looked healthy, and full of spirit. In many, however, might be seen the expression of a rude life; they bore the traces of depravity about them.

THE ROYAL FAMILY

The Queen and her husband stand before the people as the personation of every domestic and public virtue! The Queen is an excellent wife and mother; she attends to the education of her children, and fulfills her duties as sovereign, alike conscientiously. She is an early riser; is punctual and regular in great as well as in small things. She pays ready money for all that she purchases, and never is in debt to any one. Her court is remarkable for its good and beautiful morals. On their estate, she and Prince Albert carry every thing out in the best manner, establish schools and institutions for the good of the poor; these institutions and arrangements of theirs serve as examples to every one. Their uprightness, kindness, generosity, and the tact which they under all circumstances display, win the heart of the nation. They show a warm sympathy for the great interests of the people, and by this very sympathy are they promoted. Of this, the successful carrying out of free trade, and the Exhibition in the Crystal Palace, projected in the first instance by Prince Albert, and powerfully seconded by the Queen, furnish brilliant examples. The sympathies of the Queen are those of the heart as well as of the head. When that noble statesman, the great promoter of free-trade, Sir Robert Peel, died, the Queen shut herself in for several days, and wept for him as if she had lost a father. And whenever a warm sympathy is called forth, either in public or in private affairs it is warmly and fully participated by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. That which the English people require from their rulers, is not merely formal government, but a living interest in their affairs.

BIRMINGHAM AND THE CHARTISTS

From Manchester I traveled to Birmingham. I saw again the land of the fire-worshipers, their smoking altars, in tall columns and pyramids, towering above the green fields; saw again the burning gulfs yawning in the earth, and – saw them now with unmixed pleasure. I heard no longer, amid their boiling roar, the lamenting cry of the children; I heard and saw them now only as the organs of the public prosperity, and rejoiced over them as proofs of man's power over fire and water, over all the powers of nature; the victory of the gods over the giants!

The sun burst forth from between rain-clouds as I arrived in Birmingham, England's – nay, the world's – workshop of steel-pens, nails, steel, tin, and brass wares of all kinds.

If Manchester is a colossal woman at her spinning-wheel, then is Birmingham a colossal smith.

In Birmingham I visited a steel-pen manufactory, and followed from room to room the whole process of those small metal tongues which go abroad over all the world and do so much – evil, and so much good; so much that is great, so much that is small; so much that is important, so much that is trivial. I saw four hundred young girls sitting in large, light rooms, each with her little pen-stamp, employed in a dexterous and easy work, especially fitted for women. All were well dressed, seemed healthy and cheerful, many were pretty; upon the whole, it was a spectacle of prosperity which surpassed even that of the mill-girls in the celebrated factories of Lowell in North America.

Birmingham was at this time in a most flourishing condition, and had more orders for goods than it could supply, nor were there any male paupers to be found in the town; there was full employment for all.

In Birmingham I saw a large school of design. Not less than two hundred young female artists studied here in a magnificent hall or rotunda, abundantly supplied with models of all kinds, and during certain hours in the week exclusively opened to these female votaries of art. A clever, respectable old woman, the porter of the school-house, spoke of many of these with especial pleasure, as if she prided herself on them in some degree.

I saw in Birmingham a beautiful park, with hot-houses, in which were tropical plants, open to the public; saw also a large concert-room, where twice in the week "glees" were sung, and to which the public were admitted at a low price: all republican institutions, and which seem to prosper more in a monarchical realm than in republics themselves.

From Birmingham I had determined to go for a few days to Stratford-on-Avon, before I went to London in order to secure a view of the Great Exhibition, the last week of which was at hand. I was, therefore, obliged to leave the manufacturing districts earlier than I wished; but before quitting them on paper, I must say a few words on their population, on their artisans, etc.

These belong almost entirely to the class of what are called Chartists; that is, advocates of universal suffrage. They are this, through good and through evil; and the resistance which their just desire to be more fully represented in the legislative body, has met with from that body, has brought them more and more into collision with the power of the state, more and more to base their demands in opposition, even to the higher principles of justice: for they overlook the duty of rendering themselves worthy of the franchise by sound education. But the fault here, in the first place, was not theirs. Growing up amid machinery and the hum of labor, without schools, without religious or moral worth; hardened by hard labor, in continual fight with the difficulties of life, they have moulded themselves into a spirit little in harmony with life's higher educational influences, the blessings of which they had never experienced. Atheism, radicalism, republicanism, socialism of all kinds will and must nourish here in concealment among the strong and daily augmenting masses of a population, restrained only by the fear of the still more mighty powers which may be turned against them, and by labor for their daily needs, so long as those powers are sufficing. And perhaps the American slave-states are right when they say, in reference to this condition of things, "England lies at our feet – England can not do without our cotton. If the manufacturers of England must come to a stand, then has she a popular convulsion at her door." Perhaps it may be so; for these hosts of manufacturing workmen, neglected in the beginning by society, neglected by church and state, look upon them merely as exacting and despotic powers; and in strict opposition to them, they have banded together, and established schools for their own children, where only the elements of practical science are admitted, and from which religious and moral instruction are strictly excluded. In truth, a volcanic foundation for society, and which now, for some time past, has powerfully arrested the attention of the most thinking men of England.

But into the midst of this menacing chaos light has already begun to penetrate with an organizing power; and over the dark profound hovers a spirit which can and will divide the darkness from the light, and prepare a new creation.

I sought the manufacturing towns from a sense of duty, and the commands of conscience. I was anxious to see this side of human life. But this done, I thought I might do something for my own pleasure. I was in England chiefly for this purpose. I must follow the impulse of my heart; I must make a pilgrimage to the grave of Shakspeare. For the older I have become, the more that I have lived and learned, the more valuable have two good artists become to me – the more have I had to thank – Beethoven and Shakspeare.

From Birmingham I traveled, on the morning of the fourth of October, by the railway to Leamington, and thence, alone in a little carriage, to Stratford-on-Avon.

TRUE COURAGE. – A TALE OF TATTERSHALL CASTLE

In the summer vacation of 183-, a party of gay young collegians visited Tattershall Castle, in Lincolnshire. This remarkably noble ruin consists of a single lofty keep, rising to the height of two hundred feet, the interior being open from summit to basement. Mighty oaken beams once, however, spanned the massive walls, supporting floors which formed stories of varying height. Many of these beams have fallen to the basement, completely rotten, through shameful exposure to the weather ever since the roof crumbled away; others still pertinaciously hang, more or less broken and decayed, but, in a majority of instances, seem as if a strong gust of eddying wind would send them down crashing, to mingle their fragments with those already mouldering below.

The party were in high spirits. They had drunk old wines, and their young blood flowed hotly in their veins; they had laughed, joked, and talked themselves into wild excitement. About half way up to the castle turrets there is a sort of open landing, which goes along one wall of the structure; and on to this landing the party stepped from the grand spiral staircase they had hitherto been ascending, and there paused a moment to look about them. The scene was striking. A few beams sprung across just below their feet; a few thick-moted rays of sun pierced through the adjoining loop-holes; a few fleecy cloudlets flitted athwart the blue ether high overhead. Startled by the noisy visitors, a number of dusky jackdaws flew out of their holes up and down the walls, and, after chattering their decided disapprobation of being disturbed, made half-a-dozen whirling circuits of the interior, rising rapidly upward, until they disappeared.

Immediately afterward, a great white owl projected its visage from a hole close above where one of the beams joined the opposite wall, and, frightedly peering with its great dazzled eyes, the harmless creature bewilderedly popped from its hole on to the beam, and having made a few feeble flutterings with its wings, remained quite stationary, crouched in a ball-like figure, close to the wall.

"Oh, Deschamp," exclaimed one of the party to a friend at his side, who was plucking the long gray moss of a peculiar species, which literally clothes the castle walls inside and out, "look yonder at Minerva's bird."

"Ha! ha!" chorused the company – "a veritable owl!"

Thereupon one and all began picking up bits of brick and mortar from where they stood, and threw them at the bird with various degrees of skill. One or two bits even struck it, but so far from being roused thereby, the owl merely gave one boding, long-drawn, sepulchral screech, and, contracting its ghastly outline into still smaller compass, fairly buried its broad visage between the meeting bony tips of its wings.

"What a stupid creature! hoo! horoo!" shouted they, thinking by that means to induce it to fly. But the outcry only terrified the bird to such a degree, that it stuck its claws convulsively into the decayed timber, and stirred not at all.