Fifty Years Ago E-Book

Walter Besant

• Herausgeber: Publisher s11838
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Fifty Years Ago written by Walter Besant who  was a novelist and historian. This book was published in 1888. And now republish in ebook format. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book. 

Leseprobe

Fifty Years Ago

By

Walter Besant

Table of Contents

PREFACE.

CHAPTER I. GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, AND THE COLONIES.

CHAPTER II. THE YEAR 1837.

CHAPTER III. LONDON IN 1837.

CHAPTER IV. IN THE STREET.

CHAPTER V. WITH THE PEOPLE.

CHAPTER VI. WITH THE MIDDLE-CLASS.

CHAPTER VII. IN SOCIETY.

CHAPTER VIII. AT THE PLAY AND THE SHOW.

CHAPTER IX. IN THE HOUSE.

CHAPTER X. AT SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.

CHAPTER XI. THE TAVERN.

CHAPTER XII. IN CLUB- AND CARD-LAND.

CHAPTER XIII. WITH THE WITS.

CHAPTER XIV. JOURNALS AND JOURNALISTS.

CHAPTER XV. THE SPORTSMAN.

CHAPTER XVI. IN FACTORY AND MINE.

CHAPTER XVII. WITH THE MEN OF SCIENCE.

CHAPTER XVIII. LAW AND JUSTICE.

CHAPTER XIX. CONCLUSION.

THE PRINCESS VICTORIA IN 1830

(From the Picture by Richard Westall, R.A., at Windsor Castle.)

PREFACE.

It has been my desire in the following pages to present a picture of society in this country as it was when the Queen ascended the throne. The book is an enlargement of a paper originally contributed to ‘The Graphic.’ I have written several additional chapters, and have revised all the rest. The chapter on Law and Justice has been written for this volume by my friend Mr. W. Morris Colles, of the Inner Temple. I beg to record my best thanks to that gentleman for his important contribution.

I have not seen in any of the literature called forth by the happy event of last year any books or papers which cover the exact ground of this compilation. There are histories of progress and advancement; there are contrasts; but there has not been offered anywhere, to my knowledge, a picture of life, manners, and society as they were fifty years ago.

When the editor of ‘The Graphic’ proposed that I should write a paper on this subject, I readily consented, thinking it would be a light and easy task, and one which could be accomplished in two or three weeks. Light and easy it certainly was in a sense, because it was very pleasant work, and the books to be consulted are easily accessible; but then there are so many: the investigation of a single point sometimes carried one through half-a-dozen volumes. The two or three weeks became two or three months.

At the very outset of the work I was startled to find how great a revolution has taken place in our opinions and ways of thinking, how much greater than is at first understood. For instance, America was, fifty years ago, practically unknown to the bulk of our people; American ideas had little or no influence upon us; our people had no touch with the United States; if they spoke of a Republic, they still meant the first French Republic, the only Republic they knew, with death to kings and tyrants; while the recollection of the guillotine still preserved cautious and orderly people from Republican ideas.

Who now, however, connects a Republic with a Reign of Terror and the guillotine? The American Republic, in fact, has taken the place of the French. Again, though the Reform Bill had been, in 1837, passed already five years, its effects were as yet only beginning to be felt; we were still, politically, in the eighteenth century. So in the Church, in the Law, in the Services, in Society, we were governed by the ideas of the eighteenth century.

The nineteenth century actually began with steam communication by sea; with steam machinery; with railways; with telegraphs; with the development of the colonies; with the admission of the people to the government of the country; with the opening of the Universities; with the spread of science; with the revival of the democratic spirit. It did not really begin, in fact, till about fifty years ago. When and how will it end? By what order, by what ideas, will it be followed?

In compiling even such a modest work as the present, one is constantly attended by a haunting dread of having forgotten something necessary to complete the picture. I have been adding little things ever since I began to put these scenes together. At this, the very last moment, the Spirit of Memory whispers in my ear, ‘Did you remember to speak of the high fireplaces, the open chimneys—up which half the heat mounted—the broad hobs, and the high fenders, with the fronts pierced, in front of which people’s feet were always cold? Did you remember to note that the pin of the period had its head composed of a separate piece of wire rolled round; that steel pens were either as yet unknown, or were precious and costly things; that the quill was always wanting a fresh nib; that the wax-match did not exist; that in the country they still used the old-fashioned brimstone match; that the night-light of the period was a rush candle stuck in a round tin cylinder full of holes; and that all the ladies’ dress had hooks and eyes behind?’

I do not think that I have mentioned any of these points; and yet, how much food for reflection is afforded by every one! Reader, you may perhaps find my pictures imperfect, but you can fill in any one sketch from your own superior knowledge. Meantime, remember this. As nearly as possible, fifty years ago, the eighteenth century passed away. It died slowly; its end was hardly marked.

King William the Fourth is dead. Alas! how many things were dying with that good old king! The steam-whistle was already heard across the fields: already in mid-ocean the great steamers were crossing against wind and tide: already the nations were slowly beginning to know each other: Privilege, Patronage, and the Power of Rank were beginning already to tremble, and were afraid: already the working man was heard demanding his vote: the nineteenth century had begun. We who have lived in it; we who are full of its ideas; we who are all swept along upon the full stream of it—we know not, we cannot see, whither it is carrying us.

W. B.

QUEEN VICTORIA IN 1839.

(From a Drawing by R. J. Lane, A.R.A.)

CHAPTER I.GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, AND THE COLONIES.

I propose to set before my readers a picture of the country as it was when Queen Victoria (God save the Queen!) ascended the throne, now fifty years ago and more. It will be a picture of a time so utterly passed away and vanished that a young man can hardly understand it. I, who am no longer, unhappily, quite so young as some, and whose babyhood heard the cannon of the Coronation, can partly understand this time, because in many respects, and especially in the manners of the middle class, customs and habits which went out of fashion in London lingered in the country towns, and formed part of my own early experiences.

ARRIVAL OF THE CORONATION NUMBER OF ‘THE SUN’—ONE PAPER, AND ONE MAN WHO CAN READ IT IN THE TOWN

In the year 1837—I shall repeat this remark several times, because I wish to impress the fact upon everybody—we were still, to all intents and purposes, in the eighteenth century. As yet the country was untouched by that American influence which is now filling all peoples with new ideas. Rank was still held in the ancient reverence; religion was still that of the eighteenth-century Church; the rights of labour were not yet recognised; there were no trades’ unions; there were no railways to speak of; nobody travelled except the rich; their own country was unknown to the people; the majority of country people could not read or write; the good old discipline of Father Stick and his children, Cat-o’-Nine-Tails, Rope’s-end, Strap, Birch, Ferule, and Cane, was wholesomely maintained; landlords, manufacturers, and employers of all kinds did what they pleased with their own; and the Blue Ribbon was unheard of. There were still some fiery spirits in whose breasts lingered the ideas of the French Revolution, and the Chartists were already beginning to run their course. Beneath the surface there was discontent, which sometimes bubbled up. But freedom of speech was limited, and if the Sovereign People had then ventured to hold a meeting in Trafalgar Square, that meeting would have been dispersed in a very swift and surprising manner. The Reform Act had been passed, it is true, but as yet had produced little effect. Elections were carried by open bribery; the Civil Service was full of great men’s nominees; the Church was devoured by pluralists; there were no competitive examinations; the perpetual pensions were many and fat; and for the younger sons and their progeny the State was provided with any number of sinecures. How men contrived to live and to be cheerful in this state of things one knows not. But really, I think it made very little apparent difference to their happiness that this country was crammed full of abuses, and that the Ship of State, to outsiders, seemed as if she were about to capsize and founder.

This is to be a short chapter of figures. Figures mean very little unless they can be used for purposes of comparison. When, for instance, one reads that in the Census of 1831 the population of Great Britain was 16,539,318, the fact has little significance except when compared with the Census of 1881, which shows that the population of the country had increased in fifty years from sixteen millions to twenty-four millions. And, again, one knows not whether to rejoice or to weep over this fact until it has been ascertained how the condition of these millions has changed for better or for worse, and whether the outlook for the future, if, in the next fifty years, twenty-four become thirty-six, is hopeful or no. Next, when one reads that the population of Ireland was then seven millions and three-quarters, and is now less than five millions, and, further, that one Irishman in three was always next door to starving, and that the relative importance of Ireland to Great Britain was then as one to two, and is now as one to five, one naturally congratulates Ireland on getting more elbow-room and Great Britain on the relative decrease in Irish power to do the larger island an injury.

LIFEGUARD, 1837

The Army and Navy together in 1831 contained no more than 277,017 men, or half their present number. But then the proportion of the English military strength to the French was much nearer one of equality. The relief of the poor in 1831 absorbed 6,875,552l., but this sum in 1844 had dropped to 4,976,090l., the saving of two millions being due to the new Poor Law. The stream of emigration had hardly yet begun to flow. Witness the following figures:

The number of emigrants in

1820

 was

 18,984

” ”

1825

  8,860

” ”

1832

103,311

” ”

1837

 72,034

It was not until 1841 that the great flow of emigrants began in the direction of New Zealand and Australia. The emigrants of 1832 chiefly went to Canada, and as yet the United States were practically unaffected by the rush from the old countries.

The population of the great towns has for the most part doubled itself in the last fifty years. London had then a million and a half; Liverpool, 200,000; Manchester, 250,000; Glasgow, 250,000; Birmingham, 150,000; Leeds, 140,000; and Bristol, 120,000.

Penal settlements were still flourishing. Between 1825 and 1840, when they were suppressed, 48,712 convicts were sent out to Sydney. As regards travelling, the fastest rate along the high roads was ten miles an hour. There were 54 four-horse mail coaches in England, and 49 two-horse mails. In Ireland there were 30 four-horse coaches, and 10 in Scotland. There were 3,026 stage coaches in the country, of which 1,507 started from London.

There were already 668 British steamers afloat, though the penny steamboat did not as yet ply upon the river. Heavy goods travelled by the canals and navigable rivers, of which there were 4,000 in Great Britain; the hackney coach, with its pair of horses, lumbered slowly along the street; the cabriolet was the light vehicle for rapid conveyance, but it was not popular; the omnibus had only recently been introduced by Mr. Shillibeer; and there were no hansom cabs. There was a Twopenny Post in London, but no Penny Post as yet. There was no Book Post, no Parcel Post, no London Parcels Delivery Company. If you wanted to send a parcel to anywhere in the country, you confided it to the guard of the coach; if to a town address, there were street messengers and the ‘cads’ about the stage-coach stations; there were no telegraphs, no telephones, no commissionaires.

GENERAL POSTMAN

Fifty years ago the great railways were all begun, but not one of them was completed. A map published in the Athenæum of January 23, 1836, shows the state of the railways at that date. The line between Liverpool and Manchester was opened in September, 1830. In 1836 it was carrying 450,000 passengers in the year, and paying a dividend of 9 per cent. The line between Carlisle and Newcastle was very nearly completed; that between Leeds and Selby was opened in 1834; there were many short lines in the coal and mining districts, and little bits of the great lines were already completed. The London and Greenwich line was begun in 1834 and opened in 1837. There were in progress the London and Birmingham, the Birmingham, Stafford, and Warrington, the Great Western as far as Bath and Bristol, and the London and Southampton passing through Basingstoke. It is amazing to think that Portsmouth, the chief naval port and place of embarkation for troops, was left out altogether. There were also a great many lines projected, which afterwards settled down into the present great Trunk lines. As they were projected in 1836, instead of Great Northern, North-Western, and Great Eastern, we should have had one line passing through Saffron Walden, Cambridge, Peterborough, Lincoln, York, Appleby, and Carlisle, with another from London to Colchester, Ipswich, Norwich, and Yarmouth; there was also a projected continuation of the G.W.R. line from Bristol to Exeter, and three or four projected lines to Brighton and Dover. The writer of the article on the subject in the Athenæumof that date (January 23, 1836) considers that when these lines are completed, letters and passengers will be conveyed from London to Liverpool in ten hours. ‘Little attention,’ he says, ‘has yet been given to calculate the effects which must result from the establishment throughout the kingdom of great lines of intercourse traversed at a speed of twenty miles an hour.’ Unfortunately he had no confidence in himself as a prophet, or we might have had some curious and interesting forecasts.

As regards the extent of the British Empire, there has been a very little contraction and an enormous extension. We have given up the Ionian Islands to gratify the sentiment of Mr. Gladstone, and we have acquired Cyprus, which may perhaps prove of use. We have taken possession of Aden, at the mouth of the Red Sea. In Hindostan, which in 1837 was still partially ruled by a number of native princes, the flag of Great Britain now reigns supreme; the whole of Burma is now British Burma; the little island of Hong Kong, which hardly appears in Arrowsmith’s Atlas of 1840, is now a stronghold of the British Empire. Borneo, then wholly unknown, now belongs partially to us; New Guinea is partly ours; Fiji is ours. For the greatest change of all, however, we must look at the maps of Australia and New Zealand. In the former even the coast had not been completely surveyed; Melbourne was as yet but a little unimportant township. Between Melbourne and Botany Bay there was not a single village, settlement, or plantation. It was not until the year 1851, only thirty-six years ago, that Port Phillip was separated from New South Wales, and created an independent colony under the name of Victoria; and for a few years it was a very rowdy and noisy colony indeed.

In New South Wales, the population of which was about 150,000, convicts were still sent out. In the year 1840, when the transportation ceased, 21,000 convicts were assigned to private service. There were in Sydney many men, ex-convicts, who had raised themselves to wealth; society was divided by a hard line, not to be crossed in that generation by those on the one side whose antecedents were honourable and those on the other who had ‘served their time.’ Tasmania was also still a penal colony, and, apparently, a place where the convicts did not do so well as in New South Wales.

Queensland as a separate colony was not yet in existence, though Brisbane had been begun; tropical Australia was wholly unsettled; Western Australia was, what it still is, a poor and thinly settled country.

The map of New Zealand—it was not important enough to have a map all to itself—shows the coast-line imperfectly surveyed, and not a single town or English settlement upon it! Fifty years ago that great colony was not yet even founded. The first serious settlement was made in 1839, when a patch of land at Port Nicholson, in Cook Strait, was bought from the natives for the first party of settlers sent out by the recently established New Zealand Company.

In North America the whole of the North-West Territory, including Manitoba, Muskoka, British Columbia, and Vancouver’s Island, was left to Indians, trappers, buffaloes, bears, and rattlesnakes. South Africa shows the Cape Colony and nothing else. Natal, Orange Free State, the Transvaal, Bechuanaland, Griqualand, Zululand are all part of the great undiscovered continent. Considering that all these lands have now been opened up and settled, so that where was formerly a hundred square miles of forest and prairie there is now the same area covered with plantations, towns, and farms, it will be understood that the British Empire has been increased not only in area, but in wealth, strength, and resources to an extent which would have been considered incredible fifty years ago. It is, in fact, just the difference between owning a barren heath and owning a cultivated farm. The British Empire in 1837 contained millions of square miles of barren heath and wild forest, which are now settled land and smiling plantations. It boasted of vast countries, with hardly a single European in them, which are now filled with English towns. In 1837, prophets foretold the speedy downfall of an Empire which could no longer defend her vast territories. These territories can now defend themselves. It may be that we shall have to fight for empire, but the longer the day of battle is put off the better it will be for England, and the greater will be her might. To carry on that war, there are now, scattered over the whole of the British Empire, fifty millions of people speaking the Anglo-Saxon tongue. In fifty years’ time there will be two hundred millions in Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, Africa, Asia, New Zealand, and the Isles, with another two hundred millions in the States. If the English-speaking races should decide to unite in a vast confederacy, all theother Powers on the earth combined will not be able to do them an injury. Perhaps after this life we shall be allowed to see what goes on in the world. If so, there is joy in store for the Briton; if not, we have been born too soon.

NAPOLEON AT LONGWOOD

(From a Drawing made in 1820)

Next to the extension and development of the Empire comes the opening up of new countries. We have rescued since the year 1837 the third part of Africa from darkness; we have found the sources of the Nile; we have traced the great River Congo from its source to its mouth; we have explored the whole of Southern Africa; we have rediscovered the great African lakes which were known to the Jesuits in the seventeenth century; in Australia we have crossed and recrossed the continent; the whole of North America has been torn from the Red Indians, and is now settled in almost every part.

LONDON STREET CHARACTERS, 1837

(From a Drawing by John Leech)

If the progress of Great Britain has been great, that of the United States has been amazing. Along the Pacific shore, where were fifty years ago sand and rock and snow, where formerly the sluggish Mexican kept his ranch and the Red Indian hunted the buffalo, great towns and American States now flourish. Arkansas and Missouri were frontier Western States; Michigan was almost without settlers; Chicago was a little place otherwise called Fort Dearborn. The population of the States was still, except for the negroes, and a few descendants of Germans, Dutch, and Swedes, chiefly of pure British descent. As yet there were in America few Irish, Germans (except in Pennsylvania), Norwegians, or Italians. Yet the people, much more than now our cousins, held little friendly feeling towards the Mother Country, and lacked the kindly sentiment which has grown up of late years; they were quite out of touch with us, strangers to us, and yet speaking our tongue, reading our literature, and governed by our laws.

5 GREAT CHEYNE ROW

(The House in which Carlyle lived from 1834 to his death in 1881)

Your’s faithfully,T. Carlyle.

-THOMAS CARLYLE-

As soon as the battle of Waterloo was fairly fought and Napoleon put away at St. Helena, the Continental professors, historians, political students, and journalists all began with one accord to prophesy the approaching downfall of Great Britain, which some affected to deplore and others regarded with complacency. Everything conspired, it was evident, not only to bring about this decline, but also to accelerate it. The parallel of Carthage—England has always been set up as the second Carthage—was freely exhibited, especially in those countries which felt themselves called upon and qualified to play the part of Rome. It was pointed out that there was the dreadful deadweight of Ireland, with its incurable poverty and discontent; the approaching decay of trade, which could be only, in the opinion of these keen-sighted philosophers, a matter of a few years; the enormous weight of the National Debt; the ruined manufacturers; the wasteful expenditure of the Government in every branch; the corrupting influence of the Poor Laws; the stain of slavery; the restrictions of commerce; the intolerance of the Church; the narrowness and prejudice of the Universities; the ignorance of the people; their drinking habits; the vastness of the Empire. These causes, together with discontent, chartism, republicanism, atheism—in fact, all the disagreeablisms—left no doubt whatever that England was doomed. Foreigners, in fact, not yet recovered from the extraordinary spectacle of Great Britain’s long duel with France and its successful termination, prophesied what they partly hoped out of envy and jealousy, and partly feared from self-interest. Therefore the politicians and professors were always looking at this country, writing about it, watching it, visiting it. No; there could be no doubt; none of these changes and dangers could be denied; the factories were choked with excessive production; poverty stalked through the country; the towns were filled with ruined women; the streets were cumbered with drunken men; the children were growing up in ignorance and neglect inconceivable; what could come of all this but ruin? Even—and this was the most wonderful and incredible thing to those who do not understand how long a Briton will go on enduring wrongs and suffering anomalies—the very House of Commons in this boasted land of freedom did not represent half the people, seats were openly bought and sold, others were filled with nominees of the great men who owned them. What could possibly follow but ruin—swift and hopeless ruin? What, indeed? Prophets of disaster always omit one or two important elements in their calculations, and it is through these gaps that the people basely wriggle, instead of fulfilling prophecy as they ought to do. For instance, there is the recuperative power of Man, and there is his individuality. He may be full of moral disease, yet such is his excellent constitution that he presently recovers—he shakes off his evil habits as he shakes the snow off his shoulders, and goes on an altered creature. Again, the mass of men may be in heavy case, but the individual man is patient; he has strength to suffer and endure until he can pull through the worst; he has patience to wait for better times; difficulties only call forth his ingenuity and his resource: disaster stiffens his back, danger finds him brave. Always, to the prophet who knows not Man, the case is hopeless. Always, to one who considers that by gazing into the looking-glass, especially immediately before or after his morning bath, he may perceive his brother as well as himself, things are hopeful. My brother, have things, at your worst, ever been, morally, so bad with you that you have despaired of recovery, seeing that you had only to resolve and you were cured? Have you ever reflected that while, to the outside world, to your maiden aunts and to your female cousins, you were most certainly drifting to moral wreck and material ruin, you have gone about the world with a hopeful heart, feeling that the future was in your own grasp? Even now the outlook of the whole world is truly dark, and the clouds are lowering. Yet surely the outlook was darker, the clouds were blacker, fifty years ago. Read Carlyle’s ‘Past and Present,’ and compare. There may be other dangers before us of which we then suspected nothing. But if we still preserve the qualities which enabled us to stand up, almost alone, against the colossal force of Napoleon, with Europe at his back, and which carried us through the terrible troubles which followed the war, we surely need not despair.

THE DUCHESS OF KENT, WITH THE PRINCESS VICTORIA AT THE AGE OF TWO

(From the Picture by Sir W. Beechey at Windsor Castle)

CHAPTER II.THE YEAR 1837.

WILLIAM IV.

(From a Drawing by HB.)

The year 1837, except for the death of the old King and the accession of the young Queen, was a tolerably insignificant year. It was on June 20 that the King died. He was buried on the evening of July 9 at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor; on the 10th the Queen dissolved Parliament; on the 13th she went to Buckingham Palace; and on November 9 she visited the City, where they gave her a magnificent banquet, served in Guildhall at half past five, the Lord Mayor and City magnates humbly taking their modest meal at a lower table. Both the hour appointed for the banquet and the humility of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen point to a remote period.

The year began with the influenza. Everybody had it. The offices of the various departments of the Civil Service were deserted because all the clerks had influenza. Business of all kinds was stopped because merchants, clerks, bankers, and brokers all had influenza; at Woolwich fifty men of the Royal Artillery and Engineers were taken into hospital daily, with influenza. The epidemic seems to have broken out suddenly, and suddenly to have departed. Another important event of the year was the establishment of steam communication with India by way of the Red Sea. The ‘Atalanta’ left Bombay on October 2, and arrived at Suez on October 16. The mails were brought into Alexandria on the 20th, and despatched, such was the celerity of the authorities, on November 7 by H.M.S. ‘Volcano.’ They reached Malta on the 11th, Gibraltar on the 16th, and England on December 4, taking sixty days in all, of which, however, eighteen days were wasted in Alexandria, so that the possible time of transit from Bombay to England was proved to be forty-two days.

This was the year of the Greenacre murder. The wretched man was under promise to marry an elderly woman, thinking she had money. One night, while they were drinking together, she confessed that she had none, and had deceived him; whereupon, seized with wrath, he took up whatever weapon lay to his hand, and smote her on the head so that she fell backwards dead. Now mark: if this man had gone straight to the nearest police-office, and confessed the crime of homicide, he would certainly have escaped hanging. But he was so horribly frightened at what had happened, that he tried to hide the thing by cutting up the body and bestowing the fragments in various places, all of them the most likely to be discovered. There was another woman in the case, proved to have been in his confidence, and tried with him, when all the pieces had been recovered, and the murder was brought home to him. He was found guilty and hanged. And never was there a hanging more numerously or more fashionably attended. The principal performer, however, is said to have disappointed his audience by a pusillanimous shrinking from the gallows when he was brought out. The woman was sent to Australia, where, perhaps, she still survives.

THE QUEEN’S FIRST COUNCIL—KENSINGTON PALACE, JUNE 20, 1837.

(From the Picture by Sir David Wilkie, R.A., at Windsor Castle.)