IN DARKEST ENGLAND
IN certain all too frequent moods, when I behold in the sphinx Life not so much that inscrutable face of hers, nor yet her nurturing breasts, but rather her lion's claws; in such moods, a contrast rises before me. I see, as it were, upon my right hand and upon my left, two regions; separated only by a few hours' journey along our iron roads. I see upon my right hand a land of lanes, and hedgerows, and meadowed green; whose people's casual tread is over blossoming yellow, white, and purple, far-shining as the constellations that sand their nightly heaven; where the very winter rains, into which the deciduous foliage rots, cover the naked boughs with a vividness of dusted emerald. I look upon my left hand, and I see another region — is it not rather another universe? A region whose hedgerows have set to brick, whose soil is chilled to stone; where flowers are sold and women, where the men wither and the stars; whose streets to me on the most glittering day are black. For I unveil their secret meanings. I read their human hieroglyphs. I diagnose from a hundred occult signs the disease which perturbs their populous pulses. Misery cries out to me from the kerb-stone, despair passes me by in the ways; I discern limbs laden with fetters impalpable, but not imponderable;
I hear the shaking of invisible lashes, I see men dabbled with their own oozinq; life. This contrast rises before me; and I ask myself whether there be indeed an Ormuzd and an Ahriman, and whether Ahriman be the stronger of the twain. From the claws of the sphinx my eyes have risen to her countenance which no eyes read.
Because, therefore, I have these thoughts; and because also I have knowledge, not indeed great or wide, but within certain narrow limits more intimate than most men's, of this life which is not a life; to which food is as the fuel of hunger; sleep, our common sleep, precious, costly, and fallible, as water in a wilderness; in which men rob and women vend themselves — for fourpence; because I have such thoughts and such knowledge, I read with painful sympathy the book just put forward by a singular personality.* I rise from the reading of it with a strong impression that here is a proposal which they who will not bless would do well to abstain from banning. Here is at last a man who has formulated a comprehensive scheme, and has dared to take upon himself its execution. That the terrible welter of London misery has not been left undealt with during recent years, that a multitude of agencies have long been making on it a scattered guerilla warfare, I know. But from their elTorts I derived not hope, but despair; they served only to render darkness • In Darkest England, by General Booth.
visible. Before me stretched an immense, soundless, bitter ocean. On its shore stood a string of benevolent children, equipped with sugar-basins. What were they doing? They were throwing lumps of sugar into the waves, to sweeten the sea. Here was this vast putrescence strangling the air at our very doors, and what scavengers of charity might endeavour its removal? Now comes by a man, and offers to take on himself the responsibility of that removal: in God's name, give him the contrad! one inclines to exclaim.
What, then, is his book? The first part is an unexaggerated statement of the fa6ts — too surely fa6ls — regarding the existence of our London outcasts. It is the kind of thing which the pubhc has had so often lately, under one form or another, that I suppose it has ceased to be roused by it. I will therefore only note in it a single point, which for more than one reason I cannot here dwell upon. Let those who are robust enough not to take injury from the terrible diredness with which things are stated read the chapter entitled ^he Children of the Lost. For it drives home a truth which I fear the English public, with all its compassion for our destitute children, scarcely realizes, knows but in a vague, general way; namely, that they are brought up in sin from their cradles, that they know evil before they know good, that the boys are ruffians and profligates, the girls harlots in the mother's womb. This, to me the most nightmarish idea in all the nightmare of those poor little lives, I have never been able to perceive that people had any true grasp on. And having mentioned it, though it is a subjedl very near my heart, I will say no more; nor enforce it, as I might well do, from my own sad knowledge.
In the name of the Mother of Sorrows, our dereli6l Catholic men and women shall not have to wait till the Salvation Army has bruised our heel. We have done much already, considering our means; therefore it is that we shall do more. Take, for instance. General Booth's Slum Sisters, themselves living in a house like the tenements around them, cleaning in the dwellings of the poor, and nursing their sick. Then read the constitution given by St Vincent de Paul to his Sisters of Charity. They were * to consist of girls, and widows unencumbered with children, destined to seek out the poor in the alleys and streets of cities. They were to have for monastery the houses of the sick; for cell, a hired room; for their chapel, the parish church; for their cloister, the streets of the town or the wards of the hospital; for enclosure, obedience; for grating, the fear of God; for veil, holy modesty.'* The genesis of the Slum Sisters is
• The Little Sisters of the Assumption, who have houses in London, as a matter of fact were founded within late years exclusively to nurse and work for the poor in their own homes. They are debarred from going to any but the entirely destitute who can procure no other help.
evident. It would appear that we have forgotten what manner of men we are; let us look, then, into this Salvation glass and see. When Professor Huxley incidentally compared the Salvation Army to the Franciscans, in an article in the Pall Mall, I took up the comparison with alacrity, and extended it. ^
The very chivalrous militarism of St Francis has been caught and vulgarized in the outward military symbolism of the Salvation Army. That joyous spirit which St Francis so peculiarly fostered is claimed by General Booth as an integral and essential feature in his own followers. The street-preaching, in which the Salvationists are so energetic, received its first special extension from the Franciscans. Mother of street-preaching, where are your street-preachers? To gather the multitude into our churches something more than the sound of a bell has become necessary; let us go forth into the highways and byways like the Franciscan Friars of old. And it is for the Friars to do it. The priest, worn almost to breaking by the cares of his own poor parish, has no strength or time to go forth among that nomad population which is of no parish and of all parishes. Why should the Franciscans hide behind their caricatures? The scarf and scarlet jersey is crying in street, in slum-dwelling, in common lodging-house, such God's truth as is in it to cry; where is the brown frock and the cord?
But the preaching Friar can only subserve a portion of the uses subserved by the Salvation Army. Consider what the Salvation Army is. It is not merely a seft, it is virtually a Religious Order, but a Religious Order of a peculiar kind. It consists of men and women living in the world the life of the world, pursuing their businesses, marrying, bringing up families; yet united by rule and discipline, and pushing forward a6live work of charity and religious influence among the forsaken poor. It possesses, moreover, the advantage of numerous recruits from the ranks of the poor, through whom it can obtain intimate knowledge of the condition and requirements of their class.
May it be that here, too, the Salvation Army has but studied St Francis? Here, too, has the Assisian left us a weapon which but needs a little pradlice to adapt it to the necessity of the day? Even so. Our army is in the midst of us, enrolled under the banner of the Stigmata, quartered throughout the kingdom; an army over 13,000 strong, following the barrack routine of religious peace, diligently pipe-claying its spiritual accoutrements, praftising what that other Army calls ' knee-drill,' turning out for periodical inspeftion, and dreaming of no conflift at hand. Sound to it the trumpet. Sound to the militia of Assisi that the enemy is about them, that they must take the field; sound to the Tertiaries of St Francis. Yes, the Franciscan Tertiaries are this army. They are men and women who live in the world the life of the world — though not a worldly life; who marry, rear their families, attend to their worldly vocations; yet they are a Religious Order, with rule and observance. They include numbers of men and women among the poor. Nay, the resemblance extends to minor matters. Like the Salvationists, they exa6l from their women plainness of dress; though unlike the Salvationists, and most like their Poet-founder, they do not exaft ugliness of dress. Like the Salvationists, again, they are an essentially democratic body: a Tertiary peeress, writing to a Tertiary faftory girl, addresses her as ' sister.'
It rests w^ith themselves to complete the resemblance in the one point now lacking. They are saying their Office, holding their monthly meetings, sanctifying themselves; it is excellent, but only half that for which their Founder destined them. He intended them likewise for aftive works of charity. They are the Third Order of St Francis; their founder's spirit should be theirs; and with the ecstatic of Alverno, contemplation was never allowed to divert him from a6livity. He who penanced Brother Ruffino because the visionary was overpowering in him the worker, with what alacrity would he have thrown his Tertiaries on the battle-field where reserves are so needed; with what alacrity would he have bidden them come down from Alverno, and descend into the streets! Nay, Pope Leo XIH, as if he had foreseen the task which might call upon them, has released them from the weight of fasts and prayers which burdened them, reducing their fasts to two in the year, their prayers to twelve daily Paters and Avcs. They are freed from their spiritual austerities, and at liberty for external labours. They, therefore, if their founder live at all in them, seem the organization ready constituted for this work. In whatever town there was a Congregation of Tertiaries, they would endeavour to combine for the establishment of Shelters, and whatever, in the process of development, might ultimately grow out of them.
Let us, then, put this thing to the test, in God's name! And, except in God's name, it v/ere indeed wanton to try it. It may fail, true; it may be much of a leap in the dark, true; but every community must make its leaps in the dark, and make them often for far less clamorous cause. We English at large were nigh on bringing our Home Rule prodigy to birth; though astrologers hardly cast its horoscope alike, though there were not wanting prophets who boded the apparition of an armed head from our seething Irish cauldron. But long and crying suffering waited redress, we had tried palliatives which fell short, and we had all but determined (wisely, I think, determined) to test a heroic remedy. Here, at your own lintel, is long and crying suffering, worse than that of the Irish peasant, who has at least the consolation of his God, his priest, his neighbour, and his conscience; here, too, you have tried palliatives which have fallen short; here, too, then, venture a heroic remedy. The most disastrous daring is better in such a matter than but-too-certainlydisastrous quiescence. I do not like Mohammed, but I hke less Moloch: the code of the Koran is ill; is the code of Cotytto better? But to this it shall not come.
Things hard, not unachievable, I have set before you, children of Assisi; not unachievable, much less unattemptable. Scorn you may have, contumely you may have: but witness that these Salvationists, being of a verity bHnd prophets, yet endured all this; and you, who know whereof you prophesy, shall you not endure it? Can men conjure in the ways with the name of Booth, and not with the name of Manning? If they are shielded by the red jersey, you shall be shielded by the reflex of that princely red at Westminster. But rather will I cry to you, lineage of Alverno: Gird on your weakness as a hauberk of proof! T^hey have grown strong because they were weak, and esteemed because they were despised; you shall grow stronger because weaker, and more esteemed because more despised. What sword have they, but you have a keener? For blood and fire, gentle humility; for the joy of a rehgious alcohohsm, the joy of that peace which passeth understanding; for the tumults, the depths of the spirit; for the discipHne of trumpets, the discipHne of the Sacraments; for the chiming of tambourines, Mary's name pensile like a bell-tongue in men's resonant souls; for hearts clashed open by a whirlwind, the soft summons of Him \Vho stands at the door and knocks. If with these you cannot conquer, then you could not with chariots and horsemen.
THIS is a day \vhich,with aU its admitted and most lamentable evils, many of us are most glad that we have lived to see: for it is a day wherein a bad old order is fast giving place to a new; and the new, we trust, through whatever struggle and gradual transformation, will finally prove a higher order than the old. Free education is in the air. It is one among many signs of the common tendency. It involves the negation of individualism. The hearts of men are softening to each other: we will no longer suffer unchecked the rehatched ' dragons of the prime ': many minds, with many thoughts, many aims, are uniting with a common watchword against a common foe.
We, are we not formed as notes of music are For one another, though dissimilar?
We are raising from the dust a fallen standard of Christianity: not in phrase merely, but in praftice, not by lips only, but by lives also, we are re-afhrming the Brotherhood of Man.
Rousseau said it. But so did Jesus Christ. It is the doftrine of the red cap. But it is likewise the do6lrine of the red cassock. On the antagonistic side is the conspicuous and significant figure of Professor Huxley, whose map of life is crumpled between the convolutions of Darwin's brain: he cannot so much as attack Rousseau-ism, without unconsciously postulating as his argumentative basis the omnigenous truth of Darwinism. Now, Individualism was simply Natural Sele<5lion applied to the social order.
The Individualist theory had its scaffolding of excellence; O let us confess it! The walls of no theory can rise far from the ground without that. Our neighbours have this in common with Heaven — they only help those who are perfeftly able to help themselves. In the days when the blatant beast of Individualism held the field, that was a truth. It is now almost a cynicism — a cynicism with the whiff of truth which makes most cynicisms piquant; but, thank God, fast becoming cynicism. This was the scaffolding whereby the IndividuaHst edifice arose; the precept, always true within rigid limitations and safeguards, of self-help. But, in pradice, the script of self-help has been the script of selfishness, has been the maxim of Cain; in practice, self-help has meant * devil take the hindmost.' By its fruits you shall know it. Look at your darkest England; look at your darkest London. Zohar-snakes which guard the flesh they grow from; your Goths, O Rome of the sea-ways, your Goths within your own gates. You have sown your dragon's teeth, and you shall reap — armed men? Nay, I tell you, hut dragons. From dragon's teeth, dragons; and from devil's teaching, devils. His evangel you have preached, by word and deed, throughout this century; do you fear his kingdom at hand? You have prepared the way of your lord, you have made straight his paths; and now you tremble at his coming. For diabolical this docflrine of Individualism is; it is the outcome of the proud teaching which declares it despicable for men to bow before their fellow-men. It has meant, not that a man should be individual, but that he should be independent. Now this I take to be an altogether deadly lie. A man should be individual, but not independent. The very laws of Nature forbid independence, which have made man in a thousand ways inevitably dependent on his fellows.
Vain is the belief that man can convert to permanent evil that which is in itself good. It has been sought to do so with science; and some of us have been seriously frightened at science. Folly. Certain temporary evil has been wrought through it in the present, which seems very great because it is present. That will pass, the good will remain; and men will wonder how they with whom was truth could ever have feared research. Scientists, those eyeless worms who loosen the soil for the crops of God, have declared that they are proving miracles false, because they are contrary to the laws of Nature. I can see that in fifty years' time they will have proved miracles true, because they are based on the laws of Nature. So much good, at least, will come from the researches of Nancy and the Charite, of the followers of Bernheim and the followers of Charcot. If any, being evil, offer to us good things, I say: Take; for ours must be the ultimate harvest from them. Good steel wins in the hands that can wield it longest; and those hands are ours.
No scheme, be it General Booth's or another's, will avail to save more than a fraction ■ — may it be a large fraction — out of that drift of adult misery wherewith the iniquitous negleft of our forefathers has encumbered the streets. But the children! There is the chance; there, alas, also is the fear. Think of it! If Christ stood amidst your London slums, He could not say: * Except ye become as one of these little children.' For better your children were cast from the bridges of London than they should become as one of those little ones. Could they be gathered together and educated in the truest sense of the word; could the children of the nation at large be so educated as to cut off future recruits to the ranks of Darkest England; then it would need no astrology to cast the horoscope of to-morrow. La tete de Vhomme du peuple, or rather, de V enfant du feuple — around that sways the contiiil. Who grasps the child grasps the future.
The grim old superstition was right. When man would build to a lasting finish, he must found his building over a child. There is not a secret society in Europe, there is not a Secularist in France, in Germany, in Italy, in England, but knows it; everywhere these gangs of coiners are at their work of stamping and uttering base humanity. We, too, have recognized it; we on our part have not been idle, we least of all; but we are hard put to it for labourers in the task. In the school-satchel lie the keys of to-morrow. What gate shall be opened into that morrow, whether a gate of horn, or the gate of ivory wherethrough the inheritors of our own poor day passed surrounded by so many vain dreams into their inheritance, must rest with them v.ho are still
In that sweet age When Heaven 's our side the lark.