Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/595

582 crust of this fussy, hard-working planet. Of course, if this were so, it is enough to put an infant out to exchange the kisses of a seraph for the demonstrations of Mrs. Sago’s—the monthly nurse’s—professional affection. But I don’t believe the theory. I cannot help thinking that if I had ever enjoyed the supernatural comforts suggested in a previous state of existence I should have remembered something about the matter even now. I am, however, clear upon this point, that my very earliest recollection is of being on board a steamer in the Thames—my second of being taken to Astley’s, where an eminent artist of those days gratified us by personating the character of the French Emperor. He was always riding on and off the stage upon a white horse, and taking snuff in front of the foot-lights. I have also a recollection upon that occasion of a terrific combat between a Highland regiment and an overpowering French force, which terminated entirely to the advantage of the Highlanders. Now, remembering these things so well, how is it possible that I should have forgotten everything about the Elysian Fields—if, indeed, I had ever been there in a pre-infantine period of existence? Surely I should have been accustomed to play with a few favourite cherubs, I should have been friends with some ghosts. What had I done? Why was I turned out to work for my living? I protest I do not remember anything about the matter. Reader—do you?

Let us leave the young babies in the arms of their mothers. There lies the true Paradise for these little unsolved enigmas. When they come to be three or four years of age it is quite a different affair. When that happens, I can put myself right with the mothers of England. Who can ever forget those lovely groups of children which poor Sir William Ross knew so well how to translate upon ivory? Poor man! he is just gone from amongst us to a place where, as I hope, he sees more beautiful forms than he used to copy upon earth. Were they children—were they flowers? Yet what human intelligence and possibilities about them! One could see that the clear-browed little fellow with the long brown hair (numbered 1723 in the Miniature Room) might, at no very distant time, conduct the sweet little entity with the blue sash, who is thrusting back her fair silken curls with a little pink hand, where there are dimples instead of knuckles, to the hymeneal altar at St. George’s, Hanover Square. I mean that little girl yonder, numbered 1745. But what a deal of trouble the little fellow will have with the impersonal verbs between this and then—as yet he knows nothing about supines, and the child is glad. My little friend, too, in the blue sash has some hard days and red eyes before her on account of Cramer’s Exercises and her inveterate habit of thrusting her little ivory shoulder—it is the left one—out of her frock. But it will all go right in the long run. “Supines in um have an active signification:” Ut Re Mi Fa Sol—Fol-de-rol-de-riddle-dol. There are troubles on both sides, but they will meet at last.

Children at the age when Sir William Ross loved to arrest their beauty in its rapid flight are the sunbeams of a house, when they are not allowed to be its tyrants. For my own part, should like to see boy children born at five years of age, if this could be contrived without inconvenience. I would then keep them at this age for twenty years, and let them awake some morning twenty-five years old, and be captains, or perpetual curates, or junior partners, or something of that sort. The girl-children—also born at five years old—should be kept at that age for fifteen years; and on a given day be returning from their wedding tours. I should wish to be preserved from the worry of blessing my son-in-law, and wondering whether he was a young scoundrel or not, and the speeches at the wedding breakfast. No, let Emily-Jane come in with the oranges one day, and the next turn up as the beloved wife of some manly, straightforward young fellow, and mistress of a nice little house somewhere in South Kensington, with an arm-chair dedicated to the use of the aged Gamma.

One point is remarkable enough about London children of the humblest classes, and that is (despite of all the drawbacks of confined space, and I fear unwholesome dormitories, and improper or insufficient food), their healthy appearance. I would, however, make especial exception of unfortunate children who live down below Thames water-mark—Wandsworth way. It has often made my heart ache to watch the poor little ricketty creatures in those regions which are, as it were, the Pontine Marshes of London. They live, or rather stagger on through a few years of life in rows of houses with palings before them, incrusted with some green deposit which I am unable to describe by its scientific name. The back-yards abut upon each other; you commonly pass in upon the rows through turnstiles, the advantage of which I could never explain to myself, for certainly they are of no kind of use for keeping the poor little green children within bounds. On the contrary, these little human fungi cling to them like limpets to a rock, or if the sun one day shines with unusual fervour upon Paradise Row or Paragon Buildings, the creatures display their exhilaration of spirits by walking upon them, and twisting round them, and cultivating the science of callisthenics according to their feeble means. Alas! for the children of the poor, when the poor live below the Thames water-mark. Things, I believe, are in a somewhat better condition now; but when I knew the place it was full of open sewers and various forms of liquid abomination. When these were in a seething state, and covered with globules of gas under a July or August sun, the appeal to the senses was forcible but unsatisfactory. Nor did the ebb and flow of the tide make things better. The cruel time, as the medical men in those regions will tell you, was in the interval between the aggrandisement of the town in that direction and the introduction of improved systems of sewerage. So long as the place was only a filthy, ill-kept outskirt of London, there were hedge-rows and half-and-half country spots to which the children could betake themselves, and carry on the manufacture of dirt-pies under comparatively healthy conditions. It was, however, a terrible thing when the little Britons were bricked in, and compelled to carry on their scrofulous sports round the edges of open sewers.