Finishing Mayhew

In Volume 1 of Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, he describes and interviews the great variety of street sellers. Volume 2 might be entitled “occupations” as he explains the various occupations practiced in the streets from old clothes entrepreneur to crossing sweeper.

Volume 3 begins with entertainment and ends with the most abject poverty. First, the entertainment. Entertainers include Punch show operators, conjurors, salamanders (fire eaters), clowns, Irish pipers, English and German street bands, bagpipe players, Scotch pipers, photographers. Mayhew tells you how the people live, how much or little they earn and how they feel about it. A clown speaks:

I must own that the street clowns like a little drop of spirits, and occasionally a good deal. They are in a measure obligated to it. I can’t fancy a clown being funny on small beer; and I never in all my life knew one who was a teetotaller. I think such a person would be a curious character, indeed.

After sections on makers and sellers of dolls’ eyes and drivers of omnibuses, he finishes with “Characteristics of the Various Classes of Vagrants.” By vagrants, he means those who roam the roads, unemployed and often engaged in petty crime. Some claim that those seeking work are the minority. “The remainder consisted of youths, prostitutes, Irish families, and a few professional beggars.” When desperate they seek relief in the workhouses and asylums for “Houseless Poor.” Deserving or not, the conditions of the poor are appalling.

His clothes which were fustian and corduroy, tied close to his body with pieces of string, were black and shiny with filth, which looked more like pitch than grease. He had no shirt, as was plain from the fact that, where his clothes were torn, his bare skin was seen. The ragged sleeves of his fustian jacket were tied like the other parts of his dress, close to his wrists with string. This was clearly to keep the bleak air from his body.

When a worker is laid off or unable to work because of illness and injury, he sells his clothing for food. Then he can no longer get work because of his miserable appearance. Also, the Irish have come in great numbers as a result of the potato famine.

We are all starving. We are all willing to work, but it ain’t to be had. This country is getting very bad for labour; it’s so overrun with Irish that the Englishman hasn’t a chance in his own land to live. Every since I was nine years old I’ve got my own living, but now I’m dead beat, though I’m over twenty-eight next August.

The title of Mayhew’s book is significant when you consider that to be part of London labor is to be always under threat of becoming one of the London poor. There is no safety net. Lose your footing in the struggle to survive and you can fall rapidly to the bottom.

Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed

Imagine, if you can, a historical novel set in northern Italy. The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi) was written in the 19th century It depicts the 17th century, the time of the 30 Years War and the great plagues. We have the life of 400 years ago as seen some 200 years ago — and in a different language and culture. Given all that, it’s a good book and worth the time to read the over 700 pages — a project I would never have undertaken without the book group.

As someone in the group observed, this is certainly not Jane Austin. No, it’s not. It’s more like Walter Scott with whispers of Dickens and memories of Cervantes. Renzo and Lucia, young and in love, are frustrated in their marriage plans by a succession of events: the malevolence of the local nobleman/gang lord, the bread riots in Milan, the depredations of the invading German armies and the Bubonic plague.

Manzoni’s narrative style is to interrupt one story to tell you another one. So, when young Lucia and her mother take refuge in a convent, we must stop and hear all about the discontented nun and how she came to be pressured into a religious life she did not desire. Or, later in the book, when it appears the young lovers may finally get together, with some 200 pages to go, Manzoni puts Lucia in Milan and Renzo in Bergamo and tells you all about the plaque — how it was spread, who did what on the Health Commission, the stupidities of the bureaucrats, the humanity of the Capuchins, the insane suspicions of the populace. He goes on and on. It has its interest, but I did wonder if he would have enough pages left for a suitable romantic ending.

This novel is a classic in Italy and apparently all students there read it in school. Maybe, like my adolescent experience with Silas Marner, it leaves them wary of the author for years afterward. It’s better to come at it as I did, enjoying the period details and wishing the best to a deserving young couple. And did I mention that Manzoni has a dry sense of humor? He does, mixed in with a cynical view of the politics of the day.

Attilio’s uncle was a lawyer, and one of the senior members of the Council. He had a certain standing among his fellow-members; but where he really excelled as in making his position felt and respected wherever he went. Ambiguous utterances, significant silences, non-committal remarks, a way of closing his eyes which means ‘I can’t comment on that’, a way of flattering hopes without involving himself in a promise, a certain menacing formality; such were some of the means he used towards that end, and all of them met with fair success.

I don’t think an adolescent assigned to read the book is ready to appreciate this sort of commentary.

Lunch with Marilyn, or Virtue Defined

I had lunch with my friend Marilyn. She reads my blog and stirs me up by asking the tough questions. Today it was Mary Wollstonecraft. In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Ms. Wollstoncraft talks about about virtue, but never defines it. This frustrates Marilyn, who wants to know what virtue is. It’s strength, I say, the strength to do the right thing because it is right, not because someone makes you do it. So how do you get this virtue? she asks. That is not easy to figure out. Reason is important and Wollstonecraft does say very  clearly that it is not possible for a person in a “slave” (read dependent) relationship to develop it.

I think, says Marilyn — and she has been waiting to say this — that Montaigne has said it very well: virtue does not come naturally, but develops from struggle. What is easy may be good, but it is not virtuous.

A man who, from a naturally easy-going gentleness, would despise injuries done to him would do something very beautiful and praiseworthy: but a man who, stung to the quick and ravished by an injury, could arm himself with the arms of reason against a frenzied yearning for vengeance, finally mastering it after a great struggle, would undoubtedly be doing very much more. The former would have acted well: the latter, virtuously: goodness is the word for one of these actions; virtue, for the other: for it seems that virtue presupposes difficulty and opposition, and cannot be exercised without a struggle.

This is consistent with the concept that runs all through Wollstonecraft of self development and self control. The dependent female is controlled by others and, if she does the good thing, it is from the desire to please another, not from her own Virtue. Hamlet knew this, when he addressed Gertrude with “Assume a virtue if you have it not.”

Again and again Wollstonecraft feels the need to explain that women do not want their independence in order to have power over others, but in order to have power over themselves. It is the only way they can develop true virtue.

More from Mayhew

The Penguin Classics edition of excerpts from Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor includes some illustrations from the original books. Volume I was devoted to street sellers, while Volume II takes up some of the other occupations we know from the Victorian novelists: mudlarks, chimney sweeps, crossing sweepers and dust-yard workers.

The prosperous dustman is an important character is Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. A  fortune could be made from dust, and Mayhew explains how it is done. A dust contractor gets a contract with a parish to haul away its dust, mostly the residue from the thousands of coal fires. The dust is carted to a dustyard, where it is sifted, so that the particulate matter can be sold for enriching soil and making bricks. Men shovel the dust to women who wield great sieves, as shown in the illustration.

In a dust-yard lately visited the sifters formed a curious sight; they were almost up to their middle in dust, ranged in a semi-circle in front of that part of the heap which was being worked; each had before her a small mound of soil which had fullen through her sieve and formed a sort of embankment, behind which she stood…. Their coarse dirty cotton gowns were tucked up behind them…; over their gowns they wore a strong leathern apron, extending from their necks to the extremities of their petticoats…. In the process of their work they pushed the sieve from them and drew it back again with apparent violence, striking it against the outer leathern apron with such force that it produced each time a hollow sound, like a blow on the tenor drum.

The workers begin as children, since even small children can retrieve items from the dust. They continue in the life as adults because that is all they know. They are poorly paid, but they value the work because it is “steady,” unlike selling on the street.

Mayhew has really been there and seen how it was done. His descriptions of the other occupations and interviews with the workers are similarly concrete, whether of mudlarks searching for items in the Thamses mud or chimney sweepers visiting the public baths — some daily, some weekly, and some not at all.

Thank you, Bill

Journalist William Greider is my little brother, and I am his warm supporter and affectionate critic.

His article in the new issue of The Nation feels my pain and makes me proud, proud that someone I love and respect has articulated what I have been fuzzily groping toward for several years now.

When Bush won in 2000 I was disgusted; I believed he had stolen the election. When he won again in 2004 I was disgusted again. Yes, he had really won this time, but by playing on our fears. During all those eight years I grieved at the trashing of the public welfare but hoped that better times were coming.

Obama fed that hope and I greeted his victory in 2008 and inauguration  the following January with exhilaration. It was good to elect our first black President, although it would also have been good to have elected our first female President. My joy came from the belief that we were now back on track to build an America based on shared values and the equal worth of every individual.

Bill has learned that it’s not working out that way:

I asked an old friend what she makes of the current mess in Washington. “Whatever the issue, the rich guys win,” she responded.

As Bill points out, the system seeks excess:

What the capitalist system wants is more — more wealth, more freedom to do whatever it wishes. This has always been its instinct, unless government intervened to stop it.

You may disagree. You may say that simple survival instincts will keep the major corporate interests from going so far that they destroy the system. Our experience — as recently as two years ago  — does not support this. When you are on a big ship, you believe you are immune to problems like icebergs and, should you encounter one, you have your own lifeboat on reserve. This attitude disparages a culture that thinks we are all in it together.

In Collapse, his book about the extinction of once-successful societies, Jared Diamond shows how the elite can go on denuding resources until no one can survive. The chiefs on Easter Island always wanted more statues, even though it was clear the practice could not continue They knew they were superior and they felt secure, especially because they were making more statues. They were wrong, of course and, when they went down, they took everyone else with them. Diamond also asks why, conversely, a society may be willing to pay a great deal to ensure the security of all. In the Netherlands, social and political opinion supports a very expensive system of sea walls. They know that when the sea comes in, they will all drown.

We are living behind sea walls that our elites no longer wish to maintain. Our father (Bill’s and mine) worked for one company all his life and retired on his Social Security and a modest pension. My husband and I have our Social Security, he has a small pension, and we have some other resources. Politicians act as if Social Security were nothing, an insignificant amount of money to the individual. Maybe it is minor if you are making big bucks and big bonuses and are used to living that way. We held moderately-paying middle class jobs. In retirement our two Social Securities are enough so that, even without other resources, two people can live modestly in a paid-for house — but only if they have medical insurance.

I don’t know if our present way of life will be available to our children. Right now, they count on their own educations and smarts and careers to see them through and to educate their own children for similar survival. I hope it works for them; if not they’ll have to figure it out themselves because I certainly won’t be here to tell them it doesn’t have to be that way.

So I love Bill. He doesn’t think it has to be that way either. After suggesting what you can do, now,

Somewhere in all these activities, people can find fulfilling purpose again and gradually build a new politics. Don’t wait for Barack Obama to send instructions.

Mark Twain, The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) is Mark Twain’s first novel. He and Charles Dudley Warner wrote it together after an argument in 1872 about “the current state of popular fiction.” Their wives were involved also, sitting in on nightly reviews of the joint product. It reads like that: too many characters, too many plot lines, developments that don’t develop, odd changes in tone.

The book is a blend of the personal and the political. Twain had spent time in Washington, D.C. and he observed well. It pains me to read his descriptions of all the nice little tricks of corruption, as a new Congress gathers in 2011, making equally pious noises.

It is only for the politics that the book is worth reading today. That said, my attention was caught by two female characters. Ruth, the daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia Quaker family desires to study medicine and become independent. Laura, the beautiful adopted daughter of a land-poor Missouri family, fails at love, becomes a ruthless lobbyist and, eventually, murders her former lover. These characters represent the authors’ attempt to understand feminism. It is good that they tried, but sad that they failed.

Here is Ruth, arguing for her medical education:

I want to be something, to make myself something, to do something. Why should I rust, and be stupid, and sit in inaction because I am a girl? What would happen to me if thee should lose thy property and die? What one useful thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me to lead a useless life?

Sounds right to me, but the authors undermine her case. She begins the course, decides she needs more “general culture’ (do male medical students require that?), goes off to an academy, turns into a party girl, comes back to study and labor “beyond her strength” in a hospital, and almost dies of a fever before recognizing her own true love. Arrrggghhh!

Laura is beautiful and true-hearted, yet rendered insecure by the loss of her parents in a steamboat accident. She is wooed by a dastardly Confederate officer, then abandoned after a false marriage. The reaction is a typical 19th-century illness and a change in her nature.

Laura was ill for a long time, but she recovered; she had that resolution in her that could conquer death almost. And with her health came back her beauty, and an added fascination, a something that might be mistaken for sadness. Is there a beauty in the knowledge of evil, a beauty that shines out in the face of a person whose inward life is transformed by some terrible experience? Is the pathos in the eyes of the Beatrice Cenci from her guilt or her innocence?

Laura not was much changed. The lovely woman had a devil in her heart. That was all.

Here is a woman who managed to be both victim (“terrible experience”) and perpetrator (“devil in her heart”) and we know what must be ahead for her. Still and all, it is great fun when she takes on the Congress and lobbies on behalf of the family land and fortunes. I was sorry to see her lose, then end up in prison, only to prevail after some wonderfully cynical trial scenes. A survivor all the way, until the authors — not knowing what else to do with her — kill her off.

Twain and Dudley have glimpsed the situation. They see that Ruth is reasonable to desire education and independence. But they know in their hearts that she should belong to some man. They grudgingly admire the Laura who is hell-on-wheels as a lobbyist and manipulator. But they know that evil beauty is dangerous and must not be allowed to live.

A Vindication of the Rights of Women

That’s Mary Wollstonecraft as she appears in my Kindle image. I am joining with others in A Year of Feminist Classics to read and discuss this important early feminist work.

So far I am past the Introduction and the first three chapters. Time to pause and reflect. Let’s consider this passage in which Wollstonecraft is being sweetly reasonable.

Why do men halt between two impossibilities? Why do they expect virtue from a slave, or from a being whom the constitution of civil society has rendered weak, if not vicious?

“Reason” is important in Wollstonecraft’s view of social and personal development. It is the basis of all true virtue. To deny it to women and insist that they take their direction only from the men in their lives makes it impossible for women to develop their own moral sense. But then women are condemned for this result — those are the “impossibilities” Wollstonecraft deplores.

As I read (so far) she wants to bring “reason” to the table at which the argument is made and use it to establish the need of women for education and independence. She is right, of course, in her arguments, but I think we read her with such appreciation today because there is more. She cannot avoid the passion she feels about the imprisonment implied by such narrow views. Speaking of women taught to beautify themselves to attract men, she says

Confined then in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves, and stalk with mock-majesty from perch to perch. It is true, they are provided with food and raiment, for which they neither toil nor spin; but health, liberty, and virtue are given in exchange.

This sheds some light on those societies in which women are still strictly confined and where their chastity is considered indicative of the family “honor.” This has never made sense to me. If, however, a woman has no inherent ability to develop a moral sense but is totally controlled by her male relatives, then indeed her departure from virtue reflects on them — on either their own virtue or, more likely, their power to control.

Mary Wollstonecraft is a daughter of the Enlightenment. She assumes that reason supports her vindication of the rights of women. Suppose she is wrong? Maybe this is not something that can be proved or tested. Maybe women really are inferior morally and intellectually. This to her is clearly an impossibility, right up there with the impossibility that a person treated as a slave can develop true virtue. I do believe that, much as she calls on reason, Wollstonecraft like the rest of us takes her beliefs from her values, her own inner sense of right and wrong.

London Labour and the London Poor

The four volumes of Henry Mayhew’s great work of the 1850s, London Labour and the London Poor, contain 2000 pages of interviews and reporting. I have been reading the Penguin Classics edition, edited by Victor Neuberg, which excerpts some 189 pages from Volume I.

This book is not what I expected. I undertook it as a sort of sociological duty, knowing its reputation and wanting more background on the London of Dickens. I expected statistics and anguish over the situation of the poor. What I find is first-class journalism. Mayhew doesn’t do his research in a library or with Google. He visits the markets and neighborhoods, he counts, he interviews, and he brings the people to life.

Volume I is devoted to people who sell things on the street. Mayhew classifies and analyzes. No, it is not good that children are selling oranges rather than going to school, but why are these children there? Because of the actions of their parents, because this is all they know, because they are following their parents’ occupation, because they are orphans and friendless.

Are they ignorant? One of them speaks:

No; I never heerd about this here creation you speaks about. In coorse God Almighty made the world, and the poor bricklayers’ labourers built the houses afterwards — that’s my opinion; but I can’t say, for I’ve never been in no schools, only always hard at work, and knows nothing about it. I have heerd a little about our Saviour,– they seem to say he were a goodish kind of a man; but if he says as how a cove’s to forgive a feller as hits you, I should say he knows nothing about it.

Again and again we hear the street sellers speak, but from a background Mayhew delineates of the types of people he meets and the types of work that they do. Who sells what? How do they do it and where, and where do they live, and what do they eat, and do they have shoes? What does it cost to set yourself up to sell baked potatoes on the street? It’s all here in wonderful variety, yet building a pattern of chronic want and the ways the poor go on, improvising a living from day to day.

Some of the street sellers leave London. They are restless. They pick hops. They hope to sell at fairs and races and hangings. When cold weather comes, most of them return to the city. Some achieve small successes. Mayhew admires the “patterers,” those with the silver tongue who can persuade by enticing.

I sell to women of all sorts. Smart-dressing servant-maids, perhaps, are my best customers…. I sold one of my umbrellas to one of them just before you spoke to me… “Look here, ma’am,” said I, “this umbrella is much bigger you see, and will carry double so when you’re coming from church of a wet Sunday evening, a friend can have share of it, and very grateful he’ll be, as he’s sure to have his best hat on. There’s been many a question put under an umbrella that way that’s made a young lady blush, and take good care of her umbrella when she was married, and had a house of her own.”

The strength of Mayhew is like the strength of Dickens. He recognizes ignorance and privation and bemoans the injustice done to those who labor with little reward. At the same time he recognizes their strength to endure and to enjoy what pleasures their lives offer them.