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Plato - "Philebus"

Maxim Gorky - "Project Gutenberg surfs with a modem donated by Supra."

Edna Lyall - "Derrick Vaughan Novelist"

E. Nesbit - "Project Gutenberg surfs with a modem donated by Supra."

American Notes for General Circulation

C >> Charles Dickens >> American Notes for General Circulation




The streets and shops are lighted now; and as the eye travels down
the long thoroughfare, dotted with bright jets of gas, it is
reminded of Oxford Street, or Piccadilly. Here and there a flight
of broad stone cellar-steps appears, and a painted lamp directs you
to the Bowling Saloon, or Ten-Pin alley; Ten-Pins being a game of
mingled chance and skill, invented when the legislature passed an
act forbidding Nine-Pins. At other downward flights of steps, are
other lamps, marking the whereabouts of oyster-cellars - pleasant
retreats, say I: not only by reason of their wonderful cookery of
oysters, pretty nigh as large as cheese-plates (or for thy dear
sake, heartiest of Greek Professors!), but because of all kinds of
caters of fish, or flesh, or fowl, in these latitudes, the
swallowers of oysters alone are not gregarious; but subduing
themselves, as it were, to the nature of what they work in, and
copying the coyness of the thing they eat, do sit apart in
curtained boxes, and consort by twos, not by two hundreds.

But how quiet the streets are! Are there no itinerant bands; no
wind or stringed instruments? No, not one. By day, are there no
Punches, Fantoccini, Dancing-dogs, Jugglers, Conjurers,
Orchestrinas, or even Barrel-organs? No, not one. Yes, I remember
one. One barrel-organ and a dancing-monkey - sportive by nature,
but fast fading into a dull, lumpish monkey, of the Utilitarian
school. Beyond that, nothing lively; no, not so much as a white
mouse in a twirling cage.

Are there no amusements? Yes. There is a lecture-room across the
way, from which that glare of light proceeds, and there may be
evening service for the ladies thrice a week, or oftener. For the
young gentlemen, there is the counting-house, the store, the bar-
room: the latter, as you may see through these windows, pretty
full. Hark! to the clinking sound of hammers breaking lumps of
ice, and to the cool gurgling of the pounded bits, as, in the
process of mixing, they are poured from glass to glass! No
amusements? What are these suckers of cigars and swallowers of
strong drinks, whose hats and legs we see in every possible variety
of twist, doing, but amusing themselves? What are the fifty
newspapers, which those precocious urchins are bawling down the
street, and which are kept filed within, what are they but
amusements? Not vapid, waterish amusements, but good strong stuff;
dealing in round abuse and blackguard names; pulling off the roofs
of private houses, as the Halting Devil did in Spain; pimping and
pandering for all degrees of vicious taste, and gorging with coined
lies the most voracious maw; imputing to every man in public life
the coarsest and the vilest motives; scaring away from the stabbed
and prostrate body-politic, every Samaritan of clear conscience and
good deeds; and setting on, with yell and whistle and the clapping
of foul hands, the vilest vermin and worst birds of prey. - No
amusements!

Let us go on again; and passing this wilderness of an hotel with
stores about its base, like some Continental theatre, or the London
Opera House shorn of its colonnade, plunge into the Five Points.
But it is needful, first, that we take as our escort these two
heads of the police, whom you would know for sharp and well-trained
officers if you met them in the Great Desert. So true it is, that
certain pursuits, wherever carried on, will stamp men with the same
character. These two might have been begotten, born, and bred, in
Bow Street.

We have seen no beggars in the streets by night or day; but of
other kinds of strollers, plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, and vice,
are rife enough where we are going now.

This is the place: these narrow ways, diverging to the right and
left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lives as
are led here, bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse
and bloated faces at the doors, have counterparts at home, and all
the wide world over. Debauchery has made the very houses
prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and
how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes
that have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of those pigs live
here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright in lieu
of going on all-fours? and why they talk instead of grunting?

So far, nearly every house is a low tavern; and on the bar-room
walls, are coloured prints of Washington, and Queen Victoria of
England, and the American Eagle. Among the pigeon-holes that hold
the bottles, are pieces of plate-glass and coloured paper, for
there is, in some sort, a taste for decoration, even here. And as
seamen frequent these haunts, there are maritime pictures by the
dozen: of partings between sailors and their lady-loves, portraits
of William, of the ballad, and his Black-Eyed Susan; of Will Watch,
the Bold Smuggler; of Paul Jones the Pirate, and the like: on
which the painted eyes of Queen Victoria, and of Washington to
boot, rest in as strange companionship, as on most of the scenes
that are enacted in their wondering presence.

What place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us? A
kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable only
by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies beyond this tottering
flight of steps, that creak beneath our tread? - a miserable room,
lighted by one dim candle, and destitute of all comfort, save that
which may be hidden in a wretched bed. Beside it, sits a man: his
elbows on his knees: his forehead hidden in his hands. 'What ails
that man?' asks the foremost officer. 'Fever,' he sullenly
replies, without looking up. Conceive the fancies of a feverish
brain, in such a place as this!

Ascend these pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on the
trembling boards, and grope your way with me into this wolfish den,
where neither ray of light nor breath of air, appears to come. A
negro lad, startled from his sleep by the officer's voice - he
knows it well - but comforted by his assurance that he has not come
on business, officiously bestirs himself to light a candle. The
match flickers for a moment, and shows great mounds of dusty rags
upon the ground; then dies away and leaves a denser darkness than
before, if there can be degrees in such extremes. He stumbles down
the stairs and presently comes back, shading a flaring taper with
his hand. Then the mounds of rags are seen to be astir, and rise
slowly up, and the floor is covered with heaps of negro women,
waking from their sleep: their white teeth chattering, and their
bright eyes glistening and winking on all sides with surprise and
fear, like the countless repetition of one astonished African face
in some strange mirror.

Mount up these other stairs with no less caution (there are traps
and pitfalls here, for those who are not so well escorted as
ourselves) into the housetop; where the bare beams and rafters meet
overhead, and calm night looks down through the crevices in the
roof. Open the door of one of these cramped hutches full of
sleeping negroes. Pah! They have a charcoal fire within; there is
a smell of singeing clothes, or flesh, so close they gather round
the brazier; and vapours issue forth that blind and suffocate.
From every corner, as you glance about you in these dark retreats,
some figure crawls half-awakened, as if the judgment-hour were near
at hand, and every obscene grave were giving up its dead. Where
dogs would howl to lie, women, and men, and boys slink off to
sleep, forcing the dislodged rats to move away in quest of better
lodgings.

Here too are lanes and alleys, paved with mud knee-deep,
underground chambers, where they dance and game; the walls bedecked
with rough designs of ships, and forts, and flags, and American
eagles out of number: ruined houses, open to the street, whence,
through wide gaps in the walls, other ruins loom upon the eye, as
though the world of vice and misery had nothing else to show:
hideous tenements which take their name from robbery and murder:
all that is loathsome, drooping, and decayed is here.

Our leader has his hand upon the latch of 'Almack's,' and calls to
us from the bottom of the steps; for the assembly-room of the Five
Point fashionables is approached by a descent. Shall we go in? It
is but a moment.

Heyday! the landlady of Almack's thrives! A buxom fat mulatto
woman, with sparkling eyes, whose head is daintily ornamented with
a handkerchief of many colours. Nor is the landlord much behind
her in his finery, being attired in a smart blue jacket, like a
ship's steward, with a thick gold ring upon his little finger, and
round his neck a gleaming golden watch-guard. How glad he is to
see us! What will we please to call for? A dance? It shall be
done directly, sir: 'a regular break-down.'

The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend who plays the
tambourine, stamp upon the boarding of the small raised orchestra
in which they sit, and play a lively measure. Five or six couple
come upon the floor, marshalled by a lively young negro, who is the
wit of the assembly, and the greatest dancer known. He never
leaves off making queer faces, and is the delight of all the rest,
who grin from ear to ear incessantly. Among the dancers are two
young mulatto girls, with large, black, drooping eyes, and head-
gear after the fashion of the hostess, who are as shy, or feign to
be, as though they never danced before, and so look down before the
visitors, that their partners can see nothing but the long fringed
lashes.

But the dance commences. Every gentleman sets as long as he likes
to the opposite lady, and the opposite lady to him, and all are so
long about it that the sport begins to languish, when suddenly the
lively hero dashes in to the rescue. Instantly the fiddler grins,
and goes at it tooth and nail; there is new energy in the
tambourine; new laughter in the dancers; new smiles in the
landlady; new confidence in the landlord; new brightness in the
very candles.

Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-cut; snapping his
fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the
backs of his legs in front, spinning about on his toes and heels
like nothing but the man's fingers on the tambourine; dancing with
two left legs, two right legs, two wooden legs, two wire legs, two
spring legs - all sorts of legs and no legs - what is this to him?
And in what walk of life, or dance of life, does man ever get such
stimulating applause as thunders about him, when, having danced his
partner off her feet, and himself too, he finishes by leaping
gloriously on the bar-counter, and calling for something to drink,
with the chuckle of a million of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one
inimitable sound!

The air, even in these distempered parts, is fresh after the
stifling atmosphere of the houses; and now, as we emerge into a
broader street, it blows upon us with a purer breath, and the stars
look bright again. Here are The Tombs once more. The city watch-
house is a part of the building. It follows naturally on the
sights we have just left. Let us see that, and then to bed.

What! do you thrust your common offenders against the police
discipline of the town, into such holes as these? Do men and
women, against whom no crime is proved, lie here all night in
perfect darkness, surrounded by the noisome vapours which encircle
that flagging lamp you light us with, and breathing this filthy and
offensive stench! Why, such indecent and disgusting dungeons as
these cells, would bring disgrace upon the most despotic empire in
the world! Look at them, man - you, who see them every night, and
keep the keys. Do you see what they are? Do you know how drains
are made below the streets, and wherein these human sewers differ,
except in being always stagnant?

Well, he don't know. He has had five-and-twenty young women locked
up in this very cell at one time, and you'd hardly realise what
handsome faces there were among 'em.

In God's name! shut the door upon the wretched creature who is in
it now, and put its screen before a place, quite unsurpassed in all
the vice, neglect, and devilry, of the worst old town in Europe.

Are people really left all night, untried, in those black sties? -
Every night. The watch is set at seven in the evening. The
magistrate opens his court at five in the morning. That is the
earliest hour at which the first prisoner can be released; and if
an officer appear against him, he is not taken out till nine
o'clock or ten. - But if any one among them die in the interval, as
one man did, not long ago? Then he is half-eaten by the rats in an
hour's time; as that man was; and there an end.

What is this intolerable tolling of great bells, and crashing of
wheels, and shouting in the distance? A fire. And what that deep
red light in the opposite direction? Another fire. And what these
charred and blackened walls we stand before? A dwelling where a
fire has been. It was more than hinted, in an official report, not
long ago, that some of these conflagrations were not wholly
accidental, and that speculation and enterprise found a field of
exertion, even in flames: but be this as it may, there was a fire
last night, there are two to-night, and you may lay an even wager
there will be at least one, to-morrow. So, carrying that with us
for our comfort, let us say, Good night, and climb up-stairs to
bed.

* * * * * *

One day, during my stay in New York, I paid a visit to the
different public institutions on Long Island, or Rhode Island: I
forget which. One of them is a Lunatic Asylum. The building is
handsome; and is remarkable for a spacious and elegant staircase.
The whole structure is not yet finished, but it is already one of
considerable size and extent, and is capable of accommodating a
very large number of patients.

I cannot say that I derived much comfort from the inspection of
this charity. The different wards might have been cleaner and
better ordered; I saw nothing of that salutary system which had
impressed me so favourably elsewhere; and everything had a
lounging, listless, madhouse air, which was very painful. The
moping idiot, cowering down with long dishevelled hair; the
gibbering maniac, with his hideous laugh and pointed finger; the
vacant eye, the fierce wild face, the gloomy picking of the hands
and lips, and munching of the nails: there they were all, without
disguise, in naked ugliness and horror. In the dining-room, a
bare, dull, dreary place, with nothing for the eye to rest on but
the empty walls, a woman was locked up alone. She was bent, they
told me, on committing suicide. If anything could have
strengthened her in her resolution, it would certainly have been
the insupportable monotony of such an existence.

The terrible crowd with which these halls and galleries were
filled, so shocked me, that I abridged my stay within the shortest
limits, and declined to see that portion of the building in which
the refractory and violent were under closer restraint. I have no
doubt that the gentleman who presided over this establishment at
the time I write of, was competent to manage it, and had done all
in his power to promote its usefulness: but will it be believed
that the miserable strife of Party feeling is carried even into
this sad refuge of afflicted and degraded humanity? Will it be
believed that the eyes which are to watch over and control the
wanderings of minds on which the most dreadful visitation to which
our nature is exposed has fallen, must wear the glasses of some
wretched side in Politics? Will it be believed that the governor
of such a house as this, is appointed, and deposed, and changed
perpetually, as Parties fluctuate and vary, and as their despicable
weathercocks are blown this way or that? A hundred times in every
week, some new most paltry exhibition of that narrow-minded and
injurious Party Spirit, which is the Simoom of America, sickening
and blighting everything of wholesome life within its reach, was
forced upon my notice; but I never turned my back upon it with
feelings of such deep disgust and measureless contempt, as when I
crossed the threshold of this madhouse.

At a short distance from this building is another called the Alms
House, that is to say, the workhouse of New York. This is a large
Institution also: lodging, I believe, when I was there, nearly a
thousand poor. It was badly ventilated, and badly lighted; was not
too clean; - and impressed me, on the whole, very uncomfortably.
But it must be remembered that New York, as a great emporium of
commerce, and as a place of general resort, not only from all parts
of the States, but from most parts of the world, has always a large
pauper population to provide for; and labours, therefore, under
peculiar difficulties in this respect. Nor must it be forgotten
that New York is a large town, and that in all large towns a vast
amount of good and evil is intermixed and jumbled up together.

In the same neighbourhood is the Farm, where young orphans are
nursed and bred. I did not see it, but I believe it is well
conducted; and I can the more easily credit it, from knowing how
mindful they usually are, in America, of that beautiful passage in
the Litany which remembers all sick persons and young children.

I was taken to these Institutions by water, in a boat belonging to
the Island jail, and rowed by a crew of prisoners, who were dressed
in a striped uniform of black and buff, in which they looked like
faded tigers. They took me, by the same conveyance, to the jail
itself.

It is an old prison, and quite a pioneer establishment, on the plan
I have already described. I was glad to hear this, for it is
unquestionably a very indifferent one. The most is made, however,
of the means it possesses, and it is as well regulated as such a
place can be.

The women work in covered sheds, erected for that purpose. If I
remember right, there are no shops for the men, but be that as it
may, the greater part of them labour in certain stone-quarries near
at hand. The day being very wet indeed, this labour was suspended,
and the prisoners were in their cells. Imagine these cells, some
two or three hundred in number, and in every one a man locked up;
this one at his door for air, with his hands thrust through the
grate; this one in bed (in the middle of the day, remember); and
this one flung down in a heap upon the ground, with his head
against the bars, like a wild beast. Make the rain pour down,
outside, in torrents. Put the everlasting stove in the midst; hot,
and suffocating, and vaporous, as a witch's cauldron. Add a
collection of gentle odours, such as would arise from a thousand
mildewed umbrellas, wet through, and a thousand buck-baskets, full
of half-washed linen - and there is the prison, as it was that day.

The prison for the State at Sing Sing is, on the other hand, a
model jail. That, and Auburn, are, I believe, the largest and best
examples of the silent system.

In another part of the city, is the Refuge for the Destitute: an
Institution whose object is to reclaim youthful offenders, male and
female, black and white, without distinction; to teach them useful
trades, apprentice them to respectable masters, and make them
worthy members of society. Its design, it will be seen, is similar
to that at Boston; and it is a no less meritorious and admirable
establishment. A suspicion crossed my mind during my inspection of
this noble charity, whether the superintendent had quite sufficient
knowledge of the world and worldly characters; and whether he did
not commit a great mistake in treating some young girls, who were
to all intents and purposes, by their years and their past lives,
women, as though they were little children; which certainly had a
ludicrous effect in my eyes, and, or I am much mistaken, in theirs
also. As the Institution, however, is always under a vigilant
examination of a body of gentlemen of great intelligence and
experience, it cannot fail to be well conducted; and whether I am
right or wrong in this slight particular, is unimportant to its
deserts and character, which it would be difficult to estimate too
highly.

In addition to these establishments, there are in New York,
excellent hospitals and schools, literary institutions and
libraries; an admirable fire department (as indeed it should be,
having constant practice), and charities of every sort and kind.
In the suburbs there is a spacious cemetery: unfinished yet, but
every day improving. The saddest tomb I saw there was 'The
Strangers' Grave. Dedicated to the different hotels in this city.'

There are three principal theatres. Two of them, the Park and the
Bowery, are large, elegant, and handsome buildings, and are, I
grieve to write it, generally deserted. The third, the Olympic, is
a tiny show-box for vaudevilles and burlesques. It is singularly
well conducted by Mr. Mitchell, a comic actor of great quiet humour
and originality, who is well remembered and esteemed by London
playgoers. I am happy to report of this deserving gentleman, that
his benches are usually well filled, and that his theatre rings
with merriment every night. I had almost forgotten a small summer
theatre, called Niblo's, with gardens and open air amusements
attached; but I believe it is not exempt from the general
depression under which Theatrical Property, or what is humorously
called by that name, unfortunately labours.

The country round New York is surpassingly and exquisitely
picturesque. The climate, as I have already intimated, is somewhat
of the warmest. What it would be, without the sea breezes which
come from its beautiful Bay in the evening time, I will not throw
myself or my readers into a fever by inquiring.

The tone of the best society in this city, is like that of Boston;
here and there, it may be, with a greater infusion of the
mercantile spirit, but generally polished and refined, and always
most hospitable. The houses and tables are elegant; the hours
later and more rakish; and there is, perhaps, a greater spirit of
contention in reference to appearances, and the display of wealth
and costly living. The ladies are singularly beautiful.

Before I left New York I made arrangements for securing a passage
home in the George Washington packet ship, which was advertised to
sail in June: that being the month in which I had determined, if
prevented by no accident in the course of my ramblings, to leave
America.

I never thought that going back to England, returning to all who
are dear to me, and to pursuits that have insensibly grown to be a
part of my nature, I could have felt so much sorrow as I endured,
when I parted at last, on board this ship, with the friends who had
accompanied me from this city. I never thought the name of any
place, so far away and so lately known, could ever associate itself
in my mind with the crowd of affectionate remembrances that now
cluster about it. There are those in this city who would brighten,
to me, the darkest winter-day that ever glimmered and went out in
Lapland; and before whose presence even Home grew dim, when they
and I exchanged that painful word which mingles with our every
thought and deed; which haunts our cradle-heads in infancy, and
closes up the vista of our lives in age.




CHAPTER VII - PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS SOLITARY PRISON



THE journey from New York to Philadelphia, is made by railroad, and
two ferries; and usually occupies between five and six hours. It
was a fine evening when we were passengers in the train: and
watching the bright sunset from a little window near the door by
which we sat, my attention was attracted to a remarkable appearance
issuing from the windows of the gentleman's car immediately in
front of us, which I supposed for some time was occasioned by a
number of industrious persons inside, ripping open feather-beds,
and giving the feathers to the wind. At length it occurred to me
that they were only spitting, which was indeed the case; though how
any number of passengers which it was possible for that car to
contain, could have maintained such a playful and incessant shower
of expectoration, I am still at a loss to understand:
notwithstanding the experience in all salivatory phenomena which I
afterwards acquired.

I made acquaintance, on this journey, with a mild and modest young
quaker, who opened the discourse by informing me, in a grave
whisper, that his grandfather was the inventor of cold-drawn castor
oil. I mention the circumstance here, thinking it probable that
this is the first occasion on which the valuable medicine in
question was ever used as a conversational aperient.

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