Part 1

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS. A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

N^{o.} 12.] SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._

OLD LAMPS FOR NEW ONES.

The Magician in “Aladdin” may possibly have neglected the study of men, for the study of alchemical books; but it is certain that in spite of his profession he was no conjuror. He knew nothing of human nature, or the everlasting set of the current of human affairs. If, when he fraudulently sought to obtain possession of the wonderful Lamp, and went up and down, disguised, before the flying-palace, crying New Lamps for Old ones, he had reversed his cry, and made it Old Lamps for New ones, he would have been so far before his time as to have projected himself into the nineteenth century of our Christian Era.

This age is so perverse, and is so very short of faith—in consequence, as some suppose, of there having been a run on that bank for a few generations—that a parallel and beautiful idea, generally known among the ignorant as the Young England hallucination, unhappily expired before it could run alone, to the great grief of a small but a very select circle of mourners. There is something so fascinating, to a mind capable of any serious reflection, in the notion of ignoring all that has been done for the happiness and elevation of mankind during three or four centuries of slow and dearly-bought amelioration, that we have always thought it would tend soundly to the improvement of the general public, if any tangible symbol, any outward and visible sign, expressive of that admirable conception, could be held up before them. We are happy to have found such a sign at last; and although it would make a very indifferent sign, indeed, in the Licensed Victualling sense of the word, and would probably be rejected with contempt and horror by any Christian publican, it has our warmest philosophical appreciation.

In the fifteenth century, a certain feeble lamp of art arose in the Italian town of Urbino. This poor light, Raphael Sanzio by name, better known to a few miserably mistaken wretches in these later days, as Raphael (another burned at the same time, called Titian), was fed with a preposterous idea of Beauty—with a ridiculous power of etherealising, and exalting to the very Heaven of Heavens, what was most sublime and lovely in the expression of the human face divine on Earth—with the truly contemptible conceit of finding in poor humanity the fallen likeness of the angels of God, and raising it up again to their pure spiritual condition. This very fantastic whim effected a low revolution in Art, in this wise, that Beauty came to be regarded as one of its indispensable elements. In this very poor delusion, Artists have continued until this present nineteenth century, when it was reserved for some bold aspirants to “put it down.”

The Pre-Raphael Brotherhood, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the dread Tribunal which is to set this matter right. Walk up, walk up; and here, conspicuous on the wall of the Royal Academy of Art in England, in the eighty-second year of their annual exhibition, you shall see what this new Holy Brotherhood, this terrible Police that is to disperse all Post-Raphael offenders, has “been and done!”

You come—in this Royal Academy Exhibition, which is familiar with the works of WILKIE, COLLINS, ETTY, EASTLAKE, MULREADY, LESLIE, MACLISE, TURNER, STANFIELD, LANDSEER, ROBERTS, DANBY, CRESWICK, LEE, WEBSTER, HERBERT, DYCE, COPE, and others who would have been renowned as great masters in any age or country—you come, in this place, to the contemplation of a Holy Family. You will have the goodness to discharge from your minds all Post-Raphael ideas, all religious aspirations, all elevating thoughts; all tender, awful, sorrowful, ennobling, sacred, graceful, or beautiful associations; and to prepare yourselves, as befits such a subject—Pre-Raphaelly considered—for the lowest depths of what is mean, odious, repulsive, and revolting.

You behold the interior of a carpenter’s shop. In the foreground of that carpenter’s shop is a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-headed boy, in a bed-gown; who appears to have received a poke in the hand, from the stick of another boy with whom he has been playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be holding it up for the contemplation of a kneeling woman, so horrible in her ugliness, that (supposing it were possible for any human creature to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England. Two almost naked carpenters, master and journeyman, worthy companions of this agreeable female, are working at their trade; a boy, with some small flavor of humanity in him, is entering with a vessel of water; and nobody is paying any attention to a snuffy old woman who seems to have mistaken that shop for the tobacconist’s next door, and to be hopelessly waiting at the counter to be served with half an ounce of her favourite mixture. Wherever it is possible to express ugliness of feature, limb, or attitude, you have it expressed. Such men as the carpenters might be undressed in any hospital where dirty drunkards, in a high state of varicose veins, are received. Their very toes have walked out of Saint Giles’s.

This, in the nineteenth century, and in the eighty-second year of the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Art, is the Pre-Raphael representation to us, Ladies and Gentlemen, of the most solemn passage which our minds can ever approach. This, in the nineteenth century, and in the eighty-second year of the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Art, is what Pre-Raphael Art can do to render reverence and homage to the faith in which we live and die! Consider this picture well. Consider the pleasure we should have in a similar Pre-Raphael rendering of a favourite horse, or dog, or cat; and, coming fresh from a pretty considerable turmoil about “desecration” in connexion with the National Post Office, let us extol this great achievement, and commend the National Academy!

In further considering this symbol of the great retrogressive principle, it is particularly gratifying to observe that such objects as the shavings which are strewn on the carpenter’s floor are admirably painted; and that the Pre-Raphael Brother is indisputably accomplished in the manipulation of his art. It is gratifying to observe this, because the fact involves no low effort at notoriety; everybody knowing that it is by no means easier to call attention to a very indifferent pig with five legs, than to a symmetrical pig with four. Also, because it is good to know that the National Academy thoroughly feels and comprehends the high range and exalted purposes of Art; distinctly perceives that Art includes something more than the faithful portraiture of shavings, or the skilful colouring of drapery—imperatively requires, in short, that it shall be informed with mind and sentiment; will on no account reduce it to a narrow question of trade-juggling with a palette, palette-knife, and paint-box. It is likewise pleasing to reflect that the great educational establishment foresees the difficulty into which it would be led, by attaching greater weight to mere handicraft, than to any other consideration—even to considerations of common reverence or decency; which absurd principle, in the event of a skilful painter of the figure becoming a very little more perverted in his taste, than certain skilful painters are just now, might place Her Gracious Majesty in a very painful position, one of these fine Private View Days.

Would it were in our power to congratulate our readers on the hopeful prospects of the great retrogressive principle, of which this thoughtful picture is the sign and emblem! Would that we could give our readers encouraging assurance of a healthy demand for Old Lamps in exchange for New ones, and a steady improvement in the Old Lamp Market! The perversity of mankind is such, and the untoward arrangements of Providence are such, that we cannot lay that flattering unction to their souls. We can only report what Brotherhoods, stimulated by this sign, are forming; and what opportunities will be presented to the people, if the people will but accept them.

In the first place, the Pre-Perspective Brotherhood will be presently incorporated, for the subversion of all known rules and principles of perspective. It is intended to swear every P. P. B. to a solemn renunciation of the art of perspective on a soup-plate of the willow pattern; and we may expect, on the occasion of the eighty-third Annual Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art in England, to see some pictures by this pious Brotherhood, realising HOGARTH’S idea of a man on a mountain several miles off, lighting his pipe at the upper window of a house in the foreground. But we are informed that every brick in the house will be a portrait; that the man’s boots will be copied with the utmost fidelity from a pair of Bluchers, sent up out of Northamptonshire for the purpose; and that the texture of his hands (including four chilblains, a whitlow, and ten dirty nails) will be a triumph of the Painter’s art.

A Society, to be called the Pre-Newtonian Brotherhood, was lately projected by a young gentleman, under articles to a Civil Engineer, who objected to being considered bound to conduct himself according to the laws of gravitation. But this young gentleman, being reproached by some aspiring companions with the timidity of his conception, has abrogated that idea in favour of a Pre-Galileo Brotherhood now flourishing, who distinctly refuse to perform any annual revolution round the Sun, and have arranged that the world shall not do so any more. The course to be taken by the Royal Academy of Art in reference to this Brotherhood is not yet decided upon; but it is whispered that some other large Educational Institutions in the neighbourhood of Oxford are nearly ready to pronounce in favour of it.

Several promising Students connected with the Royal College of Surgeons have held a meeting, to protest against the circulation of the blood, and to pledge themselves to treat all the patients they can get, on principles condemnatory of that innovation. A Pre-Harvey-Brotherhood is the result, from which a great deal may be expected—by the undertakers.

In literature, a very spirited effort has been made, which is no less than the formation of a P. G. A. P. C. B., or Pre-Gower and Pre-Chaucer-Brotherhood, for the restoration of the ancient English style of spelling, and the weeding out from all libraries, public and private, of those and all later pretenders, particularly a person of loose character named SHAKESPEARE. It having been suggested, however, that this happy idea could scarcely be considered complete while the art of printing was permitted to remain unmolested, another society, under the name of the Pre-Laurentius Brotherhood, has been established in connexion with it, for the abolition of all but manuscript books. These MR. PUGIN has engaged to supply, in characters that nobody on earth shall be able to read. And it is confidently expected by those who have seen the House of Lords, that he will faithfully redeem his pledge.

In Music, a retrogressive step, in which there is much hope, has been taken. The P. A. B., or Pre-Agincourt Brotherhood has arisen, nobly devoted to consign to oblivion Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and every other such ridiculous reputation, and to fix its Millennium (as its name implies) before the date of the first regular musical composition known to have been achieved in England. As this Institution has not yet commenced active operations, it remains to be seen whether the Royal Academy of Music will be a worthy sister of the Royal Academy of Art, and admit this enterprising body to its orchestra. We have it on the best authority, that its compositions will be quite as rough and discordant as the real old original—that it will be, in a word, exactly suited to the pictorial Art we have endeavoured to describe. We have strong hopes, therefore, that the Royal Academy of Music, not wanting an example, may not want courage.

The regulation of social matters, as separated from the Fine Arts, has been undertaken by the Pre-Henry-the-Seventh Brotherhood, who date from the same period as the Pre-Raphael Brotherhood. This society, as cancelling all the advances of nearly four hundred years, and reverting to one of the most disagreeable periods of English History, when the Nation was yet very slowly emerging from barbarism, and when gentle female foreigners, come over to be the wives of Scottish Kings, wept bitterly (as well they might) at being left alone among the savage Court, must be regarded with peculiar favour. As the time of ugly religious caricatures (called mysteries), it is thoroughly Pre-Raphael in its spirit; and may be deemed the twin brother to that great society. We should be certain of the Plague among many other advantages, if this Brotherhood were properly encouraged.

All these Brotherhoods, and any other society of the like kind, now in being or yet to be, have at once a guiding star, and a reduction of their great ideas to something palpable and obvious to the senses, in the sign to which we take the liberty of directing their attention. We understand that it is in the contemplation of each Society to become possessed, with all convenient speed, of a collection of such pictures; and that once, every year, to wit upon the first of April, the whole intend to amalgamate in a high festival, to be called the Convocation of Eternal Boobies.

SAVINGS’ BANK DEFALCATIONS.

It is exactly fifty years ago since the clergyman of a little town in Bucks circulated among the poorer part of his parishioners a proposal, which excited the ridicule of many and the apprehension of not a few. “If any inhabitant of Wendover chooses,” said he, “to entrust me with any amount of his savings, in sums of not less than twopence at a time, I shall be happy to receive the money, and to repay the sum to him next Christmas, with an addition of one-third upon the amount of his deposit.” It was some time before the population of Wendover could be brought to understand the value of the proposal; but it was still longer before its universal application became appreciated. Five years elapsed ere any similar institution rose into existence: then a “Charitable Bank” was opened at Tottenham, by a lady named Priscilla Wakefield, assisted by six gentlemen, who undertook from their private purses to allow five per cent. interest on the deposits. Three years passed, and another society upon the same principle was formed at Bath. After this, the eyes of the public began to be opened; and by 1816, there were established in England seventy different Savings’ Banks; whilst Wales boasted of four, and Ireland of five. At present the number of Savings’ Banks in operation in Great Britain, is five hundred and eighty-four. Those doing the largest amount of business are of course in London; and some idea may be formed of the magnitude of their transactions, when it is stated that the St. Martin’s Bank, near Trafalgar Square, alone, has on its books at present, forty thousand depositors, whose investments amount to upwards of a million and a quarter sterling. Since this establishment was first commenced in 1816, it has opened one hundred and seventy-three thousand accounts for nearly eight millions of money. The bank which approaches the nearest to the St. Martin’s Bank in magnitude, is the Bishopsgate Bank in Moorfields. That bank has three-quarters of a million invested in it. The Bloomsbury Bank has half a million: the Marylebone Bank about 300,000_l._ There are banks as large as the last, at Newcastle, Nottingham, Norwich, Bristol, Hull, Devonport, Leeds, and Birmingham. The Liverpool and Manchester Banks have deposits of half a million each. In Exeter there is a bank with thirty-five thousand depositors, and half a million of money.

This immense amount of business is done at no very great cost. For the five hundred and eighty-four banks, there are altogether only eleven hundred and forty paid officers. The salaries of these officers amount to no more than seventy-five thousand pounds a year; and they manage the business of more than a million of depositors, whose accounts exceed twenty-eight millions sterling—a sum equal to the capital of the Bank of England.

The mere fact of any institution having to deal with so enormous a capital, renders it one of great importance commercially. But when it is remembered that the vast aggregate is made up of small savings; and that additions to, or withdrawals from it, furnish a clue to the fluctuations between the prosperity and depression of the largest, most useful, and least wealthy among us—the thews and sinews of the nation—the administration and management of Savings’ Banks cannot be too jealously watched.

Unhappily a painful interest has been lately imparted to the system by the abstraction of large sums by certain local managers; and by the discovery that to make these defalcations good, there exists no government liability. Indeed by law (the act of 1844) even the Trustees are not liable; but honour has always, as we shall see, proved with them stronger than the statute. A clear understanding of the actual connection of the State with Savings’ Banks is of vital importance, not only to depositors, but to those who interest themselves in promoting the banking system among the humbler classes; a system, which, it may be safely affirmed, has hitherto proved of the utmost benefit not only to the worldly prosperity, but to the morals of the working bees of our Great Hive.

Savings’ Banks were first established from motives of benevolence. They soon, however, came to involve such great responsibility that the managers were anxious that the State should give them the benefit of its support. The State was nothing loth, for it saw the advantage of having such large amounts of money in possession. Accordingly, in 1817, there was opened at the National Debt Office, a “Fund for the Banks for Savings,” and an act was passed compelling the Trustees to pay in their deposits to that Fund, receiving a debenture which bore interest at the rate of 4_l._ 10_s._ per cent.

The Government, therefore, is only responsible for the money _after_ it is paid to the National Debt Office: it is not accountable for deficiencies arising in the course of Savings’ Bank transactions, or from the embezzlement or mismanagement of local officers. Still depositors are seldom defrauded; for when such defaults have happened, the Trustees and Managers of the Bank concerned have stepped in to cover the deficiencies, except in a case which occurred in Wales in 1824, and in other instances subsequently in Ireland. In no one case, on the other hand, has the Government ever rendered assistance to the value of a farthing. Why, will be seen when the dealings between the local authorities of these banks and the National Debt Office are explained. They are simply as follows:—The accumulated deposits of each Savings’ Bank, are paid over to some neighbouring banker, or other person, who acts gratuitously as treasurer. The treasurer pays the money, by check or otherwise, to the National Debt Commissioners, who invest it in Exchequer Bills or Stock. At the end of the year they allow an interest upon the amount deposited. Out of this interest the Savings’ Banks Trustees are authorised by law to pay interest to the depositors at the rate of not less than 2_l._ 15_s._, nor more than 3_l._ 0_s._ 10_d._ per cent. per annum. The Banks vary in the precise rate; the average rate of interest afforded by all the Banks in the United Kingdom is 2_l._ 17_s._ 6_d._ Thus 7_s._ 6_d._ per cent.—which constitutes the difference between 2_l._ 17_s._ 6_d._ and the 3_l._ 5_s._—forms the fund out of which is defrayed the charges of management.

In the majority of Banks, there is only one paid officer; but of course the number varies according to the amount of business. The St. Martin’s Bank is the most complete establishment of the kind, and consists of sixteen persons. Some Banks have only one remunerated official. In every case, the National Debt Commissioners have power to make such regulations, under the Savings’ Bank Act, as enforce each paid officer giving heavy security for his honesty.

It is of great consequence that the public should understand that the defalcations which have of late caused some distrust in the stability of Savings’ Banks, have not arisen from any defect of the great principles, but only in the details, and from the abuses of the system. They have happened chiefly in consequence of the culpably loose and irregular conduct of the local managers; but partly from the carelessness or ignorance of depositors. The chief manager of an Institution in default—as in the latest case which has come before the public—has left everything to the actuary or cashier, who did precisely as he pleased, and he is blamable for laxity. On the other hand, most of the monies of which depositors were plundered never passed through a Savings’ Bank at all. They were paid to the Officers of the Banks at their own abodes, and these officers never gave any account of them to the Managers. The only way to stop this, is to make it criminal for any officer of a Bank to receive the money of any depositor, at any other time or place than at the Bank during the regular Bank hours. The fact is that there have rarely, if ever, hitherto been any _genuine_ frauds upon Savings’ Banks. The frauds have taken place upon irregular transactions out of doors. Hence it is that the National Debt Commissioners repudiate all liability to the depositors.

Against, however, the National Debt Office itself there is a very serious charge. As we have stated, it is bound to invest, in the public securities, the monies paid over to them by the Trustees and Treasurers of Savings’ Banks. It appears, from parliamentary returns, that at different periods the Commissioners have accumulated large sums of this money, and dealt with it in different classes of securities; although the necessities of Savings’ Banks did not require any such operations. The result has been very unfortunate. The National Debt Commissioners appear, by their accounts, to have less stock by _two millions_ of money, than the capital paid to them ought to represent. This glaring fact appears on the face of the public accounts. No explanation has ever been given; no reasons have ever been assigned. The belief is, that the operations by which the Savings’ Banks fund so seriously suffered, were necessitated by the financial exigencies of government some years since. They commenced in 1834 and continued down to 1843, when they were discovered and checked by public opinion. As, then, for this amount the Government is responsible, the nation will be, ultimately, obliged to pay it up to the depositors.

But a calm review of these facts—startling as some of them are—should not essentially affect the stability of Savings’ Banks, and alarm is comparatively groundless. Firstly, the defalcations of officers are generally made good by their sureties, or by the local trustees; and secondly, the deficiency of two millions is not likely to be called for so suddenly as to inconvenience the public purse.