Chapter 23

"Then my poor mother died," says Miss Stipp sadly, drawing her hand across the end of her nose. "I forgit the year, but it was the fust year that ever there come a August Bank Holiday. And she died on that day, my poor mother did. Yuss, she died on that day. She didn't seem like dyin' at all that there mornin,' she didn't. She eat a beautiful dinner, a bit of boiled meat--I forgit whether it was beef or mutton--mutton, I think it was, but anyway boiled meat; and she eat a beautiful dinner, my poor mother did--boiled meat, greens, and pertaters; and she eat a nice tea--well, nothin' partickler in the way of a tea, but a _comfortable_ tea; and when I came home, 'Oh Emma Jane,' she says, 'I wish I hadn't never let you go to church this day; for this here,' she says, 'is my very last day on earth,' she says, 'and I'm goin',' she says, 'to your father in heaven, to take care of _him_, and I shall have to leave _you_ all alone,' she says, 'to look after yourself; and I'm most afeard,' my poor mother said, 'what'll become of you,' she says; 'and don't forgit,' she says, 'to say your prayers, and go reggeler to the Communion, and always be good and obedient, and don't git doin' no vile sin, and please God we'll all meet in heaven,' she says, 'and be more happy,' she says, 'nor what we have ever been here in Blackfriars.' And it was August Bank Holiday, the first August Bank Holiday that ever was; and it was a beautiful day, lovely weather it was, and my poor mother had a fit, and never was quite the same; and she died."

Miss Stipp fetches a sigh, and shakes her head at the fire. She has been living in the past, watching with the mind's eye her poor mother fade slowly into eternity on that beautiful August day--the little almshouse bedroom flooded, let us hope, with golden light, for all it was in Blackfriars. She comes to herself with a little jerk, turns her head slowly round to us, and smiles one of her poor, pathetic, half-entreating smiles which make her seem like another Maggie.

And, strange to relate, Miss Stipp was confirmed in St. George's Church, on whose muddied steps Little Dorrit, Little Mother, sat in far-off days with the big head of poor Maggie on her lap. "It was beautiful, beautiful it was, that there Confirmation," says Miss Stipp. "The bishop, he put his hands on my head, just there he did, put 'em on, and I was kneelin' at his feet, and he said the words, whatever they was, and I felt his hands pressin' on my hair; of course, I had done it werry nice for the occasion; and I was quite a public character; yuss! and many's the time I've been up to St. George's Church since those days and fancied to myself that I was actin' the part again."

* * * * *

Upon the death of her mother the orphan went to live with her married sister, whose large family was always reducing itself by the most surprising feats in infant mortality. She helped in the house. She earned her keep by doing little things for the dying babies, and interviewing the undertaker and bargaining for special terms, seeing what a good customer her sister was, when those poor babies were dead. But that great source of crisis in the households of the poor--the mother-in-law--came to live in the Herodian household, and Emma Jane had such a warm time of it with this old Tartar of a woman that she determined to "get out of it" as soon as possible.

"So I had a letter wrote," she says, getting up to scrub the hearthstone, a feat she performs without kneeling, for the merest forward tilt of her body brings her hands upon the floor. "Yuss, I had a letter wrote, for I'm not much of a writer myself, I ain't--a letter wrote to my other sister what was out in service in the country, down Brockley way, and then I went to live with her."

"In the house where she was a servant?" I inquire.

"Yuss. That was it. I went to live with her. I was like a little servant. Blacked the boots, peeled the pertaters, washed the dishes, cleaned the grates, scrubbed the door-step, polished here, polished there, helped to dish up, and they give me two shillin's a week. I was like a little servant."

I remind her of her promise to forgo work and to be a little social, and, after another rub or two, she wrings out the sopping cloth, lets it drop on the hearthstone, and then, backing once more to the stool, leans back and smiles at me, with her wet hands folded in her lap.

* * * * *

"The fam'ly where my sister lived in the country," she says, taking up her tale, "was a large family--five or six sons there was--sich nice fellers they were! But--ain't it strange?--I never see any think on 'em now though they come reggeler to London Bridge every day of their lives, they do. They was Roman Cawtholic--boys and girls alike; but, for all that, they was good-livin' people, and they was religious in their own way. And one day a week comes the priest, and that day me and my sister wasn't allowed to enter the dinin'-room all the mornin', where the breakfast things was and where the priest was what he useter call confessin' the young ladies of their sins and givin' 'em what he called absolution, summat like that, for all they'd been doin' wrong since last time. Oh my! You never knew such goings on, not in England, you didn't. But mind, they was good-livin' people. They was Cawtholics, and they give me two shillin's a week; and I was like a little servant. Kind, good, religious people they was; and the beetles and the crickets in the house was somethink beastly. Oh, I do hate they nasty stinkin' things; _hate_ 'em I do! And they had a garden, a beautiful garden, and it was full of flowers it was, but I don't remember the names of them, excep' that I know it was full of flowers--all the colours you can think of--and that garden was a god to them poor Cawtholics, it really was. The boys worked in it before they went to the City, and the young ladies messed about with it all day; and then they all went chipping and choppin' in it of a evenin', and me and my sister wasn't hardly allowed to look at the flowers, we wasn't, for it was like a god to them."

Her sister's health began to fail. The housework of the large family became too much for her, and the brave maid-of-all-work, accompanied by Emma Jane, was obliged to return to London. They sought the advice of that dissenting minister whose shirt-fronts, if ever they showed a blister, had been so frightful a terror to Emma Jane's poor mother. By the great kindness of this good man--his wisdom is not my concern--- the invalid maid-of-all-work and the indefatigable dwarf who had been like a little servant, and who has already confessed to us that she is not much of a writer herself--were established in Blackfriars as schoolmistresses!

"We hired a little room--in Green-street, it was--me and my sister, and we had a few little scholars--oh, yuss, and a tidy lot of good-sized boys and girls, besides the little 'uns--and they paid us 6d., 4d., and 2d. a week, or whatever they liked; and we done werry well with that school, and always taught religion and the catechism; and I might have been continuin' of it now if that nasty, pokin', competitionin' Board School hadn't come along, which it finished our little lot--pretty sharp it did--and left us starvin'."

The sister, shortly after this terrific crisis in their affairs, was carried into the hospital, and, after three months of terrible pain, which she bore like a martyr, went to join in heavenly places the "poor mother" and the father who had been in some elusive fashion connected with sublunary drains.

"And after that," says Miss Stipp, getting up and resting her hands on the pail of dirty water, and looking down into it as if she saw the faces of her poor mother, her sister, and all the dead babies of the other sister shining up at her from the muddy bottom, "I came on the parish, and I've been on it ever since, and nice kind gentlemen they are, and I couldn't be treated better."

"People are kind to you?" I inquire.

"Very kind to me they are," she answers. "I often get a shillin' given to me in the street, and the other evenin' a lady in the Boro'--nicely dressed, she was, in black--asked me if I wouldn't like a New Testament, and I said, 'Yuss, I would,' and she give me one; and I told her that I was converted, not when I was born, but when I was confirmed in St. George's Church; and the bishop gave us a beautiful address he did, and I felt werry much better when he laid his hands on my head, and after he give us the blessin'. If my hands wasn't so black, I'd show you the cards and things. I've kep 'em ever since--yuss. I've still got 'The Vow Performed,' or whatever it is called. The wicked woman downstairs, she hasn't taken _that_. Oh, a wicked woman she is, a _very_ wicked woman; but I'll have the law on her. Ah!"

* * * * *

I ask her if--what with the cat and the woman downstairs, and all her relatives in heaven--she does not sometimes sigh for the next world.

"I'll be ready when my time comes," she replies confidently, and with rather a sly grin, "but I'm werry well content to stay where I am till I'm called, I am. I don't complain of nothink, I don't, excep' this beastly winder-pane which lets the draught in somethink cruel, it does, enough it is to blow me out of bed; and that awful devil of a woman downstairs; and the crossin' at the Elephant and Castle, which tries my nerves dreadful it does, and oughter be put a stop to, for it ain't safe for nobody, let alone a cripple. Then there's the children," she cries fiercely. "Oh, they are dreadful! You never heard sich language. Foul-mouthed!--oh, it's awful; I never did in all my life hear sich disgustin' language. And they tease me dreadful, they do, and call after me, and follow me into shops, and throw muck at me, the dirty little blasphemin' devils."

She tells me, in conclusion, of a milliner's shop where she goes for oddments, and where the young ladies sometimes give her a bit of trimming for her bonnet. Her last action is to drop the scrubbing-brush into the pail of water, to reach out an arm, and grab with one of her claws a piece of dirty black ribbon, sticking like an old book-marker from under a pile of rubbish beside the hearth, and then to pull at the string till presently there drops upon the floor a small and battered black bonnet with another string trailing behind it in the heap of rubbish.

"There!" says Miss Stipp, holding up the fusty old bonnet, "with a bit of black velvet," she continues, studying the flat bonnet with critical eyes, "and a nob of jet, and a orstrich feather stuck into it somewhere about there, or there perhaps, it will last me many a long day yet, and always look nice and fashionable when I go for my walks about London Bridge of a evenin'."

She is still holding the bonnet when I stoop down to take my leave. The beautiful address of the bishop who confirmed her so many years ago in Little Dorrit's church is not, my life for it, half so urgent and absorbing a matter for Miss Stipp as the latest fashion.

MUSIC [Sidenote: _Samuel Johnson_]

"Upon hearing a celebrated performer go through a hard composition, and hearing it remarked that it was very difficult, Dr. Johnson said, 'I would it had been impossible.'"

NEATNESS IN EXCESS [Sidenote: _Samuel Johnson_]

"I asked Mr. Johnson if he ever disputed with his wife. 'Perpetually,' said he; 'my wife had a particular reverence for cleanliness, and desired the praise of neatness in her dress and furniture, as many ladies do, till they become troublesome to their best friends, slaves to their own besoms, and only sigh for the hour of sweeping their husbands out of the house as dirt and useless lumber. A clean floor is so comfortable, she would say sometimes by way of twitting; till at last I told her that I thought we had had talk enough about the floor, we would now have a touch at the ceiling.' I asked him if he ever huffed his wife about his dinner. 'So often,' replied he, 'that at last she called to me and said, "Nay, hold, Mr. Johnson, and do not make a farce of thanking God for a dinner which in a few minutes you will protest not eatable."'"

A YOUNG LADY'S "NEEDS" [Sidenote: _Samuel Johnson_]

"During a visit of Miss Brown's to Streatham, Dr. Johnson was inquiring of her several things that she could not answer; and, as he held her so cheap in regard to books, he began to question her concerning domestic affairs,--puddings, pies, plain work, and so forth. Miss Brown, not at all more able to give a good account of herself in these articles than in the others, began all her answers with 'Why, sir, one need not be obliged to do so,--or so,' whatever was the thing in question. When he had finished his interrogatories, and she had finished her 'need nots,' he ended the discourse with saying, 'As to your needs, my dear, they are so very many that you would be frightened yourself if you knew half of them.'"

"IRENE" [Sidenote: _Samuel Johnson_]

"I was told," wrote Sir Walter Scott, "that a gentleman called Pot, or some such name, was introduced to Johnson as a particular admirer of his. The doctor growled and took no further notice. "He admires in especial your _Irene_ as the finest tragedy of modern times;" to which the Doctor replied: "If Pot says so, Pot Lies!" and relapsed into his reverie.

ODE TO PEACE [Sidenote: _Hood_]

WRITTEN ON THE NIGHT OF MY MISTRESS'S GRAND ROUT

O Peace! oh come with me and dwell-- But stop, for there's the bell. O peace! for thee I go and sit in churches, On Wednesday, when there's very few In loft or pew-- Another ring, the tarts are come from Birch's. O Peace! for thee I have avoided marriage-- Hush! there's a carriage. O Peace! thou art the best of earthly goods-- The five Miss Woods. O Peace! thou art the goddess I adore-- There come some more. O Peace! thou child of solitude and quiet-- That's Lord Drum's footman, for he loves a riot.

O Peace!-- Knocks will not cease. O Peace! thou wert for human comfort planned-- That's Weippert's band. O Peace! how glad I welcome thy approaches-- I hear the sound of coaches. O Peace! O Peace!--another carriage stops-- It's early for the Blenkinsops.

O Peace! with thee I love to wander, But wait till I have showed up Lady Squander; And now I've seen her up the stair, O Peace!--but here comes Captain Hare. O Peace! thou art the slumber of the mind, Untroubled, calm, and quiet, and unbroken-- If that is Alderman Guzzle from Portsoken, Alderman Gobble won't be far behind. O Peace! serene in worldly shyness-- Make way there for his Serene Highness!

O Peace! if you do not disdain To dwell amongst the menial train, I have a silent place, and lone, That you and I may call our own, Where tumult never makes an entry-- Susan, what business have you in my pantry?

O Peace!--but there is Major Monk, At variance with his wife. O Peace!-- And that great German, Van der Trunk, And that great talker, Miss Apreece. O Peace! so dear to poets' quills-- They're just beginning their quadrilles. O Peace! our greatest renovator-- I wonder where I put my waiter. O Peace!--but here my ode I'll cease! I have no peace to write of Peace.

LETTERS FROM THACKERAY [Sidenote: _Thackeray_]

_Tuesday, November 1848_.

GOOD-NIGHT, MY DEAR MADAM,

Since I came home from dining with Mr. Morier, I have been writing a letter to Mr. T. Carlyle and thinking about other things as well as the letter all the time; and I have read over a letter I received to-day which apologizes for everything and whereof the tremulous author ceaselessly doubts and misgives. Who knows whether she is not converted by Joseph Bullar by this time. She is a sister of mine, and her name is God bless her.

_Wednesday_.--I was at work until seven o'clock; not to very much purpose, but executing with great labour and hardship the day's work. Then I went to dine with Dr. Hall, the crack doctor here, a literate man, a traveller, and otherwise a kind bigwig. After dinner we went to hear Mr. Sortain lecture, of whom you may perhaps have heard me speak, as a great, remarkable orator and preacher of the Lady Huntingdon Connexion. (The paper is so greasy that I am forced to try several pens and manners of handwriting, but none will do.) We had a fine lecture, with brilliant Irish metaphors and outbursts of rhetoric, addressed to an assembly of mechanics, shopboys, and young women, who could not, and perhaps had best not, understand that flashy speaker. It was about the origin of nations he spoke, one of those big themes on which a man may talk eternally and with a never-ending outpouring of words; and he talked magnificently, about the Arabs for the most part, and tried to prove that because the Arabs acknowledged their descent from Ishmael, or Esau, therefore the Old Testament history was true. But the Arabs may have had Esau for a father and yet the bears may not have eaten up the little children for quizzing Elisha's bald head. As I was writing to Carlyle last night (I haven't sent the letter as usual, and shall not most likely), Saint Stephen was pelted to death by Old Testaments, and our Lord was killed like a felon by the law, which He came to repeal. I was thinking about Joseph Bullar's doctrine after I went to bed, founded on what I cannot but think a blasphemous asceticism, which has obtained in the world ever so long, and which is disposed to curse, hate, and undervalue the world altogether. Why should we? What we see here of this world is but an expression of God's will, so to speak--a beautiful earth and sky and sea--beautiful affections and sorrows, wonderful changes and developments of creations, suns rising, stars shining, birds singing, clouds and shadows changing and fading, people loving each other, smiling and crying, the multiplied phenomena of Nature, multiplied in fact and fancy, in Art and Science, in every way that a man's intellect or education or imagination can be brought to bear.--And who is to say that we are to ignore all this, or not value them and love them, because there is another unknown world yet to come? Why, that unknown future world is but a manifestation of God Almighty's Will, and a development of Nature, neither more nor less than this in which we are, and an angel glorified or a sparrow on a gutter are equally parts of His creation. The light upon all the saints in heaven is just as much and no more God's work, as the sun which shall shine to-morrow upon this infinitesimal speck of creation, and under which I shall read, please God, a letter from my kindest Lady and friend. About my future state I don't know; I leave it in the disposal of the awful Father--but for to-day I thank God that I can love you, and that you yonder and others besides are thinking of me with a tender regard. Hallelujah may be greater in degree than this, but not in kind, and countless ages of stars may be blazing infinitely, but you and I have a right to rejoice and believe in our little part and to trust in to-day as in to-morrow. God bless my dear lady and her husband. I hope you are asleep now, and I must go too, for the candles are just winking out.

_Thursday_.--I am glad to see among the new inspectors, in the Gazette in this morning's papers, my old acquaintance Longueville Jones, an excellent, worthy, lively, accomplished fellow, whom I like the better because he flung up his fellow and tutorship at Cambridge in order to marry on nothing a year. He worked in Galignani's newspaper for ten francs a day, very cheerfully, ten years ago, since when he has been a schoolmaster, taken pupils, or bid for them, and battled manfully with fortune. William will be sure to like him, I think, he is so honest and cheerful. I have sent off my letters to Lady Ashburton this morning, ending with some pretty phrases about poor old C.B., whose fate affects me very much, so much that I feel as if I were making my will and getting ready to march too. Well, ma'am, I have as good a right to presentiments as you have, and to sickly fancies and despondencies; but I should like to see before I die, and think of it daily more and more, the commencement of Jesus Christ's Christianism in the world, where I am sure people may be made a hundred times happier than by its present forms, Judaism, asceticism, Bullarism. I wonder will He come again and tell it us? We are taught to be ashamed of our best feelings all our life. I don't want to blubber upon everybody's shoulders; but to have a good will for all, and a strong, very strong regard for a few, which I shall not be ashamed to own to them.... It is near upon three o'clock, and I am getting rather anxious about the post from Southampton via London. Why, if it doesn't come in, you won't get any letter to-morrow, no, nothing--and I made so sure. Well, I will try and go to work, it is only one more little drop. God bless you, dear lady.

_Friday_.--I have had a good morning's work, and at two o'clock comes your letter; dear friend, thank you. What a coward I was! I will go and walk and be happy for an hour, it is a grand frosty sunshine. To-morrow morning early back to London.

* * * * *