242
was like at night when the two great gaslights went on. Many
the men had to be carried out of the room fainting for air.
told the master he was killing them, and they knew he had
rooms, but to no avail. The gaslights burned into the man's
and into his brain until, "at last, I was seized with rheumatics in
brain, and obliged to go into St. Thomas's Hospital. I was
eleven months, and
came out stone blind";
or the crippled
seller of nutmeg graters, who crawled, literally, out into the
where he stayed from ten to six eking out his pitiful existence,
days a week. On wet days he would lie in bed, often without
"Ah," he told Mayhew, "it
is
very miserable indeed lying in a bed
day, and in a lonely room, without perhaps a person to come
one-helpless as I am- and hear the rain beat against your .
all that with nothing to put to your lips." Thus,
if
in what
the life of the poor is shown to have some moments of joy, these
it is remembered, only oases in an illimitable desert of misery.
And since the Victorian moral "cade"-if there were such
thing-will be subjected to equally large generalizations, these
should be qualified in advance. Victorian "morality" is a very
plex affair. In the first place, what we call Victorian morality
is
middle-class morality. Above and below, in the relatively small
tocracy and in the immense lower class, the puritanical code did
prevail; and indeed, in many respects, the aristocrats and the
had more in common with one another, morally speaking, than
had with the middle class. Noting the passion for card-playing,
example, that prevailed among aristocrats and commoners,
remarked, "It has been said that there is a close resemblance
many of the characteristics of a very high class, socially, and a
low class." Considering the life of the aristocr,acy as a whole,
cannot doubt but that life often ran high in those days, despite
decorous national examples of Victoria and Albert. Writing to
from Paris in 1856, Dickens relates an incident, given by a
of an experience with the English squirearchy. Dickens's friend,
nated as "B," had, three years previously, been living near
and occupied himself with sketching in the outdoors. One
day
gentleman stopped his carriage and invited "B" to come to
his
and use his library. "B" accepted the invitation and stayed on
at
house, as it turned out, for six months. The lady of the house,
