Sunday Under Three Heads
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Charles Dickens >> Sunday Under Three Heads
Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
SUNDAY UNDER THREE HEADS
DEDICATION
To The Right Reverend
THE BISHOP OF LONDON
MY LORD,
You were among the first, some years ago, to expatiate on the
vicious addiction of the lower classes of society to Sunday
excursions; and were thus instrumental in calling forth occasional
demonstrations of those extreme opinions on the subject, which are
very generally received with derision, if not with contempt.
Your elevated station, my Lord, affords you countless opportunities
of increasing the comforts and pleasures of the humbler classes of
society--not by the expenditure of the smallest portion of your
princely income, but by merely sanctioning with the influence of
your example, their harmless pastimes, and innocent recreations.
That your Lordship would ever have contemplated Sunday recreations
with so much horror, if you had been at all acquainted with the
wants and necessities of the people who indulged in them, I cannot
imagine possible. That a Prelate of your elevated rank has the
faintest conception of the extent of those wants, and the nature of
those necessities, I do not believe.
For these reasons, I venture to address this little Pamphlet to
your Lordship's consideration. I am quite conscious that the
outlines I have drawn, afford but a very imperfect description of
the feelings they are intended to illustrate; but I claim for them
one merit--their truth and freedom from exaggeration. I may have
fallen short of the mark, but I have never overshot it: and while
I have pointed out what appears to me, to be injustice on the part
of others, I hope I have carefully abstained from committing it
myself.
I am,
My Lord,
Your Lordship's most obedient,
Humble Servant,
TIMOTHY SPARKS.
June, 1836.
CHAPTER I--AS IT IS
There are few things from which I derive greater pleasure, than
walking through some of the principal streets of London on a fine
Sunday, in summer, and watching the cheerful faces of the lively
groups with which they are thronged. There is something, to my
eyes at least, exceedingly pleasing in the general desire evinced
by the humbler classes of society, to appear neat and clean on this
their only holiday. There are many grave old persons, I know, who
shake their heads with an air of profound wisdom, and tell you that
poor people dress too well now-a-days; that when they were
children, folks knew their stations in life better; that you may
depend upon it, no good will come of this sort of thing in the
end,--and so forth: but I fancy I can discern in the fine bonnet
of the working-man's wife, or the feather-bedizened hat of his
child, no inconsiderable evidence of good feeling on the part of
the man himself, and an affectionate desire to expend the few
shillings he can spare from his week's wages, in improving the
appearance and adding to the happiness of those who are nearest and
dearest to him. This may be a very heinous and unbecoming degree
of vanity, perhaps, and the money might possibly be applied to
better uses; it must not be forgotten, however, that it might very
easily be devoted to worse: and if two or three faces can be
rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward
appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply
purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband.
There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over-
dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or
tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a
reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those
about him, in preference to a sullen, slovenly fellow, who works
doggedly on, regardless of his own clothing and that of his wife
and children, and seeming to take pleasure or pride in nothing.
The pampered aristocrat, whose life is one continued round of
licentious pleasures and sensual gratifications; or the gloomy
enthusiast, who detests the cheerful amusements he can never enjoy,
and envies the healthy feelings he can never know, and who would
put down the one and suppress the other, until he made the minds of
his fellow-beings as besotted and distorted as his own;--neither of
these men can by possibility form an adequate notion of what Sunday
really is to those whose lives are spent in sedentary or laborious
occupations, and who are accustomed to look forward to it through
their whole existence, as their only day of rest from toil, and
innocent enjoyment.
The sun that rises over the quiet streets of London on a bright
Sunday morning, shines till his setting, on gay and happy faces.
Here and there, so early as six o'clock, a young man and woman in
their best attire, may be seen hurrying along on their way to the
house of some acquaintance, who is included in their scheme of
pleasure for the day; from whence, after stopping to take "a bit of
breakfast," they sally forth, accompanied by several old people,
and a whole crowd of young ones, bearing large hand-baskets full of
provisions, and Belcher handkerchiefs done up in bundles, with the
neck of a bottle sticking out at the top, and closely-packed apples
bulging out at the sides,--and away they hurry along the streets
leading to the steam-packet wharfs, which are already plentifully
sprinkled with parties bound for the same destination. Their good
humour and delight know no bounds--for it is a delightful morning,
all blue over head, and nothing like a cloud in the whole sky; and
even the air of the river at London Bridge is something to them,
shut up as they have been, all the week, in close streets and
heated rooms. There are dozens of steamers to all sorts of places-
-Gravesend, Greenwich, and Richmond; and such numbers of people,
that when you have once sat down on the deck, it is all but a moral
impossibility to get up again--to say nothing of walking about,
which is entirely out of the question. Away they go, joking and
laughing, and eating and drinking, and admiring everything they
see, and pleased with everything they hear, to climb Windmill Hill,
and catch a glimpse of the rich corn-fields and beautiful orchards
of Kent; or to stroll among the fine old trees of Greenwich Park,
and survey the wonders of Shooter's Hill and Lady James's Folly; or
to glide past the beautiful meadows of Twickenham and Richmond, and
to gaze with a delight which only people like them can know, on
every lovely object in the fair prospect around. Boat follows
boat, and coach succeeds coach, for the next three hours; but all
are filled, and all with the same kind of people--neat and clean,
cheerful and contented.
They reach their places of destination, and the taverns are
crowded; but there is no drunkenness or brawling, for the class of
men who commit the enormity of making Sunday excursions, take their
families with them: and this in itself would be a check upon them,
even if they were inclined to dissipation, which they really are
not. Boisterous their mirth may be, for they have all the
excitement of feeling that fresh air and green fields can impart to
the dwellers in crowded cities, but it is innocent and harmless.
The glass is circulated, and the joke goes round; but the one is
free from excess, and the other from offence; and nothing but good
humour and hilarity prevail.
In streets like Holborn and Tottenham Court Road, which form the
central market of a large neighbourhood, inhabited by a vast number
of mechanics and poor people, a few shops are open at an early hour
of the morning; and a very poor man, with a thin and sickly woman
by his side, may be seen with their little basket in hand,
purchasing the scanty quantity of necessaries they can afford,
which the time at which the man receives his wages, or his having a
good deal of work to do, or the woman's having been out charing
till a late hour, prevented their procuring over-night. The
coffee-shops too, at which clerks and young men employed in
counting-houses can procure their breakfasts, are also open. This
class comprises, in a place like London, an enormous number of
people, whose limited means prevent their engaging for their
lodgings any other apartment than a bedroom, and who have
consequently no alternative but to take their breakfasts at a
coffee-shop, or go without it altogether. All these places,
however, are quickly closed; and by the time the church bells begin
to ring, all appearance of traffic has ceased. And then, what are
the signs of immorality that meet the eye? Churches are well
filled, and Dissenters' chapels are crowded to suffocation. There
is no preaching to empty benches, while the drunken and dissolute
populace run riot in the streets.
Here is a fashionable church, where the service commences at a late
hour, for the accommodation of such members of the congregation--
and they are not a few--as may happen to have lingered at the Opera
far into the morning of the Sabbath; an excellent contrivance for
poising the balance between God and Mammon, and illustrating the
ease with which a man's duties to both, may be accommodated and
adjusted. How the carriages rattle up, and deposit their richly-
dressed burdens beneath the lofty portico! The powdered footmen
glide along the aisle, place the richly-bound prayer-books on the
pew desks, slam the doors, and hurry away, leaving the fashionable
members of the congregation to inspect each other through their
glasses, and to dazzle and glitter in the eyes of the few shabby
people in the free seats. The organ peals forth, the hired singers
commence a short hymn, and the congregation condescendingly rise,
stare about them, and converse in whispers. The clergyman enters
the reading-desk,--a young man of noble family and elegant
demeanour, notorious at Cambridge for his knowledge of horse-flesh
and dancers, and celebrated at Eton for his hopeless stupidity.
The service commences. Mark the soft voice in which he reads, and
the impressive manner in which he applies his white hand, studded
with brilliants, to his perfumed hair. Observe the graceful
emphasis with which he offers up the prayers for the King, the
Royal Family, and all the Nobility; and the nonchalance with which
he hurries over the more uncomfortable portions of the service, the
seventh commandment for instance, with a studied regard for the
taste and feeling of his auditors, only to be equalled by that
displayed by the sleek divine who succeeds him, who murmurs, in a
voice kept down by rich feeding, most comfortable doctrines for
exactly twelve minutes, and then arrives at the anxiously expected
'Now to God,' which is the signal for the dismissal of the
congregation. The organ is again heard; those who have been asleep
wake up, and those who have kept awake, smile and seem greatly
relieved; bows and congratulations are exchanged, the livery
servants are all bustle and commotion, bang go the steps, up jump
the footmen, and off rattle the carriages: the inmates discoursing
on the dresses of the congregation, and congratulating themselves
on having set so excellent an example to the community in general,
and Sunday-pleasurers in particular.
Enter a less orthodox place of religious worship, and observe the
contrast. A small close chapel with a white-washed wall, and plain
deal pews and pulpit, contains a closely-packed congregation, as
different in dress, as they are opposed in manner, to that we have
just quitted. The hymn is sung--not by paid singers, but by the
whole assembly at the loudest pitch of their voices, unaccompanied
by any musical instrument, the words being given out, two lines at
a time, by the clerk. There is something in the sonorous quavering
of the harsh voices, in the lank and hollow faces of the men, and
the sour solemnity of the women, which bespeaks this a strong-hold
of intolerant zeal and ignorant enthusiasm. The preacher enters
the pulpit. He is a coarse, hard-faced man of forbidding aspect,
clad in rusty black, and bearing in his hand a small plain Bible
from which he selects some passage for his text, while the hymn is
concluding. The congregation fall upon their knees, and are hushed
into profound stillness as he delivers an extempore prayer, in
which he calls upon the Sacred Founder of the Christian faith to
bless his ministry, in terms of disgusting and impious familiarity
not to be described. He begins his oration in a drawling tone, and
his hearers listen with silent attention. He grows warmer as he
proceeds with his subject, and his gesticulation becomes
proportionately violent. He clenches his fists, beats the book
upon the desk before him, and swings his arms wildly about his
head. The congregation murmur their acquiescence in his doctrines:
and a short groan, occasionally bears testimony to the moving
nature of his eloquence. Encouraged by these symptoms of approval,
and working himself up to a pitch of enthusiasm amounting almost to
frenzy, he denounces sabbath-breakers with the direst vengeance of
offended Heaven. He stretches his body half out of the pulpit,
thrusts forth his arms with frantic gestures, and blasphemously
calls upon The Deity to visit with eternal torments, those who turn
aside from the word, as interpreted and preached by--himself. A
low moaning is heard, the women rock their bodies to and fro, and
wring their hands; the preacher's fervour increases, the
perspiration starts upon his brow, his face is flushed, and he
clenches his hands convulsively, as he draws a hideous and
appalling picture of the horrors preparing for the wicked in a
future state. A great excitement is visible among his hearers, a
scream is heard, and some young girl falls senseless on the floor.
There is a momentary rustle, but it is only for a moment--all eyes
are turned towards the preacher. He pauses, passes his
handkerchief across his face, and looks complacently round. His
voice resumes its natural tone, as with mock humility he offers up
a thanksgiving for having been successful in his efforts, and
having been permitted to rescue one sinner from the path of evil.
He sinks back into his seat, exhausted with the violence of his
ravings; the girl is removed, a hymn is sung, a petition for some
measure for securing the better observance of the Sabbath, which
has been prepared by the good man, is read; and his worshipping
admirers struggle who shall be the first to sign it.
But the morning service has concluded, and the streets are again
crowded with people. Long rows of cleanly-dressed charity
children, preceded by a portly beadle and a withered schoolmaster,
are returning to their welcome dinner; and it is evident, from the
number of men with beer-trays who are running from house to house,
that no inconsiderable portion of the population are about to take
theirs at this early hour. The bakers' shops in the humbler
suburbs especially, are filled with men, women, and children, each
anxiously waiting for the Sunday dinner. Look at the group of
children who surround that working man who has just emerged from
the baker's shop at the corner of the street, with the reeking
dish, in which a diminutive joint of mutton simmers above a vast
heap of half-browned potatoes. How the young rogues clap their
hands, and dance round their father, for very joy at the prospect
of the feast: and how anxiously the youngest and chubbiest of the
lot, lingers on tiptoe by his side, trying to get a peep into the
interior of the dish. They turn up the street, and the chubby-
faced boy trots on as fast as his little legs will carry him, to
herald the approach of the dinner to 'Mother' who is standing with
a baby in her arms on the doorstep, and who seems almost as pleased
with the whole scene as the children themselves; whereupon 'baby'
not precisely understanding the importance of the business in hand,
but clearly perceiving that it is something unusually lively, kicks
and crows most lustily, to the unspeakable delight of all the
children and both the parents: and the dinner is borne into the
house amidst a shouting of small voices, and jumping of fat legs,
which would fill Sir Andrew Agnew with astonishment; as well it
might, seeing that Baronets, generally speaking, eat pretty
comfortable dinners all the week through, and cannot be expected to
understand what people feel, who only have a meat dinner on one day
out of every seven.
The bakings being all duly consigned to their respective owners,
and the beer-man having gone his rounds, the church bells ring for
afternoon service, the shops are again closed, and the streets are
more than ever thronged with people; some who have not been to
church in the morning, going to it now; others who have been to
church, going out for a walk; and others--let us admit the full
measure of their guilt--going for a walk, who have not been to
church at all. I am afraid the smart servant of all work, who has
been loitering at the corner of the square for the last ten
minutes, is one of the latter class. She is evidently waiting for
somebody, and though she may have made up her mind to go to church
with him one of these mornings, I don't think they have any such
intention on this particular afternoon. Here he is, at last. The
white trousers, blue coat, and yellow waistcoat--and more
especially that cock of the hat--indicate, as surely as inanimate
objects can, that Chalk Farm and not the parish church, is their
destination. The girl colours up, and puts out her hand with a
very awkward affectation of indifference. He gives it a gallant
squeeze, and away they walk, arm in arm, the girl just looking back
towards her 'place' with an air of conscious self-importance, and
nodding to her fellow-servant who has gone up to the two-pair-of-
stairs window, to take a full view of 'Mary's young man,' which
being communicated to William, he takes off his hat to the fellow-
servant: a proceeding which affords unmitigated satisfaction to
all parties, and impels the fellow-servant to inform Miss Emily
confidentially, in the course of the evening, 'that the young man
as Mary keeps company with, is one of the most genteelest young men
as ever she see.'
The two young people who have just crossed the road, and are
following this happy couple down the street, are a fair specimen of
another class of Sunday--pleasurers. There is a dapper smartness,
struggling through very limited means, about the young man, which
induces one to set him down at once as a junior clerk to a
tradesman or attorney. The girl no one could possibly mistake.
You may tell a young woman in the employment of a large dress-
maker, at any time, by a certain neatness of cheap finery and
humble following of fashion, which pervade her whole attire; but
unfortunately there are other tokens not to be misunderstood--the
pale face with its hectic bloom, the slight distortion of form
which no artifice of dress can wholly conceal, the unhealthy stoop,
and the short cough--the effects of hard work and close application
to a sedentary employment, upon a tender frame. They turn towards
the fields. The girl's countenance brightens, and an unwonted glow
rises in her face. They are going to Hampstead or Highgate, to
spend their holiday afternoon in some place where they can see the
sky, the fields, and trees, and breathe for an hour or two the pure
air, which so seldom plays upon that poor girl's form, or
exhilarates her spirits.
I would to God, that the iron-hearted man who would deprive such
people as these of their only pleasures, could feel the sinking of
heart and soul, the wasting exhaustion of mind and body, the utter
prostration of present strength and future hope, attendant upon
that incessant toil which lasts from day to day, and from month to
month; that toil which is too often protracted until the silence of
midnight, and resumed with the first stir of morning. How
marvellously would his ardent zeal for other men's souls, diminish
after a short probation, and how enlightened and comprehensive
would his views of the real object and meaning of the institution
of the Sabbath become!
The afternoon is far advanced--the parks and public drives are
crowded. Carriages, gigs, phaetons, stanhopes, and vehicles of
every description, glide smoothly on. The promenades are filled
with loungers on foot, and the road is thronged with loungers on
horseback. Persons of every class are crowded together, here, in
one dense mass. The plebeian, who takes his pleasure on no day but
Sunday, jostles the patrician, who takes his, from year's end to
year's end. You look in vain for any outward signs of profligacy
or debauchery. You see nothing before you but a vast number of
people, the denizens of a large and crowded city, in the needful
and rational enjoyment of air and exercise.
It grows dusk. The roads leading from the different places of
suburban resort, are crowded with people on their return home, and
the sound of merry voices rings through the gradually darkening
fields. The evening is hot and sultry. The rich man throws open
the sashes of his spacious dining-room, and quaffs his iced wine in
splendid luxury. The poor man, who has no room to take his meals
in, but the close apartment to which he and his family have been
confined throughout the week, sits in the tea-garden of some famous
tavern, and drinks his beer in content and comfort. The fields and
roads are gradually deserted, the crowd once more pour into the
streets, and disperse to their several homes; and by midnight all
is silent and quiet, save where a few stragglers linger beneath the
window of some great man's house, to listen to the strains of music
from within: or stop to gaze upon the splendid carriages which are
waiting to convey the guests from the dinner-party of an Earl.
There is a darker side to this picture, on which, so far from its
being any part of my purpose to conceal it, I wish to lay
particular stress. In some parts of London, and in many of the
manufacturing towns of England, drunkenness and profligacy in their
most disgusting forms, exhibit in the open streets on Sunday, a sad
and a degrading spectacle. We need go no farther than St. Giles's,
or Drury Lane, for sights and scenes of a most repulsive nature.
Women with scarcely the articles of apparel which common decency
requires, with forms bloated by disease, and faces rendered hideous
by habitual drunkenness--men reeling and staggering along--children
in rags and filth--whole streets of squalid and miserable
appearance, whose inhabitants are lounging in the public road,
fighting, screaming, and swearing--these are the common objects
which present themselves in, these are the well-known
characteristics of, that portion of London to which I have just
referred.
And why is it, that all well-disposed persons are shocked, and
public decency scandalised, by such exhibitions?
These people are poor--that is notorious. It may be said that they
spend in liquor, money with which they might purchase necessaries,
and there is no denying the fact; but let it be remembered that
even if they applied every farthing of their earnings in the best
possible way, they would still be very--very poor. Their dwellings
are necessarily uncomfortable, and to a certain degree unhealthy.
Cleanliness might do much, but they are too crowded together, the
streets are too narrow, and the rooms too small, to admit of their
ever being rendered desirable habitations. They work very hard all
the week. We know that the effect of prolonged and arduous labour,
is to produce, when a period of rest does arrive, a sensation of
lassitude which it requires the application of some stimulus to
overcome. What stimulus have they? Sunday comes, and with it a
cessation of labour. How are they to employ the day, or what
inducement have they to employ it, in recruiting their stock of
health? They see little parties, on pleasure excursions, passing
through the streets; but they cannot imitate their example, for
they have not the means. They may walk, to be sure, but it is
exactly the inducement to walk that they require. If every one of
these men knew, that by taking the trouble to walk two or three
miles he would be enabled to share in a good game of cricket, or
some athletic sport, I very much question whether any of them would
remain at home.
But you hold out no inducement, you offer no relief from
listlessness, you provide nothing to amuse his mind, you afford him
no means of exercising his body. Unwashed and unshaven, he
saunters moodily about, weary and dejected. In lieu of the
wholesome stimulus he might derive from nature, you drive him to
the pernicious excitement to be gained from art. He flies to the
gin-shop as his only resource; and when, reduced to a worse level
than the lowest brute in the scale of creation, he lies wallowing
in the kennel, your saintly lawgivers lift up their hands to
heaven, and exclaim for a law which shall convert the day intended
for rest and cheerfulness, into one of universal gloom, bigotry,
and persecution.