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Redburn. His First Voyage

H >> Herman Melville >> Redburn. His First Voyage




I was told that standing rewards are offered for the recovery of persons
falling into the docks; so much, if restored to life, and a less amount
if irrecoverably drowned. Lured by this, several horrid old men and
women are constantly prying about the docks, searching after bodies. I
observed them principally early in the morning, when they issued from
their dens, on the same principle that the rag-rakers, and
rubbish-pickers in the streets, sally out bright and early; for then,
the night-harvest has ripened.

There seems to be no calamity overtaking man, that can not be rendered
merchantable. Undertakers, sextons, tomb-makers, and hearse-drivers, get
their living from the dead; and in times of plague most thrive. And
these miserable old men and women hunted after corpses to keep from
going to the church-yard themselves; for they were the most wretched of
starvelings.




XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT'S-HEY


The dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in the vicinity of
the docks are many very painful sights.

In going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, I
generally passed through a narrow street called "Launcelott's-Hey,"
lined with dingy, prison-like cotton warehouses. In this street, or
rather alley, you seldom see any one but a truck-man, or some solitary
old warehouse-keeper, haunting his smoky den like a ghost.

Once, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail, which seemed to
come out of the earth. It was but a strip of crooked side-walk where I
stood; the dingy wall was on every side, converting the mid-day into
twilight; and not a soul was in sight. I started, and could almost have
run, when I heard that dismal sound. It seemed the low, hopeless,
endless wail of some one forever lost. At last I advanced to an opening
which communicated downward with deep tiers of cellars beneath a
crumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen feet below the walk,
crouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed over, was the figure
of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two
shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each side.
At first, I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made no sign;
they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that soul-sickening
wail.

I made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence, echoed far and near;
but there was no response. Louder still; when one of the children lifted
its head, and cast upward a faint glance; then closed its eyes, and lay
motionless. The woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but let fall
her eye again. They were dumb and next to dead with want. How they had
crawled into that den, I could not tell; but there they had crawled to
die. At that moment I never thought of relieving them; for death was so
stamped in their glazed and unimploring eyes, that I almost regarded
them as already no more. I stood looking down on them, while my whole
soul swelled within me; and I asked myself, What right had any body in
the wide world to smile and be glad, when sights like this were to be
seen? It was enough to turn the heart to gall; and make a man-hater of a
Howard. For who were these ghosts that I saw? Were they not human
beings? A woman and two girls? With eyes, and lips, and ears like any
queen? with hearts which, though they did not bound with blood, yet beat
with a dull, dead ache that was their life.

At last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley, hoping to meet
there some ragged old women, whom I had daily noticed groping amid foul
rubbish for little particles of dirty cotton, which they washed out and
sold for a trifle.

I found them; and accosting one, I asked if she knew of the persons I
had just left. She replied, that she did not; nor did she want to. I
then asked another, a miserable, toothless old woman, with a tattered
strip of coarse baling stuff round her body. Looking at me for an
instant, she resumed her raking in the rubbish, and said that she knew
who it was that I spoke of; but that she had no time to attend to
beggars and their brats. Accosting still another, who seemed to know my
errand, I asked if there was no place to which the woman could be taken.
"Yes," she replied, "to the church-yard." I said she was alive, and not
dead.

"Then she'll never die," was the rejoinder. "She's been down there these
three days, with nothing to eat;--that I know myself."

"She desarves it," said an old hag, who was just placing on her crooked
shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, "that
Betsy Jennings desarves it--was she ever married? tell me that."

Leaving Launcelott's-Hey, I turned into a more frequented street; and
soon meeting a policeman, told him of the condition of the woman and the
girls.

"It's none of my business, Jack," said he. "I don't belong to that
street."

"Who does then?"

"I don't know. But what business is it of yours? Are you not a Yankee?"

"Yes," said I, "but come, I will help you remove that woman, if you say
so."

"There, now, Jack, go on board your ship and stick to it; and leave
these matters to the town."

I accosted two more policemen, but with no better success; they would
not even go with me to the place. The truth was, it was out of the way,
in a silent, secluded spot; and the misery of the three outcasts, hiding
away in the ground, did not obtrude upon any one.

Returning to them, I again stamped to attract their attention; but this
time, none of the three looked up, or even stirred. While I yet stood
irresolute, a voice called to me from a high, iron-shuttered window in a
loft over the way; and asked what I was about. I beckoned to the man, a
sort of porter, to come down, which he did; when I pointed down into the
vault.

"Well," said he, "what of it?"

"Can't we get them out?" said I, "haven't you some place in your
warehouse where you can put them? have you nothing for them to eat?"

"You're crazy, boy," said he; "do you suppose, that Parkins and Wood
want their warehouse turned into a hospital?"

I then went to my boarding-house, and told Handsome Mary of what I had
seen; asking her if she could not do something to get the woman and
girls removed; or if she could not do that, let me have some food for
them. But though a kind person in the main, Mary replied that she gave
away enough to beggars in her own street (which was true enough) without
looking after the whole neighborhood.

Going into the kitchen, I accosted the cook, a little shriveled-up old
Welshwoman, with a saucy tongue, whom the sailors called Brandy-Nan; and
begged her to give me some cold victuals, if she had nothing better, to
take to the vault. But she broke out in a storm of swearing at the
miserable occupants of the vault, and refused. I then stepped into the
room where our dinner was being spread; and waiting till the girl had
gone out, I snatched some bread and cheese from a stand, and thrusting
it into the bosom of my frock, left the house. Hurrying to the lane, I
dropped the food down into the vault. One of the girls caught at it
convulsively, but fell back, apparently fainting; the sister pushed the
other's arm aside, and took the bread in her hand; but with a weak
uncertain grasp like an infant's. She placed it to her mouth; but
letting it fall again, murmuring faintly something like "water." The
woman did not stir; her head was bowed over, just as I had first seen
her.

Seeing how it was, I ran down toward the docks to a mean little sailor
tavern, and begged for a pitcher; but the cross old man who kept it
refused, unless I would pay for it. But I had no money. So as my
boarding-house was some way off, and it would be lost time to run to the
ship for my big iron pot; under the impulse of the moment, I hurried to
one of the Boodle Hydrants, which I remembered having seen running near
the scene of a still smoldering fire in an old rag house; and taking off
a new tarpaulin hat, which had been loaned me that day, filled it with
water.

With this, I returned to Launcelott's-Hey; and with considerable
difficulty, like getting down into a well, I contrived to descend with
it into the vault; where there was hardly space enough left to let me
stand. The two girls drank out of the hat together; looking up at me
with an unalterable, idiotic expression, that almost made me faint. The
woman spoke not a word, and did not stir. While the girls were breaking
and eating the bread, I tried to lift the woman's head; but, feeble as
she was, she seemed bent upon holding it down. Observing her arms still
clasped upon her bosom, and that something seemed hidden under the rags
there, a thought crossed my mind, which impelled me forcibly to withdraw
her hands for a moment; when I caught a glimpse of a meager little
babe--the lower part of its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its face was
dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes looked like
balls of indigo. It must have been dead some hours.

The woman refusing to speak, eat, or drink, I asked one of the girls who
they were, and where they lived; but she only stared vacantly, muttering
something that could not be understood.

The air of the place was now getting too much for me; but I stood
deliberating a moment, whether it was possible for me to drag them out
of the vault. But if I did, what then? They would only perish in the
street, and here they were at least protected from the rain; and more
than that, might die in seclusion.

I crawled up into the street, and looking down upon them again, almost
repented that I had brought them any food; for it would only tend to
prolong their misery, without hope of any permanent relief: for die they
must very soon; they were too far gone for any medicine to help them. I
hardly know whether I ought to confess another thing that occurred to me
as I stood there; but it was this-I felt an almost irresistible impulse
to do them the last mercy, of in some way putting an end to their
horrible lives; and I should almost have done so, I think, had I not
been deterred by thoughts of the law. For I well knew that the law,
which would let them perish of themselves without giving them one cup of
water, would spend a thousand pounds, if necessary, in convicting him
who should so much as offer to relieve them from their miserable
existence.

The next day, and the next, I passed the vault three times, and still
met the same sight. The girls leaning up against the woman on each side,
and the woman with her arms still folding the babe, and her head bowed.
The first evening I did not see the bread that I had dropped down in the
morning; but the second evening, the bread I had dropped that morning
remained untouched. On the third morning the smell that came from the
vault was such, that I accosted the same policeman I had accosted
before, who was patrolling the same street, and told him that the
persons I had spoken to him about were dead, and he had better have them
removed. He looked as if he did not believe me, and added, that it was
not his street.

When I arrived at the docks on my way to the ship, I entered the
guard-house within the walls, and asked for one of the captains, to whom
I told the story; but, from what he said, was led to infer that the Dock
Police was distinct from that of the town, and this was not the right
place to lodge my information.

I could do no more that morning, being obliged to repair to the ship;
but at twelve o'clock, when I went to dinner, I hurried into
Launcelott's-Hey, when I found that the vault was empty. In place of the
women and children, a heap of quick-lime was glistening.

I could not learn who had taken them away, or whither they had gone; but
my prayer was answered--they were dead, departed, and at peace.

But again I looked down into the vault, and in fancy beheld the pale,
shrunken forms still crouching there. Ah! what are our creeds, and how
do we hope to be saved? Tell me, oh Bible, that story of Lazarus again,
that I may find comfort in my heart for the poor and forlorn. Surrounded
as we are by the wants and woes of our fellowmen, and yet given to
follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like
people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the
dead?




XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS


I might relate other things which befell me during the six weeks and
more that I remained in Liverpool, often visiting the cellars, sinks,
and hovels of the wretched lanes and courts near the river. But to tell
of them, would only be to tell over again the story just told; so I
return to the docks.

The old women described as picking dirty fragments of cotton in tie
empty lot, belong to the same class of beings who at all hours of the
day are to be seen within the dock walls, raking over and over the heaps
of rubbish carried ashore from the holds of the shipping.

As it is against the law to throw the least thing overboard, even a rope
yarn; and as this law is very different from similar laws in New York,
inasmuch as it is rigidly enforced by the dock-masters; and, moreover,
as after discharging a ship's cargo, a great deal of dirt and worthless
dunnage remains in the hold, the amount of rubbish accumulated in the
appointed receptacles for depositing it within the walls is extremely
large, and is constantly receiving new accessions from every vessel that
unlades at the quays.

Standing over these noisome heaps, you will see scores of tattered
wretches, armed with old rakes and picking-irons, turning over the dirt,
and making as much of a rope-yarn as if it were a skein of silk. Their
findings, nevertheless, are but small; for as it is one of the
immemorial perquisites of the second mate of a merchant ship to collect,
and sell on his own account, all the condemned "old junk" of the vessel
to which he belongs, he generally takes good heed that in the buckets of
rubbish carried ashore, there shall be as few rope-yarns as possible.

In the same way, the cook preserves all the odds and ends of pork-rinds
and beef-fat, which he sells at considerable profit; upon a six months'
voyage frequently realizing thirty or forty dollars from the sale, and
in large ships, even more than that. It may easily be imagined, then,
how desperately driven to it must these rubbish-pickers be, to ransack
heaps of refuse which have been previously gleaned.

Nor must I omit to make mention of the singular beggary practiced in the
streets frequented by sailors; and particularly to record the remarkable
army of paupers that beset the docks at particular hours of the day.

At twelve o'clock the crews of hundreds and hundreds of ships issue in
crowds from the dock gates to go to their dinner in the town. This hour
is seized upon by multitudes of beggars to plant themselves against the
outside of the walls, while others stand upon the curbstone to excite
the charity of the seamen. The first time that I passed through this
long lane of pauperism, it seemed hard to believe that such an array of
misery could be furnished by any town in the world.

Every variety of want and suffering here met the eye, and every vice
showed here its victims. Nor were the marvelous and almost incredible
shifts and stratagems of the professional beggars, wanting to finish
this picture of all that is dishonorable to civilization and humanity.

Old women, rather mummies, drying up with slow starving and age; young
girls, incurably sick, who ought to have been in the hospital; sturdy
men, with the gallows in their eyes, and a whining lie in their mouths;
young boys, hollow-eyed and decrepit; and puny mothers, holding up puny
babes in the glare of the sun, formed the main features of the scene.

But these were diversified by instances of peculiar suffering, vice, or
art in attracting charity, which, to me at least, who had never seen
such things before, seemed to the last degree uncommon and monstrous.

I remember one cripple, a young man rather decently clad, who sat
huddled up against the wall, holding a painted board on his knees. It
was a picture intending to represent the man himself caught in the
machinery of some factory, and whirled about among spindles and cogs,
with his limbs mangled and bloody. This person said nothing, but sat
silently exhibiting his board. Next him, leaning upright against the
wall, was a tall, pallid man, with a white bandage round his brow, and
his face cadaverous as a corpse. He, too, said nothing; but with one
finger silently pointed down to the square of flagging at his feet,
which was nicely swept, and stained blue, and bore this inscription in
chalk:--

"I have had no food for three days;
My wife and children are dying."

Further on lay a man with one sleeve of his ragged coat removed, showing
an unsightly sore; and above it a label with some writing.

In some places, for the distance of many rods, the whole line of
flagging immediately at the base of the wall, would be completely
covered with inscriptions, the beggars standing over them in silence.

But as you passed along these horrible records, in an hour's time
destined to be obliterated by the feet of thousands and thousands of
wayfarers, you were not left unassailed by the clamorous petitions of
the more urgent applicants for charity. They beset you on every hand;
catching you by the coat; hanging on, and following you along; and, for
Heaven's sake, and for God's sake, and for Christ's sake, beseeching of
you but one ha'penny. If you so much as glanced your eye on one of them,
even for an instant, it was perceived like lightning, and the person
never left your side until you turned into another street, or satisfied
his demands. Thus, at least, it was with the sailors; though I observed
that the beggars treated the town's people differently.

I can not say that the seamen did much to relieve the destitution which
three times every day was presented to their view. Perhaps habit had
made them callous; but the truth might have been that very few of them
had much money to give. Yet the beggars must have had some inducement to
infest the dock walls as they did.

As an example of the caprice of sailors, and their sympathy with
suffering among members of their own calling, I must mention the case of
an old man, who every day, and all day long, through sunshine and rain,
occupied a particular corner, where crowds of tars were always passing.
He was an uncommonly large, plethoric man, with a wooden leg, and
dressed in the nautical garb; his face was red and round; he was
continually merry; and with his wooden stump thrust forth, so as almost
to trip up the careless wayfarer, he sat upon a great pile of monkey
jackets, with a little depression in them between his knees, to receive
the coppers thrown him. And plenty of pennies were tost into his
poor-box by the sailors, who always exchanged a pleasant word with the
old man, and passed on, generally regardless of the neighboring beggars.

The first morning I went ashore with my shipmates, some of them greeted
him as an old acquaintance; for that corner he had occupied for many
long years. He was an old man-of-war's man, who had lost his leg at the
battle of Trafalgar; and singular to tell, he now exhibited his wooden
one as a genuine specimen of the oak timbers of Nelson's ship, the
Victory.

Among the paupers were several who wore old sailor hats and jackets, and
claimed to be destitute tars; and on the strength of these pretensions
demanded help from their brethren; but Jack would see through their
disguise in a moment, and turn away, with no benediction.

As I daily passed through this lane of beggars, who thronged the docks
as the Hebrew cripples did the Pool of Bethesda, and as I thought of my
utter inability in any way to help them, I could not but offer up a
prayer, that some angel might descend, and turn the waters of the docks
into an elixir, that would heal all their woes, and make them, man and
woman, healthy and whole as their ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the
garden.

Adam and Eve! If indeed ye are yet alive and in heaven, may it be no
part of your immortality to look down upon the world ye have left. For
as all these sufferers and cripples are as much your family as young
Abel, so, to you, the sight of the world's woes would be a parental
torment indeed.




XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN


The same sights that are to be met with along the dock walls at noon, in
a less degree, though diversified with other scenes, are continually
encountered in the narrow streets where the sailor boarding-houses are
kept.

In the evening, especially when the sailors are gathered in great
numbers, these streets present a most singular spectacle, the entire
population of the vicinity being seemingly turned into them. Hand-
organs, fiddles, and cymbals, plied by strolling musicians, mix with
the songs of the seamen, the babble of women and children, and the
groaning and whining of beggars. From the various boarding-houses, each
distinguished by gilded emblems outside--an anchor, a crown, a ship, a
windlass, or a dolphin--proceeds the noise of revelry and dancing; and
from the open casements lean young girls and old women, chattering and
laughing with the crowds in the middle of the street. Every moment
strange greetings are exchanged between old sailors who chance to
stumble upon a shipmate, last seen in Calcutta or Savannah; and the
invariable courtesy that takes place upon these occasions, is to go to
the next spirit-vault, and drink each other's health.

There are particular paupers who frequent particular sections of these
streets, and who, I was told, resented the intrusion of mendicants from
other parts of the town.

Chief among them was a white-haired old man, stone-blind; who was led up
and down through the long tumult by a woman holding a little saucer to
receive contributions. This old man sang, or rather chanted, certain
words in a peculiarly long-drawn, guttural manner, throwing back his
head, and turning up his sightless eyeballs to the sky. His chant was a
lamentation upon his infirmity; and at the time it produced the same
effect upon me, that my first reading of Milton's Invocation to the Sun
did, years afterward. I can not recall it all; but it was something like
this, drawn out in an endless groan--

"Here goes the blind old man; blind, blind, blind; no more will he see
sun nor moon--no more see sun nor moon!" And thus would he pass through
the middle of the street; the woman going on in advance, holding his
hand, and dragging him through all obstructions; now and then leaving
him standing, while she went among the crowd soliciting coppers.

But one of the most curious features of the scene is the number of
sailor ballad-singers, who, after singing their verses, hand you a
printed copy, and beg you to buy. One of these persons, dressed like a
man-of-war's-man, I observed every day standing at a corner in the
middle of the street. He had a full, noble voice, like a church-organ;
and his notes rose high above the surrounding din. But the remarkable
thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms, which, while
singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in the air, as if
it revolved on a pivot. The feat was unnaturally unaccountable; and he
performed it with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that in
falling from a frigate's mast-head to the deck, he had met with an
injury, which had resulted in making his wonderful arm what it was.

I made the acquaintance of this man, and found him no common character.
He was full of marvelous adventures, and abounded in terrific stories of
pirates and sea murders, and all sorts of nautical enormities. He was a
monomaniac upon these subjects; he was a Newgate Calendar of the
robberies and assassinations of the day, happening in the sailor
quarters of the town; and most of his ballads were upon kindred
subjects. He composed many of his own verses, and had them printed for
sale on his own account. To show how expeditious he was at this
business, it may be mentioned, that one evening on leaving the dock to
go to supper, I perceived a crowd gathered about the Old Fort Tavern;
and mingling with the rest, I learned that a woman of the town had just
been killed at the bar by a drunken Spanish sailor from Cadiz. The
murderer was carried off by the police before my eyes, and the very next
morning the ballad-singer with the miraculous arm, was singing the
tragedy in front of the boarding-houses, and handing round printed
copies of the song, which, of course, were eagerly bought up by the
seamen.

This passing allusion to the murder will convey some idea of the events
which take place in the lowest and most abandoned neighborhoods
frequented by sailors in Liverpool. The pestilent lanes and alleys
which, in their vocabulary, go by the names of Rotten-row,
Gibraltar-place, and Booble-alley, are putrid with vice and crime; to
which, perhaps, the round globe does not furnish a parallel. The sooty
and begrimed bricks of the very houses have a reeking, Sodomlike, and
murderous look; and well may the shroud of coal-smoke, which hangs over
this part of the town, more than any other, attempt to hide the
enormities here practiced. These are the haunts from which sailors
sometimes disappear forever; or issue in the morning, robbed naked, from
the broken doorways. These are the haunts in which cursing, gambling,
pickpocketing, and common iniquities, are virtues too lofty for the
infected gorgons and hydras to practice. Propriety forbids that I should
enter into details; but kidnappers, burkers, and resurrectionists are
almost saints and angels to them. They seem leagued together, a company
of miscreant misanthropes, bent upon doing all the malice to mankind in
their power. With sulphur and brimstone they ought to be burned out of
their arches like vermin.

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