Mary Barton Page #32

Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life is the first novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, published in 1848. The story is set in the English city of Manchester between 1839 and 1842, and deals with the difficulties faced by the Victorian working class.

• Novel

								


"Mary, we mun speak to our God to hear us, for man will not hearken;
no, not now, when we weep tears o' blood."

In an instant Mary understood the fact, if not the details, that so
weighed down her father's heart. She pressed his hand with silent
sympathy. She did not know what to say, and was so afraid of speaking
wrongly, that she was silent. But when his attitude had remained
unchanged for more than half-an-hour, his eyes gazing vacantly and
fixedly at the fire, no sound but now and then a deep drawn sigh to
break the weary ticking of the clock, and the drip-drop from the roof
without, Mary could bear it no longer. Any thing to rouse her father.
Even bad news.

"Father, do you know George Wilson's dead?" (Her hand was suddenly
and almost violently compressed.) "He dropped down dead in Oxford
Road yester morning. It's very sad, isn't it, father?"

Her tears were ready to flow as she looked up in her father's face
for sympathy. Still the same fixed look of despair, not varied by
grief for the dead.

"Best for him to die," he said, in a low voice.

This was unbearable. Mary got up under pretence of going to tell
Margaret that she need not come to sleep with her to-night, but
really to ask Job Legh to come and cheer her father.

She stopped outside their door. Margaret was practising her singing,
and through the still night air her voice rang out like that of an
angel.

"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God."

The old Hebrew prophetic words fell like dew on Mary's heart. She
could not interrupt. She stood listening and "comforted," till the
little buzz of conversation again began, and then entered and told
her errand.

Both grandfather and grand-daughter rose instantly to fulfil her
request.

"He's just tired out, Mary," said old Job. "He'll be a different man
to-morrow."

There is no describing the looks and tones that have power over an
aching, heavy laden heart; but in an hour or so John Barton was
talking away as freely as ever, though all his talk ran, as was
natural, on the disappointment of his fond hope, of the forlorn hope
of many.

"Ay, London's a fine place," said he, "and finer folk live in it than
I ever thought on, or ever heerd tell on except in th' story-books.
They are having their good things now, that afterwards they may be
tormented."

Still at the old parable of Dives and Lazarus! Does it haunt the
minds of the rich as it does those of the poor?

"Do tell us all about London, dear father," asked Mary, who was
sitting at her old post by her father's knee.

"How can I tell yo a' about it, when I never seed one-tenth of it.
It's as big as six Manchesters, they telled me. One-sixth may be made
up o' grand palaces, and three-sixths o' middling kind, and th' rest
o' holes o' iniquity and filth, such as Manchester knows nought on,
I'm glad to say."

"Well, father, but did you see th' Queen?"

"I believe I didn't, though one day I thought I'd seen her many a
time. You see," said he, turning to Job Legh, "there were a day
appointed for us to go to Parliament House. We were most on us biding
at a public-house in Holborn, where they did very well for us. Th'
morning of taking our petition we'd such a spread for breakfast as
th' Queen hersel might ha' sitten down to. I suppose they thought
we wanted putting in heart. There were mutton kidneys, and sausages,
and broiled ham, and fried beef and onions; more like a dinner nor
a breakfast. Many on our chaps though, I could see, could eat but
little. Th' food stuck in their throats when they thought o' them
at home, wives and little ones, as had, may be at that very time,
nought to eat. Well, after breakfast, we were all set to walk in
procession, and a time it took to put us in order, two and two, and
the petition as was yards long, carried by th' foremost pairs. The
men looked grave enough, yo may be sure; and such a set of thin, wan,
wretched-looking chaps as they were!"

"Yourself is none to boast on."

"Ay, but I were fat and rosy to many a one. Well, we walked on and
on through many a street, much the same as Deansgate. We had to walk
slowly, slowly, for th' carriages an' cabs as thronged th' streets.
I thought by-and-bye we should may be get clear on 'em, but as th'
streets grew wider they grew worse, and at last we were fairly
blocked up at Oxford Street. We getten across at last though, and my
eyes! the grand streets we were in then! They're sadly puzzled how
to build houses though in London; there'd be an opening for a good
steady master-builder there, as know'd his business. For yo see the
houses are many on 'em built without any proper shape for a body
to live in; some on 'em they've after thought would fall down, so
they've stuck great ugly pillars out before 'em. And some on 'em (we
thought they must be th' tailor's sign) had getten stone men and
women as wanted clothes stuck on 'em. I were like a child, I forgot
a' my errand in looking about me. By this it were dinner-time, or
better, as we could tell by th' sun, right above our heads, and we
were dusty and tired, going a step now and a step then. Well, at
last we getten into a street grander nor all, leading to th' Queen's
palace, and there it were I thought I saw th' Queen. Yo've seen th'
hearses wi' white plumes, Job?"

Job assented.

"Well, them undertaker folk are driving a pretty trade in London.
Wellnigh every lady we saw in a carriage had hired one o' them plumes
for the day, and had it niddle noddling on her head. It were th'
Queen's Drawing-room, they said, and th' carriages went bowling along
toward her house, some wi' dressed up gentlemen like circus folk in
'em, and rucks [28] o' ladies in others. Carriages themselves were
great shakes too. Some o' th' gentlemen as couldn't get inside hung
on behind, wi' nosegays to smell at, and sticks to keep off folk as
might splash their silk stockings. I wondered why they didn't hire a
cab rather than hang on like a whip-behind boy; but I suppose they
wished to keep wi' their wives, Darby and Joan like. Coachmen were
little squat men, wi' wigs like th' oud fashioned parsons. Well, we
could na get on for these carriages, though we waited and waited.
Th' horses were too fat to move quick; they'n never known want o'
food, one might tell by their sleek coats; and police pushed us
back when we tried to cross. One or two on 'em struck wi' their
sticks, and coachmen laughed, and some officers as stood nigh put
their spy-glasses in their eye, and left 'em sticking there like
mountebanks. One o' th' police struck me. 'Whatten business have yo
to do that?' said I.


   [Footnote 28: "Rucks," a great quantity.]


"'You're frightening them horses,' says he, in his mincing way (for
Londoners are mostly all tongue-tied, and can't say their a's and
i's properly), 'and it's our business to keep you from molesting the
ladies and gentlemen going to her Majesty's Drawing-room.'

"'And why are we to be molested?' asked I, 'going decently about
our business, which is life and death to us, and many a little one
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