But the misery is none the less terrible here; indeed, there are no adequate words in the dictionary to express it. No description can give an idea of those nameless dens, sordid, dilapidated stairs, miserable pieces of furniture, nondescript utensils invariably diverted from their original destination. And in that lamentable frame, those swarming families squatting in their filth; the starved look of the mothers under the tattered shawl that ever covers their heads, the hungry little faces of their whelps....
A sickening smell, recalling that of ill-ventilated hospitals, comes out of those lairs and suffocating you, almost throws you back. But it is too late. You have been caught sight of. From all sides visions of horror are emerging to light, spectres are starting up; old hags that would have surprised Shakespeare himself, swarm round you, holding out their hand for a copper. The younger women don’t generally come to the front, not that their wants be less, but they know that coppers are not inexhaustible, and that the old ones must have the precedence. So they remain sadly in the background, and then, when you have emptied your pockets, there is a roar of benedictions fit to rend one’s heart with shame. They are so fearfully sincere! And how many times do we not throw to the winds of our caprice what would be sufficient to quench at least for one moment, the thirst which is raging in that hell! You fly from that den of horror, wondering whether the most horrible deserts would not be more merciful to those destitute creatures than the liberties of the city of Dublin.
In your flight you fatally fall upon Nicholas Street, where all those dark alleys open. This is the way to the cathedral, and the great commercial artery of this side of the town. If any doubt remained in you after the insight you had of the houses of the poor in Dublin, about the way they live, that street alone would give you sufficient information.
From end to end it is lined with a row of disgusting shops or stalls, where the refuse of the new and the ancient world seems to have come for an exhibition. Imagine the most hideous, ragged, repulsive rubbish in the dust-bins of two capitals, and you will get an idea of that shop-window display; rank bacon, rotten fish, festering bones, potatoes in full germination, wormy fruit, dusty crusts, sheep’s hearts, sausages which remind you of the Siege of Paris, and perhaps come from it; all that running in garlands or festoons in front of the stalls, or made into indescribable heaps, is doled out to the customers in diminutive half-pence morsels. At every turning of the street a public-house with its dim glass and sticky glutinous door. Now and then a pawnbroker with the three symbolic brass balls, and every twenty yards a rag and bone shop.
The rag and bone trade is extremely active in Dublin, which numbers no less than 400 shops of that description, according to statistics. And that is not too many for a population which from times immemorial never wore a garment that was not second-hand. To a man Ireland dresses on the reach-me-down system, and wears out the cast-off garments which have passed on the backs of ten or twelve successive owners. Battered hats, dilapidated gowns, threadbare coats arrive here by shiploads. When the whole world has had enough of them, when the Papoo savages and Guinea niggers have discarded their finery, and declared it to be no longer serviceable, there are still amateurs to be found for it in Dublin. Hence the most extraordinary variety, and the wildest incoherence of costume. Knee-breeches, tail coats, white gowns, cocked hats,—Paddy and his spouse are ready for anything. So destitute are they of personal property, that they do not even possess an outline of their own. Their normal get-up resembles a travesty, and their distress a carnival.
The main point for them is to have a garment of any description to put on, since it is a thing understood that one cannot go about naked; and it does not very much matter after all what is the state of that garment, as it is so soon to leave their backs to go to the pawnbroker’s. This is a prominent figure in the daily drama of their wretched existence, the regulator of their humble exchequer through the coming and going of the necessaries of life, which they are obliged to part with periodically.
“You see that pair of hob-nailed shoes?” one of them tells me, “For the last six months it has come here every Monday regularly and gone every Saturday. The possessor uses them only on Sundays; on week days he prefers enjoying his capital....”
His capital!—one shilling and sixpence, for which he has to pay an interest of one penny a week; i.e., three hundred per cent. a year!
Usury under all its forms blooms spontaneously on that dung-hill. By the side of the pawnbroker a money office is almost always to be seen. It is an English institution, natural in a nation which is bursting with money, and consequently finds it difficult to make it render 3 or 4 per cent. What is England if not a colossal bank, which advances money upon any three given signatures as a security, if they come from people with a settled dwelling and a regular profession? Well, who would believe it? Paddy himself is admitted to partake of the onerous benefits of that credit, provided he work ever so little and be not too hopelessly worn out. For these small banking houses form a union and let each other know the state of their accounts. Upon the poor man’s signature accompanied by those of two of his fellows, five and seven pounds sterling will be lent to him, to be reimbursed by weekly instalments. But that resource, which is a powerful help for the strong energetic man, is almost invariably a cause of distress and ruin to the weak. The borrowed money ebbs out in worthless expenditure, in the buying of some articles of apparel or furniture, which soon takes the road to the pawnbroker’s; and the debt alone remains weighing with all its weight on poor Paddy. It is the last straw on the camel’s back, and he ends by falling down irremediably under it.