“But,” said Letty, “cannot we curtail this waiting by establishing certain regulations, as to the bringing in and sending out work, at least so far as relates to the town?”
Thomas Barnsdale thought, at first, this would be difficult of accomplishment; but Letty went earnestly into the subject, and soon showed him that by gradual management it might be done. In the meantime she had a small room, adjoining the lobby, used as a ware-room, cleared out, a good fire kept in it in winter, some books laid on the table, and this was made the women’s waiting-room. The plan gave immense satisfaction to the women, and was soon imitated in other great establishments. Thorsby was extremely pleased with this arrangement, and he proposed that a school should be opened for the children of the work-people, who lived very much in one part of the town. This was set on foot, and answered well. Mr. G. Dell had built a very handsome and airy school for poor children, but Thorsby persuaded him, and some other benevolent people, to join him in a plan for opening day-schools in all parts of the town where the working classes lived. A committee was formed for this purpose of both gentlemen and ladies, who superintended the schools once set on foot, each of their own sex. The same committee took upon them to make visits to the houses of the workpeople, in order to see that they were well drained, and otherwise kept clean and healthy. The visit of the cholera at this time made both rich and poor acquiescent in such visits of inspection. Thorsby’s purse was always liberally open for all those purposes, and the earnest gravity and sound sense with which he went about these social reforms, did much to restore him to the good opinion of his most distinguished townsmen and townswomen. They began to say, amongst themselves, “After all, Mrs. Thorsby had more sense than we had. What a wonder this will be if Thorsby holds on as he is acting now.”
But the foothold that he felt he was gaining made him more determined than ever. He said to himself, “Rather than fall back again, I would go off to the woods of Indiana and swing that sobering hammer for another winter!” He projected a splendid building for a people’s hall, and put down £4000 for his subscription to it. In a while he saw this handsome house, with ample and airy rooms for lectures, for popular public gatherings of the people, for a library, and news and coffee-rooms, erected in a near suburb, and lighted and warmed in winter in so comfortable a manner that it became the great resort of the working men. He himself gave the first opening lecture on the advantages of education and combination for mutual improvement amongst the artisan classes; and others of his townsmen followed his example, and kept up a weekly or fortnightly course of lectures on suitable subjects. In all these plans he was joined cordially by Mr. Dell and the son of William Fairfax, who was now coming forward in all the popular works which had been advocated by his father, who was now beginning to feel the desire of well-advanced years for rest. Dr. Leroy was an ever-active coadjutor in the promotion of sanitary plans, schools, and lectures. He invited the working men, in order to lead them occasionally into the open air, to bring him plants, stones, or other objects of nature, on which he gave them scientific lectures descriptive of their places in Natural History, and their uses. These became very popular.
Meantime Mrs. Thorsby, Mrs. Heritage, Mrs. Leroy, and many other ladies, were now, since Mrs. Leroy’s marriage, become a very strong party, and were greatly employed in looking after the poor, seeing that they sent their children to the schools, that they kept their houses clean and sweet, and that they were provided with all proper clothing for the winter months. They established homes for young women who were out of place, and seeking new engagements, which were also offices of inquiry for servants, which they found of great use, in not only expediting the procurement of good domestics, but in preventing much demoralisation during the intervals of services in young women. Nor did they overlook the old. They found that there was always a certain number of old, superannuated servants, who, unable to save sufficient for their latter days, had no resource but the workhouse, to which they looked with so much repugnance, that they often continued to linger in wretched lodgings, and suffer incredible misery and starvation rather than be compelled to go into one of these last sad scenes of “waiting for death.” For these a suitable home was opened, where a little maintained them; and where they were, as far as they were able, employed in such sewing as was needed for the Dorcas Society, &c.
In his explorations of the purlieus of the town in prosecution of these popular objects, Thorsby observed how closely the dwellings of the poor were jammed upon one another. Every little spot of a back-yard was bought up for the building of a factory, and every day the unhealthiness of this crowding was becoming more obvious. Asking himself what was the remedy for this evil, he immediately remembered that all round the higher part of the town, the very part most adapted for building, the land was denied to this important object by being town land. Every year till “Lammas-tide,” temporary fences were put up, extremely ugly in themselves, being of hurdles or dead thorns, the natural hedges being only in fragments, and after the hay was cut, all these temporary fences were thrown down or withdrawn, and the whole ground became a desolate, unsightly waste, over which the rabble ranged in listless idleness, or engaged in boxing and dog-fighting. The corporation, who deemed themselves most useful and patriotic conservators of the rights of the freedmen, had maintained the freedom of these lands from full inclosure most jealously; making every man who became a member of the corporation take an oath never to vote for an inclosure. Thorsby saw that whilst no one, except a few butchers, derived any benefit from the keeping open of these lands, the greatest evils were inflicted on the town by it; that the whole of that side of the place was made hideous by it; there was no longer the necessary room for the natural expansion of the town till this obstruction was removed. He took his resolve at once.
At the next vacancy for a town councillor, he presented himself; he was unanimously returned; and on the presentation of the usual oath against an inclosure, he begged to decline the taking of it till he had made a few remarks. The town clerk who offered the oath to him was very peremptory, and told him he must take it or not take it, without observation. But Thorsby was as positive, and prevailed. In a few plain statements he showed to the council the severe injuries which the town, its beauty, its trade, its health, suffered from the want of land to extend itself upon; that it possessed the most admirable ground for houses and gardens, for factories and streets on these Lammas lands, which did no good to the freedmen, though a suitable compensation for their right, properly invested, would do them a permanent good. To the astonishment of the town, the whole corporation voted for the measure at once. In less than a year Thorsby had the satisfaction of seeing an act of parliament obtained for that purpose; and in a few years the whole of those so long desolated fields covered with handsome villas, gardens, airy streets, and public edifices; schools, alms-houses for the decayed members of different trades; a blind asylum in an open, healthy situation, under the care of the principal ladies and gentlemen of the place, where the children, under a wise system of instruction, presented one of the most interesting sights that suffering humanity can offer to the benevolent heart; and where they were preparing, too, for different occupations, which such instructions alone made possible to them.
The success of this great scheme, and the serious and kindly zeal with which Thorsby had carried it out, completed that regard of his townsmen which had been gradually reviving towards him. The steady decorum, the real wisdom of his deportment and life, and the high regard in which they saw him held by the most eminent of his townsmen, eminent as much for their virtues as their wealth, raised Thorsby to a pitch of popularity with the masses which was an enthusiasm. He was declared to be the pre-eminent friend of the people, and they determined to send him to parliament. In this idea, those, indeed, who could at that time send him to parliament, happened to coincide. Thorsby had grown into a great authority in the corporation. They saw that he sought nothing for himself, all his proposals were for the good of the town at large, and had succeeded wonderfully. But to this honour of representing his native place Thorsby would not consent. He declared that he lived for his town and his townspeople, but that he did not aspire to live for the nation. He would unite with them in selecting the most suitable man to represent them in the national council, but he would never go there himself. He felt that he could do little in that national assembly, as then constituted, but that he could do much in constant work for the prosperity, improvement, and enlightenment of his own town and neighbourhood. Beyond that he had no ambition, or rather he knew of no higher ambition than to prosecute the interests and the happiness of eighty thousand people, who relied on, and responded to his exertions.
Thorsby, once the very black sheep of Castleborough, and hanging by his torn and mud-drenched fleece over an unfathomable abyss, gently seized and stoutly withdrawn by a loving hand, is now the most popular man of a great and busy community. He stands a monument of what may be done by seeking in order to save, rather than by the exercise of a bitter though not causeless resentment; and still, as he goes on his way, planning and diffusing benefits to others, he says in his own soul, “What can I do in retribution of my faults, in recompense of a deathless and redeeming love?” By his side he still sees that gentle embodiment of unpretending wisdom and domestic sunshine, whose kind glance, if he is low, re-inspires him; if he is ready, in some momentary flush of his once excitable spirits, to say or do anything too prominent, steadies and sobers him. With such a pilot and such a sheet-anchor, we will venture to predict a safe voyage of life to his mortal bark, and that never again will the sunshine of peace now lying on Woodburn, on Cotmanhaye Manor, on Bilts’ Farm, and on Fair Manor be disturbed on his account. And may the heavens, blue and fair, shine out with their softest sunshine: may the larks carol above, the flowers wave in the breeze, and the brooks sing on below, around that little peaceful Arcadia where we have so many friends, through many and many long years as now,—long, indeed, after the whole town of Castleborough shall follow in deepest mourning the remains of their greatest reformer and benefactor to their honoured resting place—follow the ashes of a great and good man, who, but for the gentle wisdom of a heart inspired by the sublime power of devoted conjugal love, would, years ago, have sunk into a dishonoured grave, burying all this host of blessings with him.
Oh, woman! woman! what strength is concealed in thy weakness—what victories are engemmed in thy gentleness! what miracles conferred on thy truth! As the giant oak lies coiled in the little, brown, burnished acorn that we pick up and pitch lightly into the thicket; as the Titan of the winds lies dreaming and poetising in the zephyr; as the little limpid, sun-bright brooklets inherit the fulness of the ocean, with its illimitable breadth and stupendous force; as the clouds and the rivers enshrine themselves in the diamond drops of morning dew, so in the light and sportive life of girlhood lie powers that can direct the course of human destiny more effectually than the little rudder can direct the colossal ship; which can shape the condition and the fortunes of society, and evoke revolutions more beneficent or portentous than all the conspirations or parliaments that ever existed.
At the root of the tree, buried in unambitious silence, lie the life-forces, that elaborate and evolve all the pillared and ramified glories above. In the bosom of the family live the feminine instincts and harmonies which send forth the masculine majesty of deeds and doctrines which rule the universe.