Part 6 (1/2)
”So far from it, wherever the water has been laid on at high pressure, the waste, which is terrible now-some say that in London one-third of the water is wasted-begins to lessen; and both water and expense are saved.
If you will only think, you will see one reason why. If a woman leaves a high-pressure tap running, she will flood her place and her neighbour's too. She will be like the magician's servant, who called up the demon to draw water for him; and so he did: but when he had begun he would not stop, and if the magician had not come home, man and house would have been washed away.”
”But if it saves money, why do not the water companies do it?”
”Because-and really here there are many excuses for the poor old water companies, when so many of them swerve and gib at the very mention of constant water-supply, like a poor horse set to draw a load which he feels is too heavy for him-because, to keep everything in order among dirty, careless, and often drunken people, there must be officers with lawful authority-water-policemen we will call them-who can enter people's houses when they will, and if they find anything wrong with the water, set it to rights with a high hand, and even summon the people who have set it wrong. And that is a power which, in a free country, must never be given to the servants of any private company, but only to the officers of a corporation or of the Government.”
”And what shall we do with the rest of the water?”
”Well, we shall have, I believe, so much to spare that we may at least do this: In each district of each city, and the centre of each town, we may build public baths and lavatories, where poor men and women may get their warm baths when they will; for now they usually never bathe at all, because they will not-and ought not, if they be hard-worked folk-bathe in cold water during nine months of the year. And there they shall wash their clothes, and dry them by steam; instead of was.h.i.+ng them as now, at home, either under back sheds, where they catch cold and rheumatism, or too often, alas! in their own living rooms, in an atmosphere of foul vapour, which drives the father to the public-house and the children into the streets; and which not only prevents the clothes from being thoroughly dried again, but is, my dear boy, as you will know when you are older, a very hot-bed of disease. And they shall have other comforts, and even luxuries, these public lavatories; and be made, in time, graceful and refining, as well as merely useful. Nay, we will even, I think, have in front of each of them a real fountain; not like the drinking-fountains-though they are great and needful boons-which you see here and there about the streets, with a tiny dribble of water to a great deal of expensive stone: but real fountains, which shall leap, and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle; and fill the place with life, and light, and coolness; and sing in the people's ears the sweetest of all earthly songs-save the song of a mother over her child-the song of 'The Laughing Water.'”
”But will not that be a waste?”
”Yes, my boy. And for that very reason, I think we, the people, will have our fountains; if it be but to make our governments, and corporations, and all public bodies and officers, remember that they all-save Her Majesty the Queen-are our servants, and not we theirs; and that we choose to have water, not only to wash with, but to play with, if we like. And I believe-for the world, as you will find, is full not only of just but of generous souls-that if the water-supply were set really right, there would be found, in many a city, many a generous man who, over and above his compulsory water-rate, would give his poor fellow-townsmen such a real fountain as those which enn.o.ble the great square at Carcasonne and the great square at Nismes; to be 'a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.'”
”And now, if you want to go back to your Latin and Greek, you shall translate for me into Latin-I do not expect you to do it into Greek, though it would turn very well into Greek, for the Greeks know all about the matter long before the Romans-what follows here; and you shall verify the facts and the names, etc., in it from your dictionaries of antiquity and biography, that you may remember all the better what it says. And by that time, I think, you will have learnt something more useful to yourself, and, I hope, to your country hereafter, than if you had learnt to patch together the neatest Greek and Latin verses which have appeared since the days of Mr. Canning.”
I have often amused myself, by fancying one question which an old Roman emperor would ask, were he to rise from his grave and visit the sights of London under the guidance of some minister of state. The august shade would, doubtless, admire our railroads and bridges, our cathedrals and our public parks, and much more of which we need not be ashamed. But after awhile, I think, he would look round, whether in London or in most of our great cities, inquiringly and in vain, for one cla.s.s of buildings, which in his empire were wont to be almost as conspicuous and as splendid, because, in public opinion, almost as necessary, as the basilicas and temples: ”And where,” he would ask, ”are your public baths?” And if the minister of state who was his guide should answer: ”Oh great Caesar, I really do not know. I believe there are some somewhere at the back of that ugly building which we call the National Gallery; and I think there have been some meetings lately in the East End, and an amateur concert at the Albert Hall, for restoring, by private subscriptions, some baths and wash-houses in Bethnal Green, which had fallen to decay. And there may be two or three more about the metropolis; for parish vestries have powers by Act of Parliament to establish such places, if they think fit, and choose to pay for them out of the rates.” Then, I think, the august shade might well make answer: ”We used to call you, in old Rome, northern barbarians. It seems that you have not lost all your barbarian habits. Are you aware that, in every city in the Roman empire, there were, as a matter of course, public baths open, not only to the poorest freeman, but to the slave, usually for the payment of the smallest current coin, and often gratuitously?
Are you aware that in Rome itself, millionaire after millionaire, emperor after emperor, from Menenius Agrippa and Nero down to Diocletian and Constantine, built baths, and yet more baths; and connected with them gymnasia for exercise, lecture-rooms, libraries, and porticoes, wherein the people might have shade, and shelter, and rest? I remark, by-the-bye, that I have not seen in all your London a single covered place in which the people may take shelter during a shower. Are you aware that these baths were of the most magnificent architecture, decorated with marbles, paintings, sculptures, fountains, what not? And yet I had heard, in Hades down below, that you prided yourselves here on the study of the learned languages; and, indeed, taught little but Greek and Latin at your public schools?”
Then, if the minister should make reply: ”Oh yes, we know all this. Even since the revival of letters in the end of the fifteenth century a whole literature has been written-a great deal of it, I fear, by pedants who seldom washed even their hands and faces-about your Greek and Roman baths. We visit their colossal ruins in Italy and elsewhere with awe and admiration; and the discovery of a new Roman bath in any old city of our isles sets all our antiquaries buzzing with interest.”
”Then why,” the shade might ask, ”do you not copy an example which you so much admire? Surely England must be much in want, either of water, or of fuel to heat it with?”
”On the contrary, our rainfall is almost too great; our soil so damp that we have had to invent a whole art of subsoil drainage unknown to you; while, as for fuel, our coal-mines make us the great fuel-exporting people of the world.”
What a quiet sneer might curl the lip of a Constantine as he replied: ”Not in vain, as I said, did we call you, some fifteen hundred years ago, the barbarians of the north. But tell me, good barbarian, whom I know to be both brave and wise-for the fame of your young British empire has reached us even in the realms below, and we recognise in you, with all respect, a people more like us Romans than any which has appeared on earth for many centuries-how is it you have forgotten that sacred duty of keeping the people clean, which you surely at one time learnt from us?
When your ancestors entered our armies, and rose, some of them, to be great generals, and even emperors, like those two Teuton peasants, Justin and Justinian, who, long after my days, reigned in my own Constantinople: then, at least, you saw baths, and used them; and felt, after the bath, that you were civilised men, and not 'sordidi ac foetentes,' as we used to call you when fresh out of your bullock-waggons and cattle-pens. How is it that you have forgotten that lesson?”
The minister, I fear, would have to answer that our ancestors were barbarous enough, not only to destroy the Roman cities, and temples, and basilicas, and statues, but the Roman baths likewise; and then retired, each man to his own freehold in the country, to live a life not much more cleanly or more graceful than that of the swine which were his favourite food. But he would have a right to plead, as an excuse, that not only in England, but throughout the whole of the conquered Latin empire, the Latin priesthood, who, in some respects, were-to their honour-the representatives of Roman civilisation and the protectors of its remnants, were the determined enemies of its cleanliness; that they looked on personal dirt-like the old hermits of the Thebaid-as a sign of sanct.i.ty; and discouraged-as they are said to do still in some of the Romance countries of Europe-the use of the bath, as not only luxurious, but also indecent.
At which answer, it seems to me, another sneer might curl the lip of the august shade, as he said to himself: ”This, at least, I did not expect, when I made Christianity the state religion of my empire. But you, good barbarian, look clean enough. You do not look on dirt as a sign of sanct.i.ty?”
”On the contrary, sire, the upper cla.s.ses of our empire boast of being the cleanliest-perhaps the only perfectly cleanly-people in the world: except, of course, the savages of the South Seas. And dirt is so far from being a thing which we admire, that our scientific men-than whom the world has never seen wiser-have proved to us, for a whole generation past, that dirt is the fertile cause of disease and drunkenness, misery, and recklessness.”
”And, therefore,” replies the shade, ere he disappears, ”of discontent and revolution: followed by a tyranny endured, as in Rome and many another place, by men once free; because tyranny will at least do for them what they are too lazy, and cowardly, and greedy, to do for themselves. Farewell, and prosper; as you seem likely to prosper, on the whole. But if you wish me to consider you a civilised nation: let me hear that you have brought a great river from the depths of the earth, be they a thousand fathoms deep, or from your nearest mountains, be they five hundred miles away; and have washed out London's dirt-and your own shame. Till then, abstain from judging too harshly a Constantine, or even a Caracalla; for they, whatever were their sins, built baths, and kept their people clean. But do your gymnasia-your schools and universities, teach your youth naught about all this?”
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.
THE more I have contemplated that ancient story of the Fall, the more it has seemed to me within the range of probability, and even of experience.
It must have happened somewhere for the first time; for it has happened only too many times since. It has happened, as far as I can ascertain, in every race, and every age, and every grade of civilisation. It is happening round us now in every region of the globe. Always and everywhere, it seems to me, have poor human beings been tempted to eat of some ”tree of knowledge,” that they may be, even for an hour, as G.o.ds; wise, but with a false wisdom; careless, but with a frantic carelessness; and happy, but with a happiness which, when the excitement is past, leaves too often-as with that hapless pair in Eden-depression, shame, and fear. Everywhere, and in all ages, as far as I can ascertain, has man been inventing stimulants and narcotics to supply that want of vitality of which he is so painfully aware; and has asked nature, and not G.o.d, to clear the dull brain, and comfort the weary spirit.
This has been, and will be perhaps for many a century to come, almost the most fearful failing of this poor, exceptional, over-organised, diseased, and truly fallen being called Man, who is in doubt daily whether he be a G.o.d or an ape; and in trying wildly to become the former, ends but too often in becoming the latter.
For man, whether savage or civilised, feels, and has felt in every age, that there is something wrong with him. He usually confesses this fact-as is to be expected-of his fellow-men, rather than of himself; and shows his sense that there is something wrong with them by complaining of, hating, and killing them. But he cannot always conceal from himself the fact that he, too, is wrong, as well as they; and as he will not usually kill himself, he tries wild ways to make himself at least feel-if not to be-somewhat ”better.” Philosophers may bid him be content; and tell him that he is what he ought to be, and what nature has made him.
But he cares nothing for the philosophers. He knows, usually, that he is not what he ought to be; that he carries about with him, in most cases, a body more or less diseased and decrepit, incapable of doing all the work which he feels that he himself could do, or expressing all the emotions which he himself longs to express; a dull brain and dull senses, which cramp the eager infinity within him; as-so Goethe once said with pity-the horse's single hoof cramps the fine intelligence and generosity of his nature, and forbids him even to grasp an object, like the more stupid cat, and baser monkey. And man has a self, too, within, from which he longs too often to escape, as from a household ghost; who pulls out, at unfortunately rude and unwelcome hours, the ledger of memory. And so when the tempter-be he who he may-says to him, ”Take this, and you will 'feel better.' Take this, and you shall be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil:” then, if the temptation was, as the old story says, too much for man while healthy and unfallen, what must it be for his unhealthy and fallen children?
In vain we say to man: