The quest for home: Alienation and sanctuary in the modern metropolis

“ In the mighty machine of the city each has his place, each is provided for, each gets the glow of sharing in the world’s work. The morning rush, splashed at street crossings with the gold of the Eastern sun, is rippled with fresh eyes and busy lips. They are all in the machine. But our young man crouching in a corner of the crowded car is not of these; slinking down Broadway he is aware that the machine has thrown him out and he cannot get in. He is an exile in the midst of his own people. The sense of loneliness and inferiority eats the heart out of the breast; the good of life is gone ”

“ They bring the wanderer to his home, the child to his mother’s arms, the ox to his stall, and the weary laborer to his rest. But to the gentle-hearted youth who is thrown upon the rocks of a pitiless city, ‘home [Pg 123] less amid a thousand homes,’ the approaching evening brings with it an aching sense of loneliness and desolation, which comes down upon the spirit like darkness upon the earth. ”

“ Istra sat on the bedside nursing her knee. She burst out:
“O Mouse dear, I’m so bored by everybody—every sort of everybody.... Of course I don’t mean you; you’re a good pal.... Oh—Paris is too complex—especially when you can’t quite get the nasal vowels—and New York is too youthful and earnest; and Dos Puentes, California, will be plain hell.... And all my little parties—I start out on them happily, always, as naive as a kiddy going to a birthday party, and then I get there and find I can’t even dance square dances, as the kiddy does, and go home—Oh damn it, damn it, damn it! ”

“ No, in the city, with its rows of houses one does not have the real impression of returning home, of earthing up like plants at night in the primitive manner, as one has it here, under those Basque roofs, solitary in the midst of the country, with the grand, surrounding black, the grand, shivering black of the foliage, the grand, changing black of the clouds and the summits.—But to-day, his travels, his new conceptions, have diminished and spoiled his mountaineer's home ”

“ All, in the exaltation of the wooing days, saw at least the indistinct reflection of the perfect house, but now the Quest is irrevocably in hand they seek and do not find. And such a momentous question it is to them. Are they not choosing the background, the air and the colour, as it were, of the next three or four years, the cardinal years, too! of their lives?
Perhaps the exquisite exasperation of the business for the man who hunts among empty houses for a home is, that it is so entirely a choice of second-hand, or at least ready-made goods. ”

“ A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amid the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and—kindly acquaintance with all neighbors, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood. ”

“ Part Four bodies the kiss touch lament in three colors light prediction twelve hours in the future surrender one metaphor
Part One Home
Our life was an accident, the flames were conjured by an indifferent couple.
So much time has passed, their union dissipated with the dumb carcass of our home.
This house has been all of our housesÐ our parents colluded with emptiness to conceal this fact.
We live from cairn to cairn, burning refugee hearts, each mistake receding in the rear-view mirror,
each incipient disaster breaking the night like headlights falling on a new city. ”

“ My uncle, I say, decided I must be shown London, and out we three went as soon as my aunt had got her hat on, to catch all that was left of the day.
VI
It pleased my uncle extremely to find I had never seen London before. He took possession of the metropolis forthwith. “London, George,” he said, “takes a lot of understanding. It’s a great place. Immense. The richest town in the world, the biggest port, the greatest manufacturing town, the Imperial city—the centre of civilisation, the heart of the world! See those sandwich men down there! ”

“ Paulus Jovius, in his description of the most remarkable towns of England, says, ‘All are obscured by London; which, in the estimation of many, is Cæsar’s City of the Trinobantes, the capital of all Britain, famous for the commerce of many nations; its houses are elegantly built, its churches fine, its towers strong, and its riches and abundance surprising. The wealth of the world is wafted to it by the Thames, swelled by the tide, and navigable to merchant ships, through a safe and deep channel for 60 miles, from its mouth to the City. ”

“ The number of persons, who with their families, find their way to the Metropolis, from the most remote quarters of Great Britain and Ireland, is inconceivable. In hopes of finding employment they incur an immediate and constant expence, for lodging and subsistence, until at length their little all is in the Pawnbrokers' shops, or sold to raise money for the necessaries of life. If they have been virtuously brought up in the country, despondency seizes upon their minds, in consequence of the disappointments and hardships, their adventurous or incautious conduct has doomed them to suffer ”

“ IN a great Metropolis, like London, where trade and commerce have arrived at such an astonishing height, and where from the extensive transactions in the Funds, and the opulence of the People, the interchange of property is so expanded, it ceases to be a matter of wonder that Forgeries and Frauds should prevail, in a certain degree:—the question of difficulty is, why the Laws and the means of prevention, have not kept pace with the progressive advancement of the Country ”

“ I met him once or twice shambling about the Embankment, which was his favorite boulevard—a place where no work can be picked up, and for that reason, I suppose, dear to him. London is a very big city, but such men as this have their haunts; they are too weak of will to wander far from the way of habit; it requires an effort, a moment of energetic decision, to change his daily walk from the Embankment to the Strand. I never saw him, except on that one occasion when he was a sandwich man, doing any kind of work ”

“ The heart of the machine-city of Metropolis dwelt in a white, cathedral-like building. The heart of the machine-city of Metropolis was guarded by one single man.
The man's name was Grot, and he loved his machine.
The machine was a universe to itself. Above the deep mysteries of its delicate joints, like the sun's disc, like the halo of a divine being, stood the silver spinning wheel, the spokes of which appeared, in the whirl of revolution, as a single gleaming disc. ”

“ Those condemned to wear it all their life long, live in an underground city, which is accounted a wonder of the world in all the five continents. It is an architectural wonder—that is true. It is light and shining bright and a model of tidiness. It lacks nothing but the sun—and the rain—and the moon by night—nothing but the sky. That is why the children which are born there have their gnome-like faces.... Do you want to go down into this city under the earth in order the more to enjoy your dwelling which lies so high above the great Metropolis, in the light of the sky? ”

“ The workman No. 11811, the man who lived in a prison-like house, under the underground railway of Metropolis, who knew no other way than that from the hole in which he slept to the machine and from the machine back to the hole—this man saw, for the first time in his life, the wonder of the world, which was Metropolis: the city, by night shining under millions and millions of lights. ”

“ Who is she, who has laid fire to this city? She is herself a flame—an impure flame. You were given of a brand, might. She is a fiery blaze over man. She is Lilith, Astarte, Rose of Hell. She is Gomorrha, Babylon—Metropolis! Your own city—this fruitful, sinful City!—has born this woman from out the womb of its hell. ”

“ In both the facility of moving from place to place, and finding a distant home, tends to dissolve the closeness of civic and family life, and to make the individual rather than the family or the city the unit of social life. ”

“ I do not purpose to take up the time of the House by dwelling upon the evils of over-crowding or drawing a picture of the wretched habitations in the narrow courts and alleys of our Metropolis, in which so many of our labouring population are compelled to reside. I say compelled to reside, because it is as important to the mechanic, the costermonger, and the huckster to reside near to the place of his employment and to the markets for his trade, as it is to the merchant, and perhaps more so, since the poor man cannot afford the daily cost of transit. ”

“ Innocent though we were, it does not seem to me that we could have found in the brief time devoted to the search so poor a street, so wretched a place, and so disreputable a janitor (this time a man) . I only wish to recall that the place was damp and small, with the kitchen in front; that some people across the air shaft were wont to [Pg 73] raise Cain all night long; that the two men below us frequently attempted to murder each other at unseemly hours, and that some extra matting and furniture stored in the basement were stolen, I suspect, by the janitor himself. ”

“ There is the familiar fragrance of hay, which penetrates my senses like a song of home, drawing me home, home, though I am not abroad. But perhaps I am abroad after all, far away from the soil where I have my roots.
Why, indeed, do I stay here any longer, at a resort full of schoolmistresses, with a host who has once more said farewell to sobriety? Nothing is happening to me; I do not grow here. The others go out and lie on their backs; I steal off and find relish in myself, and feel poetry within me for the night. The world wants no, poetry ”

“ But, say you, "here is one who is returning to a home of destitution, of misery; where the light of the natural day is almost shut out, but in which brood the deeper shadows of despair." And yet, in many a splendid mansion you will find a more fearful destitution, a dearth of affections, killed by envy, jealousy, distrust; stifled by glittering formalities; a brood of evil passions that mock the splendor, and darken the magnificent walls. The measure of joy, too, is distributed with the same impartiality as the measure of woe. ”

“ We must get home—we must get home again!
We must get home, where, as we nod and drowse,
Time humors us and tiptoes through the house,
And loves us best when sleeping baby-wise,
With dreams—not tear-drops—brimming our clenched eyes,—
Pure dreams that know nor taint nor earthly stain—
We must get home—we must get home again!
We must get home; and, unremembering there
All gain of all ambitions otherwhere,
Rest—from the feverish victory, and the crown
Of conquest whose waste glory weighs us down.—
Fame's fairest gifts we toss back with disdain—
We must get home—we must get home again! ”

“ What absurd victims of contrary desires we are! If a man is settled in one place he yearns to wander; when he wanders he yearns to have a home. And yet how bestial is content—all the great things in life are done by discontented people. ”

“ There are few neighbourhoods in which a Refuge for the homeless, a soup-kitchen, a ragged-school, a "servants home," an orphanage, a hospital or some asylum for the sick and suffering, does not relieve that sense of neglect and indifference which is the first painful impression of the thoughtful visitor to those "worst quarters," which yet lie close behind the grand thoroughfares and splendid edifices that distinguish aristocratic and commercial London. ”

“ But when the lamp of hope flickers toward extinction, when the sufferer begins to see before him nothing but more and more suffering and wretchedness with no end but death, and when, with all this, poverty and want and helplessness for all the remaining days stare him in the face, then human misery reaches a dark depth indeed.
It is to the most helpless and hopeless that the society of the Montefiore Home reaches out its hand, saying to them: “Whatever you may have to suffer, you shall not despair. ”

“ This is the City of Refuge to which a man may flee when he has robbed or murdered his fellow, or been guilty of treason, seditious talk, or slander—a strange place in which to see such a face as thine.”
“I did but seek a quiet way home and lost the turning,” said Hilarius; “in sooth, ’tis a fearful place.”
“Ay, boy, ’tis a place of darkness and despair, despite its safety—even the King’s arm falls short when a man is in these precincts: but from himself and the knowledge of his crime, a man cannot flee; hence I say ’tis a place of darkness and despair.” ”

“ Reader, would'st thou know what true peace and quiet mean; would'st thou find a refuge from the noises and clamours of the multitude; would'st thou enjoy at once solitude and society; would'st thou possess the depth of thy own spirit in stillness, without being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species; would'st thou be alone, and yet accompanied; solitary, yet not desolate; singular, yet not without some to keep thee in countenance; a unit in aggregate; a simple in composite:—come with me into a Quaker's Meeting. ”

“ Out in the street there is the same homely, yearning atmosphere. It is the homeliness of a people without a [Pg 111] home, without a country. They are exiles who have flung together, as well as may be, the few remnants of their possessions, adding to them little touches that may re-create the colour of their land, and have settled down to make the best of things. ”

“ Not because all life is change, nor because it all marches steadily on to the grave, but because our true home—the community to which we really belong, the metropolis, the mother city of our souls—is above, are we to feel ourselves strangers upon earth. ”

“ He had regained as he sang what for a moment he had lost the consciousness of when he began—viz. the presence of God with him on the lone, dreary expanse of alien soil as truly as amidst the sanctities of what was called His House.
So, brethren! if we want rest, let us clasp God as ours; if we desire a home warm, safe, sheltered from every wind that blows, and inaccessible to enemies, let us, like the swallows, nestle under the eaves of the Temple. Let us take God for our Hope. ”