Lower house

“ I always lived in a flat, John, and there was always a family above and a family below, and it frightens me to think I am in a house where there is no family above me, and not even a janitor's family below me. ”

“ We have been hunting about for a permanent country home in the neighborhood, but no house is so difficult to get as one which has at once seclusion and convenience of position, which is neither of the suburban-villa style nor of the grand hall and castle dimensions. ”

“ Eye-witnesses of the highest respectability, as well as my own paid agent, report to me the state of the town and neighbourhood of the workhouse on the admission-days in characters quite horrifying: between 100 and 200 poor, half-starved, almost naked creatures may be seen by the roadside, under the market-house—in short, wherever the famished, the houseless, and the cold can get for a night's shelter. ”

“ These remarks of course apply to the habitations of the very poor class of people. The richer families live in more comfortable style. Of the public buildings, the custom-house and the governor's residence are the most considerable, but both make a very indifferent appearance. ”

“ When [Pg 286] we reflect how soon the fortunes of a house are ruined, not only by vice or folly, but by the least deficience in that cold prudence with which highly endowed minds are so seldom gifted, the long continuance of any race of nobility or gentry seems to take place almost in defiance of probabilities. ”

“ The lower and middle classes change their place of residence with a facility unknown to the yeomanry of former times. It seems to be a matter of indifference to them whether they will live in one ugly and smoky street or in another ugly and smoky street, and why indeed should we expect their affections to take root in a “wilderness of bricks”? ”

“ In the daytime, when the tenants were out at their various avocations, the upper part of the dingy old building was deserted, save by the housekeeper in the attics; while the counting-house abutting on the street was all life and bustle. ”

“ Our theory trembled beneath the shock. We hastened home; and fancying we foresaw in the swift progress of events, its entire abolition, resolved from that day forward to vent our speculations on our next-door neighbours in person. The house adjoining ours on the left hand was uninhabited, and we had, therefore, plenty of leisure to observe our next-door neighbours on the other side.
The house without the knocker was in the occupation of a city clerk, and there was a neatly-written bill in the parlour window intimating that lodgings for a single gentleman were to be let within. ”

“ If a man eats garlic, every one sniffs it in the house opposite. If a woman administers a curtain lecture, all the occupants of the houses vis-à-vis prick up their ears, listen to every word, and mark every intonation of voice. Into no single room has the sun looked for a thousand years, and air has been but grudgingly admitted, and never allowed to circulate. The houses run up five, six, even seven storeys, and are tenanted by many families. ”

“ The old house, standing a dozen yards from the roadside, is picturesque with the contrivances of neglect and decay. Through a door hanging loose upon its hinges the passer-by may behold the evidences of loneliness and gloom,—the very embodiment of desolation,—a void, a silence, that is almost portentous. ”

“ One type of dwelling, indeed, is found to be more or less prevalent through all the urban aggregation. That is the small four or five-roomed cottage, containing on the ground floor a front parlour, a kitchen, and a scullery built as an addition to the main part [101] of the house; and on the upper floor the bedrooms, the third bedroom in the five-roomed house being built over the scullery. And in such dwelling-places, if anywhere, is concealed the secret of the future of the people of England. ”

“ These houses are six, seven, and eight stories high. Every floor, with the exception of the first, which in all probability is used for business purposes, accommodates a family, and, among the poor classes, several families. It would be difficult to find a town where every part of the house is so fully put to use and little waste or idle room. ”

“ We do not realise that one person in ten is living under what are technically known as "overcrowded conditions"—that is, with more than two persons to every room in the house. And these houses are crowded thirty, forty, and even fifty to the acre. ”

“ In any long railway journey we pass through town after town, and see these dismal rows without a vestige of greenery about them, only characterised by their meanness and by their deadly monotony. When such homes are overcrowded, and only have two bedrooms, it is impossible, or next to impossible, to live decently, especially when the family is grown up. ”

“ The households here are not so large as in other parts of the frontier, and it is evident that in former times the inhabitants must have found some means of evading the law, and dividing their property. The old order of things still exists; each cottage has its house-father and house-mother, and everything is held in common. ”

“ They are paved with irregular stones, and there seem to be no particular localities in which the wealthier class erect their elegant residences, for next to a lofty and beautiful mansion may be the humble low house of the poor man. ”

“ It being plain that as a poor young man with a family I could rent no houses at all in this most undesirable region, I next looked for rooms, unfurnished rooms, in which I could store my wife and babies and chattels. ”

“ It has lately been decreed, that every house in the republic shall have fixed on the outside of the door, in legible characters, the name, age, birth-place, and profession of its inhabitants. Not the poorest cottager, nor those who are too old or too young for action, nor even unmarried ladies, are exempt from thus proclaiming the abstract of their history to passers-by. ”

“ There is no such unwholesome atmosphere as that of an old home, rendered poisonous by one's defunct forefathers and relatives. I speak of what I know. There is a certain house within my familiar recollection,—one of those peaked-gable (there are seven of them) , projecting-storied edifices, such as you occasionally see in our older towns,—a rusty, crazy, creaky, dry-rotted, dingy, dark, and miserable old dungeon, with an arched window over the porch, and a little shop-door on one side, and a great, melancholy elm before it! ”

“ The house was an old one, and was let out in rooms to tenants who could afford only a small rent, consequently the neighborhood was now none of the best. There was an ill smell of cooking in the halls, and the sound of a constant banging of doors, and the shuffle of heavy feet on the bare stairs could always be heard. ”

“ Near the two cannons at h, some trenches were made, and one or two Roman coins were found. [9]
A foolish tradition connects Pevensey Castle with the ancient house in Westham called Priesthawes, by a subterraneous passage. As the two places are between two and three miles apart, so preposterous an idea could not for a moment be entertained; but since an elderly inhabitant of the neighbourhood vouched for the fact of his having in his youth accidentally discovered some kind of passage a few perches to the south-westward of the great gateway, we thought it worth while to examine the ground. ”

“ Lack of study and experience leads the family living in the suburbs, in one of the worst legacies of the past, to attempt the same style as friends maintain in a lately built apartment house, without in the least understanding wherein the difference lies. ”

“ The real foundlings, the children of the gutter that are picked up by the police, are the city's wards. In midwinter, when the poor shiver in their homes, and in the dog-days when the fierce heat and foul air of the tenements smother their babies by thousands, they are found, sometimes three and four in a night, in hallways, in areas and on the doorsteps of the rich, with whose comfort in luxurious homes the wretched mother somehow connects her own misery. ”

“ Then one very necessary hint to suburban residents is to see that in taking a new house the road by which it may stand, or by which it is reached, is properly ‘made up,’ and duly taken over by the authorities. ”

“ I was astonished at the strings of dwellings, side by side, stript, more or less, of the commonest household utensils—the poor little bare houses, often crowded with lodgers, whose homes had been broken up elsewhere; sometimes crowded, three or four families of decent working people in a cottage of half-a-crown a-week rental; sleeping anywhere, on benches or on straw, and afraid to doff their clothes at night time because they had no other covering. ”

“ A glance shows its feudal relation to, and dependence upon, the great house behind which it nestles; some of the back-kitchens and offices of this great house, indeed, straggle out till they meet and merge themselves into this quadrangle. None the less, it presents to the enquiring gaze a specific character, of as old a growth, one might think, as the oak itself. Here servants have lived, it may be, since man first learned the trick of setting his foot on his brother's neck. ”

“ For example, in the vicinity of our large towns and cities will be seen spacious mansions inhabited by professed followers of Jesus Christ, each surrounded by ornamented grounds. Not far from them will be seen small tenement-houses, abounding with children, each house having about as many square yards of land as the large houses have square acres. In the small tenements, the boys rise early and go forth with the father to work from eight to ten hours, with little opportunity for amusement or for reading or study. ”

“ Many families living in the same house, and at the entrance of the apartments belonging to each, a strong iron gate to separate the residence of one set from that of another, has likewise an odd melancholy look, like that of a prison or a nunnery. ”

“ Hence the houses are built of one story only; and even the Government respects the prejudice by never placing a prisoner in the stocks under the floor of a house, though the houses are raised high above the ground. ”

“ The conditions of housing are worse in towns than in country districts, higher rents and less ground space implying that each family on an average lives in fewer and more crowded rooms than in rural districts. ”

“ Only that here in the courtyard the male element detached itself from the female; the neighbours following the Mayor up the staircase into the pension house, the neighbours’ wives remaining below in the courtyard. ”

“ But upon the other side, every house or little row of houses, though not always perhaps built with the best taste, shows as plainly as words could tell it, that the careful hand and eye of a liberal landlord have been over them for years. ”

“ I asked why the poor-house was not repaired, and was told that the peasants had purposely built it poorly, fearing that if it were comfortable it might encourage pauperism in the village. The poor are supplied with clothes either from the church or village treasury according to circumstances. A residence of two years in a village compels its inhabitants at the expiration of that time to support the applicant, nor can he be forced to do any work in return for his living. ”

“ A building that presents the outward appearance of a substantial two-or three-storied dwelling-house with many rooms, shrinks into a dismal and draughty collection of stables, courtyards, and dungeon-like living-rooms, when one gets inside. ”

“ Now, alas, almost every country gentleman's house in the neighborhood is no longer occupied by its ancient proprietors, and is sold or let to successful tradespeople, so that the quintessence of society in the town plumes itself on not knowing the occupants of these stately mansions. ”

“ Now we have in our upper classes, in our country parsonages and manor houses, in town mansion and suburban villa, among our gentry generally, the very finest material in the world for infusing into the working classes that very element which it lacks. ”

“ They fabled—or said, for it might not have been a false story—that every descendant of this house had a certain portion of his life, during which he sought the track of that footstep which was left on the threshold of the mansion; that he sought it far and wide, over every foot of the estate; not only on the estate, but throughout the neighborhood; not only in the neighborhood but all over England; not only throughout England but all about the world. It was the belief of the neighborhood—at least of some old men and women in it—that the long period of Mr. ”

“ In the country neighborhood thereabouts, along the dusty roads, one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug and cozy, and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors and windows were wholly hidden from sight--sign that these were deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disappointed families who could neither sell them nor give them away. ”

“ I only know this neighbourhood as I see it from the station, and it is possible it is otherwise inside, for I know quarters where the poor lodge often escape the eye of a casual observer; but I do know districts which are very like what yours looks, where the villas cover all the ground, and there is no place for the poor man's cottage. Where the idea of building for him would be mentioned with awed abhorrence by the comfortable residents, and they would talk about the unpleasantness of the poor living so near, chances of infection, &c. ”

“ The manner in which poor people—the very poor—live in this city is, of itself, fearfully demoralizing in its effects upon their children. Oftener than otherwise, a family, in some cases six or seven in number, will occupy but two rooms; one, a kitchen, the other, a sleeping apartment. ”

“ Every residence section has its shabby houses, monuments to departed aspirations, falling into slow decay in the midst of weedy yards, sometimes uninhabited and sometimes sheltering one or two members of the family who apparently have been left, like the ancient furniture, to be forgotten. ”