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The Angel Isafrel: A Story of Prohibition in New Zealand

Chapter III. — In Albert Park

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Chapter III.
In Albert Park.

The work to which Isafrel had devoted herself was suspended by the sorrowful little episode in her life which had robbed her of her dearest companion, and one who was becoming an earnest helper. But the recollection that it was this very evil, that had struck around in a circuitous way, and laid her dear sister in the grave, was a fresh incentive; and it would seem as if she was impelled to redouble her efforts, both in ministering comfort to the sufferers, and more, in doing what in her lay to destroy for ever the power that caused those sufferings, and that produced what she had come to speak of now as “the tragedy of life.”

The claims on her time for what were her semi-official duties pressed hard on her labours of love: for so much had the women and the workers in the cause of prohibition come to rely on her wise counsel and her inspiriting presence, that things lagged when she was absent from a meeting; and her presence made just the difference between the carrying of abstract resolutions and the taking of prompt steps in a practical direction.

Partly while engaged in these visits of mercy in connection with the sufferers, and partly through her directly placing herself in communication with other workers, she was on intimate terms of acquaintance—which always in the case of Isafrel meant affectionate friendship—with all the leading women in all the organizations of the city and suburbs, and she had almost fired them all with her own enthusiasm.

The ladies of the Synagogue, and the Little Sisters of the Poor8, were alike her friends; the Helping Hand Mission, the Ladies' Benevolent Society9, the women of the Hibernian Society, and of the Door of Hope, the Hallelujah Lasses10 and the Tailoresses Union11, and the workers in connection with those various Christian schemes that were under the guidance of one good woman in Parnell, all looked on Isafrel as belonging to themselves, though she was not officially connected with any of them. The wives of all the clergymen and ministers of religion in the city and round about nearly worshipped the young girl that they met and heard of everywhere going about continually doing good; and the Sisters of Mercy12 would persist in telling Isafrel, whom they called “Our Angel,” that they knew she was a good Catholic, page 21 and though she did not call herself a nun or wear a nun's dress, they knew she had a nun's heart, and they told her that they prayed for her every night, and for the good things she was doing.

She had made herself acquainted, too, with the women of all the political organizations in the city, and she had often expostulated with them for wasting their time in minding things that she said were only remotely connected with the deepest interests of woman, as compared with the one thing which she persisted in saying was at the root of all women's wrongs, and all the miseries with which the children and the women and the whole people were afflicted.

George, one day, was rallying her about the promiscuous kind of her fellow workers. He had met her in Queen Street, or, rather, he saw her talking to a lady under the verandah, and as he had a few hours off he waited, so as not to interrupt, and at the same time to have a chance of a stroll with her.

While he was waiting, he saw a dirty little urchin edging round behind Isafrel, and as he thought the little scamp might be going to pick her pocket, he kept his eye on him. Presently the little fellow stole up behind Isafrel, and quietly taking hold of a fold of her dress, he pressed it to his dirty little face and kissed it, and then ran off and stood looking at the girl. George went over to him and asked him what he did that for, and the child, looking up at him wonderingly, said, “That's the Angel Isafrel,” and ran away.

As they were strolling up to the Albert Park, George told her about the little urchin, and she was greatly amused and interested to know who the little fellow could have been. The description did not help her much, but one day subsequently George was able to point out the child to her, and it turned out that he was one of two or three little children of a woman who had poisoned herself with “Rough on Rats,”13 as mentioned in the papers a few weeks before. The woman had been drinking heavily for some weeks, and the story of the little children found standing round the wretched creature dead on the floor, trying to awake their mother, was very pathetic.

But when they were seated in the Park a remark from George brought up this subject of the promiscuous character of the workers she had managed to associate with her in her crusade against suffering and its causes. He said, “I am afraid, Isa, that your religious principles are getting a little mixed, and that you are a bit of a latitudinarian.”14

“What a big word it is, George,” she said, “and what does it mean? I suppose it is something broad; well, yes, my religion is broad, just as broad as the suffering of the human family, and that is wide enough. It does not seem to me that suffering is confined to denominations, and as far as my experience goes page 22 when help for suffering is wanted I find the gentle spirit of Christianity is either active or only dormant in every denomination alike.”

“Christianity, Isa?” said George, “but you don't speak of Christianity in connection with the ladies of the Synagogue.”

“Well, so far as the name, no; but so far as the spirit, yes; just the same. Don't you know, George, that Jesus was a Jew, that he was born and reared a Jew, and that when he spoke those beautiful words of the Sermon on the Mount—the sweetest words that ever were uttered to comfort and guide humanity—he was a Jew still. And those words, which are the marching orders of Christians whenever they engage in the service of humanity, are the spirit of Jewish benevolence breathed into Christianity, just as much as you would find the Christian spirit of love and kindness in the Jews. It's all the same, George, call it Christian or Jewish as you like, it is there any way; and from the Jewish women, whenever I brought a case appealing to sympathy under their notice—and it did not signify to what creed or denomination it belonged—there was the true heart and the ready liberal hand to respond.”

“Do you know,” said George, “I don't want to flatter you, but it is your own goodness, darling, that you see reflected in everybody you meet, and they're all good because they can't be anything else when you're with them.”

“What a good boy, George, you are, to be sure, to make such a pretty speech, and I love you, dear, ever so much when you say such pretty things; but it's nonsense all the same. There's goodness in all humanity, overlain sometimes, it may be, with rubbish, but it's there for the bringing out; and, more than that, it sometimes takes form that other people don't understand, and they dislike it, till they search and see what it means, and that's why there is so much mischief wrought on the principle which Thomas Bracken15 has so beautifully touched in his poem of ‘Not Understood.’”

“Do you know, George,” she went on after a little, “that I have a great sympathy with the spirit of reverence for the virgin mother that pervades the Roman Catholic Church. I know you will think me horridly lati—what-do-you-call-it—narian, but I think that the presence of that principle of motherhood in the heart of religion must have exercised a powerful influence on the rugged nature of mankind in ruder days; and if you just saw the gentle devotion of those dear Sisters of Mercy, as I have seen them, you would be inclined to trace a good deal of it to the constant consciousness of communion with the mother of the Redeemer. I know we Protestants think they go too far, but the principle of motherhood is the embodiment of all that is sweetest and most powerful in womanhood, and there does seem to me something very touching in its being interwoven in that page 23 way into religion. But there, now, I have been preaching to you so that you will be beginning to yawn; but I'll tell you something if you don't laugh, for I know you are amused at what you call my rounding up of promiscuous helpers.

“Well that case that I was talking about to a lady in Queen Street when you met me. It is a wretched family, and one of the most pitiable cases I ever saw. The father and mother were both drunkards, and both broken down in health, and I think likely to die, and there are five children, as woe-begone little creatures as ever you beheld; diseased and filthy they were beyond expression. Well, the first I thought of was the Little Sisters of the Poor, and they took the whole family away, and you should have seen them washing and cleaning and attending to the sores of those miserable creatures. I don't know what religion they are, and I don't think the Sisters know. Well, as I was coming along, as luck would have it, I fell in with one of the Helping Hand Mission, and I told her about the case, and she just got a big bundle of clothes and went away up and gave them to the Sisters, and said they would help as they could. And then, do you know, I went to one of the Jewish ladies, and told her about them, and she said she would go and see the Sisters, and the Jewish ladies gave what money was wanting—a good, big sum, too—and they helped to look after the case. But the best of it is to come. I was riding out past the Chinamen's gardens16 on my bicycle, and the thought came into my head that I would tell John: and the poor fellow was really touched, and got to know where the people were, and the same evening he was round there with a lot of vegetables. The Sisters, who are very poor, said they did not want any vegetables; but John said he did not want any money, that they were ‘welly good cabbagee,’ and so they were, as the Sisters told me afterwards, and he has been coming with nice vegetables for the poor family regularly since, and will not take a farthing—and so there you are: Methodists, Catholics, Jews, and a follower of Confucius, all helping and caring for that poor dying family.”

“Well, Isafrel,” said George, “you are an angel, and I do love you so; and I'd like to kiss you, darling, if they weren't looking at us.”

“No, George, don't,” said Isafrel, demurely; “it wouldn't be proper, George—when there are people about. Besides you rumple my hat so every time, and this is a new one; don't you like it? But I love you all the same; oh! ever so much, I couldn't tell you how much, dear. I don't know what in the world I would do if I had not you—I suppose I would have to get another boy. There, now, don't look nasty! I didn't mean it. I would not have anybody else in the whole world if I had fifty to choose from.”

“But I don't like,” said George, placated by the rattling page 24 prattle of the girl, “I don't like, dear, to see the way you are knocking yourself up with going about after these cases,”

“Oh, never mind, dear, I am all right; I am as strong as a horse. You don't know that I knocked a man down the other day.”

“Isafrel!”

“I did, indeed, George. I knocked a man down; it was Tuesday or Wednesday last—Tuesday, I believe. I was in talking to an unhappy woman in her little cottage out at Arch Hill. She was as poor as wretchedness itself with hardly a stick of furniture, and she had not had a bite of food the whole day, nor her children either. There were four of the poor little things, and they looked so hungry, and weak, and I was just about going out to get something for them, when her husband came in calling for his dinner. He was a big, rough-looking man, and drunk; and when she told him very quietly that she had nothing in the house, he swore at her, and said if she was not gossiping with her neighbours like this, she could have had his dinner ready. She gave him a sort of taunting reply—women are so foolish in not speaking quietly to a man when he is drunk; I do think they often bring a good deal of the trouble on themselves. Any way he rushed at her, and I stood up between them. That baulked him for a moment; but, oh! there was such a look in his eyes. He went round to the other side of the table, and there was a tomahawk on the hearth beside some bundles of sticks, and he picked it up and rushed to get past me. I sprang at him and seized him by the wrist, and, oh! I felt as strong as a lion, and I gave such a wrench to his arm, and with my other hand I wrested the tomahawk out of his hand, and I flung him from me, and he fell in a heap to the floor. “You ruffian,” I cried, “how dare you lift your hand to the woman that you swore to love?” He picked himself up and looked me in the face. I had still the tomahawk in my hand. You have heard of a young girl going into a lion's cage, and, looking the wild beast straight in the eyes, she obliges him to cower before her. There was the look of the wild animal in that man's eyes. I think it is the effect of spirits that they bring the animal all to the front, and deaden for the time all that makes man higher than the brutes. He glanced at me for an instant, and his eyes fell before mine, and he slunk away to the door and went out. The children clung screaming about her; and I told her I could have the man sent to gaol and kept there for years for attempting to murder her. She sobbed for a little and said, ‘Oh no, do not; he is my husband, he is the father of my children.’ Oh! woman woman, I thought, why has God given you a nature like this, when He does not put forth His powers to protect you in the indulgence of the sweetest sentiments that He ever implanted in your breast. And, oh! George, I could not help thinking, how can page 25 any man, merely because he likes this thing for his own selfish enojoyment, not feel willing to let it go, and by putting it far away prevent domestic horrors like this. And, oh! George, I could not help thinking, how can any woman with the heart of a woman and a mother in her breast be indifferent to such a state of things, and, having the power in her hands to stop it for ever, close her heart to the sufferings of other poor women who have not the security and the peace which she enjoys.”

Isafrel had arisen to her feet in her emotion, and was walking to and fro on the grass. George, who had been carried along by the story, asked her what was the outcome of it all to the woman, and Isafrel, taking her seat beside him again, told him that she brought in the man and his wife from next door to protect the woman till she went out and got some food for her, and when she was leaving they promised that they would see the woman was not molested. Isafrel had then gone and told the constable, who said he would keep an eye to the house. She had heard since that the man thought she would have him brought up for attempted murder, and that he had apparently gone from the district.

George felt disturbed and anxious at hearing of the dangerous situation in which his darling had been, and he asked her why in the name of goodness she entered into scenes like that, and why it was that in seeking out distressful cases, she only hunted up those that were connected with drink.

“Because I never found any others,” she said. “I have never encountered a case of domestic misery but I was able to trace it to drink as the cause. I set myself deliberately to this,” she said. “Some of them were only remotely connected, and the people that suffered were in no way to blame. There was one case that puzzled me. The man was an excellent workman and the woman a thoroughly worthy woman, and they were as kind to one another as they could be, but they were very poor. They had pawned everything they could pawn for food, and there was hardly anything in the house. They were too proud to reveal their state, and even some of the ladies of the Benevolent Society who had visited them had been put off with evasive replies. But they were starving, and the children looked so pale and thin, but so quiet. The woman made a clean breast of their whole condition to me. She said there was something in me that drew it out of her. Her husband had lost his billet; in fact, had rashly thrown it up, and do what he could, looking up high and low down, he could get nothing to do. I asked her to tell me in confidence did he drink. She said ‘No.’ I asked if he ever drank before, and she said she believed he had never drunk in his life, unless, perhaps, a glass now and again, but that he had never been in the habit of it, and she had never known him the worse of drink. This case puzzled me. But I was determined to have it out. I asked her why he had lost his page 26 place, and she said the manager was such a bully that her husband could not stand it any longer, and gave it up. She said she had done all she could to prevent it, and he was sorry himself afterwards.

“I made it my business to find out about the manager, and from the wife of one of the hands I learned that he drank. I knew I was right, and that drink was at the bottom of it somewhere. I found that, though the manager was sometimes jovial and pleasant as man could be, whenever he took drink, which he did frequently, his temper was fearful. Hickson, the man I am speaking of, was in a position of much responsibility, which brought him constantly in communication with the manager, who had let him feel the full brunt of his bad temper when the exciting fumes of the drink had left him and that morbid reaction had set in which makes so many fightable after drink.

“And, George,” she continued, “I think this is the way in which about as much of misery is produced, and especially to employes and dependents, as in any way else. There are some people on whom the dregs of drinking produce an irritation that makes them almost fiendish sometimes, and God help those who are in that position of dependence that makes them to have to submit to the consequences. This poor man had borne his sufferings for years, for the sake of his wife and children, till in a moment of desperation he flung up his situation. The proprietor, who is a good and kind-hearted man, was sorry at his leaving, for Hickson was a good workman and always reliable, and he strongly urged him to resume. But Hickson declined, and nevertold him the reason. But I told him, and told him, too, that God would hold him to account for the way in which his servants were treated; and he said that he would speak to the manager and have this conduct stopped. But the manager, he said, was a useful man, and he could not part with him. So, for his own selfish benefit, he allowed a wrong to pass and continue that was, I am sure, more offensive to the good God than theft or robbery, or any crime in the calender short of murder. So you see, George, it was drink after all that did it.”

“But what came of the man after all,” said George, who liked to know the finish of things.

“Oh, well,” said Isafrel, “that was all right. I went to Mr.—, who is in the same business, and told him the whole thing from beginning to end, and he sent for Hickson while I was talking to him, and he gave him a position a good deal better, and with better pay; and, more than that, when Mr. — told the whole affair to his wife that night, she went the next morning and called on Mrs. Hickson, and offered to get her anything she wanted, and when I went to see Mrs. Hickson a page 27 day or two after, the poor thing threw her arms round my neck and kissed me, and sobbed like a child on my shoulder.

“But that is beside the point, which is this, that I have not yet met a case of genuine hardship that was not traceable immediately or indirectly to drink. That one of Hickson's was of course a roundabout way to the drink. It hit him all the same. But generally the connection is closer, and there is little trouble in tracing the links.

“I took particular interest in enquiring into the cases of people that are out of employment, and, besides the coarser cases of those who had established a character of non-reliability by their drinking, and were therefore the first to be shifted when the business pinch came, there are those, and, oh! so many of them, who by the mere expenditure on beverages missed the opportunity of raising themselves out of the way of risks.

“There was an interesting case I could tell you, only I have been talking so long that I am boring you.”

“No, no, Isafrel,” said George, “indeed you're not. I could listen to you talking for ever, darling, and I see that though you have your sad cases, you have also your pleasant recompenses—that case of Hickson's, for instance.”

“Well, there are two men,” she went on. “We will call them Brown and Thomson. They were great chums, and their wives were as loving as sisters. They worked together, lived next door to one another, and were nearly inseparable. They had been married about the same time, got the same wages, and were equally good men. They were carpenters. They both drank a little—not much. After a few months Brown said, ‘Look here, Thomson, we had better knock off this drink. We neither of us care much about it, and it is doing us no good.’ Thomson couldn't see it. They had plenty to keep their wives comfortable, and he did not see why they should not have their little glass of a while. ‘Well,’ says Brown, ‘I'm off; but I'll tell you what I want, Thomson. You tell me how much you drink every week, and I'll put the same in the Savings Bank, and we'll see what it will come to in the end.’ ‘All right,’ said Thomson, for they were very good friends. So they went to work, and Thomson kept the count. Sometimes it was three shillings, and sometimes it was six, and sometimes even eight and ten, when Thomson had been particularly genial. But whatever Thomson drank in the week, Brown put the same sum in the Savings Bank. And so it went on for three months, when Thomson got tired telling Brown how much he drank, and it was a bother to have to remember. So Brown struck an average on the three months, and whatever it was for the week he put that sum every week in the Savings Bank. Thomson never developed drinking habits any more than at first, nor has he to this day, and they are both equally in good health, but after about a year and a-half Brown had enough page 28 money in the bank to buy the timber to put up a little two-roomed cottage, doing the work himself in his leisure hours, and Thomson remained on in his hired house. Brown went on as his little account grew big enough to buy more timber, and added little wings and offshoots, until he had a picturesque little place of his own with six rooms in it. And Thomson remained in his hired house. Then the possession of his little property gave Brown credit, and he was able to take up little contracts for building, and Thomson went on earning his wages as before. Brown, when I got first to know Mrs. Thomson, had become a considerable contractor, and had several houses rented, and sported a buggy. His eldest little boy of fourteen or fifteen was in his father's office, and sported a bicycle after office work. Thomson was still in the hired house, and his boy was selling papers in Queen Street. When I went to see Mrs. Thomson, Thomson had been thrown out of work by the failure of his employer, and had not yet been able to find other work, for he was troubled a bit with rheumatics. The rent of his hired house had been unpaid for some time, and they had got notice to go, and next day the goods were to be sold under distraint, and this was the trouble that brought a friend of mine and myself to the scene. I wormed the story out of Mrs. Thomson, and she added that Mrs. Brown had ‘cut her,’17 which was a mistake as I afterwards found. The fact was that Mrs. Brown had been going out in her buggy with her three little girls beautifully dressed, and with ribbons flying, and Mrs. Thomson happened to be in the street when she was passing, and was in her kitchen costume, and none too good, and with her two little girls along with her barefooted; and Mrs. Thomson turned about and looked over the fence, and her two little girls looked up at the pretty dresses in the buggy and wondered, and Mrs. Brown had nodded kindly to the children, but Mrs. Thomson was looking the other way. The sum of it was that while Thomson was still a hewer of wood and drawer of water, and his daughters would soon be going out to service, and his sons would be hewers like himself, Brown was a gentleman, and his daughters would be shortly coming out at Government House18, and his son was the daintiest young gentleman that had come out of the Grammar School19. And it was all of that little glass of beer. It did not do any particular harm to Thomson. He was a hearty strong man in spite of it; but it made a difference to the children.”

“Well,” says George, “and what was the end of it?”

“Oh, bother you, George,” said Isafrel, “you always want to know the finish of things. That has nothing to do with my point, which is that the reason the great majority of working men are working men still, and will have their daughters going out to service, and their sons rising no higher than hewers of wood and drawers of water like themselves, is just because of page 29 that little pot of beer. It perhaps does themselves no harm. But if they just dropped that money every week into the Savings Bank20, every one of them could become an employer and a gentlemen instead of a slave and a dependant, and their daughters would come out at Government House and have their dresses in the society papers. And it seems a bit hard on the girls.”

“But what became of the Thomsons?” said George again.

“George,” says Isafrel, “you don't seem to care a bit about the point of the story, which is this that if the women of New Zealand, and the men to back them, would only shut out the drink from the country, there is not a working man in it but might have his son on a bicycle and his daughters sporting their dresses at the Government House balls and—

“Ah, but tell me, dear,” said George, “I do want to know how did the Thomsons fare?”

“Well, then,” said Isafrel, “if you must know, I went straight myself to Mrs. Brown, and the big tears came into her eyes when I told her that Mrs. Thomson thought she had cut her. And the things were not sold the next day, and the Thomsons were not turned out on the street, and Thomson next week became Brown's foreman of works, and on the first Saturday after he opened an account at the Savings Bank.”

“Well, Isafrel, darling,” said George, “you are a good soul, indeed, and you must have a lot of happiness through it all. Goodness, but you are good.”

“Now, don't rumple my hat, George; I told you that before. This is my other hat, and I don't want it crushed. But, goodness, see the time it is,” she said, looking at her watch; “we must be off.”

They went away down by the path behind the Public Library to get out of the Park, and when they reached the clump of shrubs that hides from the path above, George passed his arm softly round her waist and looked away up and down the paths for something or somebody.

“Don't rumple my hat, George, there's a dear,” and then she looked up into his face with her big loving eyes so sweetly “Do it again, George,” she said, and he did it again. “Do it a third time, George,” and he did it a third time, and then they walked on down the path together; and when they got near the street, just passing another big shrub, peeping out from under the corner of her hat she saw a wildlike look in George's eyes, and he was looking about for another man. “Don't rumple my hat, George,” she said again, but George saw the man he was looking for just close by, and Isafrel laughed a merry little laugh, and said “Poor George; better luck next time.”

8 A Roman Catholic order founded in the 19th century that primarily cares for the elderly.

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]

9 A society that aimed to comfort the oppressed, poor and needy.

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]

10 Female preachers from the Salvation Army who would often spread the word on street corners.

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]

11 The first women’s trade union, it was established after a “sweating scandal” surrounding low pay and bad conditions in the workplace.

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]

12 A community of women who aim to serve people in need of education, health and social services, and still active today.

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]

13 A poison that was claimed to be effective on “rats, mice, roaches, flies, ants, bed-bugs, beetles, insects, skunks, jack-rabbits, sparrows, gophers.”See Evening Post 2 March 1887.

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]

14 The 'Broad Church' of the 19th century Church of England, it eschewed the narrow doctrinal views of the High and Low Churches (Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals respectively).

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]

15 The composer of the national anthem ‘God Defend New Zealand’, Thomas Bracken wrote Not Understood in 1879.

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]

16 Auckland had a Chinese population of around 150 at the end of the 19th century; the Chinese market gardens Isafrel mentions were probably located in the area around Khyber Pass and Carlton Gore Roads.

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]

17 Affecting not to see or know a person, thereby ending the acquaintance.

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]

18 Probably Old Government House, Auckland, completed in 1856. A ballroom was added in 1868 while the Duke of Edinburgh recovered there from a gunshot wound.

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]

19 The Auckland boy’s school was established in 1868, and remains one of the more prestigious New Zealand colleges.

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]

20 Probably the Post Office Savings Bank, established in 1865.

[Note added by David Weir as annotator]