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Updated: May 19, 2025
On two low trestles, in the middle of the floor, lay a coffin with the lid on, on the top of which was stretched the dead body of an old emaciated woman in her grave clothes, the quality of which was much finer than one could have expected to have seen in the midst of the surrounding squalidness.
This is Central Africa; distinguished from all the earth by the unspeakable mixture of squalidness and magnificence, simplicity of life yet fury of passion, savage ignorance of its religious notions yet fearful worship of evil powers, its homage to magic, and desperate belief in spells, incantations and the fetish.
On a road-side, or on the borders of a bog, the dusty colour of the cabin walls, the potato patch around it, the green scraughs or damp brown straw which form its roof, all the appurtenances, in fact, of the cabin, seem suited to the things around it. But in a town this is not so. It evidently should not be there its squalidness and filth are all that strike you.
Certainly there are fleas and there are filthinesses in some directions; and yet it is amazing, especially for one accustomed to the Irish, to see an extreme of poverty so much greater, with such an utter absence of squalidness.
Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other savage race before it was degraded by contact with the civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that that people's rulers are as wise as the average of civilized rulers. Their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization.
Fine gentlemen in broad cloth, ladies in silks and jewels, and beggars in squalidness and rags, are mingled here in true Republican confusion. The bustle and uproar are very great, generally making it impossible to converse in an ordinary tone. From early morning till near midnight this scene goes on. A gentleman from the remote interior, once put up at the St. Nicholas Hotel.
At length, one of the maid-servants at the inn remembered to have heard Mrs Brandon say, that rather than live on among all her squalidness and penury, she would endeavour to suckle another child besides her own; and, as she was then in redundant health, and had two fine breasts of milk, for a fine breast of milk would not have served my turn, or, rather, Mary and I must have taken it by turns, she was accordingly sent for.
Vegetables and bread, when they indulged in such luxuries, and even fresh water, was to be procured from the mainland, which was about five miles distant. On the whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one of these was vacant when I arrived. This I hired. It contained but two rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable penury.
The rooms had been furnished twenty years before as a surprise intended for the wife who never returned to occupy them, and though there was nothing extraordinary in them, there was much to content the eyes accustomed to something very like squalidness, for had not Kalliope's lot always been the least desirable chamber in the family quarters?
A ruined castle! the dismantled towers rose around them with the great hall, the windows broken, the casement shattered. Ivy grew around the fragments, and embracing them, veiled their squalidness with its green robe, making that picturesque which anon was hideous. But company gives confidence, and our little troop rode, laughing and talking, into the haunted Castle of Fievrault.
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