The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-10-26 00:00:00

THE TRAGEDIES OF LOW LIFE.

It is a trite remark, that " truth is stranger than fic-
tion," and would not be so treated as a truism were it
known what fearful, frightful illustrations it receives be-
neath that calm, quiet under-current of common life
which covers so much of secret misery and wasting woe.
Take the humblest and most wretched haunts of poverty
—track some child of misery to the hovel or the attic
which is called home—trace out the history of that past
which has led to so wretched a present, and there will be
the materials of a tale more moving than aught that the
wildest fiction ever conceived, or the boldest pen depicted.
That this is not matter of imagination, but is sober, sad
reality, our readers can easily be satisfied—a short story
will show them that they, in their daily walks, pass con-
stantly the " heroes" or the " heroines" (mockery of
ideas!) in the tragedies of low life. Not long since, a
poor girl—a mother—and if wife, a deserted one—lost, by
the stoppage of a small theatre, the employment she had
there for some time past received as a ballet girl, and the
manager left in her debt for some arrears of her wretched
pittance. What misery is disclosed in these short facts !
It sketches the shadowy outline of some sad tale, which
fancy will not be slow in filling up with colours, alas !
most sombre. What early errors or early wrongs (and
both, perhaps, were combined in her fate) led her to the
life of the ballet girl ?—the very ability for which, as it
involves the possession of some accomplishments, indi-
cates a once happier state. What lingering wretchedness
must have been hers—deserted, defrauded, deprived even
of her hardly-earned subsistence, a prey to sickening sor-
row, embittered even to agony by recollection, and aggra-
vated almost to distractioi*by the bitter contrast between
the gaiety of the theatre, with its crowd of well-pleased
countenances, and the gloom of her home ! What a
heart-rending agony must have been hers, poor girl, as
she went through her wearying round of trivial, yet tor-
turing labour upon the stage, amidst her fond thoughts of
the " little one," of whom her earnest hope would be that
it slept I How little could the crowded spectators con-
ceive of the heart that was hidden under the flimsy tawdry
and the giddy gaiety of the " ballet girl," and what keen
pangs of silent, sharp endurance were hers, as she " tripped
it lightly" on the mimic scene !—what a mask for misery
was the smiling face or glittering eye that sparkled in the
glare of the " foot lights." Ah ! all that sparkle and
spangle, all that glitter and glare—what a horrid mockery
of the misery they concealed ! Perhaps a keen observer
might detect beneath it all the wildness, the unnatural
brightness of eye, which betokened the desperation of
despair ! Who knows what the " ballet girl" endured !
perchance preserved from the last resource of wretched-
ness only by that slight, yet all-powerful tie, which wound
itself round the mother's heart. But she had more to en-
dure. The iron must enter yet deeper into her soul. De-
prived of her employment, what alternative had she, save
starvation—or worse ? The former, for herself, perhaps,
she would have preferred. But her child—could she see it
starve ? Hearts of mothers, say ! She lodged in a
wretched room, at ss. a week. There she sat, hour after
hour, day after day—brooding over her misery—wasting,
wearing away, in woe. At length nature could endure no
longer ; she put forth her hand and stole—stole an article
from the scanty furniture of her room—stole, that her
babe might not starve. Who shall say what sharp strug-
ples she passed through ere she seized the trumpery thing
which seemed to tempt her to take it, arid hurried forth
in the dark to procure a few pence that might stave off
her sad fate some short time—and in that time what might
occur !—she might again have employment—then she
could redeem what she had stolen and restore it. Sad
sophistry ! But ere it be censured too severely, let it be
recollected she was starving. She was detected. The
usual result followed. The picture presented at the bar
of the police court was most touchingly, sorrowfully sad.
" A thin, delicate-looking woman, dressed in faded black"
(death had added its dark shadows to her dismal story),
" with a child in her arms." . . " She said she and
her child were in great distress, and that she took the ar-
ticles, intending to redeem them the moment she could
get a little money. She was engaged as a ballet-dancer at
the Theatre which she quitted about a month ago,
the manager being in her debt; and although she had
made repeated applications for the money, she could not
obtain it. Since she had left the theatre she had been
gaining a scanty subsistence for herself and child by nee-
dlework. Her salary as a ballet-dancer was 6s. a week."
The magistrate (honour to his heart!) sighed over the
poor girl's story (which everything her landlady said con-
firmed), and said " her situation was to be deplored," so
much so that he only fined her 6d., in addition to the va-
lue of the article purloined—and this her poverty pre-
vented her paying, so she was " locked up ;" but late in
the day some female friend or relative—perhaps some sis-
ter in misery—paid it for her and procured her release.
Who can wish to weep over imaginary sorrow ; when com-
mon life furnishes such stories of real woe ? Let those
who have leisure for " sentiment" search out some of
these sons and daughters of suffering humanity, and learn
the luxury of relieving them.

FUDGE.—The word Fudge was hardly enough for our
great lexicographer to notice. It was known, however,
to our language long before his friend, Goldsmith, made
such ample use of it in his " Vicar of Wakefield ;" for
D'lsraeli says that in " Remarks upon the Navy," pub-
lished in 1700, is the following anecdote :—" There was,
in our time, one Fudge, captain of a merchantman, who,
upon his return from a voyage, how ill so ever his ship
was fraught, always brought home his owners a good
cargo of falsehoods ; so that row, aboard ship, the sailors
when they hear a great falsehood told, cry out, ' You
fudge it.' "
STRANGE PROBABILITY.—There still exists a lineal
descendant of Zingis, and the Tatar khans of the Crimea,
in the person of Katti-Gheray Krim Gheray. He was
born among the mountains of Caucasus, and his acquaint-
ance with Scottish missionaries led him to examine, and
his researches to embrace, the religion of the Saviour : he
is well known in this country, having studied at Edinburgh,
where he found his way to the heart of a daughter of a
north Briton, who loved him for the dangers he had past,
and accompanied him to the Crimea in order to ensure
him happiness for the future. A curious event may fol-
low this marriage. Should the prophet be pleased to call
Abdul-Medshid to the bowers of paradise and the bosoms
of the houris, and the male line of Turkey become ex-
tinct, the throne falls by right to the family of Gheray.
Such an event is not impossible ; and, if the grasping
hand of Russia be not extended to prevent it, we may yet
see, and smile at the recollections it will recall, the des-
cendants of the chief of a Tatar horde and the wandering
daughter of a private Scottish gentleman, seated together
on the throne of the Paleologi.—Church of England
Review.

CAGLIOSTRO.—The last and perhaps the most renowned
of the Rosicrucians, was, according to a historical insinua-
tion, implicated in that notorious juggle of the Diamond
Necklace, which tended so much to increase the popular '
hatred towards the evil-doomed and beautiful Marie-An-
toinette. Whether this imputation were correct, or whe-
ther the Cardinal Duc de Rohan was the only distin-
guished person deluded by the artifices of the Coun- •
tess de la Motte, it is certain that Joseph Bal-
samo, commonly called Alexandre, Count de Caglios-
tro, was capable of any knavery, however infamous. Guile
was his element ; audacity was his breastplate ; delusion
was his profession ; immorality was his creed ; debauchery
was his consolation ; his own genius—the genius of cun-
ning—was the god of his idolatry. Had Cagliostro been
sustained by the principles of rectitude, he must have be-
come the idol as well as the wonder of his contemporaries ;
his accomplishments must have dazzled them into admi-
ration, for he possessed all the attributes of a Crichton.
Beautiful in aspect, symmetrical in proportions, graceful
in carriage, capacious in intellect, erudite as a Benedic-
tine, agile as an Acrobat, daring as Scoevola, persuasive as
Alcibiades, skilled in all manly pastimes, familiar with the
philosophies of the scholar and the worldling, an orator, a
musician, a courtier, a linguist,—such was the celebrated
Cagliostro. In his abitities, he was as capricious as Leo-
nardo, and as subtle as Machiavelli; but he was without
the magnanimity of the one or the crafty prudence of the
other. Lucretius so darkened the glories of nature by the
glooms of his blasphemous imagination, that he might
have described this earth as a golden globe animated by a
demon. Fashioned. in a mould as marvellous as that
golden orb, and animated in like manner by a devi-
lish and wily spirit, was Balsamo the Rosicrucian. Be-
tween the period of his birth in 1743, and that of his dis-
solution in 1795, when incarcerated in a dungeon of San
Leo, at Rome, Cagliostro rendered himself in a manner il-
lustrious by practising upon the credulity of his fellow-
creatures. Holstein had witnessed his pretended suc-
cesses in alchemy. Strasbourg- had received him with
adulation, as the evangelist of a mystic religion. Paris
had resounded with the marvels revealed by his perform-
ances in Egyptian freemasonry. Molton gold was said to
stream at pleasure over the rim of his crucibles ; divination
by astrology was as familiar to him as it had been of yore
to Zoroaster or Nostradamus ; graves yawned at the beck
of his potent finger ; their ghostly habitants appeared to
his preternatural bidding. The necromantic achievements
of Doctor Dee and William Lilly dwindled into insignifi-
cance before those attributed to a man who, although ap-
parently in the bloom of manhood, was believed to have
survived a thousand winters. Accident had supplied
Cagliostro with an accomplice of suitable depravity. In
the course of his eccentric peregrinations among the con-
tinental cities, he had formed the acquaintance of a female
remarkable for her consummate loveliness and her bound-
less sensuality. Married to this Circe, the adventurer
began to thrive beyond his most sanguine expectations.
It must be remembered, however, that in his nefarious
proceedings, Balsamo was aided by a faculty of invention
almost miraculous in its fruitfulness, and occasionally al-
most sublime in its audacity. By these means, he ulti-
mately became the most astonishing impostor the world
had ever beheld, with the solitary exception of Moham-
med. As a forerunner of a disastrous revolution, the ap-
pearance of this fantastic personage in the capital of civi-
lisation was at once dismal and prophetic. Uncon-
sciously, he was the prophet of disaster. Uncovciously,
he was the prelude, half-solemn, half-grotesque—of a
bloody and diabolical saturnalia. History, both profane
and inspired, tells us that when the Euphrates forsook its
natural channel, and the hostile legions trampled under
its gates at nightfall.; when the revellers of 13elshazzar,
drunk with the prolonged orgies and haggard with the
shadow of an impending doom, staggered through the
marble vestibules and out upon the marble causeways,
rending their purple vestures in the moonlight, there was
weeping among the lords of Chaldea,—" Wo ! wo ! vvo !"
was wailed in the streets of Babylon. A similar destiny
awaited Paris, but as yet a very different spectacle was vi-
sible ; as yet the carousals of the metropolis were at their
zenith ; as yet the current flowed in its ancient channel ;
as yet the woes of the empire were not written on the
wall of the palace. Festivities were never conducted with
more magnificence than immediately before the downfall
of the monarchy and the general desolation of the king-
dom. The pomps of religion, the pageantries of the court,
and the munificence of the nobility, were never before
characterised by so much grandeur and profusion. The
church, the sovereign, and the oligarchy were crowning
themselves for the sacrifice.—Blackwood's, Magazine.