dramaturgy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dramaturgy) wrote2007-02-27 07:00 pm
dramaturgy) wrote2007-02-27 07:00 pm
Tuesday - The Foundling Museum, The Severs House, and Spitalfields
I only took two pictures before someone bitched at me for taking a picture of a wall quote in the lobby (WASN'T GOING TO TAKE PICTURES INSIDE, THANK YOU) and just didn't have the energy to do much of anything except concentrate on how my hip was killing me while we chased Sarah around the eastern part of the City proper.
Aaron glanced nervously up the main staircase where hung a great portrait by one of their patrons, William Hogarth. It was of their founder, Captain Thomas Coram. Each morning and night, whenever he whispered the Lord's Prayer, Aaron thought it was to this man they were praying. They knew it was thanks to him they got shelter and education and their daily bread. Would his kindly eyes suddenly look into theirs and become full of disappointment and reproach because they had been naughty and ungrateful? Yet he looked such a kindly old man with his white hair and his gloves in his hand, as if he had only sad down for a moment before setting off agian to help some abandoned child.
- Coram Boy, by Jamila Gavin, pg 235-236
'The charity man's here!' A murmur went round. Word had gone on ahead that he was coming and some had waited for him.
In recent times, Meshak had got used to his father being called a 'charity man', though it had puzzled him. A wayfaring minister to whom they had once given a lift told him that in the Bible the word 'charity' meant 'love'. It was true that a lucrative part of his father's business as a travelling man was to collect abandoned, orphaned and unwanted children - many from local churches and poorhouses - and take them to the ever increasing number of mills that were springing up throughout the country. Otis always called the children 'brats' - as if, like rats, they were really vermin - but he made money out of them. Older boys, he handed over to regiments and naval ships, which were always on the lookout for soldiers and sailors to fight whatever wars were going on with the Prussians or the French abroad or the Jacobites up in the north. Down at the docks of London, Liverpool, Bristol and Gloucester, he made deals with ships who took both girls and boys to North Africa, the Indies or the Americas, along with their cargoes of slaves, cloth, timber and metal.
That may have been considered by some to be an act of charity, but Meshak wasn't at all sure that it was love, he only had a vague idea about what love was. He thought he had been loved by his mother, though he could hardly remember her. She used to hug him and kiss him; she had played with him and told him stories. Then one day she had died and was gone forever, and no one ever hugged or kissed him again, except for Jester - if you count face-licking, tail-wagging and jumping up a dog's way of hugging and kissing. Meshak knew he loved his dog and that Jester loved him, but he would never have called that charity.
The children whom his father picked up on the open road or in small villages, towns and cities, and took into his wagon as an act of charity, never looked happy or grateful. They were usually handed over roughly, received roughly, fed little, beaten often. All in all, Meshak couldn't say that either they, or indeed himself, were loved. If this was love, it was also business. Money changed hands, sometimes a lot of it.
But Meshak accepted that his father was a good and Christian man because everyone said he was. He was admired for this most Christian virtue, charity.
- Coram Boy, by Jamila Gavin, pg 14-15.
Aaron glanced nervously up the main staircase where hung a great portrait by one of their patrons, William Hogarth. It was of their founder, Captain Thomas Coram. Each morning and night, whenever he whispered the Lord's Prayer, Aaron thought it was to this man they were praying. They knew it was thanks to him they got shelter and education and their daily bread. Would his kindly eyes suddenly look into theirs and become full of disappointment and reproach because they had been naughty and ungrateful? Yet he looked such a kindly old man with his white hair and his gloves in his hand, as if he had only sad down for a moment before setting off agian to help some abandoned child.
- Coram Boy, by Jamila Gavin, pg 235-236
'The charity man's here!' A murmur went round. Word had gone on ahead that he was coming and some had waited for him.
In recent times, Meshak had got used to his father being called a 'charity man', though it had puzzled him. A wayfaring minister to whom they had once given a lift told him that in the Bible the word 'charity' meant 'love'. It was true that a lucrative part of his father's business as a travelling man was to collect abandoned, orphaned and unwanted children - many from local churches and poorhouses - and take them to the ever increasing number of mills that were springing up throughout the country. Otis always called the children 'brats' - as if, like rats, they were really vermin - but he made money out of them. Older boys, he handed over to regiments and naval ships, which were always on the lookout for soldiers and sailors to fight whatever wars were going on with the Prussians or the French abroad or the Jacobites up in the north. Down at the docks of London, Liverpool, Bristol and Gloucester, he made deals with ships who took both girls and boys to North Africa, the Indies or the Americas, along with their cargoes of slaves, cloth, timber and metal.
That may have been considered by some to be an act of charity, but Meshak wasn't at all sure that it was love, he only had a vague idea about what love was. He thought he had been loved by his mother, though he could hardly remember her. She used to hug him and kiss him; she had played with him and told him stories. Then one day she had died and was gone forever, and no one ever hugged or kissed him again, except for Jester - if you count face-licking, tail-wagging and jumping up a dog's way of hugging and kissing. Meshak knew he loved his dog and that Jester loved him, but he would never have called that charity.
The children whom his father picked up on the open road or in small villages, towns and cities, and took into his wagon as an act of charity, never looked happy or grateful. They were usually handed over roughly, received roughly, fed little, beaten often. All in all, Meshak couldn't say that either they, or indeed himself, were loved. If this was love, it was also business. Money changed hands, sometimes a lot of it.
But Meshak accepted that his father was a good and Christian man because everyone said he was. He was admired for this most Christian virtue, charity.
- Coram Boy, by Jamila Gavin, pg 14-15.