Noblemen who live in mean streets—A peer on a pound a week—A princess out in service—Lodgekeeper where once mistress—A grave-digger with royal blood—From £100,000 to nothing

Poverty has so many romances, and they are so varied.

Under the humblest roofs in this great city of ours men and women are daily writing in the book of life beautiful stories of tender love, of noble self-sacrifice, of deeds of heroic endurance. There are idylls of the slums and alleys as charming as ever poet penned; there are stories to be told of the dwellers in mean streets that lift our thoughts far above the sordid things of earth.

But these are romances pure and simple, and in them is no element of mystery. The romances I have in my mind as I write are those in which the poverty conceals from the eyes of the world a truth it would be greatly interested to learn.

When the London season is at its height the daily papers are filled with the gay or great doings of the aristocracy. Every movement is chronicled as being of surpassing interest to the general public. If my lord and my lady entertain their friends at home the details are considered as important as those of a battle in the Far East or a debate in the House of Commons. Even if my lord or my lady dine or sup at a restaurant the fact is duly chronicled. The untitled leaders of the smart set, our wealthy American visitors, the stars of the opera and the stage, share in the general publicity. Celebrities, whether of rank or wealth or talent, are standing items of "Fashionable Intelligence." All the world is made familiar with their features, and their diaries are compiled for them by the staff, male and female, of the popular periodicals.

There are men and women of noble birth and ancient lineage, there are men and women who have been famous in their day in the world of fashion and of art, over whose lives a great silence has settled, who move about in our midst, their very identity unsuspected, who know sorrow and suffering, and sometimes even privation. These are the romances of poverty which are mysteries, because they are rarely fathomed. Now and again the veil is lifted in the hospital, in the parish infirmary, or at the coroner's inquest. But many of them remain hidden for ever by the shallow earth which covers a pauper's coffin.

There is an old, grey-headed gentleman in thread-bare, shiny clothes, who comes out of his poor lodgings in a mean street daily when it is fine and sits in the park. He brings with him a rusty brown bag that once was black. From that bag he takes soon after midday a little packet containing a slice or two of bread and a small piece of cheese. When he has finished his humble meal he walks to the public drinking-fountain and takes a cup of water.

If the society reporter wished to chronicle this midday meal in the "Fashionable Intelligence," this is how he would have to word his paragraph in order to be correct: "Among the company who lunched in Regent's Park to-day was Lord —————. His lordship is at present occupying one room in Great James Street, Lisson Grove, where he is staying incognito under the name of Mr. Wilson."

The old gentleman, who is so poor that he can only afford bread and cheese for lunch—it is his dinner—and one room in Lisson Grove, bears a name as noble as any in the pages of Burke. His ancestral home is one of the show-places of England. But it passed from his family nearly a hundred years ago, when the reverse of fortune came that left a noble house beggared.

Lord ————— is quite alone now. Her ladyship died a year or two ago. She added to the poor little income by shirt-making at home for a West End firm.

When her ladyship died his lordship had an income of 10s. a week. This was generously increased to £1 by a relative who was just a little better off. On £1 a week one of England's "old nobility" is passing a peaceful old age. He has always a smile for the little children who play near him in the park. Sometimes when they see him bring out his bread they think he is going to feed the ducks. But he cannot afford to do that.

Ducks want such big pieces. But now and then he spares a few crumbs for the sparrows.

The parish doctor stood by the bedside of a woman who had been brought to the infirmary some days previously from a common lodging-house in the neighbourhood.

The woman was dying, but quite conscious. The workhouse-master was with the doctor.

"It's an extraordinary story she tells," said the master. "She says she is the Marchioness of —————."

The doctor looked pityingly at the poor creature, who was in the last stage of a fatal disease, and bent down to listen to something she was saying.

"It's quite true," she said. "We separated, you know, a good many years ago, and I never saw him afterwards. What was the good? But I should like him to know I'm dying—if you can find him."

The doctor, hearing the name of the nobleman, remembered something of the story. He went away and made inquiries, which resulted in his being able to find the dying woman's husband.

The Marquis, an elderly man, came to the bedside of his dying wife and forgave her. He waited till the end. When the Marchioness was dead he shook hands with the doctor, thanked him for his kindness, and said he would try and get enough money to have her ladyship decently buried. He kept his word.

Five years afterwards the doctor was rung up at one o'clock in the morning. He put his head out of the window and found that the Marquis had called upon him.

"Doctor," said the Marquis, "I'm married again, and I want you to come to my wife at once."

In the early hours of the morning an heir to the ancient title was bom in lodgings in a little suburban side street.

Up to the present the doctor has not received his fee. He did not press for it. He knew how terribly straitened were the circumstances of the nobleman, whose first wife died in the work-house, and whose second wife presented him with an heir in cheap London lodgings.

In a recent book on Russian life it is told how a young woman who had applied for the position of lady's-maid hesitated to produce her papers of identification when asked by the lady who wished to engage her. "Ah! Madame," the girl sobbed, "when you see who I am you will not take me as your servant, and I have been so long looking for a home and work by which I may live."

The lady, expecting some dreadful revelation, was astonished, when the "papers" were reluctantly handed to her, to find that the applicant for a situation as a domestic servant was of noble birth—a princess, in fact.

Princesses do not go into service in England. But ladies of title, concealing their identity, sometimes try to find a home and employment by becoming servants.

There came to me some years ago a middle-aged lady of refined and gentle appearance. She had heard that I wanted a cook, and she pleaded to be allowed to take the situation.

I told her frankly that I did not think she was a cook in the domestic sense of the word, and I asked her where she had been employed. Eventually the poor lady confided in me.

The story she told was a simple one and a very old one. The solicitor who, after her husband's death, had the management of her affairs had absconded, and she and her daughter found themselves penniless. The daughter, having a good voice and appearance, obtained an engagement in the chorus of a travelling opera company. The mother, dropping her title and changing her name, went to a registry office and entered herself on the books as a cook. In her youth she had had a taste for cooking, and had been one of the first to take lessons when it became the fashion for ladies to master the details of the culinary art.

Lady ———— had some trouble about references, but, confiding in an old friend who knew of her qualifications, she got over the difficulty. In her first situation she was uncomfortable, and after three months she left. But, fortified with a reference, she obtained a situation in a good family. There it more than once happened that Lady ———— cooked for people who had been guests at her own table in her husband's lifetime. They would have been considerably astonished had they known that their former hostess was acting in the capacity of paid cook in the kitchen of the house in which they were dining. A break-down in health compelled Lady ———— to give up her situation. It was after her recovery—the little she had been able to save by hard work swallowed up in the expenses of her illness—that she came to me, hoping I might put her in the way of getting some articles she had written on "Cooking for Ladies" accepted by a newspaper. When I last heard of Lady ———— she was going out to cook on what I believe is called "the job."

Here is a little tobacconist's shop in the suburbs. The customers who enter it daily for their cigars and tobacco, sometimes for a box of lights, and see a neatly dressed lady, who is the proprietress, behind the counter, have not the slightest idea that the lady who supplies them with their packets of cigarettes and ounces of tobacco has a "handle to her name," that her husband is the heir to an earldom, and that in due course the fair tobacconist who is keeping a little shop for a livelihood will have a right to, sit among the peeresses of England as the Countess of —————.

In the environs of London there is a comely old lady who lives in the lodge on a great estate. Sometimes she comes out and opens the park gate that the occupants of a magnificent carriage may drive up to the Hall, which is their residence. The residents at the Hall are wealthy Americans. The old lady is the widow of the former owner. It was the home of his ancestors for three centuries. To the Hall he brought her as a bride to be its mistress. Now she is the lodge-keeper. Her husband before he died was employed as a coachman to a-wealthy City merchant. It was this merchant who recommended the widow to the Americans as a trustworthy woman to have the lodge.

Even the descendants of kings come upon evil times and bring the Crown of England into the romance of poverty. The sexton of a West End church was one of the co-heirs to the barony in a famous peerage claim concerning which evidence was given before the House of Lords. This gentleman, who followed the humble occupation of a grave-digger, was entitled to quarter the Royal Arms. His direct descent from Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, fifth son of Edward III, was undisputed. A barefooted, ragged little lad playing in a back court in Wapping is the descendant of the O'Neills, the scion of a race of kings renowned in Irish history.

In one of the worst streets of London, a street that is painted in the blackest colours in Mr. Charles Booth's great and exhaustive work, there is a house let out in rooms. The inhabitants of this street are mostly criminals. They are frankly classified as thieves, burglars, and bullies. But in this house, if we enter it, we shall find a man of education and refinement occupying with his wife and child two humble, scantily furnished rooms. If you know the neighbourhood, the "appearance" of this family at once rivets your attention. Their features, their neatness and cleanliness, their speech—all are in direct contrast to anything you have met with in the locality.

In what circumstances they have drifted to such a neighbourhood as this I do not know; but their poverty they confess themselves. The man is in bad health. He is waiting till he gets a little stronger to find something to do. In the meantime he is living in a neighbourhood in which it is not safe for a decent person to be abroad after nightfall. He has been knocked down twice himself. His respectable appearance led the inhabitants of the street to imagine that he must have some money about him.

This man bears an honoured name. Living where he does, there is no need for him to conceal it. To the thieves and hooligans who are his neighbours the name means nothing. Respectable people never come down the street. Knowing his name, his ancestry, and the position his kith and kin have held in public life, the man is to me a mystery. His poverty I can understand—I have seen the brother of a world-famous divine in a wretched room in a slum in the Borough, and I have seen his children given boots that they should not have to go barefooted to school in the winter-time—but this man has hidden himself away in a criminal area, in a street that is notorious, and here with his wife and child he must rub shoulders night and day with the vilest of the vile.

To live by choice in a street where you are liable to be brutally assaulted directly you put your nose outside your door is an act the motive of which is difficult to fathom.

A little way out of London, on the road to a popular Thames-side resort, there is a tavern with a tea-garden attached to it. All day long on Sunday traps pull up there, and the occupants get out and refresh while the ostlers water the horses.

Sometimes the ladies of the party remain in the trap and take their refreshment there. To them there comes with shuffling feet an old, grey-headed waiter, who is specially engaged to do the "outside Sunday work." He takes the order and returns with the required "refreshment" on a tray. When he is paid, and receives a penny or twopence for himself, the old fellow returns thanks and doffs his weather-beaten cap to the ladies in quite the old-world courtly style.

There was a time in the days long ago when he raised a glossy high hat in the same courtly way—not to the ladies in a one-horse wagonette or a pony-trap, but to the ladies in smart victorias and aristocratic barouches. And he drove his own horses, too—a splendid pair that made many a lounger in the park look after his mail phaeton and admire his "cattle."

He could have signed his name to a cheque for £100,000 in those days, and the cheque would have been paid by his bankers.

He had not made his money. It had been made for him by his father, a man of renown in the City, the head of a firm that had been honourably known in commerce for many generations.

His father, with an ample fortune, retired from the business and left that fortune to his son, who had nothing to do but live as a private gentleman.

He lived that life till he was forty. Then a large portion of his capital was lost by an unwise investment, and from that day things began to go badly, and in a few years he found himself penniless. His wife, who had been accustomed to every comfort and luxury, died before the final disaster came, and left him with a daughter who was a cripple and an invalid.

Father and daughter faced adversity bravely. Together they managed to, pay the rent of a small cottage at Chiswick. The daughter was clever with her needle and did fancy work at home; the father obtained a situation as waiter, and was sent out with provision vans to children's treats and picnics. But he got too old for that, and at last was glad of the Sunday job on which we have seen him engaged.

The man who could once sign his cheque for £100,000 is grateful for the pennies that he gets from the "pull-up" parties. When the Sunday is fine he goes back to his invalid daughter with a smiling face. When the Sunday is wet he goes home with a smile all the same—but his heart is as heavy as his pocket is light.

There died recently under tragic circumstances a man whom I had seen rise to heights he had never dreamed of in his youth. Handsome, agreeable, and refined, everybody liked him and said he would do well. But from a humble beginning he rose to honours and dignities. He held an official position that gave him a magnificent equipage to ride in, and the honour conferred upon him made his wife "her ladyship."

He gave grand entertainments and receptions, and his name was constantly before the world in the public prints. His daughter attended a fashionable school and was fetched every day by a footman.

I saw him in his splendour, and complimented him on the favours that Fortune had showered upon him with such a lavish hand.

Years went by, and gradually his name disappeared from the public journals. He dropped out. The world moved on, and nobody troubled very much what had become of him.

Then one day I saw him again. He passed me in the street.

The man I had seen honoured, fÉted, and acclaimed had come to the point at which he shunned his friends. I would have stopped and spoken, but he hurried past me.

Three weeks later I heard of his death. He had died penniless. He had known the torture of penury for years.

And "her ladyship," broken-hearted, tortured by the memory of the past magnificence, had eaten her heart out in sorrow by the side of the man she loved.

I had seen their gorgeous carriage pass with its mounted escort through acclaiming crowds. Husband and wife died tragically. The daughter who used to be fetched from school by the family footman died not long ago of starvation in circumstances of the most intense pathos.

About this romance of poverty there was, alas! the grim note of a poignant realism. But it was a mystery that only the tragedy of its victims' deaths revealed.