THE INVITATION
Come away with me Tom
Term and talk is done
My poor lads are reaping
Busy every one
Curates mind the parish
Sweepers mind the Court
Well away to Snowdon
For our ten days sport
Fish the August evening
Till the eve is past
Whoop like boys at pounders
Fairly played and grassed
When they cease to dimple
Lunge and swerve and leap
Then up over Siabod
Choose our nest and sleep
Up a thousand feet Tom
Round the lions head
Find soft stones to leeward
And make up our bed
Bat our bread and bacon
Smoke the pipe of peace
And ere we be drowsy
Give our boots a grease
Homers heroes did so
Why not such as we
What are sheets and servants
Superfluity
Pray for wives and children
Safe in slumber curled
Then to chat till midnight
Oer this babbling world
Of the workmens college
Of the price of grain
Of the tree of knowledge,
Of the chance of rain
If Sir A goes Romeward
If Miss B sings true
If the fleet comes homeward
If the mare will do—
Anything and everything—
Up there in the sky
Angels understand us
And no saints are by
Down and bathe at daydawn
Tramp from lake to lake
Washing brain and heart clean
Every step we take
Leave to Robert Browning
Beggars fleas and vines
Leave to mournful Ruskin
Popish Apennines
Dirty Stones of Venice
And his Gaslamps Seven
Weve the stones of Snowdon
And the lamps of heaven
Wheres the mighty credit
In admiring Alps
Any goose sees glory
In their snowy scalps
Leave such signs and wonders
For the dullard brain
As æsthetic brandy
Opium and cayenne
Give me Bramshill common
St Johns harriers by
Or the vale of Windsor
Englands golden eye
Show me life and progress
Beauty health and man
Houses fair trim gardens
Turn whereer I can
Or if bored with High Art
And such popish stuff
Ones poor ears need airing
Snowdons high enough
While we find Gods signet
Fresh on English ground
Why go gallivanting
With the nations round
Though we try no ventures
Desperate or strange
Feed on commonplaces
In a narrow range
Never sought for Franklin
Round the frozen Capes
Even with Macdougall
Bagged our brace of apes
Never had our chance Tom
In that black Redan
Cant avenge poor Brereton
Out in Sakarran
Tho we earn our bread Tom
By the dirty pen
What we can we will be
Honest Englishmen
Do the work thats nearest
Though its dull at whiles
Helping when we meet them
Lame dogs over stiles
See in every hedgerow
Marks of angels feet
Epics in each pebble
Underneath our feet
Once ayear like schoolboys
RobinHooding go
Leaving fops and fogies
A thousand feet below
T H
CHEAP CLOTHES AND NASTY
King Ryence says the legend of Prince Arthur wore a paletot trimmed with kings beards In the first French Revolution so Carlyle assures us there were at Meudon tanneries of human skins Mammon at once tyrant and revolutionary follows both these noble examples—in a more respectable way doubtless for Mammon hates cruelty bodily pain is his devil—the worst evil of which he in his effeminacy can conceive So he shrieks benevolently when a drunken soldier is flogged but he trims his paletots and adorns his legs with the flesh of men and the skins of women with degradation pestilence heathendom and despair and then chuckles selfcomplacently over the smallness of his tailors bills Hypocrite—straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel What is flogging or hanging King Ryences paletot or the tanneries of Meudon to the slavery starvation waste of life yearlong imprisonment in dungeons narrower and fouler than those of the Inquisition which goes on among thousands of free English clothesmakers at this day
The man is mad says Mammon smiling supercilious pity Yes Mammon mad as Paul before Festus and for much the same reason too Much learning has made us mad From two articles in the Morning Chronicle of Friday Dec 14th and Tuesday Dec 18th on the Condition of the Working Tailors we learnt too much to leave us altogether masters of ourselves But there is method in our madness we can give reasons for it—satisfactory to ourselves perhaps also to Him who made us and you and all tailors likewise Will you freshly bedizened you and your footmen from Nebuchadnezzar and Cos Emporium of Fashion hear a little about how your finery is made You are always calling out for facts and have a firm belief in salvation by statistics Listen to a few
The Metropolitan Commissioner of the Morning Chronicle called two meetings of the Working Tailors one in Shad well and the other at the Hanover Square Rooms in order to ascertain their condition from their own lips Both meetings were crowded At the Hanover Square Rooms there were more than one thousand men they were altogether unanimous in their descriptions of the misery and slavery which they endured It appears that there are two distinct tailor trades—the honourable trade now almost confined to the West End and rapidly dying out there and the dishonourable trade of the showshops and slopshops—the plateglass palaces where gents—and alas those who would be indignant at that name—buy their cheapandnasty clothes The two names are the tailors own slang slang is true and expressive enough though now and then The honourable shops in the West End number only sixty the dishonourable four hundred and more while at the East End the dishonourable trade has it all its own way The honourable part of the trade is declining at the rate of one hundred and fifty journeymen per year the dishonourable increasing at such a rate that in twenty years it will have absorbed the whole tailoring trade which employs upwards of twentyone thousand journeymen At the honourable shops the work is done as it was universally thirty years ago on the premises and at good wages In the dishonourable trade the work is taken home by the men to be done at the very lowest possible prices which decrease year by year almost month by month At the honourable shops from 36s to 24s is paid for a piece of work for which the dishonourable shop pays from 22s to 9s But not to the workmen happy is he if he really gets twothirds or half of that For at the honourable shops the master deals directly with his workmen while at the dishonourable ones the greater part of the work if not the whole is let out to contractors or middlemen—sweaters as their victims significantly call them—who in their turn let it out again sometimes to the workmen sometimes to fresh middlemen so that out of the price paid for labour on each article not only the workmen but the sweater and perhaps the sweaters sweater and a third and a fourth and a fifth have to draw their profit And when the labour price has been already beaten down to the lowest possible how much remains for the workmen after all these deductions let the poor fellows themselves say
One working tailor at the Hanover Square Rooms Meeting mentioned a number of shops both at the east and west ends whose work was all taken by sweaters and several of these shops were under royal and noble patronage There was one notorious sweater who kept his carriage He was a Jew and of course he gave a preference to his own sect Thus another Jew received it from him second hand and at a lower rate then it went to a thirdtill it came to the unfortunate Christian at perhaps the eighth rate and he performed the work at barely living prices this same Jew required a deposit of 5_l_ in money before he would give out a single garment to be made He need not describe the misery which this system entailed upon the workmen It was well known but it was almost impossible except for those who had been at the two to form an idea of the difference between the present meeting and one at the Eastend where all who attended worked for slopshops and sweaters The present was a highly respectable assembly the other presented no other appearance but those of misery and degradation
Another says—We have all worked in the honourable trade so we know the regular prices from our own personal experience Taking the bad work with the good work we might earn 11s a week upon an average Sometimes we do earn as much as 15s but to do this we are obliged to take part of our work home to our wives and daughters We are not always fully employed We are nearly half our time idle Hence our earnings are upon an average throughout the year not more than 5s 6d a week Very often I have made only 3s 4d in the week said one Thats common enough with us all I can assure you said another Last week my wages was 7s 6d declared one I earned 6s 4d exclaimed the second My wages came to 9s 2d The week before I got 6s 3d I made 7s 9d and I 7s or 8s I cant exactly remember which This is what we term the best part of our winter season The reason why we are so long idle is because more hands than are wanted are kept on the premises so that in case of a press of work coming in our employers can have it done immediately Under the day work system no master tailor had more men on the premises than he could keep continually going but since the change to the piecework system masters made a practice of engaging double the quantity of hands that they have any need for so that an order may be executed at the shortest possible notice if requisite A man must not leave the premises when unemployed—if he does he loses his chance of work coming in I have been there four days together and had not a stitch of work to do Yes that is common enough Ay and then youre told if you complain you can go if you dont like it I am sure twelve hands would do all they have done at home and yet they keep forty of us Its generally remarked that however strong and healthy a man may be when he goes to work at that shop in a months time hell be a complete shadow and have almost all his clothes in pawn By Sunday morning he has no money at all left and he has to subsist till the following Saturday upon about a pint of weak tea and four slices of bread and butter per day
Another of the reasons for the sweaters keeping more hands than they want is the men generally have their meals with them The more men they have with them the more breakfasts and teas they supply and the more profit they make The men usually have to pay 4d and very often 5d for their breakfast and the same for their tea The tea or breakfast is mostly a pint of tea or coffee and three to four slices of bread and butter I worked for one sweater who almost starved the men the smallest eater there would not have had enough if he had got three times as much They had only three thin slices of bread and butter not sufficient for a child and the tea was both weak and bad The whole meal could not have stood him in 2d a head and what made it worse was that the men who worked there couldnt afford to have dinners so that they were starved to the bone The sweaters men generally lodge where they work A sweater usually keeps about six men These occupy two small garrets one room is called the kitchen and the other the workshop and here the whole of the six men and the sweater his wife and family live and sleep One sweater I worked with had four children and six men and they together with his wife sisterinlaw and himself all lived in two rooms the largest of which was about eight feet by ten We worked in the smallest room and slept there as well—all six of us There were two turnup beds in it and we slept three in a bed There was no chimney and indeed no ventilation whatever I was near losing my life there—the foul air of so many people working all day in the place and sleeping there at night was quite suffocating Almost all the men were consumptive and I myself attended the dispensary for disease of the lungs The room in which we all slept was not more than six feet square We were all sick and weak and both to work Each of the six of us paid 2s 6d a week for our lodging or 15s altogether and I am sure such a room as we slept and worked in might be had for 1s a week you can get a room with a fireplace for 1s 6d a week The usual sum that the men working for sweaters pay for their tea breakfasts and lodging is 6s 6d to 7s a week and they seldom earn more money in the week Occasionally at the weeks end they are in debt to the sweater This is seldom for more than 6d for the sweater will not give them victuals if he has no work for them to do Many who live and work at the sweaters are married men and are obliged to keep their wives and children in lodgings by themselves Some send them to the workhouse others to their friends in the country Besides the profit of the board and lodging the sweater takes 6d out of the price paid for every garment under 10s some take 1s and I do know of one who takes as much as 2s This man works for a large showshop at the West End The usual profit of the sweater over and above the board and lodging is 2s out of every pound Those who work for sweaters soon lose their clothes and are unable to seek for other work because they have not a coat to their back to go and seek it in Last week I worked with another man at a coat for one of her Majestys ministers and my partner never broke his fast while he was making his half of it The minister dealt at a cheap West End showshop All the workman had the whole dayandahalf he was making the coat was a little tea But sweaters work is not so bad as government work after all At that we cannot make more than 4s or 5s a week altogether—that is counting the time we are running after it of course Government contract work is the worst of all and the starvedout and sweatedout tailors last resource But still government does not do the regular trade so much harm as the cheap show and slop shops These houses have ruined thousands They have cut down the prices so that men cannot live at the work and the masters who did and would pay better wages are reducing the workmens pay every day They say they must either compete with the large show shops or go into the Gazette
Sweet competition Heavenly maid—Nowadays hymned alike by pennyaliners and philosophers as the ground of all society—the only real preserver of the earth Why not of Heaven too Perhaps there is competition among the angels and Gabriel and Raphael have won their rank by doing the maximum of worship on the minimum of grace We shall know some day In the meanwhile these are thy works thou parent of all good Man eating man eaten by man in every variety of degree and method Why does not some enthusiastic political economist write an epic on The Consecration of Cannibalism
But if any one finds it pleasant to his soul to believe the poor journeymens statements exaggerated let him listen to one of the sweaters themselves—
I wish says he that others did for the men as decently as I do I know there are many who are living entirely upon them Some employ as many as fourteen men I myself worked in the house of a man who did this The chief part of us lived and worked and slept together in two rooms on the second floor They charged 2s 6d per head for the lodging alone Twelve of the workmen I am sure lodged in the house and these paid altogether 30s a week rent to the sweater I should think the sweater paid 8s a week for the rooms—so that he gained at least 22s clear out of the lodging of these men and stood at no rent himself For the living of the men he charged—5d for breakfasts and the same for teas and 8d for dinner—or at the rate of 10s 6d each per head Taking one with the other and considering the manner in which they lived I am certain that the cost for keeping each of them could not have been more than 5s This would leave 5s 6d clear profit on the board of each of the twelve men or altogether £3 6s per week and this added to the £1 2s profit on the rent would give £4 8s for the sweaters gross profit on the board and lodging of the workmen in his place But besides this he got 1s out of each coat made on his premises and there were twentyone coats made there upon an average every week so that altogether the sweaters clear gains out of the men were £5 9s every week Each man made about a coat and a half in the course of the seven days for they all worked on a Sunday—they were generally told to borrow a day off the Lord For this coat and a half each hand got £1 2s 6d and out of it he had to pay 13s for board and lodging so that there was 9s 6d clear left These are the profits of the sweater and the earnings of the men engaged under him when working for the first rate houses But many of the cheap houses pay as low as 8s for the making of each dress and frock coat and some of them as low as 6s Hence the earnings of the men at such work would be from 9s to 12s per week and the cost of their board and lodging without dinners for these they seldom have would be from 7s 6d to 8s per week Indeed the men working under sweaters at such prices generally consider themselves well off if they have a shilling or two in their pockets for Sunday The profits of the sweater however would be from £4 to £5 out of twelve men working on his premises The usual number of men working under each sweater is about six individuals and the average rate of profit about £2 10s without the sweater doing any work himself It is very often the case that a man working under a sweater is obliged to pawn his own coat to get any pocketmoney that he may require Over and over again the sweater makes out that he is in his debt from 1s to 2s at the end of the week and when the mans coat is in pledge he is compelled to remain imprisoned in the sweaters lodgings for months together In some sweating places there is an old coat kept called a reliever and this is borrowed by such men as have none of their own to go out in There are very few of the sweaters men who have a coat to their backs or a shoe to their feet to come out into the streets on Sunday Down about Fulwoods Rents Holborn I am sure I would not give 6d for the clothes that are on a dozen of them and it is surprising to me working and living together in such numbers and in such small close rooms in narrow close back courts as they do that they are not all swept off by some pestilence I myself have seen halfadozen men at work in a room that was a little better than a bedstead long It was as much as one could do to move between the wall and the bedstead when it was down There were two bedsteads in this room and they nearly filled the place when they were down The ceiling was so low that I couldnt stand upright in the room There was no ventilation in the place There was no fireplace and only a small window When the window was open you could nearly touch the houses at the back and if the room had not been at the top of the house the men could not have seen at all in the place The staircase was so narrow steep and dark that it was difficult to grope your way to the top of the house—it was like going up a steeple This is the usual kind of place in which the sweaters men are lodged The reason why there are so many Irishmen working for the sweaters is because they are seduced over to this country by the prospect of high wages and plenty of work They are brought over by the Cork boats at 10s ahead and when they once get here the prices they receive are so small that they are unable to go back In less than a week after they get here their clothes are all pledged and they are obliged to continue working under the sweaters
The extent to which this system of street kidnapping is carried on is frightful Young tailors fresh from the country are decoyed by the sweaters wives into their miserable dens under extravagant promises of employment to find themselves deceived imprisoned and starved often unable to make their escape for months—perhaps years and then only fleeing from one dungeon to another as abominable
In the meantime the profits of the beasts of prey who live on these poor fellows—both masters and sweaters—seem as prodigious as their cruelty
Hear another working tailor on this point—In 1844 I belonged to the honourable part of the trade Our house of call supplied the present showshop with men to work on the premises The prices then paid were at the rate of 6d per hour For the same driving capes that they paid 18s then they give only 12s for now For the dress and frock coats they gave 15s then and now they are 14s The paletots and shooting coats were 12s there was no coat made on the premises under that sum At the end of the season they wanted to reduce the paletots to 9s The men refused to make them at that price when other houses were paying as much as 15s for them The consequence of this was the house discharged all the men and got a Jew middleman from the neighbourhood of Petticoatlane to agree to do them all at 7s 6d a piece The Jew employed all the poor people who were at work for the slop warehouses in Houndsditch and its vicinity This Jew makes on an average 500 paletots a week The Jew gets 2s 6d profit out of each and having no sewing trimmings allowed to him he makes the workpeople find them The saving in trimmings alone to the firm since the workmen left the premises must have realized a small fortune to them Calculating men women and children I have heard it said that the cheap house at the West End employs 1000 hands The trimmings for the work done by these would be about 6d a week per head so that the saving to the house since the men worked on the premises has been no less than £1300 a year and all this taken out of the pockets of the poor The Jew who contracts for making the paletots is no tailor at all A few years ago he sold sponges in the street and now he rides in his carriage The Jews profits are 500 halfcrowns or £60 odd per week—that is upwards of £3000 ayear Women are mostly engaged at the paletot work When I came to work for the cheap showshop I had £5 10s in the saving bank now I have not a halfpenny in it All I had saved went little by little to keep me and my family I have always made a point of putting some money by when I could afford it but since I have been at this work it has been as much as I could do to live much more to save One of the firm for which I work has been heard publicly to declare that he employed 1000 hands constantly Now the earnings of these at the honourable part of the trade would be upon an average taking the skilful with the unskilful 15s a week each or £39000 a year But since they discharged the men from off their premises they have cut down the wages of the workmen onehalf—taking one garment with another—though the selling prices remain the same to the public so that they have saved by the reduction of the workmens wages no less than £19500 per year Every other quarter of a year something has been docked off our earnings until it is almost impossible for men with families to live decently by their labour and now for the first time they pretend to feel for them They even talk of erecting a school for the children of their workpeople but where is the use of erecting schools when they know as well as we do that at the wages they pay the children must be working for their fathers at home They had much better erect workshops and employ the men on the premises at fair living wages and then the men could educate their own children without being indebted to their charity
On this last question of what the mastercannibals had much better do we have somewhat to say presently In the meantime hear another of the things which they had much better not do Part of the fraud and deception of the slop trade consists in the mode in which the public are made believe that the men working for such establishments earn more money than they really do The plan practised is similar to that adopted by the army clothier who made out that the men working on his establishment made per week from 15s to 17s each whereas on inquiry it was found that a considerable sum was paid out of that to those who helped to do the looping for those who took it home When a coat is given to me to make a ticket is handed to me with the garment similar to this one which I have obtained from a friend of mine
—————————————————————— 448 Mr Smith 6675 Made by M Ze 12s lined lustre quilted double stitched each side seams 448 No 6675 oclock Friday Mr Smith ——————————————————————
On this you see the price is marked at 12s continued my informant and supposing that I with two others could make three of these garments in the week the sum of thirtysix shillings would stand in the books of the establishment as the amount earned by me in that space of time This would be sure to be exhibited to the customers immediately that there was the least outcry made about the starvation price they paid for their work as a proof that the workpeople engaged on their establishment received the full prices whereas of that 36s entered against my name I should have had to pay 24s to those who assisted me besides this my share of the trimmings and expenses would have been 1s 6d and probably my share of the fires would be 1s more so that the real fact would be that I should make 9s 6d clear and this it would be almost impossible to do if I did not work long over hours I am obliged to keep my wife continually at work helping me in order to live
In short the condition of these men is far worse than that of the wretched labourers of Wilts or Dorset Their earnings are as low and often lower their trade requires a far longer instruction far greater skill and shrewdness their rent and food are more expensive and their hours of work while they have work more than half as long again Conceive sixteen or eighteen hours of skilled labour in a stifling and fetid chamber earning not much more than 6s 6d or 7s a week And as has been already mentioned in one case the man who will earn even that must work all Sunday He is even liable to be thrown out of his work for refusing to work on Sunday Why not Is there anything about one idle day in seven to be found among the traditions of Mammon When the demand comes the supply must come and will in spite of foolish auldwarld notion about keeping days holy—or keeping contracts holy either for indeed Mammon has no conscience—right and wrong are not words expressible by any commercial laws yet in vogue and therefore it appears that to earn this wretched pittance is by no means to get it For says one and the practice is asserted to be general almost universal there is at our establishment a mode of reducing the price of our labour even lower than we have mentioned The prices we have stated are those nominally paid for making the garments but it is not an uncommon thing in our shop for a man to make a garment and receive nothing at all for it I remember a man once having a waistcoat to do the price of making which was 2s and when he gave the job in he was told that he owed the establishment 6d The manner in which this is brought about is by a system of fines We are fined if we are behind time with our job 6d the first hour and 3d for each hour that we are late I have known as much as 7s 6d to be deducted off the price of a coat on the score of want of punctuality one said and indeed very often the whole money is stopped It would appear as if our employers themselves strove to make us late with our work and so have an opportunity of cutting down the price paid for our labour They frequently put off giving out the trimmings to us till the time at which the coat is due has expired If to the trimmer we return an answer that is considered saucy we are find 6d or 1s according to the trimmers temper I was called a thief another of the three declared and because I told the man I would not submit to such language I was fined 6d These are the principal of the indoor fines The outdoor fines are still more iniquitous There are full a dozen more fines for minor offences indeed we are fined upon every petty pretext We never know what we have to take on a Saturday for the meanest advantages are taken to reduce our wages If we object to pay these fines we are told that we may leave but they know full well that we are afraid to throw ourselves out of work
Folks are getting somewhat tired of the old rodomontade that a slave is free the moment he sets foot on British soil Stuff—are these tailors free Put any conceivable sense you will on the word and then say—are they free We have thank God emancipated the black slaves it would seem a not inconsistent sequel to that act to set about emancipating these white ones Oh we forgot there is an infinite difference between the two cases—the black slaves worked for our colonies the white slaves work for us But indeed if as some preach selfinterest is the mainspring of all human action it is difficult to see who will step forward to emancipate the said white slaves for all classes seem to consider it equally their interest to keep them as they are all classes though by their own confession they are ashamed are yet not afraid to profit by the system which keeps them down
Not only the master tailors and their underlings but the retail tradesmen too make their profit out of these abominations By a method which smacks at first sight somewhat of benevolence but proves itself in practice to be one of those precious balms which break not the head for that would savour of violence and might possibly give some bodily pain a thing intolerable to the nerves of Mammon but the heart—an organ which being spiritual can of course be recognized by no laws of police or commerce The object of the State we are told is the conservation of body and goods there is nothing in that about broken hearts nothing which should make it a duty to forbid such a system as a workingtailor here describes—
Fifteen or twenty years ago such a thing as a journeyman tailor having to give security before he could get work was unknown but now I and such as myself could not get a stitch to do first handed if we did not either procure the security of some householder or deposit £5 in the hands of the employer The reason of this is the journeymen are so badly paid that the employers know they can barely live on what they get and consequently they are often driven to pawn the garments given out to them in order to save themselves and their families from starving If the journeyman can manage to scrape together £5 he has to leave it in the hands of his employer all the time that he is working for the house I know one person who gives out the work for a fashionable West End slopshop that will not take household security and requires £5 from each hand I am informed by one of the parties who worked for this man that he has as many as 150 hands in his employ and that each of these has placed £5 in his hands so that altogether the poor people have handed over £750 to increase the capital upon which he trades and for which he pays no interest whatsoever
This recalls a similar case mentioned by a poor staystitcher in another letter published in the Morning Chronicle of a large wholesale staymaker in the City who had amassed a large fortune by beginning to trade upon the 5s which he demanded to be left in his hands by his workpeople before he gave them employment
Two or three years back one of the slopsellers at the East End became bankrupt and the poor people lost all the money that had been deposited as security for work in his hands The journeymen who get the security of householders are enabled to do so by a system which is now in general practice at the East End Several bakers publicans chandlershop keepers and coalshed keepers make a trade of becoming security for those seeking slopwork They consent to be responsible for the workpeople upon the condition of the men dealing at their shops The workpeople who require such security are generally very good customers from the fact of their either having large families all engaged in the same work or else several females or males working under them and living at their house The parties becoming securities thus not only greatly increase their trade but furnish a secondrate article at a firstrate price It is useless to complain of the bad quality or high price of the articles supplied by the securities for the shopkeepers know as well as the workpeople that it is impossible for the hands to leave them without losing their work I know one baker whose security was refused at the slopshop because he was already responsible for so many and he begged the publican to be his deputy so that by this means the workpeople were obliged to deal at both bakers and publicans too I never heard of a butcher making a trade of becoming security because the slopwork people cannot afford to consume much meat
The same system is also pursued by lodginghouse keepers They will become responsible if the workmen requiring security will undertake to lodge at their house
But of course the men most interested in keeping up the system are those who buy the clothes of these cheap shops And who are they Not merely the blackguard gent—the butt of Albert Smith and Punch who flaunts at the Casinos and Cremorne Gardens in vulgar finery wrung out of the souls and bodies of the poor not merely the poor lawyers clerk or reduced halfpay officer who has to struggle to look as respectable as his class commands him to look on a pittance often no larger than that of the day labourer—no strange to say—and yet not strange considering our modern eleventh commandment—Buy cheap and sell dear the richest as well as the poorest imitate the example of King Ryence and the tanners of Meudon At a great show establishment—to take one instance out of many—the very one where as we heard just now however strong and healthy a man may be when he goes to work at that shop in a months time he will be a complete shadow and have almost all his clothes in pawn—
We have also made garments for Sir —— —— Sir —— —— Alderman —— Dr —— and Dr —— We make for several of the aristocracy We cannot say whom because the tickets frequently come to us as Lord —— and the Marquis of —— This could not be a Jews trick because the buttons on the liveries had coronets upon them And again we know the house is patronized largely by the aristocracy clergy and gentry by the number of courtsuits and liveries surplices regimentals and ladies ridinghabits that we continually have to make up There are more clergymen among the customers than any other class and often we have to work at home upon the Sunday at their clothes in order to get a living The customers are mostly ashamed of dealing at this house for the men who take the clothes to the customers houses in the cart have directions to pull up at the corner of the street We had a good proof of the dislike of gentlefolks to have it known that they dealt at that shop for their clothes for when the trousers buttons were stamped with the name of the firm we used to have the garments returned daily to have other buttons put on them and now the buttons are unstamped
We shall make no comment on this extract It needs none If these men know how their clothes are made they are past contempt Afraid of man and not afraid of God As if His eye could not see the cart laden with the plunder of the poor because it stopped round the corner If on the other hand they do not know these things and doubtless the majority do not—it is their sin that they do not know it Woe to a society whose only apology to God and man is Am I my brothers keeper Men ought to know the condition of those by whose labour they live Had the question been the investment of a few pounds in a speculation these gentlemen would have been careful enough about good security Ought they to take no security when they invest their money in clothes that they are not putting on their backs accursed garments offered in sacrifice to devils reeking with the sighs of the starving tainted—yes tainted indeed for it comes out now that diseases numberless are carried home in these same garments from the miserable abodes where they are made Evidence to this effect was given in 1844 but Mammon was too busy to attend to it These wretched creatures when they have pawned their own clothes and bedding will use as substitutes the very garments they are making So Lord ——s coat has been seen covering a group of children blotched with smallpox The Rev D—— finds himself suddenly unpresentable from a cutaneous disease which it is not polite to mention on the south of Tweed little dreaming that the shivering dirty being who made his coat has been sitting with his arms in the sleeves for warmth while he stitched at the tails The charming Miss C—— is swept off by typhus or scarlatina and her parents talk about Gods heavy judgment and visitation—had they tracked the girls new ridinghabit back to the stifling undrained hovel where it served as a blanket to the feverstricken slopworker they would have seen why God had visited them seen that His judgments are true judgments and give His plain opinion of the system which speaketh good of the covetous whom God abhorreth—a system to use the words of the Morning Chronicles correspondent unheard of and unparalleled in the history of any country—a scheme so deeply laid for the introduction and supply of underpaid labour to the market that it is impossible for the working man not to sink and be degraded by it into the lowest depths of wretchedness and infamy—a system which is steadily and gradually increasing and sucking more and more victims out of the honourable trade who are really intelligent artizans living in comparative comfort and civilization into the dishonourable or sweating trade in which the slopworkers are generally almost brutified by their incessant toil wretched pay miserable food and filthy homes
But to us almost the worse feature in the whole matter is that the government are not merely parties to but actually the originators of this system The contract system as a working tailor stated in the name of the rest had been mainly instrumental in destroying the living wages of the working man Now the government were the sole originators of the system of contracts and of sweating Forty years ago there was nothing known of contracts except government contracts and at that period the contractors were confined to making slops for the navy the army and the West India slaves It was never dreamt of then that such a system was to come into operation in the better classes of trade till ultimately it was destructive of masters as well as men The government having been the cause of the contract system and consequently of the sweating system he called upon them to abandon it The sweating system had established the show shops and the ticket system both of which were countenanced by the government till it had become a fashion to support them
Even the court assisted to keep the system in fashion and the royal arms and royal warrants were now exhibited common enough by slopsellers
Government said its duty was to do justice But was it consistent with justice to pay only 2s 6d for making navy jackets which would be paid 10s for by every honourable tradesman Was it consistent with justice for the government to pay for Royal Marine clothing privates coat and epaulettes 1s 9d Was it consistent with justice for the government to pay for making a pair of trousers four or five hours work only 212d And yet when a contractor noted for paying just wages to those he employed brought this under the consideration of the Admiralty they declared they had nothing to do with it Here is their answer—
Admiralty March 19 1847
Sir—Having laid before my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty your letter of the 8th inst calling their attention to the extremely low prices paid for making up articles of clothing provided for Her Majestys naval service I am commanded by their lordships to acquaint you that they have no control whatever over the wages paid for making up contract clothing Their duty is to take care that the articles supplied are of good quality and well made the cost of the material and the workmanship are matters which rest with the contractor and if the public were to pay him a higher price than that demanded it would not ensure any advantage to the men employed by him as their wages depend upon the amount of competition for employment amongst themselves I am Sir your most obedient servant
H G WARD
W Shaw Esq
Oh most impotent conclusion however officially cautious and philosophically correct Even if the wages did depend entirely on the amount of competition on whom does the amount of competition depend Merely on the gross numbers of the workmen Somewhat too one would think on the system according to which the labour and the wages are distributed But right or wrong is it not a pleasant answer for the poor working tailors and one likely to increase their faith hope and charity towards the present commercial system and those who deny the possibility of any other
The government says another tailor at the same meeting had really been the means of reducing prices in the tailoring trade to so low a scale that no human being whatever his industry could live and be happy in his lot The government were really responsible for the first introduction of female labour He would clearly prove what he had stated He would refer first to the army clothing Our soldiers were comfortably clothed as they had a right to be but surely the men who made the clothing which was so comfortable ought to be paid for their labour so as to be able to keep themselves comfortable and their families virtuous But it was in evidence that the persons working upon army clothing could not upon an average earn more than 1s aday Another government department the postoffice afforded a considerable amount of employment to tailors but those who worked upon the postoffice clothing earned at the most only 1s 6d aday The police clothing was another considerable branch of tailoring this like the others ought to be paid for at living prices but the men at work at it could only earn 1s 6d aday supposing them to work hard all the time fourteen or fifteen hours The Custom House clothing gave about the same prices Now all these sorts of work were performed by time workers who as a natural consequence of the wages they received were the most miserable of human beings Husband wife and family all worked at it they just tried to breathe upon it to live it never could be called Yet the same Government which paid such wretched wages called upon the wretched people to be industrious to be virtuous and happy How was it possible whatever their industry to be virtuous and happy The fact was the men who at the slack season had been compelled to fall back upon these kinds of work became so beggared and broken down by it notwithstanding the assistance of their wives and families that they were never able to rise out of it
And now comes the question—What is to be done with these poor tailors to the number of between fifteen and twenty thousand Their condition as it stands is simply one of everincreasing darkness and despair The system which is ruining them is daily spreading deepening While we write fresh victims are being driven by penury into the slopworking trade fresh depreciations of labour are taking place Like Ulysses companions in the cave of Polyphemus the only question among them is to scramble so far back as to have a chance of being eaten at last Before them is evernearing slavery disease and starvation What can be done
First—this can be done That no man who calls himself a Christian—no man who calls himself a man—shall ever disgrace himself by dealing at any showshop or slopshop It is easy enough to know them The ticketed garments the impudent puffs the trumpery decorations proclaim them—every one knows them at first sight He who pretends not to do so is simply either a fool or a liar Let no man enter them—they are the temples of Moloch—their thresholds are rank with human blood Gods curse is on them and on those who by supporting them are partakers of their sins Above all let no clergyman deal at them Poverty—and many clergymen are poor—doubly poor because society often requires them to keep up the dress of gentlemen on the income of an artizan because too the demands on their charity are quadruple those of any other class—yet poverty is no excuse The thing is damnable—not Christianity only but common humanity cries out against it Woe to those who dare to outrage in private the principles which they preach in public God is not mocked and his curse will find out the priest at the altar as well as the nobleman in his castle
But it is so hard to deprive the public of the luxury of cheap clothes Then let the public look out for some other means of procuring that priceless blessing If that on experiment be found impossible—if the comfort of the few be for ever to be bought by the misery of the many—if civilization is to benefit every one except the producing class—then this world is truly the devils world and the sooner so illconstructed and infernal a machine is destroyed by that personage the better
But let secondly a dozen or fifty or a hundred journeymen say to one another: It is competition that is ruining us and competition is division disunion every man for himself every man against his brother The remedy must be in association cooperation selfsacrifice for the sake of one another. We can work together at the honourable tailors workshop—we can work and live together in the sweaters den for the profit of our employers why should we not work and live together in our own workshops or our own homes for our own profit The journeymen of the honourable trade are just as much interested as the slopworkers in putting down sweaters and slopsellers since their numbers are constantly decreasing so that their turn must come some day Let them if no one else does lend money to allow us to set up a workshop of our own a shop of our own If the money be not lent still let us stint and strain ourselves to the very bone if it were only to raise one sweaters securitymoney which one of us should pay into the slopsellers hands in his own name but on behalf of all that will at least save one sweaters profit out of our labour and bestow it upon ourselves and we will not spend that profit but hoard it till we have squeezed out all the sweaters one by one Then we will open our common shop and sell at as low a price as the cheapest of the show shops We can do this—by the abolition of sweaters profits—by the using as far as possible of one set of fires lights rooms kitchens and washhouses—above all by being true and faithful to one another, as all partners should be And then all that the master slopsellers had better do will be simply to vanish and become extinct
And again let one man or halfadozen men arise who believe that the world is not the devils world at all but Gods that the multitude of the people is not as Malthusians aver the ruin but as Solomon believed the strength of the rulers that men are not meant to be beasts of prey eating one another up by competition as in some confined pike pond where the great pike having despatched the little ones begin to devour each other till one overgrown monster is left alone to die of starvation Let a few men who have money and believe that arise to play the man
Let them help and foster the growth of association by all means Let them advise the honourable tailors while it is time to save themselves from being degraded into slopsellers by admitting their journeymen to a share in profits Let them encourage the journeymen to compete with Nebuchadnezzar Co at their own game Let them tell those journeymen that the experiment is even now being tried and in many instances successfully by no less than one hundred and four associations of journeymen in Paris Let them remind them of that Great Name which the Parisian ouvrier so often forgets—of Him whose everlasting Fatherhood is the sole ground of all human brotherhood whose wise and loving will is the sole source of all perfect order and government Let them as soon as an association is formed provide for them a properly ventilated workshop and let it out to the associate tailors at a low fair rent I believe that they will not lose by it—because it is right God will take care of their money The world it comes out now is so well ordered by Him that model lodginghouses public baths washhouses insurance offices all pay a reasonable profit to those who invest money in them—perhaps associate workshops may do the same At all events the owners of these showshops realize a far higher profit than need be while the buildings required for a tailoring establishment are surely not more costly than those absurd plateglass fronts and brass scrollwork chandeliers and puffs and paid poets A large house might thus be taken in some central situation the upper floors of which might be fitted up as model lodgingrooms for the tailors trade alone The drawingroom floor might be the workroom on the ground floor the shop and if possible a room of call or registration office for unemployed journeymen and a readingroom Why should not this succeed if the owners of the house and the workers who rent it are only true to one another? Every tyro in political economy knows that association involves a saving both of labour and of capital Why should it not succeed when every one connected with the establishment landlords and workmen will have an interest in increasing its prosperity and none whatever in lowering the wages of any party employed
But above all so soon as these men are found working together for common profit in the spirit of mutual selfsacrifice let every gentleman and every Christian who has ever dealt with or could ever have dealt with Nebuchadnezzar and Co or their fellows make it a point of honour and conscience to deal with the associated workmen and get others to do the like It is by securing custom far more than by gifts or loans of money that we can help the operatives We should but hang a useless burthen of debt round their necks by advancing capital without affording them the means of disposing of their produce
Be assured that the finding of a tailors model lodging house work rooms and shop and the letting out of the two latter to an association would be a righteous act to do If the plan does not pay what then only a part of the money can be lost and to have given that to an hospital or an almshouse would have been called praiseworthy and Christian charity how much more to have spent it not in the cure but in the prevention of evil—in making almshouses less needful and lessening the number of candidates for the hospital
Regulations as to police order and temperance the workmen must and if they are worthy of the name of free men they can organize for themselves Let them remember that an association of labour is very different from an association of capital The capitalist only embarks his money on the venture the workman embarks his time—that is much at least of his life Still more different is the operatives association from the single capitalist seeking only to realize a rapid fortune and then withdraw The association knows no withdrawal from business it must grow in length and in breadth outlasting rival slopsellers swallowing up all associations similar to itself, and which might end by competing with it Monopoly cries a freetrader with hair on end Not so good friend there will be no real free trade without association Who tells you that tailors associations are to be the only ones
Some such thing as I have hinted might surely be done Where there is a will there is a way No doubt there are difficulties—Howard and Elizabeth Fry too had their difficulties Brindley and Brunel did not succeed at the first trial It is the sluggard only who is always crying There is a lion in the streets Be daring—trust in God and He will fight for you man of money whom these words have touched godliness has the promise of this life as well as of that to come The thing must be done and speedily for if it be not done by fair means it will surely do itself by foul The continual struggle of competition not only in the tailors trade but in every one which is not like the navigators or engineers at a premium from its novel and extraordinary demand will weaken and undermine more and more the masters who are already many of them speculating on borrowed capital while it will depress the workmen to a point at which life will become utterly intolerable increasing education will serve only to make them the more conscious of their own misery the boiler will be strained to bursting pitch till some jar some slight crisis suddenly directs the imprisoned forces to one point and then—
What then
Look at France and see
PARSON LOT
PREFACE
To the UNDERGRADUATES of CAMBRIDGE
I have addressed this preface to the young gentlemen of the University first because it is my duty to teach such of them as will hear me Modern History and I know no more important part of Modern History than the condition and the opinions of our own fellowcountrymen some of which are set forth in this book
Next I have addressed them now because I know that many of them at various times have taken umbrage at certain scenes of Cambridge life drawn in this book I do not blame them for having done so On the contrary I have so far acknowledged the justice of their censure that while I have altered hardly one other word in this book I have rewritten all that relates to Cambridge life
Those sketches were drawn from my own recollections of 18381842 Whether they were overdrawn is a question between me and men of my own standing
But the book was published in 1849 and I am assured by men in whom I have the most thorough confidence that my sketches had by then at least become exaggerated and exceptional and therefore as a whole untrue that a process of purification was going on rapidly in the University and that I must alter my words if I meant to give the working men a just picture of her
Circumstances took the property and control of the book out of my hand and I had no opportunity of reconsidering and of altering the passages Those circumstances have ceased and I take the first opportunity of altering all which my friends tell me should be altered
But even if as early as 1849 I had not been told that I must do so I should have done so of my own accord after the experiences of 1861 I have received at Cambridge a courtesy and kindness from my elders a cordial welcome from my coequals and an earnest attention from the undergraduates with whom I have come in contact which would bind me in honour to say nothing publicly against my University even if I had aught to say But I have nought I see at Cambridge nothing which does not gain my respect for her present state and hope for her future Increased sympathy between the old and young increased intercourse between the teacher and the taught increased freedom and charity of thought and a steady purpose of internal selfreform and progress seem to me already bearing good fruit by making the young men regard their University with content and respect And among the young men themselves the sight of their increased earnestness and highmindedness increased sobriety and temperance combined with a manliness not inferior to that of the stalwart lads of twenty years ago has made me look upon my position among them as most noble my work among them as most hopeful and made me sure that no energy which I can employ in teaching them will ever have been thrown away
Much of this improvement seems to me due to the late HighChurch movement much to the influence of Dr Arnold much to that of Mr Maurice much to the general increase of civilization throughout the country but whatever be the causes of it the fact is patent and I take delight in thus expressing my consciousness of it
Another change I must notice in the tone of young gentlemen not only at Cambridge but throughout Britain which is most wholesome and most hopeful I mean their altered tone in speaking to and of the labouring classes Thirty years ago and even later the young men of the labouring classes were the cads the snobs the blackguards looked on with a dislike contempt and fear which they were not backward to return and which were but too ready to vent themselves on both sides in ugly words and deeds That hateful severance between the classes was I believe an evil of recent growth unknown to old England From the middle ages up to the latter years of the French war the relation between the English gentry and the labourers seems to have been more cordial and wholesome than in any other country of Europe But with the French Revolution came a change for the worse The Revolution terrified too many of the upper and excited too many of the lower classes and the stern Tory system of repression with its bad habit of talking and acting as if the government and the people were necessarily in antagonism caused ever increasing bad blood Besides the old feudal ties between class and class employer and employed had been severed Large masses of working people had gathered in the manufacturing districts in savage independence The agricultural labourers had been debased by the abuses of the old Poorlaw into a condition upon which one looks back now with halfincredulous horror Meanwhile the distress of the labourers became more and more severe Then arose Luddite mobs meal mobs farm riots riots everywhere Captain Swing and his rickburners Peterloo massacres Bristol conflagrations and all the ugly sights and rumours which made young lads thirty or forty years ago believe and not so wrongly that the masses were their natural enemies and that they might have to fight any year or any day for the safety of their property and the honour of their sisters
How changed thank God is all this now Before the influence of religion both Evangelical and Anglican before the spread of those liberal principles founded on common humanity and justice the triumph of which we owe to the courage and practical good sense of the Whig party before the example of a Court virtuous humane and beneficent the attitude of the British upper classes has undergone a noble change There is no aristocracy in the world and there never has been one as far as I know which has so honourably repented and brought forth fruits meet for repentance which has so cheerfully asked what its duty was that it might do it It is not merely enlightened statesmen philanthropists devotees or the working clergy hard and heartily as they are working who have set themselves to do good as a duty specially required of them by creed or by station In the generality of younger laymen as far as I can see a humanity in the highest sense of the word has been awakened which bids fair in another generation to abolish the last remnants of class prejudices and class grudges The whole creed of our young gentlemen is becoming more liberal their demeanour more courteous their language more temperate They inquire after the welfare or at least mingle in the sports of the labouring man with a simple cordiality which was unknown thirty years ago they are prompt the more earnest of them to make themselves of use to him on the ground of a common manhood if any means of doing good are pointed out to them and that it is in any wise degrading to associate with low fellows is an opinion utterly obsolete save perhaps among a few sons of squireens in remote provinces or of parvenus who cannot afford to recognize the class from whence they themselves have risen In the army thanks to the purifying effect of the Crimean and Indian wars the same altered tone is patent Officers feel for and with their men talk to them strive to instruct and amuse them more and more year by year and—as a proof that the reform has not been forced on the officers by public opinion from without but is spontaneous and from within another instance of the altered mind of the aristocracy—the improvement is greatest in those regiments which are officered by men of the best blood and in care for and sympathy with their men her Majestys Footguards stands first of all God grant that the friendship which exists there between the leaders and the led may not be tested to the death amid the snowdrift or on the battlefield but if it be so I know too that it will stand the test
But if I wish for one absolute proof of the changed relation between the upper and the lower classes I have only to point to the volunteer movement In 1803 in the face of the most real and fatal danger the Addington ministry was afraid of allowing volunteer regiments and Lord Eldon while pressing the necessity could use as an argument that if the people did not volunteer for the Government they would against it So broad was even then the gulf between the governed and the governors How much broader did it become in after years Had invasion threatened us at any period between 1815 and 1830 or even later would any ministry have dared to allow volunteer regiments Would they have been justified in doing so even if they had dared
And now what has come to pass all the world knows but all the world should know likewise that it never would have come to pass save for—not merely the late twenty years of good government in State twenty years of virtue and liberality in the Court but—the late twenty years of increasing rightmindedness in the gentry who have now their reward in finding that the privates in the great majority of corps prefer being officered by men of a rank socially superior to their own And as good always breeds fresh good so this volunteer movement made possible by the goodwill between classes will help in its turn to increase that goodwill Already by the performance of a common duty and the experience of a common humanity these volunteer corps are become centres of cordiality between class and class and gentleman tradesman and workman the more they see of each other learn to like to trust and to befriend each other more and more a good work in which I hope the volunteers of the University of Cambridge will do their part like men and gentlemen when leaving this University they become each of them as they ought an organizing point for fresh volunteers in their own districts
I know that I may return to Cambridge no better example of the way in which the altered tone of the upper classes and the volunteer movement have acted and reacted upon each other than may be seen in the Cambridge Working Mens College and its volunteer rifle corps the 8th Cambridgeshire
There we have—what perhaps could not have existed what certainly did not exist twenty years ago—a school of a hundred men or more taught for the last eight years gratuitously by men of the highest attainments in the University by a dean—to whom I believe the success of the attempt is mainly owing by professors tutors prizemen men who are now headmasters of public schools who have given freely to their fellowmen knowledge which has cost them large sums of money and the heavy labour of years Without insulting them by patronage without interfering with their religious opinions without tampering with their independence in any wise but simply on the ground of a common humanity they have been helping to educate these men belonging for the most part I presume to the very class which this book sets forth as most unhappy and most dangerous—the men conscious of unsatisfied and unemployed intellect And they have their reward in a practical and patent form Out of these men a volunteer corps is organized officered partly by themselves partly by gentlemen of the University a nucleus of discipline loyalty and civilization for the whole population of Cambridge
A noble work this has been and one which may be the parent of works nobler still It is the first instalment of I will not say a debt but a duty which the Universities owe to the working classes I have tried to express in this book what I know were twenty years ago the feelings of clever working men looking upon the superior educational advantages of our class I cannot forget any more than the working man that the Universities were not founded exclusively or even primarily for our own class that the great mass of students in the middle ages were drawn from the lower classes and that sizarships scholarships exhibitions and so forth were founded for the sake of those classes rather than of our own How the case stands now we all know I do not blame the Universities for the change It has come about I think simply by competition The change began I should say in the sixteenth century Then after the Wars of the Roses and the revival of letters and the dissolution of the monasteries the younger sons of gentlemen betook themselves to the pursuit of letters fighting having become treasonable and farming on a small scale difficult perhaps owing to the introduction of large sheepfarms which happened in those days while no monastic orders were left to recruit the Universities as they did continually through the middle ages from that labouringclass to which they and their scholars principally belonged
So the gentlemens sons were free to compete against the sons of working men and by virtue of their superior advantages they beat them out of the field We may find through the latter half of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries bequest after bequest for the purpose of stopping this change and of enabling poor mens sons to enter the Universities but the tendency was too strong to be effectually resisted then Is it too strong to be resisted now Does not the increased civilization and education of the working classes call on the Universities to consider whether they may not now try to become what certainly they were meant to be places of teaching and training for genius of every rank and not merely for that of young gentlemen Why should not wealthy Churchmen in addition to the many good deeds in which they employ their wealth nowadays found fresh scholarships and exhibitions confined to the sons of working men If it be asked how can they be so confined What simpler method than that of connecting them with the National Society and bestowing them exclusively on lads who have distinguished themselves in our National Schools I believe that money spent in such a way would be well spent both for the Nation the Church and the University As for the introduction of such a class of lads lowering the tone of the University I cannot believe it There is room enough in Cambridge for men of every rank There are still in certain colleges owing to circumstances which I should be very sorry to see altered a fair sprinkling of young men who at least before they have passed through a Cambridge career would not be called wellbred But they do not lower the tone of the University the tone of the University raises them Wherever there is intellectual power good manners are easily acquired the public opinion of young men expresses itself so freely and possibly coarsely that priggishness and forwardness the faults to which a clever National School pupil would be most prone are soon hammered out of any Cambridge man and the result is that some of the most distinguished and most popular men in Cambridge are men who have risen from the ranks All honour to them for having done so But if they have succeeded so well may there not be hundreds more in England who would succeed equally and would it not be as just to the many as useful to the University in binding her to the people and the people to her to invent some method for giving those hundreds a fair chance
I earnestly press this suggestion especially at the present time of agitation among Churchmen on the subject of education upon the attention not of the University itself, but of those wealthy men who wish well both to the University and to the people Not I say of the University it is not from her that the proposal must come but from her friends outside She is doing her best with the tools which she has fresh work will require fresh tools and I trust that such will be some day found for her
I have now to tell those of them who may read this book that it is not altogether out of date
Those political passions the last outburst of which it described have thank God become mere matter of history by reason of the good government and the unexampled prosperity of the last twelve years but fresh outbursts of them are always possible in a free country whenever there is any considerable accumulation of neglects and wrongs and meanwhile it is well—indeed it is necessary—for every student of history to know what manner of men they are who become revolutionaries and what causes drive them to revolution that they may judge discerningly and charitably of their fellowmen whenever they see them rising however madly against the powers that be
As for the social evils described in this book they have been much lessened in the last few years especially by the movement for Sanatory Reform but I must warn young men that they are not eradicated that for instance only last year attention was called by this book to the working tailors in Edinburgh and their state was found I am assured to be even more miserable than that of the London men in 1848 And I must warn them also that social evils like dust and dirt have a tendency to reaccumulate perpetually so that however well this generation may have swept their house and they have worked hard and honestly at it the rising generation will have assuredly in twenty years time to sweep it over again
One thing more I have to say and that very earnestly to the young men of Cambridge They will hear a Conservative Reaction talked of as imminent indeed as having already begun They will be told that this reaction is made more certain by the events now passing in North America they will be bidden to look at the madnesses of an unbridled democracy to draw from them some such lesson as the young Spartans were to draw from the drunken Helots and to shun with horror any further attempts to enlarge the suffrage
But if they have learnt as they should from the training of this University accuracy of thought and language they will not be content with such vague general terms as Conservatism and Democracy but will ask themselves—If this Conservative Reaction is at hand what things is it likely to conserve and still more what ought it to conserve If the violences and tyrannies of American Democracy are to be really warnings to then in what points does American Democracy coincide with British Democracy—For so far and no farther can one be an example or warning for the other
And looking as they probably will under the pressure of present excitement at the latter question first they will surely see that no real analogy would exist between American and English Democracy even were universal suffrage to be granted tomorrow
For American Democracy being merely arithmocratic provides no representation whatsoever for the more educated and more experienced minority and leaves the conduct of affairs to the uneducated and inexperienced many with such results as we see But those results are I believe simply impossible in a country which possesses hereditary Monarchy and a House of Lords to give not only voice but practical power to superior intelligence and experience Mr J S Mill Mr Stapleton and Mr Hare have urged of late the right of minorities to be represented as well as majorities and have offered plans for giving them a fair hearing That their demands are wise as well as just the present condition of the Federal States proves but too painfully But we must not forget meanwhile that the minorities of Britain are not altogether unrepresented In a hereditary Monarch who has the power to call into his counsels private and public the highest intellect of the land in a House of Lords not wholly hereditary but recruited perpetually from below by the most successful and therefore on the whole the most capable personages in a free Press conducted in all its most powerful organs by men of character and of liberal education I see safeguards against any American tyranny of numbers even if an enlargement of the suffrage did degrade the general tone of the House of Commons as much as some expect
As long I believe as the Throne the House of Lords and the Press are what thank God they are so long will each enlargement of the suffrage be a fresh source not of danger but of safety for it will bind the masses to the established order of things by that loyalty which springs from content from the sense of being appreciated trusted dealt with not as children but as men
There are those who will consider such language as this especially illtimed just now in the face of Strikes and Trades Union outrages They point to these things as proofs of the unfitness of workmen for the suffrage they point especially to the late abominable murder at Sheffield and ask not without reason would you give political power to men who would do that
Now that the Sheffield murder was in any wise planned or commanded by the Trades Unions in general I do not believe nor I think does any one else who knows aught of the British workman If it was not as some of the Sheffield men say a private act of revenge it was the act of only one or two Trades Unions of that town which are known and their conduct has been already reprobated and denounced by the other Trades Unions of England But there is no denying that the case as against the Trades Unions is a heavy one It is notorious that they have in past years planned and commanded illegal acts of violence It is patent that they are too apt from a false sense of classhonour to connive at such now instead of being as they ought to be the first to denounce them The workmen will not see that by combining in societies for certain purposes they make those societies responsible for the good and lawful behaviour of all their members in all acts tending to further those purposes and are bound to say to every man joining a Trades Union You shall do nothing to carry out the objects which we have in view save what is allowed by British Law They will not see that they are outraging the first principles of justice and freedom by dictating to any man what wages he should receive what master he shall work for or any other condition which interferes with his rights as a free agent
But in the face of these facts and very painful and disappointing they are to me I will ask the upper classes Do you believe that the average of Trades Union members are capable of such villanies as that at Sheffield Do you believe that the average of them are given to violence or illegal acts at all even though they may connive at such acts in their foolish and hasty fellows by a false classhonour not quite unknown I should say in certain learned and gallant professions Do you fancy that there are not in these Trades Unions tens of thousands of loyal respectable rational patient men as worthy of the suffrage as any average borough voter If you do so you really know nothing about the British workman At least you are confounding the workman of 1861 with the workman of 1831 and fancying that he alone of all classes has gained nothing by the increased education civilization and political experience of thirty busy and prosperous years You are unjust to the workman and more you are unjust to your own class For thirty years past gentlemen and ladies of all shades of opinion have been labouring for and among the working classes as no aristocracy on earth ever laboured before and do you suppose that all that labour has been in vain That it has bred in the working classes no increased reverence for law no increased content with existing institutions no increased confidence in the classes socially above them If so you must have as poor an opinion of the capabilities of the upper classes as you have of those of the lower
So far from the misdoings of Trades Unions being an argument against the extension of the suffrage they are in my opinion an argument for it I know that I am in a minority just now I know that the common whisper is now not especially of those who look for a Conservative reaction that these Trades Unions must be put down by strong measures and I confess that I hear such language with terror Punish by all means most severely all individual offences against individual freedom or personal safety but do not interfere surely with the Trades Unions themselves Do not try to bar these men of their right as free Englishmen to combine if they choose for what they consider their own benefit Look upon these struggles between employers and employed as fair battles in which by virtue of the irreversible laws of political economy the party who is in the right is almost certain to win and interfere in no wise save to see fair play and lawful means used on both sides alike If you do more if you interfere in any wise with the Trades Unions themselves you will fail and fail doubly You will not prevent the existence of combinations you will only make them secret dark revolutionary you will demoralize the working man thereby as surely as the merchant is demoralized by being converted into a smuggler you will heap up indignation spite and wrath against the day of wrath and finally to complete your own failure you will drive the working man to demand an extension of the suffrage in tones which will very certainly get a hearing He cares or seems to care little about the suffrage now just because he thinks that he can best serve his own interests by working these Trades Unions Take from him that means of redress real or mistaken no matter and he will seek redress in a way in which you wish him still less to seek it by demanding a vote and obtaining one
That consummation undesirable as it may seem to many would perhaps be the best for the peace of the trades These Trades Unions still tainted with some of the violence secrecy false political economy which they inherit from the evil times of 183040 last on simply I believe because the workman feels that they are his only organ that he has no other means of making his wants and his opinions known to the British Government Had he a vote he believes and I believe with him he could send at least a few men to Parliament who would state his case fairly in the House of Commons and would not only render a reason for him but hear reason against him if need were He would be content with free discussion if he could get that It is the feeling that he cannot get it that drives him often into crooked and dark ways If any answer that the representatives whom he would choose would be merely noisy demagogues I believe them to be mistaken No one can have watched the Preston strike however much he may have disapproved as I did of the strike itself without seeing from the temper the self-restraint the reasonableness the chivalrous honour of the men that they were as likely to choose a worthy member for the House of Commons as any town constituency in England no one can have watched the leaders of the working men for the last ten years without finding among them men capable of commanding the attention and respect of the House of Commons not merely by their eloquence surprising as that is but by their good sense good feeling and good breeding
Some training at first some rubbing off of angles they might require though two at least I know who would require no such training and who would be ornaments to any House of Commons the most inexperienced of the rest would not give the House onetenth the trouble which is given by a certain clique among the representatives of the sister Isle and would moreover learn his lesson in a week instead of never learning it at all like some we know too well Yet Catholic emancipation has pacified Ireland though it has brought into the House an inferior stamp of members and much more surely would an extension of the suffrage pacify the trades while it would bring into the House a far superior stamp of member to those who compose the clique of which I have spoken
But why I hear some one say impatiently talk about this subject of all others at this moment when nobody not even the working classes cares about a Reform Bill
Because I am speaking to young men who have not yet entered public life and because I wish them to understand that just because the question of parliamentary reform is in abeyance now it will not be in abeyance ten years or twenty years hence The question will be revived ere they are in the maturity of their manhood and they had best face that certain prospect and learn to judge wisely and accurately on the subject before they are called on as they will be to act upon it If it be true that the present generation has done all that it can do or intends to do towards the suffrage and I have that confidence in our present rulers that I would submit without murmuring to their decision on the point it is all the more incumbent on the rising generation to learn how to do as assuredly they will have to do the work which their fathers have left undone The question may remain long in abeyance under the influence of material prosperity such as the present or under the excitement of a war as in Pitts time but let a period of distress or disaster come and it will be reopened as of yore The progress towards institutions more and more popular may be slow but it is sure Whenever any class has conceived the hope of being fairly represented it is certain to fulfil its own hopes unless it employs or provokes violence impossible in England The thing will be Let the young men of Britain take care that it is done rightly when it is done
And how ought it to be done That will depend upon any circumstances now future and uncertain It will depend upon the pace at which sound education spreads among the working classes It will depend too very much—I fear only too much—upon the attitude of the upper classes to the lower in this very question of Trades Unions and of Strikes It will depend upon their attitude toward the unrepresented classes during the next few years upon this very question of extended suffrage And therefore I should advise I had almost said entreat any young men over whom I have any influence to read and think freely and accurately upon the subject taking if I may propose to them a textbook Mr Mills admirable treatise on Representative Government As for any theory of my own if I had one I should not put it forward How it will not be done I can see clearly enough It will not be done well by the old charter It will not be done well by merely lowering the money qualification of electors But it may be done well by other methods beside and I can trust the freedom and soundness of the English mind to discover the best method of all when it is needed
Let therefore this Conservative Reaction which I suspect is going on in the minds of many young men at Cambridge consider what it has to conserve It is not asked to conserve the Throne That thank God can take good care of itself. Let it conserve the House of Lords and that will be conserved just in proportion as the upper classes shall copy the virtues of Royalty both of him who is taken from us and of her who is left Let the upper classes learn from them that the just and wise method of strengthening their political power is to labour after that social power which comes only by virtue and usefulness Let them make themselves as the present Sovereign has made herself morally necessary to the people and then there is no fear of their being found politically unnecessary No other course is before them if they wish to make their Conservative Reaction a permanent even an endurable fact If any young gentlemen fancy and some do that they can strengthen their class by making any secret alliance with the Throne against the masses then they will discover rapidly that the sovereigns of the House of Brunswick are grown far too wise and far too noblehearted to fall once more into that trap If any of them and some do fancy that they can better their position by sneering whether in public or in their club at a Reformed House of Commons and a Free Press they will only accelerate the results which they most dread by forcing the ultraliberal party of the House and what is even worse the most intellectual and respectable portion of the Press to appeal to the people against them and if again they are tempted as too many of them are to give up public life as becoming too vulgar for them and prefer ease and pleasure to the hard work and plainspeaking of the House of Commons then they will simply pay the same penalty for laziness and fastidiousness which has been paid by the Spanish aristocracy and will discover that if they think their intellect unnecessary to the nation the nation will rapidly become of the same opinion and go its own way without them
But if they are willing to make themselves as they easily can the best educated the most trustworthy the most virtuous the most truly liberalminded class of the commonweal if they will set themselves to study the duties of rank and property as of a profession to which they are called by God and the requirements of which they must fulfil if they will acquire as they can easily a sound knowledge both of political economy and of the social questions of the day if they will be foremost with their personal influence in all good works if they will set themselves to compete on equal terms with the classes below them and as they may outrival them then they will find that those classes will receive them not altogether on equal terms that they will accede to them a superiority undefined perhaps but real and practical enough to conserve their class and their rank in every article for which a just and prudent man would wish
But if any young gentlemen look forward as I fear a few do still to a Conservative Reaction of any other kind than this to even the least return to the Tory maxims and methods of George the Fourths time to even the least stoppage of what the world calls progress—which I should define as the putting in practice the results of inductive science then do they like king Picrochole in Rabelais look for a kingdom which shall be restored to them at the coming of the Cocqcigrues The Cocqcigrues are never coming and none know that better than the present able and moderate leaders of the Conservative party none will be more anxious to teach that fact to their young adherents and to make them swim with the great stream lest it toss them contemptuously ashore upon its banks and go on its way unheeding
Return to the system of 1800—1830 is I thank God impossible Even though mens hearts should fail them they must onward they know not whither though God does know The bigot who believes in a system and not in the living God the sentimentalist who shrinks from facts because they are painful to his taste the sluggard who hates a change because it disturbs his ease the simply stupid person who cannot use his eyes and ears all these may cry feebly to the world to do what it has never done since its creation—stand still awhile that they may get their breaths But the brave and honest gentleman—who believes that God is not the tempter and deceiver but the father and the educator of man—he will not shrink even though the pace may be at moments rapid the path be at moments hid by mist for he will believe that freedom and knowledge as well as virtue are the daughters of the Most High and he will follow them and call on the rest to follow them whithersoever they may lead and will take heart for himself and for his class by the example of that great Prince who is of late gone home For if like that most royal soul he and his shall follow with single eye and steadfast heart freedom knowledge and virtue then will he and his be safe as Royalty is safe in England now because both God and man have need thereof
PREFACE
Written in 1854
ADDRESSED TO THE WORKING MEN OF GREAT BRITAIN
My Friends—Since I wrote this book five years ago I have seen a good deal of your class and of their prospects Much that I have seen has given me great hope much has disappointed me nothing has caused me to alter the opinions here laid down
Much has given me hope especially in the North of England I believe that there at least exists a mass of prudence selfcontrol genial and sturdy manhood which will be Englands reserveforce for generations yet to come The last five years moreover have certainly been years of progress for the good cause The great drag upon it—namely demagogism—has crumbled to pieces of its own accord and seems now only to exhibit itself in anilities like those of the speakers who inform a mob of boys and thieves that wheat has lately been thrown into the Thames to keep up prices or advise them to establish by means hitherto undiscovered national granaries only possible under the despotism of a Pharaoh Since the 10th of April 1848 one of the most lucky days which the English workman ever saw the trade of the moborator has dwindled down to such last shifts as these to which the working man sensibly seems merely to answer as he goes quietly about his business Why will you still keep talking Signor Benedick Nobody marks you
But the 10th of April 1848 has been a beneficial crisis not merely in the temper of the working men so called but in the minds of those who are denominated by them the aristocracy There is no doubt that the classes possessing property have been facing since 1848 all social questions with an average of honesty earnestness and good feeling which has no parallel since the days of the Tudors and that hundreds and thousands of gentlemen and ladies in Great Britain now are saying Show what we ought to do to be just to the workman and we will do it whatsoever it costs They may not be always correct though they generally are so in their conceptions of what ought to be done but their purpose is good and righteous and those who hold it are daily increasing in number The love of justice and mercy toward the handicraftsman is spreading rapidly as it never did before in any nation upon earth and if any man still represents the holders of property as a class as the enemies of those whom they employ desiring their slavery and their ignorance I believe that he is a liar and a child of the devil and that he is at his fathers old work slandering and dividing between man and man These words may be severe but they are deliberate and working men are I hope sufficiently accustomed to hear me call a spade a spade when I am pleading for them to allow me to do the same when I am pleading to them
Of the disappointing experiences which I have had I shall say nothing save in as far as I can by alluding to them point out to the working man the causes which still keep him weak but I am bound to say that those disappointments have strengthened my conviction that this book in the main speaks the truth
I do not allude of course to the thoughts and feelings of the hero They are compounded of right and wrong and such as I judged and working men whom I am proud to number among my friends have assured me that I judged rightly that a working man of genius would feel during the course of his selfeducation These thoughts and feelings often inconsistent and contradictory to each other stupid or careless or illwilled persons have represented as my own opinions having as it seems to me turned the book upside down before they began to read it I am bound to pay the working men and their organs in the press the compliment of saying that no such misrepresentations proceeded from them However deeply some of them may have disagreed with me all of them as far as I have been able to judge had sense to see what I meant and so also have the organs of the HighChurch party to whom differing from them on many points I am equally bound to offer my thanks for their fairness But indeed the way in which this book in spite of its crudities has been received by persons of all ranks and opinions who instead of making me an offender for a word have taken the book heartily and honestly in the spirit and not in the letter has made me most hopeful for the British mind and given me a strong belief that in spite of all foppery luxury covetousness and unbelief the English heart is still strong and genial able and willing to do and suffer great things as soon as the rational way of doing and suffering them becomes plain Had I written this book merely to please my own fancy this would be a paltry criterion at once illogical and boastful but I wrote it God knows in the fear of God that I might speak what seems to me the truth of God I trusted in Him to justify me in spite of my own youth inexperience hastiness clumsiness and He has done it and I trust will do it to the end
And now what shall I say to you my friends about the future Your destiny is still in your own hands For the last seven years you have let it slip through your fingers If you are better off than you were in 1848 you owe it principally to those laws of political economy as they are called which I call the brute natural accidents of supply and demand or to the exertions which have been made by upright men of the very classes whom demagogues taught you to consider as your natural enemies Pardon me if I seem severe but as old Aristotle has it Both parties being my friends it is a sacred duty to honour truth first And is this not the truth How little have the working men done to carry out that idea of association in which in 18489 they were all willing to confess their salvation lay Had the money which was wasted in the hapless Preston strike been wisely spent in relieving the labour market by emigration or in making wages more valuable by enabling the workman to buy from cooperative stores and mills his necessaries at little above cost price how much sorrow and heartburning might have been saved to the irontrades Had the real English endurance and courage which was wasted in that strike been employed in the cause of association the men might have been ere now far happier than they are ever likely to be without the least injury to the masters What again has been done toward developing the organization of the Trades Unions into its true form Association for distribution from its old useless and savage form of Association for the purpose of resistance to masters—a war which is at first sight hopeless even were it just because the opposite party holds in his hand the supplies of his foe as well as his own and therefore can starve him out at his leisure What has been done again toward remedying the evils of the slop system which this book especially exposed The true method for the working men if they wished to save their brothers and their brothers wives and daughters from degradation was to withdraw their custom from the slopsellers and to deal even at a temporary increase of price with associate workmen Have they done so They can answer for themselves In London as in the country towns the paltry temptation of buying in the cheapest market has still been too strong for the labouring man In Scotland and in the North of England thank God the case has been very different and to the North I must look still as I did when I wrote Alton Locke for the strong men in whose hands lies the destiny of the English handicraftsman
God grant that the workmen of the South of England may bestir themselves ere it be too late and discover that the only defence against want is selfrestraint the only defence against slavery obedience to rule and that instead of giving themselves up bound hand and foot by their own fancy for a freedom which is but selfish and conceited license to the brute accidents of the competitive system they may begin to organize among themselves associations for buying and selling the necessaries of life which may enable them to weather the dark season of high prices and stagnation which is certain sooner or later to follow in the footsteps of war
On politics I have little to say My belief remains unchanged that true Christianity and true monarchy also are not only compatible with but require as their necessary complement true freedom for every man of every class and that the Charter now defunct was just as wise and as righteous a Reform Bill as any which England had yet had or was likely to have But I frankly say that my experience of the last five years gives me little hope of any great development of the true democratic principle in Britain because it gives me little sign that the many are fit for it Remember always that Democracy means a government not merely by numbers of isolated individuals but by a Demos—by men accustomed to live in Demoi or corporate bodies and accustomed therefore to the self-control obedience to law and selfsacrificing public spirit without which a corporate body cannot exist but that a democracy of mere numbers is no democracy but a mere brute arithmocracy which is certain to degenerate into an ochlocracy or government by the mob in which the numbers have no real share an oligarchy of the fiercest the noisiest the rashest and the most shameless which is surely swallowed up either by a despotism as in France or as in Athens by utter national ruin and helpless slavery to a foreign invader Let the workmen of Britain train themselves in the corporate spirit and in the obedience and selfcontrol which it brings as they easily can in associations and bear in mind always that only he who can obey is fit to rule and then when they are fit for it the Charter may come or things I trust far better than the Charter and till they have done so let them thank the just and merciful Heavens for keeping out of their hands any power and for keeping off their shoulders any responsibility which they would not be able to use aright I thank God heartily this day that I have no share in the government of Great Britain and I advise my working friends to do the same and to believe that when they are fit to take their share therein all the powers of earth cannot keep them from taking it and that till then happy is the man who does the duty which lies nearest him who educates his family raises his class performs his daily work as to God and to his country not merely to his employer and himself for it is only he that is faithful over a few things who will be made or will be happy in being made ruler over many things
Yours ever
C K
ALTON LOCKE
TAILOR AND POET
CHAPTER I
A POETS CHILDHOOD
I am a Cockney among Cockneys Italy and the Tropics the Highlands and Devonshire I know only in dreams Even the Surrey Hills of whose loveliness I have heard so much are to me a distant fairyland whose gleaming ridges I am worthy only to behold afar With the exception of two journeys never to be forgotten my knowledge of England is bounded by the horizon which encircles Richmond Hill
My earliest recollections are of a suburban street of its jumble of little shops and little terraces each exhibiting some fresh variety of capricious ugliness the little scraps of garden before the doors with their dusty stunted lilacs and balsam poplars were my only forests my only wild animals the dingy merry sparrows who quarrelled fearlessly on my windowsill ignorant of trap or gun From my earliest childhood through long nights of sleepless pain as the midnight brightened into dawn and the glaring lamps grew pale I used to listen with pleasant awe to the ceaseless roll of the marketwaggons bringing up to the great city the treasures of the gay green country the land of fruits and flowers for which I have yearned all my life in vain They seemed to my boyish fancy mysterious messengers from another world the silent lonely night in which they were the only moving things added to the wonder I used to get out of bed to gaze at them and envy the coarse men and sluttish women who attended them their labour among verdant plants and rich brown mould on breezy slopes under Gods own clear sky I fancied that they learnt what I knew I should have learnt there I knew not then that the eye only sees that which it brings with it the power of seeing When will their eyes be opened When will priests go forth into the highways and the hedges and preach to the ploughman and the gipsy the blessed news that there too in every thicket and fallowfield is the house of God—there too the gate of Heaven
I do not complain that I am a Cockney That too is Gods gift He made me one that I might learn to feel for poor wretches who sit stifled in reeking garrets and workrooms drinking in disease with every breath—bound in their prisonhouse of brick and iron with their own funeral pall hanging over them in that canopy of fog and poisonous smoke from their cradle to their grave I have drunk of the cup of which they drink And so I have learnt—if indeed I have learnt—to be a poet—a poet of the people That honour surely was worth buying with asthma and rickets and consumption and weakness and—worst of all to me—with ugliness It was Gods purpose about me and therefore all circumstances combined to imprison me in London I used once when I worshipped circumstance to fancy it my curse Fates injustice to me which kept me from developing my genius asserting my rank among poets I longed to escape to glorious Italy or some other southern climate where natural beauty would have become the very element which I breathed and yet what would have come of that Should I not as nobler spirits than I have done have idled away my life in Elysian dreams singing out like a bird into the air inarticulately purposeless for mere joy and fulness of heart and taking no share in the terrible questionings the terrible strugglings of this great awful blessed time—feeling no more the pulse of the great heart of England stirring me I used as I said to call it the curse of circumstance that I was a sickly decrepit Cockney My mother used to tell me that it was the cross which God had given me to bear I know now that she was right there She used to say that my disease was Gods will I do not think though that she spoke right there also I think that it was the will of the world and of the devil of mans avarice and laziness and ignorance And so would my readers perhaps had they seen the shop in the city where I was born and nursed with its little garrets reeking with human breath its kitchens and areas with noisome sewers A sanitary reformer would not be long in guessing the cause of my unhealthiness He would not rebuke me—nor would she sweet soul now that she is at rest and bliss—for my wild longings to escape for my envying the very flies and sparrows their wings that I might flee miles away into the country and breathe the air of heaven once and die I have had my wish I have made two journeys far away into the country and they have been enough for me
My mother was a widow My father whom I cannot recollect was a small retail tradesman in the city He was unfortunate and when he died my mother came down and lived penuriously enough I knew not how till I grew older down in that same suburban street She had been brought up an Independent After my fathers death she became a Baptist from conscientious scruples She considered the Baptists as I do as the only sect who thoroughly embody the Calvinistic doctrines She held it as I do an absurd and impious thing for those who believe mankind to be children of the devil till they have been consciously converted to baptise unconscious infants and give them the sign of Gods mercy on the mere chance of that mercy being intended for them When God had proved by converting them that they were not reprobate and doomed to hell by His absolute and eternal will then and not till then dare man baptise them into His name She dared not palm a presumptuous fiction on herself and call it charity So though we had both been christened during my fathers lifetime she purposed to have us rebaptised if ever that happened—which in her sense of the word never happened I am afraid to me
She gloried in her dissent for she was sprung from old Puritan blood which had flowed again and again beneath the knife of StarChamber butchers and on the battlefields of Naseby and Sedgemoor And on winter evenings she used to sit with her Bible on her knee while I and my little sister Susan stood beside her and listened to the stories of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah till her eye kindled up and her thoughts passed forth from that old Hebrew time home into those English times which she fancied and not untruly like them And we used to shudder and yet listen with a strange fascination as she told us how her ancestor called his seven sons off their small Cambridge farm and horsed and armed them himself to follow behind Cromwell and smite kings and prelates with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon Whether she were right or wrong what is it to me What is it now to her thank God But those stories and the strict stern Puritan education learnt from the Independents and not the Baptists which accompanied them had their effect on me for good and ill
My mother moved by rule and method by Gods law as she considered and that only She seldom smiled Her word was absolute She never commanded twice without punishing And yet there were abysses of unspoken tenderness in her as well as clear sound womanly sense and insight But she thought herself as much bound to keep down all tenderness as if she had been some ascetic of the middle ages—so do extremes meet It was carnal she considered She had as yet no right to have any spiritual affection for us We were still children of wrath and of the devil—not yet convinced of sin converted born again She had no more spiritual bond with us she thought than she had with a heathen or a Papist She dared not even pray for our conversion earnestly as she prayed on every other subject For though the majority of her sect would have done so her clear logical sense would yield to no such tender inconsistency Had it not been decided from all eternity We were elect or we were reprobate Could her prayers alter that If He had chosen us He would call us in His own good time and if not— Only again and again as I afterwards discovered from a journal of hers she used to beseech God with agonized tears to set her mind at rest by revealing to her His will towards us For that comfort she could at least rationally pray But she received no answer Poor beloved mother If thou couldst not read the answer written in every flower and every sunbeam written in the very fact of our existence here at all what answer would have sufficed thee
And yet with all this she kept the strictest watch over our morality Fear of course was the only motive she employed for how could our still carnal understandings be affected with love to God And love to herself was too paltry and temporary to be urged by one who knew that her life was uncertain and who was always trying to go down to the deepest eternal ground and reason of everything and take her stand upon that So our god or gods rather till we were twelve years old were hell the rod the ten commandments and public opinion Yet under them not they but something deeper far both in her and us preserved us pure Call it natural character conformation of the spirit—conformation of the brain if you like if you are a scientific man and a phrenologist I never yet could dissect and map out my own being, or my neighbours as you analysts do To me I myself ay and each person round me seem one inexplicable whole to take away a single faculty whereof is to destroy the harmony the meaning the life of all the rest That there is a duality in us—a lifelong battle between flesh and spirit—we all alas know well enough but which is flesh and which is spirit what philosophers in these days can tell us Still less bad we two found out any such duality or discord in ourselves for we were gentle and obedient children The pleasures of the world did not tempt us We did not know of their existence; and no foundlings educated in a nunnery ever grew up in a more virginal and spotless innocence—if ignorance be such—than did Susan and I
The narrowness of my sphere of observation only concentrated the faculty into greater strength The few natural objects which I met—and they of course constituted my whole outer world for art and poetry were tabooed both by my rank and my mothers sectarianism and the study of human beings only develops itself as the boy grows into the man—these few natural objects I say I studied with intense keenness I knew every leaf and flower in the little front garden every cabbage and rhubarb plant in Battersea fields was wonderful and beautiful to me Clouds and water I learned to delight in from my occasional lingerings on Battersea bridge and yearning westward looks toward the sun setting above rich meadows and wooded gardens to me a forbidden El Dorado
I brought home wildflowers and chance beetles and butterflies and pored over them not in the spirit of a naturalist but of a poet They were to me Gods angels shining in coats of mail and fairy masquerading dresses I envied them their beauty their freedom At last I made up my mind in the simple tenderness of a childs conscience that it was wrong to rob them of the liberty for which I pined—to take them away from the beautiful broad country whither I longed to follow them and I used to keep them a day or two and then regretfully carry them back and set them loose on the first opportunity with many compunctions of heart when as generally happened they had been starved to death in the mean time
They were my only recreations after the hours of the small dayschool at the neighbouring chapel where I learnt to read write and sum except now and then a London walk with my mother holding my hand tight the whole way She would have hoodwinked me stopped my ears with cotton and led me in a string—kind careful soul—if it had been reasonably safe on a crowded pavement so fearful was she lest I should be polluted by some chance sight or sound of the Babylon which she feared and hated—almost as much as she did the Bishops
The only books which I knew were the Pilgrims Progress and the Bible The former was my Shakespeare my Dante my Vedas by which I explained every fact and phenomenon of life London was the City of Destruction from which I was to flee I was Christian the Wicket of the Way of Life I had strangely identified with the turnpike at Batterseabridge end and the rising ground of Mortlake and Wimbledon was the Land of Beulah—the Enchanted Mountains of the Shepherds If I could once get there I was saved a carnal view perhaps and a childish one but there was a dim meaning and human reality in it nevertheless
As for the Bible I knew nothing of it really beyond the Old Testament Indeed the life of Christ had little chance of becoming interesting to me My mother had given me formally to understand that it spoke of matters too deep for me that till converted the natural man could not understand the things of God and I obtained little more explanation of it from the two unintelligible dreary sermons to which I listened every dreary Sunday in terror lest a chance shuffle of my feet or a hint of drowsiness—natural result of the stifling gallery and glaring windows and gas lights—should bring down a lecture and a punishment when I returned home Oh those sabbaths—days not of rest but utter weariness when the beetles and the flowers were put by and there was nothing to fill up the long vacuity but books of which I could not understand a word when play laughter or even a stare out of window at the sinful merry sabbathbreaking promenaders were all forbidden as if the commandment had run In it thou shalt take no manner of amusement thou nor thy son nor thy daughter By what strange ascetic perversion has that got to mean keeping holy the sabbathday
Yet there was an hours relief in the evening when either my mother told us Old Testament stories or some preacher or two came in to supper after meeting and I used to sit in the corner and listen to their talk not that I understood a word but the mere struggle to understand—the mere watching my mothers earnest face—my pride in the reverent flattery with which the worthy men addressed her as a mother in Israel were enough to fill up the blank for me till bedtime
Of vital Christianity I heard much but with all my efforts could find out nothing Indeed it did not seem interesting enough to tempt me to find out much It seemed a set of doctrines believing in which was to have a magical effect on people by saving them from the everlasting torture due to sins and temptations which I had never felt Now and then believing in obedience to my mothers assurances and the solemn prayers of the ministers about me that I was a child of hell and a lost and miserable sinner I used to have accesses of terror and fancy that I should surely wake next morning in everlasting flames Once I put my finger a moment into the fire as certain Papists and Protestants too have done not only to themselves but to their disciples to see if it would be so very dreadfully painful with what conclusions the reader may judge… Still I could not keep up the excitement Why should I The fear of pain is not the fear of sin that I know of and indeed the thing was unreal altogether in my case and my heart my common sense rebelled against it again and again till at last I got a terrible whipping for taking my little sisters part and saying that if she was to die—so gentle and obedient and affectionate as she was—God would be very unjust in sending her to hellfire and that I was quite certain He would do no such thing—unless He were the Devil an opinion which I have since seen no reason to change The confusion between the King of Hell and the King of Heaven has cleared up thank God since then
So I was whipped and put to bed—the whipping altering my secret heart just about as much as the dread of hellfire did
I speak as a Christian man—an orthodox Churchman if you require that shibboleth Was I so very wrong What was there in the idea of religion which was represented to me at home to captivate me What was the use of a childs hearing of Gods great love manifested in the scheme of redemption when he heard in the same breath that the effects of that redemption were practically confined only to one human being out of a thousand and that the other nine hundred and ninetynine were lost and damned from their birthhour to all eternity—not only by the absolute will and reprobation of God though that infernal blasphemy I heard often enough but also putting that out of the question by the mere fact of being born of Adams race And this to a generation to whom Gods love shines out in every tree and flower and hedgeside bird to whom the daily discoveries of science are revealing that love in every microscopic animalcule which peoples the stagnant pool This to working men whose craving is only for some idea which shall give equal hopes claims and deliverances to all mankind alike This to working men who in the smiles of their innocent children see the heaven which they have lost—the messages of babycherubs made in Gods own image This to me to whom every butterfly every look at my little sister contradicted the lie You may say that such thoughts were too deep for a child that I am ascribing to my boyhood the scepticism of my manhood but it is not so and what went on in my mind goes on in the minds of thousands It is the cause of the contempt into which not merely sectarian Protestantism but Christianity altogether has fallen in the minds of the thinking workmen Clergymen who anathematize us for wandering into Unitarianism—you you have driven us thither You must find some explanation of the facts of Christianity more in accordance with the truths which we do know and will live and die for or you can never hope to make us Christians or if we do return to the true fold it will be as I returned after long miserable years of darkling error to a higher truth than most of you have yet learned to preach
But those old Jewish heroes did fill my whole heart and soul I learnt from them lessons which I never wish to unlearn Whatever else I saw about them this I saw—that they were patriots deliverers from that tyranny and injustice from which the childs heart—child of the devil though you may call him—instinctively and as I believe by a divine inspiration revolts Moses leading his people out of Egypt Gideon Barak and Samson slaying their oppressors David hiding in the mountains from the tyrant with his little band of those who had fled from the oppressions of an aristocracy of Nabals Jehu executing Gods vengeance on the kings—they were my heroes my models they mixed themselves up with the dim legends about the Reformation martyrs Cromwell and Hampden Sidney and Monmouth which I had heard at my mothers knee Not that the perennial oppression of the masses in all ages and countries had yet risen on me as an awful torturing fixed idea I fancied poor fool that tyranny was the exception and not the rule But it was the mere sense of abstract pity and justice which was delighted in me I thought that these were old fairy tales such as never need be realized again I learnt otherwise in after years
I have often wondered since why all cannot read the same lesson as I did in those old Hebrew Scriptures—that they of all books in the world have been wrested into proofs of the divine right of kings the eternal necessity of slavery But the eye only sees what it brings with it the power of seeing The upper classes from their first day at school to their last day at college read of nothing but the glories of Salamis and Marathon of freedom and of the old republics And what comes of it No more than their tutors know will come of it when they thrust into the boys hands books which give the lie in every page to their own political superstitions
But when I was just turned of thirteen an altogether new fairyland was opened to me by some missionary tracts and journals which were lent to my mother by the ministers Pacific coral islands and volcanoes cocoanut groves and bananas graceful savages with paint and feathers—what an El Dorado How I devoured them and dreamt of them and went there in fancy and preached small sermons as I lay in my bed at night to Tahitians and New Zealanders though I confess my spiritual eyes were just as my physical eyes would have been far more busy with the scenery than with the souls of my audience However that was the place for me I saw clearly And one day I recollect it well in the little dingy foul reeking twelve foot square backyard where huge smoky partywalls shut out every breath of air and almost all the light of heaven I had climbed up between the waterbutt and the angle of the wall for the purpose of fishing out of the dirty fluid which lay there crusted with soot and alive with insects to be renewed only three times in the seven days some of the great larvæ and kicking monsters which made up a large item in my list of wonders all of a sudden the horror of the place came over me those grim prisonwalls above with their canopy of lurid smoke the dreary sloppy broken pavement the horrible stench of the stagnant cesspools the utter want of form colour life in the whole place crushed me down without my being able to analyse my feelings as I can now and then came over me that dream of Pacific Islands and the free open sea and I slid down from my perch and bursting into tears threw myself upon my knees in the court and prayed aloud to God to let me be a missionary
Half fearfully I let out my wishes to my mother when she came home She gave me no answer but as I found out afterwards—too late alas for her if not for me—she like Mary had laid up all these things and treasured them in her heart
You may guess then my delight when a few days afterwards I heard that a real live missionary was coming to take tea with us A man who had actually been in New Zealand—the thought was rapture I painted him to myself over and over again and when after the first burst of fancy I recollected that he might possibly not have adopted the native costume of that island or if he had that perhaps it would look too strange for him to wear it about London I settled within myself that he was to be a tall venerablelooking man like the portraits of old Puritan divines which adorned our dayroom and as I had heard that he was powerful in prayer I adorned his right hand with that mystic weapon allprayer with which Christian when all other means have failed finally vanquishes the fiend—which instrument in my mind was somewhat after the model of an infernal sort of bill or halbert—all hooks edges spikes and crescents—which I had passed shuddering once in the hand of an old suit of armour in Wardour Street
He came—and with him the two ministers who often drank tea with my mother both of whom as they played some small part in the drama of my afterlife I may as well describe here The elder was a little sleek silverhaired old man with a blank weak face just like a white rabbit He loved me and I loved him too for there were always lollipops in his pocket for me and Susan Had his head been equal to his heart—but what has been was to be—and the dissenting clergy with a few noble exceptions among the Independents are not the strong men of the day—none know that better than the workmen The old mans name was Bowyer The other Mr Wigginton was a younger man tall grim dark bilious with a narrow forehead retreating suddenly from his eyebrows up to a conical peak of black hair over his ears He preached higher doctrine ie more fatalist and antinomian than his gentler colleague—and having also a stentorian voice was much the greater favourite at the chapel I hated him—and if any man ever deserved hatred he did
Well they came My heart was in my mouth as I opened the door to them and sank back again to the very lowest depths of my inner man when my eyes fell on the face and figure of the missionary—a squat redfaced pigeyed lowbrowed man with great soft lips that opened back to his very ears sensuality conceit and cunning marked on every feature—an innate vulgarity from which the artisan and the child recoil with an instinct as true perhaps truer than that of the courtier showing itself in every tone and motion—I shrank into a corner so crestfallen that I could not even exert myself to hand round the bread and butter for which I got duly scolded afterwards Oh that man—how he bawled and contradicted and laid down the law and spoke to my mother in a fondling patronizing way which made me I knew not why boil over with jealousy and indignation How he filled his teacup half full of the white sugar to buy which my mother had curtailed her yesterdays dinner—how he drained the few remaining drops of the threepennyworth of cream with which Susan was stealing off to keep it as an unexpected treat for my mother at breakfast the next morning—how he talked of the natives not as St Paul might of his converts but as a planter might of his slaves overlaying all his unintentional confessions of his own greed and prosperity with cant flimsy enough for even a boy to see through while his eyes were not blinded with the superstition that a man must be pious who sufficiently interlards his speech with a jumble of old English picked out of our translation of the New Testament Such was the man I saw I dont deny that all are not like him I believe there are noble men of all denominations doing their best according to their light all over the world but such was the one I saw—and the men who were sent home to plead the missionary cause whatever the men may be like who stay behind and work are from my small experience too often such It appears to me to be the rule that many of those who go abroad as missionaries go simply because they are men of such inferior powers and attainments that if they stayed in England they would starve
Three parts of his conversation after all was made up of abuse of the missionaries of the Church of England not for doing nothing but for being so much more successful than his own sect accusing them in the same breath of being just of the inferior type of which he was himself and also of being mere University fine gentlemen Really I do not wonder upon his own showing at the savages preferring them to him and I was pleased to hear the old whiteheaded minister gently interpose at the end of one of his tirades—We must not be jealous my brother if the Establishment has discovered what we I hope shall find out some day that it is not wise to draft our missionaries from the offscouring of the ministry and serve God with that which costs us nothing except the expense of providing for them beyond seas
There was somewhat of a roguish twinkle in the old mans eye as he said it which emboldened me to whisper a question to him
Why is it Sir that in olden times the heathens used to crucify the missionaries and burn them and now they give them beautiful farms and build them houses and carry them about on their backs
The old man seemed a little puzzled and so did the company to whom he smilingly retailed my question
As nobody seemed inclined to offer a solution I ventured one myself
Perhaps the heathens are grown better than they used to be
The heart of man answered the tall dark minister is and ever was equally at enmity with God
Then perhaps I ventured again what the missionaries preach now is not quite the same as what the missionaries used to preach in St Pauls time and so the heathens are not so angry at it
My mother looked thunder at me and so did all except my whiteheaded friend who said gently enough
It may be that the childs words come from God
Whether they did or not the child took very good care to speak no more words till he was alone with his mother and then finished off that disastrous evening by a punishment for the indecency of saying before his little sister that he thought it a great pity the missionaries taught black people to wear ugly coats and trousers they must have looked so much handsomer running about with nothing on but feathers and strings of shells
So the missionary dream died out of me by a foolish and illogical antipathy enough though after all it was a child of my imagination only not of my heart and the fancy having bred it was able to kill it also And David became my ideal To be a shepherdboy and sit among beautiful mountains and sing hymns of my own making and kill lions and bears with now and then the chance of a stray giant—what a glorious life And if David slew giants with a sling and a stone why should not I—at all events one ought to know how so I made a sling out of an old garter and some string and began to practise in the little backyard But my first shot broke a neighbours window value sevenpence and the next flew back in my face and cut my head open so I was sent supperless to bed for a week till the sevenpence had been duly saved out of my hungry stomach—and on the whole I found the hymnwriting side of Davids character the more feasible so I tried and with much brainsbeating committed the following lines to a scrap of dirty paper And it was strangely significant that in this my first attempt there was an instinctive denial of the very doctrine of particular redemption which I had been hearing all my life and an instinctive yearning after the very Being in whom I had been told I had no part nor lot till I was converted Here they are I am not ashamed to call them—doggerel though they be—an inspiration from Him of whom they speak If not from Him good readers from whom
Jesus He loves one and all
Jesus He loves children small
Their souls are sitting round His feet
On high before His mercyseat
When on earth He walked in shame
Children small unto Him came
At His feet they knelt and prayed
On their heads His hands He laid
Came a spirit on them then
Greater than of mighty men
A spirit gentle meek and mild
A spirit good for king and child
Oh that spirit give to me
Jesus Lord whereer I be
So—
But I did not finish them not seeing very clearly what to do with that spirit when I obtained it for indeed it seemed a much finer thing to fight material Apollyons with material swords of iron like my friend Christian or to go bear and lion hunting with David than to convert heathens by meekness—at least if true meekness was at all like that of the missionary whom I had lately seen
I showed the verses in secret to my little sister My mother heard us singing them together and extorted grimly enough a confession of the authorship I expected to be punished for them I was accustomed weekly to be punished for all sorts of deeds and words of the harmfulness of which I had not a notion It was therefore an agreeable surprise when the old minister the next Sunday evening patted my head and praised me for them
A hopeful sign of young grace brother said he to the dark tall man
May we behold here an infant Timothy
Bad doctrine brother in that first line—bad doctrine which I am sure he did not learn from our excellent sister here Remember my boy henceforth that Jesus does not love one and all—not that I am angry with you The carnal mind cannot be expected to understand divine things any more than the beasts that perish Nevertheless the blessed message of the Gospel stands true that Christ loves none but His Bride the Church His merits my poor child extend to none but the elect Ah my dear sister Locke how delightful to think of the narrow way of discriminating grace How it enhances the believers view of his own exceeding privileges to remember that there be few that be saved
I said nothing I thought myself only too lucky to escape so well from the danger of having done anything out of my own head But somehow Susan and I never altered it when we sang it to ourselves
I thought it necessary for the sake of those who might read my story to string together these few scattered recollections of my boyhood—to give as it were some sample of the cotyledon leaves of my young lifeplant and of the soil in which it took root ere it was transplanted—but I will not forestall my sorrows After all they have been but types of the woes of thousands who die and give no sign Those to whom the struggles of every even the meanest human being are scenes of an awful drama every incident of which is to be noted with reverent interest will not find them void of meaning while the life which opens in my next chapter is perhaps full enough of mere dramatic interest and whose life is not were it but truly written to amuse merely as a novel Ay grim and real is the action and suffering which begins with my next page—as you yourself would have found highborn reader if such chance to light upon this story had you found yourself at fifteen after a youth of conventlike seclusion settled apparently for life—in a tailors workshop
Ay—laugh—we tailors can quote poetry as well as make your courtdresses
You sit in a cloud and sing like pictured angels
And say the world runs smooth—while right below
Welters the black fermenting heap of griefs
Whereon your state is built…
CHAPTER II
THE TAILORS WORKROOM
Have you done laughing Then I will tell you how the thing came to pass
My father had a brother who had steadily risen in life in proportion as my father fell They had both begun life in a grocers shop My father saved enough to marry when of middle age a woman of his own years and set up a little shop where there were far too many such already in the hope—to him as to the rest of the world quite just and innocent—of drawing away as much as possible of his neighbours custom He failed died—as so many small tradesmen do—of bad debts and a broken heart and left us beggars His brother more prudent had in the meantime risen to be foreman then he married on the strength of his handsome person his masters blooming widow and rose and rose year by year till at the time of which I speak he was owner of a firstrate grocery establishment in the City and a pleasant villa near Herne Hill and had a son a year or two older than myself at Kings College preparing for Cambridge and the Church—that being nowadays the approved method of converting a tradesmans son into a gentleman—whereof let artisans and gentlemen also take note
My aristocratic readers—if I ever get any which I pray God I may—may be surprised at so great an inequality of fortune between two cousins but the thing is common in our class In the higher ranks a difference in income implies none in education or manners and the poor gentleman is a fit companion for dukes and princes—thanks to the old usages of Norman chivalry which after all were a democratic protest against the sovereignty if not of rank at least of money The knight however penniless was the princes equal even his superior from whose hands he must receive knighthood and the squire of low degree who honourably earned his spurs rose also into that guild whose qualifications however barbaric were still higher ones than any which the pocket gives But in the commercial classes money most truly and fearfully makes the man A difference in income as you go lower makes more and more difference in the supply of the common necessaries of life and worse—in education and manners in all which polishes the man till you may see often as in my case one cousin a Cambridge undergraduate and the other a tailors journeyman
My uncle one day came down to visit us resplendent in a black velvet waistcoat thick gold chain and acres of shirtfront and I and Susan were turned to feed on our own curiosity and awe in the backyard while he and my mother were closeted together for an hour or so in the livingroom When he was gone my mother called me in and with eyes which would have been tearful had she allowed herself such a weakness before us told me very solemnly and slowly as if to impress upon me the awfulness of the matter that I was to be sent to a tailors workrooms the next day
And an awful step it was in her eyes as she laid her hands on my head and murmured to herself Behold I send you forth as a lamb in the midst of wolves Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves And then rising hastily to conceal her own emotion fled upstairs where we could hear her throw herself on her knees by the bedside and sob piteously
That evening was spent dolefully enough in a sermon of warnings against all manner of sins and temptations the very names of which I had never heard but to which as she informed me I was by my fallen nature altogether prone and right enough was she in so saying though as often happens the temptations from which I was in real danger were just the ones of which she had no notion—fighting more or less extinct Satans as Mr Carlyle says and quite unconscious of the real modern mandevouring Satan close at her elbow
To me in spite of all the terror which she tried to awaken in me the change was not unwelcome at all events it promised me food for my eyes and my ears—some escape from the narrow cage in which though I hardly dare confess it to myself I was beginning to pine Little I dreamt to what a darker cage I was to be translated Not that I accuse my uncle of neglect or cruelty though the thing was altogether of his commanding He was as generous to us as society required him to be We were entirely dependent on him as my mother told me then for the first time for support And had he not a right to dispose of my person having bought it by an allowance to my mother of fiveandtwenty pounds a year I did not forget that fact the thought of my dependence on him rankled in me till it almost bred hatred in me to a man who had certainly never done or meant anything to me but in kindness For what could he make me but a tailor—or a shoemaker A pale consumptive rickety weakly boy all forehead and no muscle—have not clothes and shoes been from time immemorial the appointed work of such The fact that that weakly frame is generally compensated by a proportionally increased activity of brain is too unimportant to enter into the calculations of the great King Laissezfaire Well my dear Society it is you that suffer for the mistake after all more than we If you do tether your cleverest artisans on tailors shopboards and cobblers benches and they—as sedentary folk will—fall a thinking and come to strange conclusions thereby they really ought to be much more thankful to you than you are to them If Thomas Cooper had passed his first fiveandtwenty years at the plough tail instead of the shoemakers awl many words would have been left unsaid which once spoken working men are not likely to forget
With a beating heart I shambled along by my mothers side next day to Mr Smiths shop in a street off Piccadilly and stood by her side just within the door waiting till some one would condescend to speak to us and wondering when the time would come when I like the gentleman who skipped up and down the shop should shine glorious in patentleather boots and a blue satin tie sprigged with gold
Two personages both equally magnificent stood talking with their backs to us and my mother in doubt like myself as to which of them was the tailor at last summoned up courage to address the wrong one by asking if he were Mr Smith
The person addressed answered by a most polite smile and bow and assured her that he had not that honour while the other heheed evidently a little flattered by the mistake and then uttered in a tremendous voice these words
I have nothing for you my good woman—go Mr Elliot how did you come to allow these people to get into the establishment
My name is Locke sir and I was to bring my son here this morning
Oh—ah—Mr Elliot see to these persons As I was saying my lard the crimson velvet suit about thirtyfive guineas Bytheby that coat ours I thought so—idea grand and light—masses well broken—very fine chiaroscuro about the whole—an aristocratic wrinkle just above the hips—which I flatter myself no one but myself and my friend Mr Cooke really do understand The vapid smoothness of the door dummy my lard should be confined to the regions of the Strand Mr Elliot where are you Just be so good as to show his lardship that lovely new thing in drab and blue foncé Ah your lardship cant wait—Now my good woman is this the young man
Yes said my mother and—and—God deal so with you sir as you deal with the widow and the orphan
Oh—ah—that will depend very much I should say on how the widow and the orphan deal with me Mr Elliot take this person into the office and transact the little formalities with her Jones take the young man upstairs to the workroom
I stumbled after Mr Jones up a dark narrow iron staircase till we emerged through a trapdoor into a garret at the top of the house I recoiled with disgust at the scene before me and here I was to work—perhaps through life A low leanto room stifling me with the combined odours of human breath and perspiration stale beer the sweet sickly smell of gin and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new cloth On the floor thick with dust and dirt scraps of stuff and ends of thread sat some dozen haggard untidy shoeless men with a mingled look of care and recklessness that made me shudder The windows were tight closed to keep out the cold winter air and the condensed breath ran in streams down the panes chequering the dreary outlook of chimneytops and smoke The conductor handed me over to one of the men
Here Crossthwaite take this younker and make a tailor of him Keep him next you and prick him up with your needle if he shirks
He disappeared down the trapdoor and mechanically as if in a dream I sat down by the man and listened to his instructions kindly enough bestowed But I did not remain in peace two minutes A burst of chatter rose as the foreman vanished and a tall bloated sharpnosed young man next me bawled in my ear—
I say youngun fork out the tin and pay your footing at Conscrumption
Hospital
What do you mean
Aint he just green—Down with the stumpy—a tizzy for a pot of halfandhalf
I never drink beer
Then never do whispered the man at my side as sure as hells hell its your only chance
There was a fierce deep earnestness in the tone which made me look up at the speaker but the other instantly chimed in—
Oh yer dont dont yer my young Father Mathy then yerll soon learn it here if yer want to keep yer victuals down
And I have promised to take my wages home to my mother
Oh criminy hark to that my coves heres a chap as is going to take the blunt home to his mammy
Taint much of it the oldunll see said another Ven yer pockets it at the Cock and Bottle my kiddy yer wont find much of it left o Sunday mornings
Dont his mother know hes out asked another and wont she know it—
Ven hes sitting in his glory
Halfprice at the Victory
Oh no ve never mentions her—her name is never heard Certainly not by no means Why should it
Well if yer wont stand a pot quoth the tall man I will thats all and blow temperance A short life and a merry one says the tailor—
The ministers talk a great deal about port
And they makes Cape wine very dear
But blow their his if ever they tries
To deprive a poor cove of his beer
Here Sam run to the Cock and Bottle for a pot of halfandhalf to my score
A thin pale lad jumped up and vanished while my tormentor turned to me
I say youngun do you know why were nearer heaven here than our neighbours
I shouldnt have thought so answered I with a naïveté which raised a laugh and dashed the tall man for a moment
Yer dont then Ill tell yer A cause were a top of the house in the first place and next place yerll die here six months sooner nor if yer worked in the room below Aint that logic and science Orator appealing to Crossthwaite
Why asked I
A cause you get all the other floors stinks up here as well as your own Concentrated essence of mans flesh is this here as youre a breathing Cellar workroom we calls Rheumatic Ward because of the damp Groundfloors Fever Ward—them as dont get typhus gets dysentery and them as dont get dysentery gets typhus—your nosed tell yer why if you opened the back windy First floors Ashmy Ward—dont you hear um now through the cracks in the boards a puffing away like a nest of young locomotives And this here most august and uppercrust cockloft is the Conscrumptive Hospital First you begins to cough then you proceeds to expectorate—spittoons as you see perwided free gracious for nothing—fined a kivarten if you spits on the floor—
Then your cheeks they grows red and your nose it grows thin
And your bones they stick out till they comes through your skin
and then when youve sufficiently covered the poor dear shivering bare backs of the hairystocracy—
Die die die
Away you fly
Your soul is in the sky
as the hinspired Shakspeare wittily remarks
And the ribald lay down on his back stretched himself out and pretended to die in a fit of coughing which last was alas no counterfeit while poor I shocked and bewildered let my tears fall fast upon my knees
Fine him a pot roared one for talking about kicking the bucket Hes a nice young man to keep a coves spirits up and talk about a short life and a merry one Here comes the heavy Hand it here to take the taste of that fellows talk out of my mouth
Well my youngun recommenced my tormentor and how do you like your company
Leave the boy alone growled Crossthwaite dont you see hes crying
Is that anything good to eat Give me some on it if it is—itll save me washing my face And he took hold of my hair and pulled my head back
Ill tell you what Jemmy Downes said Crossthwaite in a voice which made him draw back if you dont drop that Ill give you such a taste of my tongue as shall turn you blue
Youd better try it on then Do—only just now—if you please
Be quiet you fool said another Youre a pretty fellow to chaff the orator Hell slang you up the chimney afore you can get your shoes on
Fine him a kivarten for quarrelling cried another and the bully subsided into a minutes silence after a sotto voce—Blow temperance and blow all Chartists say I and then delivered himself of his feelings in a doggerel song
Some folks leads coves a dance
With their pledge of temperance
And their plans for donkey sociation
And their pockets full they crams
By their patriotic flams
And then swears tis for the good of the nation
But I dont care two inions
For political opinions
While I can stand my heavy and my quartern
For to drown dull care within
In baccy beer and gin
Is the prime of a workingtailors fortin
Theres common sense for yer now hand the pot here
I recollect nothing more of that day except that I bent myself to my work with assiduity enough to earn praises from Crossthwaite It was to be done and I did it The only virtue I ever possessed if virtue it be is the power of absorbing my whole heart and mind in the pursuit of the moment however dull or trivial if there be good reason why it should be pursued at all
I owe too an apology to my readers for introducing all this ribaldry God knows it is as little to my taste as it can be to theirs but the thing exists and those who live if not by yet still besides such a state of things ought to know what the men are like to whose labour ay lifeblood they own their luxuries They are their brothers keepers let them deny it as they will Thank God many are finding that out and the morals of the working tailors as well as of other classes of artisans are rapidly improving a change which has been brought about partly by the wisdom and kindness of a few master tailors who have built workshops fit for human beings and have resolutely stood out against the iniquitous and destructive alterations in the system of employment Among them I may and will whether they like it or not make honourable mention of Mr Willis of St Jamess Street and Mr Stultz of Bond Street
But ninetenths of the improvement has been owing not to the masters but to the men themselves and who among them my aristocratic readers do you think have been the great preachers and practisers of temperance thrift charity selfrespect and education Who—shriek not in your Belgravian saloons—the Chartists the communist Chartists upon whom you and your venal press heap every kind of cowardly execration and ribald slander You have found out many things since Peterloo add that fact to the number
It may seem strange that I did not tell my mother into what a pandemonium I had fallen and got her to deliver me but a delicacy which was not all evil kept me back I shrank from seeming to dislike to earn my daily bread and still more from seeming to object to what she had appointed for me Her will had been always law it seemed a deadly sin to dispute it I took for granted too that she knew what the place was like and that therefore it must be right for me And when I came home at night and got back to my beloved missionary stories I gathered materials enough to occupy my thoughts during the next days work and make me blind and deaf to all the evil around me My mother poor dear creature would have denounced my daydreams sternly enough had she known of their existence but were they not holy angels from heaven guardians sent by that Father whom I had been taught not to believe in to shield my senses from pollution
I was ashamed too to mention to my mother the wickedness which I saw and heard With the delicacy of an innocent boy I almost imputed the very witnessing of it as a sin to myself and soon I began to be ashamed of more than the mere sitting by and hearing I found myself gradually learning slanginsolence laughing at coarse jokes taking part in angry conversations my moral tone was gradually becoming lower but yet the habit of prayer remained and every night at my bedside when I prayed to be converted and made a child of God I prayed that the same mercy might be extended to my fellowworkmen if they belonged to the number of the elect Those prayers may have been answered in a wider and deeper sense than I then thought of
But altogether I felt myself in a most distracted rudderless state My mothers advice I felt daily less and less inclined to ask A gulf was opening between us we were moving in two different worlds and she saw it and imputed it to me as a sin and was the more cold to me by day and prayed for me as I knew afterwards the more passionately while I slept But help or teacher I had none I knew not that I had a Father in heaven How could He be my Father till I was converted I was a child of the Devil they told me and now and then I felt inclined to take them at their word and behave like one No sympathizing face looked on me out of the wide heaven—off the wide earth none I was all boiling with new hopes new temptations new passions new sorrows and I looked to the right hand and to the left and no man cared for my soul
I had felt myself from the first strangely drawn towards Crossthwaite carefully as he seemed to avoid me except to give me business directions in the workroom He alone had shown me any kindness and he too alone was untainted with the sin around him Silent moody and preoccupied he was yet the king of the room His opinion was always asked and listened to His eye always cowed the ribald and the blasphemer his songs when he rarely broke out into merriment were always rapturously applauded Men hated and yet respected him I shrank from him at first when I heard him called a Chartist for my dim notions of that class were that they were a very wicked set of people who wanted to kill all the soldiers and policemen and respectable people and rob all the shops of their contents But Chartist or none Crossthwaite fascinated me I often found myself neglecting my work to study his face I liked him too because he was as I was—small pale and weakly He might have been fiveandtwenty but his looks like those of too many a working man were rather those of a man of forty Wild grey eyes gleamed out from under huge knitted brows and a perpendicular wall of brain too large for his puny body He was not only I soon discovered a waterdrinker but a strict vegetarian also to which perhaps he owed a great deal of the almost preternatural clearness volubility and sensitiveness of his mind But whether from his ascetic habits or the unhealthiness of his trade the marks of illhealth were upon him and his sallow cheek and everworking lip proclaimed too surely—
The fiery soul which working out its way
Fretted the pigmy body to decay
And oer informed the tenement of clay
I longed to open my heart to him Instinctively I felt that he was a kindred spirit Often turning round suddenly in the workroom I caught him watching me with an expression which seemed to say Poor boy and art thou too one of us Hast thou too to fight with poverty and guidelessness and the cravings of an unsatisfied intellect as I have done But when I tried to speak to him earnestly his manner was peremptory and repellent It was well for me that so it was—well for me I see now that it was not from him my mind received the first lessons in selfdevelopment For guides did come to me in good time though not such perhaps as either my mother or my readers would have chosen for me
My great desire now was to get knowledge By getting that I fancied as most selfeducated men are apt to do 1 should surely get wisdom Books I thought would tell me all I needed But where to get the books And which I had exhausted our small stock at home I was sick and tired without knowing why of their narrow conventional view of everything After all I had been reading them all along not for their doctrines but for their facts and knew not where to find more except in forbidden paths I dare not ask my mother for books for I dare not confess to her that religious ones were just what I did not want and all history poetry science I had been accustomed to hear spoken of as carnal learning human philosophy more or less diabolic and ruinous to the soul So as usually happens in this life—By the law was the knowledge of sin—and unnatural restrictions on the development of the human spirit only associated with guilt of conscience what ought to have been an innocent and necessary blessing
My poor mother not singular in her mistake had sent me forth out of an unconscious paradise into the evil world without allowing me even the sad strength which comes from eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil she expected in me the innocence of the dove as if that was possible on such an earth as this without the wisdom of the serpent to support it She forbade me strictly to stop and look into the windows of print shops and I strictly obeyed her But she forbade me too to read any book which I had not first shown her and that restriction reasonable enough in the abstract, practically meant in the case of a poor boy like myself reading no books at all And then came my first act of disobedience the parent of many more Bitterly have I repented it and bitterly been punished Yet strange contradiction I dare not wish it undone But such is the great law of life Punished for our sins we surely are and yet how often they become our blessings teaching us that which nothing else can teach us Nothing else One says so Rich parents I suppose say so when they send their sons to public schools to learn life We working men have too often no other teacher than our own errors But surely surely the rich ought to have been able to discover some mode of education in which knowledge may be acquired without the price of conscience Yet they have not and we must not complain of them for not giving such a one to the working man when they have not yet even given it to their own children
In a street through which I used to walk homeward was an old book shop piled and fringed outside and in with books of every age size and colour And here I at last summoned courage to stop and timidly and stealthily taking out some volume whose title attracted me snatch hastily a few pages and hasten on half fearful of being called on to purchase half ashamed of a desire which I fancied every one else considered as unlawful as my mother did Sometimes I was lucky enough to find the same volume several days running and to take up the subject where I had left it off and thus I contrived to hurry through a great deal of Childe Harold Lara and the Corsair—a new world of wonders to me They fed those poems both my health and my diseases while they gave me little of them as I could understand a thousand new notions about scenery and man a sense of poetic melody and luxuriance as yet utterly unknown They chimed in with all my discontent my melancholy my thirst after any life of action and excitement however frivolous insane or even worse I forgot the Corsairs sinful trade in his free and daring life rather I honestly eliminated the bad element—in which God knows I took no delight—and kept the good one However that might be the innocent—guilty pleasure grew on me day by day Innocent because human—guilty because disobedient But have I not paid the penalty
One evening however I fell accidentally on a new book—The Life and Poems of J Bethune I opened the story of his life—became interested absorbed—and there I stood I know not how long on the greasy pavement heedless of the passers who thrust me right and left reading by the flaring gaslight that sad history of labour sorrow and death—How the Highland cotter in spite of disease penury starvation itself, and the daily struggle to earn his bread by digging and ditching educated himself—how he toiled unceasingly with his hands—how he wrote his poems in secret on dirty scraps of paper and old leaves of books—how thus he wore himself out manful and godly bating not a jot of heart or hope till the weak flesh would bear no more and the noble spirit unrecognized by the lord of the soil returned to God who gave it I seemed to see in his history a sad presage of my own If he stronger more selfrestrained more righteous far than ever I could be had died thus unknown unassisted in the stern battle with social disadvantages what must be my lot
And tears of sympathy rather than of selfish fear fell fast upon the book
A harsh voice from the inner darkness of the shop startled me
Hoot laddie yell better no spoil my books wi greeting ower them
I replaced the book hastily and was hurrying on but the same voice called me back in a more kindly tone
Stop a wee my laddie Im no angered wi ye Come in and well just ha a bit crack thegither
I went in for there was a geniality in the tone to which I was unaccustomed and something whispered to me the hope of an adventure as indeed it proved to be if an event deserves that name which decided the course of my whole destiny
What war ye greeting about then What was the book
Bethunes Life and Poems sir I said And certainly they did affect me very much
Affect ye Ah Johnnie Bethune puir fellow Ye maunna take on about sic like laddies or yell greet your een out o your head Its mony a braw man beside Johnnie Bethune has gane JohnnieBethunes gate
Though unaccustomed to the Scotch accent I could make out enough of this speech to be in nowise consoled by it But the old man turned the conversation by asking me abruptly my name and trade and family
Hum hum widow eh puir body work at Smiths shop eh Yell ken John Crossthwaite then ay hum hum an yere desirous o reading books vara weel—lets see your cawpabilities
And he pulled me into the dim light of the little back window shoved back his spectacles and peering at me from underneath them began to my great astonishment to feel my head all over
Hum hum a vara gude forehead—vara gude indeed Causative organs large perceptive ditto Imagination superabundant—mun be heeded Benevolence conscientiousness ditto ditto Caution—no that large—might be developed with a quiet chuckle under a gude Scots education Just turn your head into profile laddie Hum hum Back o the head athegither defective Firmness sma—love of approbation unco big Beware o leeing as ye live yell need it Philoprogenitiveness gude Yell be fond o bairns Im guessing
Of what
Children laddie—children
Very answered I in utter dismay at what seemed to me a magical process for getting at all my secret failings
Hum hum Amative and combative organs sma—a general want o healthy animalism as my freen Mr Deville wad say And ye want to read books
I confessed my desire without alas confessing that my mother had forbidden it
Vara weel then books Ill lend ye after Ive had a crack wi Crossthwaite aboot ye gin I find his opinion o ye satisfactory Come to me the day after tomorrow An mind here are my rules—a damage done to a book to be paid for or na mair books lent yell mind to take no books without leave specially yell mind no to read in bed o nights—industrious folks ought to be sleeping betimes an Id no be a party to burning puir weans in their beds and lastly yell observe not to read mair than five books at once
I assured him that I thought such a thing impossible but he smiled in his saturnine way and said—
Well see this day fortnight Now then Ive observed ye for a month past over that aristocratic Byrons poems And Im willing to teach the young idea how to shoot—but no to shoot itself so yell just leave alane that vinegary souldestroying trash and Ill lend ye gin I hear a gude report of ye The Paradise Lost o John Milton—a gran classic model and for the doctrine ot its just aboot as gude as yell hear elsewhere the noo So gang your gate and tell John Crossthwaite privately auld Sandy Mackaye wad like to see him the morns night
I went home in wonder and delight Books books books I should have my fill of them at last And when I said my prayers at night I thanked God for this unexpected boon and then remembered that my mother had forbidden it That thought checked the thanks but not the pleasure Oh parents are there not real sins enough in the world already without your defiling it over and above by inventing new ones
CHAPTER III
SANDY MACKAYE
That day fortnight came—and the old Scotchmans words came true Four books of his I had already and I came in to borrow a fifth whereon he began with a solemn chuckle
Eh laddie laddie Ive been treating ye as the grocers do their new prentices They first gie the boys three days free warren among the figs and the sugarcandy and they get scunnered wi sweets after that Noo then my lad yeve just been reading four books in three days—and heres a fifth Yell no open this again
Oh I cried piteously enough just let me finish what I am reading Im in the middle of such a wonderful account of the Hornitos of Jurullo
Hornets or wasps a swarm o them yere like to have at this rate and a very bad substitute yell find them for the Attic bee Now tak tent Im no in the habit of speaking without deliberation for it saves a man a great deal of trouble in changing his mind If ye canna traduce to me a page o Virgil by this day three months ye read no more o my books Desultory reading is the bane o lads Ye maun begin with selfrestraint and method my man gin ye intend to gie yoursel a liberal education So Ill just mak you a present of an auld Latin grammar and ye maun begin where your betters ha begun before you
But who will teach me Latin
Hoot man wholl teach a man anything except himsel Its only gentlefolks and puir aristocrat bodies that go to be spoilt wi tutors and pedagogues cramming and loading them wi knowledge as yed load a gun to shoot it all out again just as it went down in a college examination and forget all aboot it after
Ah I sighed if I could have gone to college
What for then My father was a Hieland farmer and yet he was a weel learned man and Sandy my lad he used to say a man kens just as much as hes taught himsel and na mair So get wisdom and wi all your getting get understanding And so I did And monys the Greek exercise Ive written in the cowbyres And monys the page o Virgil too Ive turned into good Dawric Scotch to ane thats dead and gane poor hizzie sitting under the same plaid with the sheep feeding round us up among the hills looking out ower the broad blue sea and the wee haven wi the fishing cobles—
There was a long solemn pause I cannot tell why but I loved the man from that moment and I thought too that he began to love me Those few words seemed a proof of confidence perhaps all the deeper because accidental and unconscious
I took the Virgil which he lent me with Hamiltons literal translation between the lines and an old tattered Latin grammar I felt myself quite a learned man—actually the possessor of a Latin book I regarded as something almost miraculous the opening of this new field for my ambition Not that I was consciously much less selfishly ambitious I had no idea as yet to be anything but a tailor to the end to make clothes—perhaps in a less infernal atmosphere—but still to make clothes and live thereby I did not suspect that I possessed powers above the mass My intense longing after knowledge had been to me like a girls first love—a thing to be concealed from every eye—to be looked at askance even by myself delicious as it was with holy shame and trembling And thus it was not cowardice merely but natural modesty which put me on a hundred plans of concealing my studies from my mother and even from my sister
I slept in a little leanto garret at the back of the house some ten feet long by six wide I could just stand upright against the inner wall while the roof on the other side ran down to the floor There was no fireplace in it or any means of ventilation No wonder I coughed all night accordingly and woke about two every morning with choking throat and aching head My mother often said that the room was too small for a Christian to sleep in but where could she get a better
Such was my only study I could not use it as such however at night without discovery for my mother carefully looked in every evening to see that my candle was out But when my kind cough woke me I rose and creeping like a mouse about the room—for my mother and sister slept in the next chamber and every sound was audible through the narrow partition—I drew my darling books out from under a board of the floor one end of which I had gradually loosened at odd minutes and with them a rushlight earned by running on messages or by taking bits of work home and finishing them for my fellows
No wonder that with this scanty rest and this complicated exertion of hands eyes and brain followed by the long dreary days work of the shop my health began to fail my eyes grew weaker and weaker my cough became more acute my appetite failed me daily My mother noticed the change and questioned me about it affectionately enough But I durst not alas tell the truth It was not one offence but the arrears of months of disobedience which I should have had to confess and so arose infinite false excuses and petty prevarications which embittered and clogged still more my already overtasked spirit About my own ailments—formidable as I believed they were—I never had a moments anxiety The expectation of early death was as unnatural to me as it is I suspect to almost all I die Had I not hopes plans desires infinite Could I die while they were unfulfilled Even now I do not believe I shall die yet I will not believe it—but let that pass
Yes let that pass Perhaps I have lived long enough—longer than many a greyheaded man
There is a race of mortals who become
Old in their youth and die ere middle age
And might not those days of mine then have counted as months—those days when before starting forth to walk two miles to the shop at six oclock in the morning I sat some three or four hours shivering on my bed putting myself into cramped and painful postures not daring even to cough lest my mother should fancy me unwell and come in to see me poor dear soul—my eyes aching over the page my feet wrapped up in the bedclothes to keep them from the miserable pain of the cold longing watching dawn after dawn for the kind summer mornings when I should need no candlelight Look at the picture awhile ye comfortable folks who take down from your shelves what books you like best at the moment and then lie back amid prints and statuettes to grow wise in an easychair with a blazing fire and a camphine lamp The lower classes uneducated Perhaps you would be so too if learning cost you the privation which it costs some of them
But this concealment could not last My only wonder is that I continued to get whole months of undiscovered study One morning about four oclock as might have been expected my mother heard me stirring came in and found me sitting crosslegged on my bed stitching away indeed with all my might but with a Virgil open before me
She glanced at the book clutched it with one hand and my arm with the other and sternly asked
Where did you get this heathen stuff
A lie rose to my lips but I had been so gradually entangled in the loathed meshes of a system of concealment and consequent prevarication that I felt as if one direct falsehood would ruin for ever my fastfailing selfrespect and I told her the whole truth She took the book and left the room It was Saturday morning and I spent two miserable days for she never spoke a word to me till the two ministers had made their appearance and drank their tea on Sunday evening then at last she opened
And now Mr Wigginton what account have you of this Mr Mackaye who has seduced my unhappy boy from the paths of obedience
I am sorry to say madam answered the dark man with a solemn snuffle that he proves to be a most objectionable and altogether unregenerate character He is as I am informed neither more nor less than a Chartist and an open blasphemer
He is not I interrupted angrily He has told me more about God and given me better advice than any human being except my mother
Ah madam so thinks the unconverted heart ignorant that the god of the Deist is not the God of the Bible—a consuming fire to all but His beloved elect the god of the Deist unhappy youth is a mere selfinvented allindulgent phantom—a willothewisp deluding the unwary as he has deluded you into the slough of carnal reason and shameful profligacy
Do you mean to call me a profligate I retorted fiercely for my blood was up and I felt I was fighting for all which I prized in the world if you do you lie Ask my mother when I ever disobeyed her before I have never touched a drop of anything stronger than water I have slaved overhours to pay for my own candle I have—I have no sins to accuse myself of and neither you nor any person know of any Do you call me a profligate because I wish to educate myself and rise in life
Ah groaned my poor mother to herself still unconvinced of sin
The old Adam my dear madam you see—standing as he always does on his own filthy rags of works while all the imaginations of his heart are only evil continually Listen to me poor sinner—
I will not listen to you I cried the accumulated disgust of years bursting out once and for all for I hate and despise you eating my poor mother here out of house and home You are one of those who creep into widows houses and for pretence make long prayers You sir I will hear I went on turning to the dear old man who had sat by shaking his white locks with a sad and puzzled air for I love you
My dear sister Locke he began I really think sometimes—that is ahem—with your leave brother—I am almost disposed—but I should wish to defer to your superior zeal—yet at the same time perhaps the desire for information however carnal in itself, may be an instrument in the Lords hands—you know what I mean I always thought him a gracious youth madam didnt you And perhaps—I only observe it in passing—the Lords people among the dissenting connexions are apt to undervalue human learning as a means—of course I mean only as a means It is not generally known I believe that our reverend Puritan patriarchs Howe and Baxter Owen and many more were not altogether unacquainted with heathen authors nay that they may have been called absolutely learned men And some of our leading ministers are inclined—no doubt they will be led rightly in so important a matter—to follow the example of the Independents in educating their young ministers and turning Satans weapons of heathen mythology against himself as St Paul is said to have done My dear boy what books have you now got by you of Mr Mackayes
Miltons Poems and a Latin Virgil
Ah groaned the dark man will poetry will Latin save an immortal soul
Ill tell you what sir you say yourself that it depends on Gods absolute counsel whether I am saved or not So if I am elect I shall be saved whatever I do and if I am not I shall be damned whatever I do and in the mean time you had better mind your own business and let me do the best I can for this life as the next is all settled for me
This flippant but after all not unreasonable speech seemed to silence the man and I took the opportunity of running upstairs and bringing down my Milton The old man was speaking as I reentered
And you know my dear madam Mr Milton was a true converted man and a
Puritan
He was Oliver Cromwells secretary I added
Did he teach you to disobey your mother asked my mother
I did not answer and the old man after turning over a few leaves as if he knew the book well looked up
I think madam you might let the youth keep these books if he will promise as I am sure he will to see no more of Mr Mackaye
I was ready to burst out crying but I made up my mind and answered
I must see him once again or he will think me so ungrateful He is the best friend that I ever had except you mother Besides I do not know if he will lend me any after this
My mother looked at the old minister and then gave a sullen assent
Promise me only to see him once—but I cannot trust you You have deceived me once Alton and you may again
I shall not I shall not I answered proudly You do not know me—and I spoke true
You do not know yourself my poor dear foolish child she replied—and that was true too
And now dear friends said the dark man let us join in offering up a few words of special intercession
We all knelt down and I soon discovered that by the special intercession was meant a string of bitter and groundless slanders against poor me twisted into the form of a prayer for my conversion if it were Gods will To which I responded with a closing Amen for which I was sorry afterwards when I recollected that it was said in merely insolent mockery But the little faith I had was breaking up fast—not altogether surely by my own fault Footnote The portraits of the minister and the missionary are surely exceptions to their class rather than the average The Baptists have had their Andrew Fuller and Robert Hall and among missionaries Dr Carey and noble spirits in plenty But such men as those who excited Alton Lockes disgust are to be met with in every sect in the Church of England and in the Church of Rome And it is a real and fearful scandal to the young to see such men listened to as Gods messengers in spite of their utter want of any manhood or virtue simply because they are orthodox each according to the shibboleths of his hearers and possess that vulpine discretion of dulness whose miraculous might Dean Swift sets forth in his Essay on the Fates of Clergymen Such men do exist and prosper and as long as they are allowed to do so Alton Lockes will meet them and be scandalized by them—ED
At all events from that day I was emancipated from modern Puritanism The ministers both avoided all serious conversation with me and my mother did the same while with a strength of mind rare among women she never alluded to the scene of that Sunday evening It was a rule with her never to recur to what was once done and settled What was to be might be prayed over But it was to be endured in silence yet wider and wider ever from that time opened the gulf between us
I went trembling the next afternoon to Mackaye and told my story He first scolded me severely for disobeying my mother He that begins o that gate laddie ends by disobeying God and his ain conscience Gin yere to be a scholar God will make you one—and if not yell no mak yoursel ane in spite o Him and His commandments And then he filled his pipe and chuckled away in silence at last he exploded in a horselaugh
So ye gied the ministers a bit o yer mind The deils amang the tailors in gude earnest as the sang says Theres Johnnie Crossthwaite kicked the Papist priest out o his house yestreen Puir ministers its ill times wi them They gang about keckling and screighing after the working men like a hen thats hatched ducklings when she sees them tak the water Little Dunkelds coming to London sune Im thinking
Hech sic a parish a parish a parish
Hech sic a parish as little Dunkeld
They hae stickit the minister hanged the precentor
Dung down the steeple and drucken the bell
But may I keep the books a little while Mr Mackaye
Keep them till ye die gin ye will What is the worth o them to me What is the worth o anything to me puir auld deevil that ha no half a dizen years to live at the furthest God bless ye my bairn gang hame and mind your mither or its little gude booksll do ye
CHAPTER IV
TAILORS AND SOLDIERS
I was now thrown again utterly on my own resources I read and reread Miltons Poems and Virgils Æneid for six more months at every spare moment thus spending over them I suppose all in all far more time than most gentlemen have done I found too in the last volume of Milton a few of his select prose works the Areopagitica the Defence of the English People and one or two more in which I gradually began to take an interest and little of them as I could comprehend I was awed by their tremendous depth and power as well as excited by the utterly new trains of thought into which they led me Terrible was the amount of bodily fatigue which I had to undergo in reading at every spare moment while walking to and fro from my work while sitting up often from midnight till dawn stitching away to pay for the tallowcandle which I burnt till I had to resort to all sorts of uncomfortable contrivances for keeping myself awake even at the expense of bodily pain—Heaven forbid that I should weary my readers by describing them Young men of the upper classes to whom study—pursue it as intensely as you will—is but the business of the day and every spare moment relaxation little you guess the frightful drudgery undergone by a man of the people who has vowed to educate himself—to live at once two lives each as severe as the whole of yours—to bring to the self-imposed toil of intellectual improvement a body and brain already worn out by a day of toilsome manual labour I did it God forbid though that I should take credit to myself for it Hundreds more have done it with still fewer advantages than mine Hundreds more an everincreasing army of martyrs are doing it at this moment of some of them too perhaps you may hear hereafter
I had read through Milton as I said again and again I had got out of him all that my youth and my unregulated mind enabled me to get I had devoured too not without profit a large old edition of Foxs Martyrs which the venerable minister lent me and now I was hungering again for fresh food and again at a loss where to find it
I was hungering too for more than information—for a friend Since my intercourse with Sandy Mackaye had been stopped six months had passed without my once opening my lips to any human being upon the subjects with which my mind was haunted day and night I wanted to know more about poetry history politics philosophy—all things in heaven and earth But above all I wanted a faithful and sympathizing ear into which to pour all my doubts discontents and aspirations My sister Susan who was one year younger than myself was growing into a slender pretty hectic girl of sixteen But she was altogether a devout Puritan She had just gone through the process of conviction of sin and conversion and being looked upon at the chapel as an especially gracious professor was either unable or unwilling to think or speak on any subject except on those to which I felt a growing distaste She had shrunk from me too very much since my ferocious attack that Sunday evening on the dark minister who was her special favourite I remarked it and it was a fresh cause of unhappiness and perplexity
At last I made up my mind come what would to force myself upon Crossthwaite He was the only man whom I knew who seemed able to help me and his very reserve had invested him with a mystery which served to heighten my imagination of his powers I waylaid him one day coming out of the workroom to go home and plunged at once desperately into the matter
Mr Crossthwaite I want to speak to you I want to ask you to advise me
I have known that a long time
Then why did you never say a kind word to me
Because I was waiting to see whether you were worth saying a kind word to It was but the other day remember you were a bit of a boy Now I think I may trust you with a thing or two Besides I wanted to see whether you trusted me enough to ask me Now youve broke the ice at last in with you head and ears and see what you can fish out
I am very unhappy—
Thats no new disorder that I know of
No but I think the reason I am unhappy is a strange one at least I never read of but one person else in the same way I want to educate myself and I cant
You must have read precious little then if you think yourself in a strange way Bless the boys heart And what the dickens do you want to be educating yourself for pray
This was said in a tone of goodhumoured banter which gave me courage He offered to walk homewards with me and as I shambled along by his side I told him all my story and all my griefs
I never shall forget that walk Every house tree turning which we passed that day on our way is indissolubly connected in my mind with some strange new thought which arose in me just at each spot and recurs so are the mind and the senses connected as surely as I repass it
I had been telling him about Sandy Mackaye He confessed to an acquaintance with him but in a reserved and mysterious way which only heightened my curiosity
We were going through the Horse Guards and I could not help lingering to look with wistful admiration on the huge mustachoed warmachines who sauntered about the courtyard
A tall and handsome officer blazing in scarlet and gold cantered in on a superb horse and dismounting threw the reins to a dragoon as grand and gaudy as himself Did I envy him Well—I was but seventeen And there is something noble to the mind, as well as to the eye in the great strong man who can fight—a completeness a self-restraint a terrible sleeping power in him As Mr Carlyle says A soldier after all is—one of the few remaining realities of the age All other professions almost promise one thing and perform—alas what But this man promises to fight and does it and if he be told will veritably take out a long sword and kill me
So thought my companion though the mood in which he viewed the fact was somewhat different from my own
Come on he said peevishly clutching me by the arm what do you want dawdling Are you a nurserymaid that you must stare at those redcoated butchers And a deep curse followed
What harm have they done you
I should think I owed them turn enough
What
They cut my father down at Sheffield—perhaps with the very swords he helped to make—because he would not sit still and starve and see us starving around him while those who fattened on the sweat of his brow and on those lungs of his which the swordgrinding dust was eating out day by day were wantoning on venison and champagne Thats the harm theyve done me my chap
Poor fellows—they only did as they were ordered I suppose
And what business have they to let themselves be ordered What right I say—what right has any free reasonable soul on earth to sell himself for a shilling a day to murder any man right or wrong—even his own brother or his own father—just because such a whiskered profligate jackanapes as that officer without learning without any god except his own lookingglass and his operadancer—a fellow who just because he is born a gentleman is set to command greyheaded men before he can command his own meanest passions Good heavens that the lives of free men should be entrusted to such a stuffed cockatoo and that free men should be such traitors to their country traitors to their own flesh and blood as to sell themselves for a shilling a day and the smirks of the nurserymaids to do that fellows bidding
What are you agrumbling here about my man—gotten the cholera asked one of the dragoons a huge stupidlooking lad
About you you young longlegged cutthroat answered Crossthwaite and all your crew of traitors
Help help coomrades o mine quoth the dragoon bursting with laughter
Im gaun be moorthered wi a little booy thats gane mad and toorned
Chartist
I dragged Crossthwaite off for what was jest to the soldiers I saw by his face was fierce enough earnest to him We walked on a little in silence
Now I said that was a goodnatured fellow enough though he was a soldier You and he might have cracked many a joke together if you did but understand each other—and he was a countryman of yours too
I may crack something else besides jokes with him some day answered he moodily
Pon my word you must take care how you do it He is as big as four of us
That vile aristocrat the old Italian poet—whats his name—Ariosto—ay—he knew which quarter the wind was making for when he said that firearms would be the end of all your old knights and gentlemen in armour that hewed down unarmed innocents as if they had been sheep Gunpowder is your true leveller—dash physical strength A boys a man with a musket in his hand my chap
God forbid I said that I should ever be made a man of in that way or you either I do not think we are quite big enough to make fighters and if we were what have we got to fight about
Big enough to make fighters said he half to himself or strong enough perhaps—or clever enough—and yet Alexander was a little man and the Petit Caporal and Nelson and Cæsar too and so was Saul of Tarsus and weakly he was into the bargain Æsop was a dwarf and so was Attila Shakspeare was lame Alfred a rickety weakling Byron clubfooted—so much for body versus spirit—brute force versus genius—genius
I looked at him his eyes glared like two balls of fire Suddenly he turned to me
Locke my boy Ive made an ass of myself and got into a rage and broken a good old resolution of mine and a promise that I made to my dear little woman—bless her and said things to you that you ought to know nothing of for this long time but those redcoats always put me beside myself God forgive me And he held out his hand to me cordially
I can quite understand your feeling deeply on one point I said as I took it after the sad story you told me but why so bitter on all What is there so very wrong about things that we must begin fighting about it
Bless your heart poor innocent What is wrong—what is not wrong Wasnt there enough in that talk with Mackaye that you told me of just now to show anybody that who can tell a hawk from a handsaw
Was it wrong in him to give himself such trouble about the education of a poor young fellow who has no tie on him who can never repay him
No thats just like him He feels for the people for he has been one of us He worked in a printingoffice himself many a year and he knows the heart of the working man But he didnt tell you the whole truth about education He darent tell you No one who has money dare speak out his heart not that he has much certainly but the cunning old Scot that he is he lives by the present system of things and he wont speak ill of the bridge which carries him over—till the time comes
I could not understand whither all this tended and walked on silent and somewhat angry at hearing the least slight cast on Mackaye
Dont you see stupid he broke out at last What did he say to you about gentlemen being crammed by tutors and professors Have not you as good a right to them as any gentleman
But he told me they were no use—that every man must educate himself
Oh all very fine to tell you the grapes are sour when you cant reach them Bah lad Cant you see what comes of education—that any dolt provided he be a gentleman can be doctored up at school and college enough to make him play his part decently—his mighty part of ruling us and riding over our heads and picking our pockets as parson doctor lawyer member of parliament—while we—you now for instance—cleverer than ninetynine gentlemen out of a hundred if you had onetenth the trouble taken with you that is taken with every pigheaded son of an aristocrat—
Am I clever asked I in honest surprise
What havent you found that out yet Dont try to put that on me Dont a girl know when shes pretty without asking her neighbours
Really I never thought about it
More simpleton you Old Mackaye has at all events though canny Scotchman that he is hell never say a word to you about it yet he makes no secret of it to other people I heard him the other day telling some of our friends that you were a thorough young genius
I blushed scarlet between pleasure and a new feeling was it ambition
Why havnt you a right to aspire to a college education as any donothing canon there at the abbey lad
I dont know that I have a right to anything
What not become what Nature intended you to become What has she given you brains for but to be educated and used Oh I heard a fine lecture upon that at our club the other night There was a man there—a gentleman too but a thoroughgoing peoples man I can tell you Mr OFlynn What an orator that man is to be sure The Irish Æschines I hear they call him in Conciliation Hall Isnt he the man to pitch into the Mammonites Gentlemen and ladies says he how long will a diabolic society—no an effete society it was—how long will an effete emasculate and effeminate society in the diabolic selfishness of its eclecticism refuse to acknowledge what my immortal countryman Burke calls the Dei voluntatem in rebus revelatam—the revelation of Nature's will in the phenomena of matter? The cerebration of each is the prophetic sacrament of the yet undeveloped possibilities of his mentation The form of the brain alone and not the possession of the vile gauds of wealth and rank constitute mans only right to education—to the glories of art and science Those beaming eyes and roseate lips beneath me proclaim a bevy of undeveloped Aspasias of embryo Cleopatras destined by Nature and only restrained by mans injustice from ruling the world by their beautys eloquence Those massive and beetling brows gleaming with the lambent flames of patriotic ardour—what is needed to unfold them into a race of Shakspeares and of Gracchi ready to proclaim with sword and lyre the divine harmonies of liberty equality and fraternity before a quailing universe
It sounds very grand replied I meekly and I should like very much certainly to have a good education But I cant see whose injustice keeps me out of one if I cant afford to pay for it
Whose Why the parsons to be sure Theyve got the monopoly of education in England and they get their bread by it at their public schools and universities and of course its their interest to keep up the price of their commodity and let no man have a taste of it who cant pay down handsomely And so those aristocrats of college dons go on rolling in riches and fellowships and scholarships that were bequeathed by the peoples friends in old times just to educate poor scholars like you and me and give us our rights as free men
But I thought the clergy were doing so much to educate the poor At least I hear all the dissenting ministers grumbling at their continual interference
Ay educating them to make them slaves and bigots They dont teach them what they teach their own sons Look at the miserable smattering of general information—just enough to serve as sauce for their great first and last lesson of Obey the powers that be—whatever they be leave us alone in our comforts and starve patiently do like good boys for its Gods will And then if a boy does show talent in school do they help him up in life Not they when he has just learnt enough to whet his appetite for more they turn him adrift again to sink and drudge—to do his duty as they call it in that state of life to which society and the devil have called him
But there are innumerable stories of great Englishmen who have risen from the lowest ranks
Ay but where are the stories of those who have not risen—of all the noble geniuses who have ended in desperation drunkenness starvation suicide because no one would take the trouble of lifting them up and enabling them to walk in the path which Nature had marked out for them Dead men tell no tales and this old whited sepulchre society aint going to turn informer against itself
I trust and hope I said sadly that if God intends me to rise He will open the way for me perhaps the very struggles and sorrows of a poor genius may teach him more than ever wealth and prosperity could
True Alton my boy and thats my only comfort It does make men of us this bitter battle of life We working men when we do come out of the furnace come out not tinsel and papier mache like those fops of redtape statesmen but steel and granite Alton my boy—that has been seven times tried in the fire and woe to the papier mache gentleman that runs against us But he went on sadly for one who comes safe through the furnace there are a hundred who crack in the burning You are a young bear my lad with all your sorrows before you and youll find that a working mans training is like the Red Indian childrens The few who are strong enough to stand it grow up warriors but all those who are not fireandwaterproof by nature—just die Alton my lad and the tribe thinks itself well rid of them
So that conversation ended But it had implanted in my bosom a new seed of mingled good and evil which was destined to bear fruit precious perhaps as well as bitter God knows it has hung on the tree long enough Sour and harsh from the first it has been many a year in ripening But the sweetness of the apple the potency of the grape as the chemists tell us are born out of acidity—a developed sourness Will it be so with my thoughts Dare I assert as I sit writing here with the wild waters slipping past the cabin windows backwards and backwards ever every plunge of the vessel one forward leap from the old world—wornout world I had almost called it of sham civilization and real penury—dare I hope ever to return and triumph Shall I after all lay my bones among my own people and hear the voices of freemen whisper in my dying ears
Silence dreaming heart Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof—and the good thereof also Would that I had known that before Above all that I had known it on that night when first the burning thought arose in my heart that I was unjustly used that society had not given me my rights It came to me as a revelation celestialinfernal full of glorious hopes of the possible future in store for me through the perfect development of all my faculties and full too of fierce present rage wounded vanity bitter grudgings against those more favoured than myself which grew in time almost to cursing against the God who had made me a poor untutored working man and seemed to have given me genius only to keep me in a Tantalus hell of unsatisfied thirst
Ay respectable gentlemen and ladies I will confess all to you—you shall have if you enjoy it a fresh opportunity for indulging that supreme pleasure which the press daily affords you of insulting the classes whose powers most of you know as little as you do their sufferings Yes the Chartist poet is vain conceited ambitious uneducated shallow inexperienced envious ferocious scurrilous seditious traitorous—Is your charitable vocabulary exhausted Then ask yourselves how often have you yourself honestly resisted and conquered the temptation to any one of these sins when it has come across you just once in a way and not as they came to me as they come to thousands of the working men daily and hourly till their torments do by length of time become their elements What are we covetous too Yes And if those who have like you still covet more what wonder if those who have nothing covet something Profligate too Well though that imputation as a generality is utterly calumnious though your amount of respectable animal enjoyment per annum is a hundred times as great as that of the most selfindulgent artizan yet if you had ever felt what it is to want not only every luxury of the senses, but even bread to eat you would think more mercifully of the man who makes up by rare excesses and those only of the limited kinds possible to him for long intervals of dull privation and says in his madness Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die We have our sins and you have yours Ours may be the more gross and barbaric but yours are none the less damnable perhaps all the more so for being the sleek subtle respectable religious sins they are You are frantic enough if our part of the press calls you hard names but you cannot see that your part of the press repays it back to us with interest We see those insults and feel them bitterly enough and do not forget them alas soon enough while they pass unheeded by your delicate eyes as trivial truisms Horrible unprincipled villanous seditious frantic blasphemous are epithets of course when applied to—to how large a portion of the English people you will some day discover to your astonishment When will that come and how In thunder and storm and garments rolled in blood Or like the dew on the mown grass and the clear shining of the sunlight after April rain
Yes it was true Society had not given me my rights And woe unto the man on whom that idea true or false rises lurid filling all his thoughts with stifling glare as of the pit itself Be it true be it false it is equally a woe to believe it to have to live on a negation to have to worship for our only idea as hundreds of thousands of us have this day the hatred of the things which are. Ay though one of us here and there may die in faith in sight of the promised land yet is it not hard when looking from the top of Pisgah into the good time coming to watch the years slipping away one by one and death crawling nearer and nearer and the people wearying themselves in the fire for very vanity and Jordan not yet passed the promised land not yet entered While our little children die around us like lambs beneath the knife of cholera and typhus and consumption and all the diseases which the good time can and will prevent which as science has proved and you the rich confess might be prevented at once if you dared to bring in one bold and comprehensive measure and not sacrifice yearly the lives of thousands to the idol of vested interests and a majority in the House Is it not hard to men who smart beneath such things to help crying aloud—Thou cursed MolochMammon take my life if thou wilt let me die in the wilderness for I have deserved it but these little ones in mines and factories in typhuscellars and Tooting pandemoniums what have they done If not in their fathers cause yet still in theirs were it so great a sin to die upon a barricade
Or after all my working brothers is it true of our promised land even as of that Jewish one of old that the priests feet must first cross the mystic stream into the good land and large which God has prepared for us
Is it so indeed Then in the name of the Lord of Hosts ye priests of His why will ye not awake and arise and go over Jordan that the people of the Lord may follow you
CHAPTER V
THE SCEPTICS MOTHER
My readers will perceive from what I have detailed that I was not likely to get any positive ground of comfort from Crossthwaite and from within myself there was daily less and less hope of any Daily the struggle became more intolerable between my duty to my mother and my duty to myself—that inward thirst for mental selfimprovement which without any clear consciousness of its sanctity or inspiration I felt and could not help feeling that I must follow No doubt it was very selfwilled and ambitious of me to do that which rich mens sons are flogged for not doing and rewarded with all manner of prizes scholarships fellowships for doing But the nineteenth year is a time of life at which selfwill is apt to exhibit itself in other people besides tailors and those religious persons who think it no sin to drive their sons on through classics and mathematics in hopes of gaining them a station in life ought not to be very hard upon me for driving myself on through the same path without any such selfish hope of gain—though perhaps the very fact of my having no wish or expectation of such advantage will constitute in their eyes my sin and folly and prove that I was following the dictates merely of a carnal lust and not of a proper worldly prudence I really do not wish to be flippant or sneering I have seen the evil of it as much as any man in myself and in my own class But there are excuses for such a fault in the working man It does sour and madden him to be called presumptuous and ambitious for the very same aspirations which are lauded up to the skies in the sons of the rich—unless indeed he will do one little thing and so make his peace with society If he will desert his own class if he will try to become a sham gentleman a parasite and if he can a Mammonite the world will compliment him on his noble desire to rise in life He will have won his spurs and be admitted into that exclusive pale of knighthood beyond which it is a sin to carry arms even in selfdefence But if the working genius dares to be true to his own class—to stay among them—to regenerate them—to defend them—to devote his talents to those among whom God placed him and brought him up—then he is the demagogue the incendiary the fanatic the dreamer So you would have the monopoly of talent too exclusive worldlings And yet you pretend to believe in the miracle of Pentecost and the religion that was taught by the carpenters Son and preached across the world by fishermen
I was several times minded to argue the question out with my mother and assert for myself the same independence of soul which I was now earning for my body by my wages Once I had resolved to speak to her that very evening but strangely enough happening to open the Bible which alas I did seldom at that time my eye fell upon the chapter where Jesus after having justified to His parents His absence in the Temple while hearing the doctors and asking them questions yet went down with them to Nazareth after all and was subject unto them The story struck me vividly as a symbol of my own duties But on reading further I found more than one passage which seemed to me to convey a directly opposite lesson where His mother and His brethren fancying Him mad attempted to interfere with His labours and asserting their family rights as reasons for retaining Him met with a peremptory rebuff I puzzled my head for some time to find out which of the two cases was the more applicable to my state of self-development The notion of asking for teaching from on high on such a point had never crossed me Indeed if it had I did not believe sufficiently either in the story or in the doctrines connected with it to have tried such a resource And so as may be supposed my growing selfconceit decided for me that the latter course was the fitting one
And yet I had not energy to carry it out I was getting so worn out in body and mind from continual study and labour stinted food and want of sleep that I could not face the thought of an explosion such as I knew must ensue and I lingered on in the same unhappy state becoming more and more morose in manner to my mother while I was as assiduous as ever in all filial duties But I had no pleasure in home She seldom spoke to me Indeed there was no common topic about which we could speak Besides ever since that fatal Sunday evening I saw that she suspected me and watched me I had good reason to believe that she set spies upon my conduct Poor dear mother God forbid that I should accuse thee for a single care of thine for a single suspicion even prompted as they all were by a mothers anxious love I would never have committed these things to paper hadst thou not been far beyond the reach or hearing of them and only now in hopes that they may serve as a warning in some degree to mothers but ten times more to children For I sinned against thee deeply and shamefully in thought and deed while thou didst never sin against me though all thy caution did but hasten the fatal explosion which came and perhaps must have come under some form or other in any case
I had been detained one night in the shop till late and on my return my mother demanded in a severe tone the reason of my stay and on my telling her answered as severely that she did not believe me that she had too much reason to suspect that I had been with bad companions
Who dared to put such a thought into your head
She would not give up her authorities but she had too much reason to believe them
Again I demanded the name of my slanderer and was refused it And then I burst out for the first time in my life into a real fit of rage with her I cannot tell how I dared to say what I did but I was weak nervous irritable—my brain excited beyond all natural tension Above all I felt that she was unjust to me and my good conscience as well as my pride rebelled
You have never trusted me I cried you have watched me—
Did you not deceive me once already
And if I did I answered more and more excited have I not slaved for you stinted myself of clothes to pay your rent Have I not run to and fro for you like a slave while I knew all the time you did not respect me or trust me If you had only treated me as a child and an idiot I could have borne it But you have been thinking of me all the while as an incarnate fiend—dead in trespasses and sins—a child of wrath and the devil What right have you to be astonished if I should do my fathers works
You may be ignorant of vital religion she answered and you may insult me But if you make a mock of Gods Word you leave my house If you can laugh at religion you can deceive me
The pentup scepticism of years burst forth
Mother I said dont talk to me about religion and election and conversion and all that—I dont believe one word of it Nobody does except good kind people—like you alas I was going to say but the devil stopped the words at my lips—who must needs have some reason to account for their goodness That Bowyer—hes a soft heart by nature and as he is so he does—religion has had nothing to do with that any more than it has with that blackfaced canting scoundrel who has been telling you lies about me Much his heart is changed He carries sneak and slanderer written in his face—and sneak and slanderer he will be elect or none Religion Nobody believes in it The rich dont or they wouldnt fill their churches up with pews and shut the poor out all the time they are calling them brothers They believe the gospel Then why do they leave the men who make their clothes to starve in such hells on earth as our workroom No more do the tradespeople believe in it or they wouldnt go home from sermon to sand the sugar and put sloeleaves in the tea and send out lying puffs of their vampedup goods and grind the last farthing out of the poor creatures who rent their wretched stinking houses And as for the workmen—they laugh at it all I can tell you Much good religion is doing for them You may see its fit only for women and children—for go where you will church or chapel you see hardly anything but bonnets and babies I dont believe a word of it—once and for all Im old enough to think for myself and a freethinker I will be and believe nothing but what I know and understand
I had hardly spoken the words when I would have given worlds to recall them—but it was to be—and it was
Sternly she looked at me full in the face till my eyes dropped before her gaze Then she spoke steadily and slowly
Leave this house this moment You are no son of mine henceforward Do you think I will have my daughter polluted by the company of an infidel and a blasphemer
I will go I answered fiercely I can get my own living at all events And before I had time to think I had rushed upstairs packed up my bundle not forgetting the precious books and was on my way through the frosty echoing streets under the cold glare of the winters moon
I had gone perhaps half a mile when the thought of home rushed over me—the little room where I had spent my life—the scene of all my childish joys and sorrows—which I should never see again for I felt that my departure was for ever Then I longed to see my mother once again—not to speak to her—for I was at once too proud and too cowardly to do that—but to have a look at her through the window One look—for all the while though I was boiling over with rage and indignation I felt that it was all on the surface—that in the depths of our hearts I loved her and she loved me And yet I wished to be angry wished to hate her Strange contradiction of the flesh and spirit
Hastily and silently I retraced my steps to the house The gate was padlocked I cautiously stole over the palings to the window—the shutter was closed and fast I longed to knock—I lifted my hand to the door and dare not indeed I knew that it was useless in my dread of my mothers habit of stern determination That room—that mother I never saw again I turned away sickened at heart I was clambering back again looking behind me towards the window when I felt a strong grip on my collar and turning round had a policemans lantern flashed in my face
Hullo youngun and what do you want here with a strong emphasis after the fashion of policemen on all his pronouns
Hush or youll alarm my mother
Oh eh Forgot the latchkey you sucking Don Juan thats it is it Late home from the Victory
I told him simply how the case stood and entreated him to get me a nights lodging assuring him that my mother would not admit me or I ask to be admitted
The policeman seemed puzzled but after scratching his hat in lieu of his head for some seconds replied
This here is the dodge—you goes outside and lies down on the kerbstone whereby I spies you asleeping in the streets contrary to Act o Parliament whereby it is my duty to take you to the stationhouse whereby you gets a nights lodging free gracious for nothing and company perwided by her Majesty
Oh not to the stationhouse I cried in shame and terror
Werry well then you must keep moving all night continually whereby you avoids the hact or else you goes to a twopennyrope shop and gets a lie down And your bundle youd best leave at my house Twopennyrope society ant particular Im going off my beat you walk home with me and leave your traps Everybody knows me—Costello V 21 thats my number
So on I went with the kindhearted man who preached solemnly to me all the way on the fifth commandment But I heard very little of it for before I had proceeded a quarter of a mile a deadly faintness and dizziness came over me I staggered and fell against the railings
And have you been drinking arter all
I never—a drop in my life—nothing but breadandwater this fortnight
And it was true I had been paying for my own food and had stinted myself to such an extent that between starvation want of sleep and overexertion I was worn to a shadow and the last drop had filled the cup the evenings scene and its consequences had been too much for me and in the middle of an attempt to explain matters to the policeman I dropped on the pavement bruising my face heavily
He picked me up put me under one arm and my bundle under the other and was proceeding on his march when three men came rollicking up
Hullo Poleax—Costello—Whats that Work for us A demp unpleasant body
Oh Mr Bromley sir Hope youre well sir Werry rum go this here sir I finds this cove in the streets He says his mother turned him out o doors He seems very fair spoken and very bad in hes head and very bad in hes chest and very bad in hes legs he does And I cant come to no conclusions respecting my conduct in this here case nohow
Memorialize the Health of Towns Commission suggested one
Bleed him in the great toe said the second
Put a blister on the back of his left eyeball said a third
Case of male asterisks observed the first Rj Aquæ pumpis puræ quantum suff Applicatur exterò pro re natâ J Bromley MD and dont he wish he may get through—
Tip us your daddle my boy said the second speaker Ill tell you what
Bromley this fellows very bad Hes got no more pulse than the
Pimlico sewer Run in into the next potus Here—you lay hold of him
Bromley—that last round with the cabman nearly put my humerus out
The huge burly peajacketed medical student—for such I saw at once he was—laid hold of me on the right tenderly enough and walked me off between him and the policeman
I fell again into a faintness from which I was awakened by being shoved through the foldingdoors of a ginshop into a glare of light and hubbub of blackguardism and placed on a settle while my conductor called out—
Pots round Mary and a go of brandy hot with for the patient Here youngun toss it off itll make your hair grow
I feebly answered that I never had drunk anything stronger than water
High time to begin then no wonder youre so ill Well if you wont
Ill make you—
And taking my head under his arm he seized me by the nose while another poured the liquor down my throat—and certainly it revived me at once
A drunken drab pulled another drunken drab off the settle to make room for the poor young man and I sat there with a confused notion that something strange and dreadful had happened to me while the party drained their respective quarts of porter and talked over the last boatrace with the Leander
Now then genlmen said the policeman if you think hes recovered well take him home to his mother she ought for to take him in surely
Yes if she has as much heart in her as a dried walnut
But I resisted stoutly though I longed to vindicate my mothers affection yet I could not face her I entreated to be taken to the stationhouse threatened in my desperation to break the bar glasses which like Doll Tearsheets abuse only elicited from the policeman a solemn Very well and under the unwonted excitement of the brandy struggled so fiercely and talked so incoherently that the medical students interfered
We shall have this fellow in phrenitis or laryngitis or dothenenteritis or some other itis before long if hes aggravated
And whichever it is itll kill him He has no more stamina left than a yard of pump water
I should consider him chargeable to the parish suggested the barkeeper
Exactually so my Solomon of licensed victuallers Get a workhouse order for him Costello
And I should consider also sir said the licensed victualler with increased importance having been a guardian myself and knowing the hact as the parish couldnt refuse because theyre in power to recover all hexpenses out of his mother
To be sure its all the unnatural old witchs fault
No it is not said I faintly
Wait till your opinions asked youngun Go kick up the authorities policeman
Now Ill just tell you how thatll work gemmen answered the policeman solemnly I goes to the overseer—werry good sort o man—but hes in bed I knocks for half an hour He puts his nightcap out o windy and sends me to the relievingofficer Werry good sort o man he too but hes in bed I knocks for another halfhour He puts his nightcap out o windy—sends me to the medical officer for a certificate Medical officers gone to a midwifery case I hunts him for an hour or so Hes got hold of a babby with three heads or summat else and two more women acalling out for him like blazes Hell come tomorrow morning Now I just axes your opinion of that there most procrastinationest go
The big student having cursed the parochial authorities in general offered to pay for my nights lodging at the publichouse The good man of the house demurred at first but relented on being reminded of the value of a medical students custom whereon without more ado two of the rough diamonds took me between them carried me upstairs undressed me and put me to bed as tenderly as if they had been women
Hell have the tantrums before morning Im afraid said one
Very likely to turn to typhus said the other
Well I suppose—its a horrid bore but
What must be must man is but dust
If you cant get crumb you must just eat crust
Send me up a go of hot with and Ill sit up with him till hes asleep dead or better
Well then Ill stay too we may just as well make a night of it here as well as anywhere else
And he pulled a short black pipe out of his pocket and sat down to meditate with his feet on the hobs of the empty grate the other man went down for the liquor while I between the brandy and exhaustion fell fast asleep and never stirred till I woke the next morning with a racking headache and saw the big student standing by my bedside having as I afterwards heard sat by me till four in the morning
Hallo youngun come to your senses Headache eh Slightly comatocrapulose Well give you some soda and salvolatile and Ill pay for your breakfast
And so he did and when he was joined by his companions on their way to St Georges they were very anxious having heard my story to force a few shillings on me for luck which I need not say I peremptorily refused assuring them that I could and would get my own living and never take a farthing from any man
Thats a plucky dog though hes a tailor I heard them say as after overwhelming them with thanks and vowing amid shouts of laughter to repay them every farthing I had cost them I took my way sick and stunned towards my dear old Sandy Mackayes street
Rough diamonds indeed I have never met you again but I have not forgotten you Your early life may be a coarse too often a profligate one—but you know the people and the people know you and your tenderness and care bestowed without hope of repayment cheers daily many a poor soul in hospital wards and fevercellars—to meet its reward some day at the peoples hands You belong to us at heart as the Paris barricades can tell Alas for the society which stifles in afterlife too many of your better feelings by making you mere flunkeys and parasites dependent for your livelihood on the caprices and luxuries of the rich
CHAPTER VI
THE DULWICH GALLERY
Sandy Mackaye received me in a characteristic way—growled at me for half an hour for quarrelling with my mother and when I was at my wits end suddenly offered me a bed in his house and the use of his little sittingroom—and bliss too great to hope of his books also and when I talked of payment told me to hold my tongue and mind my own business So I settled myself at once and that very evening he installed himself as my private tutor took down a Latin book and set me to work on it
An mind ye laddie said he half in jest and half in earnest gin I find ye playing truant and reading a sorts o nonsense instead of minding the scholastic methods and proprieties Ill just bring ye in a bill at the years end o twa guineas a week for lodgings and tuition and tak the law o ye so mind and read what I tell ye Do you comprehend noo
I did comprehend and obeyed him determining to repay him some day—and somehow—how I did not very clearly see Thus I put myself more or less into the old mans power foolishly enough the wise world will say But I had no suspicion in my character and I could not look at those keen grey eyes when after staring into vacancy during some long preachment they suddenly flashed round at me and through me full of fun and quaint thought and kindly earnestness and fancy that man less honest than his face seemed to proclaim him
Bytheby I have as yet given no description of the old eccentrics abode—an unpardonable omission I suppose in these days of Dutch painting and Boz But the omission was correct both historically and artistically for I had as yet only gone to him for books books nothing but books and I had been blind to everything in his shop but that fairyland of shelves filled in my simple fancy with inexhaustible treasures wonderworking omnipotent as the magic seal of Solomon
It was not till I had been settled and at work for several nights in his sanctum behind the shop that I began to become conscious what a strange den that sanctum was
It was so dark that without a gaslight no one but he could see to read there except on very sunny days Not only were the shelves which covered every inch of wall crammed with books and pamphlets but the little window was blocked up with them the floor was piled with bundles of them in some places three feet deep apparently in the wildest confusion—though there was some mysterious order in them which he understood and symbolized I suppose by the various strange and ludicrous nicknames on their tickets—for he never was at fault a moment if a customer asked for a book though it were buried deep in the chaotic stratum Out of this book alluvium a hole seemed to have been dug near the fireplace just big enough to hold his armchair and a table bookstrewn like everything else and garnished with odds and ends of MSS and a snuffertray containing scraps of halfsmoked tobacco pipedottles as he called them which were carefully resmoked over and over again till nothing but ash was left His whole culinary utensils—for he cooked as well as eat in this strange hole—were an old rusty kettle which stood on one hob and a blue plate which when washed stood on the other A barrel of true Aberdeen meal peered out of a corner half buried in books and a keg o whusky the gift o freens peeped in like case out of another
This was his only food It was a poison he used to say in London Bread full o alum and bones and sic filth—meat overdriven till it was a braxy—water sopped wi dead mens juice Naething was safe but gude Scots parrich and Athol brose He carried his waterhorror so far as to walk some quarter of a mile every morning to fill his kettle at a favourite pump Was he a cannibal to drink out o that pump hardby right under the kirkyard But it was little he either ate or drank—he seemed to live upon tobacco From four in the morning till twelve at night the pipe never left his lips except when he went into the outer shop It promoted meditation and drove awa the lusts o the flesh Ech it was worthy o that auld tyrant Jamie to write his counterblast to the poor mans freen The hypocrite to gang preaching the virtues o evilsavoured smoke ad dæmones abigendos—and then rail again tobacco as if it was no as gude for the purpose as auld rags and horn shavings
Sandy Mackaye had a great fancy for political caricatures rows of which there being no room for them on the walls hung on strings from the ceiling—like clothes hung out to dry—and among them dangled various books to which he had taken an antipathy principally High Tory and Benthamite crucified impaled through their covers and suspended in all sorts of torturing attitudes Among them right over the table figured a copy of Icon Basilike dressed up in a paper shirt all drawn over with figures of flames and devils and surmounted by a peaked paper cap like a victim at an autodafé And in the midst of all this chaos grinned from the chimneypiece among pipes and pens pinches of salt and scraps of butter a tall cast of Michael Angelos wellknown skinless model—his pristine white defaced by a cap of soot upon the top of his scalpless skull and every muscle and tendon thrown into horrible relief by the dirt which had lodged among the cracks There it stood pointing with its ghastly arm towards the door and holding on its wrist a label with the following inscription—
Here stand I the working man
Get more off me if you can
I questioned Mackaye one evening about those hanged and crucified books and asked him if he ever sold any of them
Ou ay he said if folks are fools enough to ask for them Ill just answer a fool according to his folly
But I said Mr Mackaye do you think it right to sell books of the very opinions of which you disapprove so much
Hoot laddie its just a spoiling o the Egyptians so mind yer book and dinna tak in hand cases o conscience for ither folk Yell ha wark eneugh wi yer ain before yere dune
And he folded round his knees his Josephs coat as he called it an old dressinggown with one plaid sleeve and one blue one red shawlskirts and a black broadcloth back not to mention innumerable patches of every imaginable stuff and colour filled his pipe and buried his nose in Harringtons Oceana He read at least twelve hours every day of his life and that exclusively old history and politics though his favourite books were Thomas Carlyles works Two or three evenings in the week when he had seen me safe settled at my studies he used to disappear mysteriously for several hours and it was some time before I found out by a chance expression that he was attending some meeting or committee of workingmen I begged him to take me there with him But I was stopped by a laconic answer—
When yere ready
And when shall I be ready Mr Mackaye
Read yer book till I tell ye
And he twisted himself into his best coat which had once been black squeezed on his little Scotch cap and went out
I now found myself as the reader may suppose in an element far more congenial to my literary tastes and which compelled far less privation of sleep and food in order to find time and means for reading and my health began to mend from the very first day But the thought of my mother haunted me and Mackaye seemed in no hurry to let me escape from it for he insisted on my writing to her in a penitent strain informing her of my whereabouts and offering to return home if she should wish it With feelings strangely mingled between the desire of seeing her again and the dread of returning to the old drudgery of surveillance I sent the letter and waited the whole week without any answer At last one evening when I returned from work Sandy seemed in a state of unusual exhilaration He looked at me again and again winking and chuckling to himself in a way which showed me that his good spirits had something to do with my concerns but he did not open on the subject till I had settled to my evenings reading Then having brewed himself an unusually strong mug of whiskytoddy and brought out with great ceremony a clean pipe he commenced
Alton laddie Ive been fiechting Philistines for ye the day
Ah have you heard from my mother
I wadna say that exactly but theres been a gran bailie body wi me that calls himsel your uncle and a braw young callant a bairn o his Im thinking
Ah thats my cousin—George and tell me—do tell me what you said to them
Ou—thatll be mair concern o mine than o yourn But yere no going back to your mither
My heart leapt up with—joy there is no denying it—and then I burst into tears
And she wont see me Has she really cast me off
Why thatll be verra much as ye prosper Im thinking Yere an unaccreedited hero the noo as Thomas Carlyle has it But gin ye do weel by yoursel saith the Psalmist yell find a men speak well o ye—if ye gang their gate But yere to gang to see your uncle at his shop o Monday next at one oclock Now stint your greeting and read awa
On the next Monday I took a holiday the first in which I had ever indulged myself and having spent a good hour in scrubbing away at my best shoes and Sunday suit started in fear and trembling for my uncles establishment
I was agreeably surprised on being shown into the little back office at the back of the shop to meet with a tolerably gracious reception from the goodnatured Mammonite He did not shake hands with me it is true—was I not a poor relation But he told me to sit down commended me for the excellent character which he had of me both from my master and Mackaye and then entered on the subject of my literary tastes He heard I was a precious clever fellow No wonder I came of a clever stock his poor dear brother had plenty of brains for everything but business And you see my boy with a glance at the big ledgers and busy shop without I knew a thing or two in my time or I should not have been here But without capital I think brains a curse Still we must make the best of a bad matter and if you are inclined to help to raise the family name—not that I think much of book writers myself—poor starving devils half of them—but still people do talk about them—and a man might get a snug thing as newspaper editor with interest or clerk to something or other—always some new company in the wind now—and I should have no objection if you seemed likely to do us credit to speak a word for you Ive none of your mothers confounded puritanical notions I can tell you and whats more I have thank Heaven as fine a city connexion as any man But you must mind and make yourself a good accountant—learn double entry on the Italian method—thats a good practical study and if that old Sawney is soft enough to teach you other things gratis he may as well teach you that too Ill bet he knows something about it—the old Scotch fox There now—thatll do—theres five shillings for you—mind you dont lose them—and if I hear a good account of you why perhaps—but theres no use making promises
At this moment a tall handsome young man whom I did not at first recognize as my cousin George swung into the office and shook me cordially by the hand
Hullo Alton how are you Why I hear youre coming out as a regular genius—breaking out in a new place upon my honour Have you done with him governor
Well I think I have I wish youd have a talk with him my boy Im sorry
I cant see more of him but I have to meet a party on business at the
Westend at two and Alderman Tumbril and family dine with us this evening
dont they I think our small table will be full
Of course it will Come along with me and well have a chat in some quiet outoftheway place This city is really so noisy that you cant hear your own ears as our dean says in lecture
So he carried me off down back streets and alleys a little puzzled at the extreme cordiality of his manner Perhaps it sprung as I learned afterward to suspect from his consistent and perpetual habit of ingratiating himself with every one whom he approached He never cut a chimneysweep if he knew him And he found it pay The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light
Perhaps it sprung also as I began to suspect in the first hundred yards of our walk from the desire of showing off before me the university clothes manners and gossip which he had just brought back with him from Cambridge
I had not seen him more than three or four times in my life before and then he appeared to me merely a tall handsome conceited slangy boy But I now found him much improved—in all externals at least He had made it his business I knew to perfect himself in all athletic pursuits which were open to a Londoner As he told me that day—he found it pay when one got among gentlemen Thus he had gone up to Cambridge a capital skater rower pugilist—and billiard player Whether or not that last accomplishment ought to be classed in the list of athletic sports he contrived by his own account to keep it in that of paying ones In both these branches he seemed to have had plenty of opportunities of distinguishing himself at college and his tall powerful figure showed the fruit of these exercises in a stately and confident almost martial carriage Something jaunty perhaps swaggering remained still in his air and dress which yet sat not ungracefully on him but I could see that he had been mixing in society more polished and artificial than that to which we had either of us been accustomed and in his smart Rochester wellcut trousers and delicate French boots he excited I will not deny it my boyish admiration and envy
Well he said as soon as we were out of the shop which way Got a holiday And how did you intend to spend it
I wanted very much I said meekly to see the pictures at the National
Gallery
Oh ah pictures dont pay but if you like—much better ones at Dulwich—thats the place to go to—you can see the others any day—and at Dulwich you know theyve got—why let me see— And he ran over halfadozen outlandish names of painters which as I have never again met with them I am inclined on the whole to consider as somewhat extemporaneous creations However I agreed to go
Ah capital—very nice quiet walk and convenient for me—very little out of my way home Ill walk there with you
One word for your neighbour and two for yourself thought I but on we walked To see good pictures had been a long cherished hope of mine Everything beautiful in form or colour was beginning of late to have an intense fascination for me I had now that I was emancipated gradually dared to feed my greedy eyes by passing stares into the printshop windows and had learnt from them a thousand new notions new emotions new longings after beauties of Nature, which seemed destined never to be satisfied But pictures above all foreign ones had been in my mothers eyes Anathema Maranatha as vile Popish and Pagan vanities the rags of the scarlet woman no less than the surplice itself—and now when it came to the point I hesitated at an act of such awful disobedience even though unknown to her My cousin however laughed down my scruples told me I was out of leadingstrings now and which was true enough that it was a deal better to amuse oneself in picture galleries without leave than live a life of sneaking and lying under petticoat government as all homebirds were sure to do in the longrun And so I went on while my cousin kept up a running fire of chat the whole way intermixing shrewd bold observations upon every woman who passed with sneers at the fellows of the college to which we were going—their idleness and luxury—the large grammarschool which they were bound by their charter to keep up and did not—and hints about private interest in high quarters through which their wealthy uselessness had been politely overlooked when all similar institutions in the kingdom were subject to the searching examination of a government commission Then there were stories of boatraces and gay noblemen breakfast parties and lectures on Greek plays flavoured with a spice of Cambridge slang all equally new to me—glimpses into a world of wonders which made me feel as I shambled along at his side trying to keep step with his strides more weakly and awkward and ignorant than ever
We entered the gallery I was in a fever of expectation
The rich sombre light of the rooms the rich heavy warmth of the stoveheated air the brilliant and varied colouring and gilded frames which embroidered the walls the hushed earnestness of a few artists who were copying and the few visitors who were lounging from picture to picture struck me at once with mysterious awe But my attention was in a moment concentrated on one figure opposite to me at the furthest end I hurried straight towards it When I had got halfway up the gallery I looked round for my cousin He had turned aside to some picture of a Venus which caught my eye also but which I remember now only raised in me then a shudder and a blush and a fancy that the clergymen must be really as bad as my mother had taught me to believe if they could allow in their galleries pictures of undressed women I have learnt to view such things differently now thank God I have learnt that to the pure all things are pure I have learnt the meaning of that great saying—the foundation of all art as well as all modesty all love which tells us how the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed But this book is the history of my mental growth and my mistakes as well as my discoveries are steps in that development and may bear a lesson in them
How I have rambled But as that day was the turningpoint of my whole short life I may be excused for lingering upon every feature of it
Timidly but eagerly I went up to the picture and stood entranced before it It was Guidos St Sebastian All the world knows the picture and all the world knows too the defects of the master though in this instance he seems to have risen above himself by a sudden inspiration into that true naturalness which is the highest expression of the Spiritual But the very defects of the picture its exaggeration its theatricality were especially calculated to catch the eye of a boy awaking out of the narrow dulness of Puritanism The breadth and vastness of light and shade upon those manly limbs so grand and yet so delicate standing out against the background of lurid night the helplessness of the bound arms the arrow quivering in the shrinking side the upturned brow the eyes in whose dark depths enthusiastic faith seemed conquering agony and shame the parted lips which seemed to ask like those martyrs in the Revelations reproachful halfresigned O Lord how long—Gazing at that picture since I have understood how the idolatry of painted saints could arise in the minds even of the most educated who were not disciplined by that stern regard for fact which is—or ought to be—the strength of Englishmen I have understood the heart of that Italian girl whom some such picture of St Sebastian perhaps this very one excited as the Venus of Praxiteles the Grecian boy to hopeless love madness and death Then I had never heard of St Sebastian I did not dream of any connexion between that or indeed any picture and Christianity and yet as I stood before it I seemed to be face to face with the ghosts of my old Puritan forefathers to see the spirit which supported them on pillories and scaffolds—the spirit of that true St Margaret the Scottish maiden whom Claverhouse and his soldiers chained to a post on the seasands to die by inches in the rising tide till the sound of her hymns was slowly drowned in the dash of the hungry leaping waves My heart swelled within me my eyes seemed bursting from my head with the intensity of my gaze and great tears I knew not why rolled slowly down my face
A womans voice close to me gentle yet of deeper tone than most woke me from my trance
You seem to be deeply interested in that picture
I looked round yet not at the speaker My eyes before they could meet hers were caught by an apparition the most beautiful I had ever yet beheld And what—what—have I seen equal to her since Strange that I should love to talk of her Strange that I fret at myself now because I cannot set down on paper line by line and hue by hue that wonderful loveliness of which— But no matter Had I but such an imagination as Petrarch or rather perhaps had I his deliberate cold selfconsciousness what volumes of similes and conceits I might pour out connecting that peerless face and figure with all lovely things which heaven and earth contain As it is because I cannot say all I will say nothing but repeat to the end again and again Beautiful beautiful beautiful beyond all statue picture or poets dream Seventeen—slight but rounded a masque and features delicate and regular as if fresh from the chisel of Praxiteles—I must try to describe after all you see—a skin of alabaster privetflowers Horace and Ariosto would have said more true to Nature stained with the faintest flush auburn hair with that peculiar crisped wave seen in the old Italian pictures and the warm dark hazel eyes which so often accompany it lips like a thread of vermillion somewhat too thin perhaps—but I thought little of that then with such perfect finish and grace in every line and hue of her features and her dress down to the little fingers and nails which showed through her thin gloves that she seemed to my fancy fresh from the innermost chamber of some enchanted palace where no air of heaven could visit her cheek too roughly I dropped my eyes quite dazzled The question was repeated by a lady who stood with her whose face I remarked then—as I did to the last alas—too little dazzled at the first by outward beauty perhaps because so utterly unaccustomed to it
It is indeed a wonderful picture I said timidly May I ask what is the subject of it
Oh dont you know said the young beauty with a smile that thrilled through me It is St Sebastian
I—I am very much ashamed I answered colouring up but I do not know who St Sebastian was Was he a Popish saint
A tall stately old man who stood with the two ladies laughed kindly No not till they made him one against his will and at the same time by putting him into the mill which grinds old folks young again converted him from a grizzled old Roman tribune into the young Apollo of Popery
You will puzzle your hearer my dear uncle said the same deeptoned womans voice which had first spoken to me As you volunteered the saints name Lillian you shall also tell his history
Simply and shortly with just feeling enough to send through me a fresh thrill of delighted interest without trenching the least on the most stately reserve she told me the well known history of the saints martyrdom
If I seem minute in my description let those who read my story remember that such courteous dignity however natural I am bound to believe it is to them was to me an utterly new excellence in human nature All my mothers Spartan nobleness of manner seemed unexpectedly combined with all my little sisters careless ease
What a beautiful poem the story would make said I as soon as I recovered my thoughts
Well spoken young man answered the old gentleman Let us hope that your seeing a subject for a good poem will be the first step towards your writing one
As he spoke he bent on me two clear grey eyes full of kindliness mingled with practised discernment I saw that he was evidently a clergyman but what his tight silk stockings and peculiar hat denoted I did not know There was about him the air of a man accustomed equally to thought to men and to power And I remarked somewhat maliciously that my cousin who had strutted up towards us on seeing me talking to two ladies the instant he caught sight of those black silk stockings and that strange hat fell suddenly in countenance and sidling off somewhat meekly into the background became absorbed in the examination of a Holy Family
I answered something humbly I forget what which led to a conversation They questioned me as to my name my mother my business my studies while I revelled in the delight of stolen glances at my newfound Venus Victrix who was as forward as any of them in her questions and her interest Perhaps she enjoyed at least she could not help seeing the admiration for herself which I took no pains to conceal At last the old man cut the conversation short by a quiet Good morning sir which astonished me I had never heard words whose tone was so courteous and yet so chillingly peremptory As they turned away he repeated to himself once or twice as if to fix them in his mind my name and my masters and awoke in me perhaps too thoughtlessly a tumult of vain hopes Once and again the beauty and her companion looked back towards me and seemed talking of me and my face was burning scarlet when my cousin swung up in his hard offhand way
By Jove Alton my boy youre a knowing fellow I congratulate you At your years indeed to rise a dean and two beauties at the first throw and hook them fast
A dean I said in some trepidation
Ay a live dean—didnt you see the cloven foot sticking out from under his shoebuckle What news for your mother What will the ghosts of your grandfathers to the seventh generation say to this Alton Colloquing in Pagan picture galleries with shovelhatted Philistines And thats not the worst Alton he ran on Those daughters of Moab—those daughters of Moab—
Hold your tongue I said almost crying with vexation
Look there if you want to save your good temper There she is looking back again—not at poor me though What a lovely girl she is—and a real lady—lair noble—the real genuine grit as Sam Slick says and no mistake By Jove what a face what hands what feet what a figure—in spite of crinolines and all abominations And didnt she know it And didnt she know that you knew it too And he ran on descanting coarsely on beauties which I dared not even have profaned by naming in a way that made me I knew not why mad with jealousy and indignation She seemed mine alone in all the world What right had any other human being above all he to dare to mention her I turned again to my St Sebastian That movement only brought on me a fresh volley of banter
Oh thats the dodge is it to catch intellectual fine ladies—to fall into an ecstatic attitude before a picture—But then we must have Altons genius you know to find out which the fine pictures are I must read up that subject bytheby It might be a paying one among the dons For the present here goes in for an attitude Will this do Alton And he arranged himself admiringly before the picture in an attitude so absurd and yet so graceful that I did not know whether to laugh at him or hate him
At all events he added dryly it will be as good as playing the Evangelical at Caruss teaparties or taking the sacrament regularly for fear ones testimonials should be refused And then he looked at me and through me in his intense confident way to see that his hasty words had not injured him with me He used to meet ones eye as boldly as any man I ever saw but it was not the simple gaze of honesty and innocence but an imperious searching look as if defying scrutiny His was a true mesmeric eye if ever there was one No wonder it worked the miracles it did
Come along he said suddenly seizing my arm Dont you see theyre leaving Out of the gallery after them and get a good look at the carriage and the arms upon it I saw one standing there as we came in It may pay us—you that is—to know it again
We went out I holding him back I knew not why and arrived at the outer gate just in time to see them enter the carriage and drive off I gazed to the last but did not stir
Good boy he said knowing still If you had bowed or showed the least sign of recognition you would have broken the spell
But I hardly heard what he said and stood gazing stupidly after the carriage as it disappeared I did not know then what had happened to me I know now alas too well
CHAPTER VII
FIRST LOVE
Truly I said I did not know what had happened to me I did not attempt to analyse the intense overpowering instinct which from that moment made the lovely vision I had seen the lodestar of all my thoughts Even now I can see nothing in those feelings of mine but simple admiration—idolatry if you will—of physical beauty Doubtless there was more—doubtless—I had seen pretty faces before and knew that they were pretty but they had passed from my retina like the prints of beauties which I saw in the shop windows without exciting a thought—even a conscious emotion of complacency But this face did not pass away Day and night I saw it just as I had seen it in the gallery The same playful smile—the same glance alternately turned to me and the glowing picture above her head—and that was all I saw or felt No child ever nestled upon its mothers shoulder with feelings more celestially pure than those with which I counted over day and night each separate lineament of that exceeding loveliness Romantic extravagant Yes if the world be right in calling a passion romantic just in proportion as it is not merely hopeless but pure and unselfish drawing its delicious power from no hope or faintest desire of enjoyment but merely from simple delight in its object—then my passion was most romantic I never thought of disparity in rank Why should I That could not blind the eyes of my imagination She was beautiful and that was all and all in all to me and had our stations been exchanged and more than exchanged had I been King Cophetua or she the beggarmaid I should have gloried in her just as much
Beloved sleepless hours which I spent in picturing that scene to myself with all the brilliance of fresh recollection Beloved hours how soon you pass away Soon—soon my imagination began to fade the traces of her features on my minds eye became confused and dim and then came over me the fierce desire to see her again that I might renew the freshness of that charming image Thereon grew up an agony of longing—an agony of weeks and months and years Where could I find that face again was my ruling thought from morning till eve I knew that it was hopeless to look for her at the gallery where I had first seen her My only hope was that at some place of public resort at the West End I might catch if but for a moment an inspiring glance of that radiant countenance I lingered round the Burton Arch and Hyde Park Gate—but in vain I peered into every carriage every bonnet that passed me in the thoroughfares—in vain I stood patiently at the doors of exhibitions and concerts and playhouses to be shoved back by policemen and insulted by footmen—but in vain Then I tried the fashionable churches one by one and sat in the free seats to listen to prayers and sermons not a word of which alas I cared to understand with my eyes searching carefully every pew and gallery face by face always fancying in selftorturing waywardness that she might be just in the part of the gallery which I could not see Oh miserable days of hope deferred making the heart sick Miserable gnawing of disappointment with which I returned at nightfall to force myself down to my books Equally miserable rack of hope on which my nerves were stretched every morning when I rose counting the hours till my days work should be over and my mad search begin again At last my torment did by length of time become my element I returned steadily as ever to the studies which I had at first neglected much to Mackayes wonder and disgust and a vain hunt after that face became a part of my daily task to be got through with the same dull sullen effort with which all I did was now transacted
Mackaye I suppose at first attributed my absences and idleness to my having got into bad company But it was some weeks before he gently enough told me his suspicions and they were answered by a burst of tears and a passionate denial which set them at rest forever But I had not courage to tell him what was the matter with me A sacred modesty as well as a sense of the impossibility of explaining my emotions held me back I had a halfdread too to confess the whole truth of his ridiculing a fancy to say the least so utterly impracticable and my only confidant was a picture in the National Gallery in one of the faces of which I had discovered some likeness to my Venus and there I used to go and stand at spare half hours and feel the happier for staring and staring and whispering to the dead canvas the extravagances of my idolatry
But soon the bitter draught of disappointment began to breed harsher thoughts in me Those fine gentlemen who rode past me in the park who rolled by in carriages sitting face to face with ladies as richly dressed if not as beautiful as she was—they could see her when they liked—why not I What right had their eyes to a feast denied to mine They too who did not appreciate adore that beauty as I did—for who could worship her like me At least they had not suffered for her as I had done they had not stood in rain and frost fatigue and blank despair—watching—watching—month after month and I was making coats for them The very garment I was stitching at might in a days time be in her presence—touching her dress and its wearer bowing and smiling and whispering—he had not bought that bliss by watching in the ram It made me mad to think of it
I will say no more about it That is a period of my life on which I cannot even now look back without a shudder
At last after perhaps a year or more I summoned up courage to tell my story to Sandy Mackaye and burst out with complaints more pardonable perhaps than reasonable
Why have I not as good a right to speak to her to move in the same society in which she moves as any of the fops of the day Is it because these aristocrats are more intellectual than I I should not fear to measure brains against most of them now and give me the opportunities which they have and I would die if I did not outstrip them Why have I not those opportunities Is that fault of others to be visited on me Is it because they are more refined than I What right have they if this said refinement be so necessary a qualification a difference so deep—that without it there is to be an everlasting gulf between man and man—what right have they to refuse to let me share in it to give me the opportunity of acquiring it
Wad ye ha them set up a dancing academy for working men wi manners tocht here to the lower classes Theyll no break up their ain monopoly trust them for it Na if ye want to get amang them Ill tell ye the way ot Write a book o poems and ca it A Voice fra the Goose by a working Tailor—and then—why after a dizen years or so of starving and scribbling for your bread yell ha a chance o finding yoursel a lion and a flunkey and a licker o trenchers—ane that jokes for his dinner and sells his soul for a fine leddys smile—till ye presume to think theyre in earnest and fancy yoursel a man o the same blude as they and fa in love wi one o them—and then theyll teach you your level and send ye off to gauge whusky like Burns or leave ye to die in a ditch as they did wi puir Thom
Let me die anywhere or anyhow if I can but be near her—see her—
Married to anither body—and nursing anither bodys bairns Ah boy boy—do ye think that was what ye were made for to please yersel wi a womans smiles or een a womans kisses—or to please yersel at all How do ye expect ever to be happy or strong or a man at a as long as ye go on looking to enjoy yersel—yersel I ha tried it Mony was the year I looked for nought but my ain pleasure and got it too when it was a
Sandy Mackaye bonny Sandy Mackaye
There he sits singing the lang simmers day
Lassies gae to him
And kiss him and woo him—
Na bird is sa merry as Sandy Mackaye
An muckle good cam ot Ye may fancy Im talking like a sour disappointed auld carle But I tell ye nay Ive got thats worth living for though I am downhearted at times and fancy as wrong and theres na hope for us on earth we be a sic liars—a liars I think a universal liars—rock substrawtum as Mr Carlyle says Im a great liar often mysel especially when Im praying Do ye think Id live on here in this meeserable crankit auld banebarrel o a body if it was not for The Cause and for the puir young fellows that come in to me whiles to get some booklearning about the gran auld Roman times when folks didna care for themselves but for the nation and a man counted wife and bairns and money as dross and dung in comparison wi the great Roman city that was the mither o them a', and wad last on free and glorious after they and their bairns were a dead thegither Hoot man If I had na The Cause to care for and to work for whether I ever see it triumphant on earth or no—Id just tak the cauldwatercure off Waterloobridge and mak mysel a case for the Humane Society
And what is The Cause I asked
Wud I tell ye We want no readymade freens o The Cause I dinna hauld wi thae French indoctrinating pedants that took to stick free opinions into a man as yed stick pins into a pincushion to fa out again the first shake Na—The Cause must find a man and tak hauld o him willynilly and grow up in him like an inspiration till he can see nocht but in the light ot Puir bairn he went on looking with a halfsad halfcomic face at me—puir bairn—like a young bear wi a your sorrows before ye This time seven years yell ha no need to come speering and questioning what The Cause is and the Gran Cause and the Only Cause worth working for on the earth o God And noo gang your gate and mak fine feathers for foul birds Im gaun whar yell be ganging too before lang
As I went sadly out of the shop he called me back
Stay a wee bairn theres the Roman History for ye There yell read what
The Cause is and how they that seek their ain are no worthy thereof
I took the book and found in the legends of Brutus and Cocles and
Scævola and the retreat to the Mons Sacer and the Gladiators war what
The Cause was and forgot awhile in those tales of antique heroism and
patriotic selfsacrifice my own selfish longings and sorrows
But after all the very advice which was meant to cure me of those selfish longings only tended by diverting me from my living outward idol to turn my thoughts more than ever inward and tempt them to feed on their own substance I passed whole days on the workroom floor in brooding silence—my mind peopled with an incoherent rabble of phantasms patched up from every object of which I had ever read I could not control my daydreams they swept me away with them over sea and land and into the bowels of the earth My soul escaped on every side from my civilized dungeon of brick and mortar into the great free world from which my body was debarred Now I was the corsair in the pride of freedom on the dark blue sea Now I wandered in fairy caverns among the bones of primæval monsters I fought at the side of Leonidas and the Maccabee who stabbed the Sultans elephant and saw him crushed beneath its falling bulk Now I was a hunter in tropic forests—I heard the parrots scream and saw the humming birds flit on from gorgeous flower to flower Gradually I took a voluntary pleasure in calling up these images and working out their details into words with all the accuracy and care for which my small knowledge gave me materials And as the self-indulgent habit grew on me I began to live two lives—one mechanical and outward one inward and imaginative The thread passed through my fingers without my knowing it I did my work as a machine might do it The dingy stifling room the wan faces of my companions the scanty meals which I snatched I saw dimly as in a dream The tropics and Greece the imaginary battles which I fought the phantoms into whose mouths I put my thoughts were real and true to me They met me when I woke—they floated along beside me as I walked to work—they acted their fantastic dramas before me through the sleepless hours of night Gradually certain faces among them became familiar—certain personages grew into coherence as embodiments of those few types of character which had struck me the most and played an analogous part in every fresh fantasia Sandy Mackayes face figured incongruously enough as Leonidas Brutus a Pilgrim Father and gradually in spite of myself and the fear with which I looked on the recurrence of that dream Lillians figure reentered my fairyland I saved her from a hundred dangers I followed her through dragonguarded caverns and the corridors of magic castles I walked by her side through the forests of the Amazon…
And now I began to crave for some means of expressing these fancies to myself While they were mere thoughts parts of me they were unsatisfactory however delicious I longed to put them outside me that I might look at them and talk to them as permanent independent things First I tried to sketch them on the whitewashed walls of my garret on scraps of paper begged from Mackaye or picked up in the workroom But from my ignorance of any rules of drawing they were utterly devoid of beauty and only excited my disgust Besides I had thoughts as well as objects to express—thoughts strange sad wild about my own feelings my own destiny and drawing could not speak them for me
Then I turned instinctively to poetry with its rules I was getting rapidly conversant The mere desire of imitation urged me on and when I tried the grace of rhyme and metre covered a thousand defects I tell my story not as I saw it then but as I see it now A long and lonely voyage with its monotonous days and sleepless nights—its sickness and heartloneliness has given me opportunities for analysing my past history which were impossible then amid the ceaseless inrush of new images the ceaseless ferment of their recombination in which my life was passed from sixteen to twentyfive The poet I suppose must be a seer as long as he is a worker and a seer only He has no time to philosophize—to think about thinking as Goethe I have somewhere read says that he never could do It is too often only in sickness and prostration and sheer despair that the fierce veracity and swift digestion of his soul can cease and give him time to know himself and Gods dealings with him and for that reason it is good for him too to have been afflicted
I do not write all this to boast of it I am ready to bear sneers at my romance—my daydreams—my unpractical habits of mind for I know that I deserve them But such was the appointed growth of my uneducated mind no more unhealthy a growth if I am to believe books than that of many a carefully trained one Highborn geniuses they tell me have their idle visions as well as we workingmen and Oxford has seen of late years as wild Icarias conceived as ever were fathered by a red Republic For indeed we have the same flesh and blood the same God to teach us the same devil to mislead us whether we choose to believe it or not But there were excuses for me We Londoners are not accustomed from our youth to the poems of a great democratic genius as the Scotchmen are to their glorious Burns We have no chance of such an early acquaintance with poetic art as that which enabled John Bethune one of the great unrepresented—the starving Scotch daylabourer breaking stones upon the parish roads to write at the age of seventeen such words as these—
Hail hallowd evening sacred hour to me
Thy clouds of grey thy vocal melody
Thy dreamy silence oft to me have brought
A sweet exchange from toil to peaceful thought
Ye purple heavens how often has my eye
Wearied with its long gaze on drudgery
Lookd up and found refreshment in the hues
That gild thy vest with colouring profuse
O evening grey how oft have I admired
Thy airy tapestry whose radiance fired
The glowing minstrels of the olden time
Until their very souls flowd forth in rhyme
And I have listened till my spirit grew
Familiar with their deathless strains and drew
From the same source some portion of the glow
Which filld their spirits when from earth below
They scannd thy golden imagery And I
Have consecrated thee bright evening sky
My fount of inspiration and I fling
My spirit on thy clouds—an offering
To the great Deity of dying day
Who hath transfused oer thee his purple ray
After all our dreams do little harm to the rich Those who consider Chartism as synonymous with devilworship should bless and encourage them for the very reason for which we working men ought to dread them for quickened into prurient activity by the low novelmongering press they help to enervate and besot all but the noblest minds among us Here and there a Thomas Cooper sitting in Stafford gaol after a youth spent in cobbling shoes vents his treasures of classic and historic learning in a Purgatory of Suicides or a Prince becomes the poet of the poor no less for having fed his boyish fancy with The Arabian Nights and The Pilgrims Progress But with the most of us sedentary and monotonous occupations as has long been known create of themselves a morbidlymeditative and fantastic turn of mind And what else in Heavens name ye fine gentlemen—what else can a working man do with his imagination but dream What else will you let him do with it oh ye educationpedants who fancy that you can teach the masses as you would drill soldiers every soul alike though you will not bestir yourselves to do even that Are there no differences of rank—Gods rank not mans—among us You have discovered since your schoolboy days the fallacy of the old nomenclature which civilly classed us altogether as the snobs the blackguards which even—so strong is habit—tempted Burke himself to talk of us as the swinish multitude You are finding yourselves wrong there A few more years experience not in miseducating the poor but in watching the poor really educate themselves may teach you that we are not all by nature dolts and idiots that there are differences of brain among us just as great as there is between you and that there are those among us whose education ought not to end and will not end with the putting off of the parish cap and breeches whom it is cruelty as well as folly to toss back into the hell of mere manual drudgery as soon as you have—if indeed you have been even so bountiful as that—excited in them a new thirst of the intellect and imagination If you provide that craving with no wholesome food you at least have no right to blame it if it shall gorge itself with poison
Dare for once to do a strange thing and let yourself be laughed at go to a workmans meeting—a Chartist meeting if you will and look honestly at the faces and brows of those socalled incendiaries whom your venal caricaturists have taught you to believe a mixture of curdog and baboon—we for our part shall not be ashamed to show foreheads against your laughing House of Commons—and then say what employment can those men find in the soulless routine of mechanical labour for the mass of brain which they almost universally possess They must either dream or agitate perhaps they are now learning how to do both to some purpose
But I have found by sad experience that there is little use in declamation I had much better simply tell my story and leave my readers to judge of the facts if indeed they will be so far courteous as to believe them
CHAPTER VIII
LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE
So I made my first attempt at poetry—need I say that my subject was the beautiful Lillian And need I say too that I was as utterly disgusted at my attempt to express her in words as I had been at my trial with the pencil It chanced also that after hammering out half a dozen verses I met with Mr Tennysons poems and the unequalled sketches of women that I found there while they had with the rest of the book a new and abiding influence on my mind were quite enough to show me my own fatal incompetency in that line I threw my verses away never to resume them Perhaps I proved thereby the depth of my affection Our mightiest feelings are always those which remain most unspoken The most intense lovers and the greatest poets have generally I think written very little personal lovepoetry while they have shown in fictitious characters a knowledge of the passion too painfully intimate to be spoken of in the first person
But to escape from my own thoughts I could not help writing something and to escape from my own private sorrows writing on some matter with which I had no personal concern And so after much casting about for subjects Childe Harold and the old missionary records contrived to celebrate a spiritual wedding in my brain of which anomalous marriage came a proportionately anomalous offspring
My hero was not to be a pirate but a pious searover who with a crew of saints or at least uncommonly fine fellows who could be very manly and jolly and yet all be good Christians of a somewhat vague and latitudinarian cast of doctrine for my own was becoming rapidly so set forth under the redcross flag to colonize and convert one of my old paradises a South Sea Island
I forget most of the lines—they were probably great trash but I hugged them to my bosom as a young mother does her first child
Twas sunset in the lone Pacific world
The rich gleams fading in the western sky
Within the still Lagoon the sails were furled
The redcross flag alone was flaunting high
Before them was the low and palmfringed shore
Behind the outer oceans baffled roar
After which valiant plunge in medias res came a great lump of deception after the manner of youths—of the island and the whitehouses and the banana groves and above all the single volcano towering over the whole which
Shaking a sinful isle with thundering shocks
Reproved the worshippers of stones and stocks
Then how a line of foam appears on the Lagoon which is supposed at first to be a shoal of fish but turns out to be a troop of naked island beauties swimming out to the ship The decent missionaries were certainly guiltless of putting that into my head whether they ever saw it or not—a great many things happening in the South Seas of which they find it convenient to say nothing I think I picked it up from Wallis or Cook or some other plain spoken voyager
The crew gaze in pardonable admiration but the hero in a long speech reproves them for their lightmindedness reminds them of their sacred mission and informs them that
The soldiers of the cross should turn their eyes
From carnal lusts and heathen vanities
beyond which indisputable assertion I never got for this being about the fiftieth stanza I stopped to take breath a little and reading and rereading patching and touching continually grew so accustomed to my bantlings face that like a mother I could not tell whether it was handsome or hideous sense or nonsense I have since found out that the true plan for myself at least is to write off as much as possible at a time and then lay it by and forget it for weeks—if I can for months After that on returning to it the mind regards it as something altogether strange and new and can or rather ought to judge of it as it would of the work of another pen
But really between conceit and disgust fancying myself one day a great new poet and the next a mere twaddler I got so puzzled and anxious that I determined to pluck up courage go to Mackaye and ask him to solve the problem for me
Hech sirs poetry Ive been expecting it I suppose its the appointed gate o a workmans intellectual life—that same lust o versification Aweel aweel—lets hear
Blushing and trembling I read my verses aloud in as resonant and magniloquent a voice as I could command I thought Mackayes upper lip would never stop lengthening or his lower lip protruding He chuckled intensely at the unfortunate rhyme between shocks and stocks Indeed it kept him in chuckling matter for a whole month afterwards but when I had got to the shoal of naked girls he could bear no more and burst out—
What the deevil is there no harlotry and idolatry here in England that ye maun gang speering after it in the Cannibal Islands Are ye gaun to be like they puir aristocrat bodies that wad suner hear an Italian dog howl than an English nightingale sing and winna harken to Mr John Thomas till he calls himself Giovanni Thomasino or do ye tak yourself for a singingbird to go all your days tweedledumdeeing out into the lift just for the lust o hearing your ain clan clatter Will ye be a man or a lintic Coral Islands Pacific What do ye ken about Pacifics Are ye a Cockney or a Cannibal Islander Dinna stand there ye gowk as fusionless as a docken but tell me that Whaur do ye live
What do you mean Mr Mackaye asked I with a doleful and disappointed visage
Mean—why if God had meant ye to write aboot Pacifics Hed ha put ye
there—and because He means ye to write aboot London town Hes put ye
there—and gien ye an unco sharp taste o the ways ot and Ill gie ye
anither Come along wi me
And he seized me by the arm and hardly giving me time to put on my hat marched me out into the streets and away through Clare Market to St Giless
It was a foul chilly foggy Saturday night From the butchers and greengrocers shops the gas lights flared and flickered wild and ghastly over haggard groups of slipshod dirty women bargaining for scraps of stale meat and frostbitten vegetables wrangling about short weight and bad quality Fishstalls and fruitstalls lined the edge of the greasy pavement sending up odours as foul as the language of sellers and buyers Blood and sewerwater crawled from under doors and out of spouts and reeked down the gutters among offal animal and vegetable in every stage of putrefaction Foul vapours rose from cowsheds and slaughter houses and the doorways of undrained alleys where the inhabitants carried the filth out on their shoes from the backyard into the court and from the court up into the main street while above hanging like cliffs over the streets—those narrow brawling torrents of filth and poverty and sin—the houses with their teeming load of life were piled up into the dingy choking night A ghastly deafening sickening sight it was Go scented Belgravian and see what London is and then go to the library which God has given thee—one often fears in vain—and see what science says this London might be
Ay he muttered to himself as he strode along sing awa get yoursel wi child wi pretty fancies and gran words like the rest o the poets and gang to hell for it
To hell Mr Mackaye
Ay to a verra real hell Alton Locke laddie—a warse ane than ony fiends kitchen or subterranean Smithfield that yell hear o in the pulpits—the hell on earth o being a flunkey and a humbug and a useless peacock wasting Gods gifts on your ain lusts and pleasures—and kenning it—and not being able to get oot o it for the chains o vanity and selfindulgence Ive warned ye Now look there—
He stopped suddenly before the entrance of a miserable alley—
Look theres not a soul down that yard buts either beggar drunkard thief or warse Write anent that Say how you saw the mouth o hell and the twa pillars thereof at the entry—the pawnbrokers shop o one side and the gin palace at the other—twa monstrous deevils eating up men and women and bairns body and soul Look at the jaws o the monsters how they open and open and swallow in anither victim and anither Write anent that
What jaws Mr Mackaye
They fauldingdoors o the gin shop goose Are na they a mair damnable mandevouring idol than ony redhot statue o Moloch or wicker Gogmagog wherein thae auld Britons burnt their prisoners Look at thae barefooted barebacked hizzies with their arms roun the mens necks and their mouths full o vitriol and beastly words Look at that Irishwoman pouring the gin down the babbies throat Look at that rough o a boy gaun out o the pawn shop where hes been pledging the handkerchief he stole the morning into the gin shop to buy beer poisoned wi grains o paradise and cocculus indicus and saut and a damnable maddening thirstbreeding lustbreeding drugs Look at that girl that went in wi a shawl on her back and cam out wiout ane Drunkards frae the breast—harlots frae the cradle damned before theyre born John Calvin had an inkling o the truth there Im amost driven to think wi his reprobation deevils doctrines
Well—but—Mr Mackaye I know nothing about these poor creatures
Then ye ought What do ye ken anent the Pacific Which is maist to your business—thae barebacked hizzies that play the harlot o the other side o the warld or these—these thousands o barebacked hizzies that play the harlot o your ain side—made out o your ain flesh and blude You a poet True poetry like true charity my laddie begins at hame If yell be a poet at a ye maun be a cockney poet and while the cockneys be what they be ye maun write like Jeremiah of old o lamentation and mourning and woe for the sins o your people Gin you want to learn the spirit o a peoples poet down wi your Bible and read thae auld Hebrew prophets gin ye wad learn the style read your Burns frae morning till night and gin yed learn the matter just gang after your nose and keep your eyes open and yell no miss it
But all this is so—so unpoetical
Hech Is there no the heeven above them there and the hell beneath them and God frowning and the deevil grinning No poetry there Is no the verra idea of the classic tragedy defined to be man conquered by circumstance Canna ye see it there And the verra idea of the modern tragedy man conquering circumstance—and Ill show you that too—in mony a garret where no eye but the gude Gods enters to see the patience and the fortitude and the self-sacrifice and the luve stronger than death thats shining in thae dark places o the earth Come wi me and see
We went on through a back street or two and then into a huge miserable house which a hundred years ago perhaps had witnessed the luxury and rung to the laughter of some one great fashionable family alone there in their glory Now every room of it held its family or its group of families—a phalanstery of all the fiends—its grand staircase with the carved balustrades rotting and crumbling away piecemeal converted into a common sewer for all its inmates Up stair after stair we went while wails of children and curses of men steamed out upon the hot stifling rush of air from every doorway till at the topmost story we knocked at a garret door We entered Bare it was of furniture comfortless and freezing cold but with the exception of the plaster dropping from the roof and the broken windows patched with rags and paper there was a scrupulous neatness about the whole which contrasted strangely with the filth and slovenliness outside There was no bed in the room—no table On a broken chair by the chimney sat a miserable old woman fancying that she was warming her hands over embers which had long been cold shaking her head and muttering to herself with palsied lips about the guardians and the workhouse while upon a few rags on the floor lay a girl ugly smallpox marked hollow eyed emaciated her only bed clothes the skirt of a large handsome new ridinghabit at which two other girls wan and tawdry were stitching busily as they sat right and left of her on the floor The old woman took no notice of us as we entered but one of the girls looked up and with a pleased gesture of recognition put her finger up to her lips and whispered Ellens asleep
Im not asleep dears answered a faint unearthly voice I was only praying Is that Mr Mackaye
Ay my lassies but ha ye gotten na fire the nicht
No said one of them bitterly weve earned no fire tonight by fair trade or foul either
The sick girl tried to raise herself up and speak but was stopped by a frightful fit of coughing and expectoration as painful apparently to the sufferer as it was I confess disgusting even to me
I saw Mackaye slip something into the hand of one of the girls and whisper A halfhundred of coals to which she replied with an eager look of gratitude that I never can forget and hurried out Then the sufferer as if taking advantage of her absence began to speak quickly and eagerly
Oh Mr Mackaye—dear kind Mr Mackaye—do speak to her and do speak to poor Lizzy here Im not afraid to say it before her because shes more gentle like and hasnt learnt to say bad words yet—but do speak to them and tell them not to go the bad Way like all the rest Tell them itll never prosper I know it is want that drives them to it as it drives all of us—but tell them its best to starve and die honest girls than to go about with the shame and the curse of God on their hearts for the sake of keeping this poor miserable vile body together a few short years more in this world o sorrow Do tell them Mr Mackaye
Im thinking said he with the tears running down his old withered face yell mak a better preacher at that text than I shall Ellen
Oh no no who am I to speak to them—its no merit o mine Mr Mackaye that the Lords kept me pure through it all I should have been just as bad as any of them if the Lord had not kept me out of temptation in His great mercy by making me the poor illfavoured creature I am From that time I was burnt when I was a child and had the smallpox afterwards oh how sinful I was and repined and rebelled against the Lord And now I see it was all His blessed mercy to keep me out of evil pure and unspotted for my dear Jesus when He comes to take me to Himself I saw Him last night Mr Mackaye as plain as I see you now ail in a flame of beautiful white fire smiling at me so sweetly and He showed me the wounds in His hands and His feet and He said Ellen my own child those that suffer with me here they shall be glorified with me hereafter for Im coming very soon to take you home
Sandy shook his head at all this with a strange expression of face as if he sympathized and yet disagreed respected and yet smiled at the shape which her religious ideas had assumed and I remarked in the meantime that the poor girls neck and arm were all scarred and distorted apparently from the effects of a burn
Ah said Sandy at length I tauld ye ye were the better preacher of the two yeve mair comfort to gie Sandy than he has to gie the like o ye But how is the wound in your back the day
Oh it was wonderfully better the doctor had come and given her such blessed ease with a great thick leather he had put under it and then she did not feel the boards through so much But oh Mr Mackaye Im so afraid it will make me live longer to keep me away from my dear Saviour And theres one thing too thats breaking my heart and makes me long to die this very minute even if I didnt go to Heaven at all Mr Mackaye And she burst out crying and between her sobs it came out as well as I could gather that her notion was that her illness was the cause of keeping the girls in the bad ivay as she called it For Lizzy here I did hope that she had repented of it after all my talking to her but since Ive been so bad and the girls have had to keep me most o the time shes gone out of nights just as bad as ever
Lizzy had hid her face in her hands the greater part of this speech Now she looked up passionately almost fiercely—
Repent—I have repented—I repent of it every hour—I hate myself and hate all the world because of it but I must—I must I cannot see her starve and I cannot starve myself When she first fell sick she kept on as long as she could doing what she could and then between us we only earned three shillings a week and there was ever so much to take off for fire and twopence for thread and fivepence for candles and then we were always getting fined because they never gave us out the work till too late on purpose and then they lowered prices again and now Ellen cant work at all and theres four of us with the old lady to keep off twos work that couldnt keep themselves alone
Doesnt the parish allow the old lady anything I ventured to ask
They used to allow halfacrown for a bit and the doctor ordered Ellen things from the parish but it isnt half of em she ever got and when the meat came it was half times not fit to eat and when it was her stomach turned against it If she was a lady shed be cockered up with all sorts of soups and jellies and nice things just the minute she fancied em and lie on a water bed instead of the bare floor—and so she ought but wheres the parishll do that And the hospital wouldnt take her in because she was incurable and besides the oldun wouldnt let her go—nor into the union neither When shes in a goodhumour like shell sit by her by the hour holding her hand and kissing of it and nursing of it for all the world like a doll But she wont hear of the workhouse so now these last three weeks they takes off all her pay because they says she must go into the house and not kill her daughter by keeping her out—as if they warnt a killing her themselves
No workhouse—no workhouse said the old woman turning round suddenly in a clear lofty voice No workhouse sir for an officers daughter
And she relapsed into her stupor
At that moment the other girl entered with the coals—but without staying to light the fire ran up to Ellen with some trumpery dainty she had bought and tried to persuade her to eat it
We have been telling Mr Mackaye everything said poor Lizzy
A pleasant story isnt it Oh if that fine lady as were making that ridinghabit for would just spare only half the money that goes to dressing her up to ride in the park to send us out to the colonies wouldnt I be an honest girl there—maybe an honest mans wife Oh my God wouldnt I slave my fingers to the bone to work for him Wouldnt I mend my life then I couldnt help it—it would be like getting into heaven out of hell But now—we must—we must I tell you I shall go mad soon I think or take to drink When I passed the ginshop down there just now I had to run like mad for fear I should go in and if I once took to that—Now then to work again Make up the fire Mrs please do
And she sat down and began stitching frantically at the ridinghabit from which the other girl had hardly lifted her hands or eyes for a moment during our visit
We made a motion as if to go
God bless you said Ellen come again soon dear Mr Mackaye
Goodbye said the elder girl and goodnight to you Night and days all the same here—we must have this home by seven oclock tomorrow morning My ladys going to ride early they say whoever she may be and we must just sit up all night Its often we havent had our clothes off for a week together from four in the morning till two the next morning sometimes—stitch stitch stitch Somebodys wrote a song about that—Ill learn to sing it—itll sound fittinglike up here
Better sing hymns said Ellen
Hymns for answered the other and then burst out into that peculiar wild ringing fiendish laugh—has my reader never heard it
I pulled out the two or three shillings which I possessed and tried to make the girls take them for the sake of poor Ellen
No youre a working man and we wont feed on you—youll want it some day—all the trades going the same way as we as fast as ever it can
Sandy and I went down the stairs
Poetic element Yon lassie rejoicing in her disfigurement and not her beauty—like the nuns of Peterborough in auld time—is there na poetry there That puir lassie dying on the bare boards and seeing her Saviour in her dreams is there na poetry there callant That auld body owre the fire wi her an officers dochter is there na poetry there That ither prostituting hersel to buy food for her freen—is there na poetry there—tragedy—
With hues as when some mighty painter dips
His pen in dyes of earthquake and eclipse
Ay Shelleys gran always gran but Fact is grander—God and Satan are
grander All around ye in every ginshop and costermongers cellar are
God and Satan at death grips every garret is a haill Paradise Lost or
Paradise Regained and will ye think it beneath ye to be the Peoples
Poet
CHAPTER IX
POETRY AND POETS
In the history of individuals as well as in that of nations there is often a period of sudden blossoming—a short luxuriant summer not without its tornadoes and thunderglooms in which all the buried seeds of past observation leap forth together into life and form and beauty And such with me were the two years that followed I thought—I talked poetry to myself all day long I wrote nightly on my return from work I am astonished on looking back at the variety and quantity of my productions during that short time My subjects were intentionally and professedly cockney ones I had taken Mackaye at his word I had made up my mind that if I had any poetic powers I must do my duty therewith in that station of life to which it had pleased God to call me and look at everything simply and faithfully as a London artizan To this I suppose is to be attributed the little geniality and originality for which the public have kindly praised my verses—a geniality which sprung not from the atmosphere whence I drew but from the honesty and singlemindedness with which I hope I laboured Not from the atmosphere indeed—that was ungenial enough crime and poverty alldevouring competition and hopeless struggles against Mammon and Moloch amid the roar of wheels the ceaseless stream of pale hard faces intent on gain or brooding over woe amid endless prison walls of brick beneath a lurid crushing sky of smoke and mist It was a dark noisy thunderous element that London life a troubled sea that cannot rest casting up mire and dirt resonant of the clanking of chains the grinding of remorseless machinery the wail of lost spirits from the pit And it did its work upon me it gave a gloomy colouring a glare as of some Dantean Inferno to all my utterances It did not excite me or make me fierce—I was too much inured to it—but it crushed and saddened me it deepened in me that peculiar melancholy of intellectual youth which Mr Carlyle has christened for ever by one of his immortal nicknames—Werterism I battened on my own melancholy I believed I loved to believe that every face I passed bore the traces of discontent as deep as was my own—and was I so far wrong Was I so far wrong either in the gloomy tone of my own poetry Should not a London poets work just now be to cry like the Jew of old about the walls of Jerusalem Woe woe to this city Is this a time to listen to the voices of singing men and singing women or to cry Oh that my head were a fountain of tears that I might weep for the sins of my people Is it not noteworthy also that it is in this vein that the London poets have always been greatest Which of poor Hoods lyrics have an equal chance of immortality with The Song of the Shirt and The Bridge of Sighs rising as they do right out of the depths of that Inferno sublime from their very simplicity Which of Charles Mackays lyrics can compare for a moment with the Eschylean grandeur the terrible rhythmic lilt of his Cholera Chant—
Dense on the stream the vapours lay
Thick as wool on the cold highway
Spungy and dim each lonely lamp
Shone oer the streets so dull and damp
The moonbeams could not pierce the cloud
That swathed the city like a shroud
There stood three shapes on the bridge alone
Three figures by the copingstone
Gaunt and tall and undefined
Spectres built of mist and wind
I see his footmarks east and west—
I hear his tread in the silence fall—
He shall not sleep he shall not rest—
He comes to aid us one and all
Were men as wise as men might be
They would not work for you for me
For him that cometh over the sea
But they will not hear the warning voice
The Cholera comes—Rejoice rejoice
He shall be lord of the swarming town
And mow them down and mow them down
Not that I neglected on the other hand every means of extending the wanderings of my spirit into sunnier and more verdant pathways If I had to tell the gay ones above of the gloom around me I had also to go forth into the sunshine to bring home if it were but a wildflower garland to those that sit in darkness and the shadow of death That was all that I could offer them The reader shall judge when he has read this book throughout whether I did not at last find for them something better than even all the beauties of nature.
But it was on canvas and not among realities that I had to choose my garlands and therefore the picture galleries became more than ever my favourite—haunt I was going to say but alas it was not six times a year that I got access to them Still when once every May I found myself by dint of a hard saved shilling actually within the walls of that to me enchanted palace the Royal Academy Exhibition—Oh ye rich who gaze round you at will upon your prints and pictures if hunger is as they say a better sauce than any Ude invents and fasting itself may become the handmaid of luxury you should spend as I did perforce weeks and months shut out from every glimpse of Nature, if you would taste her beauties even on canvas with perfect relish and childish selfabandonment How I loved and blessed those painters how I thanked Creswick for every transparent shadechequered pool Fielding for every rainclad down Cooper for every knot of quiet cattle beneath the cool grey willows Stanfield for every snowy peak and sheet of foamfringed sapphire—each and every one of them a leaf out of the magic book which else was ever closed to me Again I say how I loved and blest those painters On the other hand I was not neglecting to read as well as to write poetry and to speak first of the highest I know no book always excepting Milton which at once so quickened and exalted my poetical view of man and his history as that great prose poem the single epic of modern days Thomas Carlyles French Revolution Of the general effect which his works had on me I shall say nothing it was the same as they have had thank God on thousands of my class and of every other But that book above all first recalled me to the overwhelming and yet ennobling knowledge that there was such a thing as Duty first taught me to see in history not the mere farcetragedy of mans crimes and follies but the dealings of a righteous Ruler of the universe whose ways are in the great deep and whom the sins and errors as well as the virtues and discoveries of man must obey and justify
Then in a happy day I fell on Alfred Tennysons poetry and found there astonished and delighted the embodiment of thoughts about the earth around me which I had concealed because I fancied them peculiar to myself Why is it that the latest poet has generally the greatest influence over the minds of the young Surely not for the mere charm of novelty The reason is that he living amid the same hopes the same temptations the same sphere of observation as they gives utterance and outward form to the very questions which vague and wordless have been exercising their hearts And what endeared Tennyson especially to me the working man was as I afterwards discovered the altogether democratic tendency of his poems True all great poets are by their office democrats seers of man only as man singers of the joys the sorrows the aspirations common to all humanity but in Alfred Tennyson there is an element especially democratic truly levelling not his political opinions about which I know nothing and care less but his handling of the trivial everyday sights and sounds of nature. Brought up as I understand in a part of England which possesses not much of the picturesque and nothing of that which the vulgar call sublime he has learnt to see that in all nature in the hedgerow and the sandbank as well as in the alp peak and the ocean waste is a world of true sublimity—a minute infinite—an ever fertile garden of poetic images the roots of which are in the unfathomable and the eternal as truly as any phenomenon which astonishes and awes the eye The descriptions of the desolate pools and creeks where the dying swan floated the hint of the silvery marsh mosses by Marianas moat came to me like revelations I always knew there was something beautiful wonderful sublime in those flowery dykes of Battersea Fields in the long gravelly sweeps of that lone tidal shore and here was a man who had put them into words for me This is what I call democratic art—the revelation of the poetry which lies in common things And surely all the age is tending in that direction in Landseer and his dogs—in Fielding and his downs with a host of noble fellowartists—and in all authors who have really seized the nations mind from Crabbe and Burns and Wordsworth to Hood and Dickens the great tide sets ever onward outward towards that which is common to the many not that which is exclusive to the few—towards the likeness of Him who causes His rain to fall on the just and the unjust and His sun to shine on the evil and the good who knoweth the cattle upon a thousand hills and all the beasts of the field are in His sight
Well—I must return to my story And here some one may ask me But did you not find this true spiritual democracy this universal knowledge and sympathy in Shakspeare above all other poets It may be my shame to have to confess it but though I find it now I did not then I do not think however my case is singular from what I can ascertain there is even with regularly educated minds a period of life at which that great writer is not appreciated just on account of his very greatness on account of the deep and large experience which the true understanding of his plays requires—experience of man of history of art and above all of those sorrows whereby as Hezekiah says and as I have learnt almost too well—whereby men live and in all which is the life of the spirit At seventeen indeed I had devoured Shakspeare though merely for the food to my fancy which his plots and incidents supplied for the gorgeous colouring of his scenery but at the period of which I am now writing I had exhausted that source of mere pleasure I was craving for more explicit and dogmatic teaching than any which he seemed to supply and for three years strange as it may appear I hardly ever looked into his pages Under what circumstances I afterwards recurred to his exhaustless treasures my readers shall in due time be told
So I worked away manfully with such tools and stock as I possessed and of course produced at first like all young writers some sufficiently servile imitations of my favourite poets
Ugh said Sandy wha wants mongrels atween Burns and Tennyson A gude stock baith but gin yed cross the breed ye maun unite the spirits and no the manners o the men Why maun ilk a one the noo steal his neebors barnacles before he glints out o windows Mak a style for yoursel laddie yere na mair Scots hind than ye are Lincolnshire laird sae gang yer ain gate and leave them to gang theirs and just mak a gran brode simple Saxon style for yoursel
But how can I till I know what sort of a style it ought to be
Oh but yons amazing like Tom Sheridans answer to his father Tom says the auld man Im thinking ye maun tak a wife Verra weel father says the puir skellum and whas wife shall I tak Whas style shall I tak say all the callants the noo Mak a style as ye would mak a wife by marrying her a to yoursel and yell nae mair ken whats your style till its made than yell ken what your wifes like till shes been mony a year by your ingle
My dear Mackaye I said you have the most unmerciful way of raising difficulties and then leaving poor fellows to lay the ghost for themselves
Hech then Im athegither a negative teacher as they ca it in the new lallans Ill gang out o my gate to tell a man his kye are laired but Im no obligated thereby to pu them out for him After a nae man is rid o a difficulty till hes conquered it singlehanded for himsel besides Im na poet mairs the gude hap for you
Why then
Och och theyre puir feckless crabbit unpractical bodies they poets but if its your doom ye maun dree it and Im sair afeard ye ha gotten the disease o genius mairs the pity and maun write I suppose willynilly Some folks booels are that made o catgut that they canna stir without chirruping and screeking
However æstro percitus I wrote on and in about two years and a half had got together Songs of the Highways enough to fill a small octavo volume the circumstances of whose birth shall be given hereafter Whether I ever attained to anything like an original style readers must judge for themselves—the readers of the same volume I mean for I have inserted none of those poems in this my autobiography first because it seems too like puffing my own works and next because I do not want to injure the as yet not over great sale of the same But if any ones curiosity is so far excited that he wishes to see what I have accomplished the best advice which I can give him is to go forth and buy all the workingmens poetry which has appeared during the last twenty years without favour or exception among which he must needs of course find mine and also I am happy to say a great deal which is much better and more instructive than mine
CHAPTER X
HOW FOLKS TURN CHARTISTS
Those who read my story only for amusement I advise to skip this chapter Those on the other hand who really wish to ascertain what working men actually do suffer—to see whether their political discontent has not its roots not merely in fanciful ambition but in misery and slavery most real and agonizing—those in whose eyes the accounts of a system or rather barbaric absence of all system which involves starvation nakedness prostitution and long imprisonment in dungeons worse than the cells of the Inquisition will be invested with something at least of tragic interest may I hope think it worth their while to learn how the clothes which they wear are made and listen to a few occasional statistics which though they may seem to the wealthy mere lists of dull figures are to the workmen symbols of terrible physical realities—of hunger degradation and despair Footnote Facts still worse than those which Mr Lockes story contains have been made public by the Morning Chronicle in a series of noble letters on Labour and the Poor which we entreat all Christian people to read mark learn and inwardly digest That will be better for them as Mahomet in similar cases used to say
Well one day our employer died He had been one of the old sort of fashionable Westend tailors in the fast decreasing honourable trade keeping a modest shop hardly to be distinguished from a dwellinghouse except by his name on the window blinds He paid good prices for work though not as good of course as he had given twenty years before and prided himself upon having all his work done at home His workrooms as I have said were no elysiums but still as good alas as those of three tailors out of four He was proud luxurious foppish but he was honest and kindly enough and did many a generous thing by men who had been long in his employ At all events his journeymen could live on what he paid them
But his son succeeding to the business determined like Rehoboam of old to go ahead with the times Fired with the great spirit of the nineteenth century—at least with that one which is vulgarly considered its especial glory—he resolved to make haste to be rich His father had made money very slowly of late while dozens who had begun business long after him had now retired to luxurious ease and suburban villas Why should he remain in the minority Why should he not get rich as fast as he could Why should he stick to the old slowgoing honourable trade Out of some four hundred and fifty Westend tailors there were not one hundred left who were oldfashioned and stupid enough to go on keeping down their own profits by having all their work done at home and at firsthand Ridiculous scruples The government knew none such Were not the army clothes the postoffice clothes the policemens clothes furnished by contractors and sweaters who hired the work at low prices and let it out again to journeymen at still lower ones Why should he pay his men two shillings where the government paid them one Were there not cheap houses even at the Westend which had saved several thousands a year merely by reducing their workmens wages And if the workmen chose to take lower wages he was not bound actually to make them a present of more than they asked for They would go to the cheapest market for anything they wanted and so must he Besides wages had really been quite exorbitant Half his men threw each of them as much money away in gin and beer yearly as would pay two workmen at cheap house Why was he to be robbing his family of comforts to pay for their extravagance And charging his customers too unnecessarily high prices—it was really robbing the public
Such I suppose were some of the arguments which led to an official announcement one Saturday night that our young employer intended to enlarge his establishment for the purpose of commencing business in the showtrade and that emulous of Messrs Aaron Levi and the rest of that class magnificent alterations were to take place in the premises to make room for which our workrooms were to be demolished and that for that reason—for of course it was only for that reason—all work would in future be given out to be made up at the mens own homes
Our employers arguments if they were such as I suppose were reasonable enough according to the present code of commercial morality But strange to say the auditory insensible to the delight with which the public would view the splendid architectural improvements—with taste too grovelling to appreciate the glories of plateglass shopfronts and brass scroll work—too selfish to rejoice for its own sake in the beauty of arabesques and chandeliers which though they never might behold the astonished public would—with souls too niggardly to leap for joy at the thought that gents would henceforth buy the registered guanaco vest and the patent elastic omniseasonum paletot halfacrown cheaper than ever—or that needy noblemen would pay threepoundten instead of five pounds for their footmens liveries—received the news clodhearted as they were in sullen silence and actually when they got into the street broke out into murmurs perhaps into execrations
Silence said Crossthwaite walls have ears Come down to the nearest house of call and talk it out like men instead of grumbling in the street like fishfags
So down we went Crossthwaite taking my arm strode on in moody silence—once muttering to himself bitterly—
Oh yes all right and natural What can the little sharks do but follow the big ones
We took a room and Crossthwaite coolly saw us all in and locking the door stood with his back against it
Now then mind One and all as the Cornishmen say and no peaching If any man is scoundrel enough to carry tales Ill—
Do what asked Jemmy Downes who had settled himself on the table with a pipe and a pot of porter You arnt the king of the Cannibal Islands as I know of to cut a coves head off
No but if a poor mans prayer can bring Gods curse down upon a traitors head—it may stay on his rascally shoulders till it rots
If ifs and ans were pots and pans Look at Shechem Isaacs that sold penknives in the street six months ago now ariding in his own carriage all along of turning sweater If Gods curse is like that—Ill be happy to take any mans share of it
Some new idea seemed twinkling in the fellows cunning bloated face as he spoke I and others also shuddered at his words but we all forgot them a moment afterwards as Crossthwaite began to speak
We were all bound to expect this Every working tailor must come to this at last on the present system and we are only lucky in having been spared so long You all know where this will end—in the same misery as fifteen thousand out of twenty thousand of our class are enduring now We shall become the slaves often the bodily prisoners of Jews middlemen and sweaters who draw their livelihood out of our starvation We shall have to face as the rest have ever decreasing prices of labour ever increasing profits made out of that labour by the contractors who will employ us—arbitrary fines inflicted at the caprice of hirelings—the competition of women and children and starving Irish—our hours of work will increase onethird our actual pay decrease to less than onehalf and in all this we shall have no hope no chance of improvement in wages but ever more penury slavery misery as we are pressed on by those who are sucked by fifties—almost by hundreds—yearly out of the honourable trade in which we were brought up into the infernal system of contract work which is devouring our trade and many others body and soul Our wives will be forced to sit up night and day to help us—our children must labour from the cradle without chance of going to school hardly of breathing the fresh air of heaven—our boys as they grow up must turn beggars or paupers—our daughters as thousands do must eke out their miserable earnings by prostitution And after all a whole family will not gain what one of us had been doing as yet singlehanded You know there will be no hope for us There is no use appealing to government or parliament I dont want to talk politics here I shall keep them for another place But you can recollect as well as I can when a deputation of us went up to a member of parliament—one that was reputed a philosopher and a political economist and a liberal—and set before him the everincreasing penury and misery of our trade and of those connected with it you recollect his answer—that however glad he would be to help us it was impossible—he could not alter the laws of nature—that wages were regulated by the amount of competition among the men themselves and that it was no business of government or any one else to interfere in contracts between the employer and employed that those things regulated themselves by the laws of political economy which it was madness and suicide to oppose He may have been a wise man I only know that he was a rich one Every one speaks well of the bridge which carries him over Every one fancies the laws which fill his pockets to be Gods laws But I say this If neither government nor members of parliament can help us we must help ourselves Help yourselves and heaven will help you Combination among ourselves is the only chance One thing we can do—sit still
And starve said some one
Yes and starve Better starve than sin I say it is a sin to give in to this system It is a sin to add our weight to the crowd of artizans who are now choking and strangling each other to death as the prisoners did in the black hole of Calcutta Let those who will turn beasts of prey and feed upon their fellows but let us at least keep ourselves pure It may be the law of political civilization the law of nature, that the rich should eat up the poor and the poor eat up each other Then I here rise up and curse that law that civilization that nature Either I will destroy them or they shall destroy me As a slave as an increased burden on my fellowsufferers I will not live So help me God I will take no work home to my house and I call upon every one here to combine and to sign a protest to that effect
Whats the use of that my good Mr Crossthwaite interrupted some one querulously Dont you know what came of the strike a few years ago when this piecework and sweating first came in The masters made fine promises and never kept em and the men who stood out had their places filled up with poor devils who were glad enough to take the work at any price—just as ours will be Theres no use kicking against the pricks All the rest have come to it and so must we We must live somehow and half a loaf is better than no bread and even that half loaf will go into other mens mouths if we dont snap at it at once Besides we cant force others to strike We may strike and starve ourselves but whats the use of a dozen striking out of 20000
Will you sign the protest gentlemen or not asked Crossthwaite in a determined voice
Some halfdozen said they would if the others would
And the others wont Well after all one man must take the responsibility and I am that man I will sign the protest by myself I will sweep a crossing—I will turn cressgatherer ragpicker I will starve piecemeal and see my wife starve with me but do the wrong thing I will not The Cause wants martyrs If I must be one I must
All this while my mind had been undergoing a strange perturbation The notion of escaping that infernal workroom and the company I met there—of taking my work home and thereby, as I hoped gaining more time for study—at least having my books on the spot ready at every odd moment was most enticing I had hailed the proposed change as a blessing to me till I heard Crossthwaites arguments—not that I had not known the facts before but it had never struck me till then that it was a real sin against my class to make myself a party in the system by which they were allowing themselves under temptation enough God knows to be enslaved But now I looked with horror on the gulf of penury before me into the vortex of which not only I but my whole trade seemed irresistibly sucked I thought with shame and remorse of the few shillings which I had earned at various times by taking piecework home to buy my candles for study I whispered my doubts to Crossthwaite as he sat pale and determined watching the excited and querulous discussions among the other workmen
What So you expect to have time to read Study after sixteen hours a day stitching Study when you cannot earn money enough to keep you from wasting and shrinking away day by day Study with your heart full of shame and indignation fresh from daily insult and injustice Study with the black cloud of despair and penury in front of you Little time or heart or strength will you have to study when you are making the same coats you make now at half the price
I put my name down beneath Crossthwaites on the paper which he handed me and went out with him
Ay he muttered to himself be slaves—what you are worthy to be that you will be You dare not combine—you dare not starve—you dare not die—and therefore you dare not be free Oh for six hundred men like Barbarouxs Marseillois—who knew how to die
Surely Crossthwaite if matters were properly represented to the government they would not for their own existence sake to put conscience out of the question allow such a system to continue growing
Government—government You a tailor and not know that government are the very authors of this system Not to know that they first set the example by getting the army and navy clothes made by contractors and taking the lowest tenders Not to know that the police clothes the postmens clothes the convicts clothes are all contracted for on the same infernal plan by sweaters and sweaters sweaters and sweaters sweaters sweaters till government work is just the very last lowest resource to which a poor starvedout wretch betakes himself to keep body and soul together Why the government prices in almost every department are half and less than half the very lowest living price I tell you the careless iniquity of government about these things will come out some day It will be known the whole abomination and future generations will class it with the tyrannies of the Roman emperors and the Norman barons Why its a fact that the colonels of the regiments—noblemen most of them—make their own vile profit out of us tailors—out of the pauperism of the men the slavery of the children the prostitution of the women They get so much a uniform allowed them by government to clothe the men with and then—then they let out the jobs to the contractors at less than half what government give them and pocket the difference And then you talk of appealing to government
Upon my word I said bitterly we tailors seem to owe the army a double grudge They not only keep under other artizans but they help to starve us first and then shoot us if we complain too loudly
Oh ho your bloods getting up is it Then youre in the humour to be told what you have been hankering to know so long—where Mackaye and I go at night Well strike while the irons hot and go down to the Chartist meeting at
Pardon me my dear fellow I said I cannot bear the thought of being mixed up in conspiracy—perhaps in revolt and bloodshed Not that I am afraid Heaven knows I am not But I am too much harassed miserable already I see too much wretchedness around me to lend my aid in increasing the sum of suffering by a single atom among rich and poor even by righteous vengeance
Conspiracy Bloodshed What has that to do with the Charter It suits the venal Mammonite press well enough to jumble them together and cry Murder rape and robbery whenever the six points are mentioned but they know and any man of common sense ought to know that the Charter is just as much an open political question as the Reform Bill and ten times as much as Magna Charter was when it got passed What have the six points right or wrong to do with the question whether they can be obtained by moral force and the pressure of opinion alone or require what we call ulterior measures to get them carried Come along
So with him I went that night
Well Alton where was the treason and murder Your nose must have been a sharp one to smell out any there Did you hear anything that astonished your weak mind so very exceedingly after all
The only thing that did astonish me was to hear men of my own class—and lower still perhaps some of them—speak with such fluency and eloquence Such a fund of information—such excellent English—where did they get it all
From the God who knows nothing about ranks Theyre the unknown great—the unaccredited heroes as Master Thomas Carlyle would say—whom the flunkeys aloft have not acknowledged yet—though theyll be forced to some day with a vengeance Are you convinced once for all
I really do not understand political questions Crossthwaite
Does it want so very much wisdom to understand the rights and the wrongs of all that Are the people represented Are you represented Do you feel like a man thats got any one to fight your battle in parliament my young friend eh
Im sure I dont know—
Why what in the name of common sense—what interest or feeling of yours or mine or any mans you ever spoke to except the shopkeeper do Alderman A—— or Lord C—— D—— represent They represent property—and we have none They represent rank—we have none Vested interests—we have none Large capitals—those are just what crush us Irresponsibility of employers slavery of the employed competition among masters competition among workmen that is the system they represent—they preach it they glory in it—Why it is the very ogre that is eating us all up They are chosen by the few they represent the few and they make laws for the many—and yet you dont know whether or not the people are represented
We were passing by the door of the Victoria Theatre it was just halfprice time—and the beggary and rascality of London were pouring in to their low amusement from the neighbouring gin palaces and thieves cellars A herd of ragged boys vomiting forth slang filth and blasphemy pushed past us compelling us to take good care of our pockets
Look there look at the amusements the training the civilization which the government permits to the children of the people These licensed pits of darkness traps of temptation profligacy and ruin triumphantly yawning night after night—and then tell me that the people who see their children thus kidnapped into hell are represented by a government who licenses such things
Would a change in the franchise cure that
Household suffrage mightnt—but give us the Charter and well see about it Give us the Charter and well send workmen into parliament that shall soon find out whether something better cant be put in the way of the ten thousand boys and girls in London who live by theft and prostitution than the tender mercies of the Victoria—a pretty name They say the Queens a good woman—and I dont doubt it I wonder often if she knows what her precious namesake here is like
But really I cannot see how a mere change in representation can cure such things as that
Why didnt they tell us before the Reform Bill that extension of the suffrage was to cure everything And how can you have too much of a good thing Weve only taken them at their word we Chartists Havent all politicians been preaching for years that Englands national greatness was all owing to her political institutions—to Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights and representative parliaments and all that It was but the other day I got hold of some Tory paper that talked about the English constitution and the balance of queen lords and commons as the Talismanic Palladium of the country Gad well see if a move onward in the same line wont better the matter If the balance of classes is such a blessed thing the sooner we get the balance equal the better for its rather lopsided just now no one can deny So representative institutions are the talismanic palladium of the nation are they The palladium of the classes that have them I dare say and thats the very best reason why the classes that havent got em should look out for the same palladium for themselves Whats sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose isnt it Well try—well see whether the talisman they talk of has lost its power all of a sudden since 32—whether we cant rub the magic ring a little for ourselves and call up genii to help us out of the mire as the shopkeepers and the gentlemen have done
From that night I was a Chartist heart and soul—and so were a million and a half more of the best artisans in England—at least I had no reason to be ashamed of my company Yes I too like Crossthwaite took the upper classes at their word bowed down to the idol of political institutions and pinned my hopes of salvation on the possession of one tenthousandth part of a talker in the national palaver True I desired the Charter at first as I do indeed at this moment as a means to glorious ends—not only because it would give a chance of elevation a free sphere of action to lowly worth and talent but because it was the path to reforms—social legal sanatory educational—to which the veriest Tory—certainly not the great and good Lord Ashley—would not object But soon with me and I am afraid with many many more the means became by the frailty of poor human nature an end an idol in itself. I had so made up my mind that it was the only method of getting what I wanted that I neglected alas but too often to try the methods which lay already by me If we had but the Charter—was the excuse for a thousand lazinesses procrastinations If we had but the Charter—I should be good and free and happy Fool that I was It was within rather than without that I needed reform
And so I began to look on man and too many of us I am afraid are doing so as the creature and puppet of circumstances—of the particular outward system social or political in which he happens to find himself An abominable heresy no doubt but somehow it appears to me just the same as Benthamites and economists and highchurchmen too for that matter have been preaching for the last twenty years with great applause from their respective parties One set informs the world that it is to be regenerated by cheap bread free trade and that peculiar form of the freedom of industry which in plain language signifies the despotism of capital and which whatever it means is merely some outward system circumstance or dodge about man and not in him Another partys nostrum is more churches more schools more clergymen—excellent things in their way—better even than cheap bread or free trade provided only that they are excellent—that the churches schools clergymen are good ones But the party of whom I am speaking seem to us workmen to consider the quality quite a secondary consideration compared with the quantity They expect the world to be regenerated not by becoming more a Church—none would gladlier help them in bringing that about than the Chartists themselves paradoxical as it may seem—but by being dosed somewhat more with a certain Church system circumstance or dodge For my part I seem to have learnt that the only thing to regenerate the world is not more of any system good or bad but simply more of the Spirit of God
About the supposed omnipotence of the Charter I have found out my mistake I believe no more in MorisonsPillremedies as Thomas Carlyle calls them Talismans are worthless The age of spiritcompelling spells whether of parchment or carbuncle is past—if indeed it ever existed The Charter will no more make men good than political economy or the observance of the Church Calendar—a fact which we working men I really believe have under the pressure of wholesome defeat and Godsent affliction found out sooner than our more enlightened fellowidolaters But at that time as I have confessed already we took our betters at their word and believed in Morisons Pills Only as we looked at the world from among a class of facts somewhat different from theirs we differed from them proportionably as to our notions of the proper ingredients in the said Pill
But what became of our protest
It was received—and disregarded As for turning us off we had de facto like Coriolanus banished the Romans turned our master off All the other hands some forty in number submitted and took the yoke upon them and went down into the house of bondage knowing whither they went Every man of them is now a beggar compared with what he was then Many are dead in the prime of life of consumption bad food and lodging and the peculiar diseases of our trade Some have not been heard of lately—we fancy them imprisoned in some sweaters dens—but thereby hangs a tale whereof more hereafter
But it was singular that every one of the six who had merely professed their conditional readiness to sign the protest were contumeliously discharged the next day without any reason being assigned It was evident that there had been a traitor at the meeting and every one suspected Jemmy Downes especially as he fell into the new system with suspiciously strange alacrity But it was as impossible to prove the offence against him as to punish him for it Of that wretched man too and his subsequent career I shall have somewhat to say hereafter Verily there is a God who judgeth the earth
But now behold me and my now intimate and beloved friend Crossthwaite with nothing to do—a gentlemanlike occupation but unfortunately in our class involving starvation What was to be done We applied for work at several honourable shops but at all we received the same answer Their trade was decreasing—the public ran daily more and more to the cheap showshops—and they themselves were forced in order to compete with these latter to put more and more of their work out at contract prices Facilis descensus Averni Having once been hustled out of the serried crowd of competing workmen it was impossible to force our way in again So a week or ten days past our little stocks of money were exhausted I was downhearted at once but Crossthwaite bore up gaily enough
Katie and I can pick a crust together without snarling over it And thank God I have no children and never intend to have if I can keep true to myself till the good times come
Oh Crossthwaite are not children a blessing
Would they be a blessing to me now No my lad—Let those bring slaves into the world who will I will never beget children to swell the numbers of those who are trampling each other down in the struggle for daily bread to minister in ever deepening poverty and misery to the rich mans luxury—perhaps his lust
Then you believe in the Malthusian doctrines
I believe them to be an infernal lie Alton Locke though good and wise people like Miss Martineau may sometimes be deluded into preaching them I believe theres room on English soil for twice the number there is now and when we get the Charter well prove it well show that God meant living human heads and hands to be blessings and not curses tools and not burdens But in such times as these let those who have wives be as though they had none—as St Paul said when he told his people under the Roman Emperor to be above begetting slaves and martyrs A man of the people should keep himself as free from encumbrances as he can just now He win find it all the more easy to dare and suffer for the people when their turn comes—
And he set his teeth firmly almost savagely
I think I can earn a few shillings now and then by writing for a paper I know of If that wont do I must take up agitating for a trade and live by spouting as many a Tory member as well as Radical ones do A man may do worse for he may do nothing At all events my only chance now is to help on the Charter for the sooner it comes the better for me And if I die—why the little woman wont be long in coming after me I know that well and theres a tough business got well over for both of us
Hech said Sandy
To every man
Death comes but once a life—
as my countryman Mr Macaulay says in thae gran Roman ballants o his But for ye Alton laddie yere owre young to start off in the Peoples Church Meelitant sae just bide wi me and the barrel o meal in the corner there winna waste nae mair than it did wi the widow o Zareptha a tale which coincides sae weel wi the everlasting righteousness that Im at times no inclined to consider it athegither mythical
But I with thankfulness which vented itself through my eyes finding my lips alone too narrow for it refused to eat the bread of idleness
Aweel then yell just mind the shop and dust the books whiles Im getting auld and stiff and ha need o help i the business
No I said you say so out of kindness but if you can afford no greater comforts than these you cannot afford to keep me in addition to yourself
Hech then How do ye ken that the auld Scot eats a he makes I was na born the spending side o Tweed my man But gin ye daur why dinna ye pack up your duds and yer poems wi them and gang till your cousin i the university hell surely put you in the way o publishing them Hes bound to it by blude and theres na shame in asking him to help you towards reaping the fruits o yer ain labours A few punds on a bond for repayment when the addition was sauld noo—Id do that for mysel but Im thinking yed better try to get a list o subscribers Dinna mind your independence its but spoiling the Egyptians ye ken and the bit ballants will be their moneys worth Ill warrant and tell them a wheen facts theyre no that weel acquentit wi Hech Johnnie my Chartist
Why not go to my uncle
Puir sugarandspiceselling bailie body is there aught in his ledger about poetry and the incommensurable value o the products o genius Gang till the young scholar hes a canny one too and hell ken it to be worth his while to fash himsel a wee anent it
So I packed up my little bundle and lay awake all that night in a fever of expectation about the as yet unknown world of green fields and woods through which my road to Cambridge lay
CHAPTER XI
THE YARD WHERE THE GENTLEMEN LIVE
I may be forgiven surely if I run somewhat into detail about this my first visit to the country
I had as I have said before literally never been further afield than
Fulham or Battersea Rise One Sunday evening indeed I had got as far as
Wandsworth Common but it was March and to my extreme disappointment the
heath was not in flower
But usually my Sundays had been spent entirely in study which to me was rest so worn out were both my body and my mind with the incessant drudgery of my trade and the slender fare to which I restricted myself Since I had lodged with Mackaye certainly my food had been better I had not required to stint my appetite for money wherewith to buy candles ink and pens My wages too had increased with my years and altogether I found myself gaining in strength though I had no notion how much I possessed till I set forth on this walk to Cambridge
It was a glorious morning at the end of May and when I escaped from the pall of smoke which hung over the city I found the sky a sheet of cloudless blue How I watched for the ending of the rows of houses which lined the road for miles—the great roots of London running far out into the country up which poured past me an endless stream of food and merchandise and human beings—the sap of the huge metropolitan lifetree How each turn of the road opened a fresh line of terraces or villas till hope deferred made the heart sick and the country seemed—like the place where the rainbow touches the ground or the El Dorado of Raleighs Guiana settler—always a little farther off How between gaps in the houses right and left I caught tantalizing glimpses of green fields shut from me by dull lines of highspiked palings How I peeped through gates and over fences at trim lawns and gardens and longed to stay and admire and speculate on the name of the strange plants and gaudy flowers and then hurried on always expecting to find something still finer ahead—something really worth stopping to look at—till the houses thickened again into a street and I found myself to my disappointment in the midst of a town And then more villas and palings and then a village—when would they stop those endless houses
At last they did stop Gradually the people whom I passed began to look more and more rural and more toilworn and illfed The houses ended cattleyards and farmbuildings appeared and right and left far away spread the low rolling sheet of green meadows and cornfields Oh the joy The lawns with their high elms and firs the green hedgerows the delicate hue and scent of the fresh cloverfields the steep clay banks where I stopped to pick nosegays of wild flowers and became again a child—and then recollected my mother and a walk with her on the river bank towards the Red House—and hurried on again but could not be unhappy while my eyes ranged free for the first time in my life over the chequered squares of cultivation over glittering brooks and hills quivering in the green haze while above hung the skylarks pouring out their souls in melody And then as the sun grew hot and the larks dropped one by one into the growing corn the new delight of the blessed silence I listened to the stillness for noise had been my native element I had become in London quite unconscious of the ceaseless roar of the human sea casting up mire and dirt And now for the first time in my life the crushing confusing hubbub had flowed away and left my brain calm and free How I felt at that moment a capability of clear bright meditation which was as new to me as I believe it would have been to most Londoners in my position I cannot help fancying that our unnatural atmosphere of excitement physical as well as moral is to blame for very much of the working mans restlessness and fierceness As it was I felt that every step forward every breath of fresh air gave me new life I had gone fifteen miles before I recollected that for the first time for many months I had not coughed since I rose
So on I went down the broad bright road which seemed to beckon me forward into the unknown expanses of human life
The world was all before me where to choose
and I saw it both with my eyes and my imagination in the temper of a boy broke loose from school My heart kept holiday I loved and blessed the birds which flitted past me and the cows which lay dreaming on the sward I recollect stopping with delight at a picturesque descent into the road to watch a nurserygarden full of roses of every shade from brilliant yellow to darkest purple and as I wondered at the innumerable variety of beauties which mans art had developed from a few poor and wild species it seemed to me the most delightful life on earth to follow in such a place the primæval trade of gardener Adam to study the secrets of the flowerworld the laws of soil and climate to create new species and gloat over the living fruit of ones own science and perseverance And then I recollected the tailors shop and the Charter and the starvation and the oppression which I had left behind and ashamed of my own selfishness went hurrying on again
At last I came to a wood—the first real wood that I had ever seen not a mere party of stately park trees growing out of smooth turf but a real wild copse tangled branches and grey stems fallen across each other deep ragged underwood of shrubs and great ferns like princes feathers and gay beds of flowers blue and pink and yellow with butterflies flitting about them and trailers that climbed and dangled from bough to bough—a poor commonplace bit of copse I dare say in the worlds eyes but to me a fairy wilderness of beautiful forms mysterious gleams and shadows teeming with manifold life As I stood looking wistfully over the gate alternately at the inviting vista of the greenembroidered path and then at the grim notice over my head All trespassers prosecuted a young man came up the ride dressed in velveteen jacket and leather gaiters sufficiently bedrabbled with mud A fishingrod and basket bespoke him some sort of destroyer and I saw in a moment that he was a gentleman After all there is such a thing as looking like a gentleman There are men whose class no dirt or rags could hide any more than they could Ulysses I have seen such men in plenty among workmen too but on the whole the gentlemen—by whom I do not mean just now the rich—have the superiority in that point But not please God for ever Give us the same air water exercise education good society and you will see whether this haggardness this coarseness c c for the list is too long to specify be an accident or a property of the man of the people
May I go into your wood asked I at a venture curiosity conquering pride
Well what do you want there my good fellow
To see what a wood is like—I never was in one in my life
Humph well—you may go in for that and welcome Never was in a wood in his life—poor devil
Thank you quoth I And I slowly clambered over the gate He put his hand carelessly on the top rail vaulted over it like a deer and then turned to stare at me
Hullo I say—I forgot—dont go far in or ramble up and down or youll disturb the pheasants
I thanked him again for what license he had given me—went in and lay down by the pathside
Here I suppose by the rules of modern art a picturesque description of the said wood should follow but I am the most incompetent person in the world to write it And indeed the whole scene was so novel to me that I had no time to analyse I could only enjoy I recollect lying on my face and fingering over the delicately cut leaves of the weeds and wondering whether the people who lived in the country thought them as wonderful and beautiful as I did—and then I recollected the thousands whom I had left behind who like me had never seen the green face of Gods earth and the answer of the poor gamin in St Giless who when he was asked what the country was answered The yard where the gentlemen live when they go out of town—significant that and pathetic—then I wondered whether the time would ever come when society would be far enough advanced to open to even such as he a glimpse if it were only once a year of the fresh clean face of Gods earth—and then I became aware of a soft mysterious hum above and around me and turned on my back to look whence it proceeded and saw the leaves goldgreen and transparent in the sunlight quivering against the deep heights of the empyrean blue and hanging in the sunbeams that pierced the foliage a thousand insects like specks of fire that poised themselves motionless on thrilling wings and darted away and returned to hang motionless again—and I wondered what they eat and whether they thought about anything and whether they enjoyed the sunlight—and then that brought back to me the times when I used to lie dreaming in my crib on summer mornings and watched the flies dancing reels between me and the ceilings—and that again brought the thought of Susan and my mother and I prayed for them—not sadly—I could not be sad there—and prayed that we might all meet again some day and live happily together perhaps in the country where I could write poems in peace and then by degrees my sentences and thoughts grew incoherent and in happy stupid animal comfort I faded away into a heavy sleep which lasted an hour or more till I was awakened by the efforts of certain enterprising great black and red ants who were trying to found a small Algeria in my left ear
I rose and left the wood and a gate or two on stopped again to look at the same sportsman fishing in a clear silver brook I could not help admiring with a sort of childish wonder the graceful and practised aim with which he directed his tiny bait and called up mysterious dimples on the surface which in a moment increased to splashings and stragglings of a great fish compelled as if by some invisible spell to follow the point of the bending rod till he lay panting on the bank I confess in spite of all my class prejudices against gamepreserving aristocrats I almost envied the man at least I seemed to understand a little of the universally attractive charms which those same outwardly contemptible field sports possess the fresh air fresh fields and copses fresh running brooks the exercise the simple freedom the excitement just sufficient to keep alive expectation and banish thought—After all his trout produced much the same mood in him as my turnpikeroad did in me And perhaps the man did not go fishing or shooting every day The laws prevented him from shooting at least all the year round so sometimes there might be something in which he made himself of use An honest jolly face too he had—not without thought and strength in it Well it is a strange world said I to myself where those who can need not and those who cannot must
Then he came close to the gate and I left it just in time to see a little group arrive at it—a woman of his own rank young pretty and simply dressed with a little boy decked out as a Highlander on a shaggy Shetland pony which his mother as I guessed her to be was leading And then they all met and the little fellow held up a basket of provisions to his father who kissed him across the gate and hung his creel of fish behind the saddle and patted the mothers shoulder as she looked up lovingly and laughingly in his face Altogether a joyous genial bit of—Nature Yes Nature Shall I grudge simple happiness to the few because it is as yet alas impossible for the many
And yet the whole scene contrasted so painfully with me—with my past my future my dreams my wrongs that I could not look at it and with a swelling heart I moved on—all the faster because I saw they were looking at me and talking of me and the fair wife threw after me a wistful pitying glance which I was afraid might develop itself into some offer of food or money—a thing which I scorned and dreaded because it involved the trouble of a refusal
Then as I walked on once more my heart smote me If they had wished to be kind why had I grudged them the opportunity of a good deed At all events I might have asked their advice In a natural and harmonious state when society really means brotherhood a man could go up to any stranger to give and receive if not succour yet still experience and wisdom and was I not bound to tell them what I knew was sure that they did not know Was I not bound to preach the cause of my class wherever I went Here were kindly people who for aught I knew would do right the moment they were told where it was wanted if there was an accursed artificial gulf between their class and mine had I any right to complain of it as long as I helped to keep it up by my false pride and surly reserve No I would speak my mind henceforth—I would testify of what I saw and knew of the wrongs if not of the rights of the artisan before whomsoever I might come Oh valiant conclusion of half an hours selftormenting scruples How I kept it remains to be shown
I really fear that I am getting somewhat trivial and prolix but there was hardly an incident in my two days tramp which did not give me some small fresh insight into the terra incognita of the country and there may be those among my readers to whom it is not uninteresting to look for once at even the smallest objects with a cockney workmans eyes
Well I trudged on—and the shadows lengthened and I grew footsore and tired but every step was new and won me forward with fresh excitement for my curiosity
At one village I met a crowd of little noisy happy boys and girls pouring out of a smart new Gothic schoolhouse I could not resist the temptation of snatching a glance through the open door I saw on the walls maps music charts and pictures How I envied those little urchins A solemn sturdy elder in a white cravat evidently the parson of the parish was patting childrens heads taking down names and laying down the law to a shrewd prim young schoolmaster
Presently as I went up the village the clergyman strode past me brandishing a thick stick and humming a chant and joined a motherlylooking wife who basket on arm was popping in and out of the cottages looking alternately serious and funny cross and kindly—I suppose according to the sayings and doings of the folks within
Come I thought this looks like work at least And as I went out of the village I accosted a labourer who was trudging my way fork on shoulder and asked him if that was the parson and his wife
I was surprised at the difficulty with which I got into conversation with the man at his stupidity feigned or real I could not tell which at the dogged suspicious reserve with which he eyed me and asked me whether I was one of they parts and whether I was a Londoner and what I wanted on the tramp and so on before he seemed to think it safe to answer a single question He seemed like almost every labourer I ever met to have something on his mind to live in a state of perpetual fear and concealment When however he found I was both a cockney and a passerby he began to grow more communicative and told me Ees—that were the parson sure enough
And what sort of a man was he
Oh he was a main kind man to the poor leastwise in the matter of visiting em and praying with em and getting em to put into clubs and such like and his lady too Not that there was any fault to find with the man about money—but twasnt to be expected of him
Why was he not rich
Oh rich enough to the likes of us But his own tithes here arnt more than a thirty pounds we hears tell and if he hadnt summat of his own he couldnt do not nothing by the poor as it be he pays for that ere school all to his own pocket next part All the rest o the tithes goes to some great lord or other—they say he draws a matter of a thousand a year out of the parish and not a foot ever he sot into it and thats the way with a main lot o parishes up and down
This was quite a new fact to me And what sort of folks were the parsons all round
Oh some of all sorts good and bad About six and half a dozen Theres two or three nice young gentlemen comed round here now but theyre all whatsemacall it—some sort o papishes—leastwise they has prayers in the church every day and doesnt preach the Gospel no how I hears by my wife and she knows all about it along of going to meeting Then theres one over thereaway as had to leave his living—he knows why He got safe over seas If he had been a poor man hed been in gaol safe enough and soon enough Then theres two or three as goes ahunting—not as I sees no harm in that if a mans got plenty of money he ought to enjoy himself in course but still he cant be here and there too to once Then theres two or three as is bad in their healths or thinks themselves so—or else has livings summer else and they lives summer or others and has curates Main busy chaps is they curates always and wonderful hands to preach but then just as they gets a little knowing like at it and folks gets to like em and run to hear em off they pops to summat better and in course theyre right to do so and so we countryfolks get nought but the young colts afore theyre broke you see
And what sort of a preacher was his parson
Oh he preached very good Gospel not that he went very often himself acause he couldnt make out the meaning of it he preached too high like But his wife said it was uncommon good Gospel and surely when he come to visit a body and talked plain English like not sermonways he was a very pleasant man to heer and his lady uncommon kind to nurse folk They sot up with me and my wife they two did two whole nights when we was in the fever afore the officer could get us a nurse
Well said I there are some good parsons left
Oh yes theres some very good ones—each one after his own way and thered be more on em if they did but know how bad we labourers was off Why bless ye I mind when they was very different A new parson is a mighty change for the better mostwise we finds Why when I was a boy we never had no schooling And now mine goes and learns singing and jobrafy and ciphering and sich like Not that I sees no good in it We was a sight better off in the old times when there werent no schooling Schooling harnt made wages rise nor preaching neither
But surely I said all this religious knowledge ought to give you comfort even if you are badly off
Oh religions all very well for them as has time for it and a very good thing—we ought all to mind our latter end But I dont see how a man can hear sermons with an empty belly and theres so much to fret a man now and hes so cruel tired coming home o nights he cant nowise go to pray a lot as gentlefolks does
But are you so ill off
Oh hed had a good harvesting enough but then he owed all that for hes rent and hes club money wasnt paid up nor hes shop And then with hes wages—I forget the sum—under ten shillings—how could a man keep his mouth full when he had five children And then folks is so unmarciful—Ill just tell you what they says to me now last time I was over at the board—
And thereon he rambled off into a long jumble of medicalofficers and relievingofficers and Farmer This and Squire That which indicated a mind as illeducated as discontented He cursed or rather grumbled at—for he had not spirit it seemed to curse anything—the New Poor Law because it ate up the poor flesh and bone—bemoaned the Old Law when the Vestry was forced to give a man whatsomdever he axed for and if they didnt hed go to the magistrates and make em and so sure as a man got a fresh child he went and got another loaf allowed him next vestry like a Christian—and so turned through a gate and set to work forking up some weeds on a fallow leaving me many new thoughts to digest
That night I got to some town or other and there found a nights lodging good enough for a walking traveller
CHAPTER XII
CAMBRIDGE
When I started again next morning I found myself so stiff and footsore that I could hardly put one leg before the other much less walk upright I was really quite in despair before the end of the first mile for I had no money to pay for a lift on the coach and I knew besides that they would not be passing that way for several hours to come So with aching back and knees I made shift to limp along bent almost double and ended by sitting down for a couple of hours and looking about me in a country which would have seemed dreary enough I suppose to any one but a freshlyliberated captive such as I was At last I got up and limped on stiffer than ever from my rest when a gig drove past me towards Cambridge drawn by a stout cob and driven by a tall fat jollylooking farmer who stared at me as he passed went on looked back slackened his pace looked back again and at last came to a dead stop and hailed me in a broad nasal dialect—
Whor be ganging then boh
To Cambridge
Thewst na git there that gate Beest thee honest man
I hope so said I somewhat indignantly
Whats trade
A tailor I said
Tailor—guide us Tailor atramp Barnt accoostomed to tramp then
I never was out of London before said I meekly—for I was too wornout to be cross—lengthy and impertinent as this crossexamination seemed
Oill gie thee lift dee yow joomp in Gae on powney Tailor then Oh ah tailor saith he
I obeyed most thankfully and sat crouched together looking up out of the corner of my eyes at the huge tower of broadcloth by my side and comparing the two red shoulders of mutton which held the reins with my own wasted white womanlike fingers
I found the old gentleman most inquisitive He drew out of me all my story—questioned me about the way Lunnon folks lived and whether they got ony shooting or pattening—whereby I found he meant skating—and broke in every now and then with ejaculations of childish wonder and clumsy sympathy on my accounts of London labour and London misery
Oh father father—I wonders they bears it Usn in the fens wouldnt stand that likes Theyd roit and roit and roit and tak oot the dookgunes to un—they would as they did fiveandtwenty year agone Never to goo ayond the housen—never to go ayond the housen Kill me in a three months that would—bor then
Are you a farmer I asked at last thinking that my turn for questioning was come
I beant varmer I be yooman born Never paid rent in moy life nor never wool I farms my own land and my vathers avore me this ever so mony hoondred year Ive got the swoord of em to home and the helmet that they fut with into the wars then when they chopped off the kings head—what was the name of um
Charles the First
Ees—thats the booy We was Parliament side—true Britons all we was down into the fens and Oliver Cromwell as dug Botsham lode to the head of us Yow coom down to Metholl and Ill shaw ye a country Ill shaw ee someat like bullocks to call and someat like a field o beans—I wool—none o this here darned ups and downs o hills though the country through which we drove was flat enough I should have thought to please any one to shake a bodys victuals out of his inwards—all so flat as a barns floor for vorty mile on end—theres the country to live in—and vour sons—or was vour on em—every one on em fifteen stone in his shoes to patten again any man from Whitsea Mere to Denver Sluice for twenty pounds o gold and theres the money to lay down and let the man as dare cover it down with his money and on wi his pattens thirteeninch runners down the wind again either a one o the bairns
And he jingled in his pockets a heavy bag of gold and winked and chuckled and then suddenly checking himself repeated in a sad dubious tone two or three times Vour on em there was—vour on em there was and relieved his feelings by springing the pony into a canter till he came to a publichouse where he pulled up called for a pot of hot ale and insisted on treating me I assured him that I never drank fermented liquors
Aw Eh How can yow do that then Die o cowd i the fen that gate yow would Love ye then they as dinnot tak spirits down thor tak their pennord o elevation then—womenfolk especial
Whats elevation
Oh ho ho—yow goo into druggists shop o marketday into Cambridge and youll see the little boxes doozens and doozens a ready on the counter and never a venmans wife goo by but what calls in for her pennord o elevation to last her out the week Oh ho ho Well it keeps womenfolk quiet it do and its mortal good agin ago pains
But what is it
Opium bor alive opium
But doesnt it ruin their health I should think it the very worst sort of drunkenness
Ow well yow moi soy thatmakth em cruel thin then it do but what can bodies do i thago Bot its a bad thing it is Harken yow to me Didst ever know one called Porter to yowr trade
I thought a little and recollected a man of that name who had worked with us a year or two before—a great friend of a certain scatterbrained Irish lad brother of Crossthwaites wife
Well I did once but I have lost sight of him twelve months or more
The old man faced sharp round on me swinging the little gig almost over and then twisted himself back again and put on a true farmerlike look of dogged stolid reserve We rolled on a few minutes in silence
Dee yow consider now that a mon mought be lost like into Lunnon
How lost
Why yow told o they sweaters—dee yow think a mon might get in wi one o they and they that mought be looking for un not to vind un
I do indeed There was a friend of that man Porter got turned away from our shop because he wouldnt pay some tyrannical fine for being saucy as they called it to the shopman and he went to a sweaters—and then to another and his friends have been tracking him up and down this six months and can hear no news of him
Aw guide us And whatn think yow be gone wi un
I am afraid he has got into one of those dens and has pawned his clothes as dozens of them do for food and so cant get out
Pawned his clothes for victuals To think o that noo But if he had work cant he get victuals
Oh I said theres many a man who after working seventeen or eighteen hours a day Sundays and all without even time to take off his clothes finds himself brought in in debt to his tyrant at the weeks end And if he gets no work the villain wont let him leave the house he has to stay there starving on the chance of an hours job I tell you Ive known half a dozen men imprisoned in that way in a little dungeon of a garret where they had hardly room to stand upright and only just space to sit and work between their beds without breathing the fresh air or seeing Gods sun for months together with no victuals but a few slices of breadandbutter and a little slop of tea twice a day till they were starved to the very bone
Oh my God my God said the old man in a voice which had a deeper tone of feeling than mere sympathy with others sorrow was likely to have produced There was evidently something behind all these inquiries of his I longed to ask him if his name too was not Porter
Aw yow knawn Billy Porter What was a like Tell me now—what was a like in the Lords name what was a like unto
Very tall and bony I answered
Ah sax feet and more and a yard across—but a was starved a was a thin though maybe when yow sawn un—and beautiful fine hair hadnt a like a lasss
The man I knew had red hair quoth I
Ow ay an that it wor red as a rising sun and the curls of un like gowlden guineas And thou knewst Billy Porter To think o that noo—
Another long silence
Could you find un dee yow think noo into Lunnon Suppose now there was a mon ud gie—may be five pund—ten pund—twenty pund by —twenty pund down for to ha him brocht home safe and soun—Could yow dot bor I zay could yow dot
I could do it as well without the money as with if I could do it at all
But have you no guess as to where he is
He shook his head sadly
We—thats to zay they as wants un—havnt heerd tell of un vor this three year—three year coom Whitsuntide as ever was— And he wiped his eyes with his cuff
If you will tell me all about him and where he was last heard of I will do all I can to find him
Will ye noo will ye The Lord bless ye for zaying that And he grasped my hand in his great iron fist and fairly burst out crying
Was he a relation of yours I asked gently
My bairn—my bairn—my eldest bairn Dinnot yow ax me no moor—dinnot then bor Gie on yow powney and yow goo leuk vor un
Another long silence
Ive a been to Lunnon looking vor un
Another silence
I went up and down up and down day and night day and night to all pothouses as I could zee vor says I he was aways a main chap to drink he was Oh deery me and I never cot zight on un—and noo I be most spent I be—
And he pulled up at another publichouse and tried this time a glass of brandy He stopped I really think at every inn between that place and Cambridge and at each tried some fresh compound but his head seemed from habit utterly fireproof
At last we neared Cambridge and began to pass groups of gay horsemen and then those strange caps and gowns—ugly and unmeaning remnant of obsolete fashion
The old man insisted on driving me up to the gate of College and there dropped me after I had given him my address entreating me to vind the bairn and coom to zee him down to Metholl But dinnot goo ax for Farmer Porter—theys all Porters there away Yow ax for Woodenhouse Bob—thats me and if I barnt to home ax for Mucky Billy—thats my brawther—were all gotten our names down to ven and if he barnt to home yow ax for Froghall—thats where my sister do live and theyll all veed ye and lodge ye and welcome come We be all like one doon in the ven and do ye do ye vind my bairn And he trundled on down the narrow street
I was soon directed by various smartlooking servants to my cousins rooms and after a few mistakes and wandering up and down noble courts and cloisters swarming with gay young men whose jaunty air and dress seemed strangely out of keeping with the stem antique solemnity of the Gothic buildings around I espied my cousins name over a door and uncertain how he might receive me I gave a gentle halfapologetic knock which was answered by a loud Come in and I entered on a scene even more incongruous than anything I had seen outside
If we can only keep away from Jesus as far as the corner I dont care
If we dont run into that first Trinity before the willows I shall care with a vengeance
If we dont its a pity said my cousin Wadham ran up by the side of that first Trinity yesterday and he said that they were as well gruelled as so many posters before they got to the stile
This unintelligible and to my inexperienced ears irreverent conversation proceeded from half a dozen powerful young men in lowcrowned sailors hats and flannel trousers some in striped jerseys some in shootingjackets some smoking cigars some beating up eggs in sherry while my cousin dressed like a fancy waterman sat on the back of a sofa puffing away at a huge meerschaum
Alton why what wind on earth has blown you here
By the tone the words seemed rather an inquiry as to what wind would be kind enough to blow me back again But he recovered his selfpossession in a moment
Delighted to see you Wheres your portmanteau Oh—left it at the Bull Ah I see Very well well send the gyp for it in a minute and order some luncheon Were just going down to the boatrace Sorry I cant stop but we shall all be fined—not a moment to lose Ill send you in luncheon as I go through the butteries then perhaps youd like to come down and see the race Ask the gyp to tell you the way Now then follow your noble captain gentlemen—to glory and a supper And he bustled out with his crew
While I was staring about the room at the jumble of Greek books boxinggloves and luscious prints of pretty women a shrewdfaced smart man entered much better dressed than myself
What would you like sir Oxtail soup sir or gravysoup sir Stilton cheese sir or Cheshire sir Old Stilton sir just now
Fearing lest many words might betray my rank—and strange to say though I should not have been afraid of confessing myself an artisan before the gentlemen who had just left the room I was ashamed to have my low estate discovered and talked over with his compeers by the flunkey who waited on them—I answered Anything—I really dont care in as aristocratic and offhand a tone as I could assume
Porter or ale sir
Water without a thank you I am ashamed to say for I was not at that time quite sure whether it was wellbred to be civil to servants
The man vanished and reappeared with a savoury luncheon silver forks snowy napkins smart plates—I felt really quite a gentleman
He gave me full directions as to my way to the boats sir and I started out much refreshed passed through back streets dingy dirty and profligatelooking enough out upon wide meadows fringed with enormous elms across a ferry through a pleasant village with its old grey church and spire by the side of a sluggish river alive with wherries I had walked down some mile or so and just as I heard a cannon as I thought fire at some distance and wondered at its meaning I came to a sudden bend of the river with a churchtower hanging over the stream on the opposite bank a knot of tall poplars weeping willows rich lawns sloping down to the waters side gay with bonnets and shawls while along the edge of the stream light gaudilypainted boats apparently waited for the race—altogether the most brilliant and graceful group of scenery which I had beheld in my little travels I stopped to gaze and among the ladies on the lawn opposite caught sight of a figure—my heart leapt into my mouth Was it she at last It was too far to distinguish features the dress was altogether different—but was it not she I saw her move across the lawn and take the arm of a tall venerablelooking man and his dress was the same as that of the Dean at the Dulwich Gallery—was it was it not To have found her and a river between us It was ludicrously miserable—miserably ludicrous Oh that accursed river which debarred me from certainty from bliss I would have plunged across—but there were three objections—first that I could not swim next what could I do when I had crossed and thirdly it might not be she after all
And yet I was certain—instinctively certain—that it was she the idol of my imagination for years If I could not see her features under that little white bonnet I could imagine them there they flashed up in my memory as fresh as ever Did she remember my features as I did hers Would she know me again Had she ever even thought of me from that day to this Fool But there I stood fascinated gazing across the river heedless of the racingboats and the crowd and the roar that was rushing up to me at the rate of ten miles an hour and in a moment more had caught me and swept me away with it whether I would or not along the towingpath by the side of the foremost boats
And yet after a few moments I ceased to wonder either at the Cambridge passion for boatracing or at the excitement of the spectators Honi soit qui mal y pense It was a noble sport—a sight such as could only be seen in England—some hundred of young men who might if they had chosen been lounging effeminately about the streets subjecting themselves voluntarily to that intense exertion for the mere pleasure of toil The true English stuff came out there I felt that in spite of all my prejudices—the stuff which has held Gibraltar and conquered at Waterloo—which has created a Birmingham and a Manchester and colonized every quarter of the globe—that grim earnest stubborn energy which since the days of the old Romans the English possess alone of all the nations of the earth I was as proud of the gallant young fellows as if they had been my brothers—of their courage and endurance for one could see that it was no childsplay from the pale faces and panting lips their strength and activity so fierce and yet so cultivated smooth harmonious as oar kept time with oar and every back rose and fell in concert—and felt my soul stirred up to a sort of sweet madness not merely by the shouts and cheers of the mob around me but by the loud fierce pulse of the rowlocks the swift whispering rush of the long snakelike eight oars the swirl and gurgle of the water in their wake the grim breathless silence of the straining rowers My blood boiled over and fierce tears swelled into my eyes for I too was a man and an Englishman and when I caught sight of my cousin pulling stroke to the second boat in the long line with set teeth and flashing eyes the great muscles on his bare arms springing up into knots at every rapid stroke I ran and shouted among the maddest and the foremost
But I soon tired and footsore as I was began to find my strength fail me I tried to drop behind but found it impossible in the press At last quite out of breath I stopped and instantly received a heavy blow from behind which threw me on my face and a fierce voice shouted in my ear Confound you sir dont you know better than to do that I looked up and saw a man twice as big as myself sprawling over me headlong down the bank toward the river whither I followed him but alas not on my feet but rolling head over heels On the very brink he stuck his heels into the turf and stopped dead amid a shout of Well saved Lynedale I did not stop but rolled into some twofeet water amid the laughter and shouts of the men
I scrambled out and limped on shaking with wet and pain till I was stopped by a crowd which filled the towingpath An eightoar lay under the bank and the men on shore were cheering and praising those in the boat for having bumped which word I already understood to mean winning a race
Among them close to me was the tall man who had upset me and a very handsome highbred looking man he was I tried to slip by but he recognized me instantly and spoke
I hope I didnt hurt you much Really when I spoke so sharply I did not see that you were not a gownsman
The speech as I suppose now was meant courteously enough It indicated that though he might allow himself liberties with men of his own class he was too well bred to do so with me But in my anger I saw nothing but the words not a gownsman Why should he see that I was not a gownsman Because I was shabbier—and my clothes over and above the ducking they had had were shabby or more plebeian in appearance whatsoever that may mean or wanted something else which the rest had about them and I had not Why should he know that I was not a gownsman I did not wish of course to be a gentleman and an aristocrat but I was nettled nevertheless at not being mistaken for one and answered sharply enough—
No matter whether I am hurt or not It serves me right for getting among you cursed aristocrats
Box the cads ears Lord Lynedale said a dirty fellow with a long pole—a cad himself I should have thought
Let him go home and ask his mammy to hang him out to dry said another
The lord for so I understood he was looked at me with an air of surprise and amusement which may have been goodnatured enough in him but did not increase the goodnature in me
Tut tut my good fellow I really am very sorry for having upset you
Heres halfacrown to cover damages
Better give it me than a muff like that quoth he of the long pole while I answered surlily enough that I wanted neither him nor his money and burst through the crowd toward Cambridge I was so shabby and plebeian then that people actually dare offer me money Intolerable
The reader may say that I was in a very unwholesome and unreasonable frame of mind
So I was And so would he have been in my place
CHAPTER XIII
THE LOST IDOL FOUND
On my return I found my cousin already at home in high spirits at having as he informed me bumped the first Trinity I excused myself for my dripping state simply by saying that I had slipped into the river To tell him the whole of the story while the fancied insult still rankled fresh in me was really too disagreeable both to my memory and my pride
Then came the question What had brought me to Cambridge I told him all and he seemed honestly to sympathize with my misfortunes
Never mind well make it all right somehow Those poems of yours—you must let me have them and look over them and I dare say I shall persuade the governor to do something with them After all its no loss for you you couldnt have got on tailoring—much too sharp a fellow for that—you ought to be at college if one could only get you there These sizarships now were meant for—just such cases as yours—clever fellows who could not afford to educate themselves if we could only help you to one of them now—
You forget that in that case said I with something like a sigh I should have to become a member of the Church of England
Why no not exactly Though of course if you want to get all out of the university which you ought to get you must do so at last
And pretend to believe what I do not for the sake of deserting my own class and pandering to the very aristocrats whom—
Hullo and he jumped with a hoarse laugh Stop that till I see whether the door is sported Why you silly fellow what harm have the aristocrats as you call them ever done you Are they not doing you good at this moment Are you not by virtue of their aristocratic institutions nearer having your poems published your genius recognized etc etc than ever you were before
Aristocrats Then you call yourself one
No Alton my boy not yet said he quietly and knowingly Not yet but I have chosen the right road and shall end at the roads end and I advise you—for really as my cousin I wish you all success even for the mere credit of the family to choose the same road likewise
What road
Come up to Cambridge by hook or by crook and then take orders
I laughed scornfully
My good cousin it is the only method yet discovered for turning a snob as I am or was into a gentleman except putting him into a heavy cavalry regiment My brother who has no brains preferred the latter method I who flatter myself that I have some have taken the former." The thought was new and astonishing to me and I looked at him in silence while he ran on—
If you are once a parson all is safe Be you who you may before from that moment you are a gentleman No one will offer an insult You are good enough for any mans society You can dine at any noblemans table You can be friend confidant father confessor if you like to the highest women in the land and if you have person manners and common sense marry one of them into the bargain Alton my boy
And it is for that that you will sell your soul—to become a hangeron of the upper classes in sloth and luxury
Sloth and luxury Stuff and nonsense I tell you that after I have taken orders I shall have years and years of hard work before me continual drudgery of serving tables managing charities visiting preaching from morning till night and after that often from night to morning again Enough to wear out any but a tough constitution as I trust mine is Work Alton and hard work is the only way nowadays to rise in the Church as in other professions My father can buy me a living some day but he cant buy me success notoriety social position power— and he stopped suddenly as if he had been on the point of saying something more which should not have been said
And this I said is your idea of a vocation for the sacred ministry It is for this that you brought up a dissenter have gone over to the Church of England
And how do you know—and his whole tone of voice changed instantly into what was meant I suppose for a gentle seriousness and reverent suavity—that I am not a sincere member of the Church of England How do you know that I may not have loftier plans and ideas though I may not choose to parade them to everyone and give that which is holy to the dogs
I am the dog then I asked half amused for I was too curious about his state of mind to be angry
Not at all my dear fellow But those great men to whom we or at least I owe our conversion to the true Church always tell us and you will feel yourself how right they are not to parade religious feelings to look upon them as sacred things to be treated with that due reserve which springs from real reverence You know as well as I whether that is the fashion of the body in which we were alas brought up You know as well as I whether the religious conversation of that body has heightened your respect for sacred things
I do too well And I thought of Mr Wigginton and my mothers tea parties
I dare say the vulgarity of that school has ere now shaken your faith in all that was holy
I was very near confessing that it had but a feeling came over me I knew not why that my cousin would have been glad to get me into his power and would therefore have welcomed a confession of infidelity So I held my tongue
I can confess he said in the most confidential tone that it had for a time that effect on me I have confessed it ere now and shall again and again I trust But I shudder to think of what I might have been believing or disbelieving now if I had not in a happy hour fallen in with Mr Newmans sermons and learnt from them and from his disciples what the Church of England really was not Protestant no but Catholic in the deepest and highest sense
So you are one of these new Tractarians You do not seem to have adopted yet the ascetic mode of life which I hear they praise up so highly
My dear Alton if you have read as you have your Bible you will recollect a text which tells you not to appear to men to fast What I do or do not do in the way of self-denial unless I were actually profligate which I give you my sacred honour I am not must be a matter between Heaven and myself
There was no denying that truth but the longer my cousin talked the less I trusted in him—I had almost said the less I believed him Ever since the tone of his voice had changed so suddenly I liked him less than when he was honestly blurting out his coarse and selfish ambition I do not think he was a hypocrite I think he believed what he said as strongly as he could believe anything He proved afterwards that he did so as far as man can judge man by severe and diligent parish work but I cannot help doubting at times if that man ever knew what believing meant God forgive him In that he is no worse than hundreds more who have never felt the burning and shining flame of intense conviction of some truth rooted in the inmost recesses of the soul by which a man must live for which he would not fear to die
And therefore I listened to him dully and carelessly I did not care to bring objections which arose thick and fast to everything he said He tried to assure me—and did so with a great deal of cleverness—that this Tractarian movement was not really an aristocratic but a democratic one that the Catholic Church had been in all ages the Church of the poor that the clergy were commissioned by Heaven to vindicate the rights of the people and to stand between them and the tyranny of Mammon I did not care to answer him that the Catholic Church had always been a Church of slaves and not of free men that the clergy had in every age been the enemies of light of liberty the oppressors of their flocks and that to exalt a sacerdotal caste over other aristocracies whether of birth or wealth was merely to change our tyrants When he told me that a clergyman of the Established Church if he took up the cause of the working classes might be the boldest and surest of all allies just because being established and certain of his income he cared not one sixpence what he said to any man alive I did not care to answer him as I might—And more shame upon the clergy that having the safe vantageground which you describe they dare not use it like men in a good cause and speak their minds if forsooth no one can stop them from so doing In fact I was distrustful which I had a right to be and envious also but if I had a right to be that I was certainly not wise nor is any man in exercising the said dangerous right as I did and envying my cousin and every man in Cambridge
But that evening understanding that a boating supper or some jubilation over my cousins victory was to take place in his rooms I asked leave to absent myself—and I do not think my cousin felt much regret at giving me leave—and wandered up and down the Kings Parade watching the tall gables of Kings College Chapel and the classic front of the Senate House and the stately tower of St Marys as they stood stern and silent bathed in the still glory of the moonlight and contrasting bitterly the lot of those who were educated under their shadow to the lot which had befallen me Footnote It must be remembered that these impressions of and comments on the universities are not my own They are simply what clever working men thought about them from 1845 to 1850 a period at which I had the fullest opportunities for knowing the thoughts of working men
Noble buildings I said to myself and noble institutions given freely to the people by those who loved the people and the Saviour who died for them They gave us what they had those mediæval founders whatsoever narrowness of mind or superstition defiled their gift was not their fault but the fault of their whole age The best they knew they imparted freely and God will reward them for it To monopolize those institutions for the rich as is done now is to violate both the spirit and the letter of the foundations to restrict their studies to the limits of middleaged Romanism their conditions of admission to those fixed at the Reformation is but a shade less wrongful The letter is kept—the spirit is thrown away You refuse to admit any who are not members of the Church of England say rather any who will not sign the dogmas of the Church of England whether they believe a word of them or not Useless formalism which lets through the reckless the profligate the ignorant the hypocritical and only excludes the honest and the conscientious and the mass of the intellectual working men And whose fault is it that THEY are not members of the Church of England Whose fault is it I ask Your predecessors neglected the lower orders till they have ceased to reverence either you or your doctrines you confess that among yourselves freely enough You throw the blame of the present widespread dislike to the Church of England on her sins during the godless eighteenth century Be it so Why are those sins to be visited on us Why are we to be shut out from the universities which were founded for us because you have let us grow up by millions heathens and infidels as you call us Take away your subterfuge It is not merely because we are bad churchmen that you exclude us else you would be crowding your colleges now with the talented poor of the agricultural districts who as you say remain faithful to the church of their fathers But are there six labourers sons educating in the universities at this moment No the real reason for our exclusion churchmen or not is because we are poor—because we cannot pay your exorbitant fees often as in the case of bachelors of arts exacted for tuition which is never given and residence which is not permitted—because we could not support the extravagance which you not only permit but encourage—because by your own unblushing confession it insures the university the support of the aristocracy
But on religious points at least you must abide by the statutes of the university
Strange argument truly to be urged literally by English Protestants in possession of Roman Catholic bequests If that be true in the letter as well as in the spirit you should have given place long ago to the Dominicans and the Franciscans In the spirit it is true and the Reformers acted on it when they rightly converted the universities to the uses of the new faith They carried out the spirit of the founders statutes by making the universities as good as they could be and letting them share in the new light of the Elizabethan age But was the sum of knowledge, human and divine perfected at the Reformation Who gave the Reformers or you who call yourselves their representatives a right to say to the mind of man and to the teaching of Gods Spirit Hitherto and no farther Society and mankind the children of the Supreme will not stop growing for your dogmas—much less for your vested interests and the righteous law of mingled development and renovation applied in the sixteenth century must be reapplied in the nineteenth while the spirits of the founders now purged from the superstitions and ignorances of their age shall smile from heaven and say So would we have had it if we had lived in the great nineteenth century into which it has been your privilege to be born
But such thoughts soon passed away The image which I had seen that afternoon upon the river banks had awakened imperiously the frantic longings of past years and now it reascended its ancient throne and tyrannously drove forth every other object to keep me alone with its own tantalizing and torturing beauty I did not think about her—No I only stupidly and steadfastly stared at her with my whole soul and imagination through that long sleepless night and in spite of the fatigue of my journey and the stiffness proceeding from my fall and wetting I lay tossing till the early sun poured into my bedroom window Then I arose dressed myself and went out to wander up and down the streets gazing at one splendid building after another till I found the gates of Kings College open I entered eagerly through a porch which to my untutored taste seemed gorgeous enough to form the entrance to a fairy palace and stood in the quadrangle riveted to the spot by the magnificence of the huge chapel on the right
If I had admired it the night before I felt inclined to worship it this morning as I saw the lofty buttresses and spires fretted with all their gorgeous carving and storied windows richly dight sleeping in the glare of the newlyrisen sun and throwing their long shadows due westward down the sloping lawn and across the river which dimpled and gleamed below till it was lost among the towering masses of crisp elms and rosegarlanded chestnuts in the rich gardens beyond
Was I delighted Yes—and yet no There is a painful feeling in seeing anything magnificent which one cannot understand And perhaps it was a morbid sensitiveness but the feeling was strong upon me that I was an interloper there—out of harmony with the scene and the system which had created it that I might be an object of unpleasant curiosity perhaps of scorn for I had not forgotten the nobleman at the boatrace amid those monuments of learned luxury Perhaps on the other hand it was only from the instinct which makes us seek for solitude under the pressure of intense emotions when we have neither language to express them to ourselves nor loved one in whose silent eyes we may read kindred feelings—a sympathy which wants no words Whatever the cause was when a party of men in their caps and gowns approached me down the dark avenue which led into the country I was glad to shrink for concealment behind the weepingwillow at the foot of the bridge and slink off unobserved to breakfast with my cousin
We had just finished breakfast my cousin was lighting his meerschaum when a tall figure passed the window and the taller of the noblemen whom I had seen at the boatrace entered the room with a packet of papers in his hand
Here Locule mi my pocketbook—or rather to stretch a bad pun till it bursts my pocketdictionary—I require the aid of your benevolentlysquandered talents for the correction of these proofs I am as usual both idle and busy this morning so draw pen and set to work for me
I am exceedingly sorry my lord answered George in his most obsequious tone but I must work this morning with all my might Last night recollect was given to triumph Bacchus and idleness
Then find some one who will do them for me my Ulysses polumechane polutrope panurge
I shall be most happy with a halffrown and a wince to play Panurge to your lordships Pantagruel on board the new yacht
Oh I am perfect in that character I suppose And is she after all like Pantagruels ship to be loaded with hemp Well we must try two or three milder cargoes first But come find me some starving genius—some græculus esuriens—
Who will ascend to the heaven of your lordships eloquence for the bidding
Five shillings a sheet—there will be about two of them I think in the pamphlet
May I take the liberty of recommending my cousin here
Your cousin And he turned to me who had been examining with a sad and envious eye the contents of the bookshelves Our eyes met and first a faint blush and then a smile of recognition passed over his magnificent countenance
I think I had—I am ashamed that I cannot say the pleasure of meeting him at the boat race yesterday
My cousin looked inquiringly and vexed at us both The nobleman smiled
Oh the fault was mine not his
I cannot think I answered that you have any reasons to remember with shame your own kindness and courtesy As for me I went on bitterly I suppose a poor journeyman tailor who ventures to look on at the sports of gentlemen only deserves to be run over
Sir he said looking at me with a severe and searching glance your bitterness is pardonable—but not your sneer You do not yourself think what you say and you ought to know that I think it still less than yourself If you intend your irony to be useful you should keep it till you can use it courageously against the true offenders
I looked up at him fiercely enough but the placid smile which had returned to his face disarmed me
Your class he went on blind yourselves and our class as much by wholesale denunciations of us as we alas who should know better do by wholesale denunciations of you As you grow older you will learn that there are exceptions to every rule
And yet the exception proves the rule
Most painfully true sir But that argument is twoedged For instance am I to consider it the exception or the rule when I am told that you a journeyman tailor are able to correct these proofs for me
Nearer the rule I think than you yet fancy
You speak out boldly and well but how can you judge what I may please to fancy At all events I will make trial of you There are the proofs Bring them to me by four oclock this afternoon and if they are well done I will pay you more than I should do to the average hackwriter for you will deserve more
I took the proofs he turned to go and by a sidelook at George beckoned him out of the room I heard a whispering in the passage and I do not deny that my heart beat high with new hopes as I caught unwillingly the words—
Such a forehead—such an eye—such a contour of feature as that—Locule mi—that boy ought not to be mending trousers
My cousin returned half laughing half angry
Alton you fool why did you let out that you were a snip
I am not ashamed of my trade
I am then However youve done with it now and if you cant come the gentleman you may as well come the rising genius The self-educated dodge pays well just now and after all youve hooked his lordship—thank me for that But youll never hold him you impudent dog if you pull so hard on him—He went on putting his hands into his coattail pockets and sticking himself in front of the fire like the Delphic Pythoness upon the sacred tripod in hopes I suppose of some oracular afflatus—You will never hold him I say if you pull so hard on him You ought to My lord him for months yet at least You know my good fellow you must take every possible care to pick up what good breeding you can if I take the trouble to put you in the way of good society and tell you where my private birdsnests are like the green schoolboy some poet or other talks of
He is no lord of mine I answered in any sense of the word and therefore I shall not call him so
Upon my honour here is a young gentleman who intends to rise in the world and then commences by trying to walk through the first post he meets Noodle cant you do like me and get out of the carts way when they come by If you intend to go ahead you must just dodge in and out like a dog at a fair She stoops to conquer is my motto and a precious good one too
I have no wish to conquer Lord Lynedale and so I shall not stoop to him
I have then and to very good purpose too I am his whetstone for polishing up that classical wit of his on till he carries it into Parliament to astonish the country squires He fancies himself a second Goethe I havnt forgot his hitting at me before a large supper party with a certain epigram of that old turkeycocks about the whale having his unmentionable parasite—and the great man likewise Whale indeed I bide my time Alton my boy—I bide my time and then let your grand aristocrat look out If he does not find the supposed whaleunmentionable a good stout holding harpoon with a tough line to it and a long one its a pity Alton my boy
And he burst into a coarse laugh tossed himself down on the sofa and relighted his meerschaum
He seemed to me I answered to have a peculiar courtesy and liberality of mind towards those below him in rank
Oh he had had he Now Ill just put you up to a dodge He intends to come the Mirabeau—fancies his mantle has fallen on him—prays before the fellows bust I believe if one knew the truth for a double portion of his spirit and therefore it is a part of his game to ingratiate himself with all potboydom while at heart he is as proud exclusive an aristocrat as ever wore noblemans hat At all events you may get something out of him if you play your cards well—or rather help me to play mine for I consider him as my property and you only as my aidedecamp
I shall play no ones cards I answered sulkily I am doing work fairly and shall be fairly paid for it and keep my own independence
Independence—heyday Have you forgotten that after all you are my—guest to call it by the mildest term
Do you upbraid me with that I said starting up Do you expect me to live on your charity on condition of doing your dirty work You do not know me sir I leave your roof this instant
You do not answered he laughing loudly as he sprang over the sofa and set his back against the door Come come you WillotheWisp as full of flights and fancies and vagaries as a sick old maid cant you see which side your bread is buttered Sit down I say Dont you know that Im as goodnatured a fellow as ever lived although I do parade a little Gil Bias morality now and then just for funs sake Do you think I should be so open with it if I meant anything very diabolic There—sit down and dont go into King Cambyses vein or Queen Hecubas tears either which you seem inclined to do
I know you have been very generous to me I said penitently but a kindness becomes none when you are upbraided with it
So say the copybooks—I deny it At all events Ill say no more and
you shall sit down there and write as still as a mouse till two while
I tackle this nevertobeenoughbyunhappythirdyearsmenexecrated
Griffins Optics
At four that afternoon I knocked proofs in hand at the door of Lord Lynedales rooms in the Kings Parade The door was opened by a little elderly groom greycoated greygaitered greyhaired greyvisaged He had the look of a respectable old family retainer and his exquisitely neat grooms dress gave him a sort of interest in my eyes Class costumes relics though they are of feudalism carry a charm with them They are symbolic definitive they bestow a personality on the wearer which satisfies the mind, by enabling it instantly to classify him to connect him with a thousand stories and associations and to my young mind the wiry shrewd honest grim old servingman seemed the incarnation of all the wonders of Newmarket and the huntingkennel and the steeplechase of which I had read with alternate admiration and contempt in the newspapers He ushered me in with a good breeding which surprised me—without insolence to me or servility to his master both of which I had been taught to expect
Lord Lynedale bade me very courteously sit down while he examined the proofs I looked round the lowwainscoted apartment with its narrow mullioned windows in extreme curiosity What a real noblemans abode could be like was naturally worth examining to one who had all his life heard of the aristocracy as of some mythic Titans—whether fiends or gods being yet a doubtful point—altogether enshrined on cloudy Olympus invisible to mortal ken The shelves were gay with morocco Russia leather and gilding—not much used as I thought till my eye caught one of the gorgeouslybound volumes lying on the table in a loose cover of polished leather—a refinement of which poor I should never have dreamt The walls were covered with prints which soon turned my eyes from everything else to range delighted over Landseers Turners Robertss Eastern sketches the ancient Italian masters and I recognized with a sort of friendly affection an old print of my favourite St Sebastian in the Dulwich Gallery It brought back to my mind a thousand dreams and a thousand sorrows Would those dreams be ever realized Might this new acquaintance possibly open some pathway towards their fulfilment—some vista towards the attainment of a station where they would at least be less chimerical And at that thought my heart beat loud with hope The room was choked up with chairs and tables of all sorts of strange shapes and problematical uses The floor was strewed with skins of bear deer and seal In a corner lay huntingwhips and fishingrods foils boxinggloves and guncases while over the chimneypiece an array of rich Turkish pipes all amber and enamel contrasted curiously with quaint old swords and daggers—bronze classic casts upon Gothic oak brackets and fantastic scraps of continental carving On the centre table too reigned the same rich profusion or if you will confusion—MSS Notes in Egypt Goethes Walverwandschaften Murrays Handbooks and Platos Republic What was there not there And I chuckled inwardly to see how Bells Life in London and the Ecclesiologist had between them got down McCulloch on Taxation and were sitting arminarm triumphantly astride of him Everything in the room even to the fragrant flowers in a German glass spoke of a travelled and cultivated luxury—manifold tastes and powers of self-enjoyment and selfimprovement which Heaven forgive me if I envied as I looked upon them If I now had had onetwentieth part of those books prints that experience of life not to mention that physical strength and beauty which stood towering there before the fire—so simple so utterly unconscious of the innate nobleness and grace which shone out from every motion of those stately limbs and features—all the delicacy which blood can give combined as one does sometimes see with the broad strength of the proletarian—so different from poor me—and so different too as I recollected with perhaps a savage pleasure from the miserable stunted specimens of overbred imbecility whom I had often passed in London A strange question that of birth and one in which the philosopher in spite of himself must come to democratic conclusions For after all the physical and intellectual superiority of the highborn is only preserved as it was in the old Norman times by the continual practical abnegation of the very castelie on which they pride themselves—by continual renovation of their race by intermarriage with the ranks below them The blood of Odin flowed in the veins of Norman William true—and so did the tanners of Falaise
At last he looked up and spoke courteously—
Im afraid I have kept you long but now here is for your corrections which are capital I have really to thank you for a lesson in writing English And he put a sovereign into my hand
I am very sorry said I but I have no change
Never mind that Your work is well worth the money
But I said you agreed with me for five shillings a sheet and—I do not wish to be rude but I cannot accept your kindness We working men make a rule of abiding by our wages and taking nothing which looks like—
Well well—and a very good rule it is I suppose then I must find out some way for you to earn more Good afternoon And he motioned me out of the room followed me down stairs and turned off towards the College Gardens
I wandered up and down feeding my greedy eyes till I found myself again upon the bridge where I had stood that morning gazing with admiration and astonishment at a scene which I have often expected to see painted or described and which nevertheless in spite of its unique magnificence seems strangely overlooked by those who cater for the public taste with pen and pencil The vista of bridges one after another spanning the stream the long line of great monastic palaces all unlike and yet all in harmony sloping down to the stream with their trim lawns and ivied walls their towers and buttresses and opposite them the range of rich gardens and noble timbertrees dimly seen through which at the end of the gorgeous river avenue towered the lofty buildings of St Johns The whole scene under the glow of a rich May afternoon seemed to me a fragment out of the Arabian Nights or Spencers Fairy Queen I leaned upon the parapet and gazed and gazed so absorbed in wonder and enjoyment that I was quite unconscious for some time that Lord Lynedale was standing by my side engaged in the same employment He was not alone Hanging on his arm was a lady whose face it seemed to me I ought to know It certainly was one not to be easily forgotten She was beautiful but with the face and figure rather of a Juno than a Venus—dark imperious restless—the lips almost too firmly set the brow almost too massive and projecting—a queen rather to be feared than loved—but a queen still as truly royal as the man into whose face she was looking up with eager admiration and delight as he pointed out to her eloquently the several beauties of the landscape Her dress was as plain as that of any Quaker but the grace of its arrangement of every line and fold was enough without the help of the heavy gold bracelet on her wrist to proclaim her a fine lady by which term I wish to express the result of that perfect education in taste and manner down to every gesture which Heaven forbid that I professing to be a poet should undervalue It is beautiful and therefore I welcome it in the name of the Author of all beauty I value it so highly that I would fain see it extend not merely from Belgravia to the tradesmans villa but thence as I believe it one day will to the labourers hovel and the needlewomans garret
Half in bashfulness half in the pride which shrinks from anything like intrusion I was moving away but the nobleman recognising me with a smile and a nod made some observation on the beauty of the scene before us Before I could answer however I saw that his companions eyes were fixed intently on my face
Is this she said to Lord Lynedale the young person of whom you were speaking to me just now I fancy that I recollect him though I dare say he has forgotten me
If I had forgotten the face that voice so peculiarly rich deep and marked in its pronunciation of every syllable recalled her instantly to my mind It was the dark lady of the Dulwich Gallery
I met you I think I said at the picture gallery at Dulwich and you were kind enough and—and some persons who were with you to talk to me about a picture there
Yes Guidos St Sebastian You seemed fond of reading then I am glad to see you at college
I explained that I was not at college That led to fresh gentle questions on her part till I had given her all the leading points of my history There was nothing in it of which I ought to have been ashamed
She seemed to become more and more interested in my story and her companion also
And have you tried to write I recollect my uncle advising you to try a poem on St Sebastian It was spoken perhaps in jest but it will not I hope have been labour lost if you have taken it in earnest
Yes—I have written on that and on other subjects during the last few years
Then you must let us see them if you have them with you I think my uncle Arthur might like to look over them and if they were fit for publication he might be able to do something towards it
At all events said Lord Lynedale a self-educated author is always interesting Bring any of your poems that you have with you to the Eagle this afternoon and leave them there for Dean Winnstay and tomorrow morning if you have nothing better to do call there between ten and eleven oclock
He wrote me down the deans address and nodding a civil good morning turned away with his queenly companion while I stood gazing after him wondering whether all noblemen and highborn ladies were like them in person and in spirit—a question which in spite of many noble exceptions some of them well known and appreciated by the working men I am afraid must be answered in the negative.
I took my MSS to the Eagle and wandered out once more instinctively among those same magnificent trees at the back of the colleges to enjoy the pleasing torment of expectation My uncle was he the same old man whom I had seen at the gallery and if so was Lillian with him Delicious hope And yet what if she was with him—what to me But yet I sat silent dreaming all the evening and hurried early to bed—not to sleep but to lie and dream on and on and rise almost before light eat no breakfast and pace up and down waiting impatiently for the hour at which I was to find out whether my dream was true
And it was true The first object I saw when I entered the room was Lillian looking more beautiful than ever The child of sixteen had blossomed into the woman of twenty The ivory and vermilion of the complexion had toned down together into still richer hues The dark hazel eyes shone with a more liquid lustre The figure had become more rounded without losing a line of that fairy lightness with which her light morningdress with its delicate French semitones of colour gay and yet not gaudy seemed to harmonize The little plump jewelled hands—the transparent chestnut hair banded round the beautiful oval masque—the tiny feet which as Suckling has it
Underneath her petticoat
Like little mice peeped in and out—
I could have fallen down fool that I was and worshipped—what I could not tell then for I cannot tell even now
The dean smiled recognition bade me sit down and disposed my papers meditatively on his knee I obeyed him trembling choking—my eyes devouring my idol—forgetting why I had come—seeing nothing but her—listening for nothing but the opening of these lips I believe the dean was some sentences deep in his oration before I became conscious thereof
—And I think I may tell you at once that I have been very much surprised and gratified with them They evince on the whole a far greater acquaintance with the English classicmodels and with the laws of rhyme and melody than could have been expected from a young man of your class—macte virtute puer Have you read any Latin
A little And I went on staring at Lillian who looked up furtively from her work every now and then to steal a glance at me and set my poor heart thumping still more fiercely against my side
Very good you will have the less trouble then in the preparation for college You will find out for yourself of course the immense disadvantages of self-education The fact is my dear lord turning to Lord Lynedale it is only useful as an indication of a capability of being educated by others One never opens a book written by working men without shuddering at a hundred faults of style However there are some very tolerable attempts among these—especially the imitations of Miltons Comus
Poor I had by no means intended them as imitations but such no doubt they were
I am sorry to see that Shelley has had so much influence on your writing He is a guide as irregular in taste as unorthodox in doctrine though there are some pretty things in him now and then And you have caught his melody tolerably here now—
Oh that is such a sweet thing said Lillian Do you know I read it over and over last night and took it upstairs with me How very fond of beautiful things you must be Mr Locke to be able to describe so passionately the longing after them
That voice once more It intoxicated me so that I hardly knew what I stammered out—something about working men having very few opportunities of indulging the taste for—I forget what I believe I was on the point of running off into some absurd compliment but I caught the dark ladys warning eye on me
Ah yes I forgot I dare say it must be a very stupid life So little opportunity as he says What a pity he is a tailor papa Such an unimaginative employment How delightful it would be to send him to college and make him a clergyman
Fool that I was I fancied—what did I not fancy—never seeing how that very he bespoke the indifference—the gulf between us I was not a man—an equal but a thing—a subject who was to be talked over and examined and made into something like themselves of their supreme and undeserved benevolence
Gently gently fair lady We must not be as headlong as some people would kindly wish to be If this young man really has a proper desire to rise into a higher station and I find him a fit object to be assisted in that praiseworthy ambition why I think he ought to go to some training college St Marks I should say on the whole might by its strong Church principles give the best antidote to any little remaining taint of sansculottism You understand me my lord And then if he distinguished himself there it would be time to think of getting him a sizarship
Poor Pegasus in harness half smiled half sighed the dark lady
Just the sort of youth whispered Lord Lynedale loud enough for me to hear to take out with us to the Mediterranean as secretary—sil y avait là de la morale of course—
Yes—and of course too the tailors boy was not expected to understand French But the most absurd thing was how everybody except perhaps the dark lady seemed to take for granted that I felt myself exceedingly honoured and must consider it as a matter of course the greatest possible stretch of kindness thus to talk me over and settle everything for me as if I was not a living soul but a plant in a pot Perhaps they were not unsupported by experience I suppose too many of us would have thought it so there are flunkeys in all ranks and to spare Perhaps the true absurdity was the way in which I sat demented inarticulate staring at Lillian and only caring for any word which seemed to augur a chance of seeing her again instead of saying as I felt that I had no wish whatever to rise above my station no intention whatever of being sent to training schools or colleges or anywhere else at the expense of other people And therefore it was that I submitted blindly when the dean who looked as kind and was really I believe as kind as ever was human being turned to me with a solemn authoritative voice—
Well my young friend I must say that I am on the whole very much pleased with your performance It corroborates my dear lord the assertion for which I have been so often ridiculed that there are many real men capable of higher things scattered up and down among the masses Attend to me sir a hint which I suspect I very much wanted Now recollect if it should be hereafter in our power to assist your prospects in life you must give up once and for all the bitter tone against the higher classes which I am sorry to see in your MSS As you know more of the world you will find that the poor are not by any means as ill used as they are taught in these days to believe The rich have their sorrows too—no one knows it better than I—and he played pensively with his gold pencilcase—and good and evil are pretty equally distributed among all ranks by a just and merciful God I advise you most earnestly as you value your future success in life to give up reading those unprincipled authors whose aim is to excite the evil passions of the multitude and to shut your ears betimes to the extravagant calumnies of demagogues who make tools of enthusiastic and imaginative minds for their own selfish aggrandisement Avoid politics the workman has no more to do with them than the clergyman We are told on divine authority to fear God and the king and meddle not with those who are given to change Rather put before yourself the example of such a man as the excellent Dr Brown one of the richest and most respected men of the university with whom I hope to have the pleasure of dining this evening—and yet that man actually for several years of his life worked at a carpenters bench
I too had something to say about all that I too knew something about demagogues and working men but the sight of Lillian made me a coward and I only sat silent as the thought flashed across me half ludicrous half painful by its contrast of another who once worked at a carpenters bench and fulfilled his mission—not by an old age of wealth respectability and port wine but on the Cross of Calvary After all the worthy old gentleman gave me no time to answer
Next—I think of showing these MSS to my publisher to get his opinion as to whether they are worth printing just now Not that I wish you to build much on the chance It is not necessary that you should be a poet I should prefer mathematics for you as a methodic discipline of the intellect Most active minds write poetry at a certain age—I wrote a good deal I recollect myself But that is no reason for publishing This haste to rush into print is one of the bad signs of the times—a symptom of the unhealthy activity which was first called out by the French revolution In the Elizabethan age every decentlyeducated gentleman was able as a matter of course to indite a sonnet to his mistresss eyebrow or an epigram on his enemy and yet he never dreamt of printing them One of the few rational things I have met with Eleanor in the works of your very objectionable pet Mr Carlyle—though indeed his style is too intolerable to have allowed me to read much—is the remark that speech is silver—silvern he calls it pedantically—while silence is golden
At this point of the sermon Lillian fled from the room to my extreme disgust But still the old man prosed—
I think therefore that you had better stay with your cousin for the next week I hear from Lord Lynedale that he is a very studious moral rising young man and I only hope that you will follow his good example At the end of the week I shall return home and then I shall be glad to see more of you at my house at D about miles from this place Good morning
I went in rapture at the last announcement—and yet my conscience smote me I had not stood up for the working men I had heard them calumniated and held my tongue—but I was to see Lillian I had let the dean fancy I was willing to become a pensioner on his bounty—that I was a member of the Church of England and willing to go to a Church Training School—but I was to see Lillian I had lowered myself in my own eyes—but I had seen Lillian Perhaps I exaggerated my own offences however that may be love soon silenced conscience and I almost danced into my cousins rooms on my return
That week passed rapidly and happily I was half amused with the change in my cousins demeanour I had evidently risen immensely in his eyes and I could not help applying in my heart to him Mr Carlyles dictum about the valet species—how they never honour the unaccredited hero having no eye to find him out till properly accredited and countersigned and accoutred with full uniform and diploma by that great god Public Opinion I saw through the motive of his newfledged respect for me—and yet encouraged it for it flattered my vanity The world must forgive me It was something for the poor tailor to find himself somewhat appreciated at last even outwardly And besides this sad respect took a form which was very tempting to me now—though the week before it was just the one which I should have repelled with scorn George became very anxious to lend me money to order me clothes at his own tailors and set me up in various little toilette refinements that I might make a respectable appearance at the deans I knew that he consulted rather the honour of the family than my good but I did not know that his aim was also to get me into his power and I refused more and more weakly at each fresh offer and at last consented in an evil hour to sell my own independence for the sake of indulging my lovedream and appearing to be what I was not
I saw little of the University men less than I might have done less perhaps than I ought to have done My cousin did not try to keep me from them they whenever I met them did not shrink from me and were civil enough but I shrank from them My cousin attributed my reserve to modesty and praised me for it in his coarse fashion but he was mistaken Pride rather and something very like envy kept me silent Always afraid at that period of my career of young men of my own age I was doubly afraid of these men not because they were cleverer than I for they were not but because I fancied I had no fair chance with them they had opportunities which I had not read and talked of books of which I knew nothing and when they did touch on matters which I fancied I understood it was from a point of view so different from mine that I had to choose as I thought between standing up alone to be baited by the whole party or shielding myself behind a proud and somewhat contemptuous silence I looked on them as ignorant aristocrats while they looked on me I verily believe now as a very good sort of fellow who ought to talk well but would not and went their way carelessly The truth is I did envy those men I did not envy them their learning for the majority of men who came into my cousins room had no learning to envy being rather brilliant and agreeable men than severe students but I envied them their opportunities of learning and envied them just as much their opportunities of play—their boating their cricket their football their riding and their gay confident carriage which proceeds from physical health and strength and which I mistook for the swagger of insolence while Parkers Piece with its games was a sight which made me grind my teeth when I thought of the very different chance of physical exercise which falls to the lot of a London artisan
And still more did I envy them when I found that many of them combined as my cousin did this physical exercise with really hard mental work and found the one help the other It was bitter to me—whether it ought to have been so or not—to hear of prizemen wranglers fellows of colleges as first rate oars boxers football players and my eyes once fairly filled with tears when after the departure of a little fellow no bigger or heavier than myself but with the eye and the gait of a gamecock I was informed that he was bowoar in the University eight and as sure to be senior classic next year as he has a head on his shoulders And I thought of my nights of study in the leanto garret and of the tailors workshop and of Sandys den and said to myself bitter words which I shall not set down Let gentlemen readers imagine them for themselves and judge rationally and charitably of an unhealthy workingman like me if his tongue be betrayed at moments to envy hatred malice and all uncharitableness
However one happiness I had—books I read in my cousins room from morning till night He gave me my meals hospitably enough but disappeared every day about four to hall after which he did not reappear till eight the interval being taken up he said in wines and an hour of billiards Then he sat down to work and read steadily and well till twelve while I nothing loth did the same and so passed rapidly enough my week at Cambridge
CHAPTER XIV
A CATHEDRAL TOWN
At length the wishedfor day had arrived and with my cousin I was whirling along full of hope and desire towards the cathedral town of D —through a flat fen country which though I had often heard it described as ugly struck my imagination much The vast height and width of the skyarch as seen from those flats as from an ocean—the grey haze shrouding the horizon of our narrow landview and closing us in till we seemed to be floating through infinite space on a little platform of earth the rich poplarfringed farms with their herds of dappled oxen—the luxuriant crops of oats and beans—the tender green of the tallrape a plant till then unknown to me—the long straight silver dykes with their gaudy carpets of strange floating waterplants and their black banks studded with the remains of buried forests—the innumerable drainingmills with their creaking sails and groaning wheels—the endless rows of pollard willows through which the breeze moaned and rung as through the strings of some vast Æolian harp the little island knolls in that vast sea of fen each with its long village street and delicately taper spire all this seemed to me to contain an element of new and peculiar beauty
Why exclaims the reading public if perchance it ever sees this tale of mine in its usual prurient longing after anything like personal gossip or scandalous anecdote—why there is no cathedral town which begins with a D Through the fen too He must mean either Ely Lincoln or Peterborough thats certain Then at one of those places they find there is dean—not of the name of Winnstay true—but his name begins with a W and he has a pretty daughter—no a niece well thats very near it—it must be him No at another place—there is not a dean true—but a canon or an archdeaconsomething of that kind and he has a pretty daughter really and his name begins—not with W but with Y well thats the last letter of Winnstay if it is not the first that must be the poor man What a shame to have exposed his family secrets in that way And then a whole circle of myths grow up round the mans story It is credibly ascertained that I am the man who broke into his house last year after having made love to his housemaid and stole his writingdesk and plate—else why should a burglar steal familyletters if he had not some interest in them… And before the matter dies away some worthy old gentleman who has not spoken to a working man since he left his living thirty years ago and hates a radical as he does the Pope receives two or three anonymous letters condoling with him on the cruel betrayal of his confidence—base ingratitude for undeserved condescension c c and perhaps with an enclosure of good advice for his lovely daughter
But wherever D is we arrived there and with a beating heart I—and I now suspect my cousin also—walked up the sunny slopes where the old convent had stood now covered with walled gardens and noble timbertrees and crowned by the richly fretted towers of the cathedral which we had seen for the last twenty miles growing gradually larger and more distinct across the level flat Ely No Lincoln Oh but really its just as much like Peterborough Never mind my dear reader the essence of the fact as I think lies not quite so much in the name of the place as in what was done there—to which I with all the little respect which I can muster entreat your attention
It is not from false shame at my necessary ignorance but from a fear lest I should bore my readers with what seems to them trivial that I refrain from dilating on many a thing which struck me as curious in this my first visit to the house of an English gentleman I must say however though I suppose that it will be numbered at least among trite remarks if not among trivial ones that the wealth around me certainly struck me as it has others as not very much in keeping with the office of one who professed to be a minister of the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth But I salved over that feeling being desirous to see everything in the brightest light with the recollection that the dean had a private fortune of his own though it did seem at moments that if a man has solemnly sworn to devote himself body and soul to the cause of the spiritual welfare of the nation that vow might be not unfairly construed to include his money as well as his talents time and health unless perhaps money is considered by spiritual persons as so worthless a thing that it is not fit to be given to God—a notion which might seem to explain how a really pious and universally respected archbishop living within a quarter of a mile of one of the worst infernos of destitution disease filth and profligacy—can yet find it in his heart to save £120000 out of church revenues and leave it to his family though it will not explain how Irish bishops can reconcile it to their consciences to leave behind them one and all large fortunes—for I suppose from fifty to a hundred thousand pounds is something—saved from fees and tithes taken from the pockets of a Roman Catholic population whom they have been put there to convert to Protestantism for the last three hundred years—with what success all the world knows Of course it is a most impertinent and almost a blasphemous thing for a working man to dare to mention such subjects Is it not speaking evil of dignities Strange bytheby that merely to mention facts without note or comment should be always called speaking evil Does not that argue ill for the facts themselves Working men think so but what matter what the swinish multitude think
When I speak of wealth I do not mean that the deans household would have been considered by his own class at all too luxurious He would have been said I suppose to live in a quiet comfortable gentlemanlike way—everything very plain and very good It included a butler—a quiet goodnatured old man—who ushered us into our bedrooms a footman who opened the door—a sort of animal for which I have an extreme aversion—young silly conceited overfed florid—who looked just the man to sell his soul for a livery twice as much food as he needed and the opportunity of unlimited flirtations with the maids and a coachman very like other coachmen whom I saw taking a pair of handsome carriagehorses out to exercise as we opened the gate
The old man silently and as a matter of course unpacked for me my little portmanteau lent me by my cousin and placed my things neatly in various drawers—went down brought up a jug of hot water put it on the washingtable—told me that dinner was at six—that the halfhour bell rang at halfpast five—and that if I wanted anything the footman would answer the bell bells seeming a prominent idea in his theory of the universe—and so left me wondering at the strange fact that free men with free wills do sell themselves by the hundred thousand to perform menial offices for other men not for love but for money becoming to define them strictly bellanswering animals and are honest happy contented in such a life A manservant a soldier and a Jesuit are to me the three great wonders of humanity—three forms of moral suicide for which I never had the slightest gleam of sympathy or even comprehension
At last we went down to dinner after my personal adornments had been carefully superintended by my cousin who gave me over and above various warnings and exhortations as to my behaviour which of course took due effect in making me as nervous constrained and affected as possible When I appeared in the drawingroom I was kindly welcomed by the dean the two ladies and Lord Lynedale
But as I stood fidgeting and blushing sticking my arms and legs and head into all sorts of quaint positions—trying one attitude and thinking it looked awkward and so exchanged it for another more awkward still—my eye fell suddenly on a slip of paper which had conveyed itself I never knew how upon the pages of the Illustrated Book of Ballads which I was turning over—
Be natural and you will be gentlemanlike If you wish others to forget your rank do not forget it yourself If you wish others to remember you with pleasure forget yourself and be just what God has made you
I could not help fancying that the lesson whether intentionally or not was meant for me and a passing impulse made me take up the slip fold it together and put it into my bosom Perhaps it was Lillians handwriting I looked round at the ladies but their faces were each buried behind a book
We went in to dinner and to my delight I sat next to my goddess while opposite me was my cousin Luckily I had got some directions from him as to what to say and do when my wonders the servants thrust eatables and drinkables over nay shoulders
Lillian and my cousin chatted away about churcharchitecture and the restorations which were going on at the cathedral while I for the first half of dinner feasted my eyes with the sight of a beauty in which I seemed to discover every moment some new excellence Every time I looked up at her my eyes dazzled my face burnt my heart sank and soft thrills ran through every nerve And yet Heaven knows my emotions were as pure as those of an infant It was beauty longed for and found at last which I adored as a thing not to be possessed but worshipped The desire even the thought of calling her my own never crossed my mind I felt that I could gladly die if by death I could purchase the permission to watch her I understood then and for ever after the pure devotion of the old knights and troubadours of chivalry I seemed to myself to be their brother—one of the holy guild of poetlovers I was a new Petrarch basking in the lightrays of a new Laura I gazed and gazed and found new life in gazing and was content
But my simple bliss was perfected when she suddenly turned to me and began asking me questions on the very points on which I was best able to answer She talked about poetry Tennyson and Wordsworth asked me if I understood Brownings Sordello and then comforted me after my stammering confession that I did not by telling me she was delighted to hear that for she did not understand it either and it was so pleasant to have a companion in ignorance Then she asked me if I was much struck with the buildings in Cambridge—had they inspired me with any verses yet—I was bound to write something about them—and so on making the most commonplace remarks look brilliant from the ease and liveliness with which they were spoken and the tact with which they were made pleasant to the listener while I wondered at myself for enjoying from her lips the flippant sparkling tattle which had hitherto made young women to me objects of unspeakable dread to be escaped by crossing the street hiding behind doors and rushing blindly into backyards and coalholes
The ladies left the room and I with Lillians face glowing bright in my imagination as the crimson orb remains on the retina of the closed eye after looking intently at the sun sat listening to a pleasant discussion between the dean and the nobleman about some country in the East which they had both visited and greedily devouring all the new facts which they incidentally brought forth out of the treasures of their highly cultivated minds
I was agreeably surprised dont laugh reader to find that I was allowed to drink water and that the other men drank not more than a glass or two of wine after the ladies had retired I had somehow got both lords and deans associated in my mind with infinite swillings of port wine and bacchanalian orgies and sat down at first in much fear and trembling lest I should be compelled to join under penalties of saltandwater but I had made up my mind stoutly to bear anything rather than get drunk and so I had all the merit of a temperancemartyr without any of its disagreeables
Well said I to myself smiling in spirit what would my Chartist friends say if they saw me here Not even Crossthwaite himself could find a flaw in the appreciation of merit for its own sake the courtesy and condescension—ah but he would complain of it simply for being condescension But after all what else could it be Were not these men more experienced more learned older than myself They were my superiors it was in vain for me to attempt to hide it from myself But the wonder was that they themselves were the ones to appear utterly unconscious of it They treated me as an equal they welcomed me—the young viscount and the learned dean—on the broad ground of a common humanity as I believe hundreds more of their class would do if we did not ourselves take a pride in estranging them from us—telling them that fraternization between our classes is impossible and then cursing them for not fraternizing with us But of that more hereafter
At all events now my bliss was perfect No I was wrong—a higher enjoyment than all awaited me when going into the drawingroom I found Lillian singing at the piano I had no idea that music was capable of expressing and conveying emotions so intense and ennobling My experience was confined to street music and to the bawling at the chapel And as yet Mr Hullah had not risen into a power more enviable than that of kings and given to every workman a free entrance into the magic world of harmony and melody where he may prove his brotherhood with Mozart and Weber Beethoven and Mendelssohn Great unconscious demagogue—leader of the people and labourer in the cause of divine equality—thy reward is with the Father of the people
The luscious softness of the Italian airs overcame me with a delicious enervation Every note every interval each shade of expression spoke to me—I knew not what and yet they spoke to my heart of hearts A spirit out of the infinite heaven seemed calling to my spirit which longed to answer—and was dumb—and could only vent itself in tears which welled unconsciously forth and eased my heart from the painful tension of excitement
Her voice is hovering oer my soul—it lingers
Oershadowing it with soft and thrilling wings
The blood and life within those snowy fingers
Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings
My brain is wild my breath comes quick
The blood is listening in my frame
And thronging shadows fast and thick
Fall on my overflowing eyes
My heart is quivering like a flame
As morningdew that in the sunbeam dies
I am dissolved in these consuming ecstacies
The dark lady Miss Staunton as I ought to call her saw my emotion and as I thought unkindly checked the cause of it at once
Pray do not give us any more of those dieaway Italian airs Lillian Sing something manful German or English or anything you like except those sentimental wailings
Lillian stopped took another book and commenced after a short prelude one of my own songs Surprise and pleasure overpowered me more utterly than the soft southern melodies had done I was on the point of springing up and leaving the room when my raptures were checked by our host who turned round and stopped short in an oration on the geology of Upper Egypt
Whats that about brotherhood and freedom Lillian We dont want anything of that kind here
Its only a popular London song papa answered she with an arch smile
Or likely to become so added Miss Staunton in her marked dogmatic tone
I am very sorry for London then And he returned to the deserts
CHAPTER XV
THE MAN OF SCIENCE.
After breakfast the next morning Lillian retired saying laughingly that she must go and see after her clothing club and her dear old women at the almshouse which of course made me look on her as more an angel than ever And while George was left with Lord Lynedale I was summoned to a private conference with the dean in his study
I found him in a room lined with cabinets of curiosities and hung all over with strange horns bones and slabs of fossils But I was not allowed much time to look about me for he commenced at once on the subject of my studies by asking me whether I was willing to prepare myself for the university by entering on the study of mathematics?
I felt so intense a repugnance to them that at the risk of offending him—perhaps for what I knew fatally—I dared to demur He smiled—
I am convinced young man that even if you intended to follow poetry as a profession—and a very poor one you will find it—yet you will never attain to any excellence therein without far stricter mental discipline than any to which you have been accustomed That is why I abominate our modern poets They talk about the glory of the poetic vocation as if they intended to be kings and worldmakers and all the while they indulge themselves in the most loose and desultory habits of thought Sir if they really believed their own grandiloquent assumptions they would feel that the responsibility of their mental training was greater not less than any ones else Like the Quakers they fancy that they honour inspiration by supposing it to be only extraordinary and paroxysmic the true poet like the rational Christian believing that inspiration is continual and orderly that it reveals harmonious laws not merely excites sudden emotions You understand me
I did tolerably and subsequent conversations with him fixed the thoughts sufficiently in my mind to make me pretty sure that I am giving a faithful verbal transcript of them
You must study some science Have you read any logic
I mentioned Watts Logic and Locke On the Use of the
Understanding"—two books well known to reading artizans
Ah he said such books are very well but they are merely popular
Aristotle Bitter on Induction and Kants Prolegomena and
Logic—when you had read them some seven or eight times over you might
consider yourself as knowing somewhat about the matter
I have read a little about induction in Whately
Ah very good book but popular Did you find that your method of thought received any benefit from it
The truth is—I do not know whether I can quite express myself clearly—but logic like mathematics seems to tell me too little about things It does not enlarge my knowledge of man or nature and those are what I thirst for And you must remember—I hope I am not wrong in saying it—that the case of a man of your class who has the power of travelling of reading what he will and seeing what he will is very different from that of an artisan whose chances of observation are so sadly limited You must forgive us if we are unwilling to spend our time over books which tell us nothing about the great universe outside the shopwindows
He smiled compassionately Very true my boy There are two branches of study then before you and by either of them a competent subsistence is possible with good interest Philology is one But before you could arrive at those depths in it which connect with ethnology history and geography you would require a lifetime of study There remains yet another I see you stealing glances at those natural curiosities In the study of them you would find as I believe more and more daily a mental discipline superior even to that which language or mathematics give If I had been blest with a son—but that is neither here nor there—it was my intention to have educated him almost entirely as a naturalist I think I should like to try the experiment on a young man like yourself
Sandy Mackayes definition of legislation for the masses Fiat experimentum in corpore vili rose up in my thoughts and half unconsciously passed my lips The good old man only smiled
That is not my reason Mr Locke I should choose by preference a man of your class for experiments not because the nature is coarser or less precious in the scale of creation but because I have a notion for which like many others I have been very much laughed at that you are less sophisticated more simple and fresh from natures laboratory than the young persons of the upper classes who begin from the nursery to be more or less trimmed up and painted over by the artificial state of society—a very excellent state mind Mr Locke Civilization is next to Christianity of course the highest blessing but not so good a state for trying anthropological experiments on
I assured him of my great desire to be the subject of such an experiment and was encouraged by his smile to tell him something about my intense love for natural objects the mysterious pleasure which I had taken from my boyhood in trying to classify them and my visits to the British Museum for the purpose of getting at some general knowledge of the natural groups
Excellent he said young man the very best sign I have yet seen in you And what have you read on these subjects
I mentioned several books Bingley Bewick Humboldts Travels The
Voyage of the Beagle various scattered articles in the Penny and Saturday
Magazines c c
Ah he said popular—you will find if you will allow me to give you my experience—
I assured him that I was only too much honoured—and I truly felt so I knew myself to be in the presence of my rightful superior—my master on that very point of education which I idolized Every sentence which he spoke gave me fresh light on some matter or other and I felt a worship for him totally irrespective of any vulgar and slavish respect for his rank or wealth The working man has no want for real reverence Mr Carlyles being a gentlemen has not injured his influence with the people On the contrary it is the artisans intense longing to find his real lords and guides which makes him despise and execrate his sham ones Whereof let society take note
Then continued he your plan is to take up some one section of the subject and thoroughly exhaust that Universal laws manifest themselves only by particular instances They say man is the microcosm Mr Locke but the man of science finds every worm and beetle a microcosm in its way It exemplifies directly or indirectly every physical law in the universe though it may not be two lines long It is not only a part but a mirror of the great whole It has a definite relation to the whole world and the whole world has a relation to it Really bytheby I cannot give you a better instance of what I mean than in my little diatribe on the Geryon Trifurcifer a small reptile which I found some years ago inhabiting the mud of the salt lakes of Balkhan which fills up a longdesired link between the Chelonia and the Perenni branchiate Batrachians and as I think though Professor Brown differs from me connects both with the Herbivorous Cetacea—Professor Brown is an exceedingly talented man but a little too cautious in accepting any ones theories but his own
There it is he said as he drew out of a drawer a little pamphlet of some thirty pages—an old mans darling I consider that book the outcome of thirteen years labour
It must be very deep I replied to have been worth such longcontinued study
Oh science is her own reward There is hardly a great physical law which I have not brought to bear on the subject of that one small animal and above all—what is in itself worth a lifes labour—I have I believe discovered two entirely new laws of my own though one of them bytheby has been broached by Professor Brown since in his lectures He might have mentioned my name in connection with the subject for I certainly imparted my ideas to him two years at least before the delivery of those lectures of his Professor Brown is a very great man certainly and a very good man but not quite so original as is generally supposed Still a scientific man must expect his little disappointments and injustices If you were behind the scenes in the scientific world I can assure you you would find as much partyspirit and unfairness and jealousy and emulation there as anywhere else Human nature human nature everywhere
I said nothing but thought the more and took the book promising to study it carefully
There is Cuviers Animal Kingdom and a dictionary of scientific terms to help you and mind it must be got up thoroughly for I purpose to set you an examination or two in it a few days hence Then I shall find out whether you know what is worth all the information in the world
What is that sir
The art of getting information artem discendi Mr Locke wherewith the world is badly provided just now as it is overstocked with the artem legendi—the knack of running the eye over books and fancying that it understands them because it can talk about them You cannot play that trick with my Geryon Trifurcifer I assure you he is as dry and tough as his name But believe me he is worth mastering not because he is mine but simply because he is tough
I promised all diligence
Very good And be sure if you intend to be a poet for these days and I really think you have some faculty for it you must become a scientific man Science has made vast strides and introduced entirely new modes of looking at nature and poets must live up to the age I never read a word of Goethes verse but I am convinced that he must be the great poet of the day just because he is the only one who has taken the trouble to go into the details of practical science And in the mean time I will give you a lesson myself I see you are longing to know the contents of these cabinets You shall assist me by writing out the names of this lot of shells just come from Australia which I am now going to arrange
I set to work at once under his directions and passed that morning and the two or three following delightfully But I question whether the good dean would have been well satisfied had he known how all his scientific teaching confirmed my democratic opinions The mere fact that I could understand these things when they were set before me as well as any one else was to me a simple demonstration of the equality in worth and therefore in privilege of all classes It may be answered that I had no right to argue from myself to the mob and that other working geniuses have no right to demand universal enfranchisement for their whole class just because they the exceptions are fit for it But surely it is hard to call such an error if it be one the insolent assumption of democratic conceit c c Does it not look more like the humility of men who are unwilling to assert for themselves peculiar excellence peculiar privileges who like the apostles of old want no glory save that which they can share with the outcast and the slave Let society among other matters take note of that
CHAPTER XVI
CULTIVATED WOMEN
I was thus brought in contact for the first time in my life with two exquisite specimens of cultivated womanhood and they naturally as the reader may well suppose almost entirely engrossed my thoughts and interest
Lillian for so I must call her became daily more and more agreeable and tried as I fancied to draw me out and show me off to the best advantage whether from the desire of pleasing herself or pleasing me I know not and do not wish to know—but the consequences to my boyish vanity were such as are more easy to imagine than pleasant to describe Miss Staunton on the other hand became I thought more and more unpleasant not that she ever for a moment outstepped the bounds of the most perfect courtesy but her manner which was soft to no one except to Lord Lynedale was when she spoke to me especially dictatorial and abrupt She seemed to make a point of carping at chance words of mine and of setting me down suddenly by breaking in with some severe pithy observation on conversations to which she had been listening unobserved She seemed too to view with dislike anything like cordiality between me and Lillian—a dislike which I was actually at moments vain enough such a creature is man to attribute to—jealousy till I began to suspect and hate her as a proud harsh and exclusive aristocrat And my suspicion and hatred received their confirmation when one morning after an evening even more charming than usual Lillian came down reserved peevish all but sulky and showed that that bright heaven of sunny features had room in it for a cloud and that an ugly one But I poor fool only pitied her made up my mind that some one had illused her and looked on her as a martyr—perhaps to that harsh cousin of hers
That day was taken up with writing out answers to the deans searching questions on his pamphlet in which I believe I acquitted myself tolerably and he seemed far more satisfied with my commentary than I was with his text He seemed to ignore utterly anything like religion or even the very notion of God in his chains of argument Nature was spoken of as the wilier and producer of all the marvels which he describes and every word in the book to my astonishment might have been written just as easily by an Atheist as by a dignitary of the Church of England
I could not help that evening hinting this defect as delicately as I could to my good host and was somewhat surprised to find that he did not consider it a defect at all
I am in no wise anxious to weaken the antithesis between natural and revealed religion Science may help the former, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the latter She stands on her own ground has her own laws and is her own reward Christianity is a matter of faith and of the teaching of the Church It must not go out of its way for science and science must not go out of her way for it and where they seem to differ it is our duty to believe that they are reconcilable by fuller knowledge but not to clip truth in order to make it match with doctrine
Mr Carlyle said Miss Staunton in her abrupt way can see that the God of Nature is the God of man
Nobody denies that my dear
Except in every word and action else why do they not write about Nature as if it was the expression of a living loving spirit not merely a dead machine
It may be very easy my dear for a Deist like Mr Carlyle to see his God in Nature; but if he would accept the truths of Christianity he would find that there were deeper mysteries in them than trees and animals can explain
Pardon me sir I said but I think that a very large portion of thoughtful working men agree with you though in their case that opinion has only increased their difficulties about Christianity They complain that they cannot identify the God of the Bible with the God of the world around them and one of their great complaints against Christianity is that it demands assent to mysteries which are independent of and even contradictory to the laws of Nature."
The old man was silent
Mr Carlyle is no Deist said Miss Staunton and I am sure that unless the truths of Christianity contrive soon to get themselves justified by the laws of science, the higher orders will believe in them as little as Mr Locke informs us that the working classes do
You prophesy confidently my darling
Oh Eleanor is in one of her prophetic moods tonight said Lillian slyly She has been foretelling me I know not what misery and misfortune just because I choose to amuse myself in my own way
And she gave another sly pouting look at Eleanor and then called me to look over some engravings chatting over them so charmingly—and stealing every now and then a pretty saucy look at her cousin which seemed to say I shall do what I like in spite of your predictions
This confirmed my suspicions that Eleanor had been trying to separate us and the suspicion received a further corroboration indirect and perhaps very unfair from the lecture which I got from my cousin after I went upstairs
He had been flattering me very much lately about the impression I was making on the family and tormenting me by compliments on the clever way in which I played my cards and when I denied indignantly any such intention patting me on the back and laughing me down in a knowing way as much as to say that he was not to be taken in by my professions of simplicity He seemed to judge every one by himself and to have no notion of any middle characters between the mere greenhorn and the deliberate schemer But tonight after commencing with the usual compliments he went on
Now first let me give you one hint and be thankful for it Mind your game with that Eleanor—Miss Staunton She is a regular tyrant I happen to know a strongminded woman with a vengeance She manages every one here and unless you are in her good books dont expect to keep your footing in this house my boy So just mind and pay her a little more attention and Miss Lillian a little less After all it is worth the trouble She is uncommonly well read and says confounded clever things too when she wakes up out of the sulks and you may pick up a wrinkle or two from her worth pocketing You mind what she says to you You know she is going to be married to Lord Lynedale
I nodded assent
Well then if you want to hook him you must secure her first
I want to hook no one George I have told you that a thousand times
Oh no certainly not—by no means Why should you said the artful dodger And he swung laughing out of the room leaving in my mind a strange suspicion of which I was ashamed though I could not shake it off that he had remarked Eleanors wish to cool my admiration for Lillian and was willing for some purpose of his own to further that wish The truth is I had very little respect for him or trust in him and I was learning to look habitually for some selfish motive in all he said or did Perhaps if I had acted more boldly upon what I did see I should not have been here now
CHAPTER XVII
SERMONS IN STONES
The next afternoon was the last but one of my stay at D We were to dine late after sunset and before dinner we went into the cathedral The choir had just finished practising Certain exceedingly illlooking men whose faces bespoke principally sensuality and selfconceit and whose function was that of praising God on the sole qualification of good bass and tenor voices were coming chattering through the choir gates and behind them a group of small boys were suddenly transforming themselves from angels into sinners by tearing off their white surplices and pinching and poking each other noisily as they passed us with as little reverence as Voltaire himself could have desired
I had often been in the cathedral before—indeed we attended the service daily and I had been appalled rather than astonished by what I saw and heard the unintelligible service—the irreverent gabble of the choristers and readers—the scanty congregation—the meagre portion of the vast building which seemed to be turned to any use but never more than that evening did I feel the desolateness the doleful inutility of that vast desert nave with its aisles and transepts—built for some purpose or other now extinct The whole place seemed to crush and sadden me and I could not reecho Lillians remark
How those pillars rising story above story and those lines of pointed arches all lead the eye heavenward It is a beautiful notion that about pointed architecture being symbolic of Christianity
I ought to be very much ashamed of my stupidity I answered but I cannot feel that though I believe I ought to do so That vast groined roof with its enormous weight of hanging stone seems to crush one—to bar out the free sky above Those pointed windows too—how gloriously the western sun is streaming through them but their rich hues only dim and deface his light I can feel what you say when I look at the cathedral on the outside there indeed every line sweeps the eye upward—carries it from one pinnacle to another each with less and less standingground till at the summit the building gradually vanishes in a point and leaves the spirit to wing its way unsupported and alone into the ether
Perhaps I added half bitterly these cathedrals may be true symbols of the superstition which created them—on the outside offering to enfranchise the soul and raise it up to heaven but when the dupes had entered giving them only a dark prison and a crushing bondage which neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear
You may sneer at them if you will Mr Locke said Eleanor in her severe abrupt way The working classes would have been badly off without them They were in their day the only democratic institution in the world and the only socialist one too The only chance a poor man had of rising by his worth was by coming to the monastery And bitterly the working classes felt the want of them when they fell Your own Cobbett can tell you that
Ah said Lillian how different it must have been four hundred years ago—how solemn and picturesque those old monks must have looked gliding about the aisles—and how magnificent the choir must have been before all the glass and carving and that beautiful shrine of St blazing with gold and jewels were all plundered and defaced by those horrid Puritans
Say reformersquires answered Eleanor for it was they who did the thing only it was found convenient at the Restoration to lay on the people of the seventeenth century the iniquities which the countrygentlemen committed in the sixteenth
Surely I added emboldened by her words if the monasteries were what their admirers say some method of restoring the good of the old system without its evil ought to be found and would be found if it were not— I paused recollecting whose guest I was
If it were not I suppose said Eleanor for those lazy overfed bigoted hypocrites the clergy That I presume is the description of them to which you have been most accustomed Now let me ask you one question Do you mean to condemn just now the Church as it was or the Church as it is or the Church as it ought to be Radicals have a habit of confusing those three questions as they have of confusing other things when it suits them
Really I said—for my blood was rising—I do think that with the confessed enormous wealth of the clergy the cathedral establishments especially they might do more for the people
Listen to me a little Mr Locke The laity nowadays take a pride in speaking evil of the clergy never seeing that if they are bad the laity have made them so Why what do you impute to them Their worldliness their being like the world like the laity round them—like you in short Improve yourselves and by so doing if there is this sad tendency in the clergy to imitate you you will mend them if you do not find that after all it is they who will have to mend you As with the people so with the priest is the everlasting law When fifty years ago all classes were drunkards from the statesman to the peasant the clergy were drunken also but not half so bad as the laity Now the laity are eaten up with covetousness and ambition and the clergy are covetous and ambitious but not half so bad as the laity The laity and you working men especially are the dupes of frothy insincere official rant as Mr Carlyle would call it in Parliament on the hustings at every debating society and Chartist meeting and therefore the clergymans sermons are apt to be just what people like elsewhere and what therefore they suppose people will like there
If then I answered in spite of your opinions you confess the clergy to be so bad why are you so angry with men of our opinions if we do plot sometimes a little against the Church
I do not think you know what my opinions are Mr Locke Did you not hear me just now praising the monasteries because they were socialist and democratic But why is the badness of the clergy any reason for pulling down the Church That is another of the confused irrationalities into which you all allow yourselves to fall What do you mean by crying shame on a man for being a bad clergyman if a good clergyman is not a good thing If the very idea of a clergyman was abominable as your Churchdestroyers ought to say you ought to praise a man for being a bad one and not acting out this same abominable idea of priesthood Your very outcry against the sins of the clergy shows that even in your minds a dim notion lies somewhere that a clergymans vocation is in itself, a divine a holy a beneficent one
I never looked at it in that light certainly said I somewhat staggered
Very likely not One word more for I may not have another opportunity of speaking to you as I would on these matters You working men complain of the clergy for being bigoted and obscurantist and hating the cause of the people Does not ninetenths of the blame of that lie at your door I took up the other day at hazard one of your favourite libertypreaching newspapers and I saw books advertised in it whose names no modest woman should ever behold doctrines and practices advocated in it from which all the honesty the decency the common human feeling which is left in the English mind ought to revolt and does revolt You cannot deny it Your class has told the world that the cause of liberty equality and fraternity the cause which the working masses claim as theirs identifies itself with blasphemy and indecency with the tyrannous persecutions of tradesunions with robbery assassinations vitriolbottles and midnight incendiarism And then you curse the clergy for taking you at your word Whatsoever they do you attack them If they believe you and stand up for common morality and for the truths which they know are allimportant to poor as well as rich you call them bigots and persecutors while if they neglect in any way the very Christianity for believing which you insult them you turn round and call them hypocrites Mark my words Mr Locke till you gain the respect and confidence of the clergy you will never rise The day will come when you will find that the clergy are the only class who can help you Ah you may shake your head I warn you of it They were the only bulwark of the poor against the mediæval tyranny of Rank you will find them the only bulwark against the modern tyranny of Mammon
I was on the point of entreating her to explain herself further but at that critical moment Lillian interposed
Now stay your prophetic glances into the future here come Lynedale and papa And in a moment Eleanors whole manner and countenance altered—the petulant wild unrest the harsh dictatorial tone vanished and she turned to meet her lover with a look of tender satisfied devotion which transfigured her whole face It was most strange the power he had over her His presence even at a distance seemed to fill her whole being with rich quiet life She watched him with folded hands like a mystic worshipper waiting for the afflatus of the spirit and suspicious and angry as I felt towards her I could not help being drawn to her by this revelation of depths of strong healthy feeling of which her usual manner gave so little sign
This conversation thoroughly puzzled me it showed me that there might be two sides to the question of the peoples cause as well as to that of others It shook a little my faith in the infallibility of my own class to hear such severe animadversions on them from a person who professed herself as much a disciple of Carlyle as any working man and who evidently had no lack either of intellect to comprehend or boldness to speak out his doctrines who could praise the old monasteries for being democratic and socialist and spoke far more severely of the clergy than I could have done—because she did not deal merely in trite words of abuse but showed a real analytic insight into the causes of their shortcoming
That same evening the conversation happened to turn on dress of which Miss Staunton spoke scornfully and disparagingly as mere useless vanity and frippery—an empty substitute for real beauty of person as well as the higher beauty of mind And I emboldened by the courtesy with which I was always called on to take my share in everything that was said or done ventured to object humbly enough to her notions
But is not beauty I said in itself a good and blessed thing softening refining rejoicing the eyes of all who behold And my eyes as I spoke involuntary rested on Lillians face—who saw it and blushed Surely nothing which helps beauty is to be despised And without the charm of dress beauty even that of expression does not really do itself justice How many lovely and lovable faces there are for instance among the working classes which if they had but the advantages which ladies possess might create delight respect chivalrous worship in the beholder—but are now never appreciated because they have not the same fair means of displaying themselves which even the savage girl of the South Sea Islands possesses
Lillian said it was so very true—she had really never thought of it before—and somehow I gained courage to go on
Besides dress is a sort of sacrament if I may use the word—a sure sign of the wearers character according as any one is orderly or modest or tasteful or joyous or brilliant—and I glanced again at Lillian—those excellences or the want of them are sure to show themselves in the colours they choose and the cut of their garments In the workroom I and a friend of mine used often to amuse ourselves over the clothes we were making by speculating from them on the sort of people the wearers were to be and I fancy we were not often wrong
My cousin looked daggers at me and for a moment I fancied I had committed a dreadful mistake in mentioning my tailorlife So I had in his eyes but not in those of the really wellbred persons round me
Oh how very amusing it must have been I think I shall turn milliner Eleanor for the fun of divining every ones little failings from their caps and gowns
Go on Mr Locke said the dean who had seemed buried in the Transactions of the Royal Society The fact is novel and I am more obliged to any one who gives me that than if he gave me a banknote The money gets spent and done with but I cannot spend the fact it remains for life as permanent capital returning interest and compound interest ad infinitum Bytheby tell me about those same workshops I have heard more about them than I like to believe true
And I did tell him all about them and spoke my blood rising as I went on long and earnestly perhaps eloquently Now and then I got abashed and tried to stop and then the dean informed me that I was speaking well and sensibly while Lillian entreated me to go on She had never conceived such things possible—it was as interesting as a novel c c and Miss Staunton sat with compressed lips and frowning brow apparently thinking of nothing but her book till I felt quite angry at her apathy—for such it seemed to me to be
CHAPTER XVIII
MY FALL
And now the last day of our stay at D had arrived and I had as yet heard nothing of the prospects of my book though indeed the company in which I had found myself had driven literary ambition for the time being out of my head and bewitched me to float down the stream of daily circumstance satisfied to snatch the enjoyment of each present moment That morning however after I had fulfilled my daily task of arranging and naming objects of natural history the dean settled himself back in his armchair and bidding me sit down evidently meditated a business conversation
He had heard from his publisher and read his letter to me The poems were on the whole much liked The most satisfactory method of publishing for all parties would be by procuring so many subscribers each agreeing to take so many copies In consideration of the deans known literary judgment and great influence the publisher would as a private favour not object to take the risk of any further expenses
So far everything sounded charming The method was not a very independent one but it was the only one and I should actually have the delight of having published a volume But alas he thought that the sale of the book might be greatly facilitated if certain passages of a strong political tendency were omitted He did not wish personally to object to them as statements of facts or to the pictorial vigour with which they were expressed but he thought that they were somewhat too strong for the present state of the public taste and though he should be the last to allow any private considerations to influence his weak patronage of rising talent yet considering his present connexion he should hardly wish to take on himself the responsibility of publishing such passages unless with great modifications
You see said the good old man the opinion of respectable practical men who know the world exactly coincides with mine I did not like to tell you that I could not help in the publication of your MSS in their present state but I am sure from the modesty and gentleness which I have remarked in you your readiness to listen to reason and your pleasing freedom from all violence or coarseness in expressing your opinions that you will not object to so exceedingly reasonable a request which after all is only for your good Ah young man he went on in a more feeling tone than I had yet heard from him if you were once embroiled in that political world of which you know so little you would soon be crying like David Oh that I had wings like a dove then would I flee away and be at rest Do you fancy that you can alter a fallen world What it is it always has been and will be to the end Every age has its political and social nostrums my dear young man and fancies them infallible and the next generation arises to curse them as failures in practice and superstitious in theory and try some new nostrum of its own."
I sighed
Ah you may sigh But we have each of us to be disenchanted of our dream There was a time once when I talked republicanism as loudly as raw youth ever did—when I had an excuse for it too for when I was a boy I saw the French Revolution and it was no wonder if young enthusiastic brains were excited by all sorts of wild hopes—perfectibility of the species,' rights of man universal liberty equality and brotherhood—My dear sir there is nothing new under the sun all that is stale and trite to a septuagenarian who has seen where it all ends I speak to you freely because I am deeply interested in you I feel that this is the important question of your life and that you have talents the possession of which is a heavy responsibility Eschew politics once and for all as I have done I might have been I may tell you a bishop at this moment if I had condescended to meddle again in those party questions of which my youthful experience sickened me But I knew that I should only weaken my own influence as that most noble and excellent man Dr Arnold did by interfering in politics The poet like the clergyman and the philosopher has nothing to do with politics Let them choose the better part and it shall not be taken from them The world may rave he continued waxing eloquent as he approached his favourite subject—the world may rave but in the study there is quiet The world may change Mr Locke and will but the earth abideth for ever Solomon had seen somewhat of politics and social improvement and so on and behold then as now all was vanity and vexation of spirit That which is crooked cannot be made straight and that which is wanting cannot be numbered What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun The thing which hath been it is that which shall be and there is no new thing under the sun One generation passeth away and another cometh but the earth abideth for ever No wonder that the wisest of men took refuge from such experience as I have tried to do in talking of all herbs from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that groweth on the wall
Ah Mr Locke he went on in a soft melancholy halfabstracted tone—ah Mr Locke I have felt deeply and you will feel some day the truth of Jarnos saying in Wilhelm Meister when he was wandering alone in the Alps with his geological hammer These rocks at least tell me no lies as men do Ay there is no lie in Nature, no discord in the revelations of science, in the laws of the universe Infinite pure unfallen earthsupporting Titans fresh as on the morning of creation those great laws endure your only true democrats too—for nothing is too great or too small for them to take note of No tiniest gnat or speck of dust but they feed it guide it and preserve it—Hail and snow wind and vapour fulfilling their Makers word and like him too hiding themselves from the wise and prudent and revealing themselves unto babes Yes Mr Locke it is the childlike simple patient reverent heart which science at once demands and cultivates To prejudice or haste to selfconceit or ambition she proudly shuts her treasuries—to open them to men of humble heart whom this world thinks simple dreamers—her Newtons and Owens and Faradays Why should you not become such a man as they You have the talents—you have the love for nature you seem to have the gentle and patient spirit which indeed will grow up more and more in you if you become a real student of science. Or if you must be a poet why not sing of nature, and leave those to sing political squabbles who have no eye for the beauty of her repose How few great poets have been politicians
I gently suggested Milton
Ay he became a great poet only when he had deserted politics because they had deserted him In blindness and poverty in the utter failure of all his national theories he wrote the works which have made him immortal Was Shakespeare a politician or any one of the great poets who have arisen during the last thirty years Have they not all seemed to consider it a sacred duty to keep themselves as far as they could out of party strife
I quoted Southey Shelley and Burns as instances to the contrary but his induction was completed already to his own satisfaction
Poor dear Southey was a great versemaker rather than a great poet and I always consider that his partyprejudices and partywriting narrowed and harshened a mind which ought to have been flowing forth freely and lovingly towards all forms of life And as for Shelley and Burns their politics dictated to them at once the worst portions of their poetry and of their practice Shelley what little I have read of him only seems himself when he forgets radicalism for nature and you would not set Burns life or death either as a model for imitation in any class Now do you know I must ask you to leave me a little I am somewhat fatigued with this long discussion in which certainly I had borne no great share and I am sure that after all I have said you will see the propriety of acceding to the publishers advice Go and think over it and let me have your answer by post time
I did go and think over it—too long for my good If I had acted on the first impulse I should have refused and been safe These passages were the very pith and marrow of the poems They were the very words which I had felt it my duty my glory to utter I who had been a working man who had experienced all their sorrows and temptations—I seemed called by every circumstance of my life to preach their cause to expose their wrongs—I to squash my convictions to stultify my book for the sake of popularity money patronage And yet—all that involved seeing more of Lillian They were only too powerful inducements in themselves, alas but I believe I could have resisted them tolerably if they had not been backed by love And so a struggle arose which the rich reader may think a very fantastic one though the poor man will understand it and surely pardon it also—seeing that he himself is Man Could I not just once in a way serve God and Mammon at once—or rather not Mammon but Venus a worship which looked to me and really was in my case purer than all the Mariolatry in Popedom After all the fall might not be so great as it seemed—perhaps I was not infallible on these same points It is wonderful how humble and selfdenying one becomes when one is afraid of doing ones duty Perhaps the dean might be right He had been a republican himself once certainly The facts indeed which I had stated there could be no doubt of but I might have viewed them through a prejudiced and angry medium I might have been not quite logical in my deductions from them—I might… In short between perhapses and mights I fell—a very deep real damnable fall and consented to emasculate my poems and become a flunkey and a dastard
I mentioned my consent that evening to the party the dean purred content thereat Eleanor to my astonishment just said sternly and abruptly
Weak and then turned away while Lillian began
Oh what a pity And really they were some of the prettiest verses of all But of course my father must know best you are quite right to be guided by him and do whatever is proper and prudent After all papa I have got the naughtiest of them all you know safe Eleanor set it to music and wrote it out in her book and I thought it was so charming that I copied it
What Lillian said about herself I drank in as greedily as usual what she said about Eleanor fell on a heedless ear and vanished not to reappear in my recollection till—But I must not anticipate
So it was all settled pleasantly and I sat up that evening writing a bit of verse for Lillian about the Old Cathedral and Heavenaspiring towers and Aisles of cloistered shade and all that sort of thing which I did not believe or care for but I thought it would please her and so it did and I got golden smiles and compliments for my first though not my last insincere poem I was going fast down hill in my hurry to rise However as I said it was all pleasant enough I was to return to town and there await the deans orders and most luckily I had received that morning from Sandy Mackaye a characteristic letter
Gowk Telemachus hearken Item 1 Yere fou wi the Circean cup aneath the shade o shovel hats and steeple houses
Item 2 I cuifMentor that I am wearing out a gude pair o gude Scots brogues that my sisters husbands third cousin sent me a towmond gane fra Aberdeen rinning ower the town to a journals respectable and ither anent the sellin o your Autobiography of an EngineBoiler in the Vauxhall Road the whilk I ha disposit o at the last to OFlynns Weekly Warwhoop and gin ye ha ony mair sic trash in your head you may get your meal whiles out o the same kist unless as I sair misdoubt yere praying already like Elis bairns to be put into ane o the priests offices that ye may eat a piece o bread
Yell be coming themorrow Im lane without ye though I look for ye surely to come ben wi a gowd shouldernote and a red nose
This letter though it hit me hard and made me I confess a little angry at the moment with my truest friend still offered me a means of subsistence and enabled me to decline safely the pecuniary aid which I dreaded the deans offering me And yet I felt dispirited and ill at ease My conscience would not let me enjoy the success I felt I had attained But next morning I saw Lillian and I forgot books peoples cause conscience and everything
I went home by coach—a luxury on which my cousin insisted—as he did on lending me the fare so that in all I owed him somewhat more than eleven pounds But I was too happy to care for a fresh debt and home I went considering my fortune made
My heart fell as I stepped into the dingy little old shop Was it the meanness of the place after the comfort and elegance of my late abode Was it disappointment at not finding Mackaye at home Or was it that blackedged letter which lay waiting for me on the table I was afraid to open it I knew not why I turned it over and over several times trying to guess whose the handwriting on the cover might be the postmark was two days old and at last I broke the seal
Sir—This is to inform you that your mother Mrs Locke died this morning a sensible sinner not without assurance of her election and that her funeral is fixed for Wednesday the 29th instant
The humble servant of the Lords people
J WIGGINTON
CHAPTER XIX
SHORT AND SAD
I shall pass over the agonies of the next few days There is selfexenteration enough and to spare in my story without dilating on them They are too sacred to publish and too painful alas even to recall I write my story too as a working man Of those emotions which are common to humanity I shall say but little—except when it is necessary to prove that the working man has feelings like the rest of his kind But those feelings may in this case be supplied by the readers own imagination Let him represent them to himself as bitter as remorseful as he will he will not equal the reality True she had cast me off but had I not rejoiced in that rejection which should have been my shame True I had fed on the hope of some day winning reconciliation by winning fame but before the fame had arrived the reconciliation had become impossible I had shrunk from going back to her as I ought to have done in filial humility and therefore I was not allowed to go back to her in the pride of success Heaven knows I had not forgotten her Night and day I had thought of her with prayers and blessings but I had made a merit of my own love to her—my forgiveness of her as I dared to call it I had pampered my conceit with a notion that I was a martyr in the cause of genius and enlightenment How hollow windy heartless all that looked now There I will say no more Heaven preserve any who read these pages from such days and nights as I dragged on till that funeral and for weeks after it was over when I had sat once more in the little old chapel with all the memories of my childhood crowding up and tantalizing me with the vision of their simple peace—never never to return I heard my mothers dying pangs her prayers her doubts her agonies for my reprobate soul dissected for the public good by my old enemy Mr Wigginton who dragged in among his fulsome eulogies of my mothers signs of grace rejoicings that there were babes spanlong in hell I saw my sister Susan now a tall handsome woman but become all rigid sour with coarse grim lips and that crushed selfconscious reserved almost dishonest look about the eyes common to fanatics of every creed I heard her cold farewell as she put into my hands certain notes and diaries of my mothers which she had bequeathed to me on her deathbed I heard myself proclaimed inheritor of some small matters of furniture which had belonged to her told Susan carelessly to keep them for herself and went forth fancying that the curse of Cain was on my brow
I took home the diary but several days elapsed before I had courage to open it Let the words I read there be as secret as the misery which dictated them I had broken my mothers heart—no I had not—The infernal superstition which taught her to fancy that Heavens love was narrower than her own—that God could hate his creature not for its sins but for the very nature which he had given it—that that had killed her
And I remarked too with a gleam of hope that in several places where sunshine seemed ready to break through the black cloud of fanatic gloom—where she seemed inclined not merely to melt towards me for there was in every page an undercurrent of love deeper than death and stronger than the grave but also to dare to trust God on my behalf—whole lines carefully erased page after page torn out evidently long after the MSS were written I believe to this day that either my poor sister or her fatherconfessor was the perpetrator of that act The fraus pia is not yet extinct and it is as inconvenient now as it was in popish times to tell the whole truth about saints when they dare to say or do things which will not quite fit into the formulæ of their sect
But what was to become of Susan Though my uncle continued to her the allowance which he had made to my mother yet I was her natural protector—and she was my only tie upon earth Was I to lose her too Might we not after all be happy together in some little hole in Chelsea like Elia and his Bridget That question was solved for me She declined my offers saying that she could not live with any one whose religious opinions differed from her own and that she had already engaged a room at the house of a Christian friend and was shortly to be united to that dear man of God Mr Wigginton who was to be removed to the work of the Lord in Manchester
I knew the scoundrel but it would have been impossible for me to undeceive her Perhaps he was only a scoundrel—perhaps he would not illtreat her And yet—my own little Susan my playfellow my only tie on earth—to lose her—and not only her but her respect her love—And my spirit deep enough already sank deeper still into sadness and I felt myself alone on earth and clung to Mackaye as to a father—and a father indeed that old man was to me
CHAPTER XX
PEGASUS IN HARNESS
But in sorrow or in joy I had to earn my bread and so too had Crossthwaite poor fellow How he contrived to feed himself and his little Katie for the next few years is more than I can tell at all events he worked hard enough He scribbled agitated ran from London to Manchester and Manchester to Bradford spouting lecturing—sowing the east wind I am afraid and little more Whose fault was it What could such a man do with that fervid tongue and heart and brain of his in such a station as his such a time as this Society had helped to make him an agitator Society has had more or less to take the consequences of her own handiwork For Crossthwaite did not speak without hearers He could make the fierce shrewd artisan nature flash out into fire—not always celestial nor always either infernal So he agitated and lived—how I know not That he did do so is evident from the fact that he and Katie are at this moment playing chess in the cabin before my eyes and making love all the while as if they had not been married a week… Ah well
I however had to do more than get my bread I had to pay off these fearful eleven pounds odd which now that all the excitement of my stay at D had been so sadly quenched lay like lead upon my memory My list of subscribers filled slowly and I had no power of increasing it by any canvassings of my own My uncle indeed had promised to take two copies and my cousin one not wishing of course to be so uncommercial as to run any risk before they had seen whether my poems would succeed But with those exceptions the dean had it all his own way and he could not be expected to forego his own literary labours for my sake so through all that glaring summer and sad foggy autumn and nipping winter I had to get my bread as I best could—by my pen Mackaye grumbled at my writing so much and so fast and sneered about the furor scribendi But it was hardly fair upon me My mouth craved it of me as Solomon says I had really no other means of livelihood Even if I could have gotten employment as a tailor in the honourable trade I loathed the business utterly—perhaps alas to confess the truth I was beginning to despise it I could bear to think of myself as a poor genius in connection with my new wealthy and highbred patrons for there was precedent for the thing Penniless bards and squires of low degree lowborn artists ennobled by their pictures—there was something grand in the notion of mind triumphant over the inequalities of rank and associating with the great and wealthy as their spiritual equal on the mere footing of its own innate nobility no matter to what den it might return to convert it into a temple of the Muses by the glorious creations of its fancy c c But to go back daily from the drawingroom and the publishers to the goose and the shopboard was too much for my weakness even if it had been physically possible as thank Heaven it was not
So I became a hackwriter and sorrowfully but deliberately put my Pegasus into heavy harness as my betters had done before me It was miserable work there is no denying it—only not worse than tailoring To try and serve God and Mammon too to make miserable compromises daily between the two great incompatibilities what was true and what would pay to speak my mind in fear and trembling by hints and halves and quarters to be daily hauling poor Truth just up to the top of the well and then frightened at my own success let her plump down again to the bottom to sit there trying to teach others while my mind was in a whirl of doubt to feed others intellects while my own were hungering to grind on in the Philistines mill or occasionally make sport for them like some wearyhearted clown grinning in a pantomime in a light article as blind as Samson but not alas as strong for indeed my Delilah of the Westend had clipped my locks and there seemed little chance of their growing again That face and that drawingroom flitted before me from morning till eve and enervated and distracted my already overwearied brain
I had no time besides to concentrate my thoughts sufficiently for poetry no time to wait for inspiration From the moment I had swallowed my breakfast I had to sit scribbling off my thoughts anyhow in prose and soon my own scanty stock was exhausted and I was forced to beg borrow and steal notions and facts wherever I could get them Oh the misery of having to read not what I longed to know but what I thought would pay to skip page after page of interesting matter just to pick out a single thought or sentence which could be stitched into my patchwork and then the still greater misery of seeing the article which I had sent to press a tolerably healthy and lusty bantling appear in print next week after suffering the inquisition tortures of the editorial censorship all maimed and squinting and onesided with the colour rubbed off its poor cheeks and generally a villanous hangdog look of ferocity so different from its birthsmile that I often did not know my own child again—and then when I dared to remonstrate however feebly to be told by way of comfort that the public taste must be consulted It gave me a hopeful notion of the said taste certainly and often and often I groaned in spirit over the temper of my own class which not only submitted to but demanded such onesided bigotry prurience and ferocity from those who set up as its guides and teachers
Mr OFlynn editor of the Weekly Warwhoop whose white slave I now found myself was I am afraid a pretty faithful specimen of that class as it existed before the bitter lesson of the 10th of April brought the Chartist working men and the Chartist press to their senses Thereon sprang up a new race of papers whose moral tone whatever may be thought of their political or doctrinal opinions was certainly not inferior to that of the Whig and Tory press The Commonwealth the Standard of Freedom the Plain Speaker were reprobates if to be a Chartist is to be a reprobate but none except the most onesided bigots could deny them the praise of a stern morality and a lofty earnestness a hatred of evil and a craving after good which would often put to shame many a paper among the oracles of Belgravia and Exeter Hall But those were the days of lubricity and OFlynn Not that the man was an unredeemed scoundrel He was no more profligate either in his literary or his private morals than many a man who earns his hundreds sometimes his thousands a year by prophesying smooth things to Mammon crying in daily leaders Peace peace when there is no peace and daubing the rotten walls of careless luxury and selfsatisfied covetousness with the untempered mortar of party statistics and garbled foreign news—till the storm shall fall and the breaking thereof cometh suddenly in an instant Let those of the respectable press who are without sin cast the first stone at the unrespectable Many of the latter class who have been branded as traitors and villains were singleminded earnest valiant men and as for even OFlynn and those worse than him what was really the matter with them was that they were too honest—they spoke out too much of their whole minds Bewildered like Lear amid the social storm they had determined like him to become unsophisticated to owe the worm no silk the cat no perfume—seeing indeed that if they had they could not have paid for them so they tore off of their own will the peacocks feathers of gentility the sheeps clothing of moderation even the figleaves of decent reticence and became just what they really were—just what hundreds more would become who now sit in the high places of the earth if it paid them as well to be unrespectable as it does to be respectable if the selfishness and covetousness bigotry and ferocity which are in them and more or less in every man had happened to enlist them against existing evils instead of for them OFlynn would have been gladly as respectable as they but in the first place he must have starved and in the second place he must have lied for he believed in his own radicalism with his whole soul There was a ribald sincerity a frantic courage in the man He always spoke the truth when it suited him and very often when it did not He did see which is more than all do that oppression is oppression and humbug humbug He had faced the gallows before now without flinching He had spouted rebellion in the Birmingham Bullring and elsewhere and taken the consequences like a man while his colleagues left their dupes to the tender mercies of broadswords and bayonets and decamped in the disguise of sailors old women and dissenting preachers He had sat three months in Lancaster Castle the Bastille of England one day perhaps to fall like that Parisian one for a libel which he never wrote because he would not betray his cowardly contributor He had twice pleaded his own cause without help of attorney and showed himself as practised in every lawquibble and practical cheat as if he had been a regularly ordained priest of the bluebag and each time when hunted at last into a corner had turned valiantly to bay with wild witty Irish eloquence worthy as the press say of poor misguided Mitchell of a better cause Altogether a muchenduring Ulysses unscrupulous toughhided ready to do and suffer anything fair or foul for what he honestly believed—if a confused virulent positiveness be worthy of the name belief—to be the true and righteous cause
Those who class all mankind compendiously and comfortably under the two exhaustive species of saints and villains may consider such a description garbled and impossible I have seen few men but never yet met I among those few either perfect saint or perfect villain I draw men as I have found them—inconsistent piecemeal better than their own actions worse than their own opinions and poor OFlynn among the rest Not that there were no questionable spots in the sun of his fair fame It was whispered that he had in old times done dirty work for Dublin Castle bureaucrats—nay that he had even in a very hard season written court poetry for the Morning Post but all these little peccadilloes he carefully veiled in that kindly mist which hung over his youthful years He had been a medical student and got plucked his foes declared in his examination He had set up a savingsbank which broke He had come over from Ireland to agitate for repale and rint and like a wise man as he was had never gone back again He had set up three or four papers in his time and entered into partnership with every leading democrat in turn but his papers failed and he quarrelled with his partners being addicted to profane swearing and personalities And now at last after Ulyssean wanderings he had found rest in the office of the Weekly Warwhoop if rest it could be called that perennial hurricane of plotting railing sneering and bombast in which he lived never writing a line on principle till he had worked himself up into a passion
I will dwell no more on so distasteful a subject Such leaders let us hope belong only to the past—to the youthful selfwill and licentiousness of democracy and as for reviling OFlynn or any other of his class no man has less right than myself I fear to cast stones at such as they I fell as low as almost any beneath the besetting sins of my class and shall I take merit to myself because God has shown me a little earlier perhaps than to them somewhat more of the true duties and destinies of The Many Oh that they could see the depths of my affection to them Oh that they could see the shame and selfabasement with which in rebuking their sins I confess my own If they are apt to be flippant and bitter so was I If they lust to destroy without knowing what to build up instead so did I If they make an almighty idol of that Electoral Reform which ought to be and can be only a preliminary means and expect final deliverance from their twentythousandth part of a talker in the national palaver so did I Unhealthy and noisome as was the literary atmosphere in which I now found myself it was one to my taste The very contrast between the peaceful intellectual luxury which I had just witnessed and the misery of my class and myself quickened my delight in it In bitterness in sheer envy I threw my whole soul into it and spoke evil and rejoiced in evil It was so easy to find fault It pampered my own selfconceit my own discontent while it saved me the trouble of inventing remedies Yes it was indeed easy to find fault The world was all before me where to choose In such a disorganized anomalous grumbling partyembittered element as this English society and its twin pauperism and luxury I had but to look straight before me to see my prey
And thus I became daily more and more cynical fierce reckless My mouth was filled with cursing—and too often justly And all the while like tens of thousands of my class I had no man to teach me Sheep scattered on the hills we were that had no shepherd What wonder if our bones lay bleaching among rocks and quagmires and wolves devoured the heritage of God
Mackaye had nothing positive after all to advise or propound His wisdom was one of apophthegms and maxims utterly impracticable too often merely negative as was his creed which though he refused to be classed with any sect was really a somewhat undefined Unitarianism—or rather Islamism He could say with the old Moslem God is great—who hath resisted his will And he believed what he said and lived manful and pure reverent and selfdenying by that belief as the first Moslem did But that was not enough
Not enough Merely negative
No—that was positive enough and mighty but I repeat it it was not enough He felt it so himself for he grew daily more and more cynical more and more hopeless about the prospects of his class and of all humanity Why not Poor suffering wretches what is it to them to know that God is great unless you can prove to them God is also merciful Did he indeed care for men at all—was what I longed to know was all this misery and misrule around us his will—his stern and necessary law—his lazy connivance And were we to free ourselves from it by any frantic means that came to hand or had he ever interfered himself Was there a chance a hope of his interfering now in our own time to take the matter into his own hand and come out of his place to judge the earth in righteousness That was what we wanted to know and poor Mackaye could give no comfort there God was great—the wicked would be turned into hell Ay—the few wilful triumphant wicked but the millions of suffering starving wicked the victims of society and circumstance—what hope for them God was great And for the clergy our professed and salaried teachers all I can say is—and there are tens perhaps hundreds of thousands of workmen who can reecho my words—with the exception of the dean and my cousin and one who shall be mentioned hereafter a clergyman never spoke to me in my life
Why should he Was I not a Chartist and an Infidel The truth is the clergy are afraid of us To read the Dispatch is to be excommunicated Young mens classes Honour to them however few they are—however hampered by the restrictions of religious bigotry and political cowardice But the working men whether rightly or wrongly do not trust them they do not trust the clergy who set them on foot they do not expect to be taught at them the things they long to know—to be taught the whole truth in them about history politics science the Bible They suspect them to be mere tubs to the whale—mere substitutes for education slowly and late adopted in order to stop the mouths of the importunate They may misjudge the clergy but whose fault is it if they do Clergymen of England—look at the history of your Establishment for the last fifty years and say what wonder is it if the artisan mistrust you Every spiritual reform since the time of John Wesley has had to establish itself in the teeth of insult calumny and persecution Every ecclesiastical reform comes not from within but from without your body Mr Horsman struggling against every kind of temporizing and trickery has to do the work which bishops by virtue of their seat in the House of Lords ought to have been doing years ago Everywhere we see the clergy with a few persecuted exceptions like Dr Arnold proclaiming themselves the advocates of Toryism the dogged opponents of our political liberty living either by the accursed system of pewrents or else by one which depends on the high price of corn chosen exclusively from the classes who crush us down prohibiting all free discussion on religious points commanding us to swallow down with faith as passive and implicit as that of a Papist the very creeds from which their own bad example and their scandalous neglect have in the last three generations alienated us never mixing with the thoughtful working men except in the prison the hospital or in extreme old age betraying in every tract in every sermon an ignorance of the doubts the feelings the very language of the masses which would be ludicrous were it not accursed before God and man And then will you show us a few tardy improvements here and there and ask us indignantly why we distrust you Oh gentlemen if you cannot see for yourselves the causes of our distrust it is past our power to show you We must leave it to God
But to return to my own story I had as I said before to live by my pen and in that painful confused maimed way I contrived to scramble on the long winter through writing regularly for the Weekly Warwhoop and sometimes getting an occasional scrap into some other cheap periodical often on the very verge of starvation and glad of a handful of meal from Sandys widows barrel If I had had more than my share of feasting in the summer I made the balance even during those frosty months by many a bitter fast
And here let me ask you gentle reader who are just now considering me ungentle virulent and noisy did you ever for one day in your whole life literally involuntarily and in spite of all your endeavours longings and hungerings not get enough to eat If you ever have it must have taught you several things
But all this while it must not be supposed that I had forgotten my promise to good Farmer Porter to look for his missing son And indeed Crossthwaite and I were already engaged in a similar search for a friend of his—the young tailor who as I told Porter had been lost for several months He was the brother of Crossthwaites wife a passionate kindhearted Irishman Mike Kelly by name reckless and scatterbrained enough to get himself into every possible scrape and weak enough of will never to get himself out of one For these two Crossthwaite and I had searched from one sweaters den to another and searched in vain And though the present interest and exertion kept us both from brooding over our own difficulties yet in the long run it tended only to embitter and infuriate our minds. The frightful scenes of hopeless misery which we witnessed—the ever widening pit of pauperism and slavery gaping for fresh victims day by day as they dropped out of the fast lessening honourable trade into the everincreasing miseries of sweating piecework and starvation prices the horrible certainty that the same process which was devouring our trade was slowly but surely eating up every other also the knowledge that there was no remedy no salvation for us in man that political economists had declared such to be the law and constitution of society and that our rulers had believed that message and were determined to act upon it—if all these things did not go far towards maddening us we must have been made of sterner stuff than any one who reads this book
At last about the middle of January just as we had given up the search as hopeless and poor Katies eyes were getting red and swelled with daily weeping a fresh spur was given to our exertions by the sudden appearance of no less a person than the farmer himself What ensued upon his coming must be kept for another chapter
CHAPTER XXI
THE SWEATERS DEN
I was greedily devouring Lanes Arabian Nights which had made their first appearance in the shop that day
Mackaye sat in his usual place smoking a clean pipe and assisting his meditations by certain mysterious chironomic signs while opposite to him was Farmer Porter—a stone or two thinner than when I had seen him last but one stone is not much missed out of seventeen His forehead looked smaller and his jaws larger than ever and his red face was sad and furrowed with care
Evidently too he was ill at ease about other matters besides his son He was looking out of the corners of his eyes first at the skinless cast on the chimneypiece then at the crucified books hanging over his head as if he considered them not altogether safe companions and rather expected something uncanny to lay hold of him from behind—a process which involved the most horrible contortions of visage as he carefully abstained from stirring a muscle of his neck or body but sat bolt upright his elbows pinned to his sides and his knees as close together as his stomach would permit like a huge corpulent Egyptian Memnon—the most ludicrous contrast to the little old man opposite twisted up together in his Josephs coat like some wizard magician in the stories which I was reading A curious pair of poles the two made the mesothet whereof by no means a punctum indifferens but a true connecting spiritual idea stood on the table—in the whiskybottle
Farmer Porter was evidently big with some great thought and had all a true poets bashfulness about publishing the fruit of his creative genius He looked round again at the skinless man the caricatures the books and as his eye wandered from pile to pile and shelf to shelf his face brightened and he seemed to gain courage
Solemnly he put his hat on his knees and began solemnly brushing it with his cuff Then he saw me watching him and stopped Then he put his pipe solemnly on the hob and cleared his throat for action while I buried my face in the book
Thems a sight o larned beuks Muster Mackaye
Humph
Yow maun ha got a deal o scholarship among they noo
Humph
Dee yow think noo yow could find out my boy out of un by any ways o conjuring like
By what
Conjuring—to strike a perpendicular noo or say the Lords Prayer backwards
Wadna ye prefer a meeracle or twa asked Sandy after a long pull at the whiskytoddy
Or a few efreets added I
Whatsoever you likes gentlemen Youre best judges to be sure answered
Farmer Porter in an awed and helpless voice
Aweel—Im no that disinclined to believe in the occult sciences I dinna haud athegither wi Salverte There was mair in them than Magia naturalis Im thinking Mesmerism and magiclanterns benj and opium winna explain all facts Alton laddie Dootless they were an unco barbaric an empiric method o expressing the gran truth o mans mastery ower matter But the interpenetration o the spiritual an physical worlds is a gran truth too an aiblins the Deity might ha allowed witchcraft just to teach that to puir barbarous folk—signs and wonders laddie to mak them believe in somewhat mair than the beasts that perish an so ghaists an warlocks might be a necessary element o the divine education in dark and carnal times But Ive no read o a case in which necromancy nor geomancy nor coskinomancy nor ony other mancy was applied to sic a purpose as this Unco gude they were may be for the discovery o stolen spunes—but no that o stolen tailors
Farmer Porter had listened to this harangue with mouth and eyes gradually expanding between awe and the desire to comprehend but at the last sentence his countenance fell
So Im thinking Mister Porter that the best witch in siccan a case is ane that ye may find at the policeoffice
Anan
Thae detective police are gran necromancers an canny in their way an I just took the liberty a week agone to ha a crack wi ane o em An noo gin yere inclined well leave the whusky awhile an gang up to that cave o Trophawnius cad by the vulgar Bowstreet an speir for tidings o the twa lost sheep
So to Bowstreet we went and found our man to whom the farmer bowed with obsequiousness most unlike his usual burly independence He evidently half suspected him to have dealings with the world of spirits but whether he had such or not they had been utterly unsuccessful and we walked back again with the farmer between us halfblubbering—
I tell ye theres nothing like ganging to a wise ooman Bless ye I mind one up to Guy Hall when I was a barn that two Irish reapers coom down and murthered her for the money—and if you lost aught shed vind it so sure as the church—and a mighty hand to cure burns and they two villains coom back after harvest seventy mile to do it—and when my vathers cows was shrewstruck she made un be draed under a brimble as growed together at the both ends she a praying like mad all the time and they never got nothing but fourteen shilling and a crooked sixpence for why the devil carried off all the rest of her money and I seen um both ahanging in chains by Wisbeach river with my own eyes So when they Irish reapers comes into the vens our chaps always says Yow goo to Guy Hall theres yor brithren awaitin for yow and that do make um joost mad loike it do I tell ye theres nowt like a wise ooman for vinding out the likes o this
At this hopeful stage of the argument I left them to go to the Magazine office As I passed through Covent Garden a pretty young woman stopped me under a gaslamp I was pushing on when I saw it was Jemmy Downess Irish wife and saw too that she did not recognise me A sudden instinct made me stop and hear what she had to say
Shure thin and yere a tailor my young man
Yes I said nettled a little that my late loathed profession still betrayed itself in my gait
From the counthry
I nodded though I dared not speak a white lie to that effect I fancied that somehow through her I might hear of poor Kelly and his friend Porter
Yell be wanting work thin
I have no work
Och thin its I can show ye the flower o work I can Bedad theres a shop I know of where yell earn—bedad if yere the ninth part of a man let alone a handy young fellow like the looks of you—och yell earn thirty shillings the week to the very least—an beautiful lodgings och thin just come and see em—as chape as mothers milk Gome along thin—och its the beauty ye are—just the nate figure for a tailor
The fancy still possessed me and I went with her through one dingy back street after another She seemed to be purposely taking an indirect road to mislead me as to my whereabouts but after a halfhours walking I knew as well as she that we were in one of the most miserable slopworking nests of the Eastend
She stopped at a house door and hurried me in up to the first floor and into a dirty slatternly parlour smelling infamously of gin where the first object I beheld was Jemmy Downes sitting before the fire threeparts drunk with a couple of dirty squalling children on the hearthrug whom he was kicking and cuffing alternately
Och thin ye villain beating the poor darlints whinever I lave ye a minute And pouring out a volley of Irish curses she caught up the urchins one under each arm and kissed and hugged them till they were nearly choked Och ye plague o my life—as drunk as a baste an I brought home this darlint of a young gentleman to help ye in the business
Downes got up and steadying himself by the table leered at me with lacklustre eyes and attempted a little ceremonious politeness How this was to end I did not see but I was determined to carry it through on the chance of success infinitely small as that might be
An Ive told him thirty shillings a weeks the least hell earn and charge for board and lodgings only seven shillings
Thirty—she lies shes always a lying dont you mind her Fiveandforty is the werry lowest figure Ask my respectable and most piousest partner Shemei Solomons Why blow me—its Locke
Yes it is Locke and surely youre my old friend Jemmy Downes Shake hands What an unexpected pleasure to meet you again
Werry unexpected pleasure Tip us your daddle Delighted—delighted as I was a saying to be of the least use to yer Take a caulker Summat heavy then No Tak a drap o kindness yet for auld langsyne
You forget I was always a teetotaller
Ay with a look of unfeigned pity An youre a going to lend us a hand Oh ah perhaps youd like to begin Heres a most beautiful uniform now for a markis in her Majestys Guards we dont mention names—tarnt businesslike Praps youd like best to work here tonight for company—for auld langsyne my boys and Ill introduce yer to the gents upstairs tomorrow
No I said Ill go up at once if youve no objection
Och thin but the sheets isnt aired—no—faix and Im thinking the gentleman as is a going isnt gone yet
But I insisted on going up at once and grumbling she followed me I stopped on the landing of the second floor and asked which way and seeing her in no hurry to answer opened a door inside which I heard the hum of many voices saying in as sprightly a tone as I could muster that I supposed that was the workroom
As I had expected a fetid choking den with just room enough in it for the seven or eight sallow starved beings who coatless shoeless and ragged sat stitching each on his trucklebed I glanced round the man whom I sought was not there
My heart fell why it had ever risen to such a pitch of hope I cannot tell and halfcursing myself for a fool in thus wildly thrusting my head into a squabble I turned back and shut the door saying—
A very pleasant room maam but a leetle too crowded
Before she could answer the opposite door opened and a face appeared—unwashed unshaven shrunken to a skeleton I did not recognise it at first
Blessed Vargen but that wasnt your voice Locke
And who are you
Tear and ages and he dont know Mike Kelly
My first impulse was to catch him up in my arms and run downstairs with him I controlled myself however not knowing how far he might be in his tyrants power But his voluble Irish heart burst out at once—
Oh blessed saints take me out o this take me out for the love of
Jesus take me out o this hell or Ill go mad intirely Och will nobody
have pity on poor sowls in purgatory—here in prison like negur slaves
Were starved to the bone we are and kilt intirely with cowld
And as he clutched my arm with his long skinny trembling fingers I saw that his hands and feet were all chapped and bleeding Neither shoe nor stocking did he possess his only garments were a ragged shirt and trousers and—and and in horrible mockery of his own misery a grand new flowered satin vest which tomorrow was to figure in some gorgeous shopwindow
Och Mother of Heaven he went on wildly when will I get out to the fresh air For five months I havent seen the blessed light of sun nor spoken to the praste nor ate a bit o mate barring breadandbutter Shure its all the blessed Sabbaths and saints days Ive been a working like a haythen Jew an niver seen the insides o the chapel to confess my sins and me poor sowls lost intirely—and theyve pawned the relaver Footnote A coat we understand which is kept by the coatless wretches in these sweaters dungeons to be used by each of them in turn when they want to go out—EDITOR this fifteen weeks and not a boy of us iver sot foot in the street since
Vots that row roared at this juncture Downess voice from below
Och thin shrieked the woman heres that thief o the warld Micky Kelly slandhering o us afore the blessed heaven and he owing £2 14s 12d for his board an lodging let alone pawntickets and goin to rin away the blackhearted ongrateful sarpent And she began yelling indiscriminately Thieves Murder Blasphemy and such other ejaculations which the English ones at least had not the slightest reference to the matter in hand
Ill come to him said Downes with an oath and rushed stumbling up the stairs while the poor wretch sneaked in again and slammed the door to Downes battered at it but was met with a volley of curses from the men inside while profiting by the Babel I blew out the light ran downstairs and got safe into the street
In two hours afterwards Mackaye Porter Crossthwaite and I were at the door accompanied by a policeman and a searchwarrant Porter had insisted on accompanying us He had made up his mind that his son was at Downess and all representations of the smallness of his chance were fruitless He worked himself up into a state of complete frenzy and flourished a huge stick in a way which shocked the policemans orderly and legal notions
That may do very well down in your country sir but you arnt a goin to use that there weapon here you know not by no hact o Parliament as I knows on
Ow its joost a way I ha wi me And the stick was quiet for fifty yards or so and then recommenced smashing imaginary skulls
Youll do somebody a mischief sir with that Youd much better a lend it me
Porter tucked it under his arm for fifty yards more and so on till we reached Downess house
The policeman knocked and the door was opened cautiously by an old Jew of a most unCaucasian cast of features however highnosed as Mr Disraeli has it
The policeman asked to see Michael Kelly
Michaelsh I dot know such namesh— But before the parley could go farther the farmer burst past policeman and Jew and rushed into the passage roaring in a voice which made the very windows rattle
Billy Poorter Billy Poorter whor be yow whor be yow
We all followed him upstairs in time to see him charging valiantly with his stick for a bayonet the small person of a Jewboy who stood at the head of the stairs in a scientific attitude The young rascal planted a dozen blows in the huge carcase—he might as well have thumped the rhinoceros in the Regents Park the old man ran right over him without stopping and dashed up the stairs at the head of which—oh joy—appeared a long shrunken redhaired figure the tears on its dirty cheeks glittering in the candleglare In an instant father and son were in each others arms
Oh my barn my barn my barn my barn And then the old Hercules held him off at arms length and looked at him with a wistful face and hugged him again with My barn my barn He had nothing else to say Was it not enough And poor Kelly danced frantically around them hurrahing his own sorrows forgotten in his friends deliverance
The Jewboy shook himself turned and darted down stairs past us the policeman quietly put out his foot tripped him headlong and jumping down after him extracted from his grasp a heavy pocketbook
Ah my dear mothershs dying gift Oh dear oh dear give it back to a poor orphansh
Didnt I see you take it out o the old uns pocket you young villain answered the maintainer of order as he shoved the book into his bosom and stood with one foot on his writhing victim a complete nineteenthcentury St Michael
Let me hold him I said while you go upstairs
You hold a Jewboy—you hold a mad cat answered the policeman contemptuously—and with justice—for at that moment Downes appeared on the firstfloor landing cursing and blaspheming
Hes my prentice hes my servant Ive got a bond with his own hand to it to serve me for three years Ill have the law of you—I will
Then the meaning of the big stick came out The old man leapt down the stairs and seized Downes Youre the tyrant as has locked my barn up here And a thrashing commenced which it made my bones ache only to look at Downes had no chance the old man felled him on his face in a couple of blows and taking both hands to his stick hewed away at him as if he had been a log
I waint hit as head I waint hit as head—whack whack Let me be—whack whackpuff It does me gude it does me gude—puff puff puff—whack Ive been a bottling of it up for three years come Whitsuntide—whack whack whack—while Mackaye and Crossthwaite stood coolly looking on and the wife shut herself up in the sideroom and screamed Murder
The unhappy policeman stood at his wits end between the prisoner below and the breach of the peace above bellowing in vain in the Queens name to us and to the grinning tailors on the landing At last as Downess life seemed in danger he wavered the Jewboy seized the moment jumped up upsetting the constable dashed like an eel between Crossthwaite and Mackaye gave me a backhanded blow in passing which I felt for a week after and vanished through the streetdoor which he locked after him
Very well said the functionary rising solemnly and pulling out a notebook—Scar under left eye nose a little twisted to the right bad chilblains on the hands Youll keep till next time young man Now you fat gentleman up there have you done a qualifying of yourself for Newgate
The old man had ran upstairs again and was hugging his son but when the policeman lifted Downes he rushed back to his victim and begged like a great schoolboy for leave to bet him joost won bit moor
Let me bet un Ill pay un—Ill pay all as my son owes un Marcy me wheres my pooss And so on raged the Babel till we got the two poor fellows safe out of the house We had to break open the door to do it thanks to that imp of Israel
For Gods sake take us too almost screamed five or six other voices
Theyre all in debt—every onesh they shant go till they paysh if theres law in England whined the old Jew who had reappeared
Ill pay for em—Ill pay every farden if so be as they treated my boy well Here you Mr Locke theres the ten pounds as I promised you Why whor is my pooss
The policeman solemnly handed it to him He took it turned it over looked at the policeman half frightened and pointed with his fat thumb at Mackaye
Well he said as you was a conjuror—and sure he was right
He paid me the money I had no mind to keep it in such company so I got the poor fellows pawntickets and Crossthwaite and I took the things out for them When we returned we found them in a group in the passage holding the door open in their fear lest we should be locked up or entrapped in some way Their spirits seemed utterly broken Some three or four went off to lodge where they could the majority went upstairs again to work That even that dungeon was their only home—their only hope—as it is of thousands of free Englishmen at this moment
We returned and found the old man with his newfound prodigal sitting on his knee as if he had been a baby Sandy told me afterwards that he had scarcely kept him from carrying the young man all the way home he was convinced that the poor fellow was dying of starvation I think really he was not far wrong In the corner sat Kelly crouched together like a baboon blubbering hurrahing invoking the saints cursing the sweaters and blessing the present company We were afraid for several days that his wits were seriously affected
And in his old armchair pipe in mouth sat good Sandy Mackaye wiping his eyes with the manycoloured sleeve and moralizing to himself sotto voce
The auld Romans made slaves o their debitors sae did the AngloSaxons for a good Major Cartwright has writ to the contrary But I didna ken the same Christian practice was part o the Breetish constitution Aweel aweel—atween Riot Acts Government by Commissions and ither little extravagants and codicils o Mammons making its no that easy to ken the day what is the Breetish constitution and what isnt Tak a drappie Billy Porter lad
Never again so long as I live Ive learnt a lesson and a half about that these last few months
Aweel moderations best but abstinence better than naething Nae man shall deprive me o my leeberty but Ill tempt nae man to gie up his And he actually put the whiskybottle by into the cupboard
The old man and his son went home next day promising me if I would but come to see them twa hundert acres o the best partridgeshooting and wild dooks as plenty as sparrows and to live in clover till I bust if I liked And so as Bunyan has it they went on their way and I saw them no more
CHAPTER XXII
AN EMERSONIAN SERMON
Certainly if John Crossthwaite held the victimofcircumstance doctrine in theory he did not allow Mike Kelly to plead it in practice as an extenuation of his misdeeds Very different from his Owenite itsnobodysfault harangues in the debating society or his admiration for the teacher of whom my readers shall have a glimpse shortly was his lecture that evening to the poor Irishmen on Its all your own fault Unhappy Kelly he sat there like a beaten cur looking first at one of us and then at the other for mercy and finding none As soon as Crossthwaites tongue was tired Mackayes began on the sins of drunkenness hastiness improvidence overtrustfulness c c and above all on the cardinal offence of not having signed the protest years before and spurned the dishonourable trade as we had done Even his most potent excuse that a boy must live somehow Crossthwaite treated as contemptuously as if he had been a very Leonidas while Mackaye chimed in with—
An ye a Papist ye talk o praying to saints an martyrs that died in torments because they wad na do what they should na do What ha ye to do wi martyrs—a meeserable wretch that sells his soul for a mess o pottage—four slices per diem o thin breadandbutter Et propter veetam veevendi perdere causas Dinna tell me o your hardships—yeve had your deserts—your rights were just equivalent to your mights an so ye got them
Faix thin Misther Mackaye darlint an whin did I desarve to pawn me own goose an board an sit looking at the spidhers for the want o them
Pawn his ain goose Pawn himsel pawn his needle—gin it had been worth the pawning theyd ha taen it An yet theres a command in Deuteronomy Ye shall na tak the millstone in pledge for its a mans life nor yet keep his raiment ower night but gie it the puir body back that he may sleep in his ain claes an bless ye O—but pawnbrokers dinna care for blessings—na marketable value in them whatsoever
And the shopkeeper said I in the Arabian Nights refuses to take the fishermans net in pledge because he gets his living thereby
Ech but laddie they were puir legal Jews under carnal ordinances an daur na even tak an honest five per cent interest for their money An the baker o Bagdad why he was a benighted heathen ye ken an deceivit by that fause prophet Mahomet to his eternal damnation or he wad never ha gone aboot to fancy a fisherman was his brither
Faix an aint we all brothers asked Kelly
Ay and no said Sandy with an expression which would have been a smile but for its depths of bitter earnestness brethren in Christ my laddie
An aint that all over the same
Ask the preachers Gin they meant brothers theyd say brothers be sure but because they dont mean brothers at a they say brethren—yell mind brethren—to soun antiquate an professional an perfunctorylike for fear it should be ower real an practical an startling an a that and then jist limit it down wi a in Christ for fear o owre wide applications and a that But
For a that and a that
Its comin yet for a that
When man an man the warld owre
Shall brothers be for a that—
An na brithren any mair at a
An didnt the blessed Jesus die for all
What for heretics Micky
Bedad thin an I forgot that intirely
Of course you did Its strange laddie said he turning to me that that Name suld be everywhere fra the thunderers o Exeter Ha to this puir feckless Paddy the watchword o exclusiveness Im thinking yell no find the workmen believe int till somebody can fin the plan o making it the sign o universal comprehension Gin I had na seen in my youth that a brither in Christ meant less a thousandfold than a brither out o him I might ha believit the noo—well no say what Ive an owre great organ o marvellousness an o veneration too Im afeard
Ah said Crossthwaite you should come and hear Mr Windrush tonight about the allembracing benevolence of the Deity and the abomination of limiting it by all those narrow creeds and dogmas
An whas Meester Windrush then
Oh hes an American he was a Calvinist preacher originally I believe but as he told us last Sunday evening he soon cast away the wornout vestures of an obsolete faith which were fast becoming only crippling fetters
An ran oot sarkless on the public eh Im afeard theres mony a man else that throws awa the gude auld plaid o Scots Puritanism an is unco fain to cover his nakedness wi ony cast popinjays feathers he can forgather wi Aweel aweel—a puir priestless age it is the noo Well een gang hear him the nicht Alton laddie ye ha na darkened the kirk door this mony a day—nor I neither mair by token
It was too true I had utterly given up the whole problem of religion as insoluble I believed in poetry science and democracy—and they were enough for me then enough at least to leave a mighty hunger in my heart I knew not for what And as for Mackaye though brought up as he told me a rigid Scotch Presbyterian he had gradually ceased to attend the church of his fathers
It was no the kirk o his fathers—the auld God—trusting kirk that Clavers dragoonit down by burns and muirsides It was a gane dead an dry a piece of AuldBailey barristration anent soulsaving dodges What did he want wi proofs o the being o God an o the doctrine o original sin He could see eneugh o them ayont the shopdoor ony tide They made puir Rabbie Burns an anythingarian wi their blethers an he was near gaun the same gate
And besides he absolutely refused to enter any place of worship where there were pews He wadna follow after a multitude to do evil he wad na gang before his Maker wi a lee in his right hand Nae wonder folks were so afraid o the names o equality an britherhood when theyd kicked them out een o the kirk o God Pious folks may ca me a sinfu auld Atheist They winna gang to a harmless stage play—an richt they—for fear o countenancing the sin thats dune there an I winna gang to the kirk for fear o countenancing the sin thats dune there by putting down my hurdies on that stool o antichrist a haspit pew
I was therefore altogether surprised at the promptitude with which he agreed to go and hear Crossthwaites newfound prophet His reasons for so doing may be I think gathered from the conversation towards the end of this chapter
Well we went and I for my part was charmed with Mr Windrushs eloquence His style which was altogether Emersonian quite astonished me by its alternate bursts of what I considered brilliant declamation and of forcible epigrammatic antithesis I do not deny that I was a little startled by some of his doctrines and suspected that he had not seen much either of St Giless cellars or tailors workshops either when he talked of sin as only a lower form of good Nothing he informed us was produced in nature without pain and disturbance and what we had been taught to call sin was in fact nothing but the birththroes attendant on the progress of the species.—As for the devil Novalis indeed had gone so far as to suspect him to be a necessary illusion Novalis was a mystic and tainted by the old creeds The illusion was not necessary—it was disappearing before the fastapproaching meridian light of philosophic religion Like the myths of Christianity it had grown up in an age of superstition when men blind to the wondrous order of the universe believed that supernatural beings like the Homeric gods actually interfered in the affairs of mortals Science had revealed the irrevocability of the laws of nature—was man alone to be exempt from them No The time would come when it would be as obsolete an absurdity to talk of the temptation of a fiend as it was now to talk of the wehrwolf or the angel of the thundercloud The metaphor might remain doubtless as a metaphor in the domain of poetry whose office was to realize in objective symbols the subjective ideas of the human intellect but philosophy and the pure sentiment of religion which found all things even God himself in the recesses of its own enthusiastic heart must abjure such a notion
What he asked again shall all nature be a harmonious whole reflecting in every drop of dew which gems the footsteps of the morning the infinite love and wisdom of its Maker and man alone be excluded from his part in that concordant choir Yet such is the doctrine of the advocates of freewill and of sin—its phantombantling Man disobey his Maker disarrange and break the golden wheels and springs of the infinite machine The thought were blasphemy—impossibility All things fulfil their destiny and so does man in a higher or lower sphere of being Shall I punish the robber Shall I curse the profligate As soon destroy the toad because my partial taste may judge him ugly or doom to hell for his carnivorous appetite the muscanonge of my native lakes Toad is not horrible to toad or thief to thief Philanthropists or statesmen may environ him with more genial circumstances and so enable his propensities to work more directly for the good of society but to punish him—to punish nature for daring to be nature—Never I may thank the Upper Destinies that they have not made me as other men are—that they have endowed me with nobler instincts a more delicate conformation than the thief but I have my part to play and he has his Why should we wish to be other than the Allwise has made us
Fine doctrine that grumbled Sandy gin yeve first made up your mind wi the Pharisee that ye are no like ither men
Shall I pray then For what I will coax none natter none—not even the Supreme I will not be absurd enough to wish to change that order by which sun and stars saints and sinners alike fulfil their destinies There is one comfort my friends coax and flatter as we will he will not hear us
Pleasant for puir deevils like us quoth Mackaye
What then remains Thanks thanks—not of words but of actions Worship is a life not a ceremony He who would honour the Supreme let him cheerfully succumb to the destiny which the Supreme has allotted and like the shell or the flower—Or the pickpocket added Mackaye almost audibly—become the happy puppet of the universal impulse He who would honour Christ let him become a Christ himself Theodore of Mopsuestia—born alas before his time—a prophet for whom as yet no audience stood ready in the amphitheatre of souls—Christ he was wont to say I can become Christ myself if I will Become thou Christ my brother He has an idea—the idea of utter submission—abnegation of his own fancied will before the supreme necessities Fulfil that idea and thou art he Deny thyself and then only wilt thou be a reality for thou hast no self If thou hadst a self, thou wouldst but lie in denying it—and would The Being thank thee for denying what he had given thee But thou hast none God is circumstance and thou his creature Be content Fear not strive not change not repent not Thou art nothing Be nothing and thou becomest a part of all things
And so Mr Windrush ended his discourse which Crossthwaite had been all the while busily taking down in shorthand for the edification of the readers of a certain periodical and also for those of this my Life
I plead guilty to having been entirely carried away by what I heard There was so much which was true so much more which seemed true so much which it would have been convenient to believe true and all put so eloquently and originally as I then considered that in short I was in raptures and so was poor dear Crossthwaite and as we walked home we dinned Mr Windrushs praises one into each of Mackayes ears The old man however paced on silent and meditative At last—
A hunder sects or so in the land o Gret Britain an a hunder or so single preachers each man a sect of his ain an this the last fashion Last indeed The moon of Calvinisms far gone in the fourth quarter when its come to the like o that Truly the soulsaving business is athegither fan to a low ebb as Master Tummas says somewhere
Well but asked Crossthwaite was not that man at least splendid
An hoo much o thae gran objectives an subjectives did ye comprehen then Johnnie my man
Quite enough for me answered John in a somewhat nettled tone
An sae did I
But you ought to hear him often You cant judge of his system from one sermon in this way
Seestem and whats that like
Why he has a plan for uniting all sects and parties on the one broad fundamental ground of the unity of God as revealed by science—
Verra like uniting o men by just puing aff their claes and telling em There yere a brithers noo on the one broad fundamental principle o want o breeks
Of course went on Crossthwaite without taking notice of this interruption he allows full liberty of conscience All he wishes for is the emancipation of intellect He will allow every one he says to realize that idea to himself by the representations which suit him best
An so he has no objection to a wee playing at Papistry gin a man finds it good to tickle up his soul
Ay he did speak of that—what did he call it Oh one of the ways in which the Christian idea naturally embodied itself in imaginative minds but the higher intellects of course would want fewer helps of that kind They would see—ay that was it—the pure white light of truth without requiring those coloured refracting media
That wad depend muckle on whether the light o truth chose or not Im thinking But Johnnie lad—guide us and save us—whaur got ye a these gran outlandish words the nicht
Havent I been taking down every one of these lectures for the press
The press gang to the father ot—and you too for lending your han in the matter—for a mair accursed aristocrat I never heerd sin I first ate haggis Oh ye gowk—ye gowk Dinna ye see what be the upshot o siccan doctrin That every puir fellow as has no gret brains in his head will be left to his superstition an his ignorance to fulfil the lusts o his flesh while the few that are geniuses or fancy themselves sae are to ha the monopoly o this private still o philosophy—these carbonari illuminati vehmgericht samothracian mysteries o bottled moonshine An when that comes to pass Ill just gang back to my schule and my catechism and begin again wi who was born o the Virgin Mary suffered oonder Pontius Pilate Hech lads theres no subjectives and objectives there na beggarly windy abstractions but joost a plain fact that God cam down to look for puir bodies instead o leaving puir bodies to gang looking for Him An heres a pretty place to be left looking for Him in—between gin shops and gutters A pretty Gospel for the publicans an harlots to tell em that if their bairns are canny eneugh they may possibly some day be allowed to believe that there is one God and not twa And then by way of practical application—Hech my dear starving simple brothers ye manna be sae owre conscientious and gang fashing yourselves anent being brutes an deevils for the gude Gods made ye sae and Hes verra weel content to see you sae gin ye be content or no
Then do you believe in the old doctrines of Christianity I asked
Dinna speir what I believe in I canna tell ye Ive been seventy years
trying to believe in God and to meet anither man that believed in him So
Im just like the Quaker o the town o Redcross that met by himself every
Firstday in his ain hoose
Well but I asked again is not complete freedom of thought a glorious aim—to emancipate mans noblest part—the intellect—from the trammels of custom and ignorance
Intellect—intellect rejoined he according to his fashion catching one up at a word and playing on that in order to answer not what one said but what ones words led to Im sick o all the talk anent intellect I hear noo An whats the use o intellect Aristocracy o intellect they cry Curse a aristocracies—intellectual anes as well as anes o birth or rank or money What will I ca a man my superior because hes cleverer than mysel—will I boo down to a bit o brains ony mair than to a stock or a stane Let a man prove himsel better than me my laddie—honester humbler kinder wi mair sense o the duty o man an the weakness o man—and that man Ill acknowledge—that mans my king my leader though he war as stupid as Eppe Dalgleish that could na count five on her fingers and yet keepit her drucken father by her ain hands labour for twentythree yeers
We could not agree to all this but we made a rule of never contradicting the old sage in one of his excited moods for fear of bringing on a weeks silent fit—a state which generally ended in his smoking himself into a bilious melancholy but I made up my mind to be henceforth a frequent auditor of Mr Windrushs oratory
An sae the deevils dead said Sandy half to himself as he sat crooning and smoking that night over the fire Gone at last puir fallow—an he sae little appreciated too Every gowk laying his ain sins on Nickies back puir Nickie—verra like that much misunderstood politeecian Mr John Cade as Charles Buller cad him in the Hoose o Commons—an he to be dead at last the warldll seem quite unco without his auldfarrant phizog on the streets Aweel aweel—aiblins hes but shammin—
When pleasant Spring came on apace
And showers began to fa
John Barleycorn got up again
And sore surprised them a
At ony rate Id no bury him till he began smell a wee strong like Its a grewsome thing is premature interment Alton laddie
CHAPTER XXIII
THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
But all this while my slavery to Mr OFlynns partyspirit and coarseness was becoming daily more and more intolerable—an explosion was inevitable and an explosion came
Mr OFlynn found out that I had been staying at Cambridge and at a cathedral city too and it was quite a godsend to him to find any one who knew a word about the institutions at which he had been railing weekly for years So nothing would serve him but my writing a set of articles on the universities as a prelude to one on the Cathedral Establishments In vain I pleaded the shortness of my stay there and the smallness of my information
Och were not abuses notorious And couldnt I get them up out of any Radical paper—and just put in a little of my own observations and a dashing personal cut or two to spice the thing up and give it an original look and if I did not choose to write that—why with an enormous oath I should write nothing So—for I was growing weaker and weaker and indeed my hackwriting was breaking down my moral sense as it does that of most men—I complied and burning with vexation feeling myself almost guilty of a breach of trust toward those from whom I had received nothing but kindness I scribbled off my first number and sent it to the editor—to see it appear next week threeparts rewritten and every fact of my own furnishing twisted and misapplied till the whole thing was as vulgar and commonplace a piece of rant as ever disgraced the peoples cause And all this in spite of a solemn promise confirmed by a volley of oaths that I should say what I liked and speak my whole mind as one who had seen things with his own eyes had a right to do
Furious I set off to the editor and not only my pride but what literary conscience I had left was stirred to the bottom by seeing myself made whether I would or not a blackguard and a slanderer
As it was ordained Mr OFlynn was gone out for an hour or two and unable to settle down to any work till I had fought my battle with him fairly out I wandered onward towards the West End staring into printshop windows and meditating on many things
As it was ordained also I turned up Regent Street and into Langham Place when at the door of AllSouls Church behold a crowd and a long string of carriages arriving and all the pomp and glory of a grand wedding
I joined the crowd from mere idleness and somehow found myself in the first rank just as the bride was stepping out of the carriage—it was Miss Staunton and the old gentleman who handed her out was no other than the dean They were of course far too deeply engaged to recognise insignificant little me so that I could stare as thoroughly to my hearts content as any of the butcherboys and nurserymaids around me
She was closely veiled—but not too closely to prevent my seeing her magnificent lip and nostril curling with pride resolve rich tender passion Her glorious blackbrown hair—the true purple locks which Homer so often talks of—rolled down beneath her veil in great heavy ringlets and with her tall and rounded figure and step as firm and queenly as if she were going to a throne she seemed to me the very ideal of those magnificent Eastern Zubeydehs and Nourmahals whom I used to dream of after reading the Arabian Nights
As they entered the doorway almost touching me she looked round as if for some one The dean whispered something in his gentle stately way and she answered by one of those looks so intense and yet so bright so full of unutterable depths of meaning and emotion that in spite of all my antipathy I felt an admiration akin to awe thrill through me and gazed after her so intently that Lillian—Lillian herself—was at my side and almost passed me before I was aware of it
Yes there she was the foremost among a bevy of fair girls herself the fairest far all April smiles and tears golden curls snowy rosebuds and hovering clouds of lace—a fairy queen—but yet—but yet—how shallow that hazel eye how empty of meaning those delicate features compared with the strength and intellectual richness of the face which had preceded her
It was too true—I had never remarked it before but now it flashed across me like lightning—and like lightning vanished for Lillians eye caught mine and there was the faintest spark of a smile of recognition and pleased surprise and a nod I blushed scarlet with delight some servantgirl or other who stood next to me had seen it too—quickeyed that women are—and was looking curiously at me I turned I knew not why in my delicious shame and plunged through the crowd to hide I knew not what
I walked on—poor fool—in an ecstasy the whole world was transfigured in my eyes and virtue and wisdom beamed from every face I passed The omnibushorses were racers and the drivers—were they not my brothers of the people The very policemen looked sprightly and philanthropic I shook hands earnestly with the crossingsweeper of the Regent Circus gave him my last twopence and rushed on like a young David to exterminate that Philistine OFlynn
Ah well I was a great fool as others too have been but yet that little chancemeeting did really raise me It made me sensible that I was made for better things than low abuse of the higher classes It gave me courage to speak out and act without fear of consequences once at least in that confused facingbothways period of my life O woman woman only true missionary of civilization and brotherhood and gentle forgiving charity is it in thy power and perhaps in thine only to bind up the brokenhearted to preach deliverance to the captives One real lady who should dare to stoop what might she not do with us—with our sisters If—
There are hundreds answers the reader who do stoop Elizabeth Fry was a lady wellborn rich educated and she has many scholars
True my dear readers true—and may God bless her and her scholars Do you think the working men forget them But look at St Giless or Spitalfields or Shadwell and say is not the harvest plentiful and the labourers alas few No one asserts that nothing is done the question is is enough done Does the supply of mercy meet the demand of misery Walk into the next court and see
I found Mr OFlynn in his sanctum busy with paste and scissors in the act of putting in a string of advertisements—indecent French novels Atheistic tracts quack medicines and slopsellers puffs and commenced with as much dignity as I could muster
What on earth do you mean sir by rewriting my article
What—in the other place—do you mean by giving me the trouble of rewriting it Me heads splitting now with sitting up cutting out and putting in Poker o Moses but yed given it an intirely aristocratic tendency What did ye mane and three or four oaths rattled out by talking about the pious intentions of the original founders and the democratic tendencies of monastic establishments
I wrote it because I thought it
Is that any reason ye should write it And there was another bit too—it made my hair stand on end when I saw it to think how near I was sending the copy to press without looking at it—something about a French Socialist and Church Property
Oh you mean I suppose the story of the French Socialist who told me that church property was just the only property in England which he would spare because it was the only one which had definite duties attached to it that the real devourers of the people were not the bishops who however rich were at least bound to work in return for their riches but the landlords and millionaires who refused to confess the duties of property while they raved about its rights
Bedad thats it and pretty doctrine too
But its true its an entirely new and a very striking notion, and I consider it my duty to mention it
Thrue What the devil does that matter Theres a time to speak the truth and a time not isnt there Itll make a grand hit now in a leader upon the Irish Church question to back the prastes against the landlords But if Id let that in as it stood bedad Id have lost three parts of my subscribers the next week Every soul of the Independents let alone the Chartists would have bid me good morning Now do like a good boy give us something more the right thing next time Draw it strong—A good drunken supperparty and a policerow if ye havent seen one get it up out of Pater Priggins—or Laver might do if the other wasnt convanient Thats Dublin to be sure but one universitys just like another And give us a seduction or two and a brace of Dons carried home drunk from Barnwell by the Procthors
Really I never saw anything of the kind and as for profligacy amongst the Dons I dont believe it exists. Ill call them idle and bigoted and careless of the morals of the young men because I know that they are so but as for anything more I believe them to be as sober respectable a set of Pharisees as the world ever saw
Mr OFlynn was waxing warm and the bullyvein began fast to show itself
I dont care a curse sir My subscribers wont stand it and they shant I am a man of business sir and a man of the world sir and faith thats more than you are and I know what will sell the paper and by J——s Ill let no upstart spalpeen dictate to me
Then Ill tell you what sir quoth I waxing warm in my turn I dont know which are the greater rogues you or your subscribers You a patriot You are a humbug Look at those advertisements and deny it if you can Crying out for education and helping to debauch the public mind with Voltaires Candide and Eugène Sue—swearing by Jesus and puffing Atheism and blasphemy—yelling at a quack government quack law quack priesthoods and then dirtying your fingers with halfcrowns for advertising Holloways ointment and Parrs life pills—shrieking about slavery of labour to capital and inserting Moses and Sons doggerel—ranting about searching investigations and the march of knowledge, and concealing every fact which cannot be made to pander to the passions of your dupes—extolling the freedom of the press and showing yourself in your own office a tyrant and a censor of the press You a patriot You the peoples friend You are doing everything in your power to blacken the peoples cause in the eyes of their enemies You are simply a humbug a hypocrite and a scoundrel and so I bid you good morning
Mr OFlynn had stood during this harangue speechless with passion those loose lips of his wreathing like a pair of earthworms It was only when I stopped that he regained his breath and with a volley of incoherent oaths caught up his chair and hurled it at my head Luckily I had seen enough of his temper already to keep my hand on the lock of the door for the last five minutes I darted out of the room quicker than I ever did out of one before or since The chair took effect on the luckless door and as I threw a flying glance behind me I saw one leg sticking through the middle panel in a way that augured ill for my skull had it been in the way of Mr OFlynns fury
I ran home to Mackaye in a state of intense selfglorification and told him the whole story He chuckled he crowed he hugged me to his bosom
Leeze me o ye but I kenned ye were o the true Norse blude after a
For a that an a that
A mans a man for a that
Oh but I hae expeckit it this month an mare Oh but I prophesied it
Johnnie
Then why in Heavens name did you introduce me to such a scoundrel
I sent you to schule lad I sent you to schule Ye wad na be ruled by me Ye tuk me for a puir doited auld misanthrope an I thocht to gie ye the meat ye lusted after an fill ye wi the fruit o your ain desires An noo that yeve gane doon in the fire o temptation an conquered heres your reward standin ready Special prawvidences—wha can doot them I ha had mony—miracles I might ca them to see how they cam just when I was gaun daft wi despair
And then he told me that the editor of a popular journal of the Howitt and Eliza Cook school had called on me that morning and promised me work enough and pay enough to meet all present difficulties
I did indeed accept the curious coincidence if not as a reward for an act of straightforwardness in which I saw no merit at least as proof that the upper powers had not altogether forgotten me I found both the editor and his periodical as I should have wished them temperate and sunny—somewhat claptrap and sentimental perhaps and afraid of speaking out as all parties are but still willing to allow my fancy free range in light fictions descriptions of foreign countries scraps of showy rosepink morality and such like which though they had no more power against the raging mass of crime misery and discontent around than a peacocks feather against a threedecker still were all genial graceful kindly humanizing and soothed my discontented and impatient heart in the work of composition
CHAPTER XXIV
THE TOWNSMANS SERMON TO THE GOWNSMAN
One morning in February a few days after this explosion I was on the point of starting to go to the deans house about that weary list of subscribers which seemed destined never to be filled up when my cousin George burst in upon me He was in the highest good spirits at having just taken a double firstclass at Cambridge and after my congratulations sincere and hearty enough were over he offered to accompany me to that reverend gentlemans house
He said in an offhand way that he had no particular business there but he thought it just as well to call on the dean and mention his success in case the old fellow should not have heard of it
For you see he said I am a sort of protégé both on my own account and on Lord Lynedales—Ellerton he is now—you know he is just married to the deans niece Miss Staunton—and Ellertons a capital fellow—promised me a living as soon as Im in priests orders So my cue is now he went on as we walked down the Strand together to get ordained as fast as ever I can
But I asked have you read much for ordination or seen much of what a clergymans work should be
Oh as for that—you know it isnt one out of ten whos ever entered a school or a cottage even except to light a cigar before he goes into the church and as for the examination thats all humbug any man may cram it all up in a month—and thanks to Kings College I knew all I wanted to know before I went to Cambridge And I shall be threeandtwenty by Trinity Sunday and then in I go neck or nothing Only the confounded bore is that this Bishop of London wont give one a title—wont let any man into his diocese who has not been ordained two years and so I shall be shoved down into some poking little countrycuracy without a chance of making play before the world or getting myself known at all Horrid bore isnt it
I think I said considering what London is just now the bishops regulation seems to be one of the best specimens of episcopal wisdom that Ive heard of for some time
Great bore for me though all the same for I must make a name I can tell you if I intend to get on A person must work like a horse nowadays to succeed at all and Lynedales a desperately particular fellow with all sorts of outré notions about peoples duties and vocations and heaven knows what
Well I said my dear cousin and have you no high notions of a clergymans vocation because we—I mean the working men—have Its just their high idea of what a clergyman should be which makes them so furious at clergymen for being what they are
Its a queer way of showing their respect to the priesthood he answered to do all they can to exterminate it
I dare say they are liable like other men to confound the thing with its abuses but if they hadnt some dim notion that the thing might be made a good thing in itself, you may depend upon it they would not rave against those abuses so fiercely The reader may see that I had not forgotten my conversation with Miss Staunton And thought I to myself is it not you and such as you who do so incorporate the abuses into the system that one really cannot tell which is which and longs to shove the whole thing aside as rotten to the core and make a trial of something new
Well but I said again returning to the charge for the subject was altogether curious and interesting to me do you really believe the doctrines of the Prayerbook George
Believe them he answered in a tone of astonishment why not I was brought up a Churchman whatever my parents were I was always intended for the ministry Id sign the Thirtynine Articles now against any man in the three kingdoms and as for all the proofs out of Scripture and Church History Ive known them ever since I was sixteen—Ill get them all up again in a week as fresh as ever
But I rejoined astonished in my turn at my cousins notion of what belief was have you any personal faith—you know what I mean—I hate using cant words—but inward experience of the truth of all these great ideas, which, true or false you will have to preach and teach Would you live by them die for them as a patriot would for his country now
My dear fellow I dont know anything about all those Methodistical mystical Calvinistical inward experiences and all that Im a Churchman remember and a High Churchman too and the doctrine of the Church is that children are regenerated in holy baptism and theres not the least doubt from the authority both of Scripture and the fathers that thats the—
For Heavens sake I said no polemical discussions Whether youre right or wrong thats not what Im talking about What I want to know is this—you are going to teach people about God and Jesus Christ Do you delight in God Do you love Jesus Christ Never mind what I do or think or believe What do you do George
Well my dear fellow if you take things in that way you know of course—and he dropped his voice into that peculiar tone by which all sects seem to think they show their reverence while to me as to most other working men it never seemed anything but a symbol of the separation and discrepancy between their daily thoughts and their religious ones—of course we dont any of us think of these things half enough and Im sure I wish I could be more earnest than I am but I can only hope it will come in time The Church holds that theres a grace given in ordination and really—really I do hope and wish to do my duty—indeed one cant help doing it one is so pushed on by the immense competition for preferment an idle parson hasnt a chance nowadays
But I asked again halflaughing halfdisgusted do you know what your duty is
Bless you my good fellow a man cant go wrong there Carry out the Church system thats the thing—all laid down by rule and method A man has but to work out that—and its the only one for the lower classes Im convinced
Strange I said that they have from the first been so little of that opinion that every attempt to enforce it for the last three hundred years has ended either in persecution or revolution
Ah that was all those vile puritans fault They wouldnt give the Church a chance of showing her powers
What not when she had it all her own way during the whole eighteenth century
Ah but things are very different now The clergy are awakened now to the real beauty of the Catholic machinery and you have no notion how much is doing in churchbuilding and schools and societies of every sort and kind It is quite incredible what is being done now for the lower orders by the Church
I believe I said that the clergy are exceedingly improved and I believe too that the men to whom they owe all their improvement are the Wesleys and Whitfields—in short the very men whom they drove one by one out of the Church from persecution or disgust And I do think it strange that if so much is doing for the lower classes the working men who form the mass of the lower classes are just those who scarcely feel the effects of it while the churches seem to be filled with children and rich and respectable to the almost entire exclusion of the adult lower classes A strange religion this I went on and to judge by its effects a very different one from that preached in Judea 1800 years ago if we are to believe the Gospel story
What on earth do you mean Is not the Church of England the very purest form of Apostolic Christianity
It may be—and so may the other sects But somehow in Judea it was the publicans and harlots who pressed into the kingdom of heaven and it was the common people who heard Christ gladly Christianity then was a movement in the hearts of the lower order But now my dear fellow you rich who used to be told in St Jamess time to weep and howl have turned the tables upon us poor It is you who are talking all day long of converting us Look at any place of worship you like orthodox and heretical—Who fill the pews—the outcast and the reprobate No the Pharisees and the covetous who used to deride Christ fill His churches and say still This people these masses who know not the Gospel are accursed And the universal feeling as far as I can judge seems to be not how hardly shall they who have but how hardly shall they who have not riches enter into the kingdom of heaven
Upon my word said he laughing I did not give you credit for so much eloquence you seem to have studied the Bible to some purpose too I didnt think that so much Radicalism could be squeezed out of a few texts of Scripture Its quite a new light to me Ill just mark that card and play it when I get a convenient opportunity It may be a winning one in these democratic times
And he did play it as I heard hereafter but at present he seemed to think that the less that was said further on clerical subjects the better and commenced quizzing the people whom we passed humorously and neatly enough while I walked on in silence and thought of Mr ByeEnds in the Pilgrims Progress And yet I believe the man was really in earnest He was really desirous to do what was right as far as he knew it and all the more desirous because he saw in the present state of society what was right would pay him God shall judge him not I Who can unravel the confusion of mingled selfishness and devotion that exists even in his own heart much less in that of another
The dean was not at home that day having left town on business George nodded familiarly to the footman who opened the door
Youll mind and send me word the moment your master comes home—mind now
The fellow promised obedience and we walked away
You seem to be very intimate here said I with all parties
Oh footmen are useful animals—a halfsovereign now and then is not altogether thrown away upon them But as for the higher powers it is very easy to make oneself at home in the deans study but not so much so as to get a footing in the drawingroom above I suspect he keeps a precious sharp eye upon the fair Miss Lillian
But I asked as a jealous pang shot through my heart how did you contrive to get this same footing at all When I met you at Cambridge you seemed already well acquainted with these people
How—how does a hound get a footing on a cold scent By working and casting about and about and drawing on it inch by inch as I drew on them for years my boy and cold enough the scent was You recollect that day at the Dulwich Gallery I tried to see the arms on the carriage but there were none so that cock wouldnt fight
The arms I should never have thought of such a plan
Dare say you wouldnt Then I harked back to the doorkeeper while you were St Sebastianizing He didnt know their names or didnt choose to show me their ticket on which it ought to have been so I went to one of the fellows whom I knew and got him to find out There comes out the value of money—for money makes acquaintances Well I found who they were—Then I saw no chance of getting at them But for the rest of that year at Cambridge I beat every bush in the university to find some one who knew them and as fortune favours the brave at last I hit off this Lord Lynedale and he of course was the ace of trumps—a fine catch in himself and a double catch because he was going to marry the cousin So I made a dead set at him and tight work I had to nab him I can tell you for he was three or four years older than I and had travelled a good deal and seen life But every man has his weak side and I found his was a sort of a HighChurch Radicalism and that suited me well enough for I was always a deuce of a radical myself so I stuck to him like a leech and stood all his temper and his pride and those unpractical windy visions of his that made a commonsense fellow like me sick to listen to but I stood it and here I am
And what on earth induced you to stoop to all this— meanness I was on the point of saying Surely you are in no want of money—your father could buy you a good living tomorrow
And he will but not the one I want and he could not buy me reputation power rank do you see Alton my genius And whats more he couldnt buy me a certain little titbit a jewel worth a Jews eye and a half Alton that I set my heart on from the first moment I set my eye on it
My heart beat fast and fierce but he ran on—
Do you think Id have eaten all this dirt if it hadnt lain in my way to her Eat dirt Id drink blood Alton—though I dont often deal in strong words—if it lay in that road I never set my heart on a thing yet that I didnt get it at last by fair means or foul—and Ill get her I dont care for her money though thats a pretty plum Upon my life I dont I worship her limbs and eyes I worship the very ground she treads on Shes a duck and a darling said he smacking his lips like an Ogre over his prey and Ill have her before Ive done so help me—
Whom do you mean I stammered out
Lillian you blind beetle
I dropped his arm—Never as I live
He started back and burst into a horselaugh
Hullo my eye and Betty Martin You dont mean to say that I have the honour of finding a rival in my talented cousin
I made no answer
Come come my dear fellow this is too ridiculous You and I are very good friends and we may help each other if we choose like kith and kin in this here wale So if youre fool enough to quarrel with me I warn you Im not fool enough to return the compliment Only lowering his voice just bear one little thing in mind—that I am unfortunately of a somewhat determined humour and if folks will get in my way why its not my fault if I drive over them You understand Well if you intend to be sulky I dont So good morning till you feel yourself better
And he turned gaily down a sidestreet and disappeared looking taller handsomer manfuller than ever
I returned home miserable I now saw in my cousin not merely a rival but a tyrant and I began to hate him with that bitterness which fear alone can inspire The eleven pounds still remained unpaid Between three and four pounds was the utmost which I had been able to hoard up that autumn by dint of scribbling and stinting there was no chance of profit from my book for months to come—if indeed it ever got published which I hardly dare believe it would and I knew him too well to doubt that neither pity nor delicacy would restrain him from using his power over me if I dared even to seem an obstacle in his way
I tried to write but could not I found it impossible to direct my thoughts even to sit still a vague spectre of terror and degradation crushed me Day after day I sat over the fire and jumped up and went into the shop to find something which I did not want and peep listlessly into a dozen books one after the other and then wander back again to the fireside to sit mooning and moping starting at that horrible incubus of debt—a devil which may give mad strength to the strong but only paralyses the weak And I was weak as every poet is more or less There was in me as I have somewhere read that there is in all poets that feminine vein—a receptive as well as a creative faculty—which kept up in me a continual thirst after beauty rest enjoyment And here was circumstance after circumstance goading me onward as the gadfly did Io to continual wanderings never ceasing exertions every hour calling on me to do while I was only longing to be—to sit and observe and fancy and build freely at my own will And then—as if this necessity of perpetual petty exertion was not in itself sufficient torment—to have that accursed debt—that knowledge that I was in a rivals power rising up like a black wall before me to cripple and render hopeless for aught I knew the very exertions to which it compelled me I hated the bustle—the crowds the ceaseless roar of the street outside maddened me I longed in vain for peace—for one days freedom—to be one hour a shepherdboy and lie looking up at the blue sky without a thought beyond the rushes that I was plaiting Oh that I had wings as a dove—then would I flee away and be at rest—
And then more than once or twice either the thoughts of suicide crossed me and I turned it over and looked at it and dallied with it as a last chance in reserve And then the thought of Lillian came and drove away the fiend And then the thought of my cousin came and paralysed me again for it told me that one hope was impossible And then some fresh instance of misery or oppression forced itself upon me and made me feel the awful sacredness of my calling as a champion of the poor and the base cowardice of deserting them for any selfish love of rest And then I recollected how I had betrayed my suffering brothers—How for the sake of vanity and patronage I had consented to hide the truth about their rights—their wrongs And so on through weary weeks of moping melancholy—a doubleminded man unstable in all his ways
At last Mackaye who as I found afterwards had been watching all along my altered mood contrived to worm my secret out of me I had dreaded that whole autumn having to tell him the truth because I knew that his first impulse would be to pay the money instantly out of his own pocket and my pride as well as my sense of justice revolted at that and sealed my lips But now this fresh discovery—the knowledge that it was not only in my cousins power to crush me but also his interest to do so—had utterly unmanned me and after a little innocent and fruitless prevarication out came the truth with tears of bitter shame
The old man pursed up his lips and without answering me opened his table drawer and commenced fumbling among accounts and papers
No no no best noblest of friends I will not burden you with the fruits of my own vanity and extravagance I will starve go to gaol sooner than take your money If you offer it me I will leave the house bag and baggage this moment And I rose to put my threat into execution
I havena at present ony sic intention answered he deliberately seeing that theres na necessity for paying debits twice owre when ye ha the stampt receipt for them And he put into my hands to my astonishment and rapture a receipt in full for the money signed by my cousin
Not daring to believe my own eyes I turned it over and over looked at it looked at him—there was nothing but clear smiling assurance in his beloved old face as he twinkled and winked and chuckled and pulled off his spectacles and wiped them and put them on upsidedown and then relieved himself by rushing at his pipe and cramming it fiercely with tobacco till he burst the bowl
Yes it was no dream—the money was paid and I was free The sudden relief was as intolerable as the long burden had been and like a prisoner suddenly loosed from off the rack my whole spirit seemed suddenly to collapse and I sank with my head upon the table to faint even for gratitude
But who was my benefactor Mackaye vouchsafed no answer but that I suld ken better than he But when he found that I was really utterly at a loss to whom to attribute the mercy he assured me by way of comfort that he was just as ignorant as myself and at last piecemeal in his circumlocutory and cautious Scotch method informed me that some six weeks back he had received an anonymous letter athegither o a Belgravian cast o phizog containing a bank note for twenty pounds and setting forth the writers suspicions that I owed my cousin money and their desire that Mr Mackaye o whose uprightness and generosity they were pleased to confess themselves no that ignorant should write to George ascertain the sum and pay it without my knowledge handing over the balance if any to me when he thought fit—Sae theres the remnant—aucht pounds sax shillings an saxpence tippence being deduckit for expense o twa letters anent the same transaction
But what sort of handwriting was it asked I almost disregarding the welcome coin
Ou then—aiblins a mans aiblins a maids He was no chirographosophic himsel—an he had na curiosity anent ony sic passage o aristocratic romance
But what was the postmark of the letter
Why for suld I speired Gin the writers had been minded to be beknown theyd ha signt their names upon the document An gin they didna sae intend wad it be coorteous o me to gang speiring an peering ower covers an seals
But where is the cover
Ou then he went on with the same provoking coolness white papers o geyan use in various operations o the domestic economy Sae I just tare it up—aiblins for pipelights—I canna mind at this time
And why asked I more vexed and disappointed than I liked to confess—why did you not tell me before
How wad I ken that you had need ot An verily I thocht it no that bad a lesson for ye to let ye experiment a towmond mair on the precious balms that break the head—whereby I opine the Psalmist was minded to denote the delights o spending borrowed siller
There was nothing more to be extracted from him so I was fain to set to work again a pleasant compulsion truly with a free heart eight pounds in my pocket and a brainful of conjectures Was it the dean Lord Lynedale or was it—could it be—Lillian herself That thought was so delicious that I made up my mind as I had free choice among half a dozen equally improbable fancies to determine that the most pleasant should be the true one and hoarded the money which I shrunk from spending as much as I should from selling her miniature or a lock of her beloved golden hair They were a gift from her—a pledge—the first fruits of—I dare not confess to myself what
Whereat the reader will smile and say not without reason that I was fast fitting myself for Bedlam if indeed I had not proved my fitness for it already by paying the tailors debts instead of my own with the ten pounds which Farmer Porter had given me I am not sure that he would not be correct but so I did and so I suffered
CHAPTER XXV
A TRUE NOBLEMAN
At last my list of subscribers was completed and my poems actually in the press Oh the childish joy with which I fondled my first set of proofs And how much finer the words looked in print than they ever did in manuscript—One took in the idea of a whole page so charmingly at a glance instead of having to feel ones way through line after line and sentence after sentence—There was only one drawback to my happiness—Mackaye did not seem to sympathize with it He had never grumbled at what I considered and still do consider my cardinal offence the omission of the strong political passages he seemed on the contrary in his inexplicable waywardness to be rather pleased at it than otherwise It was my publishing at all at which he growled
Ech he said owre young to marry is owre young to write but its the way o these puir distractit times Nae chick can find a grain o corn but oot he rins cackling wi the shell on his head to tell it to a the warld as if there was never barley grown on the face o the earth before I wonder whether Isaiah began to write before his beard was grown or Dawvid either He had mony a long year o shepherding an mosstrooping an rugging an riving i the wilderness Ill warrant afore he got thae gran lyrics o his oot o him Ye might tak example too gin ye were minded by Moses the man o God that was joost forty years at the learning o the Egyptians afore he thocht gude to come forward into public life an then fun to his gran surprise I warrant that hed begun forty years too sune—an then had forty years mair after that o marching an lawgiving an bearing the burdens o the people before he turned poet
Poet sir I never saw Moses in that light before
Then yell just read the 90th Psalm—the prayer o Moses the man o God—the grandest piece o lyric to my taste that I ever heard o on the face o Gods earth an see what a man can write thatll have the patience to wait a century or twa before he rins to the publishers I gie ye up fra this moment the letting out o ink is like the letting out o waters or the eating o opium or the getting up at public meetings—When a man begins he canna stop Theres nae mair enslaving lust o the flesh under the heaven than that same furor scribendi as the Latins hae it
But at last my poems were printed and bound and actually published and I sat staring at a book of my own making and wondering how it ever got into being And what was more the book took and sold and was reviewed in Peoples journals and in newspapers and Mackaye himself relaxed into a grin when his oracle the Spectator the only honest paper according to him on the face of the earth condescended after asserting its impartiality by two or three searching sarcasms to dismiss me grimlybenignant with a paternal pat on the shoulder Yes—I was a real live author at last and signed myself by special request in the Magazine as the author of Songs of the Highways At last it struck me and Mackaye too who however he hated flunkeydom never overlooked an act of discourtesy that it would be right for me to call upon the dean and thank him formally for all the real kindness he had shown me So I went to the handsome house off Harleystreet and was shown into his study and saw my own book lying on the table and was welcomed by the good old man and congratulated on my success and asked if I did not see my own wisdom in yielding to more experienced opinions than my own and submitting to a censorship which however severe it might have appeared at first was as the event proved benignant both in its intentions and effects
And then I was asked even I to breakfast there the next morning And I went and found no one there but some scientific gentlemen to whom I was introduced as the young man whose poems we were talking of last night And Lillian sat at the head of the table and poured out the coffee and tea And between ecstasy at seeing her and the intense relief of not finding my dreaded and now hated cousin there I sat in a delirium of silent joy stealing glances at her beauty and listening with all my ears to the conversation which turned upon the newmarried couple
I heard endless praises to which I could not but assent in silence of Lord Ellertons perfections His very personal appearance had been enough to captivate my fancy and then they went on to talk of his magnificent philanthropic schemes and his deep sense of the high duties of a landlord and how finding himself at his fathers death the possessor of two vast but neglected estates he had sold one in order to be able to do justice to the other instead of laying house to house and field to field like most of his compeers till he stood alone in the land and there was no place left and how he had lowered his rents even though it had forced him to put down the ancestral pack of hounds and live in a corner of the old castle and how he was draining claying breaking up old moorlands and building churches and endowing schools and improving cottages and how he was expelling the old ignorant bankrupt race of farmers and advertising everywhere for men of capital and science and character who would have courage to cultivate flax and silk and try every species of experiment and how he had one scientific farmer after another staying in his house as a friend and how he had numbers of his books rebound in plain covers that he might lend them to every one on his estate who wished to read them and how he had thrown open his picture gallery not only to the inhabitants of the neighbouring town but what strange to say seemed to strike the party as still more remarkable to the labourers of his own village and how he was at that moment busy transforming an old unoccupied manorhouse into a great associate farm in which all the labourers were to live under one roof with a common kitchen and dininghall clerks and superintendents whom they were to choose subject only to his approval and all of them from the least to the greatest have their own interest in the farm and be paid by percentage on the profits and how he had one of the first political economists of the day staying with him in order to work out for him tables of proportionate remuneration applicable to such an agricultural establishment and how too he was giving the spadelabour system a fairtrial by laying out small cottagefarms on rocky knolls and sides of glens too steep to be cultivated by the plough and was locating on them the most intelligent artisans whom he could draft from the manufacturing town hard by—
And at that notion my brain grew giddy with the hope of seeing myself one day in one of those same cottages tilling the earth under Gods sky and perhaps— And then a whole cloudworld of love freedom fame simple graceful country luxury steamed up across my brain to end—not like the mans in the Arabian Nights in my kicking over the tray of China which formed the basepoint of my inverted pyramid of hope—but in my finding the contents of my plate deposited in my lap while I was gazing fixedly at Lillian
I must say for myself though that such accidents happened seldom whether it was bashfulness or the tact which generally I believe accompanies a weak and nervous body and an active mind or whether it was that I possessed enough relationship to the monkeytribe to make me a firstrate mimic I used to get tolerably well through on these occasions by acting on the golden rule of never doing anything which I had not seen some one else do first—a rule which never brought me into any greater scrape than swallowing something intolerably hot sour and nasty whereof I never discovered the name because I had seen the dean do so a moment before
But one thing struck me through the whole of this conversation—the way in which the newmarried Lady Ellerton was spoken of as aiding encouraging originating—a helpmeet if not an oracular guide for her husband—in all these noble plans She had already acquainted herself with every woman on the estate she was the dispenser not merely of alms—for those seemed a disagreeable necessity from which Lord Ellerton was anxious to escape as soon as possible—but of advice comfort and encouragement She not only visited the sick and taught in the schools—avocations which thank God I have reason to believe are matters of course not only in the families of clergymen but those of most squires and noblemen when they reside on their estates—but seemed from the hints which I gathered to be utterly devoted body and soul to the welfare of the dwellers on her husbands land
I had no notion I dared at last to remark humbly enough that
Miss—Lady Ellerton cared so much for the people
Really One feels inclined sometimes to wish that she cared for anything beside them said Lillian half to her father and half to me
This gave a fresh shake to my estimate of that remarkable womans character But still who could be prouder more imperious more abrupt in manner harsh even to the very verge of goodbreeding for I had learnt what goodbreeding was from the debating society as well as from the drawingroom and above all had she not tried to keep me from Lillian But these cloudy thoughts melted rapidly away in that sunny atmosphere of success and happiness and I went home as merry as a bird and wrote all the morning more gracefully and sportively as I fancied than I had ever yet done
But my bliss did not end here In a week or so behold one morning a note—written indeed by the dean—but directed in Lillians own hand inviting me to come there to tea that I might see a few of the literary characters of the day
I covered the envelope with kisses and thrust it next my fluttering heart I then proudly showed the note to Mackaye He looked pleased yet pensive and then broke out with a fresh adaptation of his favourite song
—and shovel hats and a that—
A mans a man for a that
The auld gentleman is a man and a gentleman an has made a verra courteous an weel considerit move gin ye ha the sense to profit by it an no turn it to yer ain destruction
Destruction
Ay—thats the word an nothing less laddie
And he went into the outer shop and returned with a volume of Bulwers
Ernest Maltravers
What are you a novel reader Mr Mackaye
How do ye ken what I may ha thocht gude to read in my time Yell be pleased the noo to sit down an begin at that page—an read mark learn an inwardly digest the history of Castruccio Cesarini—an the gude God gie ye grace to lay the same to heart
I read that fearful story and my heart sunk and my eyes were full of tears long ere I had finished it Suddenly I looked up at Mackaye half angry at the pointed allusion to my own case
The old man was watching me intently with folded hands and a smile of solemn interest and affection worthy of Socrates himself He turned his head as I looked up but his lips kept moving I fancied I know not why that he was praying for me
CHAPTER XXVI
THE TRIUMPHANT AUTHOR
So to the party I went and had the delight of seeing and hearing the men with whose names I had been long acquainted as the leaders of scientific discovery in this wondrous age and more than one poet too over whose works I had gloated whom I had worshipped in secret Intense was the pleasure of now realizing to myself as living men wearing the same flesh and blood as myself the names which had been to me mythic ideas Lillian was there among them more exquisite than ever but even she at first attracted my eyes and thoughts less than did the truly great men around her I hung on every word they spoke I watched every gesture as if they must have some deep significance the very way in which they drank their coffee was a matter of interest to me I was almost disappointed to see them eat and chat like common men I expected that pearls and diamonds would drop from their lips as they did from those of the girl in the fairytale every time they opened their mouths and certainly the conversation that evening was a new world to me—though I could only of course be a listener Indeed I wished to be nothing more I felt that I was taking my place there among the holy guild of authors—that I too however humbly had a thing to say and had said it and I was content to sit on the lowest step of the literary temple without envy for those elder and more practised priests of wisdom who had earned by long labour the freedom of the inner shrine I should have been quite happy enough standing there looking and listening—but I was at last forced to come forward Lillian was busy chatting with grave greyheaded men who seemed as ready to flirt and pet and admire the lovely little fairy as if they had been as young and gay as herself It was enough for me to see her appreciated and admired I loved them for smiling on her for handing her from her seat to the piano with reverent courtesy gladly would I have taken their place I was content however to be only a spectator for it was not my rank but my youth I was glad to fancy which denied me that blissful honour But as she sang I could not help stealing up to the piano and feasting my greedy eyes with every motion of those delicious lips listen and listen entranced and living only in that melody
Suddenly after singing two or three songs she began fingering the keys and struck into an old air wild and plaintive rising and falling like the swell of an Æolian harp upon a distant breeze
Ah now she said if I could get words for that What an exquisite lament somebody might write to it if they could only thoroughly take in the feeling and meaning of it
Perhaps I said humbly that is the only way to write songs—to let some air get possession of ones whole soul and gradually inspire the words for itself; as the old Hebrew prophets had music played before them to wake up the prophetic spirit within them
She looked up just as if she had been unconscious of my presence till that moment
Ah Mr Locke—well if you understand my meaning so thoroughly perhaps you will try and write some words for me
I am afraid that I do not enter sufficiently into the meaning of the air
Oh then listen while I play it over again I am sure you ought to appreciate anything so sad and tender
And she did play it to my delight over again even more gracefully and carefully than before—making the inarticulate sounds speak a mysterious train of thoughts and emotions It is strange how little real intellect in women especially is required for an exquisite appreciation of the beauties of music—perhaps because it appeals to the heart and not the head
She rose and left the piano saying archly Now dont forget your promise and I poor fool my sunlight suddenly withdrawn began torturing my brains on the instant to think of a subject
As it happened my attention was caught by hearing two gentlemen close to me discuss a beautiful sketch by Copley Fielding if I recollect rightly which hung on the wall—a wild waste of tidal sands with here and there a line of stakenets fluttering in the wind—a grey shroud of rain sweeping up from the westward through which low red cliffs glowed dimly in the rays of the setting sun—a train of horses and cattle splashing slowly through shallow desolate pools and creeks their wet red and black hides glittering in one long line of level light
They seemed thoroughly conversant with art and as I listened to their criticisms I learnt more in five minutes about the characteristics of a really true and good picture and about the perfection to which our unrivalled English landscapepainters have attained than I ever did from all the books and criticisms which I had read One of them had seen the spot represented at the mouth of the Dee and began telling wild stories of salmonfishing and wildfowl shooting—and then a tale of a girl who in bringing her fathers cattle home across the sands had been caught by a sudden flow of the tide and found next day a corpse hanging among the stakenets far below The tragedy the art of the picture the simple dreary grandeur of the scenery took possession of me and I stood gazing a long time and fancying myself pacing the sands and wondering whether there were shells upon it—I had often longed for once only in my life to pick up shells—when Lady Ellerton whom I had not before noticed woke me from my reverie
I took the liberty of asking after Lord Ellerton
He is not in town—he has stayed behind for one day to attend a great meeting of his tenantry—you will see the account in the papers tomorrow morning—he comes tomorrow And as she spoke her whole face and figure seemed to glow and heave in spite of herself with pride and affection
And now come with me Mr Locke—the ambassador wishes to speak to you
The ambassador I said startled for let us be as democratic as we will there is something in the name of great officers which awes perhaps rightly for the moment and it requires a strong act of self-possession to recollect that a mans a man for a that Besides I knew enough of the great man in question to stand in awe of him for his own sake having lately read a panegyric of him which perfectly astounded me by its description of his piety and virtue his family affection and patriarchal simplicity the liberality and philanthropy of all his measures and the enormous intellectual powers and stores of learning which enabled him with the affairs of Europe on his shoulders to write deeply and originally on the most abstruse questions of theology history and science
Lady Ellerton seemed to guess my thoughts You need not be afraid of meeting an aristocrat in the vulgar sense of the word You will see one who once perhaps as unknown as yourself has risen by virtue and wisdom to guide the destinies of nations—and shall I tell you how Not by fawning and yielding to the fancies of the great not by compromising his own convictions to suit their prejudices—
I felt the rebuke but she went on—
He owes his greatness to having dared one evening to contradict a crownprince to his face and fairly conquer him in argument and thereby bind the truly royal heart to him for ever
There are few scions of royalty to whose favour that would be a likely path
True and therefore the greater honour is due to the young student who could contradict and the prince who could be contradicted
By this time we had arrived in the great mans presence he was sitting with a little circle round him in the further drawingroom and certainly I never saw a nobler specimen of humanity I felt myself at once before a hero—not of war and bloodshed but of peace and civilization his portly and ample figure fair hair and delicate complexion and above all the benignant calm of his countenance told of a character gentle and genial—at peace with himself and all the world while the exquisite proportion of his chiselled and classic features the lofty and ample brain and the keen thoughtful eye bespoke at the first glance refinement and wisdom—
The reason firm the temperate will—
Endurance foresight strength and skill
I am not ashamed to say Chartist as I am that I felt inclined to fall upon my knees and own a master of Gods own making
He received my beautiful guide with a look of chivalrous affection which I observed that she returned with interest and then spoke in a voice peculiarly bland and melodious
So my dear lady this is the protégé of whom you have so often spoken
So she had often spoken of me Blind fool that I was I only took it in as food for my own selfconceit that my enemy for so I actually fancied her could not help praising me
I have read your little book sir he said in the same soft benignant voice with very great pleasure It is another proof if I required any of the undercurrent of living and healthful thought which exists even in the lessknown ranks of your great nation I shall send it to some young friends of mine in Germany to show them that Englishmen can feel acutely and speak boldly on the social evils of their country without indulging in that frantic and bitter revolutionary spirit which warps so many young minds among us You understand the German language at all
I had not that honour
Well you must learn it We have much to teach you in the sphere of abstract thought as you have much to teach us in those of the practical reason and the knowledge of mankind I should be glad to see you some day in a German university I am anxious to encourage a truly spiritual fraternization between the two great branches of the Teutonic stock by welcoming all brave young English spirits to their ancient fatherland Perhaps hereafter your kind friends here will be able to lend you to me The means are easy thank God You will find in the Germans true brothers in ways even more practical than sympathy and affection
I could not but thank the great man with many blushes and went home that night utterly tête montée as I believe the French phrase is—beside myself with gratified vanity and love to lie sleepless under a severe fit of asthma—sent perhaps as a wholesome chastisement to cool my excited spirits down to something like a rational pitch As I lay castlebuilding Lillians wild air rang still in my ears and combined itself somehow with that picture of the Cheshire sands and the story of the drowned girl till it shaped itself into a song which as it is yet unpublished and as I have hitherto obtruded little or nothing of my own composition on my readers I may be excused for inserting it here
I
O Mary go and call the cattle home
And call the cattle home
And call the cattle home
Across the sands o Dee
The western wind was wild and dank wi foam
And all alone went she
II
The creeping tide came up along the sand
And oer and oer the sand
And round and round the sand
As far as eye could see
The blinding mist came down and hid the land—
And never home came she
III
Oh is it weed or fish or floating hair—
A tress o golden hair
O drowned maidens hair
Above the nets at sea
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
Among the stakes on Dee
IV
They rowed her in across the rolling foam
The cruel crawling foam
The cruel hungry foam
To her grave beside the sea
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
Across the sands o Dee
There—let it go—it was meant as an offering for one whom it never reached
About midday I took my way towards the deans house to thank him for his hospitality—and I need not say to present my offering at my idols shrine and as I went I conned over a dozen complimentary speeches about Lord Ellertons wisdom liberality eloquence—but behold the shutters of the house were closed What could be the matter It was full ten minutes before the door was opened and then at last an old woman her eyes red with weeping made her appearance My thoughts flew instantly to Lillian—something must have befallen her I gasped out her name first and then recollecting myself asked for the dean
They had all left town that morning
Miss—Miss Winnstay—is she ill
No
Thank God I breathed freely again What matter what happened to all the world beside
Ay thank God indeed but poor Lord Ellerton was thrown from his horse last night and brought home dead A messenger came here by six this morning and theyre all gone off to Her ladyships raving mad—And no wonder And she burst out crying afresh and shut the door in my face
Lord Ellerton dead and Lillian gone too Something whispered that I should have cause to remember that day My heart sunk within me When should I see her again
That day was the 1st of June 1845 On the 10th of April 1848 I saw Lillian Winnstay again Dare I write my history between those two points of time Yes even that must be done for the sake of the rich who read and the poor who suffer
CHAPTER XXVII
THE PLUSH BREECHES TRAGEDY
My triumph had received a cruel check enough when just at its height and more were appointed to follow Behold some two days after another—all the more bitter because my conscience whispered that it was not altogether undeserved The peoples press had been hitherto praising and petting me lovingly enough I had been classed and heaven knows that the comparison was dearer to me than all the applause of the wealthy with the CornLaw Rhymer and the author of the Purgatory of Suicides My class had claimed my talents as their own—another voice fresh from the heart of nature," another untutored songster of the wilderness another prophet arisen among the suffering millions—when one day behold in Mr OFlynns paper a long and fierce attack on me my poems my early history How he could have got at some of the facts there mentioned how he could have dared to inform his readers that I had broken my mothers heart by my misconduct I cannot conceive unless my worthy brotherinlaw the Baptist preacher had been kind enough to furnish him with the materials But however that may be he showed me no mercy I was suddenly discovered to be a timeserver a spy a concealed aristocrat Such paltry talent as I had I had prostituted for the sake of fame I had deserted The Peoples Cause for filthy lucre—an allurement which Mr OFlynn had always treated with withering scorn—in print Nay more I would write and notoriously did write in any paper Whig Tory or Radical where I could earn a shilling by an enormous gooseberry or a scrap of private slander And the working men were solemnly warned to beware of me and my writings till the editor had further investigated certain ugly facts in my history which he would in due time report to his patriotic and enlightened readers
All this stung me in the most sensitive nerve of my whole heart for I knew that I could not altogether exculpate myself and to that miserable certainty was added the dread of some fresh exposure Had he actually heard of the omissions in my poems—and if he once touched on that subject what could I answer Oh how bitterly now I felt the force of the critics careless lash The awful responsibility of those written words which we bandy about so thoughtlessly How I recollected now with shame and remorse all the hasty and cruel utterances to which I too had given vent against those who had dared to differ from me the harsh onesided judgments the reckless imputations of motive the bitter sneers rejoicing in evil rather than in the truth How I too had longed to prove my victims in the wrong and turned away not only lazily but angrily from many an exculpatory fact And here was my Nemesis come at last As I had done unto others so it was done unto me
It was right that it should be so However indignant mad almost murderous I felt at the time I thank God for it now It is good to be punished in kind It is good to be made to feel what we have made others feel It is good—anything is good however bitter which shows us that there is such a law as retribution that we are not the sport of blind chance or a triumphant fiend but that there is a God who judges the earth—righteous to repay every man according to his works
But at the moment I had no such ray of comfort—and full of rage and shame I dashed the paper down before Mackaye How shall I answer him What shall I say
The old man read it all through with a grim saturnine smile
Hoolie hoolie speech is o silver—silence is o gold says Thomas Carlyle anent this an ither matters Whad be fashed wi sic blethers Yell just abide patient and haud still in the Lord until this tyranny be owerpast Commit your cause to him said the auld Psalmist an hell mak your righteousness as clear as the light an your just dealing as the noonday
But I must explain I owe it as a duty to myself I must refute these charges I must justify myself to our friends
Can ye do that same laddie asked he with one of his quaint searching looks Somehow I blushed and could not altogether meet his eye while he went on —An gin ye could whaur would ye do t I ken na periodical whar the editor will gie ye a clear stage an no favour to bang him ower the lugs
Then I will try some other paper
An what for then They that read him winna read the ither an they that read the ither winna read him He has his ain set o dupes like every ither editor an ye mun let him gang his gate an feed his ain kye with his ain hay Hell no change it for your bidding
What an abominable thing this whole business of the press is then if each editor is to be allowed to humbug his readers at his pleasure without a possibility of exposing or contradicting him
An yeve just spoken the truth laddie Theres na mair accursed inquisition than this of thae selfelected popes the editors That puir auld Roman ane ye can bring him forat when ye list bad as he is Fænum habet in cornu his names ower his shopdoor But these anonymies—priests o the order of Melchisedec by the deevils side without father or mither beginning o years nor end o days—without a local habitation or a nameas kittle to baud as a brock in a cairn—
What do you mean Mr Mackaye asked I for he was getting altogether unintelligibly Scotch as was his custom when excited
Ou I forgot yere a puir Southern body an no sensible to the gran metaphoric powers o the true Dawric But its an accursit state athegither the noo this o the anonymous press—oreeginally devised ye ken by Balaam the son o Beor for serving God wiout the deevils finding it out—an noo after the way o human institutions translated ower to help folks to serve the deevil without Gods finding it out Im no astonished at the puir expiring religious press for siccan a fa but for the working men to be a thats bad—its grewsome to behold Ill tell ye what my bairn theres na salvation for the workmen while they defile themselves this fashion wi a the very idols o their ain tyrants—wi salvation by act o parliament—irresponsible rights o property—anonymous Balaamry—fechtin that canny auld farrant fiend Mammon wi his ain weapons—and then a fleyed because they get well beaten for their pains Im sair forfaughten this mony a year wi watching the puir gowks trying to do Gods wark wi the deevils tools Tak tent o that
And I did tak tent o it Still there would have been as little present consolation as usual in Mackayes unwelcome truths even if the matter had stopped there But alas it did not stop there OFlynn seemed determined to run a muck at me Every week some fresh attack appeared The very passages about the universities and church property which had caused our quarrel were paraded against me with free additions and comments and at last to my horror out came the very story which I had all along dreaded about the expurgation of my poems with the coarsest allusions to petticoat influence—aristocratic kisses—and the Duchess of Devonshire canvassing draymen for Fox c c How he got a clue to the scandal I cannot conceive Mackaye and Crossthwaite I had thought were the only souls to whom I had ever breathed the secret and they denied indignantly the having ever betrayed my weakness How it came out I say again I cannot conceive except because it is a great everlasting law and sure to fulfil itself sooner or later as we may see by the histories of every remarkable and many an unremarkable man—There is nothing secret but it shall be made manifest and whatsoever ye have spoken in the closet shall be proclaimed upon the housetops
For some time after that last exposure I was thoroughly crestfallen—and not without reason I had been giving a few lectures among the working men on various literary and social subjects I found my audience decrease—and those who remained seemed more inclined to hiss than to applaud me In vain I ranted and quoted poetry often more violently than my own opinions justified My words touched no responsive chord in my hearers hearts they had lost faith in me
At last in the middle of a lecture on Shelley I was indulging and honestly too in some very glowing and passionate praise of the true nobleness of a man whom neither birth nor education could blind to the evils of society who for the sake of the suffering many could trample under foot his hereditary pride and become an outcast for the Peoples Cause
I heard a whisper close to me from one whose opinion I valued and value still—a scholar and a poet one who had tasted poverty and slander and a prison for The Good Cause
Fine talk but its all in his days work Will he dare to say that tomorrow to the ladies at the Westend
No—I should not I knew it and at that instant I felt myself a liar and stopped short—my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth I fumbled at my papers—clutched the watertumbler—tried to go on—stopped short again—caught up my hat and rushed from the room amid peals of astonished laughter
It was some months after this that fancying the storm blown over I summoned up courage enough to attend a political meeting of our party but even there my Nemesis met full face After some sanguinary speech I really forgot from whom and if I recollected God forbid that I should tell now I dared to controvert mildly enough Heaven knows some especially frantic assertion or other But before I could get out three sentences OFlynn flew at me with a coarse invective hounded on bytheby by one who calling himself a gentleman might have been expected to know better But indeed he and OFlynn had the same object in view which was simply to sell their paper and as a means to that great end to pander to the fiercest passions of their readers to bully and silence all moderate and rational Chartists and pet and tar on the physicalforce men till the poor fellows began to take them at their word Then when it came to deeds and not to talk and people got frightened and the sale of the paper decreased a little a blessed change came over them—and they awoke one morning meeker than lambs ulterior measures had vanished back into the barbarous ages pikes vitriolbottles and all and the public were entertained with nothing but homilies on patience and resignation the triumphs of moral justice the omnipotence of public opinion and the gentle conquests of fraternal love—till it was safe to talk treason and slaughter again
But just then treason happened to be at a premium Sedition which had been floundering on in a confused disconsolate underground way ever since 1842 was supposed by the public to be dead and for that very reason it was safe to talk it or at least back up those who chose to do so And so I got no quarter—though really if the truth must be told I had said nothing unreasonable
Home I went disgusted to toil on at my hackwriting only praying that I might be let alone to scribble in peace and often thinking sadly how little my friends in Harleystreet could guess at the painful experience the doubts the struggles the bitter cares which went to the making of the poetry which they admired so much
I was not however left alone to scribble in peace either by OFlynn or by his readers who formed alas just then only too large a portion of the thinking artizans every day brought some fresh slight or annoyance with it till I received one afternoon by the Parcels Delivery Company a large unpaid packet containing to my infinite disgust an old pair of yellow plush breeches with a recommendation to wear them whose meaning could not be mistaken
Furious I thrust the unoffending garment into the lire and held it there with the tongs regardless of the horrible smell which accompanied its martyrdom till the ladylodger on the first floor rushed down to inquire whether the house was on fire
I answered by hurling a book at her head and brought down a volley of abuse under which I sat in sulky patience till Mackaye and Crossthwaite came in and found her railing in the doorway and me sitting over the fire still intent on the frizzling remains of the breeches
Was this insult of your invention Mr Crossthwaite asked I in a tone of lofty indignation holding up the last scrap of unroasted plush
Roars of laughter from both of them made me only more frantic and I broke out so incoherently that it was some time before the pair could make out the cause of my fury
Upon my honour Locke quoth John at last holding his sides I never sent them though on the whole—youve made my stomach ache with laughing I cant speak But you must expect a joke or two after your late fashionable connexions
I stood still and white with rage
Really my good fellow how can you wonder if our friends suspect you Can you deny that youve been off and on lately between flunkeydom and The Cause like a donkey between two bundles of hay Have you not neglected our meetings Have you not picked all the spice out of your poems And can you expect to eat your cake and keep it too You must be one thing or the other and though Sandy here is too kindhearted to tell you you have disappointed us both miserably—and theres the long and short of it
I hid my face in my hands and sat moodily over the fire my conscience told me that I had nothing to answer
Whisht Johnnie Yere ower sair on the lad Hes a right at heart still an hell do good service But the deevil aways fechts hardest wi them hes maist feard of Whats this anent agricultural distress ye had to tell me the noo
There is a rising down in the country a friend of mine writes me The people are starving not because bread is dear but because its cheap and like sensible men theyre going to have a great meeting to inquire the rights and wrong of all that Now I want to send a deputation down to see how far they are inclined to go and let them know we up in London are with them And then we might get up a corresponding association you know Its a great opening for spreading the principles of the Charter
I sair misdoubt its just bread theyll be wanting they labourers mair than liberty Their God is their belly Im thinking and a verra poor empty idol he is the noo sma burnt offerings and fat o rams he gets to propitiate him But ye might send down a canny body just to spy out the nakedness o the land
I will go I said starting up They shall see that I do care for The Cause If its a dangerous mission so much the better It will prove my sincerity Where is the place
About ten miles from D
D My heart sank If it had been any other spot in England But it was too late to retract Sandy saw what was the matter and tried to turn the subject but I was peremptory almost rude with him I felt I must keep up my present excitement or lose my heart and my caste for ever and as the hour for the committee was at hand I jumped up and set off thither with them whether they would or not I heard Sandy whisper to Crossthwaite and turned quite fiercely on him
If you want to speak about me speak out If you fancy that I shall let my connexion with that place I could not bring myself to name it stand in the way of my duty you do not know me
I announced my intention at the meeting It was at first received coldly but I spoke energetically—perhaps as some told me afterwards actually eloquently When I got heated I alluded to my former stay at D and said while my heart sunk at the bravado which I was uttering that I should consider it a glory to retrieve my character with them and devote myself to the cause of the oppressed in the very locality whence had first arisen their unjust and pardonable suspicions In short generous trusting hearts as they were and always are I talked them round they shook me by the hand one by one bade me God speed told me that I stood higher than ever in their eyes and then set to work to vote money from their funds for my travelling expenses which I magnanimously refused saying that I had a pound or two left from the sale of my poems and that I must be allowed as an act of repentance and restitution to devote it to The Cause
My triumph was complete Even OFlynn who like all Irishmen had plenty of loose goodnature at bottom and was as sudden and furious in his loves as in his hostilities scrambled over the benches regardless of patriots toes to shake me violently by the hand and inform me that I was a broth of a boy and that any little disagreements between us had vanished like a passing cloud from the sunshine of our fraternity—when my eye was caught by a face which there was no mistaking—my cousins
Yes there he sat watching me like a basilisk with his dark glittering mesmeric eyes out of a remote corner of the room—not in contempt or anger but there was a quiet assured sardonic smile about his lips which chilled me to the heart
The meeting was sufficiently public to allow of his presence but how had he found out its existence? Had he come there as a spy on me Had he been in the room when my visit to D was determined on I trembled at the thought and I trembled too lest he should be daring enough—and I knew he could dare anything—to claim acquaintance with me there and then It would have ruined my newrestored reputation for ever But he sat still and steady and I had to go through the rest of the evenings business under the miserable cramping knowledge that every word and gesture was being noted down by my most deadly enemy trembling whenever I was addressed lest some chance word of an acquaintance would implicate me still further—though indeed I was deep enough already The meeting seemed interminable and there I fidgeted with my face scarlet—always seeing those basilisk eyes upon me—in fancy—for I dared not look again towards the corner where I knew they were
At last it was over—the audience went out and when I had courage to look round my cousin had vanished among them A load was taken off my breast and I breathed freely again—for five minutes—for I had not made ten steps up the street when an arm was familiarly thrust through mine and I found myself in the clutches of my evil genius
How are you my dear fellow Expected to meet you there Why what an orator you are Really I havent heard more fluent or passionate English this month of Sundays You must give me a lesson in sermonpreaching I can tell you we parsons want a hint or two in that line So youre going down to D to see after those poor starving labourers Pon my honour Ive a great mind to go with you
So then he knew all However there was nothing for it but to brazen it out and besides I was in his power and however hateful to me his seeming cordiality might be I dared not offend him at that moment
It would be well if you did If you parsons would show yourselves at such places as these a little oftener you would do more to make the people believe your mission real than by all the tracts and sermons in the world
But my dear cousin and he began to snuffle and sink his voice there is so much sanguinary language so much unsanctified impatience you frighten away all the meek apostolic men among the priesthood—the very ones who feel most for the lost sheep of the flock
Then the parsons are either great Pharisees or great cowards or both
Very likely I was in a precious fright myself I know when I saw you recognized me If I had not felt strengthened you know as of course one ought to be in all trials by the sense of my holy calling I think I should have bolted at once However I took the precaution of bringing my Bowie and revolver with me in case the worst came to the worst
And a very needless precaution it was said I half laughing at the quaint incongruity of the priestly and the lay elements in his speech You dont seem to know much of working mens meetings or working mens morals Why that place was open to all the world The proceedings will be in the newspaper tomorrow The whole bench of bishops might have been there if they had chosen and a great deal of good it would have done them
I fully agree with you my dear fellow No one hates the bishops more than we true highchurchmen I can tell you—thats a great point of sympathy between us and the people But I must be off Bytheby would you like me to tell our friends at D that I met you They often ask after you in their letters I assure you
This was a sting of complicated bitterness I felt all that it meant at once So he was in constant correspondence with them while I—and that thought actually drove out of my head the more pressing danger of his utterly ruining me in their esteem by telling them as he had a very good right to do that I was going to preach Chartism to discontented mobs
Ah well perhaps you wouldnt wish it mentioned As you like you know Or rather and he laid an iron grasp on my arm and dropped his voice—this time in earnest—as you behave my wise and loyal cousin Good night
I went home—the excitement of self-applause which the meeting had called up damped by a strange weight of foreboding And yet I could not help laughing when just as I was turning into bed Crossthwaite knocked at my door and on being admitted handed over to me a bundle wrapped up in paper
Theres a pair of breeks for you—not plush ones this time old fellow—but you ought to look as smart as possible Theres so much in a mans looking dignified and all that when hes speechifying So Ive just brought you down my best black trousers to travel in Were just of a size you know little and good like a Welshmans cow And if you tear them why were not like poor miserable useless aristocrats tailors and sailors can mend their own rents And he vanished whistling the Marseillaise
I went to bed and tossed about fancying to myself my journey my speech the faces of the meeting among which Lillians would rise in spite of all the sermons which I preached to myself on the impossibility of her being there of my being known of any harm happening from the movement but I could not shake off the fear If there were a riot a rising—If any harm were to happen to her If—Till mobbed into fatigue by a rabble of such miserable hypothetic ghosts I fell asleep to dream that I was going to be hanged for sedition and that the mob were all staring and hooting at me and Lillian clapping her hands and setting them on and I woke in an agony to find Sandy Mackaye standing by my bedside with a light
Hoolie laddie ye need na jump up that way Im no gaun to burke ye the nicht but I canna sleep Im sair misdoubtful o the thing It seems a richt an Ive been praying for us an thats mickle for me to be taught our way but I dinna see aught for ye but to gang If your heart is richt with God in this matter then hes o your side an I fear na what men may do to ye An yet yere my Joseph as it were the son o my auld age wi a coat o many colours plush breeks included an gin aught take ye yell bring down my grey haffets wi sorrow to the grave
The old man gazed at me as be spoke with a deep earnest affection I had never seen in him before and the tears glistened in his eyes by the flaring candlelight as he went on
I ha been reading the Bible the nicht Its strange how the words ot rise up and open themselves whiles to puir distractit bodies though maybe no always in just the orthodox way An I fell on that Behold I send ye forth as lambs in the midst o wolves Be ye therefore wise as serpents an harmless as doves an that gave me comfort laddie for ye Mind the warning dinna gang wud whatever ye may see an hear its an ill way o showing pity to gang daft anent it Dinna talk magniloquently thats the workmans darling sin An mind ye dinna go too deep wi them Ye canna trust them to understand ye theyre puir foolish sheep that ha no shepherd—swine that ha no wash rather So cast na your pearls before swine laddie lest they trample them under their feet an turn again an rend ye
He went out and I lay awake tossing till morning making a thousand good resolutions—like the rest of mankind
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE MEN WHO ARE EATEN
With many instructions from our friends and warnings from Mackaye I started next day on my journey When I last caught sight of the old man he was gazing fixedly after me and using his pockethandkerchief in a somewhat suspicious way I had remarked how depressed he seemed and my own spirits shared the depression A presentiment of evil hung over me which not even the excitement of the journey—to me a rare enjoyment—could dispel I had no heart somehow to look at the country scenes around which in general excited in me so much interest and I tried to lose myself in summing up my stock of information on the question which I expected to hear discussed by the labourers I found myself not altogether ignorant The horrible disclosures of SGO and the barbarous abominations of the Andover Workhouse then fresh in the public mind had had their due effect on mine and like most thinking artizans I had acquainted myself tolerably from books and newspapers with the general condition of the country labourers
I arrived in the midst of a dreary treeless country whose broad brown and grey fields were only broken by an occasional line of dark doleful firs at a knot of thatched hovels all sinking and leaning every way but the right the windows patched with paper the doorways stopped with filth which surrounded a beershop That was my destination—unpromising enough for any one but an agitator If discontent and misery are preparatives for liberty—and they are—so strange and unlike ours are the ways of God—I was likely enough to find them there
I was welcomed by my intended host a little pert snubnosed shoemaker who greeted me as his cousin from London—a relationship which it seemed prudent to accept
He took me into his little cabin and there with the assistance of a shrewd goodnatured wife shared with me the best he had and after supper commenced mysteriously and in trembling as if the very walls might have ears a rambling bitter diatribe on the wrongs and sufferings of the labourers which went on till late in the night and which I shall spare my readers for if they have either brains or hearts they ought to know more than I can tell them from the public prints and indeed from their own eyes—although as a wise man says there is nothing more difficult than to make people see first the facts which lie under their own nose
Upon one point however which was new to me he was very fierce—the customs of landlords letting the cottages with their farms for the mere sake of saving themselves trouble thus giving up all power of protecting the poor man and delivering him over bound hand and foot even in the matter of his commonest home comforts to farmers too penurious too ignorant and often too poor to keep the cottages in a state fit for the habitation of human beings Thus the poor mans hovel as well as his labour became he told me a source of profit to the farmer out of which he wrung the last drop of gain The necessary repairs were always put off as long as possible—the labourers were robbed of their gardens—the slightest rebellion lost them not only work but shelter from the elements the slavery under which they groaned penetrated even to the fireside and to the bedroom
And who was the landlord of this parish
Oh he believed he was a very good sort of man and uncommon kind to the people where he lived but that was fifty miles away in another country and he liked that estate better than this and never came down here except for the shooting
Full of many thoughts and tired out with my journey I went up to bed in the same loft with the cobbler and his wife and fell asleep and dreamt of Lillian
About eight oclock the next morning I started forth with my guide the shoemaker over as desolate a country as men can well conceive Not a house was to be seen for miles except the knot of hovels which we had left and here and there a great dreary lump of farmbuildings with its yard of yellow stacks Beneath our feet the earth was iron and the sky iron above our heads Dark curdled clouds which had built up everywhere an underroof of doleful grey swept on before the bitter northern wind which whistled through the low leafless hedges and rotting wattles and crisped the dark sodden leaves of the scattered hollies almost the only trees in sight
We trudged on over wide stubbles with innumerable weeds over wide fallows in which the deserted ploughs stood frozen fast then over clover and grass burnt black with frost then over a field of turnips where we passed a large fold of hurdles within which some hundred sheep stood with their heads turned from the cutting blast All was dreary idle silent no sound or sign of human beings One wondered where the people lived who cultivated so vast a tract of civilized overpeopled nineteenthcentury England As we came up to the fold two little boys hailed us from the inside—two little wretches with blue noses and white cheeks scarecrows of rags and patches their feet peeping through bursten shoes twice too big for them who seemed to have shared between them a ragged pair of worsted gloves and cowered among the sheep under the shelter of a hurdle crying and inarticulate with cold
Whats the matter boys
Turmits is froze and us cant turn the handle of the cutter Do ye gie us a turn please
We scrambled over the hurdles and gave the miserable little creatures the benefit of ten minutes labour They seemed too small for such exertion their little hands were purple with chilblains and they were so sorefooted they could scarcely limp I was surprised to find them at least three years older than their size and looks denoted and still more surprised too to find that their salary for all this bitter exposure to the elements—such as I believe I could not have endured two days running—was the vast sum of one shilling a week each Sundays included They didnt never go to school nor to church nether except just now and then sometimes—they had to mind the shop
I went on sickened with the contrast between the highlybred overfed fat thickwoolled animals with their troughs of turnips and maltdust and their racks of rich cloverhay and their little penthouse of rocksalt having nothing to do but to eat and sleep and eat again and the little halfstarved shivering animals who were their slaves Man the master of the brutes Bah As society is now the brutes are the masters—the horse the sheep the bullock is the master and the labourer is their slave Oh but the brutes are eaten Well the horses at least are not eaten—they live like landlords till they die And those who are eaten are certainly not eaten by their human servants The sheep they fat another kills to parody Shelley and after all is not the labourer as well as the sheep eaten by you my dear Society—devoured body and soul not the less really because you are longer about the meal there being an old prejudice against cannibalism and also against murder—except after the Riot Act has been read
What shriek the insulted respectabilities have we not paid him his wages weekly and has he not lived upon them Yes and have you not given your sheep and horses their daily wages and have they not lived on them You wanted to work them and they could not work you know unless they were alive But here lies your iniquity you gave the labourer nothing but his daily food—not even his lodgings the pigs were not stinted of their wash to pay for their styroom the man was and his wages thanks to your competitive system were beaten down deliberately and conscientiously for was it not according to political economy and the laws thereof to the minimum on which he could or would work without the hope or the possibility of saving a farthing You know how to invest your capital profitably dear Society and to save money over and above your income of daily comforts but what has he saved—what is he profited by all those years of labour He has kept body and soul together—perhaps he could have done that without you or your help But his wages are used up every Saturday night When he stops working you have in your pocket the whole real profits of his nearly fifty years labour and he has nothing And then you say that you have not eaten him You know in your heart of hearts that you have Else why in Heavens name do you pay him poors rates If as you say he has been duly repaid in wages what is the meaning of that halfacrown a week—you owe him nothing Oh but the man would starve—common humanity forbids What now Society Give him alms if you will on the score of humanity but do not tax people for his support whether they choose or not—that were a mere tyranny and robbery If the landlords feelings will not allow him to see the labourer starve let him give in Gods name but let him not cripple and drain by compulsory poorrates the farmer who has paid him his just remuneration of wages and the parson who probably out of his scanty income gives away twice as much in alms as the landlord does out of his superfluous one No no as long as you retain compulsory poorlaws you confess that it is not merely humane but just to pay the labourer more than his wages You confess yourself in debt to him over and above an uncertain sum which it suits you not to define because such an investigation would expose ugly gaps and patches in that same snug competitive and property world of yours and therefore being the stronger party you compel your debtor to give up the claim which you confess for an annuity of halfacrown a week—that being the justabovestarvingpoint of the economic thermometer And yet you say you have not eaten the labourer You see we workmen too have our thoughts about political economy differing slightly from yours truly—just as the man who is being hanged may take a somewhat different view of the process from the man who is hanging him Which view is likely to be the more practical one
With some such thoughts I walked across the open down toward a circular camp the earthwork probably of some old British town Inside it some thousand or so of labouring people were swarming restlessly round a single large block of stone some relic of Druid times on which a tall man stood his dark figure thrown out in bold relief against the dreary sky As we pushed through the crowd I was struck with the wan haggard look of all faces their lacklustre eyes and drooping lips stooping shoulders heavy dragging steps gave them a crushed dogged air which was infinitely painful and bespoke a grade of misery more habitual and degrading than that of the excitable and passionate artisan
There were many women among them talking shrilly and looking even more pinched and wan than the men
I remarked also that many of the crowd carried heavy sticks pitchforks and other tools which might be used as fearful weapons—an ugly sign which I ought to have heeded betimes
They glared with sullen curiosity at me and my Londoners clothes as with no small feeling of self-importance I pushed my way to the foot of the stone The man who stood on it seemed to have been speaking some time His words like all I heard that day were utterly devoid of anything like eloquence or imagination—a dull string of somewhat incoherent complaints which derived their force only from the intense earnestness which attested their truthfulness As far as I can recollect I will give the substance of what I heard But indeed I heard nothing but what has been bandied about from newspaper to newspaper for years—confessed by all parties deplored by all parties but never an attempt made to remedy it
—The farmers makes slaves on us I cant hear no difference between a Christian and a nigger except they flogs the niggers and starves the Christians and I dont know which Id choose I served Farmer seven year off and on and arter harvest he tells me hes no more work for me nor my boy nether acause hes getting too big for him so he gets a little un instead and we does nothing and my boy lies about getting into bad ways like hundreds more and then we goes to board and they bids us go and look for work and we goes up next part to London I couldnt get none theyd enough to do they said to employ their own and we begs our way home and goes into the Union and they turns us out again in two or three days and promises us work again and gives us two days gravelpicking and then says they has no more for us and we was sore pinched and laid abed all day then next boardday we goes to em and they gives us one day more—and that threw us off another week and then next boardday we goes into the Union again for three days and gets sent out again and so Ive been starving onehalf of the time and they putting us off and on o purpose like that and Ill bear it no longer and thats what I says
He came down and a tall powerful wellfed man evidently in his Sunday smockfrock and clean yellow leggings got up and began
I havnt no complaint to make about myself Ive a good master and the parsons a right kind un and thats more than all can say and the squires a real gentleman and my master he dont need to lower his wages I gets my ten shillings a week all the year round and harvesting and a pig and a lotment—and thats just why I come here If I can get it why cant you
Cause our masters baint like yourn
No by George there baint no money round here like that I can tell you
And why aint they continued the speaker Theres the shame on it Theres my master can grow five quarters where yourn only grows three and so he can live and pay like a man and so he say he dont care for free trade You know as well as I that theres not half o the land round here grows what it ought They aint no money to make it grow more and besides they wont employ no hands to keep it clean I come across more weeds in one field here than Ive seen for nine year on our farm Why arnt some of you agetting they weeds up It ud pay em to farm better—and they knows that but theyre too lazy if they can just get a living off the land they dont care and theyd sooner save money out of your wages than save it by growing more corn—its easier for em it is Theres the work to be done and they wont let you do it Theres you crying out for work and work crying out for you—and neither of you can get to the other I say thats a shame I do I say a poor mans a slave He darent leave his parish—nobody wont employ him as can employ his own folk And if he stays in his parish its just a chance whether he gets a good master or a bad un He cant choose and thats a shame it is Why should he go starving because his master dont care to do the best by the land If they cant till the land I say let them get out of it and let them work it as can And I think as we ought all to sign a petition to government to tell em all about it though I dont see as how they could help us unless theyd make a law to force the squires to put in nobody to a farm as hasnt money to work it fairly
I says said the next speaker a poor fellow whose sentences were continually broken by a hacking cough just what he said If they cant till the land let them do it as can But they wont they wont let us have a scrap on it though wed pay em more for it nor ever theyd make for themselves But they says it ud make us too independent if we had an acre or so o land and so it ud for they And so I says as he did—they want to make slaves on us altogether just to get the flesh and bones off us at their own price Look you at this here down—If I had an acre on it to make a garden on Id live well with my wages off and on Why if this here was in garden it ud be worth twenty forty times o that it be now And last spring I lays out o work from Christmas till barleysowing and I goes to the farmer and axes for a bit o land to dig and plant a few potatoes—and he says You be d—d If youre minding your garden after hours youll not be fit to do a proper days work for me in hours—and I shall want you byandby when the weather breaks—for it was frost most bitter it was And if you gets potatoes youll be getting a pig—and then youll want straw and meal to fat un—and then Ill not trust you in my barn I can tell ye and so there it was And if Id had only one halfacre of this here very down as we stands on as isnt worth five shillings a year—and Id a given ten shillings for it—my belly wouldnt a been empty now Oh they be dogs in the manger and the Lordll reward em therefor First they says they cant afford to work the land emselves and then they waint let us work it ether Then they says prices is so low they cant keep us on and so they lowers our wages and then when prices goes up ever so much our wages dont go up with em So high prices or low prices its all the same With the one we cant buy bread and with the other we cant get work I dont mind free trade—not I to be sure if the loafs cheap we shall be ruined but if the loafs dear we shall be starved and for that we is starved now Nobody dont care for us for my part I dont much care for myself A man must die some time or other Only I thinks if we could some time or other just see the Queen once and tell her all about it shed take our part and not see us put upon like that I do
Gentlemen cried my guide the shoemaker in a somewhat conceited and dictatorial tone as he skipped up by the speakers side and gently shouldered him down—it aint like the ancient times as Ive read off when any poor man as had a petition could come promiscuously to the Kings royal presence and put it direct into his own hand and be treated like a gentleman Dont you know as how they locks up the Queen nowadays and never lets a poor soul come anear her lest she should hear the truth of all their iniquities Why they never lets her stir without a lot o dragoons with drawn swords riding all around her and if you dared to go up to her to ax mercy whoot theyd chop your head off before you could say Please your Majesty And then the hypocrites say as its to keep her from being frightened—and thats true—for its frightened shed be with a vengeance if she knowed all that they grand folks make poor labourers suffer to keep themselves in power and great glory I tell ye tarnt perpracticable at all to ax the Queen for anything shes afeard of her life on em You just take my advice and sign a roundrobin to the squires—you tell em as youre willing to till the land for em if theyll let you Theres draining and digging enough to be done as ud keep ye all in work arnt there
Ay ay theres lots o work to be done if so be we could get at it
Everybody knows that
Well you tell em that Tell em heres hundreds and hundreds of ye starving and willing to work and then tell em if they wont find ye work they shall find ye meat Theres lots o victuals in their larders now havent you as good a right to it as their jackanapes o footmen The squires is at the bottom of it all What do you stupid fellows go grumbling at the farmers for Dont they squires tax the land twenty or thirty shillings an acre and what do they do for that The best of em if he gets five thousand a year out o the land dont give back five hundred in charity or schools or poorrates—and whats that to speak of And the main of em—curse em—they drains the money out o the land and takes it up to London or into foreign parts to spend on fine clothes and fine dinners or throws it away at elections to make folks beastly drunk and sell their souls for money—and we gets no good on it Ill tell you what its come to my men—that we cant afford no more landlords We cant afford em and thats the truth of it
The crowd growled a dubious assent
Oh yes you can grumble at the farmers acause you deals with them firsthand but you be too stupid to do aught but hunt by sight I be an old dog and I hunts cunning I sees farther than my nose I does I larnt politics to London when I was a prentice and I aint forgotten the plans of it Look you here The farmers they say they cant live unless they can make four rents one for labour and one for stock and one for rent and one for themselves aint that about right Very well just now they cant make four rents—in course they cant Now whos to suffer for that—the farmer as works or the labourer as works or the landlord as does nothing But he takes care on himself He wont give up his rent—not he Perhaps he might give back ten per cent and whats that—two shillings an acre maybe Whats that if corn falls two pound a load and more Then the farmer gets a stinting and he cant stint hisself hes bad enough off already hes forty shillings out o pocket on every load of wheat—thats eight shillings maybe on every acre of his land on a fourcourse shift—and wheres the eight shillings to come from for the landlords only given him back two on it He cant stint hisself he darent stint his stock and so he stints the labourers and so its you as pays the landlords rent—you my boys out o your flesh and bones you do—and you cant afford it any longer by the look of you—so just tell em so
This advice seemed to me as sadly unpractical as the rest In short there seemed to be no hope no purpose among them—and they felt it and I could hear from the running comment of murmurs that they were getting every moment more fierce and desperate at the contemplation of their own helplessness—a mood which the next speech was not likely to soften
A pale thin woman scrambled up on the stone and stood there her scanty and patched garments fluttering in the bitter breeze as with face sharpened with want and eyes fierce with misery she began in a querulous scornful falsetto
I am an honest woman I brought up seven children decently and never axed the parish for a farden till my husband died Then they tells me I can support myself and mine—and so I does Early and late I hoed turmits and early and late I rep and left the children at home to mind each other and one on em fell into the fire and is gone to heaven blessed angel and two more it pleased the Lord to take in the fever and the next I hope will soon be out o this miserable sinful world But look you here three weeks agone I goes to the board I had no work They say they could not relieve me for the first week because I had money yet to take—The hypocrites they knowing as I couldnt but owe it all and a lot more beside Next week they sends the officer to inquire That was ten days gone and we starving Then on boardday they gives me two loaves Then next week they takes it off again And when I goes over five miles to the board to ax why—theyd find me work—and they never did so we goes on starving for another week—for no one wouldnt trust us how could they when we was in debt already a whole lot—youre all in debt
That we are
Theres some here as never made ten shillings a week in their lives as owes twenty pounds at the shop
Ay and more—and hows a man ever to pay that
So this week when I comes they offers me the house Would I go into the house Theyd be glad to have me acause Im strong and hearty and a good nurse But would I that am an honest woman go to live with they offscourings—they—she used a strong word—would I be parted from my children Would I let them hear the talk and keep the company as they will there and learn all sorts o sins that they never heard on blessed be God Ill starve first and see them starve too—though Lord knows its hard—Oh its hard she said bursting into tears to leave them as I did this morning crying after their breakfasts and I none to give em Ive got no bread—where should I Ive got no fire—how can I give one shilling and sixpence a hundred for coals And if I did whod fetch em home And if I dared break a hedge for a knitch o wood theyd put me in prison they would with the worst What be I to do What be you going to do Thats what I came here for What be ye going to do for us women—us that starve and stint and wear our hands off for you men and your children and get hard words and hard blows from you Oh if I was a man I know what Id do I do But I dont think you be men three parts o you or youd not see the widow and the orphan starve as you do and sit quiet and grumble as long as you can keep your own bodies and souls together Eh ye cowards
What more she would have said in her excitement which had risen to an absolute scream I cannot tell but some prudent friend pulled her down off the stone to be succeeded by a speaker more painful if possible an aged blind man the wornout melancholy of whose slow feeble voice made my heart sink and hushed the murmuring crowd into silent awe
Slowly he turned his grey sightless head from side to side as if feeling for the faces below him—and then began
I heard you was all to be here—and I suppose you are and I said I would come—though I suppose theyll take off my pay if they hear of it But I knows the reason of it and the bad times and all The Lord revealed it to me as clear as day four years agone come Eastertide Its all along of our sins and our wickedness—because we forgot Him—it is I mind the old war times what times they was when there was smuggled brandy up and down in every public and work more than hands could do And then how we all forgot the Lord and went after our own lusts and pleasures—squires and parsons and farmers and labouring folk all alike They oughted to ha knowed better—and we oughted too Manys the Sunday I spent in skittleplaying and cockfighting and the pound I spent in beer as might ha been keeping me now We was an evil and perverse generation—and so one o my sons went for a sodger and was shot at Waterloo and the other fell into evil ways and got sent across seas—and I be left alone for my sins But the Lord was very gracious to me and showed me how it was all a judgment on my sins he did He has turned his face from us and thats why were troubled And so I dont see no use in this meeting It wont do no good nothing wont do us no good unless we all repent of our wicked ways our drinking and our dirt and our lovechildren and our picking and stealing and gets the Lord to turn our hearts and to come back again and have mercy on us and take us away speedily out of this wretched world where theres nothing but misery and sorrow into His everlasting glory Amen Folks say as the day of judgments a coming soon—and I partly think so myself I wish it was all over and we in heaven above and thats all I have to say
It seemed a not unnatural revulsion when a tall fierce man with a forbidding squint sprung jauntily on the stone and setting his arms akimbo broke out
Here be I Blinkey and I has as good a right to speak as ere a one Youre all blamed fools you are Sos that old blind buffer there You sticks like pigs in a gate hollering and squeeking and never helping yourselves Why cant you do like me I never does no work—darned if Ill work to please the farmers The rich folks robs me and I robs them and thats fair and equal You only turn poachers—you only go stealing turmits and fireud and all as you can find—and then youll not need to work Arnt it yourn The games no ones is it now—you know that And if you takes turmits or corn theyre yourn—you helped to grow em And if youre put to prison I tell ye its a darned deal warmer and better victuals too than ever a one of you gets at home let alone the Union Now I knows the dodge Whenever my wifes ready for her trouble I gets cotched then I lives like a prince in gaol and she goes to the workus and when its all over start fair again Oh you blockheads—to stand here shivering with empty bellies—You just go down to the farm and burn they stacks over the old rascals head and then they that let you starve now will be forced to keep you then If you cant get your share of the poorrates try the countyrates my bucks—you can get fat on them at the Queens expense—and thats more than youll do in ever a Union as I hear on Wholl come down and pull the farm about the folks ears Warnt he as turned five on yer off last week and aint he more corn there than ud feed you all round this day and wont sell it just because hes waiting till folks are starved enough and prices rise Curse the old villain—wholl help to disappoint him o that Come along
A confused murmur arose and a movement in the crowd I felt that now or never was the time to speak If once the spirit of mad aimless riot broke loose I had not only no chance of a hearing but every likelihood of being implicated in deeds which I abhorred and I sprung on the stone and entreated a few minutes attention telling them that I was a deputation from one of the London Chartist committees This seemed to turn the stream of their thoughts and they gaped in stupid wonder at me as I began hardly less excited than themselves
I assured them of the sympathy of the London working men made a comment on their own speeches—which the reader ought to be able to make for himself—and told them that I had come to entreat their assistance towards obtaining such a parliamentary representation as would secure them their rights I explained the idea of the Charter and begged for their help in carrying it out
To all which they answered surlily that they did not know anything about politics—that what they wanted was bread
I went on more vehement than ever to show them how all their misery sprung as I then fancied from being unrepresented—how the laws were made by the rich for the poor and not by all for all—how the taxes bit deep into the necessaries of the labourer and only nibbled at the luxuries of the rich—how the criminal code exclusively attacked the crimes to which the poor were prone while it dared not interfere with the subtler iniquities of the highborn and wealthy—how poorrates as I have just said were a confession on the part of society that the labourer was not fully remunerated I tried to make them see that their interest as much as common justice demanded that they should have a voice in the councils of the nation such as would truly proclaim their wants their rights their wrongs and I have seen no reason since then to unsay my words
To all which they answered that their stomachs were empty and they wanted bread And bread we will have
Go then I cried losing my selfpossession between disappointment and the maddening desire of influence—and indeed who could hear their story or even look upon their faces and not feel some indignation stir in him unless selfinterest had drugged his heart and conscience—go I cried and get bread After all you have a right to it No man is bound to starve There are rights above all laws and the right to live is one Laws were made for man not man for laws If you had made the laws yourselves they might bind you even in this extremity but they were made in spite of you—against you They rob you crash you even now they deny you bread God has made the earth free to all like the air and sunshine and you are shut out from off it The earth is yours for you till it Without you it would be a desert Go and demand your share of that corn the fruit of your own industry What matter if your tyrants imprison murder you—they can but kill your bodies at once instead of killing them piecemeal as they do now and your blood will cry against them from the ground—Ay Woe—I went on carried away by feelings for which I shall make no apology for however confused there was and is and ever will be a Gods truth in them as this generation will find out at the moment when its own serene selfsatisfaction crumbles underneath it—Woe unto those that grind the faces of the poor Woe unto those who add house to house and field to field till they stand alone in the land and there is no room left for the poor man The wages of their reapers which they have held back by fraud cry out against them and their cry has entered into the ears of the God of heaven—
But I had no time to finish The murmur swelled into a roar for Bread
Bread My hearers had taken me at my word I had raised the spirit could
I command him now he was abroad
Go to Jenningss farm
No he aint no corn he sold un all last week
Theres plenty at the Hall farm Rouse out the old steward
And amid yells and execrations the whole mass poured down the hill sweeping me away with them I was shocked and terrified at their threats I tried again and again to stop and harangue them I shouted myself hoarse about the duty of honesty warned them against pillage and violence entreated them to take nothing but the corn which they actually needed but my voice was drowned in the uproar Still I felt myself in a measure responsible for their conduct I had helped to excite them and dare not in honour desert them and trembling I went on prepared to see the worst following as a flag of distress a mouldy crust brandished on the point of a pitchfork
Bursting through the rotting and halffallen palings we entered a wide rushy neglected park and along an old gravel road now green with grass we opened on a sheet of frozen water and on the opposite bank the huge square corpse of a hall the closeshuttered windows of which gave it a dead and ghastly look except where here and there a single one showed as through a black empty eyesocket the dark unfurnished rooms within On the right beneath us lay amid tall elms a large mass of farmbuildings into the yard of which the whole mob rushed tumultuously—just in time to see an old man on horseback dart out and gallop hatless up the park amid the yells of the mob
The old rascals gone and hell call up the yeomanry We must be quick boys shouted one and the first signs of plunder showed themselves in an indiscriminate chase after various screaming geese and turkeys while a few of the more steady went up to the housedoor and knocking demanded sternly the granary keys
A fat virago planted herself in the doorway and commenced railing at them with the cowardly courage which the fancied immunity of their sex gives to coarse women but she was hastily shoved aside and took shelter in an upper room where she stood screaming and cursing at the window
The invaders returned cramming their mouths with bread and chopping asunder flitches of bacon The granary doors were broken open and the contents scrambled for amid immense waste by the starving wretches It was a sad sight Here was a poor shivering woman hiding scraps of food under her cloak and hurrying out of the yard to the children she had left at home There was a tall man leaning against the palings gnawing ravenously at the same loaf as a little boy who had scrambled up behind him Then a huge blackguard came whistling up to me with a can of ale Drink my beauty youre dry with hollering by now
The ale is neither yours nor mine I wont touch it
Darn your buttons You said the wheat was ourn acause we growed it—and thereby sos the beer—for we growed the barley too
And so thought the rest for the yard was getting full of drunkards a woman or two among them reeling kneedeep in the loose straw among the pigs
Thresh out they ricks roared another
Get out the threshingmachine
You harness the horses
No there baint no time Yeomanryll be here You mun leave the ricks
Darned if we do Old Woods shant get naught by they
Fire em then and go on to Slaters farm
As well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb hiccuped Blinkey as he rushed through the yard with a lighted brand I tried to stop him but fell on my face in the deep straw and got round the barns to the rickyard just in time to here a crackle—there was no mistaking it the windward stack was in a blaze of fire
I stood awestruck—I cannot tell how long—watching how the live flamesnakes crept and hissed and leapt and roared and rushed in long horizontal jets from stack to stack before the howling wind and fastened their fiery talons on the barneaves and swept over the peaked roofs and hurled themselves in fiery flakes into the yard beyond—the food of man the labour of years devoured in aimless ruin—Was it my doing Was it not
At last I recollected myself and ran round again into the strawyard where the fire was now falling fast The only thing which saved the house was the weltering mass of bullocks pigs and human beings drunk and sober which trampled out unwittingly the flames as fast as they caught
The fire had seized the roofs of the cartstables when a great lubberly boy blubbered out—
Git my horses out git my horses out o the fire I be so fond o mun
Well they aint done no harm poor beasts And a dozen men ran in to save them but the poor wretches screaming with terror refused to stir I never knew what became of thembut their shrieks still haunt my dreams…
The yard now became a pandemonium The more ruffianly part of the mob—and alas there were but too many of them—hurled the furniture out of the windows or ran off with anything that they could carry In vain I expostulated threatened I was answered by laughter curses frantic dances and brandished plunder Then I first found out how large a portion of rascality shelters itself under the wing of every crowd and at the moment I almost excused the rich for overlooking the real sufferers in indignation at the rascals But even the really starving majority whose faces proclaimed the grim fact of their misery seemed gone mad for the moment The old crust of sullen dogged patience had broken up and their whole souls had exploded into reckless fury and brutal revenge—and yet there was no hint of violence against the red fat woman who surrounded with her blubbering children stood screaming and cursing at the firstfloor window getting redder and fatter at every scream The worst personality she heard was a roar of laughter in which such is poor humanity I could not but join as her little starved drab of a maidofallwork ran out of the door with a bundle of stolen finery under her arm and high above the roaring of the flames and the shouts of the rioters rose her mistresss yell
O Betsy Betsy you little awdacious unremorseful hussy—a running away with my best bonnet and shawl
The laughter soon however subsided when a man rushed breathless into the yard shouting The yeomanry
At that sound to my astonishment a general panic ensued The miserable wretches never stopped to enquire how many or how far off they were—but scrambled to every outlet of the yard trampling each other down in their hurry I leaped up on the wall and saw galloping down the park a mighty armament of some fifteen men with a tall officer at their head mounted on a splendid horse
There they be there they be all the varmers and young Squire Clayton wi mun on his grey hunter O Lord O Lord and all their swords drawn
I thought of the old story in Herodotus—how the Scythian masters returned from war to the rebel slaves who had taken possession of their lands and wives and brought them down on their knees with terror at the mere sight of the old dreaded dogwhips
I did not care to run I was utterly disgusted disappointed with myself—the people I longed for the moment to die and leave it all and left almost alone sat down on a stone buried my head between my hands and tried vainly to shut out from my ears the roaring of the fire
At that moment Blinkey staggered out past me and against me a writingdesk in his hands shouting in his drunken glory Ive vound ut at last Ive got the old fellows money Hush What a vule I be hollering like that—And he was going to sneak off with a face of drunken cunning when I sprung up and seized him by the throat
Rascal robber lay that down Have you not done mischief enough already
I waint have no sharing What Do you want un yourself eh Then well see whos the stronger
And in an instant he shook me from him and dealt me a blow with the corner of the desk that laid me on the ground…
I just recollect the tramp of the yeomanry horses and the gleam and jingle of their arms as they galloped into the yard I caught a glimpse of the tall young officer as his great grey horse swept through the air over the high yardpales—a feat to me utterly astonishing Half a dozen long strides—the wretched ruffian staggering across the field with his booty was caught up—The clear blade gleamed in the air—and then a fearful yell—and after that I recollect nothing
Slowly I recovered my consciousness I was lying on a trucklebed—stone walls and a grated window A man stood over me with a large bunch of keys in his hand He had been wrapping my head with wet towels I knew instinctively where I was
Well young man said he in a not unkindly tone—and a nice job youve made of it Do you know where you are
Yes answered I quietly in D gaol
Exactly so
CHAPTER XXIX
THE TRIAL
The day was come—quickly thank Heaven and I stood at the bar with four or five miserable haggard labourers to take my trial for sedition riot and arson
I had passed the intervening weeks half stupified with the despair of utter disappointment disappointment at myself and my own loss of self-possession which had caused all my misfortune—perhaps too and the thought was dreadful that of my wretched fellowsufferers—disappointment with the labourers with The Cause and when the thought came over me in addition that I was irreparably disgraced in the eyes of my late patrons parted for ever from Lillian by my own folly I laid down my head and longed to die
Then again I would recover awhile and pluck up heart I would plead my cause myself—I would testify against the tyrants to their face—I would say no longer to their besotted slaves but to the men themselves Go to ye rich men weep and howl The hire of your labourers who have reaped down your fields which is by you kept back by fraud crieth and the cries of them that have reaped hath entered into the ears of the Lord God of Hosts I would brave my fate—I would die protesting and glory in my martyrdom But—
Martyrdom said Mackaye who had come down to D and was busy night and day about my trial Yell just leave alone the martyr dodge my puir bairn Yere na martyr at a yell understand but a vera foolish callant that lost his temper an cast his pearls before swine—an very questionable pearls they too to judge by the price they fetch i the market
And then my heart sank again And a few days before the trial a letter came evidently in my cousins handwriting though only signed with his initials
SIR—You are in a very great scrape—you will not deny that How you will get out of it depends on your own common sense You probably wont be hanged—for nobody believes that you had a hand in burning the farm but unless you take care you will be transported Call yourself John Nokes entrust your case to a clever lawyer and keep in the background I warn you as a friend—if you try to speechify and play the martyr and let out who you are the respectable people who have been patronizing you will find it necessary for their own sakes to clap a stopper on you for good and all to make you out an impostor and a swindler and get you out of the way for life while if you are quiet it will suit them to be quiet too and say nothing about you if you say nothing about them and then there will be a chance that they as well as your own family will do everything in their power to hush the matter up So again dont let out your real name and instruct your lawyers to know nothing about the Ws and then perhaps the Queens counsel will know nothing about them either Mind—you are warned and woe to you if you are fool enough not to take the warning
GL
Plead in a false name Never so help me Heaven To go into court with a lie in my mouth—to make myself an impostor—probably a detected one—it seemed the most cunning scheme for ruining me which my evil genius could have suggested whether or not it might serve his own selfish ends But as for the other hints they seemed not unreasonable and promised to save me trouble while the continued pressure of anxiety and responsibility was getting intolerable to my overwearied brain So I showed the letter to Mackaye who then told me that he had taken it for granted that I should come to my right mind and had therefore already engaged an old compatriot as attorney and the best counsel which money could procure
But where did you get the money You have not surely been spending your own savings on me
I canna say that I wadna ha so dune in case o need But the men in town just subscribit puir honest fellows
What is my folly to be the cause of robbing them of their slender earnings Never Mackaye Besides they cannot have subscribed enough to pay the barrister whom you just mentioned Tell me the whole truth or positively I will plead my cause myself
Aweel then there was a bit banknote or twa cam to hand—I canna say whaur fra But they that sent it direckit it to be expendit in the defence o the sax prisoners—whereof ye make ane
Again a world of fruitless conjecture It must be the same unknown friend who had paid my debt to my cousin—Lillian
And so the day was come I am not going to make a long picturesque description of my trial—trials have become lately quite hackneyed subjects stock properties for the fictionmongers—neither indeed could I do so if I would I recollect nothing of that day but fragments—flashes of waking existence scattered up and down in what seemed to me a whole life of heavy confused painful dreams with the glare of all those faces concentrated on me—those countless eyes which I could not could not meet—stony careless unsympathizing—not even angry—only curious If they had but frowned on me insulted me gnashed their teeth on me I could have glared back defiance as it was I stood cowed and stupified a craven by the side of cravens
Let me see—what can I recollect Those faces—faces—everywhere faces—a faint sickly smell of flowers—a perpetual whispering and rustling of dresses—and all through it the voice of some one talking talking—I seldom knew what or whether it was counsel witness judge or prisoner that was speaking I was like one asleep at a foolish lecture who hears in dreams and only wakes when the prosing stops Was it not prosing What was it to me what they said They could not understand me—my motives—my excuses the whole pleading on my side as well as the crowns seemed one huge fallacy—beside the matter altogether—never touching the real point at issue the eternal moral equity of my deeds or misdeeds I had no doubt that it would all be conducted quite properly and fairly and according to the forms of law but what was law to me—I wanted justice And so I let them go on their own way conscious of but one thought—was Lillian in the court
I dared not look and see I dared not lift up my eyes toward the gaudy rows of ladies who had crowded to the interesting trial of the D rioters The torture of anxiety was less than that of certainty might be and I kept my eyes down and wondered how on earth the attorneys had found in so simple a case enough to stuff those great blue bags
When however anything did seem likely to touch on a reality I woke up forthwith in spite of myself I recollect well for instance a squabble about challenging the jurymen and my counsels voice of pious indignation as he asked Do you call these agricultural gentlemen and farmers however excellent and respectable—on which point Heaven forbid that I c c—the prisoners pares peers equals or likes What single interest opinion or motive have they in common but the universal one of self-interest which in this case happens to pull in exactly opposite directions Your Lordship has often animadverted fully and boldly on the practice of allowing a bench of squires to sit in judgment on a poacher surely it is quite as unjust that agricultural rioters should be tried by a jury of the very class against whom they are accused of rebelling
Perhaps my learned brother would like a jury of rioters suggested some
Queens counsel
Upon my word then it would be much the fairer plan
I wondered whether he would have dared to say as much in the street outside—and relapsed into indifference I believe there was some long delay and wrangling about lawquibbles which seemed likely at one time to quash the whole prosecution but I was rather glad than sorry to find that it had been overruled It was all a play a game of bowls—the bowls happening to be human heads—got up between the lawyers for the edification of society and it would have been a pity not to play it out according to the rules and regulations thereof
As for the evidence its tenor may be easily supposed from my story There were those who could swear to my language at the camp I was seen accompanying the mob to the farm and haranguing them The noise was too great for the witnesses to hear all I said but they were certain I talked about the sacred name of liberty The farmers wife had seen me run round to the stacks when they were fired—whether just before or just after she never mentioned She had seen me running up and down in front of the house talking loudly and gesticulating violently she saw me too struggling with another rioter for her husbands desk—and the rest of the witnesses some of whom I am certain I had seen busy plundering though they were ready to swear that they had been merely accidental passersby seemed to think that they proved their own innocence and testified their pious indignation by avoiding carefully any fact which could excuse me But somehow my counsel thought differently and crossexamined and bullied and tormented and misstated—as he was bound to do and so one witness after another clumsy and cowardly enough already was driven by his engines of torture as if by a pitiless spell to deny half that he had deposed truly and confess a great deal that was utterly false—till confusion became worse confounded and there seemed no truth anywhere and no falsehood either and naught was everything and everything was naught till I began to have doubts whether the riot had ever occurred at all—and indeed doubts of my own identity also when I had heard the counsel for the crown impute to me personally as in duty bound every seditious atrocity which had been committed either in England or France since 1793 To him certainly I did listen tolerably it was as good as a play Atheism blasphemy vitriolthrowing and community of women were among my lighter offences—for had I not actually been engaged in a plot for the destruction of property How did the court know that I had not spent the night before the riot as the doctor and his friends did before the riots of 1839 in drawing lots for the estates of the surrounding gentlemen with my deluded dupes and victims—for of course I and not want of work had deluded them into rioting at least they never would have known that they were starving if I had not stirred up their evil passions by daring to inform them of that otherwise impalpable fact I the only Chartist there Might there not have been dozens of them—emissaries from London dressed up as starving labourers and rheumatic old women There were actually traces of a plan for seizing all the ladies in the country and setting up a seraglio of them in D Cathedral How did the court know that there was not one
Ay how indeed and how did I know either I really began to question whether the man might not be right after all The whole theory seemed so horribly coherent—possible natural I might have done it under possession of the devil and forgotten it in excitement—I might—perhaps I did And if there why not elsewhere Perhaps I had helped Jourdan Coupetête at Lyons and been king of the Munster Anabaptists—why not What matter When would this eternity of wigs and bonnets and glaring windows and eargrinding prate and jargon as of a diabolic universe of street organs end—end—end—and I get quietly hanged and done with it all for ever
Oh the horrible length of that day It seemed to me as if I had been always on my trial ever since I was born I wondered at times how many years ago it had all begun I felt what a far stronger and more singlehearted patriot than I poor Somerville says of himself under the torture of the sergeants cat in a passage whose horrible simplicity and unconscious pathos have haunted me ever since I read it how when only fifty out of his hundred lashes had fallen on the bleeding back The time since they began was like a long period of life I felt as if I had lived all the time of my real life in torture and that the days when existence had a pleasure in it were a dream long long gone by
The reader may begin to suspect that I was fast going mad and I believe I was If he has followed my story with a human heart he may excuse me of any extreme weakness if I did at moments totter on the verge of that abyss
What saved me I believe now was the keen bright look of love and confidence which flashed on me from Crossthwaites glittering eyes when he was called forward as a witness to my character He spoke out like a man I hear that day But the counsel for the crown tried to silence him triumphantly by calling on him to confess himself a Chartist as if a man must needs be a liar and a villain because he holds certain opinions about the franchise However that was I heard the general opinion of the court And then Crossthwaite lost his temper and called the Queens counsel a hired bully and so went down having done as I was told afterwards no good to me
And then there followed a passage of tongue fence between Mackaye and some barrister and great laughter at the barristers expense and then I heard the old mans voice rise thin and clear
Let him that is without sin amang ye cast the first stane
And as he went down he looked at me—a look full of despair I never had had a ray of hope from the beginning but now I began to think whether men suffered much when they were hung and whether one woke at once into the next life or had to wait till the body had returned to the dust and watch the ugly process of ones own decay I was not afraid of death—I never experienced that sensation I am not physically brave I am as thoroughly afraid of pain as any child can be but that next world has never offered any prospect to me save boundless food for my insatiable curiosity
But at that moment my attorney thrust into my hand a little dirty scrap of paper Do you know this man I read it
SIR—I wull tell all truthe Mr Locke is a murdered man if he be hanged
Lev me spek out for love of the Lord
J DAVIS
No I never had heard of him and I let the paper fall
A murdered man I had known that all along Had not the Queens counsel been trying all day to murder me as was their duty seeing that they got their living thereby
A few moments after a labouring man was in the witnessbox and to my astonishment telling the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
I will not trouble the reader with his details for they were simply and exactly what I have already stated He was badgered bullied crossexamined but nothing could shake him With that dogged honesty and laconic dignity which is the good side of the English peasants character he stood manfully to his assertion—that I had done everything that words or actions could do to prevent violence even to the danger of my own personal safety He swore to the words which I used when trying to wrest the desk from the man who had stolen it and when the Queens counsel asked him tauntingly who had set him on bringing his new story there at the eleventh hour he answered equally to the astonishment of his questioner and of me
Muster Locke hisself
What the prisoner almost screamed the counsellor who fancied I suppose that he had stumbled on a confession of unblushing bribery
Yes he he there As he went up over hill to meeting he met my two boys a shepminding and because the cutter was froze he stop and turn the handle for em for a matter of ten minutes and I was coming up over field and says I Ill hear what that chaps got to say—there cant be no harm in going up arter the likes of he for says I to myself a man cant have got any great wickedness a plotting in hes head when hell stop a ten minutes to help two boys as he never sot eyes on afore in his life and I think their honoursll say the same
Whether my reader will agree or not with the worthy fellow my counsel I need not say did and made full use of his hint All the previous evidence was now discovered to have corroborated the last witness except where it had been notoriously overthrown I was extolled as a miracle of calm benevolence and black became grey and grey became spotless white and the whole feeling of the court seemed changed in my favour till the little attorney popped up his head and whispered to me
By George that last witness has saved your life
To which I answered Very well—and turned stupidly back upon that nightmare thought—was Lillian in the court
At last a voice the judges I believe for it was grave gentle almost compassionate asked us one by one whether we had anything to say in our own defence I recollect an indistinct murmur from one after another of the poor semibrutes on my left and then my attorney looking up to me made me aware that I was expected to speak On the moment somehow my whole courage returned to me I felt that I must unburden my heart now or never With a sudden effort I roused myself and looking fixedly and proudly at the reverend face opposite began
The utmost offence which has been proved against me is a few bold words producing consequences as unexpected as illogical If the stupid ferocity with which my words were misunderstood as by a horde of savages rather than Englishmen—if the moral and physical condition of these prisoners at my side—of those witnesses who have borne testimony against me miserable white slaves miscalled free labourers—ay if a single walk through the farms and cottages on which this mischief was bred affords no excuse for one indignant sentence—
There she was There she had been all the time—right opposite to me close to the judge—cold bright curious—smiling And as our eyes met she turned away and whispered gaily something to a young man who sat beside her
Every drop of blood in my body rushed into my forehead the court the windows and the faces whirled round and round and I fell senseless on the floor of the dock
I next recollect some room or other in the gaol Mackaye with both my hands in his and the rough kindly voice of the gaoler congratulating me on having only got three years
But you didnt show half a good pluck said some one Theres two on em transported took it as bold as brass and thanked the judge for getting em out o this starving place free gracious for nothing says they
Ah quoth the little attorney rubbing his hands you should have seen and after the row in 42 They were the boys for the Bull Ring Gave a barrister as good as he brought eh Mr Mackaye My small services you remember were of no use really no use at all—quite ashamed to send in my little account Managed the case themselves like two patriotic parties as they were with a degree of forensic acuteness inspired by the consciousness of a noble cause—Ahem You remember friend M Grand triumphs those eh
Ay said Sandy I mind them unco weel—they cost me a my few savings mair by token an mony a braw fallow paid for ither folks sins that tide But my puir laddie heres no made o that stuff Hes ower thinskinned for a patriot
Ah well—this little taste of British justice will thicken his hide for him eh And the attorney chuckled and winked Hell come out again as tough as a bull dog and as surly too Eh Mr Mackaye—eh
Deed then Im unco sair afeard that your opeenion is no athegither that improbable answered Sandy with a drawl of unusual solemnity
CHAPTER XXX
PRISON THOUGHTS
I was alone in my cell
Three years imprisonment Thirtysix months—one thousand and ninetyfive days—and twentyfour whole hours in each of them Well—I should sleep half the time onethird at least Perhaps I should not be able to sleep To lie awake and think—there the thought was horrible—it was all horrible To have three whole years cut out of my life instead of having before me as I had always as yet had a mysterious Eldorado of new schemes and hopes possible developments possible triumphs possible bliss—to have nothing nothing before me but blank and stagnation dead loss and waste and then to go out again and start once more where I had left off yesterday
It should not be I would not lose these years I would show myself a man they should feel my strength just when they fancied they had crushed me utterly They might bury me but I should rise again—I should rise again more glorious perhaps to be henceforth immortal and live upon the lips of men I would educate myself I would read—what would I not read These three years should be a time of sacred retirement and contemplation as of Thebaid Anchorite or Mahomet in his Arabian cave I would write pamphlets that should thunder through the land and make tyrants tremble on their thrones All England—at least all crushed and suffering hearts—should break forth at my fiery words into one roar of indignant sympathy No—I would write a poem I would concentrate all my experience my aspirations all the hopes and wrongs and sorrows of the poor into one garland of thorns—one immortal epic of suffering What should I call it And I set to work deliberately—such a thing is man—to think of a title
I looked up and my eye caught the close bars of the little window and then came over me for the first time the full meaning of that word—Prison that word which the rich use so lightly knowing well that there is no chance in these days of there ever finding themselves in one for the higher classes never break the laws—seeing that they have made them to fit themselves Ay I was in prison I could not go out or come in at will I was watched commanded at every turn I was a brute animal a puppet a doll that children put away in a cupboard and there it lies And yet my whole soul was as wide fierce roving struggling as ever Horrible contradiction The dreadful sense of helplessness the crushing weight of necessity seemed to choke me The smooth white walls the smooth white ceiling seemed squeezing in closer and closer on me and yet dilating into vast inane infinities just as the merest knot of mould will transform itself, as one watches it and nothing else into enormous cliffs long slopes of moor and spurs of mountainrange Oh those smooth white walls and ceilings If there had but been a print—a stain of dirt—a cobweb to fleck their unbroken ghastliness They stared at me like grim impassive featureless formless fiends all the more dreadful for their sleek hypocritic cleanliness—purity as of a saintinquisitor watching with spotless conscience the victim on the rack They choked me—I gasped for breath stretched out my arms rolled shrieking on the floor—the narrow chequered glimpse of free blue sky seen through the window seemed to fade dimmer and dimmer farther and farther off I sprang up as if to follow it—rushed to the bars shook and wrenched at them with my thin puny arms—and stood spellbound as I caught sight of the cathedral towers standing out in grand repose against the horizontal fiery bars of sunset like great angels at the gates of Paradise watching in stately sorrow all the wailing and the wrong below And beneath beneath—the wellknown roofs—Lillians home and all its proud and happy memories It was but a corner of a gable a scrap of garden that I could see beyond intervening roofs and trees—but could I mistake them There was the very cedartree I knew its dark pyramid but too well There I had walked by her there just behind that envious group of chestnuts she was now The light was fading it must be six oclock she must be in her room now dressing herself for dinner looking so beautiful And as I gazed and gazed all the intervening objects became transparent and vanished before the intensity of my imagination Were my poems in her room still Perhaps she had thrown them away—the condemned rioters poems Was she thinking of me Yes—with horror and contempt Well at least she was thinking of me And she would understand me at last—she must Some day she would know all I had borne for love of her—the depth the might the purity of my adoration She would see the world honouring me in the day of my triumph when I was appreciated at last when I stood before the eyes of admiring men a peoples singer a king of human spirits great with the rank which genius gives then she would find out what a man had loved her then she would know the honour the privilege of a poets worship
—But that trial scene
Ay—that trial scene That cold unmoved smile—when she knew me must have known me not to be the wretch which those hired slanderers had called me If she had cared for me—if she had a womans heart in her at all any pity any justice would she not have spoken Would she not have called on others to speak and clear me of the calumny Nonsense Impossible She—so frail tender retiring—how could she speak How did I know that she had not felt for me It was womans nature—duty to conceal her feelings perhaps that after all was the true explanation of that smile Perhaps too she might have spoken—might be even now pleading for me in secret not that I wished to be pardoned—not I—but it would be so delicious to have her her pleading for me Perhaps—perhaps I might hear of her—from her Surely she could not leave me here so close without some token And I actually listened I know not how long expecting the door to open and a message to arrive till with my eyes riveted on that bit of gable and my ears listening behind me like a hares in her form to catch every sound in the ward outside I fell fast asleep and forgot all in the heavy dreamless torpor of utter mental and bodily exhaustion
I was awakened by the opening of my cell door and the appearance of the turnkey
Well young man all right again Youve had a long nap and no wonder youve had a hard time of it lately and a good lesson to you too
How long have I slept I do not recollect going to bed And how came I to lie down without undressing
I found you at lockup hours asleep there kneeling on the chair with your head on the windowsill and a mercy you hadnt tumbled off and broke your back Now look here—You seems a civil sort of chap and civil gets as civil gives with me Only dont you talk no politics They aint no good to nobody except the big uns wot gets their living thereby and I should think youd had dose enough on em to last for a month of Sundays So just get yourself tidy theres a lad and come along with me to chapel
I obeyed him in that and other things and I never received from him or indeed from any one else there aught but kindness I have no complaint to make—but prison is prison As for talking politics I never during those three years exchanged as many sentences with any of my fellowprisoners What had I to say to them Poachers and petty thieves—the scum of misery ignorance and rascality throughout the country If my heart yearned toward them at times it was generally shut close by the exclusive pride of superior intellect and knowledge I considered it as it was a degradation to be classed with such never asking myself how far I had brought that degradation on myself and I loved to show my sense of injustice by walking moody and silent up and down a lonely corner of the yard and at last contrived under the plea of ill health and truly I never was ten minutes without coughing to confine myself entirely to my cell and escape altogether the company of a class whom I despised almost hated as my betrayers before whom I had cast away my pearls—questionable though they were according to Mackaye Oh there is in the intellectual workmans heart as in all others the root of Pharisaism—the lust after selfglorifying superiority on the ground of genius We too are men frail selfish proud as others The days are past thank God when the gentlemen buttonmakers used to insist on a separate taproom from the mere buttonmakers on the ground of earning a few more shillings per week But we are not yet thorough democrats my brothers we do not yet utterly believe our own loud doctrine of equality nor shall we till—But I must not anticipate the stages of my own experience
I complain of no one again I say—neither of judge jury gaolers or chaplain True imprisonment was the worst possible remedy for my disease that could have been devised if as the new doctrine is punishments are inflicted only to reform the criminal What could prison do for me but embitter and confirm all my prejudices But I do not see what else they could have done with me while law is what it is and perhaps ever will be dealing with the overt acts of the poor and never touching the subtler and more spiritual iniquities of the rich respectable When shall we see a nation ruled not by the law by the Gospel not in the letter which kills but in the spirit which is love forgiveness life When God knows And God does know
But I did work during those three years for months at a time steadily and severely and with little profit alas to my temper of mind I gorged my intellect for I could do nothing else The political questions which I longed to solve in some way or other were tabooed by the wellmeaning chaplain He even forbid me a standard English work on political economy which I had written to Mackaye to borrow for me he was not so careful it will be seen hereafter with foreign books He meant of course to keep my mind from what he considered at once useless and polluting but the only effect of his method was that all the doubts and questions remained rankling and fierce imperiously demanding my attention and had to be solved by my own moody and soured meditations warped and coloured by the strong sense of universal wrong
Then he deluged me with tracts weak and wellmeaning which informed me that Christians being not of this world had nothing to do with politics and preached to me the divine right of kings passive obedience to the powers—or impotences—that be c c with such success as may be imagined I opened them each read a few sentences and laid them by They were written by good men no doubt but men who had an interest in keeping up the present system at all events by men who knew nothing of my temptations my creed my unbelief who saw all heaven and earth from a station antipodal to my own I had simply nothing to do with them
And yet excellent man pious benignant compassionate God forbid that I should in writing these words allow myself a desire so base as that of disparaging thee However thy words failed of their purpose that bright gentle earnest face never appeared without bringing balm to the wounded spirit Hadst thou not recalled me to humanity those three years would have made a savage and madman of me May God reward thee hereafter Thou hast thy reward on earth in the gratitude of many a broken heart bound up of drunkards sobered thieves reclaimed and outcasts taught to look for a paternal home denied them here on earth While such thy deeds what matter thine opinions
But alas for the truth must be told as a warning to those who have to face the educated working men his opinions did matter to himself The good man laboured under the delusion common enough of choosing his favourite weapons from his weakest faculty and the very inferiority of his intellect prevented him from seeing where his true strength lay He would argue he would try and convert me from scepticism by what seemed to him reasoning the common figure of which was what logicians I believe call begging the question and the common method what they call ignoratio elenchi—shooting at pigeons while crows are the game desired He always started by demanding my assent to the very question which lay at the bottom of my doubts He would wrangle and wrestle blindly up and down with tears of earnestness in his eyes till he had lost his temper as far as it was possible for one so angelguarded as he seemed to be and then when he found himself confused contradicting his own words making concessions at which he shuddered for the sake of gaining from me assents which he found out the next moment I understood in quite a different sense from his he would suddenly shift his ground and try to knock me down authoritatively with a single text of Scripture when all the while I wanted proof that Scripture had any authority at all
He carefully confined himself too throughout to the dogmatic phraseology of the pulpit while I either did not understand or required justification for the strange farfetched technical meanings which he attached to his expressions If he would only have talked English—if clergymen would only preach in English—and then they wonder that their sermons have no effect Their notion seems to be as my good chaplains was that the teacher is not to condescend to the scholar much less to become all things to all men if by any means he may save some but that he has a right to demand that the scholar shall ascend to him before he is taught that he shall raise himself up of his own strength into the teachers region of thought as well as feeling to do for himself in short under penalty of being called an unbeliever just what the preacher professes to do for him
At last he seemed dimly to discover that I could not acquiesce in his conclusions while I denied his premises and so he lent me in an illstarred moment Paleys Evidences and some tracts of the last generation against Deism I read them and remained as hundreds more have done just where I was before
Was Paley I asked a really good and pious man
The really good and pious man hemmed and hawed
Because if he was not I cant trust a page of his special pleading let it look as clever as the whole Old Bailey in one
Besides I never denied the existence of Jesus of Nazareth or his apostles I doubted the myths and doctrines which I believed to have been gradually built up round the true story The fact was he was like most of his class attacking extinct Satans fighting manfully against Voltaire Volney and Tom Paine while I was fighting for Strauss Hennell and Emerson And at last he gave me up for some weeks as a hopeless infidel without ever having touched the points on which I disbelieved He had never read Strauss—hardly even heard of him and till clergymen make up their minds to do that and to answer Strauss also they will as he did leave the heretic artisan just where they found him
The bad effect which all this had on my mind may easily be conceived I felt myself his intellectual superior I tripped him up played with him made him expose his weaknesses till I really began to despise him May Heaven forgive me for it But it was not till long afterwards that I began on looking back to see how worthless was any superior cleverness of mine before his superior moral and spiritual excellence That was just what he would not let me see at the time I was worshipping intellect mere intellect and thence arose my doubts and he tried to conquer them by exciting the very faculty which had begotten them When will the clergy learn that their strength is in action and not in argument If they are to reconvert the masses it must be by noble deeds as Carlyle says not by noisy theoretic laudation of a Church but by silent practical demonstration of the Church
But the reader may ask where was your Bible all this time
Yes—there was a Bible in my cell—and the chaplain read to me both privately and in chapel such portions of it as he thought suited my case or rather his utterlymistaken view thereof But to tell the truth I cared not to read or listen Was it not the book of the aristocrats—of kings and priests passive obedience and the slavery of the intellect Had I been thrown under the influence of the more educated Independents in former years I might have thought differently They at least have contrived with what logical consistence I know not to reconcile orthodox Christianity with unflinching democratic opinions But such was not my lot My mother as I said in my first chapter had become a Baptist because she believed that sect and as I think rightly to be the only one which logically and consistently carries out the Calvinistic theory and now I looked back upon her delight in Gideon and Barak Samson and Jehu only as the mystic application of rare exceptions to the fanaticism of a chosen few—the elect—the saints who as the fifthmonarchy men held were one day to rule the world with a rod of iron And so I fell—willingly alas—into the vulgar belief about the politics of Scripture common alike—strange unanimity—to Infidel and Churchman The great idea that the Bible is the history of mankinds deliverance from all tyranny outward as well as inward of the Jews as the one free constitutional people among a world of slaves and tyrants of their ruin as the righteous fruit of a voluntary return to despotism of the New Testament as the good news that freedom brotherhood and equality once confided only to Judæa and to Greece and dimly seen even there was henceforth to be the right of all mankind the law of all society—who was there to tell me that Who is there now to go forth and tell it to the millions who have suffered and doubted and despaired like me and turn the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just before the great and terrible day of the Lord come Again I ask—who will go forth and preach that Gospel and save his native land
But as I said before I read and steadily In the first place I for the first time in my life studied Shakspeare throughout and found out now the treasure which I had overlooked I assure my readers I am not going to give a lecture on him here as I was minded to have done Only as I am asking questions who will write us a Peoples Commentary on Shakspeare
Then I waded making copious notes and extracts through the whole of Hume and Hallams Middle Ages and Constitutional History and found them barren to my soul When to ask a third and last question will some man of the spirit of Carlyle—one who is not ashamed to acknowledge the intervention of a God a Providence even of a devil in the affairs of men—arise and write a Peoples History of England
Then I laboured long months at learning French for the mere purpose of reading French political economy after my liberation But at last in my impatience I wrote to Sandy to send me Proudhon and Louis Blanc on the chance of their passing the good chaplains censorship—and behold they passed He had never heard their names He was I suspect utterly ignorant of French and afraid of exposing his ignorance by venturing to criticise As it was I was allowed peaceable possession of them till within a few months of my liberation with such consequences as may be imagined and then to his unfeigned terror and horror he discovered in some periodical that he had been leaving in my hands books which advocated the destruction of property and therefore in his eyes of all which is moral or sacred in earth or heaven I gave them up without a struggle so really painful was the good souls concern and the reproaches which he heaped not on me—he never reproached me in his life—but on himself for having so neglected his duty
Then I read hard for a few months at physical science—at Zoology and Botany and threw it aside again in bitterness of heart It was too bitter to be tantalized with the description of Nature's wondrous forms and I there a prisoner between those four white walls
Then I set to work to write an autobiography—at least to commit to paper in regular order the most striking incidents and conversations which I could recollect and which I had noted down as they occurred in my diary From that source I have drawn nearly the whole of my history up to this point For the rest I must trust to memory—and indeed the strange deeds and sufferings and yet stranger revelations of the last few months have branded themselves deep enough upon my brain I need not hope or fear that aught of them should slip my memory
So went the weary time Week after week month after month summer after summer I scored the days off like a lonely school boy on the pages of a calendar and day by day I went to my window and knelt there gazing at the gable and the cedartree That was my only recreation Sometimes at first my eyes used to wander over the wide prospect of rich lowlands and farms and hamlets and I used to amuse myself with conjectures about the people who lived in them and walked where they liked on Gods earth but soon I hated to look at the country its perpetual change and progress mocked the dreary sameness of my dungeon It was bitter maddening to see the grey boughs grow green with leaves and the green fade to autumnal yellow and the grey boughs reappear again and I still there The dark sleeping fallows bloomed with emerald blades of corn and then the corn grew deep and crisp and blackened before the summer breeze in waves of shadow as Mr Tennyson says in one of his most exquisite lyrics and then the fields grew white to harvest day by day and I saw the rows of sheaves rise one by one and the carts crawling homeward under their load I could almost hear the merry voices of the children round them—children that could go into the woods and pick wild flowers and I still there No—I would look at nothing but the gable and the cedartree and the tall cathedral towers there was no change in them—they did not laugh at me
But she who lived beneath them Months and seasons crawled along and yet no sign or hint of her I was forgotten forsaken And yet I gazed and gazed I could not forget her I could not forget what she had been to me Eden was still there though I was shut out from it for ever and so like a widower over the grave of her he loves morning and evening I watched the gable and the cedartree
And my cousin Ah that was the thought the only thought which made my life intolerable What might he not be doing in the meantime I knew his purpose I knew his power True I had never seen a hint a glance which could have given him hope but he had three whole years to win her in—three whole years and I fettered helpless absent Fool could I have won her if I had been free At least I would have tried we would have fought it fairly out on even ground we would have seen which was the strongest respectability and cunning or the simplicity of genius But now—And I tore at the bars of the window and threw myself on the floor of my cell and longed to die
CHAPTER XXXI
THE NEW CHURCH
In a poor suburb of the city which I could see well enough from my little window a new Gothic church was building When I first took up my abode in the cell it was just begun—the walls had hardly risen above the neighbouring sheds and gardenfences But month after month I had watched it growing I had seen one window after another filled with tracery one buttress after another finished off with its carved pinnacle then I had watched the skeleton of the roof gradually clothed in tiling and then the glazing of the windows—some of them painted I could see from the iron network which was placed outside them the same day Then the doors were put up—were they going to finish that handsome tower No it was left with its wooden cap I suppose for further funds But the nave and the deep chancel behind it were all finished and surmounted by a cross—and beautifully enough the little sanctuary looked in the virginpurity of its spotless freestone For eighteen months I watched it grow before my eyes—and I was still in my cell
And then there was a grand procession of surplices and lawn sleeves and among them I fancied I distinguished the old deans stately figure and turned my head away and looked again and fancied I distinguished another figure—it must have been mere imagination—the distance was far too great for me to identify any one but I could not get out of my head the fancy—say rather the instinct—that it was my cousins and that it was my cousin whom I saw daily after that coming out and going in—when the bell rang to morning and evening prayers—for there were daily services there and saints day services and Lent services and three services on a Sunday and six or seven on Good Friday and Easterday The little musical bell above the chancelarch seemed always ringing and still that figure haunted me like a nightmare ever coming in and going out about its priestly calling—and I still in my cell If it should be he—so close to her I shuddered at the thought and just because it was so intolerable it clung to me and tormented me and kept me awake at nights till I became utterly unable to study quietly and spent hours at the narrow window watching for the very figure I loathed to see
And then a Gothic schoolhouse rose at the churchyard end and troops of children poured in and out and women came daily for alms and when the frosts came on every morning I saw a crowd and soup carried away in pitchers and clothes and blankets given away the giving seemed endless boundless and I thought of the times of the Roman Empire and the sportula when the poor had got to live upon the alms of the rich more and more year by year—till they devoured their own devourers and the end came and I shuddered And yet it was a pleasant sight as every new church is to the healthyminded man let his religious opinions be what they may A fresh centre of civilization mercy comfort for weary hearts relief from frost and hunger a fresh centre of instruction humanizing disciplining however meagre in my eyes to hundreds of little savage spirits altogether a pleasant sight even to me there in my cell And I used to wonder at the wasted power of the Church—her almost entire monopoly of the pulpits the schools the alms of England and then thank Heaven somewhat prematurely that she knew and used so little her vast latent power for the destruction of liberty
Or for its realization
Ay that is the question We shall not see it solved—at least I never shall
But still that figure haunted me all through that winter I saw it chatting with old women patting childrens heads walking to the church with ladies sometimes with a tiny tripping figure—I did not dare to let myself fancy who that might be
December passed and January came I had now only two months more before my deliverance One day I seemed to myself to have passed a whole life in that narrow room and the next the years and months seemed short and blank as a nights sleep on waking and there was no salient point in all my memory since that last sight of Lillians smile and the faces and the window whirling round me as I fell
At last a letter came from Mackaye Ye speired for news o your cousin—an I find hes a neebour o yours cad to a new kirk i the city o your captivity—an na stickit minister he makes forbye hes ane o these new Puseyite sectarians to judge by your uncles report I met the auld bailiebodie on the street and was gaun to pass him by but he was sae fou o good news he could na but stop an ha a crack wi me on politics for we ha helpit thegither in certain municipal clamjamfries o late An he told me your cousin wins honour fast an maun surely die a bishop—puir bairn An besides that hes gaun to be married the spring I dinna mind the leddys name but theres tocher wi lass o his Ill warrant Hes na laird o Cockpen for a penniless lass wi a long pedigree
As I sat meditating over this news—which made the torment of suspicion and suspense more intolerable than ever—behold a postscript added some two days after
Oh Oh Sic news gran news news to make baith the ears o him that heareth it to tingle God is God an no the deevil after a Louis Philippe is doun—doun doun like a dog and the republics proclaimed an the auld villain here in England they say a wanderer an a beggar I ha sent ye the paper o the day Ps—73 37 12 Oh the Psalms are full ot Never say the Bibles no true mair Ive been unco faithless mysel God forgive me I got grieving to see the wicked in sic prosperity I did na gang into the sanctuary eneugh an therefore I could na see the end of these men—how He does take them up suddenly after all an cast them doun vanish they do perish an come to a fearful end Yea like as a dream when one awaketh so shalt thou make their image to vanish out of the city Oh but its a day o God An yet Im sair afraid for they puir feckless French I ha na faith ye ken in the Celtic blude an its spirit o lees The Saxon spirit o covetize is a grewsome housefiend and saes our Norse speerit o shifts an dodges but the spirit o lees is warse Puir lustful Reubens that they are—unstable as water they shall not excel Well well—after all there is a God that judgeth the earth an when a man kens that hes learnt eneugh to last him till he dies
CHAPTER XXXII
THE TOWER OF BABEL
A glorious people vibrated again
The lightning of the nations Liberty
From heart to heart from tower to tower oer France
Scattering contagious fire into the sky
Gleamed My soul spurned the chains of its dismay
And in the rapid plumes of song
Clothed itself sublime and strong
Sublime and strong Alas not so An outcast heartless faithless and embittered I went forth from my prison—But yet Louis Philippe had fallen And as I whirled back to Babylon and want discontent and discord my heart was light my breath came thick and fierce—The incubus of France had fallen and from land to land like the Beaconfire which leaped from peak to peak proclaiming Troys downfall passed on the glare of burning idols the crash of falling anarchies Was I mad sinful Both—and yet neither Was I mad and sinful if on my return to my old haunts amid the grasp of loving hands and the caresses of those who called me in their honest flattery a martyr and a hero—what things as Carlyle says men will fall down and worship in their extreme need—was I mad and sinful if daring hopes arose and desperate words were spoken and wild eyes read in wild eyes the thoughts they dare not utter Liberty has risen from the dead and we too will be free
Yes mad and sinful therefore are we as we are Yet God has forgiven us—perhaps so have those men whose forgiveness is alone worth having
Liberty And is that word a dream a lie the watchword only of rebellious fiends as bigots say even now Our forefathers spoke not so—
The shadow of her coming fell
On Saxon Alfreds olivetinctured brow
Had not freedom progressive expanding descending been the glory and the strength of England Were Magna Charta and the Habeas Corpus Act Hampdens resistance to shipmoney and the calm righteous might of 1688—were they all futilities and fallacies Ever downwards for seven hundred years welling from the heavenwatered mountain peaks of wisdom had spread the stream of liberty The nobles had gained their charter from John the middle classes from William of Orange was not the time at hand when from a queen more gentle charitable upright spotless than had ever sat on the throne of England the working masses in their turn should gain their Charter
If it was given the gift was hers if it was demanded to the uttermost the demand would be made not on her but on those into whose hands her power had passed the avowed representatives neither of the Crown nor of the people but of the very commercial class which was devouring us
Such was our dream Insane and wicked were the passions which accompanied it insane and wicked were the means we chose and God in his mercy to us rather than to Mammon triumphant in his iniquity fattening his heart even now for a spiritual day of slaughter more fearful than any physical slaughter which we in our folly had prepared for him—God frustrated them
We confess our sins Shall the Chartist alone be excluded from the promise If we confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness
And yet were there no excuses for us I do not say for myself—and yet three years of prison might be some excuse for a soured and harshened spirit—but I will not avail myself of the excuse for there were men stancher Chartists than ever I had been—men who had suffered not only imprisonment but loss of health and loss of fortune men whose influence with the workmen was far wider than my own and whose temptations were therefore all the greater who manfully and righteously kept themselves aloof from all those frantic schemes and now reap their reward in being acknowledged as the true leaders of the artizans while the mere preachers of sedition are scattered to the winds
But were there no excuses for the mass Was there no excuse in the spirit with which the English upper classes regarded the continental revolutions No excuse in the undisguised dislike fear contempt which they expressed for that very sacred name of Liberty which had been for ages the pride of England and her laws—
The old laws of England they
Whose reverend heads with age are grey—
Children of a wiser day—
And whose solemn voice must be
Thine own echo Liberty
for which according to the latest improvements is now substituted a bureaucracy of despotic commissions Shame upon those who sneered at the very name of her to whom they owed the wealth they idolize who cry down liberty because God has given it to them in such priceless abundance boundless as the sunshine and the air of heaven that they are become unconscious of it as of the elements by which they live Woe to those who despise the gift of God Woe to those who have turned His grace into a cloak for tyranny who like the Jews of old have trampled under foot His covenant at the very moment that they were asserting their exclusive right to it and denying his allembracing love
And were there no excuses too in the very arguments which nineteentwentieths of the public press used to deter us from following the example of the Continent If there had been one word of sympathy with the deep wrongs of France Germany Italy Hungary—one attempt to discriminate the righteous and Godinspired desire of freedom from mans furious and selfwilled perversion of it we would have listened to them But instead what was the first last cardinal crowning argument—The cost of sedition Revolutions interfered with trade and therefore they were damnable Interfere with the food and labour of the millions The millions would take the responsibility of that upon themselves If the party of order cares so much for the millions why had they left them what they are No it was with the profits of the few that revolutions interfered with the Divine right not so much of kings but of moneymaking They hampered Mammon the very fiend who is devouring the masses The one end and aim of existence was the maintenance of order—of peace and room to make money in And therefore Louis spies might make France one great inquisitionhell German princelets might sell their country piecemeal to French or Russian the Hungarian constitution almost the counterpart of our own might be sacrificed at the will of an idiot or villain Papal misgovernment might continue to render Rome a worse den of thieves than even Papal superstition could have made it without the addition of tyranny but Order must be maintained for how else could the few make money out of the labour of the many These were their own arguments Whether they were likely to conciliate the workman to the powers that be by informing him that those powers were avowedly the priests of the very system which was crushing him let the reader judge
The maintenance of order—of the order of disorder—that was to be the new God before whom the working classes were to bow in spellbound awe an idol more despicable and empty than even that old divine right of tyrants newly applied by some wellmeaning but illogical personages not merely as of old to hereditary sovereigns but to Louis Philippes usurers upstarts—why not hereafter to demagogues Blindfold and desperate bigots who would actually thus in the imbecility of terror deify that very right of the physically strongest and cunningest which if anything is antichrist itself That argument against sedition the workmen heard and recollecting 1688 went on their way such as it was unheeding
One word more even at the risk of offending many whom I should be very sorry to offend and I leave this hateful discussion Let it ever be remembered that the working classes considered themselves deceived cajoled by the passers of the Reform Bill that they cherished—whether rightly or wrongly it is now too late to ask—a deeprooted grudge against those who had as they thought made their hopes and passions a steppingstone towards their own selfish ends They were told to support the Reform Bill not only on account of its intrinsic righteousness—which God forbid that I should deny—but because it was the first of a glorious line of steps towards their enfranchisement and now the very men who told them this talked peremptorily of finality showed themselves the most dogged and careless of conservatives and poohpoohed away every attempt at further enlargement of the suffrage They were told to support it as the remedy for their own social miseries and behold those miseries were year by year becoming deeper more widespread more hopeless their entreaties for help and mercy in 1842 and at other times had been lazily laid by unanswered and almost the only practical efforts for their deliverance had been made by a Tory nobleman the honoured and beloved Lord Ashley They found that they had in helping to pass the Reform Bill only helped to give power to the two very classes who crushed them—the great labour kings and the small shopkeepers that they had blindly armed their oppressors with the additional weapon of an everincreasing political majority They had been told too let that never be forgotten that in order to carry the Reform Bill sedition itself was lawful they had seen the mastermanufacturers themselves give the signal for the plugriots by stopping their mills Their vanity ferocity sense of latent and fettered power pride of numbers and physical strength had been nattered and pampered by those who now only talked of grapeshot and bayonets They had heard the Reform Bill carried by the threats of men of rank and power that Manchester should march upon London Were their masters then to have a monopoly in sedition as in everything else What had been fair in order to compel the Reform Bill must surely be fairer still to compel the fulfilment of Reform Bill pledges And so imitating the example of those whom they fancied had first used and then deserted them they in their madness concocted a rebellion not primarily against the laws and constitution of their land but against Mammon—against that accursed system of competition slavery of labour absorption of the small capitalists by the large ones and of the workman by all which is and was and ever will be their internecine foe Silly and sanguinary enough were their schemes God knows and bootless enough had they succeeded for nothing nourishes in the revolutionary atmosphere but that lowest embodiment of Mammon the black pool of Agio and its moneygamblers But the battle remains still to be fought the struggle is internecine only no more with weapons of flesh and blood but with a mightier weapon—with that association which is the true bane of Mammon—the embodiment of brotherhood and love
We should have known that before the tenth of April Most true reader—but wrath is blindness You too surely have read more wisdom than you have practised yet seeing that you have your Bible and perhaps too Mills Political Economy Have you perused therein the priceless Chapter On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes If not let me give you the reference—vol ii p 315 of the Second Edition Read it thou selfsatisfied Mammon and perpend for it is both a prophecy and a doom
But the reader may ask how did you with your experience of the reason honesty moderation to be expected of mobs join in a plan which if it had succeeded must have let loose on those who had in London the whole flood of those who had not
The reader shall hear My story may be instructive as a type of the feelings of thousands beside me
It was the night after I had returned from D sitting in Crossthwaites little room I had heard with mingled anxiety and delight the plans of my friends They were about to present a monster petition in favour of the Charter to accompany it en masse to the door of the House of Commons and if it was refused admittance—why then ulterior measures were the only hope And they will refuse it said Crossthwaite theyre going I hear to revive some old law or other that forbids processions within such and such a distance of the House of Commons Let them forbid To carry arms to go in public procession to present petitions openly instead of having them made a humbug of by being laid on the table unopened by some careless member—theyre our rights and well have them Theres no use mincing the matter its just like the old fable of the farmer and his wheat—if we want it reaped we must reap it ourselves Public opinion and the pressure from without are the only things which have carried any measure in England for the last twenty years Neither Whigs nor Tories deny it the governed govern their governors—thats the ordre du jour just now—and well have our turn at it Well give those House of Commons oligarchs—those tools of the squires and shopkeepers—well give them a taste of pleasure from without as shall make the bar of the house crack again And then to be under arms day and night till the Charters granted
And if it is refused
Fight thats the word and no other Theres no other hope No Charter—No social reforms We must give them ourselves for no one else will Look there and judge for yourself
He pulled a letter out from among his papers and threw it across to me
Whats this
That came while you were in gaol There dont want many words about it We sent up a memorial to government about the army and police clothing We told em how it was the lowest most tyrannous most illpaid of all the branches of slopmaking how men took to it only when they were starved out of everything else We entreated them to have mercy on us—entreated them to interfere between the merciless contractors and the poor wretches on whose flesh and blood contractors sweaters and colonels were all fattening and theres the answer we got Look at it read it Again and again Ive been minded to placard it on the walls that all the world might see the might and the mercies of the government Read it Sorry to say that it is utterly out of the power of her Majestys s to interfere—as the question of wages rests entirely between the contractor and the workmen
He lies I said If it did the workmen might put a pistol to the contractors head and say—You shall not tempt the poor needy greedy starving workers to their own destruction and the destruction of their class you shall not offer these murderous poisonous prices If we saw you offering our neighbour a glass of laudanum we would stop you at all risks—and we will stop you now No no John the question dont lie between workman and contractor but between workman and contractorplusgrapeandbayonets
Look again Theres worse comes after that If government did interfere it would not benefit the workman as his rate of wages depends entirely on the amount of competition between the workmen themselves Yes my dear children you must eat each other we are far too fond parents to interfere with so delightful an amusement Curse them—sleek hardhearted impotent donothings They confess themselves powerless against competition—powerless against the very devil that is destroying us faster and faster every year They cant help us on a single point They cant check population and if they could they cant get rid of the population which exists They darent give us a comprehensive emigration scheme They darent lift a finger to prevent gluts in the labour market They darent interfere between slave and slave between slave and tyrant They are cowards and like cowards they shall fall
Ay—like cowards they shall fall I answered and from that moment I was a rebel and a conspirator
And will the country join us
The cities will never mind the country They are too weak to resist their own tyrants—and they are too weak to resist us The countrys always drivelling in the background A countrypartys sure to be a party of imbecile bigots Nobody minds them
I laughed It always was so John When Christianity first spread it was in the cities—till a pagan a villager got to mean a heathen for ever and ever
And so it was in the French revolution when Popery had died out of all the rest of France the priests and the aristocrats still found their dupes in the remote provinces
The sign of a dying system that to be sure Woe to Toryism and the Church of England and everything else when it gets to boasting that its stronghold is still the hearts of the agricultural poor It is the cities John the cities where the light dawns first—where man meets man and spirit quickens spirit and intercourse breeds knowledge and knowledge sympathy and sympathy enthusiasm combination power irresistible while the agriculturists remain ignorant selfish weak because they are isolated from each other Let the country go The towns shall win the Charter for England And then for social reform sanitary reform ædile reform cheap food interchange of free labour liberty equality and brotherhood for ever
Such was our Babeltower whose top should reach to heaven To understand the allurement of that dream you must have lain like us for years in darkness and the pit You must have struggled for bread for lodging for cleanliness for water for education—all that makes life worth living for—and found them becoming year by year more hopelessly impossible if not to yourself yet still to the millions less gifted than yourself you must have sat in darkness and the shadow of death till you are ready to welcome any ray of light even though it should be the glare of a volcano
CHAPTER XXXIII
A PATRIOTS REWARD
I never shall forget one evenings walk as Crossthwaite and I strode back together from the Convention We had walked on some way arm in arm in silence under the crushing and embittering sense of having something to conceal—something which if those who passed us so carelessly in the street had known— It makes a villain and a savage of a man that consciousness of a dark hateful secret And it was a hateful one—a dark and desperate necessity which we tried to call by noble names that faltered on our lips as we pronounced them for the spirit of God was not in us; and instead of bright hope and the clear fixed lodestar of duty weltered in our imaginations a wild possible future of tumult and flame and blood
It must be done—it shall be done—it will be done burst out John at last in that positive excited tone which indicated a half disbelief of his own words Ive been reading Macerone on streetwarfare and I see the way as clear as day
I felt nothing but the dogged determination of despair It must be tried if the worst comes to the worst—but I have no hope I read Somervilles answer to that Colonel Macerone Ten years ago he showed it was impossible We cannot stand against artillery we have no arms
Ill tell you where to buy plenty Theres a man Power or Bower hes sold hundreds in the last few days and he understands the matter He tells us were certain safe There are hundreds of young men in the government offices ready to join if we do but succeed at first It all depends on that The first hour settles the fate of a revolution
If we succeed yes—the cowardly world will always side with the conquering party and we shall have every pickpocket and ruffian in our wake plundering in the name of liberty and order
Then well shoot them like dogs as the French did Mort aux voleurs shall be the word
Unless they shoot us The French had a national guard who had property to lose and took care of it The shopkeepers here will be all against us theyll all be sworn in special constables to a man and between them and the soldiers we shall have three to one upon us
Oh that Power assures me the soldiers will fraternize He says there are three regiments at least have promised solemnly to shoot their officers and give up their arms to the mob
Very important if true—and very scoundrelly too Id sooner be shot myself by fair fighting than see officers shot by cowardly treason
Well its ugly I like fair play as well as any man But it cant be done There must be a surprise a coup de main as the French say poor Crossthwaite was always quoting French in those days Once show our strength—burst upon the tyrants like a thunderclap and then—
Men of England heirs of glory
Heroes of unwritten story
Rise shake off the chains like dew
Which in sleep have fallen on you
Ye are many they are few
Thats just what I am afraid they are not Lets go and find out this man
Power and hear his authority for the soldierstory Who knows him
Why Mike Kelly and he had been a deal together of late Kellys a true heart now—a true Irishman ready for anything Those Irish are the boys after all—though I dont deny they do bluster and have their way a little too much in the Convention But still Irelands wrongs are Englands We have the same oppressors We must make common cause against the tyrants
I wish to Heaven they would just have stayed at home and ranted on the other side of the water they had their own way there and no Mammonite middleclass to keep them down and yet they never did an atom of good Their eloquence is all bombast and whats more Crossthwaite though there are some fine fellows among them ninetenths are liars—liars in grain and you know it—
Crossthwaite turned angrily to me Why you are getting as reactionary as old Mackaye himself
I am not—and he is not I am ready to die on a barricade tomorrow if it comes to that I havent six months lease of life—I am going into consumption and a bullet is as easy a death as spitting up my lungs piecemeal But I despise these Irish because I cant trust them—they cant trust each other—they cant trust themselves You know as well as I that you cant get common justice done in Ireland because you can depend upon no mans oath You know as well as I that in Parliament or out nine out of ten of them will stick at no lie even if it has been exposed and refuted fifty times over provided it serves the purpose of the moment and I often think that after all Mackayes right and whats the matter with Ireland is just that and nothing else—that from the nobleman in his castle to the beggar on his dunghill they are a nation of liars John Crossthwaite
Sandys a prejudiced old Scotchman
Sandys a wiser man than you or I and you know it
Oh I dont deny that but hes getting old and I think he has been failing in his mind of late
Im afraid hes failing in his health he has never been the same man since they hooted him down in John Street But he hasnt altered in his opinions one jot and Ill tell you what—I believe hes right Ill die in this matter like a man because its the cause of liberty but Ive fearful misgivings about it just because Irishmen are at the head of it
Of course they are—they have the deepest wrongs and that makes them most earnest in the cause of right The sympathy of suffering as they say themselves has bound them to the English working man against the same oppressors
Then let them fight those oppressors at home and well do the same thats the true way to show sympathy Charity begins at home They are always crying Ireland for the Irish why cant they leave England for the English
Youre envious of OConnors power
Say that again John Crossthwaite and we part for ever And I threw off his arm indignantly
No—but—dont lets quarrel my dear old fellow—now that perhaps perhaps we may never meet again—but I cant bear to hear the Irish abused Theyre noble enthusiastic generous fellows If we English had half as warm hearts we shouldnt be as we are now and OConnors a glorious man I tell you Just think of him the descendant of the ancient kings throwing away his rank his name all he had in the world for the cause of the suffering millions
Thats a most aristocratic speech John said I smiling in spite of my gloom So you keep a leader because hes descended from ancient kings do you I should prefer him just because he was not—just because he was a working man and come of workmens blood We shall see whether hes stanch after all To my mind little Cuffys worth a great deal more as far as earnestness goes
Oh Cuffys a lowbred uneducated fellow
Aristocrat again John said I as we went upstairs to Kellys room And
Crossthwaite did not answer
There was so great a hubbub inside Kellys room of English French and Irish all talking at once that we knocked at intervals for full five minutes unheard by the noisy crew and I in despair was trying the handle which was fast when to my astonishment a heavy blow was struck on the panel from the inside and the point of a sharp instrument driven right through close to my knees with the exclamation—
What do you think o that now in a policemans breadbasket
I think answered I as loud as I dare and as near the dangerous door if I intended really to use it I wouldnt make such a fools noise about it
There was a dead silence the door was hastily opened and Kellys nose poked out while we in spite of the horribleness of the whole thing could not help laughing at his face of terror Seeing who we were he welcomed us in at once into a miserable apartment full of pikes and daggers brandished by some dozen miserable ragged halfstarved artizans Threefourths I saw at once were slopworking tailors There was a bloused and bearded Frenchman or two but the majority were as was to have been expected the oppressed the starved the untaught the despairing the insane the dangerous classes which society creates and then shrinks in horror like Frankenstein from the monster her own clumsy ambition has created Thou Frankenstein Mammon hast thou not had warnings enough either to make thy machines like men or stop thy bungling and let God make them for Himself
I will not repeat what I heard there There is many a frantic ruffian of that night now sitting in his right mind—though not yet clothed—waiting for Gods deliverance rather than his own
We got Kelly out of the room into the street and began inquiring of him the whereabouts of this said Bower or Power He didnt know—the featherheaded Irishman that he was—Faix bytheby hed forgotten—an he went to look for him at the place he tould him and they didnt know sich a one there—
Oh oh Mr Power has an alibi then Perhaps an alias too
He didnt know his name rightly Some said it was Brown but he was a broth of a boy—a thrue peoples man Bedad he gov away arms afthen and afthen to them that couldnt buy em An hes as freespoken—och but hes put me into the confidence Come down the street a bit and Ill tell yees—Ill be LordLieutenant o Dublin Castle meself if it succades as shure as theres no snakes in ould Ireland an revenge her wrongs ankle deep in the bhlood o the Saxon Whirroo for the marthyred memory o the three hundred thousint vargens o Wexford
Hold your tongue you ass said Crossthwaite as he clapped his hand over his mouth expecting every moment to find us all three in the Rhadamanthine grasp of a policeman while I stood laughing as people will for mere disgust at the ridiculous which almost always intermingles with the horrible
At last out it came—
Bedad were going to do it Londons to be set o fire in seventeen places at the same moment an Im to light two of them to me own self and make a holycrust—ay thats the word—o Irelands scorpions to sting themselves to death in circling flame—
You would not do such a villanous thing cried we both at once
Bedad but I wont harm a hair o their heads Shure well save the women and childer alive and run for the fireingins our blessed selves and then out with the pikes and seize the Bank and the Tower—
An av I lives I lives victhorious
An av I dies my soul in glory is
Love fa—a—are—well
I was getting desperate the whole thing seemed at once so horrible and so impossible There must be some villanous trap at the bottom of it
If you dont tell me more about this fellow Power Mike said I Ill blow your brains out on the spot either you or he are villains And I valiantly pulled out my only weapon the door key and put it to his head
Och are you mad thin Hes a broth of a boy and Ill tell ye Shure he knows all about the redcoats case hes an arthillery man himself and thats the way hes found out his gran combustible
An artilleryman said John He told me he was a writer for the press
Bedad thin hes mistaken himself intirely for he tould me with his own mouth And Ill show you the thing he sowld me as is to do it Shure itll set fire to the stones o the street av you pour a bit vitriol on it
Set fire to the stones I must see that before I believe it
Shure an ye shall then Wherell I buy a bit Sorra a shop is there open this time o night an troth I forgot the name o it intirely Poker o Moses but heres a bit in my pocket
And out of his tattered coattail he lugged a flask of powder and a lump of some cheap chemical salt whose name I have I am ashamed to say forgotten
Youre a pretty fellow to keep such things in the same pocket with gunpowder
Come along to Mackayes said Crossthwaite Ill see to the bottom of this Be hanged but I think the fellows a cursed mouchard—some government spy
Spy is he thin Och the thief o the world Ill stab him Ill murther him an burn the town afterwards all the same
Unless said I just as youve got your precious combustible to blaze off up he comes from behind the corner and gives you in charge to a policeman Its a villanous trap you miserable fool as sure as the moons in heaven
Upon my word I am afraid it is—and Im trapped too
Blood and turf thin its he that Ill trap thin Theres two million free and inlightened Irishmen in London to avenge my marthyrdom wi pikes and baggonets like raving salviges and blood for blood
Like savages indeed said I to Crossthwaite And pretty savage company we are keeping Liberty like poverty makes a man acquainted with strange companions
And whos made em savages Who has left them savages That the greatest nation of the earth has had Ireland in her hands three hundred years—and her people still to be savages—if that dont justify a revolution what does Why its just because these poor brutes are what they are that rebellion becomes a sacred duty Its for them—for such fools brutes as that there and the millions more like him and likely to remain like him and Ive made up my mind to do or die tomorrow
There was a grand halftruth distorted miscoloured in the words that silenced me for the time
We entered Mackayes door strangely enough at that time of night it stood wide open What could be the matter I heard loud voices in the inner room and ran forward calling his name when to my astonishment out past me rushed a tall man followed by a steaming kettle which missing him took full effect on Kellys chest as he stood in the entry filling his shoes with boiling water and producing a roar that might have been heard at Temple Bar
Whats the matter
Have I hit him said the old man in a state of unusual excitement
Bedad it was the man Power the cursed spy An just as I was going to slate the villain nately came the kittle and kilt me all over
Power Hes as many names as a pickpocket and as many callings too Ill warrant He came sneaking in to tell me the sogers were a ready to gie up their arms if Id come forward to them tomorrow So I tauld him sin he was so sure ot hed better gang and tak the arms himsel an then he let out hed been a policeman—
A policeman said both Crossthwaite and Kelly with strong expletives
A policeman doon in Manchester I thought I kenned his face fra the first And when the rascal saw hed let out too much he wanted to make out that hed been a along a spy for the Chartists while he was makin believe to be a spy o the goovernments Sae when he came that far I just up wi the het water and bleezed awa at him an noo I maun gang and het some mair for my drap toddy
Sandy had a little vitriol in the house so we took the combustible down into the cellar and tried it It blazed up but burnt the stone as much as the reader may expect We next tried it on a lump of wood It just scorched the place where it lay and then went out leaving poor Kelly perfectly frantic with rage terror and disappointment He dashed upstairs and out into the street on a wildgoose chase after the rascal and we saw no more of him that night
I relate a simple fact I am afraid—perhaps for the poor workmens sake I should say I am glad that it was not an unique one Villains of this kind both in April and in June mixed among the working men excited their worst passions by bloodthirsty declamations and extravagant promises of success sold them arms and then like the shameless wretch on whose evidence Cuffy and Jones were principally convicted bore witness against their own victims unblushingly declaring themselves to have been all along the tools of the government I entreat all those who disbelieve this apparently prodigious assertion to read the evidence given on the trial of the John Street conspirators and judge for themselves
The petitions filling faster than ever said Crossthwaite as that evening we returned to Mackayes little back room
Dirts plenty grumbled the old man who had settled himself again to his pipe with his feet on the fender and his head half way up the chimney
Now or never went on Crossthwaite without minding him now or never
The manufacturing districts seem more firm than ever
An words cheap commented Mackaye sotto voce
Well I said Heaven keep us from the necessity of ulterior measures
But what must be must
The government expect it I can tell you Theyre in a pitiable funk I hear One regiment is ordered to Uxbridge already because they darent trust it Theyll find soldiers are men I do believe after all
Men they are said Sandy an therefore theyll no be fools eneugh to stan by an see ye pu down a that is to build up ye yourselves dinna yet rightly ken what Men Ay an wi mair common sense in them than some that had mair opportunities
I think Ive settled everything went on Crossthwaite who seemed not to have heard the last speech—settled everything—for poor Katie I mean If anything happens to me she has friends at Cork—she thinks so at least—and theyd get her out to service somewhere—God knows And his face worked fearfully a minute
Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori said I
There are twa methods o fulfilling that saw Im thinkin Impreemis to shoot your neebour in secundis to hang yoursel
What do you mean by grumbling at the whole thing in this way Mr Mackaye Are you too going to shrink back from The Cause now that liberty is at the very doors
Ou then Im stanch eneuch I ha laid in my ain stock o weapons for the fecht at Armageddon
You dont mean it What have you got
A braw new halter an a muckle nail Theres a gran tough beam here ayont the ingle will haud me a crouse and cantie when the time comes
What on earth do you mean asked we both together
Ha ye looked into the monsterpetition
Of course we have and signed it too
Monster Ay ferlie Monstrum horrendum informe ingens cui lumen ademptum Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne Leeberty the bonnie lassie wi a sealghs fud to her Ill no sign it I dinna consort wi shoplifters an idiots an suckin bairns—wi long nose an short nose an pug nose an seventeen Deuks o Wellington let alone a bakers dizen o Queens Its no company that for a puir auld patriot
Why my dear Mackaye said I you know the Reform Bill petitions were just as bad
And the AntiCornlaw ones too for that matter said Crossthwaite You know we cant help accidents the petition will never be looked through
Its always been the plan with Whigs and Tories too
I ken that better than ye I guess
And isnt everything fair in a good cause said Crossthwaite
Desperate men really cant be so dainty
How lang ha ye learnit that deils lee Johnnie Ye were no o that mind five years agone lad Ha ye been to Exeter Hall the while As fair in the cause o Mammon in the cause o cheap bread that means cheap wages but in the cause o God—waes me that ever I suld see this day ower again ower again Like the dog to his vomit—just as it was ten twenty fifty year agone Ill just ha a petition a alane to mysel—I an a twa or three honest men Besides yere just eight days ower time wi it
What do you mean
Suld ha sent it in the 1st of April an no the 10th a fools day wud ha suited wi it ferlie
Mr Mackaye said Crossthwaite in a passion I shall certainly inform the Convention of your extraordinary language
Do laddie do then An tell em this too—and as he rose his whole face and figure assumed a dignity an awfulness which I had never seen before in him—tell them that ha driven out and an every one that daur speak a word o common sense or common humanity—them that stone the prophets an quench the Spirit o God and love a lie an them that mak the same—them that think to bring about the reign o love an britherhood wi pikes an vitriol bottles murther an blasphemy—tell em that ane o fourscore years and mair—ane that has grawn grey in the peoples cause—that sat at the feet o Cartwright an knelt by the deathbed o Rabbie Burns—ane that cheerit Burdett as he went to the Touer an spent his wee earnings for Hunt an Cobbett—ane that beheld the shaking o the nations in the Ninetythree and heard the birthshriek o a newborn world—ane that while he was yet a callant saw Liberty afar off an seeing her was glad as for a bonny bride an followed her through the wilderness for threescore weary waeful years—sends them the last message that eer hell send on airth tell em that theyre the slaves o warse than priests and kings—the slaves o their ain lusts an passions—the slaves o every loudtongued knave an mountebank thatll pamper them in their selfconceit and that the gude Godll smite em down and bring em to nought and scatter em abroad till they repent an get clean hearts and a richt speerit within them and learn His lesson that hes been trying to teach em this threescore years—that the cause o the people is the cause o Him that made the people an wae to them that tak the deevils tools to do his wark wi Gude guide us—What was yon Alton laddie
What
But I saw a spunk o fire fa into your bosom Ive na faith in siccan heathen omens but auld carlins wud say its a sign o death within the year—save ye from it my puir misguidit bairn Aiblins a fireflaught o my een it might be—Ive had them unco often the day—
And he stooped down to the fire and began to light his pipe muttering to himself—
Saxty years o madness saxty years o madness How lang O Lord before thou bring these puir daft bodies to their richt mind again
We stood watching him and interchanging looks—expecting something we knew not what
Suddenly he sank forward on his knees with his hands on the bars of the grate we rushed forward and caught him up He turned his eyes up to me speechless with a ghastly expression one side of his face was all drawn aside—and helpless as a child he let us lift him to his bed and there he lay staring at the ceiling
Four weary days passed by—it was the night of the ninth of April In the evening of that day his speech returned to him on a sudden—he seemed uneasy about something and several times asked Katie the day of the month
Before the tenth—ay we maun pray for that I doubt but Im ower hearty yet—I canna bide to see the shame o that day—
Na—Ill tak no potions nor pills—gin it were na for scruples o conscience Id apocartereeze athegither after the manner o the ancient philosophers But its no lawful I misdoubt to starve onesel
Here is the doctor said Katie
Doctor Wha cad for doctors Canst thou administer to a mind diseased Can ye tak long nose an short nose an snub nose an seventeen Deuks o Wellington out o my puddins Will your castor oil an your calomel an your croton do that Dye ken a medicamentum thatll put brains into workmen— Non tribus Anticyrus Tons o hellebore—acres o strait waistcoats—a hall policeforce o headdoctors winna do it Juvat insanire—this their way is their folly as auld Benjamin o Tudela saith of the heathen Heigho Forty years lang was he grevit wi this generation an swore in his wrath that they suldna enter into his rest Pulse tongue ay shak your lugs an tak your fee an dinna keep auld folk out o their graves Can ye sing
The doctor meekly confessed his inability
Thats pity—or Id gar ye sing Auldlangsyne—
We twa hae paidlit in the burn—
Aweel aweel aweel—
Weary and solemn was that long night as we sat there with the crushing weight of the morrow on our mind, watching by that deathbed listening hour after hour to the rambling soliloquies of the old man as he babbled of green fields yet I verily believe that to all of us especially to poor little Katie the active present interest of tending him kept us from going all but mad with anxiety and excitement But it was weary work—and yet too strangely interesting as at times there came scraps of old Scotch lovepoetry contrasting sadly with the grim withered lips that uttered them—hints to me of some sorrow long since suffered but never healed I had never heard him allude to such an event before but once on the first day of our acquaintance
I went to the kirk
My luve sat afore me
I trow my twa een
Tauld him a sweet story
Aye wakin o—
Wakin aye and weary—
I thocht a the kirk
Saw me and my deary
Aye wakin o—Do ye think noo we sall ha knowledge in the next warld o them we loved on earth I askit that same o Rab Burns ance an he said puir chiel he didna ken ower well we maun bide and see—bide and see—thats the gran philosophy o life after a Aiblins folkll ken their true freens there an therell be na mair luve coft and sauld for siller—
Gear and tocher is needit nane
I the country whaur my luve is gane
Gin I had a true freen the noo to gang down the wynd an find if it war but an auld Abraham o a bluegown wi a bit crowd or a fizzlepipe to play me the Bush aboon Traquair Na na na its singing the Lords song in a strange land that wad be an I hope the applications no irreverent for ane that was rearit amang the hills o God an the trees o the forest which he hath planted
Oh the broom and the bonny yellow broom
The broom o the Cowdenknowes
Hech but she wud lilt that bonnily
Did ye ever gang listering saumons by nicht Ou but its braw sport wi the scars an the birks a glowering out bludered i the torchlight and the bonnie hizzies skelping an skirling on the bank—
There was a gran leddy a bonny leddy came in and talked like an angel o God to puir auld Sandy anent the salvation o his soul But I tauld her no to fash hersel Its no my view o human life that a mans sent into the warld just to save his soul an creep out again An I said I wad leave the savin o my soul to Him that made my soul it was in richt gude keepin there Id warrant An then she was unco fleyed when she found I didna haud wi the Athanasian creed An I tauld her na if He that died on cross was sic a ane as she and I teuk him to be there was na that pride nor spite in him be sure to send a puir auld sinful guideless body to eternal fire because he didna athegither understand the honour due to his name
Who was this lady
He did not seem to know and Katie had never heard of her before—some district visitor or other
I sair misdoubt but the auld creeds are in the right anent Him after a Id gie muckle to think it—theres na comfort as it is Aiblins there might be a wee comfort in that for a poor auld wornout patriot But its ower late to change I tauld her that too ance Its ower late to put new wine into auld bottles I was unco drawn to the high doctrines ance when I was a bit laddie an sat in the wee kirk by my minnie an my daddie—a richt stern auld Cameronian sort o body he was too but as I grew and grew the bed was ower short for a man to stretch himsel thereon an the plaidie ower strait for a man to fauld himself therein and so I had to gang my gate a naked in the matter o formulæ as Maister Tummas has it
Ah do send for a priest or a clergyman said Katie who partly understood his meaning
Parson He canna pit new skin on auld scars Na bit stickit curateladdie for me to gang argumentin wi ane thats auld enough to be his granfather When the parsons will hear me anent Gods people then Ill hear them anent God
—Sae Im wearing awa Jean
To the land o the leal—
Gin I ever get thither Katie here hauds wi purgatory ye ken where souls are burnt clean again—like baccy pipes—
When Bazorbrigg is ower and past
Every night and alle
To Whinny Muir thou comest at last
And God receive thy sawle
Gin hosen an shoon thou gavest nane
Every night and alle
The whins shall pike thee intil the bane
And God receive thy sawle
Amen Theres mair things aboon as well as below than are dreamt o in our philosophy At least whereer I go Ill meet no long nose nor short nose nor snub nose patriots there nor puir gowks stealing the deils tools to do Gods wark wi Out among the eternities an the realities—its no that dreary outlook after a to find truth an fact—naught but truth an fact—een beside the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched
God forbid said Katie
God do whatsoever shall please Him Katie—an thats aye gude like
Himsel Shall no the Judge of all the earth do right—right—right
And murmuring that word of words to himself over and over more and more faintly he turned slowly over and seemed to slumber—
Some half hour passed before we tried to stir him He was dead
And the candles waned grey and the great light streamed in through every crack and cranny and the sun had risen on the Tenth of April What would be done before the sun had set
What would be done Just what we had the might to do and therefore according to the formula on which we were about to act that mights are rights just what we had a right to do—nothing Futility absurdity vanity and vexation of spirit I shall make my next a short chapter It is a day to be forgotten—and forgiven
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE TENTH OF APRIL
And he was gone at last Kind women whom his unknown charities had saved from shame laid him out duly and closed his eyes and bound up that face that never would beam again with genial humour those lips that would never again speak courage and counsel to the sinful the oppressed the forgotten And there he lay the old warrior dead upon his shield worn out by long years of manful toil in The Peoples Cause and saddest thought of all by disappointment in those for whom he spent his soul True he was aged no one knew how old He had said more than eighty years but we had shortened his life and we knew it He would never see that deliverance for which he had been toiling ever since the days when as a boy he had listened to Tooke and Cartwright and the patriarchs of the peoples freedom Bitter bitter were our thoughts, and bitter were our tears as Crossthwaite and I stood watching that beloved face now in death refined to a grandeur to a youthful simplicity and delicacy which we had never seen on it before—calm and strong—the square jaws set firm even in death—the lower lip still clenched above the upper as if in a divine indignation and everlasting protest even in the grave against the devourers of the earth Yes he was gone—the old lion worn out with many wounds dead in his cage Where could we replace him There were gallant men amongst us eloquent wellread earnest—men whose names will ring through this land ere long—men who had boon taught wisdom even as he by the sinfulness the apathy the ingratitude as well as by the sufferings of their fellows But where should we two find again the learning the moderation the long experience above all the more than womens tenderness of him whom we had lost And at that time too of all others Alas we had despised his counsel wayward and fierce we would have none of his reproof and now God has withdrawn him from us the righteous was taken away from the evil to come For we knew that evil was coming We felt all along that we should not succeed But we were desperate and his death made us more desperate still at the moment it drew us nearer to each other Yes—we were rudderless upon a roaring sea and all before us blank with lurid blinding mist but still we were together to live and die and as we looked into each others eyes and clasped each others hands above the dead mans face we felt that there was love between us as of Jonathan and David passing the love of woman
Few words passed Even our passionate artizannature so sensitive and voluble in general in comparison with the cold reserve of the fieldlabourer and the gentleman was hushed in silent awe between the thought of the past and the thought of the future We felt ourselves trembling between two worlds We felt that tomorrow must decide our destiny—and we felt rightly though little we guessed what that destiny would be
But it was time to go We had to prepare for the meeting We must be at Kennington Common within three hours at furthest and Crossthwaite hurried away leaving Katie and me to watch the dead
And then came across me the thought of another deathbed—my mothers—How she had lain and lain while I was far away—And then I wondered whether she had suffered much or faded away at last in a peaceful sleep as he had—And then I wondered how her corpse had looked and pictured it to myself lying in the little old room day after day till they screwed the coffin down—before I came—Cruel Did she look as calm as grand in death as he who lay there And as I watched the old mans features I seemed to trace in them the strangest likeness to my mothers The strangest likeness I could not shake it off It became intense—miraculous Was it she or was it he who lay there I shook myself and rose My loins ached my limbs were heavy my brain and eyes swam round I must be over fatigued by excitement and sleeplessness I would go down stairs into the fresh air and shake it off
As I came down the passage a woman dressed in black was standing at the door speaking to one of the lodgers And he is dead Oh if I had but known sooner that he was even ill
That voice—that figuresurely I knew them—them at least there was no mistaking Or was it another phantom of my disordered brain I pushed forward to the door and as I did so she turned and our eyes met full It was she—Lady Ellerton sad worn transformed by widows weeds but that face was like no others still Why did I drop my eyes and draw back at the first glance like a guilty coward She beckoned me towards her went out into the street and herself began the conversation from which I shrank I know not why
When did he die
Just at sunrise this morning But how came you here to visit him Were you the lady who as he said came to him a few days since
She did not answer my question At sunrise this morning—A fitting time for him to die before he sees the ruin and disgrace of those for whom he laboured And you too I hear are taking your share in this projected madness and iniquity
What right have you I asked bristling up at a sudden suspicion that crossed me to use such words about me
Recollect she answered mildly but firmly your conduct three years ago at D
What I said was it not proved upon my trial that I exerted all my powers endangered my very life to prevent outrage in that case
It was proved upon your trial she replied in a marked tone but we were informed and alas from authority only too good namely from that of an earwitness of the sanguinary and ferocious language which you were not afraid to use at the meeting in London only two nights before the riot
I turned white with rage and indignation
Tell me I said—tell me if you have any honour who dared to forge such an atrocious calumny No you need not tell me I see well enough now He should have told you that I exposed myself that night to insult not by advocating but by opposing violence as I have always done—as I would now were not I desperate—hopeless of any other path to liberty And as for this coming struggle have I not written to my cousin humiliating as it was to me to beg him to warn you all from me lest—
I could not finish the sentence
You wrote He has warned us but he never mentioned your name He spoke of his knowledge as having been picked up by himself at personal risk to his clerical character
The risk I presume of being known to have actually received a letter from a Chartist but I wrote—on my honour I wrote—a week ago and received no word of answer
Is this true she asked
A man is not likely to deal in useless falsehoods who knows not whether he shall live to see the set of sun
Then you are implicated in this expected insurrection
I am implicated I answered with the people what they do I shall do Those who once called themselves the patrons of the tailorpoet left the mistaken enthusiast to languish for three years in prison without a sign a hint of mercy pity remembrance Society has cast me off and in casting me off it has sent me off to my own people where I should have stayed from the beginning Now I am at my post because I am among my class If they triumph peacefully I triumph with them If they need blood to gain their rights be it so Let the blood be upon the head of those who refuse not those who demand At least I shall be with my own people And if I die what better thing on earth can happen to me
But the law she said
Do not talk to me of law I know it too well in practice to be moved by any theories about it Laws are no law but tyranny when the few make them in order to oppress the many by them
Oh she said in a voice of passionate earnestness which I had never heard from her before stop—for Gods sake stop You know not what you are saying—what you are doing Oh that I had met you before—that I had had more time to speak to poor Mackaye Oh wait wait—there is a deliverance for you but never in this path—never And just while I and nobler far than I are longing and struggling to find the means of telling you your deliverance you in the madness of your haste are making it impossible
There was a wild sincerity in her words—an almost imploring tenderness in her tone
So young said she so young to be lost thus
I was intensely moved I felt I knew that she had a message for me I felt that hers was the only intellect in the world to which I would have submitted mine and for one moment all the angel and all the devil in me wrestled for the mastery If I could but have trusted her one moment… No all the pride the spite the suspicion the prejudice of years rolled back upon me An aristocrat and she too the one who has kept me from Lillian And in my bitterness not daring to speak the real thought within me I answered with a flippant sneer—
Yes madam like Cordelia so young yet so untender—Thanks to the mercies of the upper classes
Did she turn away in indignation No by Heaven there was nothing upon her face but the intensest yearning pity If she had spoken again she would have conquered but before those perfect lips could open the thought of thoughts flashed across me
Tell me one thing Is my cousin George to be married to —— and I stopped
He is
And yet I said you wish to turn me back from dying on a barricade And without waiting for a reply I hurried down the street in all the fury of despair
I have promised to say little about the Tenth of April for indeed I have no heart to do so Every one of Mackayes predictions came true We had arrayed against us by our own folly the very physical force to which we had appealed The dread of general plunder and outrage by the savages of London the national hatred of that French and Irish interference of which we had boasted armed against us thousands of special constables who had in the abstract little or no objection to our political opinions The practical common sense of England whatever discontent it might feel with the existing system refused to let it be hurled rudely down on the mere chance of building up on its ruins something as yet untried and even undefined Above all the people would not rise Whatever sympathy they had with us they did not care to show it And then futility after futility exposed itself. The meeting which was to have been counted by hundreds of thousands numbered hardly its tens of thousands and of them a frightful proportion were of those very rascal classes against whom we ourselves had offered to be sworn in as special constables OConnors courage failed him after all He contrived to be called away at the critical moment by some problematical superintendent of police Poor Cuffy the honestest if not the wisest speaker there leapt off the waggon exclaiming that we were all humbugged and betrayed and the meeting broke up pitiably piecemeal drenched and cowed body and soul by pouring rain on its way home—for the very heavens mercifully helped to quench our folly—while the monsterpetition crawled ludicrously away in a hack cab to be dragged to the floor of the House of Commons amid roars of laughter—inextinguishable laughter as of Tennysons Epicurean Gods—
Careless of mankind
For they lie beside their nectar and their bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys and the clouds are lightly curled
Round their golden houses girdled with the gleaming world
There they smile in secret looking over wasted lands
Blight and famine plague and earthquake roaring deeps and fiery sands
Clanging fights and flaming towns and sinking ships and praying hands
But they smile they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong
Like a tale of little meaning though the words are strong
Chanted by an illused race of men that cleave the soil
Sow the seed and reap the harvest with enduring toil
Storing little yearly dues of wheat and wine and oil
Till they perish and they suffer—some tis whispered down in hell
Suffer endless anguish—
Truly—truly great poets words are vaster than the singers themselves suppose
CHAPTER XXXV
THE LOWEST DEEP
Sullen disappointed desperate I strode along the streets that evening careless whither I went The Peoples Cause was lost—the Charter a laughingstock That the party which monopolizes wealth rank and as it is fancied education and intelligence should have been driven degraded to appeal to brute force for selfdefence—that thought gave me a savage joy but that it should have conquered by that last lowest resource—That the few should be still stronger than the many or the many still too coldhearted and coward to face the few—that sickened me I hated the wellborn young special constables whom I passed because they would have fought I hated the gent and shopkeeper special constables because they would have run away I hated my own party because they had gone too far—because they had not gone far enough I hated myself because I had not produced some marvellous effect—though what that was to have been I could not tell—and hated myself all the more for that ignorance
A group of effeminate shopkeepers passed me shouting God save the
Queen Hypocrites I cried in my heart—they mean God save our shops
Liars They keep up willingly the useful calumny that their slaves and
victims are disloyal as well as miserable
I was utterly abased—no not utterly for my selfcontempt still vented itself—not in forgiveness but in universal hatred and defiance Suddenly I perceived my cousin laughing and jesting with a party of fashionable young specials I shrank from him and yet I know not why drew as near him as I could unobserved—near enough to catch the words
Upon my honour Locke I believe you are a Chartist yourself at heart
At least I am no Communist said he in a significant tone There is one little bit of real property which I have no intention of sharing with my neighbours
What the little beauty somewhere near Cavendish Square
Thats my business
Whereby you mean that you are on your way to her now Well I am invited to the wedding remember
He pushed on laughingly without answering I followed him fast—near Cavendish Square—the very part of the town where Lillian lived I had had as yet a horror of going near it but now an intolerable suspicion scourged me forward and I dogged his steps hiding behind pillars and at the corners of streets and then running on till I got sight of him again He went through Cavendish Square up Harley Street—was it possible I gnashed my teeth at the thought But it must be so He stopped at the deans house knocked and entered without parley
In a minute I was breathless on the doorstep and knocked I had no plan no object except the wild wish to see my own despair I never thought of the chances of being recognized by the servants or of anything else except of Lillian by my cousins side
The footman came out smiling What did I want
I—I—Mr Locke
Well you neednt be in such a hurry with a significant grin Mr
Lockes likely to be busy for a few minutes yet I expect
Evidently the man did not know me
Tell him that—that a person wishes to speak to him on particular business Though I had no more notion what that business was than the man himself
Sit down in the hall
And I heard the fellow a moment afterwards gossiping and laughing with the maids below about the young couple
To sit down was impossible my only thought was—where was Lillian
Voices in an adjoining room caught my ear His yes—and hers too—soft and low What devil prompted me to turn eavesdropper to run headlong into temptation I was close to the diningroom door but they were not there—evidently they were in the back room which as I knew opened into it with foldingdoors I—I must confess all—Noiselessly with craft like a madmans I turned the handle slipped in as stealthily as a cat—the foldingdoors were slightly open I had a view of all that passed within A horrible fascination seemed to keep my eyes fixed on them in spite of myself Honour shame despair bade me turn away but in vain
I saw them—How can I write it Yet I will—I saw them sitting together on the sofa Their arms were round each other Her head lay upon his breast he bent over her with an intense gaze as of a basilisk I thought how do I know that it was not the fierceness of his love Who could have helped loving her
Suddenly she raised her head and looked up in his face—her eyes brimming with tenderness her cheeks burning with mingled delight and modesty—their lips met and clung together… It seemed a life—an eternity—before they parted again Then the spell was broken and I rushed from the room
Faint giddy and blind I just recollect leaning against the wall of the staircase He came hastily out and started as he saw me My face told all
What Eavesdropping he said in a tone of unutterable scorn I answered nothing but looked stupidly and fixedly in his face while he glared at me with that keen burning intolerable eye I longed to spring at his throat but that eye held me as the snakes holds the deer At last I found words
Traitor everywhere—in everything—tricking me—supplanting me—in my friends—in my love
Your love Yours And the fixed eye still glared upon me Listen cousin Alton The strong and the weak have been matched for the same prize and what wonder if the strong man conquers Go and ask Lillian how she likes the thought of being a Communists love
As when in a nightmare we try by a desperate effort to break the spell I sprang forward and struck at him he put my hand by carelessly and felled me bleeding to the ground I recollect hardly anything more till I found myself thrust into the street by sneering footmen and heard them call after me Chartist and Communist as I rushed along the pavement careless where I went
I strode and staggered on through street after street running blindly against passengers dashing under horses heads heedless of warnings and execrations till I found myself I know not how on Waterloo Bridge I had meant to go there when I left the door I knew that at least—and now I was there
I buried myself in a recess of the bridge and stared around and up and down
I was alone—deserted even by myself Mother sister friends love the idol of my life were all gone I could have borne that But to be shamed and know that I deserved it to be deserted by my own honour selfrespect strength of will—who can bear that
I could have borne it had one thing been left—faith in my own destiny—the inner hope that God had called me to do a work for him
What drives the Frenchman to suicide I asked myself arguing ever even in the face of death and hell—His faith in nothing but his own lusts and pleasures and when they are gone then comes the pan of charcoal—and all is over What drives the German His faith in nothing but his own brain He has fallen down and worshipped that miserable Ich of his and made that and not Gods will the centre and root of his philosophy his poetry and his selfidolizing æsthetics and when it fails him then for prussic acid and nonentity Those old Romans too—why they are the very experimentum crucis of suicide As long as they fancied that they had a calling to serve the state they could live on and suffer But when they found no more work left for them then they could die—as Porcia died—as Cato—as I ought What is there left for me to do outcast disgraced useless decrepit—
I looked out over the bridge into the desolate night Below me the dark moaning rivereddies hurried downward The wild westwind howled past me and leapt over the parapet downward The huge reflexion of Saint Pauls the great taproots of light from lamp and window that shone upon the lurid stream pointed down—down—down A black wherry shot through the arch beneath me still and smoothly downward My brain began to whirl madly—I sprang upon the step—A man rushed past me clambered on the parapet and threw up his arms wildly—A moment more and he would have leapt into the stream The sight recalled me to my senses—say rather it reawoke in me the spirit of manhood I seized him by the arm tore him down upon the pavement and held him in spite of his frantic struggles It was Jemmy Downes Gaunt ragged sodden bleareyed drivelling the wornout gindrinker stood his momentary paroxysm of strength gone trembling and staggering
Why wont you let a cove die Why wont you let a cove die Theyre all dead—drunk and poisoned and dead What is there left—he burst out suddenly in his old ranting style—what is there left on earth to live for The prayers of liberty are answered by the laughter of tyrants her sun is sunk beneath the ocean wave and her pipe put out by the raging billows of aristocracy Those starving millions of Kennington Common—where are they Where I axes you he cried fiercely raising his voice to a womanish scream—where are they
Gone home to bed like sensible people and you had better go too
Bed I sold ours a month ago but well go Come along and Ill show you my wife and family and well have a teaparty—Jacobs Island tea Come along
Flea flea unfortunate flea
Bereft of his wife and his small family
He clutched my arm and dragging me off towards the Surrey side turned down Stamford Street
I followed half perforce and the man seemed quite demented—whether with gin or sorrow I could not tell As he strode along the pavement he kept continually looking back with a perplexed terrified air as if expecting some fearful object
The rats—the rats dont you see em coming out of the gullyholes atween the area railings—dozens and dozens
No I saw none
You lie I hear their tails whisking theres their shiny hats a glistening and every one on em with peelers staves Quick quick or theyll have me to the stationhouse
Nonsense I said we are free men What are the policemen to us
You lie cried he with a fearful oath and a wrench at my arm which almost threw me down Do you call a sweaters man a free man
You a sweaters man
Ay with another oath My men ran away—folks said I drank too but here I am and I that sweated others Im sweated myself—and Im a slave Im a slave—a negro slave I am you aristocrat villain
Mind me Downes if you will go quietly I will go with you but if you do not let go of my arm I give you in charge to the first policeman I meet
Oh dont dont whined the miserable wretch as he almost fell on his knees gindrinkers tears running down his face or I shall be too late—And then the ratsll get in at the roof and up through the floor and eat em all up and my work too—the grand new threepound coat that Ive been stitching at this ten days for the sum of one halfcrown sterling—and dont I wish I may see the money Come on quick there are the rats close behind And he dashed across the broad roaring thoroughfare of Bridge Street and hurrying almost at a run down Tooley Street plunged into the wilderness of Bermondsey
He stopped at the end of a miserable blind alley where a dirty gaslamp just served to make darkness visible and show the patched windows and rickety doorways of the crazy houses whose upper stories were lost in a brooding cloud of fog and the pools of stagnant water at our feet and the huge heap of cinders which filled up the waste end of the alley—a dreary black formless mound on which two or three spectral dogs prowled up and down after the offal appearing and vanishing like dark imps in and out of the black misty chaos beyond
The neighbourhood was undergoing as it seemed improvements of that peculiar metropolitan species which consists in pulling down the dwellings of the poor and building up rich mens houses instead and great buildings within high temporary palings had already eaten up half the little houses as the great fish and the great estates and the great shopkeepers eat up the little ones of their species—by the law of competition lately discovered to be the true creator and preserver of the universe There they loomed up the tall bullies against the dreary sky looking down with their grim proud stony visages on the misery which they were driving out of one corner only to accumulate and intensify it in another
The house at which we stopped was the last in the row all its companions had been pulled down and there it stood leaning out with one naked ugly side into the gap and stretching out long props like feeble arms and crutches to resist the work of demolition
A group of slatternly people were in the entry talking loudly and as
Downes pushed by them a woman seized him by the arm
Oh you unnatural villain—To go away after your drink and leave all them poor dear dead corpses locked up without even letting a body go in to stretch them out
And breeding the fever too to poison the whole house growled one
The relieving officers been here my cove said another and hes gone for a peeler and a search warrant to break open the door I can tell you
But Downes pushed past unheeding unlocked a door at the end of the passage thrust me in locked it again and then rushed across the room in chase of two or three rats who vanished into cracks and holes
And what a room A low leanto with wooden walls without a single article of furniture and through the broad chinks of the floor shone up as it were ugly glaring eyes staring at us They were the reflexions of the rushlight in the sewer below The stench was frightful—the air heavy with pestilence The first breath I drew made my heart sink and my stomach turn But I forgot everything in the object which lay before me as Downes tore a halffinished coat off three corpses laid side by side on the bare floor
There was his little Irish wife—dead—and naked the wasted white limbs gleamed in the lurid light the unclosed eyes stared as if reproachfully at the husband whose drunkenness had brought her there to kill her with the pestilence and on each side of her a little shrivelled impish childcorpse—the wretched man had laid their arms round the dead mothers neck—and there they slept their hungering and wailing over at last for ever the rats had been busy already with them—but what matter to them now
Look he cried I watched em dying Day after day I saw the devils come up through the cracks like little maggots and beetles and all manner of ugly things creeping down their throats and I asked em and they said they were the fever devils
It was too true the poisonous exhalations had killed them The wretched mans delirium tremens had given that horrible substantiality to the poisonous fever gases
Suddenly Downes turned on me almost menacingly Money money I want some gin
I was thoroughly terrified—and there was no shame in feeling fear locked up with a madman far my superior in size and strength in so ghastly a place But the shame and the folly too would have been in giving way to my fear and with a boldness half assumed half the real fruit of excitement and indignation at the horrors I beheld I answered—
If I had money I would give you none What do you want with gin Look at the fruits of your accursed tippling If you had taken my advice my poor fellow I went on gaining courage as I spoke and become a waterdrinker like me—
Curse you and your waterdrinking If you had had no water to drink or wash with for two years but that—that pointing to the foul ditch below—if you had emptied the slops in there with one hand and filled your kettle with the other—
Do you actually mean that that sewer is your only drinking water
Where else can we get any Everybody drinks it and you shall too—you shall he cried with a fearful oath and then see if you dont run off to the ginshop to take the taste of it out of your mouth Drink and who can help drinking with his stomach turned with such hellbroth as that—or such a hells blast as this air is here ready to vomit from morning till night with the smells Ill show you You shall drink a bucket full of it as sure as you live you shall
And he ran out of the back door upon a little balcony which hung over the ditch
I tried the door but the key was gone and the handle too I beat furiously on it and called for help Two gruff authoritative voices were heard in the passage
Let us in Im the policeman
Let me out or mischief will happen
The policeman made a vigorous thrust at the crazy door and just as it burst open and the light of his lantern streamed into the horrible den a heavy splash was heard outside
He has fallen into the ditch
Hell be drowned then as sure as hes a born man shouted one of the crowd behind
We rushed out on the balcony The light of the policemans lantern glared over the ghastly scene—along the double row of miserable housebacks which lined the sides of the open tidal ditch—over strange rambling jetties and balconies and sleepingsheds which hung on rotting piles over the black waters with phosphorescent scraps of rotten fish gleaming and twinkling out of the dark hollows like devilish gravelights—over bubbles of poisonous gas and bloated carcases of dogs and lumps of offal floating on the stagnant olivegreen hellbroth—over the slow sullen rows of oily ripple which were dying away into the darkness far beyond sending up as they stirred hot breaths of miasma—the only sign that a spark of humanity after years of foul life had quenched itself at last in that foul death I almost fancied that I could see the haggard face staring up at me through the slimy water but no it was as opaque as stone
I shuddered and went in again to see slatternly ginsmelling women stripping off their clothes—true women even there—to cover the poor naked corpses and pointing to the bruises which told a tale of long tyranny and cruelty and mingling their lamentations with stories of shrieks and beating and children locked up for hours to starve and the men looked on sullenly as if they too were guilty or rushed out to relieve themselves by helping to find the drowned body Ugh it was the very mouth of hell that room And in the midst of all the rout the relieving officer stood impassive jotting down scraps of information and warning us to appear the next day to state what we knew before the magistrates Needless hypocrisy of law Too careless to save the woman and children from brutal tyranny nakedness starvation—Too superstitious to offend its idol of vested interests by protecting the poor man against his tyrants the houseowning shopkeepers under whose greed the dwellings of the poor become nests of filth and pestilence drunkenness and degradation Careless superstitious imbecile law—leaving the victims to die unhelped and then when the fever and the tyranny has done its work in thy sanctimonious prudishness drugging thy respectable conscience by a searching inquiry as to how it all happened—lest forsooth there should have been foul play Is the knife or the bludgeon then the only foul play and not the cesspool and the curse of Rabshakeh Go through Bermondsey or Spitalfields St Giless or Lambeth and see if there is not foul play enough already—to be tried hereafter at a more awful coroners inquest than thou thinkest of
CHAPTER XXXVI
DREAMLAND
It must have been two oclock in the morning before I reached my lodgings Too much exhausted to think I hurried to my bed I remember now that I reeled strangely as I went upstairs I lay down and was asleep in an instant
How long I had slept I know not when I awoke with a strange confusion and whirling in my brain and an intolerable weight and pain about my back and loins By the light of the gaslamp I saw a figure standing at the foot of my bed I could not discern the face but I knew instinctively that it was my mother I called to her again and again but she did not answer She moved slowly away and passed out through the wall of the room
I tried to follow her but could not An enormous unutterable weight seemed to lie upon me The bedclothes grew and grew before me and upon me into a vast mountain millions of miles in height Then it seemed all glowing red like the cone of a volcano I heard the roaring of the fires within the rattling of the cinders down the heaving slope A river ran from its summit and up that riverbed it seemed I was doomed to climb and climb for ever millions and millions of miles upwards against the rushing stream The thought was intolerable and I shrieked aloud A raging thirst had seized me I tried to drink the riverwater but it was boiling hot—sulphurous—reeking of putrefaction Suddenly I fancied that I could pass round the foot of the mountain and jumbling as madmen will the sublime and the ridiculous I sprang up to go round the foot of my bed which was the mountain
I recollect lying on the floor I recollect the people of the house who had been awoke by my shriek and my fall rushing in and calling to me I could not rise or answer I recollect a doctor and talk about brain fever and delirium It was true I was in a raging fever And my fancy long pentup and crushed by circumstances burst out in uncontrollable wildness and swept my other faculties with it helpless away over all heaven and earth presenting to me as in a vast kaleidoscope fantastic symbols of all I had ever thought or read or felt
That fancy of the mountain returned but I had climbed it now I was wandering along the lower ridge of the Himalaya On my right the line of snow peaks showed like a rosy saw against the clear blue morning sky Raspberries and cyclamens were peeping through the snow around me As I looked down the abysses I could see far below through the thin veils of blue mist that wandered in the glens the silver spires of giant deodars and huge rhododendrons glowing like trees of flame The longing of my life to behold that cradle of mankind was satisfied My eyes revelled in vastness as they swept over the broad flat jungle at the mountain foot a desolate sheet of dark gigantic grasses furrowed with the paths of the buffalo and rhinoceros with barren sandy watercourses desolate pools and here and there a single tree stunted with malaria shattered by mountain floods and far beyond the vast plains of Hindostan enlaced with myriad silver rivers and canals tanks and ricefields cities with their mosques and minarets gleaming among the stately palmgroves along the boundless horizon Above me was a Hindoo temple cut out of the yellow sandstone I climbed up to the higher tier of pillars among monstrous shapes of gods and fiends that mouthed and writhed and mocked at me struggling to free themselves from their bed of rock The bull Nundi rose and tried to gore me hundredhanded gods brandished quoits and sabres round my head and Kali dropped the skull from her goredripping jaws to clutch me for her prey Then my mother came and seizing the pillars of the portico bent them like reeds an earthquake shook the hills—great sheets of woodland slid roaring and crashing into the valleys—a tornado swept through the temple halls which rocked and tossed like a vessel in a storm a crash—a cloud of yellow dust which filled the air—choked me—blinded me—buried me—
And Eleanor came by and took my soul in the palm of her hand as the angels did Fausts and carried it to a cavern by the seaside and dropped it in and I fell and fell for ages And all the velvet mosses rock flowers and sparkling spars and ores fell with me round me in showers of diamonds whirlwinds of emerald and ruby and pattered into the sea that moaned below and were quenched and the light lessened above me to one small spark and vanished and I was in darkness and turned again to my dust
And I was at the lowest point of created life a madrepore rooted to the rock fathoms below the tidemark and worst of all my individuality was gone I was not one thing but many things—a crowd of innumerable polypi and I grew and grew and the more I grew the more I divided and multiplied thousand and ten thousandfold If I could have thought I should have gone mad at it but I could only feel
And I heard Eleanor and Lillian talking as they floated past me through the deep for they were two angels and Lillian said When will he be one again
And Eleanor said He who falls from the golden ladder must climb through ages to its top He who tears himself in pieces by his lusts ages only can make him one again The madrepore shall become a shell and the shell a fish and the fish a bird and the bird a beast and then he shall become a man again and see the glory of the latter days
And I was a soft crab under a stone on the seashore With infinite starvation and struggling and kicking I had got rid of my armour shield by shield and joint by joint and cowered naked and pitiable in the dark among dead shells and ooze Suddenly the stone was turned up and there was my cousins hated face laughing at me and pointing me out to Lillian She laughed too as I looked up sneaking ashamed and defenceless and squared up at him with my soft useless claws Why should she not laugh Are not crabs and toads and monkeys and a hundred other strange forms of animal life jests of nature—embodiments of a divine humour at which men are meant to laugh and be merry But alas my cousin as he turned away thrust the stone back with his foot and squelched me flat
And I was a remora weak and helpless till I could attach myself to some living thing and then I had power to stop the largest ship And Lillian was a flying fish and skimmed over the crests of the waves on gauzy wings And my cousin was a huge shark rushing after her greedy and openmouthed and I saw her danger and clung to him and held him back and just as I had stopped him she turned and swam back into his open jaws
Sand—sand—nothing but sand The air was full of sand drifting over granite temples and painted kings and triumphs and the skulls of a former world and I was an ostrich flying madly before the simoon wind and the giant sand pillars which stalked across the plains hunting me down And Lillian was an Amazon queen beautiful and cold and cruel and she rode upon a charmed horse and carried behind her on her saddle a spotted ounce which was my cousin and when I came near her she made him leap down and course me And we ran for miles and for days through the interminable sand till he sprung on me and dragged me down And as I lay quivering and dying she reined in her horse above me and looked down at me with beautiful pitiless eyes and a wild Arab tore the plumes from my wings and she took them and wreathed them in her golden hair The broad and bloodred sun sank down beneath the sand and the horse and the Amazon and the ostrich plumes shone bloodred in his lurid rays
I was a mylodon among South American forests—a vast sleepy mass my elephantine limbs and yardlong talons contrasting strangely with the little meek rabbits head furnished with a poor dozen of clumsy grinders and a very small kernel of brains whose highest consciousness was the enjoyment of muscular strength Where I had picked up the sensation which my dreams realized for me I know not my waking life alas had never given me experience of it Has the mind power of creating sensations for itself? Surely it does so in those delicious dreams about flying which haunt us poor wingless mortals which would seem to give my namesakes philosophy the lie However that may be intense and new was the animal delight to plant my hinder claws at some treefoot deep into the black rotting vegetablemould which steamed rich gases up wherever it was pierced and clasp my huge arms round the stem of some palm or treefern and then slowly bring my enormous weight and muscle to bear upon it till the stem bent like a withe and the laced bark cracked and the fibres groaned and shrieked and the roots sprung up out of the soil and then with a slow circular wrench the whole tree was twisted bodily out of the ground and the maddening tension of my muscles suddenly relaxed and I sank sleepily down upon the turf to browse upon the crisp tart foliage and fall asleep in the glare of sunshine which streamed through the new gap in the green forest roof Much as I had envied the strong I had never before suspected the delight of mere physical exertion I now understood the wild gambols of the dog and the madness which makes the horse gallop and strain onwards till he drops and dies They fulfil their nature as I was doing and in that is always happiness
But I did more—whether from mere animal destructiveness or from the spark of humanity which was slowly rekindling in me I began to delight in tearing up trees for its own sake I tried my strength daily on thicker and thicker boles I crawled up to the high palmtops and bowed them down by my weight My path through the forest was marked like that of a tornado by snapped and prostrate stems and withering branches Had I been a few degrees more human I might have expected a retribution for my sin I had fractured my own skull three or four times already I used often to pass the carcases of my race killed as geologists now find them by the fall of the trees they had overthrown but still I went on more and more reckless a slave like many a socalled man to the mere sense of power
One day I wandered to the margin of the woods and climbing a tree surveyed a prospect new to me For miles and miles away to the white line of the smoking Cordillera stretched a low rolling plain one vast thistlebed the down of which flew in grey gauzy clouds before a soft fitful breeze innumerable finches fluttered and pecked above it and bent the countless flowerheads Far away one tall tree rose above the level thistleocean A strange longing seized me to go and tear it down The forest leaves seemed tasteless my stomach sickened at them nothing but that tree would satisfy me and descending I slowly brushed my way with halfshut eyes through the tall thistles which buried even my bulk
At last after days of painful crawling I dragged my unwieldiness to the treefoot Around it the plain was bare and scored by burrows and heaps of earth among which gold some in dust some in great knots and ingots sparkled everywhere in the sun in fearful contrast to the skulls and bones which lay bleaching round Some were human some were those of vast and monstrous beasts I knew one knows everything in dreams that they had been slain by the winged ants as large as panthers who snuffed and watched around over the magic treasure Of them I felt no fear and they seemed not to perceive me as I crawled with greedy hungersharpened eyes up to the foot of the tree It seemed miles in height Its stem was bare and polished like a palms and above a vast feathery crown of dark green velvet slept in the still sunlight But wonders of wonders from among the branches hung great seagreen lilies and nestled in the heart of each of them the bust of a beautiful girl Their white bosoms and shoulders gleamed rosywhite against the emerald petals like conchshells halfhidden among seaweeds while their delicate waists melted mysteriously into the central sanctuary of the flower Their long arms and golden tresses waved languishingly downward in the breeze their eyes glittered like diamonds their breaths perfumed the air A blind ecstasy seized me—I awoke again to humanity and fiercely clasping the tree shook and tore at it in the blind hope of bringing nearer to me the magic beauties above for I knew that I was in the famous land of WakWak from which the Eastern merchants used to pluck those flowerborn beauties and bring them home to fill the harems of the Indian kings Suddenly I heard a rustling in the thistles behind me and looking round saw again that dreaded face—my cousin
He was dressed—strange jumble that dreams are—like an American backwoodsman He carried the same revolver and bowieknife which he had showed me the fatal night that he intruded on the Chartist club I shook with terror but he too did not see me He threw himself on his knees and began fiercely digging and scraping for the gold
The winged ants rushed on him but he looked up and held them with his glittering eye and they shrank back abashed into the thistle covert while I strained and tugged on and the faces of the dryads above grew sadder and older and their tears fell on me like a fragrant rain
Suddenly the treebole cracked—it was tottering I looked round and saw that my cousin knelt directly in the path of its fall I tried to call to him to move but how could a poor edentate like myself articulate a word I tried to catch his attention by signs—he would not see I tried convulsively to hold the tree up but it was too late a sudden gust of air swept by and down it rushed with a roar like a whirlwind and leaving my cousin untouched struck me full across the loins broke my backbone and pinned me to the ground in mortal agony I heard one wild shriek rise from the flower fairies as they fell each from the lily cup no longer of full human size but withered shrivelled diminished a thousandfold and lay on the bare sand like little rosy hummingbirds eggs all crushed and dead
The great blue heaven above me spoke and cried Selfish and sensebound thou hast murdered beauty
The sighing thistleocean answered and murmured Discontented thou hast murdered beauty
One flower fairy alone lifted up her tiny cheek from the goldstrewn sand and cried Presumptuous thou hast murdered beauty
It was Lillians face—Lillians voice My cousin heard it too and turned eagerly and as my eyes closed in the last deathshiver I saw him coolly pick up the little beautiful figure which looked like a fragment of some exquisite cameo and deliberately put it away in his cigarcase as he said to himself A charming titbit for me when I return from the diggings
When I awoke again I was a babyape in Bornean forests perched among fragrant trailers and fantastic orchis flowers and as I looked down beneath the green roof into the clear waters paved with unknown waterlilies on which the sun had never shone I saw my face reflected in the pool—a melancholy thoughtful countenance with large projecting brow—it might have been a negro childs And I felt stirring in me germs of a new and higher consciousness—yearnings of love towards the mother ape who fed me and carried me from tree to tree But I grew and grew and then the weight of my destiny fell upon me I saw year by year my brow recede my neck enlarge my jaw protrude my teeth became tusks skinny wattles grew from my cheeks—the animal faculties in me were swallowing up the intellectual I watched in myself with stupid selfdisgust the fearful degradation which goes on from youth to age in all the monkey race especially in those which approach nearest to the human form Long melancholy mopings fruitless stragglings to think were periodically succeeded by wild frenzies agonies of lust and aimless ferocity I flew upon my brother apes and was driven off with wounds I rushed howling down into the village gardens destroying everything I met I caught the birds and insects and tore them to pieces with savage glee One day as I sat among the boughs I saw Lillian coming along a flowery path—decked as Eve might have been the day she turned from Paradise The skins of gorgeous birds were round her waist her hair was wreathed with fragrant tropic flowers On her bosom lay a baby—it was my cousins I knew her and hated her The madness came upon me I longed to leap from the bough and tear her limb from limb but brutal terror the dread of man which is the doom of beasts kept me rooted to my place Then my cousin came—a hunter missionary and I heard him talk to her with pride of the new world of civilization and Christianity which he was organizing in that tropic wilderness I listened with a dim jealous understanding—not of the words but of the facts I saw them instinctively as in a dream She pointed up to me in terror and disgust as I sat gnashing and gibbering overhead He threw up the muzzle of his rifle carelessly and fired—I fell dead but conscious still I knew that my carcase was carried to the settlement and I watched while a smirking chuckling surgeon dissected me bone by bone and nerve by nerve And as he was fingering at my heart and discoursing sneeringly about Van Helmonts dreams of the Archæus and the animal spirit which dwells within the solar plexus Eleanor glided by again like an angel and drew my soul out of the knot of nerves with one velvet fingertip
Childdreams—more vague and fragmentary than my animal ones and yet more calm and simple and gradually as they led me onward through a new life ripening into detail coherence and reflection Dreams of a hut among the valleys of Thibet—the young of forest animals wild cats and dogs and fowls brought home to be my playmates and grow up tame around me Snowpeaks which glittered white against the nightly sky barring in the horizon of the narrow valley and yet seeming to beckon upwards outwards Strange unspoken aspirations instincts which pointed to unfulfilled powers a mighty destiny A sense awful and yet cheering of a wonder and a majesty a presence and a voice around in the cliffs and the pine forests and the great blue rainless heaven The music of loving voices the sacred names of child and father mother brother sister first of all inspirations—Had we not an AllFather whose eyes looked down upon us from among those stars above whose hand upheld the mountain roots below us Did He not love us too even as we loved each other
The noise of wheels crushing slowly through meadows of tall marigolds and asters orchises and fragrant lilies I lay a child upon a womans bosom Was she my mother or Eleanor or Lillian Or was she neither and yet all—some ideal of the great Arian tribe containing in herself all future types of European women So I slept and woke and slept again day after day week after week in the lazy bullockwaggon among herds of grey cattle guarded by huge lopeared mastiffs among shaggy white horses heavyhorned sheep and silky goats among tall barelimbed men with stone axes on their shoulders and horn bows at their backs Westward through the boundless steppes whither or why we knew not but that the AllFather had sent us forth And behind us the rosy snowpeaks died into ghastly grey lower and lower as every evening came and before us the plains spread infinite with gleaming saltlakes and ever fresh tribes of gaudy flowers Behind us dark lines of living beings streamed down the mountain slopes around us dark lines crawled along the plains—all westward westward ever—The tribes of the Holy Mountain poured out like water to replenish the earth and subdue it—lavastreams from the crater of that great soulvolcano—Titan babies dumb angels of God bearing with them in their unconscious pregnancy the law the freedom the science, the poetry the Christianity of Europe and the world
Westward ever—who could stand against us We met the wild asses on the steppe and tamed them and made them our slaves We slew the bison herds and swam broad rivers on their skins The Python snake lay across our path the wolves and the wild dogs snarled at us out of their coverts we slew them and went on The forest rose in black tangled barriers we hewed our way through them and went on Strange giant tribes met us and eaglevisaged hordes fierce and foolish we smote them hip and thigh and went on westward ever Days and weeks and months rolled on and our wheels rolled on with them New alps rose up before us we climbed and climbed them till in lonely glens the mountain walls stood up and barred our path
Then one arose and said Rocks are strong but the AllFather is stronger Let us pray to Him to send the earthquakes and blast the mountains asunder
So we sat down and prayed but the earthquake did not come
Then another arose and said Rocks are strong but the AllFather is stronger If we are the children of the AllFather we too are stronger than the rocks Let us portion out the valley to every man an equal plot of ground and bring out the sacred seeds and sow and build and come up with me and bore the mountain
And all said It is the voice of God We will go up with thee and bore the mountain and thou shalt be our king for thou art wisest and the spirit of the AllFather is on thee and whosoever will not go up with thee shall die as a coward and an idler
So we went up and in the morning we bored the mountain and at night we came down and tilled the ground and sowed wheat and barley and planted orchards And in the upper glens we met the mining dwarfs and saw their tools of iron and copper and their rockhouses and forges and envied them But they would give us none of them then our king said—
The AllFather has given all things and all wisdom Woe to him who keeps them to himself we will teach you to sow the sacred seeds and do you teach us your smithwork or you die
Then the dwarfs taught us smithwork and we loved them for they were wise and they married our sons and daughters and we went on boring the mountain
Then some of us arose and said We are stronger than our brethren and can till more ground than they Give us a greater portion of land to each according to his power
But the king said Wherefore that ye may eat and drink more than your brethren Have you larger stomachs as well as stronger arms As much as a man needs for himself that he may do for himself The rest is the gift of the AllFather and we must do His work therewith For the sake of the women and the children for the sake of the sick and the aged let him that is stronger go up and work the harder at the mountain And all men said It is well spoken
So we were all equal—for none took more than he needed and we were all free because we loved to obey the king by whom the spirit spoke and we were all brothers because we had one work and one hope and one AllFather
But I grew up to be a man and twenty years were past and the mountain was not bored through and the king grew old and men began to love their flocks and herds better than quarrying and they gave up boring through the mountain And the strong and the cunning said What can we do with all this might of ours So because they had no other way of employing it they turned it against each other and swallowed up the heritage of the weak and a few grew rich and many poor and the valley was filled with sorrow for the land became too narrow for them
Then I arose and said How is this And they said We must make provision for our children
And I answered The AllFather meant neither you nor your children to devour your brethren Why do you not break up more waste ground Why do you not try to grow more corn in your fields
And they answered We till the ground as our forefathers did we will keep to the old traditions
And I answered Oh ye hypocrites have ye not forgotten the old traditions that each man should have his equal share of ground and that we should go on working at the mountain for the sake of the weak and the children the fatherless and the widow
And they answered nought for a while
Then one said Are we not better off as we are We buy the poor mans ground for a price and we pay him his wages for tilling it for us—and we know better how to manage it than he
And I said Oh ye hypocrites See how your lie works Those who were free are now slaves Those who had peace of mind are now anxious from day to day for their daily bread And the multitude gets poorer and poorer while ye grow fatter and fatter If ye had gone on boring the mountain ye would have had no time to eat up your brethren
Then they laughed and said Thou art a singer of songs and a dreamer of dreams Let those who want to get through the mountain go up and bore it we are well enough here Come now sing us pleasant songs and talk no more foolish dreams and we will reward thee
Then they brought out a veiled maiden and said Look her feet are like ivory and her hair like threads of gold and she is the sweetest singer in the whole valley And she shall be thine if thou wilt be like other people and prophesy smooth things unto us and torment us no more with talk about liberty equality and brotherhood for they never were and never will be on this earth Living is too hard work to give in to such fancies
And when the maidens veil was lifted it was Lillian And she clasped me round the neck and cried Come I will be your bride and you shall be rich and powerful and all men shall speak well of you and you shall write songs and we will sing them together and feast and play from dawn to dawn
And I wept and turned me about and cried Wife and child song and wealth are pleasant but blessed is the work which the AllFather has given the people to do Let the maimed and the halt and the blind the needy and the fatherless come up after me and we will bore the mountain
But the rich drove me out and drove back those who would have followed me So I went up by myself and bored the mountain seven years weeping and every year Lillian came to me and said Come and be my husband for my beauty is fading and youth passes fast away But I set my heart steadfastly to the work
And when seven years were over the poor were so multiplied that the rich had not wherewith to pay their labour And there came a famine in the land and many of the poor died Then the rich said If we let these men starve they will turn on us and kill us for hunger has no conscience and they are all but like the beasts that perish So they all brought one a bullock another a sack of meal each according to his substance, and fed the poor therewith and said to them Behold our love and mercy towards you But the more they gave the less they had wherewithal to pay their labourers and the more they gave the less the poor liked to work so that at last they had not wherewithal to pay for tilling the ground and each man had to go and till his own and knew not how so the land lay waste and there was great perplexity
Then I went down to them and said If you had hearkened to me and not robbed your brethren of their land you would never have come into this strait for by this time the mountain would have been bored through
Then they cursed the mountain and me and Him who made them and came down to my cottage at night and cried Onesided and lefthanded father of confusion and disciple of dead donkeys see to what thou hast brought the land with thy blasphemous doctrines Here we are starving and not only we but the poor misguided victims of thy abominable notions
You have become wondrous pitiful to the poor said I since you found that they would not starve that you might wanton
Then once more Lillian came to me thin and pale and worn See I too am starving and you have been the cause of it but I will forgive all if you will help us but this once
How shall I help you
You are a poet and an orator and win over all hearts with your talk and your songs Go down to the tribes of the plain and persuade them to send us up warriors that we may put down these riotous and idle wretches and you shall be king of all the land and I will be your slave by day and night
But I went out and quarried steadfastly at the mountain
And when I came back the next evening the poor had risen against the rich one and all crying As you have done to us so will we do to you and they hunted them down like wild beasts and slew many of them and threw their carcases on the dunghill and took possession of their land and houses and cried We will be all free and equal as our forefathers were and live here and eat and drink and take our pleasure
Then I ran out and cried to them Fools I will you do as these rich did and neglect the work of God If you do to them as they have done to you you will sin as they sinned and devour each other at the last as they devoured you The old paths are best Let each man rich or poor have his equal share of the land as it was at first and go up and dig through the mountain and possess the good land beyond where no man need jostle his neighbour or rob him when the land becomes too small for you Were the rich only in fault Did not you too neglect the work which the AllFather had given you and run every man after his own comfort So you entered into a lie and by your own sin raised up the rich man to be your punishment For the last time who will go up with me to the mountain
Then they all cried with one voice We have sinned We will go up and pierce the mountain and fulfil the work which God set to our forefathers
We went up and the first stroke that I struck a crag fell out and behold the light of day and far below us the good land and large stretching away boundless towards the western sun
I sat by the caves mouth at the dawning of the day Past me the tribe poured down young and old with their waggons and their cattle their seeds and their arms as of old—yet not as of old—wiser and stronger taught by long labour and sore affliction Downward they streamed from the caves mouth into the glens following the guidance of the silver watercourses and as they passed me each kissed my hands and feet and cried Thou hast saved us—thou hast given up all for us Come and be our king
Nay I said I have been your king this many a year for I have been the servant of you all
I went down with them into the plain and called them round me Many times they besought me to go with them and lead them
No I said I am old and greyheaded and I am not as I have been Choose out the wisest and most righteous among you and let him lead you But bind him to yourselves with an oath that whenever he shall say to you Stay here and let us sit down and build and dwell here for ever you shall cast him out of his office and make him a hewer of wood and a drawer of water and choose one who will lead you forwards in the spirit of God
The crowd opened and a woman came forward into the circle Her face was veiled but we all knew her for a prophetess Slowly she stepped into the midst chanting a mystic song Whether it spoke of past present or future we knew not but it sank deep into all our hearts
True freedom stands in meekness—
True strength in utter weakness—
Justice in forgiveness lies—
Riches in selfsacrifice—
Own no rank but Gods own spirit—
Wisdom rule—and worth inherit
Work for all and all employ—
Share with all and all enjoy—
God alike to all has given
Heaven as Earth and Earth as Heaven
When the laud shall find her king again
And the reign of God is come
We all listened awestruck She turned to us and continued
Hearken to me children of Japhet the unresting
On the holy mountain of Paradise in the Asgard of the HindooKoh in the cup of the four rivers in the womb of the mother of nations in brotherhood equality and freedom the sons of men were begotten at the wedding of the heaven and the earth Mighty infants you did the right you knew not of and sinned not because there was no temptation By selfishness you fell and became beasts of prey Each man coveted the universe for his own lusts and not that he might fulfil in it Gods command to people and subdue it Long have you wandered—and long will you wander still For here you have no abiding city You shall build cities and they shall crumble you shall invent forms of society and religion and they shall fail in the hour of need You shall call the lands by your own names and fresh waves of men shall sweep you forth westward westward ever till you have travelled round the path of the sun to the place from whence you came For out of Paradise you went and unto Paradise you shall return you shall become once more as little children and renew your youth like the eagles Feature by feature and limb by limb ye shall renew it age after age gradually and painfully by hunger and pestilence by superstitions and tyrannies by need and blank despair shall you be driven back to the AllFathers home till you become as you were before you fell and left the likeness of your father for the likeness of the beasts Out of Paradise you came from liberty equality and brotherhood and unto them you shall return again You went forth in unconscious infancy—you shall return in thoughtful manhood—You went forth in ignorance and need—you shall return in science and wealth philosophy and art You went forth with the world a wilderness before you—you shall return when it is a garden behind you You went forth selfishsavages—you shall return as the brothers of the Son of God
And for you she said looking on me your penance is accomplished You have learned what it is to be a man You have lost your life and saved it He that gives up house or land or wife or child for Gods sake it shall be repaid him an hundredfold Awake
Surely I knew that voice She lifted her veil The face was Lillians
No—Eleanors
Gently she touched my hand—I sank down into soft weary happy sleep
The spell was snapped My fever and my dreams faded away together and I woke to the twittering of the sparrows and the scent of the poplar leaves and the sights and sounds of childhood and found Eleanor and her uncle sitting by my bed and with them Crossthwaites little wife
I would have spoken but Eleanor laid her finger on her lips and taking her uncles arm glided from the room Katie kept stubbornly a smiling silence and I was fain to obey my newfound guardian angels
What need of many words Slowly and with relapses into insensibility I passed like one who recovers from drowning through the painful gate of birth into another life The fury of passion had been replaced by a delicious weakness The thunderclouds had passed roaring down the wind and the calm bright holy evening was come My heart like a fretful child had stamped and wept itself to sleep I was past even gratitude infinite submission and humility feelings too long forgotten absorbed my whole being Only I never dared meet Eleanors eye Her voice was like an angels when she spoke to me—friend mother sister all in one But I had a dim recollection of being unjust to her—of some bar between us
Katie and Crossthwaite as they sat by me tender and careful nurses both told me in time that to Eleanor I owed all my comforts I could not thank her—the debt was infinite inexplicable I felt as if I must speak all my heart or none and I watched her lavish kindness with a sort of sleepy passive wonder like a newborn babe
At last one day my kind nurses allowed me to speak a little I broached to Crossthwaite the subject which filled my thoughts How came I here How came you here and Lady Ellerton What is the meaning of it all
The meaning is that Lady Ellerton as they call her is an angel out of heaven Ah Alton she was your true friend after all if you had but known it and not that other one at all
I turned my head away
Whisht—howld then Johnny darlint and dont go tormenting the poor dear sowl just when hes comin round again
No no tell me all I must—I ought—I deserve to bear it How did she come here
Why then its my belief she had her eye on you ever since you came out of that Bastille and before that too and she found you out at Mackayes and me with you for I was there looking after you If it hadnt been for your illness Id have been in Texas now with our friends for alls up with the Charter and the countrys too hot at least for me Im sick of the whole thing together patriots aristocrats and everybody else except this blessed angel And Ive got a couple of hundred to emigrate with and whats more so have you
Hows that
Why when poor dear old Mackayes will was read and you raving mad in the next room he had left all his stockintrade that was the books to some of our friends to form a workmens library with and £400 hed saved to be parted between you and me on condition that wed GTT and cool down across the Atlantic for seven years come the tenth of April
So then by the lasting love of my adopted father I was at present at least out of the reach of want My heart was ready to overflow at my eyes but I could not rest till I had heard more of Lady Ellerton What brought her here to nurse me as if she had been a sister
Why then she lives not far off by When her husband died his cousin got the estate and title and so she came Katie tells me and lived for one year down somewhere in the Eastend among the needlewomen and spent her whole fortune on the poor and never kept a servant so they say but made her own bed and cooked her own dinner and got her bread with her own needle to see what it was really like And she learnt a lesson there I can tell you and God bless her for it For now shes got a large house here by with fifty or more in it all at work together sharing the earnings among themselves and putting into their own pockets the profits which would have gone to their tyrants and she keeps the accounts for them and gets the goods sold and manages everything and reads to them while they work and teaches them every day
And takes her victuals with them said Katie share and share alike She that was so grand a lady to demane herself to the poor unfortunate young things Shes as blessed a saint as any a one in the Calendar if theyll forgive me for saying so
Ay demeaning indeed for the best of it is theyre not the respectable ones only though she spends hundreds on them—
And sure havent I seen it with my own eyes when Ive been there charing
Ay but those she lives with are the fallen and the lost ones—those that the rich would not set up in business or help them to emigrate or lift them out of the gutter with a pair of tongs for fear they should stain their own whitewash in handling them
And sure theyre as dacent as meself now the poor darlints It was misery druv em to it every one perhaps it might hav druv me the same way if Id a lot o childer and Johnny gone to glory—and the blessed saints save him from that same at all at all
What from going to glory said John
Och thin and wouldnt I just go mad if ever such ill luck happened to yees as to be taken to heaven in the prime of your days asthore
And she began sobbing and hugging and kissing the little man and then suddenly recollecting herself scolded him heartily for making such a whillybaloo and thrust him out of my room to recommence kissing him in the next leaving me to many meditations
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE TRUE DEMAGOGUE
I used to try to arrange my thoughts but could not the past seemed swept away and buried like the wreck of some drowned land after a flood Ploughed by affliction to the core my heart lay fallow for every seed that fell Eleanor understood me and gently and gradually beneath her skilful hand the chaos began again to bloom with verdure She and Crossthwaite used to sit and read to me—from the Bible from poets from every book which could suggest soothing graceful or hopeful fancies Now out of the stillness of the darkened chamber one or two priceless sentences of à Kempis or a spiritstirring Hebrew psalm would fall upon my ear and then there was silence again and I was left to brood over the words in vacancy till they became a fibre of my own souls core Again and again the stories of Lazarus and the Magdalene alternated with Miltons Penseroso or with Wordsworths tenderest and most solemn strains Exquisite prints from the history of our Lords life and death were hung one by one each for a few days opposite my bed where they might catch my eye the moment that I woke the moment before I fell asleep I heard one day the good dean remonstrating with her on the sentimentalism of her mode of treatment
Poor drowned butterfly she answered smiling he must be fed with honeydew Have I not surely had practice enough already
Yes angel that you are answered the old man You have indeed had practice enough And lifting her hand reverentially to his lips he turned and left the room
She sat down by me as I lay and began to read from Tennysons LotusEaters But it was not reading—it was rather a soft dreamy chant which rose and fell like the waves of sound on an Æolian harp
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass
Or night dews on still waters between wails
Of shadowy granite in a gleaming pass
Music that gentler on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies
Here are cool mosses deep
And through the moss the ivies creep
And in the stream the longleaved flowers weep
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep
Why are we weighd upon with heaviness
And utterly consumed with sharp distress
While all things else have rest from weariness
All things have rest why should we toil alone
We only toil who are the first of things
And make perpetual moan
Still from one sorrow to another thrown
Nor ever fold our wings
And cease from wanderings
Nor steep our brows in slumbers holy balm
Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings
There is no joy but calm
Why should we only toil the roof and crown of things
She paused—
My soul was an enchanted boat
Which like a sleeping swan did float
Upon the silver waves of her sweet singing
Halfunconscious I looked up Before me hung a copy of Raffaelles cartoon of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes As my eye wandered over it it seemed to blend into harmony with the feelings which the poem had stirred I seemed to float upon the glassy lake I watched the vista of the waters and mountains receding into the dreamy infinite of the still summer sky Softly from distant shores came the hum of eager multitudes towers and palaces slept quietly beneath the eastern sun In front fantastic fishes and the birds of the mountain and the lake confessed His power who sat there in His calm godlike beauty His eye ranging over all that still infinity of His own works over all that wondrous line of figures which seemed to express every gradation of spiritual consciousness from the dark selfcondemned dislike of Judass averted and wily face through mere animal greediness to the first dawnings of surprise and on to the manly awe and gratitude of Andrews majestic figure and the self-abhorrent humility of Peter as he shrank down into the bottom of the skiff and with convulsive palms and bursting brow seemed to press out from his inmost heart the words Depart from me for I am a sinful man O Lord Truly pictures are the books of the unlearned and of the mislearned too Glorious Raffaelle Shakspeare of the South Mighty preacher to whose blessed intuition it was given to know all human hearts to embody in form and colour all spiritual truths common alike to Protestant and Papist to workman and to sage—oh that I may meet thee before the throne of God if it be but to thank thee for that one picture in which thou didst reveal to me in a single glance every step of my own spiritual history
She seemed to follow my eyes and guess from them the workings of my heart for now in a low halfabstracted voice as Diotima may have talked of old she began to speak of rest and labour of death and life of a labour which is perfect rest—of a daily death which is but daily birth—of weakness which is the strength of God and so she wandered on in her speech to Him who died for us And gradually she turned to me She laid one finger solemnly on my listless palm as her words and voice became more intense more personal She talked of Him as Mary may have talked just risen from His feet She spoke of Him as I had never heard Him spoken of before—with a tender passionate loyalty kept down and softened by the deepest awe The sense of her intense belief shining out in every lineament of her face carried conviction to my heart more than ten thousand arguments could do It must be true—Was not the power of it around her like a glory She spoke of Him as near us—watching us—in words of such vivid eloquence that I turned halfstartled to her as if I expected to see Him standing by her side
She spoke of Him as the great Reformer and yet as the true conservative the inspirer of all new truths revealing in His Bible to every age abysses of new wisdom as the times require and yet the vindicator of all which is ancient and eternal—the justifier of His own dealings with man from the beginning She spoke of Him as the true demagogue—the champion of the poor and yet as the true King above and below all earthly rank on whose will alone all real superiority of man to man all the timejustified and timehonoured usages of the family the society the nation stand and shall stand for ever
And then she changed her tone and in a voice of infinite tenderness she spoke of Him as the Creator the Word the Inspirer the only perfect Artist the Fountain of all Genius
She made me feel—would that His ministers had made me feel it before since they say that they believe it—that He had passed victorious through my vilest temptations that He sympathized with my every struggle
She told me how He in the first dawn of manhood full of the dim consciousness of His own power full of strange yearning presentiments about His own sad and glorious destiny went up into the wilderness as every youth above all every genius must there to be tempted of the devil She told how alone with the wild beasts and the brute powers of nature, He saw into the open secret—the mystery of mans twofold life His kingship over earth His sonship under God and conquered in the might of His knowledge How He was tempted like every genius to use His creative powers for selfish ends—to yield to the lust of display and singularity and break through those laws which He came to reveal and to fulfil—to do one little act of evil that He might secure thereby the harvest of good which was the object of His life and how He had conquered in the faith that He was the Son of God She told me how He had borne the sorrows of genius how the slightest pang that I had ever felt was but a dim faint pattern of His how He above all men had felt the agony of calumny misconception misinterpretation how He had fought with bigotry and stupidity casting His pearls before swine knowing full well what it was to speak to the deaf and the blind how He had wept over Jerusalem in the bitterness of disappointed patriotism when He had tried in vain to awaken within a nation of slavish and yet rebellious bigots the consciousness of their glorious calling…
It was too much—I hid my face in the coverlet and burst out into long low and yet most happy weeping She rose and went to the window and beckoned Katie from the room within
I am afraid she said my conversation has been too much for him
Showers sweeten the air said Katie and truly enough as my own lightened brain told me
Eleanor—for so I must call her now—stood watching me for a few minutes and then glided back to the bedside and sat down again
You find the room quiet
Wonderfully quiet The roar of the city outside is almost soothing and the noise of every carriage seems to cease suddenly just as it becomes painfully near
We have had straw laid down she answered all along this part of the street
This last drop of kindness filled the cup to overflowing a veil fell from before my eyes—it was she who had been my friend my guardian angel from the beginning
You—you—idiot that I have been I see it all now It was you who laid that paper to catch my eye on that first evening at D —you paid my debt to my cousin—you visited Mackaye in his last illness
She made a sign of assent
You saw from the beginning my danger my weakness—you tried to turn me from my frantic and fruitless passion—you tried to save me from the very gulf into which I forced myself—and I—I have hated you in return—cherished suspicions too ridiculous to confess only equalled by the absurdity of that other dream
Would that other dream have ever given you peace even if it had ever become reality
She spoke gently slowly seriously waiting between each question for the answer which I dared not give
What was it that you adored a soul or a face The inward reality or the outward symbol which is only valuable as a sacrament of the loveliness within
Ay thought I and was that loveliness within What was that beauty but a hollow mask How barren borrowed trivial every thought and word of hers seemed now as I looked back upon them in comparison with the rich luxuriance the startling originality of thought and deed and sympathy in her who now sat by me wan and faded beautiful no more as men call beauty but with the spirit of an archangel gazing from those clear fiery eyes And as I looked at her an emotion utterly new to me arose utter trust delight submission gratitude awe—if it was love it was love as of a dog towards his master…
Ay I murmured half unconscious that I spoke aloud her I loved and love no longer but you you I worship and for ever
Worship God she answered If it shall please you hereafter to call me friend I shall refuse neither the name nor its duties But remember always that whatsoever interest I feel in you and indeed have felt from the first time I saw your poems I cannot give or accept friendship upon any ground so shallow and changeable as personal preference The time was when I thought it a mark of superior intellect and refinement to be as exclusive in my friendships as in my theories Now I have learnt that that is most spiritual and noble which is also most universal If we are to call each other friends it must be for a reason which equally includes the outcast and the profligate the felon and the slave
What do you mean I asked half disappointed
Only for the sake of Him who died for all alike
Why did she rise and call Crossthwaite from the next room where he was writing Was it from the womanly tact and delicacy which feared lest my excited feelings might lead me on to some too daring expression and give me the pain of a rebuff however gentle or was it that she wished him as well as me to hear the memorable words which followed to which she seemed to have been all along alluring me and calling up in my mind one by one the very questions to which she had prepared the answers
That name I answered Alas has it not been in every age the watchword not of an allembracing charity but of self-conceit and bigotry excommunication and persecution
That is what men have made it not God or He who bears it the Son of God Yes men have separated from each other slandered each other murdered each other in that name and blasphemed it by that very act But when did they unite in any name but that Look all history through—from the early churches unconscious and infantile ideas of Gods kingdom as Eden was of the human race when love alone was law and none said that aught that he possessed was his own but they had all things in common—Whose name was the bond of unity for that brotherhood such as the earth had never seen—when the Roman lady and the Negro slave partook together at the table of the same bread and wine and sat together at the feet of the Syrian tentmaker—One is our Master even Christ who sits at the right hand of God and in Him we are all brothers Not selfchosen preference for His precepts but the overwhelming faith in His presence His rule His love bound those rich hearts together Look onward too at the first followers of St Bennet and St Francis at the Cameronians among their Scottish hills or the little persecuted flock who in a dark and godless time gathered around Wesley by pit mouths and on Cornish cliffs—Look too at the great societies of our own days which however imperfectly still lovingly and earnestly do their measure of Gods work at home and abroad and say when was there ever real union cooperation philanthropy equality brotherhood among men save in loyalty to Him—Jesus who died upon the cross
And she bowed her head reverently before that unseen Majesty and then looked up at us again—Those eyes now brimming full of earnest tears would have melted stonier hearts than ours that day
Do you not believe me Then I must quote against you one of your own prophets—a ruined angel—even as you might have been
When Camille Desmoulins the revolutionary about to die as is the fate of such by the hands of revolutionaries was asked his age he answered they say that it was the same as that of the bon sansculotte Jesus I do not blame those who shrink from that speech as blasphemous I too have spoken hasty words and hard and prided myself on breaking the bruised reed and quenching the smoking flax Time was when I should have been the loudest in denouncing poor Camille but I have long since seemed to see in those words the distortion of an almighty truth—a truth that shall shake thrones and principalities and powers and fill the earth with its sound as with the trump of God a prophecy like Balaams of old—I shall see Him but not nigh I shall behold Him but not near… Take all the heroes prophets poets philosophers—where will you find the true demagogue—the speaker to man simply as man—the friend of publicans and sinners the stern foe of the scribe and the Pharisee—with whom was no respect of persons—where is he Socrates and Plato were noble Zerdusht and Confutzee for aught we know were nobler still but what were they but the exclusive mystagogues of an enlightened few like our own Emersons and Strausses to compare great with small What gospel have they or Strauss or Emerson for the poor the suffering the oppressed The Peoples Friend Where will you find him but in Jesus of Nazareth
We feel that I assure you we feel that said Crossthwaite There are thousands of us who delight in His moral teaching as the perfection of human excellence
And what gospel is there in a moral teaching What good news is it to the savage of St Giles to the artizan crushed by the competition of others and his own evil habits to tell him that he can be free—if he can make himself free—That all men are his equals—if he can rise to their level or pull them down to his—All men his brothers—if he can only stop them from devouring him or making it necessary for him to devour them Liberty equality and brotherhood Let the history of every nation of every revolution—let your own sad experience speak—have they been aught as yet but delusive phantoms—angels that turned to fiends the moment you seemed about to clasp them Remember the tenth of April and the plots thereof and answer your own hearts
Crossthwaite buried his face in his hands
What I answered passionately will you rob us poor creatures of our only faith our only hope on earth Let us be deceived and deceived again yet we will believe We will hope on in spite of hope We may die but the idea lives for ever Liberty equality and fraternity must come We know we know that they must come and woe to those who seek to rob us of our faith
Keep keep your faith she cried for it is not yours but Gods who gave it But do not seek to realize that idea for yourselves
Why then in the name of reason and mercy
Because it is realized already for you You are free God has made you free You are equals—you are brothers for He is your king who is no respecter of persons He is your king who has bought for you the rights of sons of God He is your king to whom all power is given in heaven and earth who reigns and will reign till He has put all enemies under His feet That was Luthers charter—with that alone he freed half Europe That is your charter and mine the everlasting ground of our rights our mights our duties of evergathering storm for the oppressor of everbrightening sunshine for the oppressed Own no other Claim your investiture as free men from none but God His will His love is a stronger ground surely than abstract rights and ethnological opinions Abstract rights What ground what root have they but the everchanging opinions of men born anew and dying anew with each fresh generation—while the word of God stands sure—You are mine and I am yours bound to you in an everlasting covenant
Abstract rights They are sure to end in practice only in the tyranny of their father—opinion In favoured England here the notions of abstract right among the many are not so incorrect thanks to three centuries of Protestant civilization but only because the right notions suit the many at this moment But in America even now the same ideas of abstract right do not interfere with the tyranny of the white man over the black Why should they The white man is handsomer stronger cunninger worthier than the black The black is more like an ape than the white man—he is—the fact is there and no notions of an abstract right will put that down nothing but another fact—a mightier more universal fact—Jesus of Nazareth died for the negro as well as for the white Looked at apart from Him each race each individual of mankind stands separate and alone owing no more brotherhood to each other than wolf to wolf or pike to pike—himself a mightier beast of prey—even as he has proved himself in every age Looked at as he is as joined into one family in Christ his archetype and head even the most frantic declamations of the French democrat about the majesty of the people the divinity of mankind become rational reverent and literal Gods grace outrivals all mans boasting—I have said ye are gods and ye are all the children of the Most Highest—children of God members of Christ of His body of His flesh and of His bones—kings and priests to God—free inheritors of the spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit of prudence and courage of reverence and love the spirit of Him who has said Behold the days come when I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and no one shall teach his brother saying Know the Lord for all shall know Him from the least even unto the greatest Ay even on the slaves and on the handmaidens in those days will I pour out my spirit saith the Lord
And that is really in the Bible asked Crossthwaite
Ay—she went on her figure dilating and her eyes flashing like an inspired prophetess—that is in the Bible What would you more than that That is your charter the only ground of all charters You like all mankind have had dim inspirations confused yearnings after your future destiny and like all the world from the beginning you have tried to realize by selfwilled methods of your own what you can only do by Gods inspiration by Gods method Like the builders of Babel in old time you have said Go to let us build us a city and a tower whose top shall reach to heaven—And God has confounded you as he did them By mistrust division passion and folly you are scattered abroad Even in these last few days the last dregs of your late plot have exploded miserably and ludicrously—your late companions are in prison and the name of Chartist is a laughingstock as well as an abomination
Good Heavens Is this true asked I looking at Crossthwaite for confirmation
Too true dear boy too true and if it had not been for these two angels here I should have been in Newgate now
Yes she went on The Charter seems dead and liberty further off than ever
That seems true enough indeed said I bitterly
Yes But it is because Liberty is Gods beloved child that He will not have her purity sullied by the touch of the profane Because He loves the people He will allow none but Himself to lead the people Because He loves the people He will teach the people by afflictions And even now while all this madness has been destroying itself He has been hiding you in His secret place from the strife of tongues that you may have to look for a state founded on better things than acts of parliament social contracts and abstract rights—a city whose foundations are in the eternal promises whose builder and maker is God
She paused—Go on go on cried Crossthwaite and I in the same breath
That state that city Jesus said was come—was now within us had we eyes to see And it is come Call it the church the gospel civilization freedom democracy association what you will—I shall call it by the name by which my Master spoke of it—the name which includes all these and more than these—the kingdom of God Without observation as he promised secretly but mightily it has been growing spreading since that first Whitsuntide civilizing humanizing uniting this distracted earth Men have fancied they found it in this system or in that and in them only They have cursed it in its own name when they found it too wide for their own narrow notions They have cried Lo here and Lo there To this communion or To that set of opinions But it has gone its way—the way of Him who made all things and redeemed all things to Himself In every age it has been a gospel to the poor In every age it has sooner or later claimed the steps of civilization the discoveries of science, as Gods inspirations not mans inventions In every age it has taught men to do that by God which they had failed in doing without Him It is now ready if we may judge by the signs of the times once again to penetrate to convert to reorganize the political and social life of England perhaps of the world to vindicate democracy as the will and gift of God Take it for the ground of your rights If henceforth you claim political enfranchisement claim it not as mere men who may be villains savages animals slaves of their own prejudices and passions but as members of Christ children of God inheritors of the kingdom of heaven and therefore bound to realize it on earth All other rights are mere mights—mere selfish demands to become tyrants in your turn If you wish to justify your Charter do it on that ground Claim your share in national life only because the nation is a spiritual body whose king is the Son of God whose work whose national character and powers are allotted to it by the Spirit of Christ Claim universal suffrage only on the ground of the universal redemption of mankind—the universal priesthood of Christians That argument will conquer when all have failed for God will make it conquer Claim the disenfranchisement of every man rich or poor who breaks the laws of God and man not merely because he is an obstacle to you but because he is a traitor to your common King in heaven and to the spiritual kingdom of which he is a citizen Denounce the effete idol of propertyqualification not because it happens to strengthen class interests against you but because as your mystic dream reminded you and therefore as you knew long ago there is no real rank no real power but worth and worth consists not in property but in the grace of God Claim if you will annual parliaments as a means of enforcing the responsibility of rulers to the Christian community of which they are to be not the lords but the ministers—the servants of all But claim these and all else for which you long not from man but from God the King of men And therefore before you attempt to obtain them make yourselves worthy of them—perhaps by that process you will find some of them have become less needful At all events do not ask do not hope that He will give them to you before you are able to profit by them Believe that he has kept them from you hitherto because they would have been curses and not blessings Oh look back look back at the history of English Radicalism for the last half century and judge by your own deeds your own words were you fit for those privileges which you so frantically demanded Do not answer me that those who had them were equally unfit but thank God if the case be indeed so that your incapacity was not added to theirs to make confusion worse confounded Learn a new lesson Believe at last that you are in Christ and become new creatures With those miserable awful farce tragedies of April and June let old things pass away and all things become new Believe that your kingdom is not of this world but of One whose servants must not fight He that believeth as the prophet says will not make haste Beloved suffering brothers are not your times in the hand of One who loved you to the death who conquered as you must do not by wrath but by martyrdom Try no more to meet Mammon with his own weapons but commit your cause to Him who judges righteously who is even now coming out of His place to judge the earth and to help the fatherless and poor unto their right that the man of the world may be no more exalted against them—the poor man of Nazareth crucified for you
She ceased and there was silence for a few moments as if angels were waiting hushed to carry our repentance to the throne of Him we had forgotten
Crossthwaite had kept his face fast buried in his hands now he looked up with brimming eyes—
I see it—I see it all now Oh my God my God what infidels we have been
CHAPTER XXXVIII
MIRACLES AND SCIENCE
Sunrise they say often at first draws up and deepens the very mists which it is about to scatter and even so as the excitement of my first conviction cooled dark doubts arose to dim the newborn light of hope and trust within me The question of miracles had been ever since I had read Strauss my greatest stumblingblock—perhaps not unwillingly for my doubts pampered my sense of intellectual acuteness and scientific knowledge and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing But now that they interfered with nobler more important more immediately practical ideas I longed to have them removed—I longed even to swallow them down on trust—to take the miracles into the bargain as it were for the sake of that mighty gospel of deliverance for the people which accompanied them Mean subterfuge which would not could not satisfy me The thing was too precious too allimportant to take one tittle of it on trust I could not bear the consciousness of one hollow spot—the nether fires of doubt glaring through even at one little crevice I took my doubts to Lady Ellerton—Eleanor as I must now call her for she never allowed herself to be addressed by her title—and she referred me to her uncle—
I could say somewhat on that point myself But since your doubts are scientific ones I had rather that you should discuss them with one whose knowledge of such subjects you and all England with you must revere
Ah but—pardon me he is a clergyman
And therefore bound to prove whether he believes in his own proof or not Unworthy suspicion she cried with a touch of her old manner If you had known that mans literary history for the last thirty years you would not suspect him at least of sacrificing truth and conscience to interest or to fear of the worlds insults
I was rebuked and not without hope and confidence I broached the question to the good dean when he came in—as he happened to do that very day
I hardly like to state my difficulties I began—for I am afraid that I must hurt myself in your eyes by offending your—prejudices if you will pardon so plainspoken an expression
If he replied in his bland courtly way I am so unfortunate as to have any prejudices left you cannot do me a greater kindness than by offending them—or by any other means however severe—to make me conscious of the locality of such a secret canker
But I am afraid that your own teaching has created or at least corroborated these doubts of mine
How so
You first taught me to revere science You first taught me to admire and trust the immutable order the perfect harmony of the laws of Nature."
Ah I comprehend now he answered in a somewhat mournful tone—How much we have to answer for How often in our carelessness we offend those little ones whose souls are precious in the sight of God I have thought long and earnestly on the very subject which now distresses you perhaps every doubt which has passed through your mind has exercised my own and strange to say you first set me on that new path of thought A conversation which passed between us years ago at D on the antithesis of natural and revealed religion—perhaps you recollect it
Yes I recollected it better than he fancied and recollected too—I thrust the thought behind me—it was even yet intolerable
That conversation first awoke in me the sense of an hitherto unconscious inconsistency—a desire to reconcile two lines of thought—which I had hitherto considered as parallel and impossible to unite To you and to my beloved niece here I owe gratitude for that evenings talk and you are freely welcome to all my conclusions for you have been indirectly the originator of them all
Then I must confess that miracles seem to me impossible just because they break the laws of Nature. Pardon me—but there seems something blasphemous in supposing that God can mar His own order His power I do not call in question but the very thought of His so doing is abhorrent to me
It is as abhorrent to me as it can be to you to Goethe or to Strauss and yet I believe firmly in our Lords miracles
How so if they break the laws of Nature?"
Who told you my dear young friend that to break the customs of Nature, is to break her laws A phenomenon, an appearance whether it be a miracle or a comet need not contradict them because it is rare because it is as yet not referable to them Natures deepest laws her only true laws are her invisible ones All analyses I think you know enough to understand my terms whether of appearances of causes, or of elements only lead us down to fresh appearances—we cannot see a law, let the power of our lens be ever so immense The true causes remain just as impalpable as unfathomable as ever eluding equally our microscope and our induction—ever tending towards some great primal law as Mr Grove has well shown lately in his most valuable pamphlet—some great primal law I say manifesting itself according to circumstances in countless diverse and unexpected forms—till all that the philosopher as well as the divine can say is—the Spirit of Life impalpable transcendental direct from God is the only real cause It bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth What if miracles should be the orderly result of some such deep most orderly and yet most spiritual law
I feel the force of your argument but—
But you will confess at least that you after the fashion of the crowd have begun your argument by begging the very question in dispute and may have after all created the very difficulty which torments you
I confess it but I cannot see how the miracles of Jesus—of our
Lord—have anything of order in them
Tell me then—to try the Socratic method—is disease or health the order and law of Nature?"
Health surely we all confess that by calling diseases disorders
Then would one who healed diseases be a restorer or a breaker of order
A restorer doubtless but—
Like a patient scholar and a scholarly patient allow me to exhibit my own medicines according to my own notion of the various crises of your distemper I assure you I will not play you false or entrap you by quips and special pleading You are aware that our Lords miracles were almost exclusively miracles of healing—restorations of that order of health which disease was breaking—that when the Scribes and Pharisees superstitious and sensebound asked him for a sign from heaven a contranatural prodigy he refused them as peremptorily as he did the fiends Command these stones that they be made bread You will quote against me the water turned into wine as an exception to this rule St Augustine answered that objection centuries ago by the same argument as I am now using Allow Jesus to have been the Lord of Creation and what was he doing then but what he does in the maturing of every grape—transformed from air and water even as that wine in Cana Goethe himself unwittingly has made Mephistopheles even say as much as that—
Wine is sap and grapes are wood
The wooden board yields wine as good
But the time—so infinitely shorter than that which Nature usually occupies in the process?"
Time and space are no Gods as a wise German says and as the electric telegraph ought already to have taught you They are customs but who has proved them to be laws of Nature? No analyse these miracles one by one fairly carefully scientifically and you will find that if you want prodigies really blasphemous and absurd infractions of the laws of Nature, amputated limbs growing again and dead men walking away with their heads under their arms you must go to the Popish legends but not to the miracles of the Gospels And now for your but—
The raising of the dead to life Surely death is the appointed end of every animal—ay of every species and of man among the rest
Who denies it But is premature death—the death of Jairuss daughter of the widows son at Nain the death of Jesus himself in the prime of youth and vigour—or rather that gradual decay of ripe old age through which I now thank God so fast am travelling What nobler restoration of order what clearer vindication of the laws of Nature from the disorder of diseases than to recall the dead to their natural and normal period of life
I was silent a few moments having nothing to answer then—
After all these may have been restorations of the law of Nature. But why was the law broken in order to restore it The Tenth of April has taught me at least that disorder cannot cast disorder out
Again I ask why do you assume the very point in question Again I ask who knows what really are the laws of Nature? You have heard Bacons golden rule—Nature is conquered by obeying her
I have
Then who more likely who more certain to fulfil that law to hitherto unattained perfection than He who came to obey not outward nature merely but as Bacon meant the inner ideas the spirit of Nature, which is the will of God—He who came to do utterly not His own will but the will of the Father who sent Him Who is so presumptuous as to limit the future triumphs of science? Surely no one who has watched her giant strides during the last century Shall Stephenson and Faraday and the inventors of the calculating machine and the electric telegraph have fulfilled such wonders by their weak and partial obedience to the Will of God expressed in things—and He who obeyed even unto the death have possessed no higher power than theirs
Indeed I said your words stagger me But there is another old objection which they have reawakened in my mind You will say I am shifting my ground sadly But you must pardon me
Let us hear They need not be irrelevant The unconscious logic of association is often deeper and truer than any syllogism
These modern discoveries in medicine seem to show that Christs miracles may be attributed to natural causes."
And thereby justify them For what else have I been arguing The difficulty lies only in the rationalists shallow and sensuous view of Nature, and in his ambiguous slipslop trick of using the word natural to mean in one sentence material and in the next as I use it only normal and orderly Every new wonder in medicine which this great age discovers—what does it prove but that Christ need have broken no natural laws to do that of old which can be done now without breaking them—if you will but believe that these gifts of healing are all inspired and revealed by Him who is the Great Physician the Life the Lord of that vital energy by whom all cures are wrought
The surgeons of St Georges make the boy walk who has been lame from his mothers womb But have they given life to a single bone or muscle of his limbs They have only put them into that position—those circumstances in which the Godgiven life in them can have its free and normal play and produce the cure which they only assist I claim that miracle of science, as I do all future ones as the inspiration of Him who made the lame to walk in Judea not by producing new organs but by His creative will—quickening and liberating those which already existed
The mesmerist again says that he can cure a spirit of infirmity an hysteric or paralytic patient by shedding forth on them his own vital energy and therefore he will have it that Christs miracles were but mesmeric feats I grant for the sake of argument that he possesses the power which he claims though I may think his facts too new too undigested often too exaggerated to claim my certain assent But I say I take you on your own ground and indeed if man be the image of God his vital energy may for aught I know be able like Gods to communicate some spark of life—But then what must have been the vital energy of Him who was the life itself who was filled without measure with the spirit not only of humanity but with that of God the Lord and Giver of life Do but let the Bible tell its own story grant for the sake of argument the truth of the dogmas which it asserts throughout and it becomes a consistent whole When a man begins as Strauss does by assuming the falsity of its conclusions no wonder if he finds its premises a fragmentary chaos of contradictions
And what else asked Eleanor passionately—what else is the meaning of that highest human honour the Sacrament of the Lords Supper but a perennial token that the same lifegiving spirit is the free right of all
And thereon followed happy peaceful hopeful words which the reader if he call himself a Christian ought to be able to imagine for himself I am afraid that writing from memory I should do as little justice to them as I have to the deans arguments in this chapter Of the consequences which they produced in me I will speak anon
CHAPTER XXXIX
NEMESIS
It was a month or more before I summoned courage to ask after my cousin
Eleanor looked solemnly at me
Did you not know it He is dead
Dead I was almost stunned by the announcement
Of typhus fever He died three weeks ago and not only he but the servant who brushed his clothes and the shopman who had a few days before brought him a new coat home
How did you learn all this
From Mr Crossthwaite But the strangest part of the sad story is to come Crossthwaites suspicions were aroused by some incidental circumstance and knowing of Downess death and the fact that you most probably caught your fever in that miserable beings house he made such inquiries as satisfied him that it was no other than your cousins coat—
Which covered the corpses in that fearful chamber
It was indeed
Just awful God And this was the consistent Nemesis of all poor Georges thrift and cunning of his determination to carry the buycheapandselldear commercialism in which he had been brought up into every act of life Did I rejoice No all revenge all spite had been scourged out of me I mourned for him as for a brother till the thought flashed across me—Lillian was free Half unconscious I stammered her name inquiringly
Judge for yourself answered Eleanor mildly yet with a deep severe meaning in her tone
I was silent
The tempest in my heart was ready to burst forth again but she my guardian angel soothed it for me
She is much changed sorrow and sickness—for she too has had the fever and alas less resignation or peace within than those who love her would have wished to see—have worn her down Little remains now of that loveliness—
Which I idolized in my folly
Thank God thank God that you see that at last I knew it all along I knew that there was nothing there for your heart to rest upon—nothing to satisfy your intellect—and therefore I tried to turn you from your dream I did it harshly angrily too sharply yet not explicitly enough I ought to have made allowances for you I should have known how enchanting intoxicating mere outward perfections must have been to one of your perceptions shut out so long as you had been from the beautiful in art and nature But I was cruel Alas I had not then learnt to sympathize and I have often since felt with terror that I too may have many of your sins to answer for that I even I helped to drive you on to bitterness and despair
Oh do not say so You have done to me meant to me nothing but good
Be not too sure of that You little know me You little know the pride which I have fostered—even the mean anger against you for being the protégé of any one but myself That exclusiveness and shyness and proud reserve is the bane of our English character—it has been the bane of mine—daily I strive to root it out Come—I will do so now You wonder why I am here You shall hear somewhat of my story and do not fancy that I am showing you a peculiar mark of honour or confidence If the history of my life can be of use to the meanest they are welcome to the secrets of my inmost heart
I was my parents only child an heiress highly born and highly educated Every circumstance of humanity which could pamper pride was mine and I battened on the poison I painted I sang I wrote in prose and verse—they told me not without success Men said that I was beautiful—I knew that myself and revelled and gloried in the thought Accustomed to see myself the centre of all my parents hopes and fears to be surrounded by flatterers to indulge in secret the still more fatal triumph of contempt for those I thought less gifted than myself self became the centre of my thoughts Pleasure was all I thought of But not what the vulgar call pleasure That I disdained while like you I worshipped all that was pleasurable to the intellect and the taste The beautiful was my God I lived in deliberate intoxication on poetry music painting and every antitype of them which I could find in the world around At last I met with—one whom you once saw He first awoke in me the sense of the vast duties and responsibilities of my station—his example first taught me to care for the many rather than for the few It was a blessed lesson yet even that I turned to poison by making self still self the object of my very benevolence To be a philanthropist a philosopher a feudal queen amid the blessings and the praise of dependent hundreds—that was my new ideal for that I turned the whole force of my intellect to the study of history of social and economic questions From Bentham and Malthus to Fourier and Proudhon I read them all I made them all fit into that idoltemple of self which I was rearing and fancied that I did my duty by becoming one of the great ones of the earth My ideal was not the crucified Nazarene but some Hairoun Alraschid in luxurious splendour pampering his pride by bestowing as a favour those mercies which God commands as the right of all I thought to serve God forsooth by serving Mammon and myself Fool that I was I could not see Gods handwriting on the wall against me How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven…
You gave me unintentionally a warning hint The capabilities which I saw in you made me suspect that those below might be more nearly my equals than I had yet fancied Your vivid descriptions of the misery among whole classes of workmen—misery caused and ever increased by the very system of society itself—gave a momentary shock to my fairy palace They drove me back upon the simple old question which has been asked by every honest heart age after age What right have I to revel in luxury while thousands are starving Why do I pride myself on doling out to them small fractions of that wealth which if sacrificed utterly and at once might help to raise hundreds to a civilization as high as my own I could not face the thought and angry with you for having awakened it however unintentionally I shrank back behind the pitiable wornout fallacy that luxury was necessary to give employment I knew that it was a fallacy I knew that the labour spent in producing unnecessary things for one rich man may just as well have gone in producing necessaries for a hundred poor or employ the architect and the painter for public bodies as well as private individuals That even for the production of luxuries the monopolizing demand of the rich was not required—that the appliances of real civilization the landscapes gardens stately rooms baths books pictures works of art collections of curiosities which now went to pamper me alone—me one single human soul—might be helping in an associate society to civilize a hundred families now debarred from them by isolated poverty without robbing me of an atom of the real enjoyment or benefit of them I knew it I say to be a fallacy and yet I hid behind it from the eye of God Besides it always had been so—the few rich and the many poor I was but one more among millions
She paused a moment as if to gather strength and then continued
The blow came My idol—for he too was an idol—To please him I had begun—To please myself in pleasing him I was trying to become great—and with him went from me that sphere of labour which was to witness the triumph of my pride I saw the estate pass into other hands a mighty change passed over me as impossible perhaps as unfitting for me to analyse I was considered mad Perhaps I was so there is a divine insanity a celestial folly which conquers worlds At least when that period was past I had done and suffered so strangely that nothing henceforth could seem strange to me I had broken the yoke of custom and opinion My only ground was now the bare realities of human life and duty In poverty and loneliness I thought out the problems of society and seemed to myself to have found the one solution—selfsacrifice Following my first impulse I had given largely to every charitable institution I could hear of—God forbid that I should regret those gifts—yet the money I soon found might have been better spent One by one every institution disappointed me they seemed after all only means for keeping the poor in their degradation by making it just not intolerable to them—means for enabling Mammon to draw fresh victims into his den by taking off his hands those whom he had already worn out into uselessness Then I tried association among my own sex—among the most miserable and degraded of them I simply tried to put them into a position in which they might work for each other and not for a single tyrant in which that tyrants profits might be divided among the slaves themselves Experienced men warned me that I should fail that such a plan would be destroyed by the innate selfishness and rivalry of human nature that it demanded what was impossible to find good faith fraternal love overruling moral influence I answered that I knew that already that nothing but Christianity alone could supply that want but that it could and should supply it that I would teach them to live as sisters by living with them as their sister myself To become the teacher the minister the slave of those whom I was trying to rescue was now my one idea to lead them on not by machinery but by precept by example by the influence of every gift and talent which God had bestowed upon me to devote to them my enthusiasm my eloquence my poetry my art my science to tell them who had bestowed their gifts on me and would bestow to each according to her measure the same on them to make my workrooms in one word not a machinery but a family And I have succeeded—as others will succeed long after my name my small endeavours are forgotten amid the great new world—new Church I should have said—of enfranchised and fraternal labour
And this was the suspected aristocrat Oh my brothers my brothers little you know how many a noble soul among those ranks which you consider only as your foes is yearning to love to help to live and die for you did they but know the way Is it their fault if God has placed them where they are Is it their fault if they refuse to part with their wealth before they are sure that such a sacrifice would really be a mercy to you Show yourselves worthy of association Show that you can do justly love mercy and walk humbly with your God as brothers before one Father subjects of one crucified King—and see then whether the spirit of self-sacrifice is dead among the rich See whether there are not left in England yet seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Mammon who will not fear to give their substance to the free if they find that the Son has made you free—free from your own sins as well as from the sins of others
CHAPTER XL
PRIESTS AND PEOPLE
But after all I said one day the great practical objection still remains unanswered—the clergy Are we to throw ourselves into their hands after all Are we who have been declaiming all our lives against priestcraft voluntarily to forge again the chains of our slavery to a class whom we neither trust nor honour
She smiled If you will examine the PrayerBook you will not find as far as I am aware anything which binds a man to become the slave of the priesthood voluntarily or otherwise Whether the people become priestridden or not hereafter will depend as it always has done utterly on themselves As long as the people act upon their spiritual liberty and live with eyes undimmed by superstitious fear fixed in loving boldness on their Father in heaven and their King the firstborn among many brethren the priesthood will remain as God intended them only the interpreters and witnesses of His will and His kingdom But let them turn their eyes from Him to aught in earth or heaven beside and there will be no lack of priestcraft of veils to hide Him from them tyrants to keep them from Him idols to ape His likeness A sinful people will be sure to be a priestridden people in reality though not in name by journalists and demagogues if not by classleaders and popes and of the two I confess I should prefer a Hildebrand to an OFlynn
But I replied we do not love we do not trust we do not respect the clergy Has their conduct to the masses for the last century deserved that we should do so Will you ask us to obey the men whom we despise
God forbid she answered But you must surely be aware of the miraculous everincreasing improvement in the clergy
In morals I said and in industry doubtless but not upon those points which are to us just now dearer than their morals or their industry because they involve the very existence of our own industry and our own morals—I mean social and political subjects On them the clergy seem to me as ignorant as bigoted as aristocratic as ever
But suppose that there were a rapidlyincreasing class among the clergy who were willing to help you to the uttermost—and you must feel that their help would be worth having—towards the attainment of social reform if you would waive for a time merely political reform
What I said give up the very ideas for which we have struggled and sinned and all but died and will struggle and if need be die for still or confess ourselves traitors to the common weal
The Charter like its supporters must die to itself before it lives to
God Is it not even now farther off than ever
It seems so indeed—but what do you mean
You regarded the Charter as an absolute end You made a selfish and a self-willed idol of it And therefore Gods blessing did not rest on it or you
We want it as a means as well as an end—as a means for the highest and widest social reform as well as a right dependent on eternal justice
Let the working classes prove that then she replied in their actions now If it be true as I would fain believe it to be let them show that they are willing to give up their will to Gods will to compass those social reforms by the means which God puts in their way and wait for His own good time to give them or not to give them those means which they in their own minds prefer This is what I meant by saying that Chartism must die to itself before it has a chance of living to God You must feel too that Chartism has sinned—has defiled itself in the eyes of the wise the good the gentle Your only way now to soften the prejudice against it is to show that you can live like men and brothers and Christians without it You cannot wonder if the clergy shall object awhile to help you towards that Charter which the majority of you demanded for the express purpose of destroying the creed which the clergy do believe however badly they may have acted upon it
It is all true enough—bitterly true But yet why do we need the help of the clergy
Because you need the help of the whole nation because there are other classes to be considered beside yourselves because the nation is neither the few nor the many but the all because it is only by the cooperation of all the members of a body that any one member can fulfil its calling in health and freedom because as long as you stand aloof from the clergy or from any other class through pride selfinterest or wilful ignorance you are keeping up those very class distinctions of which you and I too complain as hateful equally to God and to his enemies and finally because the clergy are the class which God has appointed to unite all others which in as far as it fulfils its calling and is indeed a priesthood is above and below all rank and knows no man after the flesh but only on the ground of his spiritual worth and his birthright in that kingdom which is the heritage of all
Truly I answered the idea is a noble one—But look at the reality Has not priestly pandering to tyrants made the Church in every age a scoff and a byword among free men
May it ever do so she replied whenever such a sin exists But yet look at the other side of the picture Did not the priesthood in the first ages glory not in the name but what is better in the office of democrats Did not the Roman tyrants hunt them down as wild beasts because they were democrats proclaiming to the slave and to the barbarian a spiritual freedom and a heavenly citizenship before which the Roman well knew his power must vanish into naught Who during the invasion of the barbarians protected the poor against their conquerors Who in the middle age stood between the baron and his serfs Who in their monasteries realized spiritual democracy—the nothingness of rank and wealth the practical might of cooperation and selfsacrifice Who delivered England from the Pope Who spread throughout every cottage in the land the Bible and Protestantism the book and the religion which declares that a mans soul is free in the sight of God Who at the martyrs stake in Oxford lighted the candle in England that shall never be put out Who by suffering and not by rebellion drove the last perjured Stuart from his throne and united every sect and class in one of the noblest steps in Englands progress You will say these are the exceptions I say nay they are rather a few great and striking manifestations of an influence which has been unseen though not unfelt at work for ages converting consecrating organizing every fresh invention of mankind and which is now on the eve of christianizing democracy as it did Mediæval Feudalism Tudor Nationalism Whig Constitutionalism and which will succeed in christianizing it and so alone making it rational human possible because the priesthood alone of all human institutions testifies of Christ the King of men the Lord of all things the inspirer of all discoveries who reigns and will reign till He has put all things under His feet and the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ Be sure as it always has been so will it be now Without the priesthood there is no freedom for the people Statesmen know it and therefore those who would keep the people fettered find it necessary to keep the priesthood fettered also The people never can be themselves without cooperation with the priesthood and the priesthood never can be themselves without cooperation with the people They may help to make a sectChurch for the rich as they have been doing or a sectChurch for paupers which is also the most subtle form of a sectChurch for the rich as a party in England are trying now to do—as I once gladly would have done myself but if they would be truly priests of God and priests of the Universal Church they must be priests of the people priests of the masses priests after the likeness of Him who died on the cross
And are there any men I said who believe this and what is more have courage to act upon it now in the very hour of Mammons triumph
There are those who are willing who are determined whatever it may cost them to fraternize with those whom they take shame to themselves for having neglected to preach and to organize in concert with them a Holy War against the social abuses which are Englands shame and first and foremost against the fiend of competition They do not want to be dictators to the working men They know that they have a message to the artizan but they know too that the artizan has a message to them and they are not afraid to hear it They do not wish to make him a puppet for any system of their own they only are willing if he will take the hand they offer him to devote themselves body and soul to the great end of enabling the artizan to govern himself to produce in the capacity of a free man and not of a slave to eat the food he earns and wear the clothes he makes Will your working brothers cooperate with these men Are they do you think such bigots as to let political differences stand between them and those who fain would treat them as their brothers or will they fight manfully side by side with them in the battle against Mammon trusting to God that if in anything they are otherwise minded He will in His own good time reveal even that unto them Do you think to take one instance the men of your own trade would heartily join a handful of these men in an experiment of associate labour even though there should be a clergyman or two among them
Join them I said Can you ask the question I for one would devote myself body and soul to any enterprise so noble Crossthwaite would ask for nothing higher than to be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water to an establishment of associate workmen But alas his fate is fixed for the New World and mine I verily believe for sickness and the grave And yet I will answer for it that in the hopes of helping such a project he would give up Mackayes bequest for the mere sake of remaining in England and for me if I have but a month of life it is at the service of such men as you describe
Oh she said musingly if poor Mackaye had but had somewhat more faith in the future that fatal condition would perhaps never have been attached to his bequest And yet perhaps it is better as it is Crossthwaites mind may want quite as much as yours does a few years of a simpler and brighter atmosphere to soften and refresh it again Besides your health is too weak your life I know too valuable to your class for us to trust you on such a voyage alone He must go with you
With me I said You must be misinformed I have no thought of leaving
England
You know the opinion of the physicians
I know that my life is not likely to be a long one that immediate removal to a southern if possible to a tropical climate is considered the only means of preserving it For the former I care little non est tanti vivere And indeed the latter even if it would succeed is impossible Crossthwaite will live and thrive by the labour of his hands while for such a helpless invalid as I to travel would be to dissipate the little capital which Mackaye has left me
The day will come when society will find it profitable as well as just to put the means of preserving life by travel within the reach of the poorest But individuals must always begin by setting the examples which the state too slowly though surely for the world is Gods world after all will learn to copy All is arranged for you Crossthwaite you know would have sailed ere now had it not been for your fever Next week you start with him for Texas No make no objections All expenses are defrayed—no matter by whom
By you By you Who else
Do you think that I monopolize the generosity of England Do you think warm hearts beat only in the breasts of working men But if it were I would not that be only another reason for submitting You must go You will have for the next three years such an allowance as will support you in comfort whether you choose to remain stationary or as I hope to travel southward into Mexico Your passagemoney is already paid
Why should I attempt to describe my feelings I gasped for breath and looked stupidly at her for a minute or two—The second darling hope of my life within my reach just as the first had been snatched from me At last I found words
No no noble lady Do not tempt me Who am I the slave of impulse useless worn out in mind and body that you should waste such generosity upon me I do not refuse from the honest pride of independence I have not man enough left in me even for that But will you of all people ask me to desert the starving suffering thousands to whom my heart my honour are engaged to give up the purpose of my life and pamper my fancy in a luxurious paradise while they are slaving here
What Cannot God find champions for them when you are gone Has he not found them already Believe me that Tenth of April which you fancied the deathday of liberty has awakened a spirit in high as well as in low life which children yet unborn will bless
Oh do not mistake me Have I not confessed my own weakness But if I have one healthy nerve left in me soul or body it will retain its strength only as long as it thrills with devotion to the peoples cause If I live I must live among them for them If I die I must die at my post I could not rest except in labour I dare not fly like Jonah from the call of God In the deepest shade of the virgin forests on the loneliest peak of the Cordilleras He would find me out and I should hear His still small voice reproving me as it reproved the fugitive patriotseer of old—What doest thou here Elijah
I was excited and spoke I am afraid after my custom somewhat too magniloquently But she answered only with a quiet smile
So you are a Chartist still
If by a Chartist you mean one who fancies that a change in mere political circumstances will bring about a millennium I am no longer one That dream is gone—with others But if to be a Chartist is to love my brothers with every faculty of my soul—to wish to live and die struggling for their rights endeavouring to make them not electors merely but fit to be electors senators kings and priests to God and to His Christ—if that be the Chartism of the future then am I sevenfold a Chartist and ready to confess it before men though I were thrust forth from every door in England
She was silent a moment
The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner Surely the old English spirit has cast its madness and begins to speak once more as it spoke in Naseby fights and Smithfield fires
And yet you would quench it in me amid the enervating climate of the tropics
Need it be quenched there Was it quenched in Drake in Hawkins in the conquerors of Hindostan Weakness like strength is from within of the spirit and not of sunshine I would send you thither that you may gain new strength new knowledge to carry out your dream and mine Do not refuse me the honour of preserving you Do not forbid me to employ my wealth in the only way which reconciles my conscience to the possession of it I have saved many a woman already and this one thing remained—the highest of all my hopes and longings—that God would allow me ere I die to save a man I have longed to find some noble soul as Carlyle says fallen down by the wayside and lift it up and heal its wounds and teach it the secret of its heavenly birthright and consecrate it to its King in heaven I have longed to find a man of the people whom I could train to be the poet of the people
Me at least you have saved have taught have trained Oh that your care had been bestowed on some more worthy object
Let me at least then perfect my own work You do not—it is a sign of your humility that you do not—appreciate the value of this rest You underrate at once your own powers and the shock which they have received
If I must go then why so far Why put you to so great expense If you must be generous send me to some place nearer home—to Italy to the coast of Devon or the Isle of Wight where invalids like me are said to find all the advantages which are so often perhaps too hastily sought in foreign lands
No she said smiling you are my servant now by the laws of chivalry and you must fulfil my quest I have long hoped for a tropic poet one who should leave the routine imagery of European civilization its meagre scenery and physically decrepit races for the grandeur the luxuriance the infinite and stronglymarked variety of tropic nature the paradisiac beauty and simplicity of tropic humanity I am tired of the old images of the barren alternations between Italy and the Highlands I had once dreamt of going to the tropics myself but my work lay elsewhere Go for me and for the people See if you cannot help to infuse some new blood into the aged veins of English literature see if you cannot by observing man in his mere simple and primeval state bring home fresh conceptions of beauty fresh spiritual and physical laws of his existence that you may realize them here at home—how I see as yet but dimly but He who teaches the facts will surely teach their application—in the cottages in the playgrounds the readingrooms the churches of working men
But I know so little—I have seen so little
That very fact I flatter myself gives you an especial vocation for my scheme Your ignorance of cultivated English scenery and of Italian art will enable you to approach with a more reverend simple and unprejudiced eye the primeval forms of beauty—Gods work not mans Sin you will see there and anarchy and tyranny but I do not send you to look for society but for nature I do not send you to become a barbarian settler but to bring home to the realms of civilization those ideas of physical perfection which as yet alas barbarism rather than civilization has preserved Do not despise your old love for the beautiful Do not fancy that because you have let it become an idol and a tyrant it was not therefore the gift of God Cherish it develop it to the last steep your whole soul in beauty watch it in its most vast and complex harmonies and not less in its most faint and fragmentary traces Only hitherto you have blindly worshipped it now you must learn to comprehend to master to embody it to show it forth to men as the sacrament of Heaven the fingermark of God
Who could resist such pleading from those lips I at least could not
CHAPTER XLI
FREEDOM EQUALITY AND BROTHERHOOD
Before the same Father the same King crucified for all alike we had partaken of the same bread and wine we had prayed for the same spirit Side by side around the chair on which I lay propped up with pillows coughing my span of life away had knelt the highborn countess the cultivated philosopher the repentant rebel the wild Irish girl her slavish and exclusive creed exchanged for one more free and allembracing and that no extremest type of human condition might be wanting the reclaimed Magdalene was there—two pale worn girls from Eleanors asylum in whom I recognized the needlewomen to whom Mackaye had taken me on a memorable night seven years before Thus—and how better—had God rewarded their loving care of that poor dying fellowslave
Yes—we had knelt together and I had felt that we were one—that there was a bond between us real eternal independent of ourselves knit not by man but God and the peace of God which passes understanding came over me like the clear sunshine after weary rain
One by one they shook me by the hand and quitted the room and Eleanor and
I were left alone
See she said Freedom Equality and Brotherhood are come but not as you expected
Blissful repentant tears blinded my eyes as I replied not to her but to
Him who spoke by her—
Lord not as I will but as thou wilt
Yes she continued Freedom Equality and Brotherhood are here Realize them in thine own self and so alone thou helpest to make them realities for all Not from without from Charters and Republics but from within from the Spirit working in each not by wrath and haste but by patience made perfect through suffering canst thou proclaim their good news to the groaning masses and deliver them as thy Master did before thee by the cross and not the sword Divine paradox—Folly to the rich and mighty—the watchword of the weak in whose weakness is Gods strength made perfect In your patience possess ye your souls for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh Yes—He came then and the Babeltyranny of Rome fell even as the more fearful more subtle and more diabolic tyranny of Mammon shall fall ere long—suicidal even now crumbling by its innate decay Yes—Babylon the Great—the commercial world of selfish competition drunken with the blood of Gods people whose merchandise is the bodies and souls of men—her doom is gone forth And then—then—when they the tyrants of the earth who lived delicately with her rejoicing in her sins the plutocrats and bureaucrats the moneychangers and devourers of labour are crying to the rocks to hide them and to the hills to cover them from the wrath of Him that sitteth on the throne—then labour shall be free at last and the poor shall eat and be satisfied with things that eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive but which God has prepared for those who love Him Then the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea and mankind at last shall own their King—Him in whom they are all redeemed into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God and He shall reign indeed on earth and none but His saints shall rule beside Him And then shall this sacrament be an everlasting sign to all the nations of the world as it has been to you this day of freedom equality brotherhood of Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace and goodwill toward men Do you believe
Again I answered not her but Him who sent her—
Lord I believe Help thou mine unbelief
And now farewell I shall not see you again before you start—and ere you return—My health has been fast declining lately
I started—I had not dared to confess to myself how thin her features had become of late I had tried not to hear the dry and hectic cough or see the burning spot on either cheek—but it was too true and with a broken voice I cried
Oh that I might die and join you
Not so—I trust that you have still a work to do But if not promise me that whatever be the event of your voyage you will publish in good time an honest history of your life extenuating nothing exaggerating nothing ashamed to confess or too proclaim nothing It may perhaps awaken some rich man to look down and take pity on the brains and hearts more noble than his own which lie struggling in poverty and misguidance among these foul sties which civilization rears—and calls them cities Now once again farewell
She held out her hand—I would have fallen at her feet but the thought of that common sacrament withheld me I seized her hand covered it with adoring kisses—Slowly she withdrew it and glided from the room—
What need of more words I obeyed her—sailed—and here I am
Yes I have seen the land Like a purple fringe upon the golden sea while parting day dies like the dolphin there it lay upon the fair horizon—the great young free new world and every tree and flower and insect on it new—a wonder and a joy—which I shall never see…
No—I shall never reach the land I felt it all along Weaker and weaker day by day with bleeding lungs and failing limbs I have travelled the ocean paths The iron has entered too deeply into my soul…
Hark Merry voices on deck are welcoming their future home Laugh on happy ones—come out of Egypt and the house of bondage and the waste and howling wilderness of slavery and competition workhouses and prisons into a good land and large a land flowing with milk and honey where you will sit every one under his own vine and his own figtree and look into the faces of your rosy children—and see in them a blessing and not a curse Oh England stern motherland when wilt thou renew thy youth—Thou wilderness of mans making not Gods… Is it not written that the days shall come when the forest shall break forth into singing and the wilderness shall blossom like the rose
Hark again sweet and clear across the still night sea ring out the notes of Crossthwaites bugle—the first luxury poor fellow he ever allowed himself and yet not a selfish one for music like mercy is twice blessed—
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes
There is the spiritstirring marching air of the German workmen students
Thou thou thou and thou
Sir Master fare thee well—
Perhaps a half reproachful hint to the poor old England he is leaving What a glorious metre warming ones whole heart into life and energy If I could but write in such a metre one true peoples song that should embody all my sorrow indignation hope—fitting last words for a poet of the people—for they will be my last words—Well—thank God at least I shall not be buried in a London churchyard It may be a foolish fancy—but I have made them promise to lay me up among the virgin woods where if the soul ever visits the place of its bodys rest I may snatch glimpses of that natural beauty from which I was barred out in life and watch the gorgeous flowers that bloom above my dust and hear the forest birds sing around the Poets grave
Hark to the grand lilt of the Good Time Coming—Song which has cheered ten thousand hearts which has already taken root that it may live and grow for ever—fitting melody to soothe my dying ears Ah how should there not be A Good Time Coming—Hope and trust and infinite deliverance—a time such as eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive—coming surely soon or late to those for whom a God did not disdain to die
Our only remaining duty is to give an extract from a letter written by John
Crossthwaite and dated
GALVESTON TEXAS October 1848
… I am happy Katie is happy There is peace among us here like the clear downshining after rain But I thirst and long already for the expiration of my seven years exile wholesome as I believe it to be My only wish is to return and assist in the Emancipation of Labour and give my small aid in that fraternal union of all classes which I hear is surely though slowly spreading in my motherland
And now for my poor friend whose papers according to my promise to him I transmit to you On the very night on which he seems to have concluded them—an hour after we had made the land—we found him in his cabin dead his head resting on the table as peacefully as if he had slumbered On a sheet of paper by him were written the following verses the ink was not yet dry
MY LAST WORDS
I
Weep weep weep and weep
For pauper dolt and slave
Hark from wasted moor and fen
Feverous alley workhouse den
Swells the wail of Englishmen
Work or the grave
II
Down down down and down
With idler knave and tyrant
Why for sluggards stint and moil
He that will not live by toil
Has no right on English soil
Gods words our warrant
III
Up up up and up
Face your game and play it
The night is past—behold the sun—
The cup is full the web is spun
The Judge is set the doom begun
Who shall stay it