"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 blood's getting up, is it? Then you're in the humour to be told what you have been hankering to know so long—where Mackaye and I go at night. We'll strike while the iron's 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. They're the unknown great—the unaccredited heroes, as Master Thomas Carlyle would say—whom the flunkeys aloft have not acknowledged yet—though they'll 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 that's got any one to fight your battle in parliament, my young friend, eh?"
"I'm sure I don't know—"
"Why, what in the name of common sense—what interest or feeling of yours or mine, or any man's 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 don't know whether or not the people are represented!"
We were passing by the door of the Victoria Theatre; it was just half-price 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 mightn't—but give us the Charter, and we'll see about it! Give us the Charter, and we'll send workmen, into parliament that shall soon find out whether something better can't 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 Queen's a good woman—and I don't 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, didn't 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? We've only taken them at their word, we Chartists. Haven't all politicians been preaching for years that England's 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, we'll see if a move onward in the same line won't better the matter. If the balance of classes is such a blessed thing, the sooner we get the balance equal, the better; for it's 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 that's the very best reason why the classes that haven't got 'em should look out for the same palladium for themselves. What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, isn't it? We'll try—we'll see whether the talisman they talk of has lost its power all of a sudden since '32—whether we can't 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 ten-thousandth 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 high-churchmen, 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"aboutman, and notinhim. Another party's 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 "Morison's-Pill-remedies," as Thomas Carlyle calls them. Talismans are worthless. The age of spirit-compelling 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 God-sent affliction, found out sooner than our more "enlightened" fellow-idolaters. But at that time, as I have confessed already, we took our betters at their word, and believed in Morison's 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 show-shops—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 down-hearted 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 man's 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 there's room on English soil for twice the number there is now; and when we get the Charter we'll prove it; we'll 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 won't 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 won't be long in coming after me, I know that well; and there's a tough business got well over for both of us!"
"Hech," said Sandy,
"To every manDeath comes but once a life—
"as my countryman, Mr. Macaulay, says, in thae gran' Roman ballants o' his. But for ye, Alton, laddie, ye're owre young to start off in the People's 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 I'm at times no inclined to consider it a'thegither 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, ye'll just mind the shop, and dust the books whiles; I'm 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? he'll surely put you in the way o' publishing them. He's bound to it by blude; and there's 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,—I'd do that for mysel; but I'm thinking ye'd better try to get a list o' subscribers. Dinna mind your independence; it's but spoiling the Egyptians, ye ken, and the bit ballants will be their money's worth, I'll warrant, and tell them a wheen facts they're no that weel acquentit wi'. Hech? Johnnie, my Chartist?"
"Why not go to my uncle?"
"Puir sugar-and-spice-selling bailie body! is there aught in his ledger about poetry, and the incommensurable value o' the products o' genius? Gang till the young scholar; he's a canny one, too, and he'll 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.
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 thanFulham or Battersea Rise. One Sunday evening, indeed, I had got as far asWandsworth Common; but it was March, and, to my extreme disappointment, theheath 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 life-tree! 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 Raleigh's 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 high-spiked 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 toil-worn and ill-fed. The houses ended, cattle-yards and farm-buildings 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 clover-fields, 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 man's 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 nursery-garden, full of roses of every shade, from brilliant yellow to darkest purple; and as I wondered at the innumerable variety of beauties which man's 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 flower-world, the laws of soil and climate; to create new species, and gloat over the living fruit of one's own science and perseverance. And then I recollected the tailor's 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 world's 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 green-embroidered 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 fishing-rod 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—don't go far in, or ramble up and down, or you'll disturb the pheasants."
I thanked him again for what license he had given me—went in, and lay down by the path-side.
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 God's earth; and the answer of the poor gamin in St. Giles's, 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 God's 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 gold-green 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 "game-preserving 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 turnpike-road 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 mother's 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 hour's self-tormenting 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 theterra incognitaof 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 workman's 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 school-house. 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 children's 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 motherly-looking 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 passer-by, 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 'twasn't to be expected of him."
"Why, was he not rich?"
"Oh, rich enough to the likes of us. But his own tithes here arn't more than a thirty pounds we hears tell; and if he hadn't summat of his own, he couldn't 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 that's 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. There's two or three nice young gentlemen come'd round here now, but they're all what's-'em-a-call it?—some sort o' papishes;—leastwise, they has prayers in the church every day, and doesn't preach the Gospel, no how, I hears by my wife, and she knows all about it, along of going to meeting. Then there's one over thereaway, as had to leave his living—he knows why. He got safe over seas. If he had been a poor man, he'd been in * * * * * gaol, safe enough, and soon enough. Then there's two or three as goes a-hunting—not as I sees no harm in that; if a man's got plenty of money, he ought to enjoy himself, in course: but still he can't be here and there too, to once. Then there's 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 they're right to do so; and so we country-folks get nought but the young colts, afore they're 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 couldn't 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 sermon-ways, 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; there's some very good ones—each one after his own way; and there'd 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 weren't no schooling. Schooling harn't 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! religion's 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 don't see how a man can hear sermons with an empty belly; and there's so much to fret a man, now, and he's so cruel tired coming home o' nights, he can't nowise go to pray a lot, as gentlefolks does."
"But are you so ill off?"
"Oh! he'd had a good harvesting enough; but then he owed all that for he's rent; and he's club money wasn't paid up, nor he's shop. And then, with he's 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—I'll 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 medical-officers, and relieving-officers, and Farmer This, and Squire That, which indicated a mind as ill-educated 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 didn't, he'd 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 night's lodging, good enough for a walking traveller.
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 freshly-liberated 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, jolly-looking 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."
"Thew'st na git there that gate. Be'est thee honest man?"
"I hope so," said I, somewhat indignantly.
"What's trade?"
"A tailor," I said.
"Tailor!—guide us! Tailor a-tramp? Barn't accoostomed to tramp, then?"
"I never was out of London before," said I, meekly—for I was too worn-out to be cross—lengthy and impertinent as this cross-examination seemed.
"Oi'll 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 broad-cloth by my side, and comparing the two red shoulders of mutton which held the reins, with my own wasted, white, woman-like 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. Us'n in the fens wouldn't stand that likes. They'd roit, and roit, and roit, and tak' oot the dook-gunes to un—they would, as they did five-and-twenty 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 bean't 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. I've got the swoord of 'em to home, and the helmet that they fut with into the wars, then when they chopped off the king's head—what was the name of um?"
"Charles the First?"
"Ees—that's 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 I'll shaw ye a country. I'll shaw 'ee some'at like bullocks to call, and some'at 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 body's victuals out of his inwards—all so flat as a barn's floor, for vorty mile on end—there's 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 Whit'sea Mere to Denver Sluice, for twenty pounds o' gold; and there's the money to lay down, and let the man as dare cover it, down with his money, and on wi' his pattens, thirteen-inch 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 public-house, 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—women-folk especial."
"What's elevation?"
"Oh! ho! ho!—yow goo into druggist's shop o' market-day, into Cambridge, and you'll see the little boxes, doozens and doozens, a' ready on the counter; and never a ven-man's wife goo by, but what calls in for her pennord o' elevation, to last her out the week. Oh! ho! ho! Well, it keeps women-folk quiet, it do; and it's mortal good agin ago pains."
"But what is it?"
"Opium, bor' alive, opium!"
"But doesn't it ruin their health? I should think it the very worst sort of drunkenness."
"Ow, well, yow moi soy that-mak'th 'em cruel thin then, it do; but what can bodies do i' th'ago? Bot it's 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 scatter-brained Irish lad, brother of Crossthwaite's 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 farmer-like 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 wouldn't pay some tyrannical fine for being saucy, as they called it, to the shopman; and he went to a sweater's—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 what'n, 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 can't get out."
"Pawned his clothes for victuals! To think o' that, noo! But if he had work, can't he get victuals?"
"Oh!" I said, "there's 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 week's end. And if he gets no work, the villain won't let him leave the house; he has to stay there starving, on the chance of an hour's job. I tell you, I've 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 God's sun, for months together, with no victuals but a few slices of bread-and-butter, 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 Lord's 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, hadn't a, like a lass's?"
"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 knew'st 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 do't, bor'? I zay, could yow do't?"
"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—that's to zay, they as wants un—hav'n't 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.
"I've 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 pot-houses as I could zee; vor, says I, he was a'ways 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 public-house, 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 fire-proof.
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—they's all Porters there away. Yow ax for Wooden-house Bob—that's me; and if I barn't to home, ax for Mucky Billy—that's my brawther—we're all gotten our names down to ven; and if he barn't to home, yow ax for Frog-hall—that's where my sister do live; and they'll 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 smart-looking servants, to my cousin's 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 cousin's name over a door; and, uncertain how he might receive me, I gave a gentle, half-apologetic 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 don't care."
"If we don't run into that first Trinity before the willows, I shall care with a vengeance."
"If we don't it's 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 low-crowned sailors' hats and flannel trousers, some in striped jerseys, some in shooting-jackets, 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 self-possession in a moment.
"Delighted to see you! Where's your portmanteau? Oh—left it at the Bull! Ah! I see. Very well, we'll send the gyp for it in a minute, and order some luncheon. We're just going down to the boat-race. Sorry I can't stop, but we shall all be fined—not a moment to lose. I'll send you in luncheon as I go through the butteries; then, perhaps, you'd 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, boxing-gloves, and luscious prints of pretty women, a shrewd-faced, smart man entered, much better dressed than myself.
"What would you like, sir? Ox-tail soup, sir, or gravy-soup, 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 don't care," in as aristocratic and off-hand 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 well-bred 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 profligate-looking 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 church-tower hanging over the stream on the opposite bank, a knot of tall poplars, weeping willows, rich lawns, sloping down to the water's side, gay with bonnets and shawls; while, along the edge of the stream, light, gaudily-painted 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, venerable-looking 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 racing-boats, 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 towing-path, by the side of the foremost boats.
And yet, after a few moments, I ceased to wonder either at the Cambridge passion for boat-racing, 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 child's-play, 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 snake-like 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! don't 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 two-feet 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 towing-path. An eight-oar 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, high-bred looking man he was. I tried to slip by, but he recognized me instantly, and spoke.
"I hope I didn't 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 cad's 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 good-natured enough in him, but did not increase the good-nature in me.
"Tut, tut, my good fellow. I really am very sorry for having upset you.Here's half-a-crown 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.
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; we'll 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, it's no loss for you; you couldn't 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 road's 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 man's society. You can dine at any nobleman's 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 hanger-on 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 now-a-days to rise in the Church, as in other professions. My father can buy me a living some day: but he can't 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 mother's 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. Newman's 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 vantage-ground 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 cousin's 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 King's Parade, watching the tall gables of King's College Chapel, and the classic front of the Senate House, and the stately tower of St. Mary's, 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 middle-aged 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 wide-spread 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 arepoor—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.'"