THE ORDER OF POVERTY
Whyshould not Lazarus make to himself an order of tatters? Why should not poverty have its patch of honour? Wherefore should not the undubbed knights of evil fortune carry about them, with a gracious humility, the inevitable types of their valorous contest with the Paynim iniquities of life? Wherefore may not man wear indigence as proudly as nobility flashes its jewels? Is there not a higher heraldry than that of the college?
Not a very long time ago the King of Greece awarded to an Englishman the Order of the Redeemer. The Englishman did not reject the gift; he did not stare with wonder, or smile in meek pity at the grave mockery of the distinction; but winning the consent of our Sovereign Lady Victoria to sport the jewel, the Knight of Christ—knight by the handiwork of the King of Greece—hung about him the Order of the Redeemer.
And what may be the gracious discipline of this Order of Redemption? Has the new knight sold off all that he had, and given the money to the poor? We have heard of no such broker’s work; and surely the newspapertongue would have given loud utterance to the penitence of Mammon. What discipline, then, does this Order of Christ compel upon its holy and immaculate brotherhood? What glorifying services towards the heart and spirit of man what self-martyrdom does it recompense? Is it the bright reward of humility—of active loving-kindness towards everything that breathes? Is it that the knighted, beyond ten thousand men, has proved the divine temper of the spiritual follower of Jesus, making his hourly life an active goodness, and with every breath drawn drawing nearer to rewarding Heaven? Surely the Order of the Redeemer—that awful, solemn badge, setting apart its wearer from the sordid crowd of earth—could only be vouchsafed to some hard Christian service—could only reward some triumphant wrestling of the suffering soul—some wondrous victory in the forlorn hope of this dark struggling life. These are our thoughts—these our passionate words; whereupon the herald of the court of Greece—a grave, fantastic wizard—with mildly-reproving look and most delicate speech, says: “You are wrong: quite wrong. The Order of the Redeemer, though by no means the first Order, is a very pretty Order in its way. Six months since we gave it to Captain Jonquil, from Paris; and truly no man more deserved the Order of the Redeemer. He taught His Majesty’s infantry the use of the bayonet: his howitzer practice, too, is a divine thing. Captain Jonquil is a great soldier. Last week the Order of the Redeemer was also bestowed upon Andreas, a great favourite at court—but, if the naughty truth must be told, a pimp.”
Alas! is heraldry always innocent of blasphemy?
On the 13th of June 1843, a grave masque—a solemn ceremony—was held at the court of St James. Heraldry again looked smug and pompous. A knight was to be made of “the most ancient Order of the Thistle.” Letus make a clean breast of our ignorance; we assert nothing against the antiquity of the Thistle; for what we know, it may be as old—ay, as old as asses. But upon the glad 13th of June a chapter was held, and John, Marquis of Bute, and the Right Hon. William, Earl of Mansfield, were elected knights. They of course took the oaths to protect and succour distressed maidens, orphans and widows; to abstain from every sort of wrong, and to do every sort of right.
“The Marquis of Bute then kneeling near the Sovereign, and Mr Woods on his knee, presenting to the Queen the riband and jewel of the Order, Her Majesty was graciously pleased to place the same over the noble Marquis’s left shoulder. His Lordship rising, kissed the Sovereign’s hand, and having received the congratulations of the knights brethren, retired.”
From that moment John, Marquis of Bute, looked and moved with the aspect and bearing of a man, radiant with new honours. He was a Knight of the Thistle, and the jewel sparkling at his bosom feebly typified the bright, admiring looks of the world—the gaze of mingled love and admiration bent upon him. But on this earth—in this abiding-place of equity—men do not get even thistles for nothing. It may, indeed, happen that desert may pant and moan without honour; but in the court of kings, where justice weighs with nicest balance, honour never with its smiles mocks imbecility, or gilds with outward lustre a concealed rottenness. Honour never gives alms, but awards justice. Mendicancy, though with liveried lackies clustering at its carriage—and there is such pauperism—may whine and pray its hardest, yet move not the inflexible herald. He awards those jewels to virtue, which virtue has sweated, bled for. And it is with this belief, yea, in the very bigotry of the creed, we ask—what has John, Marquis of Bute, fulfilled to earnhis thistle? What, the Right Hon. William, Earl of Mansfield? What dragon wrong has either overcome? What giant Untruth stormed in Sophist Castle? What necromantic wickedness baffled and confounded? Yet, these battles have been fought—these triumphs won; oh! who shall doubt them? Be sure of it, ye unbelieving demagogues—scoffing plebians, not for nothing nobility browses upon thistles.
We pay all honour to these inventions, these learned devices of the Herald. They doubtless clothe, comfort, and adorn humanity, which, without them, would be cold, naked, shrunk, and squalid. They, moreover, gloriously attest the supremacy of the tame, the civilised man, over the wild animal. The orders of the Herald aretattoowithout the pain of puncture. The New Zealander carries his knighthood, lined and starred and flowered, in his visage. The civilised knight hangs it more conveniently on a riband.
We are such devout believers in the efficacy of Orders, that we devote this small essay to an attempt to make them, under some phase or other, universal. We will not linger in a consideration of the Orders already dead; lovely was their life, and as fragrant is their memory. There was one Order—Teutonic, if we mistake not, the Order of Fools. There was a quaint sincerity in the very title of this brotherhood. Its philosophy was out-speaking; and more than all, the constitution of such a chapter admitted knights against whose worthiness, whose peculiar right to wear the badge, no envious demagogue could say his bitter saying. Surely, in our reverence for the wisdom of antiquity, this Order might have resurrection. The Fool might have his bauble newly varnished—his cap newly hung with tinkling bells. Some of us chirp and cackle of the wisdom of the bygone day; but that is only wisdom which jumps with our own cunning; which fortifiesus in the warm and quiet nook of some hallowed prejudice. From the mere abstract love of justice, we should be right glad to have the Order of Fools revived in the fullest splendour of Folly. Such an Order would so beneficently provide for many unrewarded public idlers—ay, and public workers.
There was a time when the world in its first childhood needed playthings. Then was the Herald the world’s toy-maker, and made for it pretty little nick-knacks—golden fleeces—stars, ribands and garters; tempting the world to follow the kickshaws, as nurse with sugared bread-and-butter tempts the yeanling to try its tottering feet. The world has grown old—old and wise: yet is not the Herald bankrupt, but like a pedlar at a fair, draws the hearts of simple men after the shining, silken glories in his box. Meanwhile, philosophy in hodden grey, laughs at the crowd, who bellow back the laugh and sometimes pelt the reverend fool for his irreligious humour: for he who believes not in Stars and Garters is unbeliever; to the world’s best and brightest faith, atheist and scoffer.
Is it not strange that a man should think the better of himself for a few stones glittering in his bosom? That a costly band about the leg should make the blood dance more swiftly through the arteries? That a man seeing his breast set with jewellers’ stars should think them glorious as the stars of heaven—himself, little less than an earthly god, so deified? If these things be really types and emblems of true greatness, what rascal poverty besets the man without them! How is he damned in his baseness! What mere offal of humanity, the biped without an Order! And, therefore, let stars be multiplied; and let nobility—like bees—suck honey from Thistles!
We are, however, confirmed in our late failing faith. We are bigoted to Orders. Men, like watches, must work the better upon jewels. Man is, at the best, a puppet;and is only put into dignified motion when pulled by Blue or Red Ribands. Now, as few, indeed, of us can get stars, garters or ribands, let us have Orders of our own. Let us, with invincible self-complacency, ennoble ourselves.
In the hopeless ignorance and vulgarity of our first prejudice, we might possibly want due veneration for the Golden Fleece; an ancient and most noble Order, worn by few. Yet with all our worst carelessness towards the Order, we never felt for it the same pitying contempt we feel towards an Order worn by many—not at their button-holes, not outside their breasts, but in the very core of their hearts—the Order of the Golden Calf.
Oh! bowelless Plutus, what a host of Knights! What a lean-faced, low-browed, thick-jowled, swag-bellied brotherhood! Deformity, in all its fantastic variety, meets in the chapter. They wear no armour of steel or brass, but are cased in the magic mail of impenetrable Bank-paper. They have no sword, no spear, no iron mace with spikes; but they ride merrily into the fight of life, swinging about gold-gutted purses, and levelling with the dust rebellious poverty. These are the Knights of the Golden Calf. It is a glorious community. What a look of easy triumph they have! With what serene self-satisfaction they measure the wide distance between mere paupers—the Knights of the Order of Nothing—and themselves! How they walk the earth as if they alone possessed the patent of walking upright! How they dilate in the light of their own gold, like adders in the sun!
A most fatal honour is this Order of the Golden Calf. It is worn unseen, as we have said, in the hearts of men; but its effects are visible: the disease speaks out in every atom of flesh—poor human worm’s-meat!—and throbs in every muscle. It poisons the soul; gives the eye a squint; takes from the face of fellow-man its God-gifted dignity, and makes him a thing to prey upon; to work, to use up;to reduce to so much hard cash; then to be put up, with a wary look of triumph, into the pocket. This Order damns with a leprosy of soul its worshipper. It blinds and deafens him to the glories and the harmonies ministrant to poorer men. His eye is jaundiced, and in the very stars of God he sees nought but twinkling guineas.
At this moment great is the Order throughout the land! Tyrannous its laws, reckless its doings. It is strong, and why should it be just? To be of this Order is now the one great striving of life. They alone are men who wear the jewel—wretches they without it. Man was originally made from the dust of the earth: he is now formed of a richer substance: the true man is made of gold. Yes, the regenerate Adam is struck only at the Mint.
The Knights of the Order of the Golden Calf have no formal ceremony of election; yet has brother knight almost instinctive knowledge of brother. In the solitude of his own thoughts is he made one of the community; in utter privacy he kisses the pulseless hand of Plutus, and swears to his supremacy. The oath divorces him from pauper-life—from its cares, its wants, its sympathies. He is privileged from the uneasiness of thought, the wear and tear of anxiety for fellow-man; he is compact and self-concentrated in his selfishness. Nought ruffles him that touches not that inmost jewel of his soul, his knighthood’s Order.
In the olden day the Knights of the Fleece, the Garter and other glories, won their rank upon the battlefield—blood and strife being to them the hand-maids of honour. The chivalry of the Golden Calf is mild and gentle. It splits no brain-pan, spills no blood; yet is it ever fighting. We are at the exchange. Look at that easy, peaceful man. What a serenity is upon his cheek! What a mild lustre in his eye! How plainly is he habited! He wears the livery of simplicity and the look of peace. Yet has he in his heart the Order of the Golden Calf. He is one ofMammon’s boldest heroes. A very soldier of fortune. He is now fighting—fighting valorously. He has come armed with a bran-new lie—a falsehood of surpassing temper, which with wondrous quietude he lays about him, making huge gashes in the money-bags of those he fights with. A good foreign lie, well finished and well mounted, is to this Knight of the Golden Calf as the sword of Faery to Orlando. With it he sometimes cuts down giant fortunes, and after “grinds their bones to make his bread.”
And there are small esquires and pages of the Order; men who, with heart-felt veneration, lick their lips at the Golden Calf, and with more than bridegroom yearning pant for possession. These small folk swarm like summer-gnats; and still they drone the praises of the Calf; and looking at no other thing, have their eyes bleared and dazzled to all beside.
The Knights of the Golden Calf shed no blood; that is, the wounds they deal bleed inwardly and give no evidence of homicide. They are, too, great consumers of the marrow of men; and yet they break no bones, but by a trick known to their Order extract without fracture precious nutriment. They are great alchemists, too; and turn the sweat of unrequited poverty, aye, the tears of childhood, into drops of gold.
Much wrong, much violence, much wayward cruelty—if the true history of knighthood were indicted—lies upon the Fleece, the Garter, yes, upon the Templar’s Lamb;—yet all is but as May-day pastime to the voracity, the ignorance, the wilful selfishness, the bestial lowings of the Golden Calf. And of this Order the oldest of the brotherhood are the most gluttonous. There is one whose every fibre is blasted with age. To the imagination his face is as a coffin-plate. Yet is he all belly. As cruel as a cat though toothless as a bird!
Oh, ye knights, great and small—whether expanding onthe mart, or lyingperduin back parlours—fling from your hearts the Order there, and feel for once the warmth of kindly blood! The brotherhood chuckle at the adjuration. Well, let us fight the Order with an Order.
The Order of Poverty against the Order of the Golden Calf!
Will it not be a merry time, when men, with a blithe face and open look, shall confess that they are poor? When they shall be to the world what they are to themselves? When the lie, the shuffle, the bland, yet anxious hypocrisy of seeming, and seeming only, shall be a creed forsworn? When Poverty asserts itself, and never blushes and stammers at its true name, the Knights of the Calf must give ground. Much of their strength, their poor renown, their miserable glory, lies in the hypocrisy of those who would imitate them. They believe themselves great, because the poor, in the very ignorance of the dignity of poverty, would ape their magnificence.
The Order of Poverty! How many sub-orders might it embrace! As the spirit of Gothic chivalry has its fraternities, so might the Order of Poverty have its distinct devices.
The Order of the Thistle! That is an order for nobility—a glory to glorify marquisate or earldom. Can we not, under the rule of Poverty, find as happy a badge?
Look at this peasant. His face bronzed with midday toil. From sunrise to sunset, with cheerful looks and uncomplaining words, he turns the primal curse to dignity, and manfully earns his bread in the sweat of his brow. Look at the fields around! Golden with blessed corn. Look at this bloodless soldier of the plough—this hero of the sickle. His triumphs are there, piled up in bread-bestowing sheaves. Is he not Sir Knight of the Wheat-Ear? Surely, as truly dubbed in the heraldry of justice, as any Knight of the Thistle.
And here is a white-haired shepherd. As a boy, a child, playful as the lambs he tended, he laboured. He has dreamed away his life upon a hillside—on downs—on solitary heaths. The humble, simple, patient watcher for fellow-men. Solitude has been his companion: he has grown old, wrinkled, bent in the eye of the burning sun. His highest wisdom is a guess at the coming weather: he may have heard of diamonds, but he knows the evening star. He has never sat at a congress of kings: he has never helped to commit a felony upon a whole nation. Yet is he to our mind a most reverend Knight of the Fleece. If the Herald object to this, let us call him Knight of the Lamb! In its gentleness and patience, a fitting type of the poor old shepherd.
And here is a pauper, missioned from the workhouse to break stones at the road-side. How he strikes and strikes at that unyielding bit of flint! Is it not the stony heart of the world’s injustice knocked at by poverty? What haggardness is in his face! What a blight hangs about him! There are more years in his looks than in his bones. Time has marked him with an iron pen. He wailed as a babe for bread his father was not allowed to earn. He can recollect every dinner—they were so few—of his childhood. He grew up, and want was with him even as his shadow. He has shivered with cold—fainted with hunger. His every day of life has been set about by goading wretchedness. Around him, too, were the stores of plenty. Food, raiment, and money mocked the man made half mad with destitution. Yet, with a valorous heart, a proud conquest of the shuddering spirit, he walked with honesty and starved. His long journey of life hath been through thorny places, and now he sits upon a pile of stones on the wayside, breaking them for workhouse bread. Could loftiest chivalry show greater heroism—nobler self-control, than this old man, this weary breaker of flints? Shall he notbe of the Order of Poverty? Is not penury to him even as a robe of honour? His grey workhouse coat braver than purple and miniver? He shall be Knight of the Granite if you will. A workhouse gem, indeed—a wretched, highway jewel—yet, to the eye of truth, finer than many a ducal diamond.
“He has dreamed his life upon a hillside—”
“He has dreamed his life upon a hillside—”
“He has dreamed his life upon a hillside—”
This man is a weaver; this a potter. Here, too, is a razor-grinder; here an iron-worker. Labour is their lot; labour they yearn for, though to some of them labour comes with miserable disease and early death. Have we not here Knights of the Shuttle, Knights of Clay, and Knights of Vulcan, who prepare the carcase of the giant engine for its vital flood of steam? Are not these among the noblest of the sons of Poverty? Shall they not take high rank in its Order?
We are at the mouth of a mine. There, many, manyfathoms below us, works the naked, grimed, and sweating wretch, oppressed, brutalised, that he may dig us coal for our winter’s hearth; where we may gather round, and with filled bellies, well-clothed backs, and hearts all lapped in self-complacency, talk of the talked-of evils of the world, as though they were the fables of ill-natured men, and not the verities of bleeding life. That these men, doing the foulest offices of the world should still be of the world’s poorest, gives dignity to want—the glory of long-suffering to poverty.
And so, indeed, in the mind of wisdom, is poverty ennobled. And for the Knights of the Golden Calf, how are they outnumbered! Let us, then, revive the Order of Poverty. Ponder, reader, on its antiquity. For was not Christ Himself Chancellor of the Order, and the Apostles Knights Companions?