page decorationOn Pilgrims and the Pilgrim Spirit“Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,And palmers for to seeke strange strandsTo ferne hallows couth in sundry lands.”In the good old times, when a man wanted a little change from the bosom of his family—in those days a somewhat restricted bosom—he went on a crusade, or a pilgrimage.What if he did spend his time and substance on that which, from a worldly standpoint, profited not—absenting himself from home and friends for periods of time lengthy enough to afford a modern wife good grounds for a divorce—was it not all meritorious? Heaven, he fondly believed, would more than pay his travelling expenses by a large cheque to his credit on the next world, whilst he had the pleasure of the journey in this: an ingenious method of seeing something of both! And so he donned his pilgrim weeds, and his “cockle hat and shoon”—as all good chroniclers tell us—and hied him off to Canterbury or Cologne, Rome, Jerusalem, or Timbuctoo. Mrs. Pilgrim was left at home to play “patience,” and to keep the house and bairns. She was generally a long-suffering creature, but sometimes shedidget into mischief. She could notalwaysspin yarn, so she occasionally varied her task by weaving nets—traps for the unwary who wasnota pilgrim.But if she got into mischief, she paid the penalty; my lord invariably cut off her head with his scimitar when he returned home—if she waited for that—and there was an end of the matter. There was no Divorce Court in the good old days, and a woman’s head did not count for much. But these slight casualties never diminished the ardour of the pilgrim spirit: the pilgrim increasedand multiplied, and sought new shrines as well as new wives. To slightly vary the words of the poet, “Shrineaftershrinehis rising raptures fill. But still he sighs—forshrinesare wanting still.” The law of supply and demand, however, worked as surely then as now; and as pilgrims increased to venerate, objects increased to be venerated. There is a good story told by the Arabs—it was given by Dr. Samuel Jessup in one of his contributions to “Picturesque Palestine” some years ago—and it is an apt illustration of this supply and demand principle.“ran away with his master’s donkey.”There was a certain Sheik-Mohammed who, once upon a time, was the keeper of a “wely” or shrine, supposed by the faithful to be the tomb of an eminent Saint, and so largely frequented by them that the Sheik grew rich from their costly offerings. His servant Ali, however, receiving but a small share of the profits, ran away to the south of the Jordan, taking with him his master’s donkey. The animal died on the way, and Ali, having covered his body with a heap of stones, sat down in despair. A passer-by enquired the cause of his sorrow, and Ali replied that he had just found the tomb of an eminent Saint; the man kissed the stones, gave Ali a present, and passed on his way.The news of the holy shrine spread throughout the land, and pilgrims thronged to visit it: Ali became rich, built a fine “Kubbeh” (Dome), and was envied by all the Sheiks.Mohammed, hearing of the new shrine, and finding his own eclipsed by it, made a pilgrimage to it himself, in hopes of finding out the source of its great repute. Finding Ali in charge, he asked, in a whisper, if he would tell him the name of the Saint whose tomb he kept charge of. “I will,” replied Ali, “on condition that you tell me the name of your Saint.” Mohammed consented, and Ali then whispered, “God alone is great! This is the tomb of the donkey I stole from you.”“Mashallah!” cried Mohammed, “and my ‘wely’ is thetomb of that donkey’s father!” Methinks Palestine has not a monopoly of the long-eared and long-suffering race, either living or dead!But we have changed all that; as we have a good many other things. Saints and their shrines are out of fashion. “It is an age of seeing, not believing,” we say complacently; and we laugh with superior wisdom at the follies of our forefathers, and the relics they went so far to adore—relics which, like the fabled frog, by trying to swell themselves to greater and still greater dimensions, ended in growing a little too extensive for their ultimate good. Saints, like sinners, can only have two legs apiece, we all know; but the saints of our ancestors, if their relics spoke truly, must have been saintly centipedes: of making new limbs there was no end, and, as their numbers increased, reverence waned, till hey!—the bubble of credulity burst at last, as did the frog!But if the heavenly profitability was cut off by this collapse of superstition, or eclipse of faith—call it which you will—the habit of pleasurable moving remained; stronger by the force of repeated custom throughout all past times: we keep the shell, but we cunningly substitute a new kernel in the place of the exploded core of heretofore.We go a pilgrimage still, but your modern spirit is now the pilgrim of Health, Pleasure, Science, Art, and such-like—all high-sounding names to conjure by; and the world, that old time-server, ever seeking to accommodate itself to the new ways of its inhabitants, is ever supplying us with a new Spa, a new “old master,” or masterpiece, a newly dug-up ruin, or hieroglyph, or Dark Continent, or—for even the humblest “tripper” is not forgotten—a new Mudport-on-Sea.The shrines of our forefathers’ worship have crept back into favour by hiding themselves in the voluminous draperies of History or Art. Our appetite for shows is omnivorous, and we don’t object to a shrine if it has a Gothic moulding sufficiently “cute,” or a Byzantine roof, or some other attraction—are we not pilgrims ofArt?—though if called upon to define our roof or moulding many of us might be considerably nonplussed, taking refuge in describing one as a “thing with a round top,” and the other as “a sort of stone trimming, don’t you know.”I remember once reading a child’s tale—I have forgotten where, for it was many years ago—but the drift of the story was too good to forget. It was about a small pig who lived with his mother in a stye which possessed but a limited front yard. Piggy had thepilgrim spirit, and sighed to escape to pastures new, to see what lay beyond his little wall. One day his chance came—he escaped somehow, and made a pilgrimage round the farmyard, where the strange things he saw either frightened him dreadfully, or were utterly unintelligible to his piggish mind. He was so frightened by the roaring of a bull that he fled with great precipitation home, where he gave a glowing account of his travels to his mother.“pilgrims of art.”“Yes,” he said, “I have seen the world. It is square, and it has a wall all round it, to keep the pigs from falling off, of course. I saw some queer white pigs, with only two legs—think of that! They said ‘Quack, quack’—that is what they say in the world, you know, but, of course,youdon’t understand. Then I saw a great red pig, who cried, ‘Mou-e-e-e!’ There is butonesuch pig in the world, andIhave seen it. I am content to live quietly now, for I have seen the whole world!”Who has not seen that smug satisfaction of small souls as reflected by piggy?There is a great deal inlookingwise even if you don’t feel so. Talk always of your “dones,” and leave out the “undones.”Most of us have heard of the apocryphal American who “does Europe” in a fortnight! I cannot say that I have actually met that gentleman, but I have met pilgrims, both English and American, who will tell you grandly that they have “done”—say Rome, in two, nay in one day! All the antiquities, ofcourse, and the Museums; and then comes a string of names of churches, and galleries, until you gasp for breath! You go away and lean against something to recover your breath, and your gravity, but the pilgrimage is an accomplished fact. They have a right to stick to the cockle-shell in their cap, so to speak, and go home saying, “Oh, yes! We have done Rome, or Italy, or Egypt,thoroughly; missed nothing!”If one could take an impression of one of these pilgrim’s brains by “Kodak,” one would get some queer results in chaos, rather like the game of family post—the Raphael frescoes transferring themselves to Karnak, and the Sphinx hiding in the Catacombs, whilst pictures, statuary, and shrines of “cult” executed a Bacchanalian dance on a gigantic scale all round.But results do not alter facts; and in these busy days people are generally content toseeyour tree of knowledge; they have no time to climb its branches to look for the fruit of wisdom!We have changed our pilgrim weeds for an ulster of the latest cut, and our Missal for a “Murray” or “Baedeker,” but are we really so much wiser than our forefathers?Alas! we have but changed the object, and human nature, gullible ever, sees no reason why it should not flock in thousands to drop a visiting card into the tomb (so called) of “Juliet” at Verona, with as fond credulity as their fathers, when they deposited their candle at the tomb of some miracle-working saint; with this difference, however—that the latter was deposited for the glory and praise of the saint, and the former of the sinnerhimself. Who could say, after that, that he had not seen it!I happened, when there, to make some irreverent remarks about that tomb. I had walked out to see it on a hot afternoon, and I found it inconveniently far. One is accustomed to have these places “grouped,” and I was displeased withJulietfor not being buried nearer home—it was an oversight—but perhaps it had been arranged for the benefit of the carriage-drivers.Julietwas public-spirited, and thought of all classes, and their interests. I did not think of all these extenuating circumstances then, however, and so I said unbelieving things about her tomb.Thecustodewas deeply pained, as an orthodoxcustodeought to be. He remonstrated with me first, and then he pointed to the wall. “Ecco, Signor! è scritto, è scritto è verissimo!”“ecco, signor!”And there indeed it was written, in good set terms, and in two or three languages, for the benefit of all non-literary or unbelieving pilgrims.I have often thought since how many people there are, like my friend thecustode, to whom the magic “it is written” is sufficient ground for their faith, without further consideration as towhenandhow.Some time ago a friend of mine encountered a portly Western American tourist at Kenilworth. He came in a hurry, and asked to be shown the part “wrote up” by Scott. He gazed for a few minutes, and then departed as quickly as he came. To him Kenilworth was merely a place “wrote up” by Scott, and no doubt he had Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon to see that same afternoon, before going on to Liverpool.There are pilgrims who certainly carry a feeling of duty into all things. Wherever they go they mean work!This quality pre-eminently distinguishes the English-speaking world, and it always fills our Continental, or Oriental, neighbours with lazy wonder. “Oh, these Englishwomen! they have legs and stomachs of bronze!” I once heard an Italian say.We are inclined to overdo it. I think an occasional rest-day is as necessary to the tired brain as the photographer’s dark room is to the development of the negative impression—without it the brain would, indeed, record a “negative impression.”But I am straying fromJuliet’stomb, and the subject of unlimited faith. Only make a thing possible, and,if there is an undercurrent of desire to believe it, the large majority will swallow almost anything with what theologians call “simple faith.” The “if” is an important one—the key to the situation. We believe readily when it is agreeable to do so, and all pilgrims have ever sought to heighten the attractions of the objects of their interest. It adds to their own enjoyment of them, and, after all, is it not areflex compliment to ourselves? If “there is butonesuch pig in the world,” have notIseen it?“lured men to destruction.”Have you ever noticed the effect of the expression, “They say?” If we say “Tom,” or “Dick,” or “Harry,” says “so and so,” “Tom” is no better authority than “Dick,” nor are both together much better than “Harry.” But if we say, indefinitely, “Theysay” “so and so,” there is a mysterious potency in the unknown quantity which leads, if not to universal belief, at least to universal transmission.“Yes, it is an interesting spot. They say that a princess is buried here who was laid under a potent spell by a mighty wizard, long, long ago,” etc.; or “They tell of a beauteous maiden who sat on this rock, in the far past, and sang, and thus lured men to destruction,” etc.He or she is always swallowed up by the mists of obscurity—oh, ye mists of obscurity, ye have much to answer for!We do not care to dispute with “They” his superior information—even if we could find him; for he seems to reside permanently in the aforesaid mists himself; only issuing forth, like a valiant knight, to rescue the fair maidens—Fact, or Fiction—from the jaws of the dragon Oblivion! What heis, we leave to the learned, who could no doubt dispose of him suitably in connection with the highly convenient solar myths, as a Potent Rescuing Power! As for us, we meddle not with the mists: we rather like the delicious glow of their luminous dimness, which glorifies the past if it clouds it; and which softens off the hardness of our prosaic modern life, as a summer haze our English landscape.We are delighted to get hold of an ancient legend,whether of headless horseman or housekeeper, pixie or wizard. Even in that “happy hunting ground” of the Modern Spirit, the United States of America, the old legends linger still, if but faintly. The soil of a new country does not grow sentiment of this sort readily, but the plant is indigenous to the human heart; and its fair flowers have been gathered and wreathed around their pages by many an essayist and poet. We cannot do without the element of mystery in our life, however we may represent it. It is part of the spirit within us, and we find it in everything around us. It is the veil of “Isis” which science, her worshipper, is ever trying to lift, but cannot. The muse of Inspiration pours forth her melodious voice, like the nightingale, in the darkness and the shady covert. We listen to her song with entranced ears; a few whose spirits are “finely touched,” try to repeat it; but who has ever seen her; the soul that animates, the spirit that inspires! Our life itself is a mystery—the Past and Future—are they not the wings of the Spirit of Time which are brooding over our Present? When they are lifted—when the mighty pinions are outspread for flight—thenthe shadows will flee for ever, for the great Daybreak of Eternity will have begun!science lifting the veil of isis.Without the spirit of mystery, the mother of enquiry—of romance, the days of pilgrimage would be ended. If it is a mere matter of rest, and of oiling the wheels of the machine for a fresh grind, Mudport-on-Sea will do well enough; but Mudport-on-Sea can never satisfy the hunger of the curious soul for the beautiful; the marvellous; all that is in itself lovely, or that has lived in the past, and caught a brighterglow from its rainbow reflections. One spot of ground may content the naturalist, or the Buddhist sage, for one can find a world of wondrous thought in the smallest leaf—a microcosm in a dew-drop; and the other can send his soul off on aerial pilgrimages, though his body may be in chains! But we are not all either natural or transcendental philosophers; our appetite requires not one leaf, but many, for our powers of assimilation are not great enough to draw spiritual sustenance from one alone; and so, like the caterpillar, when we have finished our leaf, we crawl to another.“But this spirit of curiosity, or unrest, is all owing to lack of self-culture,” cry some. Perhaps it is—some of it. No doubt the cocoon stage of rest and self-development is higher, and nearer to the ultimate perfection—the winged creature which soars above where others crawl—but until we are fit to be cocoons, and evolve butterflies, we must be content with our caterpillar instincts.People speak scornfully of “mere curiosity,” but it is only worthless when it bears no fruit. Curiosity, in itself, is a healthy, natural instinct, which we see to perfection in the small child. Toddie’s speech in “Helen’s Babies,” “Want to shee wheels go wound,” is the pilgrim spirit epitomised. We hear of the watch, and we want to see it; we see it, and then we want to hold it; we hear it tick, and we want to open it; and then we would like to “shee wheels go wound” constantly, and if we cannot, we kick at the prohibition!Curiosity may be a worthless element in life when idle, but when otherwise, is it not the mainspring of the watch? Think of the manifold results of “mere curiosity,” when rightly persevered in! But then we change the name—it becomes insight—research—it becomes a power which can climb the dizziest height, and dive the deepest depths, to bring to us their treasures—the star—the pearl!A College Idyl.By S. Gordon.Illustrations by A. H. Fisher.Night it was—nay, nearer morning,Snores and nightmares whisked about,And the pallid moon gave warningThat her lamp was nearly out.Twain we sat, and ruminatedOn the world, its joys and ills,What we loved, and what we hated,Woman, wine—exams and bills.Often, too, with short-lived splendour,Flashed the ready epigram,Thoughts we uttered, soft and tender,Ending in a smothered “——”;All the truths and lies of agesCompassed we in one short breath,Flouted whims of priests and sages,Lightly toyed with life and death.Men and manners, saints and sinners,All and more we touched upon,How the worst were ever winners,Forweyet had never won;And we cursed at superstition,Villain smiles, and sects, and cants,Hurled to ruin and perditionAll the tribe of sycophants—Queried, thinking of cold faces,Colder hearts of living stone,Why our lot within such places,Why upon such days was thrown;In our years’ maturing crescentSpied we how our fate was fraught,Spanned the future and the presentWith the flimsy bridge of thought.So the morn came, pale and haggard,Lighting up our sunken eyes,And we rose and thither staggeredWhence we would but slowly rise;Plain our footsteps, weak and frisky,Told their moral—speak who can—Midnight words and midnight whiskeyPlay the devil with a man!(from a photograph bymessrs. elliott and fry.)My First Book.By F. W. Robinson.Illustrations by Geo. Hutchinson.It is a far cry back to 1853, when dreams of writing a book had almost reached the boundary line of “probable events.” I was then a pale, long-haired, consumptive-looking youth, who had been successful in prize poems—for there were prize competitions even in those far-off days—and in acrostics, and in the acceptance of one or two short stories, which had been actually published in a magazine that did not pay for contributions (it was edited by a clergyman of the Church of England, too, and the chaplain to a real Duke), and which magazine has gone the way of many magazines, and is now as extinct as the Dodo. It was in the year 1853, or a month or two earlier, that I wrote my first novel—which, upon a moderate computation, I think, would make four or five good-sized library volumes, but I have never attempted to “scale” the manuscript. It is in my possession still, although I have not seen it for many weary years. It is buried with a heapmore rubbish in a respectable old oak chest, the key of which is even lost to me. And yet that MS. was the turning-point of my small literary career. And it is the history of that manuscript which leads up to the publication of my first novel; my first step, though I did not know it, and hence it is part and parcel of the history of my first book—a link in the chain.at twenty.elmore house.When that manuscript was completed, it was read aloud, night after night, to an admiring audience of family members, and pronounced as fit for publication as anything of Dickens or Thackeray or Bulwer, who were then in the full swing of their mighty capacities. Alas! I was a better judge than my partial and amiable critics. I had very grave doubts—“qualms,” I think they are called—and I had read that it was uphill work to get a book published, and swagger through the world as a real live being who had actually written a novel. There was a faint hope, that was all; and so, with my MS. under my arm, I strolled into the palatial premises of Messrs. Hurst and Blackett (“successors to Henry Colburn” they proudly designated themselves at that period), laid my heavy parcel on the counter, and waited, with fear and trembling, for someone to emerge from the galleries of books and rows of desks beyond, and enquire the nature of my business. And here ensued my first surprise—quite a dramatic coincidence—for the tall, spare, middle-aged gentleman who advanced from the shadows towards the counter, proved, to my intense astonishment, to be a constantchess antagonist of mine at Kling’s Chess Rooms, round the corner, in New Oxford Street—rooms which have disappeared long ago, along with Horwitz, Harrwitz, Loewenthal, Williams, and other great chess lights of those far-away times, who were to be seen there, night after night, prepared for all comers. Kling’s was a great chess house, and I was a chess enthusiast, as well as a youth who wanted to get into print. Failing literature, I had made up my mind to become a chess champion, if possible, although I knew already, by quiet observation of my antagonists, that in that way madness lay, sheer uncontrollable, raging madness—for me at any rate. And the grave, middle-aged gentleman behind the counter of 13, Great Marlborough Street, proved to be the cashier of the firm, and used—being chess-mad like the rest of us—to spend his evenings at “Kling’s.” He was a player of my own strength, and for twelve months or so had I skirmished with him over the chessboard, and fought innumerable battles with him. He had never spoken of his occupation, or I of my restless ambitions—chess players never go far beyond the chequered board.at thirty.“Hallo, Robinson!” he exclaimed, in his surprise, “you don’t mean to say that you——”And then he stopped and regarded my youthful appearance very critically.“Yes, Mr. Kenny—it’s a novel,” I said, modestly; “my first.”“There’s plenty of it,” he remarked, drily. “I’ll send it upstairs at once. And I’ll wish you luck too; but,” he added, kindly, preparing to soften the shock of a future refusal, “we have plenty of these come in—about seven a day—and most of them go back to their writers again.”“Ye-es, I suppose so,” I answered, with a sigh.For awhile, however, I regarded the meeting as a happyaugury—a lucky coincidence. I even had the vain, hopeless notion that Mr. Kenny might put in a good word for me, ask for special consideration, out of that kindly feeling which we had for each other, and which chess antagonists have invariably for each other, I am inclined to believe. But though we met three or four times a week, from that day forth not one word concerning the fate of my manuscript escaped the lips of Mr. Kenny. It is probable the incident had passed from his memory; he had nothing to do with the novel department itself, and the delivery of MSS. was a very common everyday proceeding to him. I was too bashful, perhaps too proud, an individual to ask any questions of him; but every evening that I encountered him I used to wonder “if he had heard anything,” if any news of the book’s fate had reached him, directly or indirectly; occasionally even, as time went on, I was disposed to imagine that he was letting me win the game out of kindness—for he was a gentle, kindly soul always—in order to soften the shock of a disappointment which he knew perfectly well was on its way towards me.mr. robinson’s library.the garden.Some months afterwards, the fateful letter came to me from the firm, regretting their inability to make use of the MS., and expressing many thanks for a perusal of the same—a polite, concise, all-round kind of epistle, which a publisher is compelled tokeep in stock, and to send out when rejected literature pours forth like a waterfall from the dusky caverns of a publishing house in a large way of business. It was all over, then—I had failed! From that hour I would turn chess player, and soften my brain in a quest for silver cups or champion amateur stakes. I could play chess better than I could write fiction, I was sure. Still, after some days of dead despair, I sent the MS. once more on its travels—this time to Smith and Elder’s, whose reader, Mr. Williams, had leapt into singular prominence since his favourable judgment of Charlotte Brontë’s book, and to whom most MSS. flowed spontaneously for many years afterwards. And in due course of time, Mr. Williams, acting for Messrs. Smith and Elder, asked me to call upon him—for the MS.!—at Cornhill, and there I received my first advice, my first thrill of exultation. “Presently, and probably,and with perseverance,” he said, “you will succeed in literature, and if you will remember now, that to write a good novel is a very considerable achievement. Years of short story-writing is the best apprenticeship for you. Write and re-write, and spare no pains.” I thanked him, and I went home with tears in my eyes of gratitude and consolation, though my big story had been declined with thanks. But I did not write again. I put away my MS., and went on for six or eight hours a day at chess for many idle months before I was in the vein for composition, and then, with a sudden dash, I began “The House of Elmore.” It was half finished when another strange incident in its little way occurred. I received one morning a letter from Lascelles Wraxall (afterwards Sir Lascelles Wraxall, Bart., as the reader may be probably aware), informing me that he was one of the readers for Messrs. Hurst and Blackett, and that it had been his duty some time ago to decide unfavourably against a story which I had submitted to the notice of his firm, but that he had intended to write to me a private note urging me to adopt literature as a profession. Hisprincipal object in writing at that time was to suggest my trying the fortunes of the novel which he had already read with Messrs. Routledge, and he kindly added a letter of introduction to that firm in the Broadway—an introduction which, by the way, never came to anything.the drawing-room.Poor Lascelles Wraxall, clever writer and editor, pressman and literary adviser, real Bohemian and true friend—indeed, everybody’s friend but his own—I never think of him but with feelings of deep gratitude. He was a rolling stone, and when I met him for the first time in my life, years afterwards, he had left Marlborough Street for the Crimea; he had been given a commission in the Turkish Contingent at Kertch; he had come back anathematising the service, and “chock full” of grievances against the Government, and he became once more editor and sub-editor, and publisher’s hack even at last, until he stepped into his baronetcy—an empty title, for he had sold the reversion of the estates for a mere song long ago—and became special correspondent in Austria for theDaily Telegraph. And in Vienna he died, young in years still—not forty, I think—closing a life that onlywanted one turn more of “application,” I have often thought, to have achieved very great distinction. There are still a few writing men about who remember Lascelles Wraxall, but they are “the boys of the old brigade.”It was to Lascelles Wraxall I sent, when finished, “The House of Elmore,” the reader may very easily guess. Wraxall had stepped so much out of his groove—for the busy literary man that he was—to take me by the hand, and point the way along “the perilous road”; he had given me so many kind words, that I wrote my hardest to complete my new story before I should fade wholly from his recollection. The book was finished in five weeks, and in hot haste, and for months again I was left wondering what the outcome of it all was to be—whether Wraxall was reading my story, or whether—oh, horror!—some other reader less kindly disposed, and more austere and critical, and hard to please, had been told off to sit in judgment upon my second MS.at forty.I went back to chess for a distraction till the fate of that book was pronounced or sealed—it was always chess in the hours of my distress and anxiety—and I once again faced Charles Kenny, and once again wondered if he knew, and how much he knew, whilst he was deep in his king’s gambit or his giuoco-piano; but he was not even aware that I had sent in a second story, I learned afterwards. And then at last came the judgment—the pleasant, if formal, notice from Marlborough Street that the novel had been favourably reported upon by the reader, and that Messrs. Hurst and Blackett would be pleased to see me at Marlborough Street to talk the matter of its publication over with me. Ah! what a letter that was!—what a surprise, after all!—what a good omen!And some three months afterwards, at the end of the year 1854, my first book—but my second novel—was launched into the reading world, and I have hardly got over the feeling yet that I had actually a right to dub myself a novelist!mr. robinson at work.When the first three notices of the book appeared, wild dreams of a brilliant future beset me. They were all favourable notices—too favourable; butJohn Bull,The Press, andBell’s Messenger(I think they were the papers) scattered favourable notices indiscriminately at that time. Presently theAthenæumsobered me a little, but wound up with a kindly pat on the back, and theSaturday Review, then in its seventh number, drenched me with vitriolic acid, and brought me to a lower level altogether; and finally theMorning Heraldblew a loud blast to my praise and glory—that last notice, I believe, having been written by my old friend Sir Edward Clarke, then a very young reviewer on theHeraldstaff, with no dreams of becoming Her Majesty’s Solicitor-General just then! And the “House of Elmore” actually paid its publishers’ expenses, and left a balance, and brought me in a little cheque, and thus my writing life began in sober earnest.Told by the Colonel.XI.HOSKINS’S PETS.By W. L. Alden.Illustrations by R. Jack.“heave flowers into his cell.”“Yes!” said the Colonel, reflectively, "I’ve been almost everywhere in my time except in gaol, and I’ve been in a great deal worse places than a first-class American gaol with all the modern improvements. The fact is, that philanthropic people have gone so far in improving the condition of prisoners, that most of our prisons are rather better than most of our hotels. At any rate, they are less expensive, and the guests are treated with more respect.“I never could understand the craze that some people have for prisoners. For instance, in New York and Chicago, the young ladies have a society for giving flowers to murderers. Whenever a man is convicted of murder and sentenced to be hung, the girls begin to heave flowers into his cell till he can’t turn round without upsetting a vase of roses, or a big basin full of pansies, and getting his feet wet. I once knew a murderer who told me that if anything could reconcile him to being hung it would be getting rid of the floral tributes that the girls lavished on him. You see he was one of the leading murderers in that section of country, and consequently he received about a cartload of flowers every day.“I had a neighbour when I lived in New Berlinopolisville who was the President of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of Prisoners, and he was the craziest man on the subject that I ever met. His name was Hoskins—Colonel Uriah Hoskins—and he was the author of the Hoskins Bill that attracted so much attention when it was before the Legislature, though it never became a law. The bill provided that every prisoner should have a sitting room as well as a sleeping room, and that it should be furnished with a piano, a banjo, a library, a typewriter, a wine cooler, and a whist table; that the prisoner should be permitted to hold two weekly receptions, to which everybody should be allowed to come, and that he should be taught any branch of study that he might care to take up, books and masters being, of course, supplied free. Colonel Hoskins used to insist that the only thing that made a man go wrong was the lack of kindness, and that the sure way to reform a criminal was to treat him with so much kindness that he would grow ashamed of being wicked, and would fall on everybody’s neck and devote the rest of his life to weeping tears of repentance and singing hymns of joy.“drew up a beautiful notice.”“While Colonel Hoskins was fond of all styles of criminals, burglars were his particular pets. According to him, a burglar was more deserving of kindness than any other man. ‘How would you like it,’ he used to say, ‘if you had to earn your living by breaking into houses in the middle of the night, instead of sleeping peacefully in your bed? Do you think you would be full of good thoughts after you had been bitten by the watch-dog and fired at by the man of the house, and earned nothing by your labour except a bad cold and the prospect of hydrophobia? There is nothing more brutal than the way in which society treats the burglar, and so long as society refuses to put him in the way of earning an easier and less dangerous living, he cannot be blamed if he continues to practise his midnight profession.’“I must say this for Colonel Hoskins. He did not confine himself to talk, like many other philanthropists, but he was already trying to carry out his principles. He really meant whathe said about burglars, and there isn’t the least doubt that he had more sympathy for them than he had for the honest men of his acquaintance. When people asked him what he would do if he woke up in the night and found a burglar in his house, and whether or not he would shoot at him, he said that he would as soon think of shooting at his own wife, and that he would undertake to reform that burglar then and there by kindness alone. Once somebody said to Hoskins that he ought really to let the burglars know his feelings towards them, and Hoskins said that he would do it without delay.“That same day he drew up a beautiful ‘Notice to Burglars,’ and had it printed in big letters and framed and hung up in the dining-room of his house. It read in this way: ‘Burglars are respectfully informed that the silver-ware is all plated, and that the proprietor of this house never keeps ready money on hand. Cake and wine will be found in the dining-room closet, and burglars are cordially invited to rest and refresh themselves. Please wipe your feet on the mat, and close the window when leaving the house.’“Colonel Hoskins took a good deal of pride in that notice. He showed it to everyone who called at the house, and said that if other people would follow his example, and treat burglars like Christians and gentlemen, there would soon be an end of burglary, for the burglars would be so touched by the kindness of their treatment that they would abandon the business and become honoured members of society—insurance presidents, or bank cashiers, or church treasurers. He didn’t say how the reformed burglars were to find employment in banks and insurance offices, and such, but that was a matter of detail, and he always preferred to devise large and noble schemes, and leave the working details of them to other men.“One morning, Colonel Hoskins, who was an early riser, went down to the dining-room before breakfast, and was surprised to find that he had had a midnight visit from burglars. Two empty wine bottles stood on the table, and all the cake was eaten, which showed that the burglars had accepted the invitation to refresh themselves. But they did not seem to have accepted it in quite the right spirit. All Hoskins’s spoons and forks lay in a heap in the middle of the floor, and every one was twisted or broken so as to be good for nothing. The window had been left open, and the rain had ruined the curtains, and on a dirty piece of paper the burglars had scrawled with a lead pencil the opinion that ‘Old Hoskins is thebiggest fule, and the gol-darndest skinflint in the country. You set out whiskey next time, or we’ll serve you out.’“Hoskins was not in the least cast down by the rudeness of the burglars. ‘Poor fellows,’ he said, ‘they have been so used to bad treatment that they don’t altogether appreciate kindness at first. But they will learn.’ So he laid in some new spoons and forks, and added a bottle of whiskey to the wine that he kept in the closet for the burglars, and was as confident as ever that the next gang that might break into his house would be melted into tears and repentance, and would call him their best and dearest friend.
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On Pilgrims and the Pilgrim Spirit“Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,And palmers for to seeke strange strandsTo ferne hallows couth in sundry lands.”In the good old times, when a man wanted a little change from the bosom of his family—in those days a somewhat restricted bosom—he went on a crusade, or a pilgrimage.What if he did spend his time and substance on that which, from a worldly standpoint, profited not—absenting himself from home and friends for periods of time lengthy enough to afford a modern wife good grounds for a divorce—was it not all meritorious? Heaven, he fondly believed, would more than pay his travelling expenses by a large cheque to his credit on the next world, whilst he had the pleasure of the journey in this: an ingenious method of seeing something of both! And so he donned his pilgrim weeds, and his “cockle hat and shoon”—as all good chroniclers tell us—and hied him off to Canterbury or Cologne, Rome, Jerusalem, or Timbuctoo. Mrs. Pilgrim was left at home to play “patience,” and to keep the house and bairns. She was generally a long-suffering creature, but sometimes shedidget into mischief. She could notalwaysspin yarn, so she occasionally varied her task by weaving nets—traps for the unwary who wasnota pilgrim.
On Pilgrims and the Pilgrim Spirit
“Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,And palmers for to seeke strange strandsTo ferne hallows couth in sundry lands.”
In the good old times, when a man wanted a little change from the bosom of his family—in those days a somewhat restricted bosom—he went on a crusade, or a pilgrimage.
What if he did spend his time and substance on that which, from a worldly standpoint, profited not—absenting himself from home and friends for periods of time lengthy enough to afford a modern wife good grounds for a divorce—was it not all meritorious? Heaven, he fondly believed, would more than pay his travelling expenses by a large cheque to his credit on the next world, whilst he had the pleasure of the journey in this: an ingenious method of seeing something of both! And so he donned his pilgrim weeds, and his “cockle hat and shoon”—as all good chroniclers tell us—and hied him off to Canterbury or Cologne, Rome, Jerusalem, or Timbuctoo. Mrs. Pilgrim was left at home to play “patience,” and to keep the house and bairns. She was generally a long-suffering creature, but sometimes shedidget into mischief. She could notalwaysspin yarn, so she occasionally varied her task by weaving nets—traps for the unwary who wasnota pilgrim.
But if she got into mischief, she paid the penalty; my lord invariably cut off her head with his scimitar when he returned home—if she waited for that—and there was an end of the matter. There was no Divorce Court in the good old days, and a woman’s head did not count for much. But these slight casualties never diminished the ardour of the pilgrim spirit: the pilgrim increasedand multiplied, and sought new shrines as well as new wives. To slightly vary the words of the poet, “Shrineaftershrinehis rising raptures fill. But still he sighs—forshrinesare wanting still.” The law of supply and demand, however, worked as surely then as now; and as pilgrims increased to venerate, objects increased to be venerated. There is a good story told by the Arabs—it was given by Dr. Samuel Jessup in one of his contributions to “Picturesque Palestine” some years ago—and it is an apt illustration of this supply and demand principle.
“ran away with his master’s donkey.”
There was a certain Sheik-Mohammed who, once upon a time, was the keeper of a “wely” or shrine, supposed by the faithful to be the tomb of an eminent Saint, and so largely frequented by them that the Sheik grew rich from their costly offerings. His servant Ali, however, receiving but a small share of the profits, ran away to the south of the Jordan, taking with him his master’s donkey. The animal died on the way, and Ali, having covered his body with a heap of stones, sat down in despair. A passer-by enquired the cause of his sorrow, and Ali replied that he had just found the tomb of an eminent Saint; the man kissed the stones, gave Ali a present, and passed on his way.
The news of the holy shrine spread throughout the land, and pilgrims thronged to visit it: Ali became rich, built a fine “Kubbeh” (Dome), and was envied by all the Sheiks.
Mohammed, hearing of the new shrine, and finding his own eclipsed by it, made a pilgrimage to it himself, in hopes of finding out the source of its great repute. Finding Ali in charge, he asked, in a whisper, if he would tell him the name of the Saint whose tomb he kept charge of. “I will,” replied Ali, “on condition that you tell me the name of your Saint.” Mohammed consented, and Ali then whispered, “God alone is great! This is the tomb of the donkey I stole from you.”
“Mashallah!” cried Mohammed, “and my ‘wely’ is thetomb of that donkey’s father!” Methinks Palestine has not a monopoly of the long-eared and long-suffering race, either living or dead!
But we have changed all that; as we have a good many other things. Saints and their shrines are out of fashion. “It is an age of seeing, not believing,” we say complacently; and we laugh with superior wisdom at the follies of our forefathers, and the relics they went so far to adore—relics which, like the fabled frog, by trying to swell themselves to greater and still greater dimensions, ended in growing a little too extensive for their ultimate good. Saints, like sinners, can only have two legs apiece, we all know; but the saints of our ancestors, if their relics spoke truly, must have been saintly centipedes: of making new limbs there was no end, and, as their numbers increased, reverence waned, till hey!—the bubble of credulity burst at last, as did the frog!
But if the heavenly profitability was cut off by this collapse of superstition, or eclipse of faith—call it which you will—the habit of pleasurable moving remained; stronger by the force of repeated custom throughout all past times: we keep the shell, but we cunningly substitute a new kernel in the place of the exploded core of heretofore.
We go a pilgrimage still, but your modern spirit is now the pilgrim of Health, Pleasure, Science, Art, and such-like—all high-sounding names to conjure by; and the world, that old time-server, ever seeking to accommodate itself to the new ways of its inhabitants, is ever supplying us with a new Spa, a new “old master,” or masterpiece, a newly dug-up ruin, or hieroglyph, or Dark Continent, or—for even the humblest “tripper” is not forgotten—a new Mudport-on-Sea.
The shrines of our forefathers’ worship have crept back into favour by hiding themselves in the voluminous draperies of History or Art. Our appetite for shows is omnivorous, and we don’t object to a shrine if it has a Gothic moulding sufficiently “cute,” or a Byzantine roof, or some other attraction—are we not pilgrims ofArt?—though if called upon to define our roof or moulding many of us might be considerably nonplussed, taking refuge in describing one as a “thing with a round top,” and the other as “a sort of stone trimming, don’t you know.”
I remember once reading a child’s tale—I have forgotten where, for it was many years ago—but the drift of the story was too good to forget. It was about a small pig who lived with his mother in a stye which possessed but a limited front yard. Piggy had thepilgrim spirit, and sighed to escape to pastures new, to see what lay beyond his little wall. One day his chance came—he escaped somehow, and made a pilgrimage round the farmyard, where the strange things he saw either frightened him dreadfully, or were utterly unintelligible to his piggish mind. He was so frightened by the roaring of a bull that he fled with great precipitation home, where he gave a glowing account of his travels to his mother.
“pilgrims of art.”
“Yes,” he said, “I have seen the world. It is square, and it has a wall all round it, to keep the pigs from falling off, of course. I saw some queer white pigs, with only two legs—think of that! They said ‘Quack, quack’—that is what they say in the world, you know, but, of course,youdon’t understand. Then I saw a great red pig, who cried, ‘Mou-e-e-e!’ There is butonesuch pig in the world, andIhave seen it. I am content to live quietly now, for I have seen the whole world!”
Who has not seen that smug satisfaction of small souls as reflected by piggy?
There is a great deal inlookingwise even if you don’t feel so. Talk always of your “dones,” and leave out the “undones.”
Most of us have heard of the apocryphal American who “does Europe” in a fortnight! I cannot say that I have actually met that gentleman, but I have met pilgrims, both English and American, who will tell you grandly that they have “done”—say Rome, in two, nay in one day! All the antiquities, ofcourse, and the Museums; and then comes a string of names of churches, and galleries, until you gasp for breath! You go away and lean against something to recover your breath, and your gravity, but the pilgrimage is an accomplished fact. They have a right to stick to the cockle-shell in their cap, so to speak, and go home saying, “Oh, yes! We have done Rome, or Italy, or Egypt,thoroughly; missed nothing!”
If one could take an impression of one of these pilgrim’s brains by “Kodak,” one would get some queer results in chaos, rather like the game of family post—the Raphael frescoes transferring themselves to Karnak, and the Sphinx hiding in the Catacombs, whilst pictures, statuary, and shrines of “cult” executed a Bacchanalian dance on a gigantic scale all round.
But results do not alter facts; and in these busy days people are generally content toseeyour tree of knowledge; they have no time to climb its branches to look for the fruit of wisdom!
We have changed our pilgrim weeds for an ulster of the latest cut, and our Missal for a “Murray” or “Baedeker,” but are we really so much wiser than our forefathers?
Alas! we have but changed the object, and human nature, gullible ever, sees no reason why it should not flock in thousands to drop a visiting card into the tomb (so called) of “Juliet” at Verona, with as fond credulity as their fathers, when they deposited their candle at the tomb of some miracle-working saint; with this difference, however—that the latter was deposited for the glory and praise of the saint, and the former of the sinnerhimself. Who could say, after that, that he had not seen it!
I happened, when there, to make some irreverent remarks about that tomb. I had walked out to see it on a hot afternoon, and I found it inconveniently far. One is accustomed to have these places “grouped,” and I was displeased withJulietfor not being buried nearer home—it was an oversight—but perhaps it had been arranged for the benefit of the carriage-drivers.Julietwas public-spirited, and thought of all classes, and their interests. I did not think of all these extenuating circumstances then, however, and so I said unbelieving things about her tomb.
Thecustodewas deeply pained, as an orthodoxcustodeought to be. He remonstrated with me first, and then he pointed to the wall. “Ecco, Signor! è scritto, è scritto è verissimo!”
“ecco, signor!”
And there indeed it was written, in good set terms, and in two or three languages, for the benefit of all non-literary or unbelieving pilgrims.
I have often thought since how many people there are, like my friend thecustode, to whom the magic “it is written” is sufficient ground for their faith, without further consideration as towhenandhow.
Some time ago a friend of mine encountered a portly Western American tourist at Kenilworth. He came in a hurry, and asked to be shown the part “wrote up” by Scott. He gazed for a few minutes, and then departed as quickly as he came. To him Kenilworth was merely a place “wrote up” by Scott, and no doubt he had Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon to see that same afternoon, before going on to Liverpool.
There are pilgrims who certainly carry a feeling of duty into all things. Wherever they go they mean work!
This quality pre-eminently distinguishes the English-speaking world, and it always fills our Continental, or Oriental, neighbours with lazy wonder. “Oh, these Englishwomen! they have legs and stomachs of bronze!” I once heard an Italian say.
We are inclined to overdo it. I think an occasional rest-day is as necessary to the tired brain as the photographer’s dark room is to the development of the negative impression—without it the brain would, indeed, record a “negative impression.”
But I am straying fromJuliet’stomb, and the subject of unlimited faith. Only make a thing possible, and,if there is an undercurrent of desire to believe it, the large majority will swallow almost anything with what theologians call “simple faith.” The “if” is an important one—the key to the situation. We believe readily when it is agreeable to do so, and all pilgrims have ever sought to heighten the attractions of the objects of their interest. It adds to their own enjoyment of them, and, after all, is it not areflex compliment to ourselves? If “there is butonesuch pig in the world,” have notIseen it?
“lured men to destruction.”
Have you ever noticed the effect of the expression, “They say?” If we say “Tom,” or “Dick,” or “Harry,” says “so and so,” “Tom” is no better authority than “Dick,” nor are both together much better than “Harry.” But if we say, indefinitely, “Theysay” “so and so,” there is a mysterious potency in the unknown quantity which leads, if not to universal belief, at least to universal transmission.
“Yes, it is an interesting spot. They say that a princess is buried here who was laid under a potent spell by a mighty wizard, long, long ago,” etc.; or “They tell of a beauteous maiden who sat on this rock, in the far past, and sang, and thus lured men to destruction,” etc.
He or she is always swallowed up by the mists of obscurity—oh, ye mists of obscurity, ye have much to answer for!
We do not care to dispute with “They” his superior information—even if we could find him; for he seems to reside permanently in the aforesaid mists himself; only issuing forth, like a valiant knight, to rescue the fair maidens—Fact, or Fiction—from the jaws of the dragon Oblivion! What heis, we leave to the learned, who could no doubt dispose of him suitably in connection with the highly convenient solar myths, as a Potent Rescuing Power! As for us, we meddle not with the mists: we rather like the delicious glow of their luminous dimness, which glorifies the past if it clouds it; and which softens off the hardness of our prosaic modern life, as a summer haze our English landscape.
We are delighted to get hold of an ancient legend,whether of headless horseman or housekeeper, pixie or wizard. Even in that “happy hunting ground” of the Modern Spirit, the United States of America, the old legends linger still, if but faintly. The soil of a new country does not grow sentiment of this sort readily, but the plant is indigenous to the human heart; and its fair flowers have been gathered and wreathed around their pages by many an essayist and poet. We cannot do without the element of mystery in our life, however we may represent it. It is part of the spirit within us, and we find it in everything around us. It is the veil of “Isis” which science, her worshipper, is ever trying to lift, but cannot. The muse of Inspiration pours forth her melodious voice, like the nightingale, in the darkness and the shady covert. We listen to her song with entranced ears; a few whose spirits are “finely touched,” try to repeat it; but who has ever seen her; the soul that animates, the spirit that inspires! Our life itself is a mystery—the Past and Future—are they not the wings of the Spirit of Time which are brooding over our Present? When they are lifted—when the mighty pinions are outspread for flight—thenthe shadows will flee for ever, for the great Daybreak of Eternity will have begun!
science lifting the veil of isis.
Without the spirit of mystery, the mother of enquiry—of romance, the days of pilgrimage would be ended. If it is a mere matter of rest, and of oiling the wheels of the machine for a fresh grind, Mudport-on-Sea will do well enough; but Mudport-on-Sea can never satisfy the hunger of the curious soul for the beautiful; the marvellous; all that is in itself lovely, or that has lived in the past, and caught a brighterglow from its rainbow reflections. One spot of ground may content the naturalist, or the Buddhist sage, for one can find a world of wondrous thought in the smallest leaf—a microcosm in a dew-drop; and the other can send his soul off on aerial pilgrimages, though his body may be in chains! But we are not all either natural or transcendental philosophers; our appetite requires not one leaf, but many, for our powers of assimilation are not great enough to draw spiritual sustenance from one alone; and so, like the caterpillar, when we have finished our leaf, we crawl to another.
“But this spirit of curiosity, or unrest, is all owing to lack of self-culture,” cry some. Perhaps it is—some of it. No doubt the cocoon stage of rest and self-development is higher, and nearer to the ultimate perfection—the winged creature which soars above where others crawl—but until we are fit to be cocoons, and evolve butterflies, we must be content with our caterpillar instincts.
People speak scornfully of “mere curiosity,” but it is only worthless when it bears no fruit. Curiosity, in itself, is a healthy, natural instinct, which we see to perfection in the small child. Toddie’s speech in “Helen’s Babies,” “Want to shee wheels go wound,” is the pilgrim spirit epitomised. We hear of the watch, and we want to see it; we see it, and then we want to hold it; we hear it tick, and we want to open it; and then we would like to “shee wheels go wound” constantly, and if we cannot, we kick at the prohibition!
Curiosity may be a worthless element in life when idle, but when otherwise, is it not the mainspring of the watch? Think of the manifold results of “mere curiosity,” when rightly persevered in! But then we change the name—it becomes insight—research—it becomes a power which can climb the dizziest height, and dive the deepest depths, to bring to us their treasures—the star—the pearl!
By S. Gordon.
Illustrations by A. H. Fisher.
Night it was—nay, nearer morning,Snores and nightmares whisked about,And the pallid moon gave warningThat her lamp was nearly out.Twain we sat, and ruminatedOn the world, its joys and ills,What we loved, and what we hated,Woman, wine—exams and bills.Often, too, with short-lived splendour,Flashed the ready epigram,Thoughts we uttered, soft and tender,Ending in a smothered “——”;All the truths and lies of agesCompassed we in one short breath,Flouted whims of priests and sages,Lightly toyed with life and death.Men and manners, saints and sinners,All and more we touched upon,How the worst were ever winners,Forweyet had never won;And we cursed at superstition,Villain smiles, and sects, and cants,Hurled to ruin and perditionAll the tribe of sycophants—Queried, thinking of cold faces,Colder hearts of living stone,Why our lot within such places,Why upon such days was thrown;In our years’ maturing crescentSpied we how our fate was fraught,Spanned the future and the presentWith the flimsy bridge of thought.So the morn came, pale and haggard,Lighting up our sunken eyes,And we rose and thither staggeredWhence we would but slowly rise;Plain our footsteps, weak and frisky,Told their moral—speak who can—Midnight words and midnight whiskeyPlay the devil with a man!
Night it was—nay, nearer morning,Snores and nightmares whisked about,And the pallid moon gave warningThat her lamp was nearly out.Twain we sat, and ruminatedOn the world, its joys and ills,What we loved, and what we hated,Woman, wine—exams and bills.
Often, too, with short-lived splendour,Flashed the ready epigram,Thoughts we uttered, soft and tender,Ending in a smothered “——”;All the truths and lies of agesCompassed we in one short breath,Flouted whims of priests and sages,Lightly toyed with life and death.
Men and manners, saints and sinners,All and more we touched upon,How the worst were ever winners,Forweyet had never won;And we cursed at superstition,Villain smiles, and sects, and cants,Hurled to ruin and perditionAll the tribe of sycophants—
Queried, thinking of cold faces,Colder hearts of living stone,Why our lot within such places,Why upon such days was thrown;In our years’ maturing crescentSpied we how our fate was fraught,Spanned the future and the presentWith the flimsy bridge of thought.
So the morn came, pale and haggard,Lighting up our sunken eyes,And we rose and thither staggeredWhence we would but slowly rise;Plain our footsteps, weak and frisky,Told their moral—speak who can—Midnight words and midnight whiskeyPlay the devil with a man!
(from a photograph bymessrs. elliott and fry.)
By F. W. Robinson.
Illustrations by Geo. Hutchinson.
It is a far cry back to 1853, when dreams of writing a book had almost reached the boundary line of “probable events.” I was then a pale, long-haired, consumptive-looking youth, who had been successful in prize poems—for there were prize competitions even in those far-off days—and in acrostics, and in the acceptance of one or two short stories, which had been actually published in a magazine that did not pay for contributions (it was edited by a clergyman of the Church of England, too, and the chaplain to a real Duke), and which magazine has gone the way of many magazines, and is now as extinct as the Dodo. It was in the year 1853, or a month or two earlier, that I wrote my first novel—which, upon a moderate computation, I think, would make four or five good-sized library volumes, but I have never attempted to “scale” the manuscript. It is in my possession still, although I have not seen it for many weary years. It is buried with a heapmore rubbish in a respectable old oak chest, the key of which is even lost to me. And yet that MS. was the turning-point of my small literary career. And it is the history of that manuscript which leads up to the publication of my first novel; my first step, though I did not know it, and hence it is part and parcel of the history of my first book—a link in the chain.at twenty.
It is a far cry back to 1853, when dreams of writing a book had almost reached the boundary line of “probable events.” I was then a pale, long-haired, consumptive-looking youth, who had been successful in prize poems—for there were prize competitions even in those far-off days—and in acrostics, and in the acceptance of one or two short stories, which had been actually published in a magazine that did not pay for contributions (it was edited by a clergyman of the Church of England, too, and the chaplain to a real Duke), and which magazine has gone the way of many magazines, and is now as extinct as the Dodo. It was in the year 1853, or a month or two earlier, that I wrote my first novel—which, upon a moderate computation, I think, would make four or five good-sized library volumes, but I have never attempted to “scale” the manuscript. It is in my possession still, although I have not seen it for many weary years. It is buried with a heapmore rubbish in a respectable old oak chest, the key of which is even lost to me. And yet that MS. was the turning-point of my small literary career. And it is the history of that manuscript which leads up to the publication of my first novel; my first step, though I did not know it, and hence it is part and parcel of the history of my first book—a link in the chain.
at twenty.
elmore house.
When that manuscript was completed, it was read aloud, night after night, to an admiring audience of family members, and pronounced as fit for publication as anything of Dickens or Thackeray or Bulwer, who were then in the full swing of their mighty capacities. Alas! I was a better judge than my partial and amiable critics. I had very grave doubts—“qualms,” I think they are called—and I had read that it was uphill work to get a book published, and swagger through the world as a real live being who had actually written a novel. There was a faint hope, that was all; and so, with my MS. under my arm, I strolled into the palatial premises of Messrs. Hurst and Blackett (“successors to Henry Colburn” they proudly designated themselves at that period), laid my heavy parcel on the counter, and waited, with fear and trembling, for someone to emerge from the galleries of books and rows of desks beyond, and enquire the nature of my business. And here ensued my first surprise—quite a dramatic coincidence—for the tall, spare, middle-aged gentleman who advanced from the shadows towards the counter, proved, to my intense astonishment, to be a constantchess antagonist of mine at Kling’s Chess Rooms, round the corner, in New Oxford Street—rooms which have disappeared long ago, along with Horwitz, Harrwitz, Loewenthal, Williams, and other great chess lights of those far-away times, who were to be seen there, night after night, prepared for all comers. Kling’s was a great chess house, and I was a chess enthusiast, as well as a youth who wanted to get into print. Failing literature, I had made up my mind to become a chess champion, if possible, although I knew already, by quiet observation of my antagonists, that in that way madness lay, sheer uncontrollable, raging madness—for me at any rate. And the grave, middle-aged gentleman behind the counter of 13, Great Marlborough Street, proved to be the cashier of the firm, and used—being chess-mad like the rest of us—to spend his evenings at “Kling’s.” He was a player of my own strength, and for twelve months or so had I skirmished with him over the chessboard, and fought innumerable battles with him. He had never spoken of his occupation, or I of my restless ambitions—chess players never go far beyond the chequered board.
at thirty.
“Hallo, Robinson!” he exclaimed, in his surprise, “you don’t mean to say that you——”
And then he stopped and regarded my youthful appearance very critically.
“Yes, Mr. Kenny—it’s a novel,” I said, modestly; “my first.”
“There’s plenty of it,” he remarked, drily. “I’ll send it upstairs at once. And I’ll wish you luck too; but,” he added, kindly, preparing to soften the shock of a future refusal, “we have plenty of these come in—about seven a day—and most of them go back to their writers again.”
“Ye-es, I suppose so,” I answered, with a sigh.
For awhile, however, I regarded the meeting as a happyaugury—a lucky coincidence. I even had the vain, hopeless notion that Mr. Kenny might put in a good word for me, ask for special consideration, out of that kindly feeling which we had for each other, and which chess antagonists have invariably for each other, I am inclined to believe. But though we met three or four times a week, from that day forth not one word concerning the fate of my manuscript escaped the lips of Mr. Kenny. It is probable the incident had passed from his memory; he had nothing to do with the novel department itself, and the delivery of MSS. was a very common everyday proceeding to him. I was too bashful, perhaps too proud, an individual to ask any questions of him; but every evening that I encountered him I used to wonder “if he had heard anything,” if any news of the book’s fate had reached him, directly or indirectly; occasionally even, as time went on, I was disposed to imagine that he was letting me win the game out of kindness—for he was a gentle, kindly soul always—in order to soften the shock of a disappointment which he knew perfectly well was on its way towards me.
mr. robinson’s library.
the garden.
Some months afterwards, the fateful letter came to me from the firm, regretting their inability to make use of the MS., and expressing many thanks for a perusal of the same—a polite, concise, all-round kind of epistle, which a publisher is compelled tokeep in stock, and to send out when rejected literature pours forth like a waterfall from the dusky caverns of a publishing house in a large way of business. It was all over, then—I had failed! From that hour I would turn chess player, and soften my brain in a quest for silver cups or champion amateur stakes. I could play chess better than I could write fiction, I was sure. Still, after some days of dead despair, I sent the MS. once more on its travels—this time to Smith and Elder’s, whose reader, Mr. Williams, had leapt into singular prominence since his favourable judgment of Charlotte Brontë’s book, and to whom most MSS. flowed spontaneously for many years afterwards. And in due course of time, Mr. Williams, acting for Messrs. Smith and Elder, asked me to call upon him—for the MS.!—at Cornhill, and there I received my first advice, my first thrill of exultation. “Presently, and probably,and with perseverance,” he said, “you will succeed in literature, and if you will remember now, that to write a good novel is a very considerable achievement. Years of short story-writing is the best apprenticeship for you. Write and re-write, and spare no pains.” I thanked him, and I went home with tears in my eyes of gratitude and consolation, though my big story had been declined with thanks. But I did not write again. I put away my MS., and went on for six or eight hours a day at chess for many idle months before I was in the vein for composition, and then, with a sudden dash, I began “The House of Elmore.” It was half finished when another strange incident in its little way occurred. I received one morning a letter from Lascelles Wraxall (afterwards Sir Lascelles Wraxall, Bart., as the reader may be probably aware), informing me that he was one of the readers for Messrs. Hurst and Blackett, and that it had been his duty some time ago to decide unfavourably against a story which I had submitted to the notice of his firm, but that he had intended to write to me a private note urging me to adopt literature as a profession. Hisprincipal object in writing at that time was to suggest my trying the fortunes of the novel which he had already read with Messrs. Routledge, and he kindly added a letter of introduction to that firm in the Broadway—an introduction which, by the way, never came to anything.
the drawing-room.
Poor Lascelles Wraxall, clever writer and editor, pressman and literary adviser, real Bohemian and true friend—indeed, everybody’s friend but his own—I never think of him but with feelings of deep gratitude. He was a rolling stone, and when I met him for the first time in my life, years afterwards, he had left Marlborough Street for the Crimea; he had been given a commission in the Turkish Contingent at Kertch; he had come back anathematising the service, and “chock full” of grievances against the Government, and he became once more editor and sub-editor, and publisher’s hack even at last, until he stepped into his baronetcy—an empty title, for he had sold the reversion of the estates for a mere song long ago—and became special correspondent in Austria for theDaily Telegraph. And in Vienna he died, young in years still—not forty, I think—closing a life that onlywanted one turn more of “application,” I have often thought, to have achieved very great distinction. There are still a few writing men about who remember Lascelles Wraxall, but they are “the boys of the old brigade.”
It was to Lascelles Wraxall I sent, when finished, “The House of Elmore,” the reader may very easily guess. Wraxall had stepped so much out of his groove—for the busy literary man that he was—to take me by the hand, and point the way along “the perilous road”; he had given me so many kind words, that I wrote my hardest to complete my new story before I should fade wholly from his recollection. The book was finished in five weeks, and in hot haste, and for months again I was left wondering what the outcome of it all was to be—whether Wraxall was reading my story, or whether—oh, horror!—some other reader less kindly disposed, and more austere and critical, and hard to please, had been told off to sit in judgment upon my second MS.
at forty.
I went back to chess for a distraction till the fate of that book was pronounced or sealed—it was always chess in the hours of my distress and anxiety—and I once again faced Charles Kenny, and once again wondered if he knew, and how much he knew, whilst he was deep in his king’s gambit or his giuoco-piano; but he was not even aware that I had sent in a second story, I learned afterwards. And then at last came the judgment—the pleasant, if formal, notice from Marlborough Street that the novel had been favourably reported upon by the reader, and that Messrs. Hurst and Blackett would be pleased to see me at Marlborough Street to talk the matter of its publication over with me. Ah! what a letter that was!—what a surprise, after all!—what a good omen!
And some three months afterwards, at the end of the year 1854, my first book—but my second novel—was launched into the reading world, and I have hardly got over the feeling yet that I had actually a right to dub myself a novelist!
mr. robinson at work.
When the first three notices of the book appeared, wild dreams of a brilliant future beset me. They were all favourable notices—too favourable; butJohn Bull,The Press, andBell’s Messenger(I think they were the papers) scattered favourable notices indiscriminately at that time. Presently theAthenæumsobered me a little, but wound up with a kindly pat on the back, and theSaturday Review, then in its seventh number, drenched me with vitriolic acid, and brought me to a lower level altogether; and finally theMorning Heraldblew a loud blast to my praise and glory—that last notice, I believe, having been written by my old friend Sir Edward Clarke, then a very young reviewer on theHeraldstaff, with no dreams of becoming Her Majesty’s Solicitor-General just then! And the “House of Elmore” actually paid its publishers’ expenses, and left a balance, and brought me in a little cheque, and thus my writing life began in sober earnest.
XI.
HOSKINS’S PETS.
By W. L. Alden.Illustrations by R. Jack.
“heave flowers into his cell.”
“Yes!” said the Colonel, reflectively, "I’ve been almost everywhere in my time except in gaol, and I’ve been in a great deal worse places than a first-class American gaol with all the modern improvements. The fact is, that philanthropic people have gone so far in improving the condition of prisoners, that most of our prisons are rather better than most of our hotels. At any rate, they are less expensive, and the guests are treated with more respect.
“I never could understand the craze that some people have for prisoners. For instance, in New York and Chicago, the young ladies have a society for giving flowers to murderers. Whenever a man is convicted of murder and sentenced to be hung, the girls begin to heave flowers into his cell till he can’t turn round without upsetting a vase of roses, or a big basin full of pansies, and getting his feet wet. I once knew a murderer who told me that if anything could reconcile him to being hung it would be getting rid of the floral tributes that the girls lavished on him. You see he was one of the leading murderers in that section of country, and consequently he received about a cartload of flowers every day.
“I had a neighbour when I lived in New Berlinopolisville who was the President of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of Prisoners, and he was the craziest man on the subject that I ever met. His name was Hoskins—Colonel Uriah Hoskins—and he was the author of the Hoskins Bill that attracted so much attention when it was before the Legislature, though it never became a law. The bill provided that every prisoner should have a sitting room as well as a sleeping room, and that it should be furnished with a piano, a banjo, a library, a typewriter, a wine cooler, and a whist table; that the prisoner should be permitted to hold two weekly receptions, to which everybody should be allowed to come, and that he should be taught any branch of study that he might care to take up, books and masters being, of course, supplied free. Colonel Hoskins used to insist that the only thing that made a man go wrong was the lack of kindness, and that the sure way to reform a criminal was to treat him with so much kindness that he would grow ashamed of being wicked, and would fall on everybody’s neck and devote the rest of his life to weeping tears of repentance and singing hymns of joy.
“drew up a beautiful notice.”
“While Colonel Hoskins was fond of all styles of criminals, burglars were his particular pets. According to him, a burglar was more deserving of kindness than any other man. ‘How would you like it,’ he used to say, ‘if you had to earn your living by breaking into houses in the middle of the night, instead of sleeping peacefully in your bed? Do you think you would be full of good thoughts after you had been bitten by the watch-dog and fired at by the man of the house, and earned nothing by your labour except a bad cold and the prospect of hydrophobia? There is nothing more brutal than the way in which society treats the burglar, and so long as society refuses to put him in the way of earning an easier and less dangerous living, he cannot be blamed if he continues to practise his midnight profession.’
“I must say this for Colonel Hoskins. He did not confine himself to talk, like many other philanthropists, but he was already trying to carry out his principles. He really meant whathe said about burglars, and there isn’t the least doubt that he had more sympathy for them than he had for the honest men of his acquaintance. When people asked him what he would do if he woke up in the night and found a burglar in his house, and whether or not he would shoot at him, he said that he would as soon think of shooting at his own wife, and that he would undertake to reform that burglar then and there by kindness alone. Once somebody said to Hoskins that he ought really to let the burglars know his feelings towards them, and Hoskins said that he would do it without delay.
“That same day he drew up a beautiful ‘Notice to Burglars,’ and had it printed in big letters and framed and hung up in the dining-room of his house. It read in this way: ‘Burglars are respectfully informed that the silver-ware is all plated, and that the proprietor of this house never keeps ready money on hand. Cake and wine will be found in the dining-room closet, and burglars are cordially invited to rest and refresh themselves. Please wipe your feet on the mat, and close the window when leaving the house.’
“Colonel Hoskins took a good deal of pride in that notice. He showed it to everyone who called at the house, and said that if other people would follow his example, and treat burglars like Christians and gentlemen, there would soon be an end of burglary, for the burglars would be so touched by the kindness of their treatment that they would abandon the business and become honoured members of society—insurance presidents, or bank cashiers, or church treasurers. He didn’t say how the reformed burglars were to find employment in banks and insurance offices, and such, but that was a matter of detail, and he always preferred to devise large and noble schemes, and leave the working details of them to other men.
“One morning, Colonel Hoskins, who was an early riser, went down to the dining-room before breakfast, and was surprised to find that he had had a midnight visit from burglars. Two empty wine bottles stood on the table, and all the cake was eaten, which showed that the burglars had accepted the invitation to refresh themselves. But they did not seem to have accepted it in quite the right spirit. All Hoskins’s spoons and forks lay in a heap in the middle of the floor, and every one was twisted or broken so as to be good for nothing. The window had been left open, and the rain had ruined the curtains, and on a dirty piece of paper the burglars had scrawled with a lead pencil the opinion that ‘Old Hoskins is thebiggest fule, and the gol-darndest skinflint in the country. You set out whiskey next time, or we’ll serve you out.’
“Hoskins was not in the least cast down by the rudeness of the burglars. ‘Poor fellows,’ he said, ‘they have been so used to bad treatment that they don’t altogether appreciate kindness at first. But they will learn.’ So he laid in some new spoons and forks, and added a bottle of whiskey to the wine that he kept in the closet for the burglars, and was as confident as ever that the next gang that might break into his house would be melted into tears and repentance, and would call him their best and dearest friend.