aliment and dew; so these buds become blossoms, fruits, tall branches and stately trees that cast refreshing shadows.
There are men who are to other men as the shadow of a mighty rock in a weary land–such is Walt Whitman.
VICTOR HUGO
Man is neither master of his life nor of his fate. He can but offer to his fellowmen his efforts to diminish human suffering; he can but offer to God his indomitable faith in the growth of liberty.
–_Victor Hugo_
[Illustration: VICTOR HUGO]
The father of Victor Hugo was a general in the army of Napoleon, his mother a woman of rare grace and brave good sense. Victor was the third of three sons. Six weeks before the birth of her youngest boy, the mother wrote to a very dear friend of her husband, this letter:
“To General Victor Lahorie,
“Citizen-General:
“Soon to become the mother of a third child, it would be very agreeable to me if you would act as its godfather. Its name shall be yours–one which you have not belied and one which you have so well honored: Victor or Victorine. Your consent will be a testimonial of your friendship for us.
“Please accept, Citizen-General, the assurance of our sincere attachment.
“Femme Hugo.”
Victorine was expected, Victor came. General Lahorie acted as sponsor for the infant.
A soldier’s family lives here or there, everywhere or anywhere. In Eighteen Hundred Eight, General Hugo was with Joseph Bonaparte in Spain. Victor was then six years old. His mother had taken as a residence a quaint house in the Impasse of the Feullantines, Paris.
It was one of those peculiar old places occasionally seen in France. The environs of London have a few; America none of which I know. This house, roomy, comfortable and antiquated, was surrounded with trees and a tangle of shrubbery, vines and flowers; above it all was a high stone wall, and in front a picket iron gate. It was a mosaic–a sample of the Sixteenth Century inlaid in this; solitary as the woods; quiet as a convent; sacred as a forest; a place for dreams, and reverie, and rest. At the back of the house was a dilapidated little chapel. Here an aged priest counted his beads, said daily mass, and endeavored to keep moth, rust and ruin from the house of prayer. This priest was a scholar, a man of learning: he taught the children of Madame Hugo.
Another man lived in this chapel. He never went outside the gate and used to take exercise at night. He had a cot-bed in the shelter of the altar; beneath his pillow were a pair of pistols and a copy of Tacitus. This man lived there Summer and Winter, although there was no warmth save the scanty sunshine that stole in through the shattered windows. He, too, taught the children and gave them little lectures on history. He loved the youngest boy and would carry him on his shoulder and tell him stories of deeds of valor.
One day a file of soldiers came. They took this man and manacled him. The mother sought to keep her children inside the house so that they should not witness the scene, but she did not succeed. The boys fought their mother and the servants in a mad frenzy trying to rescue the old man. The soldiers formed in columns of four and marched their prisoner away.
Not long after, Madame Hugo was passing the church of Saint Jacques du Haut Pas: her youngest boy’s hand was in hers. She saw a large placard posted in front of the church. She paused and pointing to it said, “Victor, read that!” The boy read. It was a notice that General Lahorie had been shot that day on the plains of Grenville by order of a court martial.
General Lahorie was a gentleman of Brittany. He was a Republican, and five years before had grievously offended the Emperor. A charge of conspiracy being proved against him, a price was placed upon his head, and he found a temporary refuge with the mother of his godson.
That tragic incident of the arrest, and the placard announcing General Lahorie’s death, burned deep into the soul of the manling, and who shall say to what extent it colored his future life?
When Napoleon met his downfall, it was also a Waterloo for General Hugo. His property was confiscated, and penury took the place of plenty.
When Victor was nineteen, his mother having died, the family life was broken up. In “Les Miserables” the early struggles of Marius are described; and this, the author has told us, may be considered autobiography. He has related how the young man lived in a garret; how he would sweep this barren room; how he would buy a pennyworth of cheese, waiting until dusk to get a loaf of bread, and slink home as furtively as if he had stolen it; how carrying his book under his arm he would enter the butcher’s shop, and after being elbowed by jeering servants till he felt the cold sweat standing out on his forehead, he would take off his hat to the astonished butcher and ask for a single mutton-chop. This he would carry to his garret, and cooking it himself it would be made to last for three days.
In this way he managed to live on less than two hundred dollars a year, derived from the proceeds of poems, pamphlets and essays. At this time he was already an “Academy Laureate,” having received honorable mention for a poem submitted in a competition.
In his twentieth year, fortune came to him in triple form: he brought out a book of poems that netted him seven hundred francs; soon after the publication of this book, Louis the Eighteenth, who knew the value of having friends who were ready writers, bestowed on him a pension of one thousand francs a year; then these two pieces of good fortune made possible a third–his marriage.
Early marriages are like late ones: they may be wise and they may not. Victor Hugo’s marriage with Adele Foucher was a most happy event.
A man with a mind as independent as Victor Hugo’s is sure to make enemies. The “Classics” were positive that he was defiling the well of Classic French, and they sought to write him down. But by writing a man up you can not write him down; the only thing that can smother a literary aspirant is silence.
Victor Hugo coined the word when he could not find it, transposed phrases, inverted sentences, and never called a spade an agricultural implement. Not content with this, he put the spade on exhibition and this often at unnecessary times, and occasionally prefaced the word with an adjective. Had he been let alone he would not have done this.
The censors told him he must not use the name of Deity, nor should he refer so often to kings. At once, he doubled his Topseys and put on his stage three Uncle Toms when one might have answered. Like Shakespeare, he used idioms and slang with profusion–anything to express the idea. Will this convey the thought? If so, it was written down, and, once written, Beelzebub and all his hosts could not make him change it. But in the interest of truth let me note one exception:
“I do not like that word,” said Mademoiselle Mars to Victor Hugo at a rehearsal of “Hernani”; “can I not change it?”
“I wrote it so and it must stand,” was the answer.
Mademoiselle Mars used another expression instead of the author’s, and he promptly asked her to resign her part. She wept, and upon agreeing to adhere to the text was reinstated in favor.
Rehearsal after rehearsal occurred, and the words were repeated as written. The night of the performance came. Superb was the stage-setting, splendid the audience. The play went forward amid loud applause. The scene was reached where came the objectionable word. Did Mademoiselle Mars use it? Of course not; she used the word she chose–she was a woman. Fifty-three times she played the part, and not once did she use the author’s pet phrase; and he was wise enough not to note the fact. The moral of this is that not even a strong man can cope with a small woman who weeps at the right time.
The censorship forbade the placing of “Marion Delorme” on the stage until a certain historical episode in it had been changed. Would the author be so kind as to change it? Not he.
“Then it shall not be played,” said M. de Martignac.
The author hastened to interview the minister in person. He got a North Pole reception. In fact, M. de Martignac said that it was his busy day, and that playwriting was foolish business anyway; but if a man were bound to write, he should write to amuse, not to instruct. And young Hugo was bowed out.
When he found himself well outside the door he was furious. He would see the King himself. And he did see the King. His Majesty was gracious and very patient. He listened to the young author’s plea, talked book-lore, recited poetry, showed that he knew Hugo’s verses, asked after the author’s wife, then the baby, and–said that the play could not go on. Hugo turned to go. Charles the Tenth called him back, and said that he was glad the author had called–in fact, he was about to send for him. His pension thereafter should be six thousand francs a year.
Victor Hugo declined to receive it. Of course, the papers were full of the subject. All cafedom took sides: Paris had a topic for gesticulation, and Paris improved the opportunity.
Conservatism having stopped this play, there was only one thing to do: write another; for a play of Victor Hugo’s must be put upon the stage. All his friends said so; his honor was at stake.
In three weeks another play was ready. The censors read it and gave their report. They said that “Hernani” was whimsical in conception, defective in execution, a tissue of extravagances, generally trivial and often coarse. But they advised that it be put upon the stage, just to show the public to what extent of folly an author could go. In order to preserve the dignity of their office, they drew up a list of six places where the text should be changed.
Both sides were afraid, so each was willing to give in a point. The text was changed, and the important day for the presentation was drawing nigh. The Romanticists were, of course, anxious that the play should be a great success; the Classics were quite willing that it should be otherwise; in fact, they had bought up the claque and were making arrangements to hiss it down. But the author’s friends were numerous; they were young and lusty; they held meetings behind locked doors, and swore terrible oaths that the play should go.
On the day of the initial performance, five hours before the curtain rose, they were on hand, having taken the best seats in the house. They also took the worst, wherever a hisser might hide. These advocates of liberal art wore coats of green or red or blue, costumes like bullfighters, trousers and hats to match or not to match–anything to defy tradition. All during the performance there was an uproar. Theophile Gautier has described the event in most entertaining style, and in “L’Historie de Romanticisme” the record of it is found in detail.
Several American writers have touched upon this particular theme, and all who have seen fit to write of it seem to have stood under umbrellas when God rained humor. One writer calls it “the outburst of a tremendous revolution in literature.” He speaks of “smoldering flames,” “the hordes that furiously fought entrenched behind prestige, age, caste, wealth and tradition,” “suppression and extermination of heresy,” “those who sought to stop the onward march of civilization,” etc. Let us be sensible. A “cane-rush” is not a revolution, and “Bloody Monday” at Harvard is not “a decisive battle in the onward and upward march.”
If “Hernani” had been hissed down, Victor Hugo would have lived just as long and might have written better.
Civilization is not held in place by noisy youths in flaming waistcoats; and even if every cabbage had hit its mark, and every egg bespattered its target, the morning stars would still sing together.
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” was next turned out–written in five months–and was a great success. Publishers besieged the author for another story, but he preferred poetry. It was thirty years before his next novel, “Les Miserables,” appeared. But all the time he wrote–plays, verses, essays, pamphlets. Everything that he penned was widely read. Amid storms of opposition and cries of bravo, continually making friends, he moved steadily forward.
Men like Victor Hugo can be killed or they may be banished, but they can not be bought; neither can they be intimidated into silence. He resigned his pension and boldly expressed himself in his own way.
He knew history by heart and toyed with it; politics was his delight. But it is a mistake to call him a statesman. He was bold to rashness, impulsive, impatient and vehement. Because a man is great is no reason why he should be proclaimed perfect. Such men as Victor Hugo need no veneer–the truth will answer: he would explode a keg of powder to kill a fly. He was an agitator. But these zealous souls are needed–not to govern or to be blindly followed, but rather to make other men think for themselves. Yet to do this in a monarchy is not safe.
The years passed, and the time came for either Hugo or Royalty to go; France was not large enough for both. It proved to be Hugo; a bounty of twenty-five thousand francs was offered for his body, dead or alive. Through a woman’s devotion he escaped to Brussels. He was driven from there to Jersey, then to Guernsey.
It was nineteen years before he returned to Paris–years of banishment, but years of glory. Exiled by Fate that he might do his work!
* * * * *
Each day a steamer starts from Southampton for Guernsey, Alderney and Jersey. These are names known to countless farmers’ boys the wide world over.
You can not mistake the Channel Island boats–they smell like a county fair, and though you be blind and deaf it is impossible to board the wrong craft. Every time one of these staunch little steamers lands in England, crates containing mild-eyed, lusty calves are slid down the gangplank, marked for Maine, Iowa, California, or some uttermost part of the earth. There his vealship (worth his weight in gold) is going to found a kingdom.
I stood on the dock watching the bovine passengers disembark, and furtively listened the while to an animated argument between two rather rough-looking, red-faced men, clothed in corduroys and carrying long, stout staffs. Mixed up in their conversation I caught the names of royalty, then of celebrities great, and artists famous–warriors, orators, philanthropists and musicians. Could it be possible that these rustics were poets? It must be so. And there came to me thoughts of Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Joaquin Miller, and all that sublime company of singers in shirt-sleeves.
Suddenly the wind veered and the veil fell; all the sacred names so freely bandied about were those of “families” with mighty milk-records.
When we went on board and the good ship was slipping down The Solent, I made the acquaintance of these men and was regaled with more cow-talk than I had heard since I left Texas.
We saw the island of Portsea, where Dickens was born, and got a glimpse of the spires of Portsmouth as we passed; then came the Isle of Wight and the quaint town of Cowes. I made a bright joke on the latter place as it was pointed out to me by my Jersey friend, but it went for naught.
A pleasant sail of eight hours and the towering cliffs of Guernsey came in sight. Foam-dashed and spray-covered they rise right out of the sea at the south, to the height of two hundred seventy feet. About them great flocks of sea-fowl hover, swirl and soar. Wild, rugged and romantic is the scene.
The Isle of Guernsey is nine miles long and six wide. Its principal town is Saint Peter Port, a place of about sixteen thousand inhabitants, where a full dozen hotel porters meet the incoming steamer and struggle for your baggage.
Hotels and boarding-houses here are numerous and good. Guernsey is a favorite resort for invalids and those who desire to flee the busy world for a space. In fact, the author of “Les Miserables” has made exile popular.
Emerging from my hotel at Saint Peter Port I was accosted by a small edition of Gavroche, all in tatters, who proposed showing me the way to Hauteville House for a penny. I already knew the route, but accepted the offer on Gavroche’s promise to reveal to me a secret about the place. The secret is this: The house is haunted, and when the wind is east, and the setting moon shows only a narrow rim above the rocks, ghosts come and dance a solemn minuet on the glass roof above the study.
Had Gavroche ever seen them? No, but he knew a boy who had. Years and years–ever so many years ago–long before there were any steamboats, and when only a schooner came to Guernsey once a week, a woman was murdered in Hauteville House. Her ghost came back with other ghosts and drove the folks away. So the big house remained vacant–save for the spooks, who paid no rent.
Then after a great, long time Victor Hugo came and lived in the house. The ghosts did not bother him. Faith! they had been keeping the place just a’ purpose for him. He rented the house first, and liked it so well that he bought it–got it at half-price on account of the ghosts. Here, every Christmas, Victor Hugo gave a big dinner in the great oak hall to all the children in Guernsey: hundreds of them–all the way from babies that could barely creep, to “boys” with whiskers. They were all fed on turkey, tarts, apples, oranges and figs; and when they went away, each was given a bag of candy to take home.
Climbing a narrow, crooked street we came to the great, dark, gloomy edifice situated at the top of a cliff. The house was painted black by some strange whim of a former occupant.
“We will leave it so,” said Victor Hugo; “liberty is dead, and we are in mourning for her.”
But the gloom of Hauteville House is only on the outside. Within all is warm and homelike. The furnishings are almost as the poet left them, and the marks of his individuality are on every side.
In the outer hall stands an elegant column of carved oak, its panels showing scenes from “The Hunchback.” In the dining-room there is fantastic wainscoting with plaques and porcelain tiles inlaid here and there. Many of these ornaments were presents, sent by unknown admirers in all parts of the world.
In “Les Miserables” there is a chance line revealing the author’s love for the beautiful as shown in the grain of woods. The result was an influx of polished panels, slabs, chips, hewings, carvings, and in one instance a log sent “collect.” Samples of redwood, ebony, calamander, hamamelis, suradanni, tamarind, satinwood, mahogany, walnut, maples of many kinds and oaks without limit–all are there. A mammoth ax-helve I noticed on the wall was labeled, “Shagbark-hickory from Missouri.”
These specimens of wood were sometimes made up into hatracks, chairs, canes, or panels for doors, and are seen in odd corners of these rambling rooms. Charles Hugo once facetiously wrote to a friend: “We have bought no kindling for three years.” At another time he writes:
“Father still is sure he can sketch and positive he can carve. He has several jackknives, and whittles names, dates and emblems on sticks and furniture–we tremble for the piano.”
In the dining-room, I noticed a huge oaken chair fastened to the wall with a chain. On the mantel was a statuette of the Virgin; on the pedestal Victor Hugo had engraved lines speaking of her as “Freedom’s Goddess.” This dining-room affords a sunny view out into the garden; on this floor are also a reception-room, library and a smoking-room.
On the next floor are various sleeping-apartments, and two cozy parlors, known respectively as the red room and the blue. Both are rich in curious draperies, a little more pronounced in color than some folks admire.
The next floor contains the “Oak Gallery”: a ballroom we should call it. Five large windows furnish a flood of light. In the center of this fine room is an enormous candelabrum with many branches, at the top a statue of wood, the whole carved by Victor Hugo’s own hands.
The Oak Gallery is a regular museum of curiosities of every sort–books, paintings, carvings, busts, firearms, musical instruments. A long glass case contains a large number of autograph-letters from the world’s celebrities, written to Hugo in exile.
At the top of the house and built on its flat roof is the most interesting apartment of Hauteville House–the study and workroom of Victor Hugo. Three of its sides and the roof are of glass. The floor, too, is one immense slab of sea-green glass. Sliding curtains worked by pulleys cut off the light as desired. “More light, more light,” said the great man again and again. He gloried and reveled in the sunshine.
Here, in the Winter, with no warmth but the sun’s rays, his eyes shaded by his felt hat, he wrote, always standing at a shelf fixed in the wall. On this shelf were written all “The Toilers,” “The Man Who Laughs,” “Shakespeare” and much of “Les Miserables.” The leaves of manuscript were numbered and fell on the floor, to remain perhaps for days before being gathered up.
When Victor Hugo went to Guernsey he went to liberty, not to banishment. He arrived at Hauteville House poor in purse and broken in health. Here the fire of his youth came back, and his pen retrieved the fortune that royalty had confiscated. The forenoons were given to earnest work. The daughter composed music; the sons translated Shakespeare and acted as their father’s faithful helpers; Madame Hugo collected the notes of her husband’s life and cheerfully looked after her household affairs.
Several hours of each afternoon were given to romp and play; the evenings were sacred to music, reading and conversation.
Horace Greeley was once a prisoner in Paris. From his cell he wrote, “The Saint Peter who holds the keys of this place has kindly locked the world out; and for once, thank Heaven, I am free from intrusion.”
Lovers of truth must thank exile for some of our richest and ripest literature. Exile is not all exile. Imagination can not be imprisoned. Amid the winding bastions of the brain, thought roams free and untrammeled.
Liberty is only a comparative term, and Victor Hugo at Guernsey enjoyed a thousand times more freedom than ever ruling monarch knew.
Standing at the shelf-desk where this “Gentleman of France” stood for so many happy hours, I inscribed my name in the “visitors’ book.”
I thanked the good woman who had shown me the place, and told me so much of interest–thanked her in words that seemed but a feeble echo of all that my heart would say.
I went down the stairs–out at the great carved doorway–and descended the well-worn steps.
Perched on a crag waiting for me was little Gavroche, his rags fluttering in the breeze. He offered to show me the great stone chair where Gilliatt sat when the tide came up and carried him away. And did I want to buy a bull calf? Gavroche knew where there was a fine one that could be bought cheap. Gavroche would show me both the calf and the stone chair for threepence.
I accepted the offer, and we went down the stony street toward the sea, hand in hand.
* * * * *
On the Twenty-eighth day of June, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-four, I took my place in the long line and passed slowly through the Pantheon at Paris and viewed the body of President Carnot.
The same look of proud dignity that I had seen in life was there–calm, composed, serene. The inanimate clay was clothed in the simple black of a citizen of the Republic; the only mark of office being the red silken sash that covered the spot in the breast where the stiletto-stroke of hate had gone home.
Amid bursts of applause, surrounded by loving friends and loyal adherents, he was stricken down and passed out into the Unknown. Happy fate! to die before the fickle populace had taken up a new idol; to step in an instant beyond the reach of malice–to leave behind the self-seekers that pursue, the hungry horde that follows, the zealots who defame; to escape the dagger-thrust of calumny and receive only the glittering steel that at the same time wrote his name indelibly on the roll of honor.
Carnot, thrice happy thou! Thy name is secure on history’s page, and thy dust now resting beneath the dome of the Pantheon is bedewed with the tears of thy countrymen.
Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, died in Five Hundred Twelve. She was buried on a hilltop, the highest point in Paris, on the left bank of the Seine. Over the grave was erected a chapel which for many years was a shrine for the faithful. This chapel with its additions remained until Seventeen Hundred Fifty, when a church was designed which in beauty of style and solidity of structure has rarely been equaled. The object of the architect was to make the most enduring edifice possible, and still not sacrifice proportion.
Louis the Fifteenth laid the cornerstone of this church in Seventeen Hundred Sixty-four, and in Seventeen Hundred Ninety the edifice was dedicated by the Roman Catholics with great pomp. But the spirit of revolution was at work; and in one year after, a mob sacked this beautiful building, burned its pews, destroyed its altar, and wrought havoc with its ecclesiastical furniture.
The Convention converted the structure into a memorial temple, inscribing on its front the words, “Aux grandes Hommes la patrie reconnaisante,” and they named the building the Pantheon.
In Eighteen Hundred Six, the Catholics had gotten such influence with the government that the building was restored to them. After the revolution of Eighteen Hundred Thirty, the church of Saint Genevieve was again taken from the priests. It was held until Eighteen Hundred Fifty-one, when the Romanists in the Assembly succeeded in having it again reconsecrated. In the meantime, many of the great men of France had been buried there.
The first interment in the Pantheon was Mirabeau. Next came Marat–stabbed while in the bath by Charlotte Corday. Both bodies were removed by order of the Convention when the church was given back to Rome.
In the Pantheon, the visitor now sees the elaborate tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau. In the dim twilight he reads the glowing inscriptions, and from the tomb of Rousseau he sees the hand thrust forth bearing a torch–but the bones of these men are not here.
While robed priests chanted the litany, as the great organ pealed, and swinging censers gave off their perfume, visitors came, bringing children, and they stopped at the arches where Rousseau and Voltaire slept side by side, and they said, “It is here.” And so the dust of infidel greatness seemed to interfere with the rites. A change was made. Let Victor Hugo tell:
“One night in May, Eighteen Hundred Fourteen, about two o’clock in the morning, a cab stopped near the city gate of La Gare at an opening in a board fence. This fence surrounded a large, vacant piece of ground belonging to the city of Paris. The cab had come from the Pantheon, and the coachman had been ordered to take the most deserted streets. Three men alighted from the cab and crawled into the enclosure. Two carried a sack between them. Other men, some in cassocks, awaited them. They proceeded towards a hole dug in the middle of the field. At the bottom of the hole was quicklime. These men said nothing, they had no lanterns. The wan daybreak gave a ghastly light; the sack was opened. It was full of bones. These were the bones of Jean Jacques and of Voltaire, which had been withdrawn from the Pantheon.
“The mouth of the sack was brought close to the hole, and the bones rattled down into that black pit. The two skulls struck against each other; a spark, not likely to be seen by those standing near, was doubtless exchanged between the head that made ‘The Philosophical Dictionary’ and the head that made ‘The Social Contract,’ When that was done, when the sack was shaken, when Voltaire and Rousseau had been emptied into that hole, a digger seized a spade, threw into the opening the heap of earth, and filled up the grave. The others stamped with their feet upon the ground, so as to remove from it the appearance of having been freshly disturbed. One of the assistants took for his trouble the sack–as the hangman takes the clothing of his victim–they left the enclosure, got into the cab without saying a word, and, hastily, before the sun had risen, these men got away.”
The ashes of the man who wrote these vivid words now rest next to the empty tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau. But a step away is the grave of Sadi-Carnot.
When the visitor is conducted to the crypt of the Pantheon, he is first taken to the tomb of Victor Hugo. The sarcophagus on each side is draped with the red, white and blue of France and the stars and stripes of America. With uncovered heads, we behold the mass of flowers and wreaths, and our minds go back to Eighteen Hundred Eighty-five, when the body of the chief citizen of Paris lay in state at the Pantheon and five hundred thousand people passed by and laid the tribute of silence or of tears on his bier.
The Pantheon is now given over as a memorial to the men of France who have enriched the world with their lives. Over the portals of this beautiful temple are the words, “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.” Across its floors of rarest mosaic echo only the feet of pilgrims and those of the courteous and kindly old soldiers who have the place in charge. On the walls color revels in beautiful paintings, and in the niches and on the pedestals is marble that speaks of greatness which lives in lives made better.
The history of the Pantheon is one of strife. As late as Eighteen Hundred Seventy the Commune made it a stronghold, and the streets on every side were called upon to contribute their paving-stones for a barricade. Yet it seems meet that Victor Hugo’s dust should lie here amid the scenes he loved and knew, and where he struggled, worked, toiled, achieved; from whence he was banished, and to which he returned in triumph, to receive at last the complete approbation so long withheld.
Certainly not in the quiet of a mossy graveyard, nor in a church where priests mumble unmeaning words at fixed times, nor yet alone on the mountain-side–for he chafed at solitude–but he should have been buried at sea. In the midst of storm and driving sleet, at midnight, the sails should have been lowered, the great engines stopped, and with no requiem but the sobbing of the night-wind and the sighing of the breeze through the shrouds, and the moaning of the waves as they surged about the great, black ship, the plank should have been run out, and the body wrapped in the red, white and blue of the Republic: the sea, the infinite mother of all, beloved and sung by him, should have taken his tired form to her arms, and there he would rest.
If not this, then the Pantheon.
WM. WORDSWORTH
Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things; Of ebb and flow and ever-during power; And central peace subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation. Here you stand,
Adore and worship, when you know it not; Pious beyond the intention of your thought; Devout above the meaning of your will. –_Wordsworth_
[Illustration: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH]
Some one has told us that Heaven is not a place but a condition of mind, and it is possible that he is right.
But if Heaven is a place, surely it is not unlike Grasmere. Such loveliness of landscape–such sylvan stretches of crystal water–peace and quiet and rest!
Great, green hills lift their heads to the skies, and all the old stone walls and hedgerows are covered with trailing vines and blooming flowers. The air is rich with song of birds, sweet with perfume, and the blossoms gaily shower their petals on the passer-by. Overhead, white, billowy clouds float lazily over their background of ethereal blue. Cool June breezes fan the cheek. Distant knolls are dotted with flocks of sheep whose bells tinkle dreamily; and drowsy hum of beetle makes the bass, while lark song forms the air of the sweet symphony that Nature plays. Such was Grasmere as I first saw it.
To love the plain, homely, common, simple things of earth, of these to sing; to make the familiar beautiful and the commonplace enchanting; to cause each bush to burn with the actual presence of the living God: this is the poet’s office. And if the poet lives near Grasmere, his task does not seem difficult.
From Seventeen Hundred Ninety-nine to Eighteen Hundred Eight, Wordsworth lived at Dove Cottage. Thanks to a few earnest souls, the place is now secured to the people of England and the lovers of poetry wherever they may be. A good old woman has charge of the cottage, and for a slight fee shows you the house and garden and little orchard and objects of interest, all the while talking: and you are glad, for, although unlettered, she is reverent and honest. She was born here, and all she knows is Wordsworth and the people and the things he loved. Is not this enough?
Here Wordsworth lived before anything he wrote was published in book form: here his best work was done, and here Dorothy–splendid, sympathetic Dorothy—was inspiration, critic, friend. But who inspired Dorothy? Coleridge perhaps more than all others, and we know somewhat of their relationship as told in Dorothy’s diary. There is a little Wordsworth Library in Dove Cottage, and I sat at the window of “De Quincey’s room” and read for an hour. Says Dorothy:
“Sat until four o’clock reading dear Coleridge’s letters.”
“We paced the garden until moonrise at one o’clock–we three, brother, Coleridge and I.” “I read Spenser to him aloud and then we had a midnight tea.”
Here in this little, terraced garden, behind the stone cottage with its low ceilings and wide window-seats and little, diamond panes, she in her misery wrote:
“Oh, the pity of it all! Yet there is recompense; every sight reminds me of Coleridge, dear, dear fellow; of our walks and talks by day and night; of all the bright and witty, and sad sweet things of which we spoke and read. I was melancholy and could not talk, and at last I eased my heart by weeping.”
Alas, too often there is competition between brother and sister, then follow misunderstandings; but here the brotherly and sisterly love stands out clear and strong after these hundred years have passed, and we contemplate it with delight. Was ever woman more honestly and better praised than Dorothy?
“The blessings of my later years
Were with me when I was a boy.
She gave me eyes, she gave me ears, And humble cares and gentle fears,
A heart! the fountain of sweet tears, And love and thought and joy.
And she hath smiles to earth unknown, Smiles that with motion of their own
Do spread and sink and rise;
That come and go with endless play, And ever as they pass away
Are hidden in her eyes.”
And so in a dozen or more poems, we see Dorothy reflected. She was the steel on which he tried his flint. Everything he wrote was read to her, then she read it alone, balancing the sentences in the delicate scales of her womanly judgment. “Heart of my heart, is this well done?” When she said, “This will do,” it was no matter who said otherwise.
Back of the house on the rising hillside is the little garden. Hewn out of the solid rock is “Dorothy’s seat.” There I rested while Mrs. Dixon discoursed of poet lore, and told me of how, many times, Coleridge and Dorothy had sat in the same seat and watched the stars.
Then I drank from “the well,” which is more properly a spring; the stones that curb it were placed in their present position by the hand that wrote “The Prelude.” Above the garden is the orchard, where the green linnet still sings, for the birds never grow old.
There, too, are the circling swallows; and in a snug little alcove of the cottage you can read “The Butterfly” from a first edition; and then you can go sit in the orchard, white with blossoms, and see the butterflies that suggested the poem. And if your eye is good you can discover down by the lakeside the daffodils, and listen the while to the cuckoo call.
Then in the orchard you can see not only “the daisy,” but many of them, and, if you wish, Mrs. Dixon will let you dig a bunch of the daisies to take back to America; and if you do, I hope that yours will prosper as have mine, and that Wordsworth’s flowers, like Wordsworth’s verse, will gladden your heart when the blue sky of your life threatens to be o’ercast with gray.
Here Southey came, and “Thalaber” was read aloud in this little garden. Here, too, came Clarkson, the man with a fine feminine carelessness, as Dorothy said. Charles Lloyd sat here and discoursed with William Calvert. Sir George Beaumont forgot his title and rapped often at the quaint, hinged door. An artist was Beaumont, but his best picture they say is not equal to the lines that Wordsworth wrote about it. Sir George was not only a gentleman according to law, but one in heart, for he was a friend, kind, gentle and generous. With such a friend Wordsworth was rich indeed. But perhaps the friends we have are only our other selves, and we get what we deserve.
We must not forget the kindly face of Humphry Davy, whose gracious playfulness was ever a charm to the Wordsworths. The safety-lamp was then only an unspoken word, and perhaps few foresaw the sweetness and light that these two men would yet give to earth.
Walter Scott and his wife came to Dove Cottage in Eighteen Hundred Five. He did not bring his title, for it, like Humphry Davy’s, was as yet unpacked down in London town. They slept in the little cubby-hole of a room in the upper southwest corner. One can imagine Dorothy taking Sir Walter’s shaving-water up to him in the morning; and the savory smell of breakfast as Mistress Mary poured the tea, while England’s future laureate served the toast and eggs: Mr. Scott eating everything in sight and talking a torrent the while about art and philosophy as he passed his cup back, to the consternation of the hostess, whose frugal ways were not used to such ravages of appetite. Of course she did not know that a combined novelist and rhymster ate twice as much as a simple poet.
Afterwards Mrs. Scott tucked up her dress, putting on one of Dorothy’s aprons, and helped do the dishes.
Then Coleridge came over and they all climbed to the summit of Helm Crag. Shy little De Quincey had read some of Wordsworth’s poems, and knew from their flavor that the man who penned them was a noble soul. He came to Grasmere to call on him: he walked past Dove Cottage twice, but his heart failed him and he went away unannounced. Later, he returned and found the occupants as simple folks as himself.
Happiness was there and good society; few books, but fine culture; plain living and high thinking.
Wordsworth lived at Rydal Mount for thirty-three years, yet the sweetest flowers of his life blossomed at Dove Cottage. For difficulty, toil, struggle, obscurity, poverty, mixed with aspiration and ambition—all these were here. Success came later, but this is naught; for the achievement is more than the public acknowledgment of the deed.
After Wordsworth moved away, De Quincey rented Dove Cottage and lived in it for twenty-seven years. He acquired a library of more than five thousand volumes, making bookshelves on four sides of the little rooms from floor to ceiling. Some of these shelves still remain. Here he turned night into day and dreamed the dreams of “The Opium-Eater.”
And all these are some of the things that Mrs. Dixon told me on that bright Summer day. What if I had heard them before! no difference. Dear old lady, I salute you and at your feet I lay my gratitude for a day of rare and quiet joy.
“Farewell, thou little nook of mountain ground, Thou rocky corner in the lowest stair
Of that magnificent temple which does bound One side of our whole vale with gardens rare, Sweet garden-orchard, eminently fair,
The loveliest spot that man has ever found, Farewell! We leave thee to Heaven’s peaceful care, Thee, and the Cottage which thou dost surround.”
* * * * *
At places of pleasure and entertainment in the Far West, are often found functionaries known as “bouncers.” It is the duty of the bouncer to give hints to objectionable visitors that their presence is not desired. And inasmuch as there are many men who can never take a hint without a kick, the bouncer is a person selected on account of his peculiar fitness–psychic and otherwise–for the place. We all have special talents, and these faculties should be used in a manner that will help our fellowmen on their way.
My acquaintanceship with the bouncer has been only general, not particular. Yet I have admired him from a distance, and the skill and eclat that he sometimes shows in a professional way has often excited my admiration.
In social usages, America borrows constantly from the mother country. But like all borrowing it seems to be one-sided, for seldom, very, very seldom, in point of etiquette and manners does England borrow from us. Yet there are exceptions.
It is a beautiful highway that skirts Lake Windermere and follows up through Ambleside. We get a glimpse of the old home of Harriet Martineau, and “Fox Howe,” the home of Matthew Arnold. Just before Rydal Water is reached comes Rydal Road, running straight up the hillside, off from the turnpike. Rydal Mount is the third house up on the left-hand side, I knew the location, for I had read of it many times, and in my pocketbook I carried a picture taken from an old “Frank Leslie’s,” showing the house.
My heart beat fast as I climbed the hill. To visit the old home of one who was Poet Laureate of England is no small event in the life of a book-lover. I was full of poetry and murmured lines from “The Excursion” as I walked. Soon rare old Rydal Mount came in sight among the wealth of green. I stopped and sighed. Yes, yes, Wordsworth lived here for thirty-three years, and here he died; the spot whereon I then stood had been pressed many times by his feet. I walked slowly, with uncovered head, and approached the gate. It was locked. I fumbled at the latch; and just as there came a prospect of its opening, a loud, deep, guttural voice dashed over me like a wave:
“There–you! now, wot you want?”
The owner of this voice was not ten feet away, but he was standing up close to the wall and I had not seen him. I was somewhat startled at first. The man did not move. I stepped to one side to get a better view of my interlocutor, and saw him to be a large, red man of perhaps fifty. A handkerchief was knotted around his thick neck, and he held a heavy hoe in his hand. A genuine beefeater he was, only he ate too much beef and the ale he drank was evidently Extra XXX.
His scowl was so needlessly severe and his manner so belligerent that I–thrice armed, knowing my cause was just–could not restrain a smile. I touched my hat and said, “Ah, excuse me, Mr. Falstaff, you are the bouncer?”
“Never mind wot I am, sir–‘oo are you?”
“I am a great admirer of Wordsworth—-“
“That’s the way they all begins. Cawn’t ye hadmire ‘im on that side of the wall as well as this?”
There is no use of wasting argument with a man of this stamp; besides that, his question was to the point. But there are several ways of overcoming one’s adversary: I began feeling in my pocket for pence. My enemy ceased glaring, stepped up to the locked gate as though he half-wished to be friendly, and there was sorrow in his voice: “Don’t tempt me, sir; don’t do ut! The Missus is peekin’ out of the shutters at us now.”
“And do you never admit visitors, even to the grounds?”
“No, sir, never, God ‘elp me! and there’s many an honest bob I could turn by ut, and no one ‘urt. But I’ve lost my place twic’t by ut. They took me back though. The Guv’ner ‘ud never forgive me again. ‘It’s three times and out, Mister ‘Opkins,’ says ‘ee, only last Whitsuntide.”
“But visitors do come?”
“Yes, sir; but they never gets in. Mostly ‘mer’cans; they don’t know no better, sir. They picks all the ivy orf the outside of the wall, and you sees yourself there’s no leaves on the lower branches of that tree. Then they carries away so many pebbles from out there that I’ve to dump in a fresh weelbarrel full o’ gravel every week, sir, don’t you know.”
He thrust a pudgy, freckled hand through the bars of the gate to show that he bore me no ill-will, and also, I suppose, to mollify my disappointment. For although I had come too late to see the great poet himself and had even failed to see the inside of his house, yet I had at least been greeted at the gate by his proxy. I pressed the hand firmly, pocketed a handful of gravel as a memento, then turned and went my way.
And all there is to tell about my visit to Rydal Mount is this interview with the bouncer.
* * * * *
Wordsworth lived eighty years. His habitation, except for short periods, was never more than a few miles from his birthplace. His education was not extensive, his learning not profound. He lacked humor and passion; in his character there was little personal magnetism, and in his work there is small dramatic power.
He traveled more or less and knew humanity, but he did not know man. His experience in so-called practical things was slight, his judgment not accurate. So he lived–quietly, modestly, dreamily.
His dust rests in a country churchyard, the grave marked by a simple slab. A gnarled, old yew-tree stands guard above the grass-grown mound. The nearest railroad is fifteen miles away.
As a poet, Wordsworth stands in the front rank of the second class. Shelley, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, far surpass him; and the sweet singer of Michigan, even in uninspired moments, never “threw off” anything worse than this:
“And he is lean and he is sick:
His body, dwindled and awry,
Rests upon ankles swollen and thick; His legs are thin and dry.
One prop he has, and only one,
His wife, an aged woman,
Lives with him near the waterfall, Upon the village common.”
Jove may nod, but when he makes a move it counts.
Yet the influence of Wordsworth upon the thought and feeling of the world has been very great. He himself said, “The young will read my poems and be better for their truth.” Many of his lines pass as current coin: “The child is father of the man,” “The light that never was on land nor sea,” “Not too bright and good for human nature’s daily food,” “Thoughts that do lie too deep for tears,” “The mighty stream of tendency,” and many others. “Plain living and high thinking” is generally given to Emerson, but he discovered it in Wordsworth, and recognizing it as his own he took it. In a certain book of quotations, “The still sad music of humanity” is given to Shakespeare; but to equalize matters we sometimes attribute to Wordsworth “The Old Oaken Bucket.”
The men who win are those who correct an abuse. Wordsworth’s work was a protest–mild yet firm–against the bombastic and artificial school of the Eighteenth Century. Before his day the “timber” used by poets consisted of angels, devils, ghosts, gods; onslaught, tourneys, jousts, tempests of hate and torrents of wrath, always of course with a very beautiful and very susceptible young lady just around the corner. The women in those days were always young and ever beautiful, but seldom wise and not often good. The men were saints or else “bad,” generally bad. Like the cats of Kilkenny, they fought on slight cause.
Our young man at Hawkshead School saw this: it pleased him not, and he made a list of the things on which he would write poems. This list includes: sunset, moonrise, starlight, mist, brooks, shells, stones, butterflies, moths, swallows, linnets, thrushes, wagoners, babies, bark of trees, leaves, nests, fishes, rushes, leeches, cobwebs, clouds, deer, music, shade, swans, crags and snow. He kept his vow and “went it one better,” for among his verses I find the following titles: “Lines Left Upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree,” “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” “To a Wounded Butterfly,” “To Dora’s Portrait,” “To the Cuckoo,” “On Seeing a Needlebook Made in the Shape of a Harp,” etc.
Wordsworth’s service to humanity consists in the fact that he has shown us old truth in a new light, and has made plain the close relationship that exists between physical nature and the soul of man. Is this much or little? I think it is much. When we realize that we are a part of all that we see, or hear, or feel, we are not lonely. But to feel a sense of separation is to feel the chill of death.
Wordsworth taught that the earth is the universal Mother and that the life of the flower has its source in the same universal life from whence ours is derived. To know this truth is to feel a tenderness, a kindliness, a spirit of fraternalism, toward every manifestation of this universal life. No attempt was made to say the last word, only a wish to express the truth that the spirit of God is manifest on every hand.
Now this is a very simple philosophy. No far-reaching, syllogistic logic is required to prove it; no miracle, nor special dispensation is needed; you just feel that it is so, that’s all, and it gives you peace. Children, foolish folks, old men, whose sands of life are nearly run, comprehend it. But heaven bless you! you can’t prove any such foolishness. Jeffrey saw the ridiculousness of these assumptions and so he declared, “This will never do,” and for twenty years “The Edinburgh Review” never ceased to fling off fleers and jeers–and to criticize and scoff. That a great periodical, rich and influential, in the city which was the very center of learning, should go so much out of its way to attack a quiet countryman living in a four-roomed cottage, away off in the hills of Cumberland, seems a little queer.
Then, this countryman did not seek to found a kingdom, nor to revolutionize society, nor did he force upon the world his pattypan rhymes about linnets, and larks, and daffodils. Far from it: he was very modest–diffident, in fact–and his song was quite in the minor key, but still the chain-shot and bombs of literary warfare were sent hissing in his direction.
There is a little story about a certain general who figured as division-commander in the War of Secession: this warrior had his headquarters, for a time, in a typical Southern home in the Tennessee Mountains. The house had a large fireplace and chimney; in this chimney, swallows had nests. One day, as the great man was busy at his maps, working out a plan of campaign against the enemy, the swallows made quite an uproar. Perhaps some of the eggs were hatching; anyway, the birds were needlessly noisy in their domestic affairs, and it disturbed the great man–he grew nervous. He called his adjutant. “Sir,” said the mighty warrior, “dislodge those damn pests in the chimney, without delay.”
Two soldiers were ordered to climb the roof and dislodge the enemy. Yet the swallows were not dislodged, for the soldiers could not reach them.
So Jeffrey’s tirades were unavailing, and Wordsworth was not dislodged.
“He might as well try to crush Skiddaw,” said Southey.
WILLIAM M. THACKERAY
TO MR. BROOKFIELD
September 16, 1849
Have you read Dickens? Oh, it is charming! Brave Dickens! “David Copperfield” has some of his prettiest touches, and the reading of the book has done another author a great deal of good.
–W.M.T.
[Illustration: W.M. THACKERAY]
There are certain good old ladies in every community who wear perennial mourning. They attend every funeral, carrying black-bordered handkerchiefs, and weep gently at the right time. I have made it a point to hunt out these ancient dames at their homes, and, over the teacups, I have discovered that invariably they enjoy a sweet peace–a happiness with contentment–that is a great gain. They seem to be civilization’s rudimentary relic of the Irish keeners and the paid mourners of the Orient.
And there is just a little of this tendency to mourn with those who mourn in all mankind. It is not difficult to bear another’s woe–and then there is always a grain of mitigation, even in the sorrow of the afflicted, that makes their tribulation bearable.
Burke affirms, in “On the Sublime,” that all men take a certain satisfaction in the disasters of others. Just as Frenchmen lift their hats when a funeral passes and thank God that they are not in the hearse, so do we in the presence of calamity thank Heaven that it is not ours.
Perhaps this is why I get a strange delight from walking through a graveyard by night. All about are the white monuments that glisten in the ghostly starlight, the night-wind sighs softly among the grassy mounds–all else is silent–still.
This is the city of the dead, and of all the hundreds or thousands who have traveled to this spot over long and weary miles, I, only I, have the power to leave at will. Their ears are stopped, their eyes are closed, their hands are folded–but I am alive.
One of the first places I visited on reaching London was Kensal Green Cemetery. I quickly made the acquaintance of the First Gravedigger, a rare wit, over whose gray head have passed full seventy pleasant summers. I presented him a copy of “The Shroud,” the organ of the American Undertakers’ Association, published at Syracuse, New York. I subscribe for “The Shroud” because it has a bright wit-and-humor column, and also for the sweet satisfaction of knowing that there is still virtue left in Syracuse.
The First Gravedigger greeted me courteously, and when I explained briefly my posthumous predilections we grasped hands across an open grave (that he had just digged) and were fast friends.
“Do you believe in cremation, sir?” he asked.
“No, never; it’s pagan.”
“Aye, you are a gentleman–and about burying folks in churches?”
“Never! A grave should be out under the open sky, where the sun by day and the moon and stars—-“
“Right you are. How Shakespeare can ever stand it to have his grave walked over by a boy choir is more than I can understand. If I had him here I could look after him right. Come, I’ll show you the company I keep!”
Not twenty feet from where we stood was a fine but plain granite block to the memory of the second wife of James Russell Lowell.
“Just Mr. Lowell and one friend stood by the grave when we lowered the coffin–just two men and no one else but the young clergyman who belongs here. Mr. Lowell shook hands with me when he went away. He gave me a guinea and wrote me two letters afterward from America; the last was sent only a week before he died. I’ll show ’em to you when we go to the office. Say, did you know him?”
He pointed to a slab, on which I read the name of Sydney Smith. Then we went to the graves of Mulready, the painter; Kemble, the actor; Sir Charles Eastlake, the artist. Next came the resting-place of Buckle–immortal for writing a preface–dead at thirty-seven, with his history unwrit; Leigh Hunt sleeps near, and above his dust a column that explains how it was erected by friends. In life he asked for bread; when dead they gave him a costly pile of stone.
Here are also the graves of Madame Tietjens; of Charles Mathews, the actor; and of Admiral Sir John Ross, the Arctic explorer.
“And just down the hill aways another big man is buried. I knew him well; he used to come and visit us often. The last time I saw him I said as he was going away, ‘Come again, sir; you are always welcome!’
“‘Thank you, Mr. First Gravedigger,’ says he; ‘I will come again before long, and make you an extended visit.’ In less than a year the hearse brought him. That’s his grave–push that ivy away and you can read the inscription. Did you ever hear of him?”
It was a plain, heavy slab placed horizontally, and the ivy had so run over it that the white of the marble was nearly obscured. But I made out this inscription:
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Born July 18, 1811
Died Dec. 24, 1863
ANNE CARMICHAEL SMYTH
Died Dec. 18, 1864, aged 72–his mother by her first marriage
The unpoetic exactness of that pedigree gave me a slight chill. But here they sleep–mother and son in one grave. She who gave him his first caress also gave him his last; and when he was found dead in his bed, his mother, who lived under the same roof, was the first one called. He was the child of her girlhood–she was scarcely twenty when she bore him. In life they were never separated, and in death they are not divided. It is as both desired.
Thackeray was born in India, and was brought to England on the death of his father, when he was six years of age. On the way from Calcutta the ship touched at the Island of Saint Helena. A servant took the lad ashore and they walked up the rocky heights to Longwood, and there, pacing back and forth in a garden, they saw a short, stout man.
“Lookee, lad, lookee quick–that’s him! He eats three sheep every day and all the children he can get!”
“And that’s all I had to do with the Battle of Waterloo,” said “Old Thack,” forty years after. But you will never believe it after reading those masterly touches concerning the battle, in “Vanity Fair.”
Young Thackeray was sent to the Charterhouse School, where he was considered rather a dull boy. He was big and good-natured, and read novels when he should have studied arithmetic. This tendency to “play off” stuck to him at Cambridge–where he did not remain long enough to get a degree, but to the relief of his tutors went off on a tour through Europe.
Travel as a means of education is a very seductive bit of sophistry. Invalids whom the doctors can not cure, and scholars whom teachers can not teach, are often advised to take “a change.” Still there is reason in it.
In England Thackeray was intent on law; at Paris he received a strong bent toward art; but when he reached Weimar and was introduced at the Court of Letters and came into the living presence of Goethe, he caught the infection and made a plan for translating Schiller.
Schiller dead was considered in Germany a greater man than Goethe living, as if it were an offense to live and a virtue to die. And young William Makepeace wrote home to his mother that Schiller was the greatest man that ever lived and that he was going to translate his books and give them to England.
No doubt there are certain people born with a tendency to infectiousness in regard to certain diseases; so there are those who catch the literary mania on slight exposure.
“I’ve got it,” said Thackeray, and so he had.
He went back to England and made groggy efforts at Blackstone, and Somebody’s Digest, and What’s-His-Name’s Compendium, but all the time he scribbled and sketched.
The young man had come into possession of a goodly fortune from his father’s estate–enough to yield him an income of over two thousand dollars a year. But bad investments and signing security for friends took the money the way that money usually goes when held by a man who has not earned it.
“Talk about riches having wings,” said Thackeray; “my fortune had pinions like a condor, and flew like a carrier-pigeon.”
When Thackeray was thirty he was eking out a meager income writing poems, reviews, criticisms and editorials. His wife was a confirmed invalid, a victim of mental darkness, and his sorrows and anxieties were many.
He was known as a bright writer, yet London is full of clever, unsuccessful men. But in Thackeray’s thirty-eighth year “Vanity Fair” came out, and it was a success from the first.
In “Yesterdays With Authors,” Mr. Fields says: “I once made a pilgrimage with Thackeray to the various houses where his books had been written; and I remember when we came to Young Street, Kensington, he said, with mock gravity, ‘Down on your knees, you rogue, for here “Vanity Fair” was penned; and I will go down with you, for I have a high opinion of that little production myself.'”
Young Street is only a block from the Kensington Metropolitan Railway-Station. It is a little street running off Kensington Road. At Number Sixteen (formerly Number Thirteen), I saw a card in the window, “Rooms to Rent to Single Gentlemen.”
I rang the bell, and was shown a room that the landlady offered me for twelve shillings a week if I paid in advance; or if I would take another room one flight up with a “gent who was studying hart” it would be only eight and six. I suggested that we go up and see the “gent.” We did so, and I found the young man very courteous and polite.
He told me that he had never heard Thackeray’s name in connection with the house. The landlady protested that “no man by the name o’ Thack’ry has had rooms here since I rented the place; leastwise, if he has been here he called hisself by sumpthink else, which was like o’nuff the case, as most ev’rybody is crooked now’days–but surely no decent person can blame me for that!”
I assured her that she was in no wise to blame.
From this house in Young Street the author of “Vanity Fair” moved to Number Thirty-six Onslow Square, where he wrote “The Virginians.” On the south side of the Square there is a row of three-storied brick houses. Thackeray lived in one of these houses for nine years. They were the years when honors and wealth were being heaped upon him; and he was worldling enough to let his wants keep pace with his ability to gratify them. He was made of the same sort of clay as other men, for his standard of life conformed to his pocketbook and he always felt poor.
From this fine house on Onslow Square he moved to a veritable palace, which he built to suit his own taste, at Number Two Palace Green, Kensington. But mansions on earth are seldom for long–he died here on Christmas Eve, Eighteen Hundred Sixty-three. And Charles Dickens, Mark Lemon, Millais, Trollope, Robert Browning, Cruikshank, Tom Taylor, Louis Blanc, Charles Mathews and Shirley Brooks were among the friends who carried him to his rest.
* * * * *
To take one’s self too seriously is a great mistake. Complacency is the unpardonable sin, and the man who says, “Now I’m sure of it,” has at that moment lost it.
Villagers who have lived in one little place until they think themselves great, having lost the sense of proportion through lack of comparison, are generally “in dead earnest.”
Surely they are often intellectually dead, and I do not dispute the fact that they are in earnest. All those excellent gentlemen in the days gone by who could not contemplate a celestial bliss that did not involve the damnation of those who disagreed with them were in dead earnest.
Cotton Mather once saw a black cat perched on the shoulder of an innocent, chattering old gran’ma. The next day a neighbor had a convulsion; and Cotton Mather went forth and exorcised Tabby with a hymn-book, and hanged gran’ma by the neck, high on Gallows Hill, until she was dead.
Had the Reverend Mr. Mather possessed but a mere modicum of humor he might have exorcised the cat, but I am sure he would never have troubled old gran’ma. But alas, Cotton Mather’s conversation was limited to yea, yea, and nay, nay–generally, nay, nay–and he was in dead earnest.
In the Boston Public Library is a book written in Sixteen Hundred Eighty-five by Cotton Mather, entitled, “Wonders of the Invisible World.” This book received the endorsement of the Governor of the Province and also of the President of Harvard College. The author cites many cases of persons who were bewitched; and also makes the interesting statement that the Devil knows Greek, Latin and Hebrew, but speaks English with an accent. These facts were long used at Harvard as an argument in favor of the Classics. And when Greek was at last made optional, the Devil was supposed to have filed a protest with the Dean of the Faculty.
The Reverend Francis Gastrell, who razed New Place, and cut down the poet’s mulberry-tree to escape the importunities of visitors, was in dead earnest. Attila, and Herod, and John Calvin were in dead earnest. And were it not for the fact that Luther had lucid intervals when he went about with his tongue in his cheek he surely would have worked grievous wrong.
Recent discoveries in Egyptian archeology show that in his lifetime Moses was esteemed more as a wit than as a lawmaker. His jokes were posted upon the walls and explained to the populace, who it seems were a bit slow.
Job was a humorist of a high order, and when he said to the wise men, “No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you,” he struck twelve. When the sons of Jacob went down into Egypt and Joseph put up the price of corn, took their money, and then secretly replaced the coin in the sacks, he showed his artless love of a quiet joke.
Shakespeare’s fools were the wisest and kindliest men at court. When the master decked a character in cap and bells, it was as though he had given bonds for the man’s humanity. Touchstone followed his master into exile; and when all seemed to have forsaken King Lear the fool bared himself to the storm and covered the shaking old man with his own cloak. And if Costard, Trinculo, Touchstone, Jaques and Mercutio had lived in Salem in Sixteen Hundred Ninety-two, there would have been not only a flashing of merry jests, but a flashing of rapiers as well, and every gray hair of every old dame’s head would have been safe so long as there was a striped leg on which to stand.
Lincoln, liberator of men, loved the motley. In fact, the individual who is incapable of viewing the world from a jocular basis is unsafe, and can be trusted only when the opposition is strong enough to laugh him into line.
In the realm of English letters, Thackeray is prince of humorists. He could see right through a brick wall, and never mistook a hawk for a hernshaw. He had a just estimate of values, and the temperament that can laugh at all trivial misfits. And he had, too, that dread capacity for pain which every true humorist possesses, for the true essence of humor is sensibility.
In all literature that lives there is mingled like pollen an indefinable element of the author’s personality. In Thackeray’s “Lectures on English Humorists” this subtle quality is particularly apparent. Elusive, delicate, alluring–it is the actinic ray that imparts vitality.
When wit plays skittles with dulness, dulness gets revenge by taking wit at his word. Vast numbers of people taking Thackeray at his word consider him a bitter pessimist.
He even disconcerted bright little Charlotte Bronte, who went down to London to see him, and then wrote back to Haworth that “the great man talked steadily with never a smile. I could not tell when to laugh and when to cry, for I did not know what was fun and what fact.”
But finally the author of “Jane Eyre” found the combination, and she saw that beneath the brusk exterior of that bulky form there was a woman’s tender sympathy.
Thackeray has told us what he thought of the author of “Jane Eyre,” and the author of “Jane Eyre” has told us what she thought of the author of “Vanity Fair.” One was big and whimsical, the other was little and sincere, but both were alike in this: their hearts were wrung at the sight of suffering, and both had tears for the erring, the groping, and the oppressed.
A Frenchman can not comprehend a joke that is not accompanied by grimace and gesticulation; and so M. Taine chases Thackeray through sixty solid pages, berating him for what he is pleased to term “bottled hate.”
Taine is a cynic who charges Thackeray with cynicism, all in the choicest of biting phrase. It is a beautiful example of sinners calling the righteous to repentance–a thing that is often done, but seldom with artistic finish.
The fun is too deep for Monsieur, or mayhap the brand is not the yellow label to which his palate is accustomed, so he spews it all. Yet Taine’s criticism is charming reading, although he is only hot after an aniseed trail of his own dragging. But the chase is a deal more exciting than most men would lead, were there real live game to capture.
If pushed, I might suggest several points in this man’s make-up where God could have bettered His work. But accepting Thackeray as we find him, we see a singer whose cage Fate had overhung with black until he had caught the tune. The “Ballad of Boullabaisse” shows a tender side of his spirit that he often sought to conceal. His heart vibrated to all finer thrills of mercy; and his love for all created things was so delicately strung that he would, in childish shame, sometimes issue a growl to drown its rising, tearful tones.
In the character of Becky Sharp, he has marshaled some of his own weak points and then lashed them with scorn. He looked into the mirror and seeing a potential snob he straightway inveighed against snobbery. The punishment does not always fit the crime–it is excess. But I still contest that where his ridicule is most severe, it is Thackeray’s own back that is bared to the knout.
The primal recipe for roguery in art is, “Know Thyself.” When a writer portrays a villain and does it well–make no mistake, he poses for the character himself. Said gentle Ralph Waldo Emerson, “I have capacity in me for every crime.”
The man of imagination knows those mystic spores of possibility that lie dormant, and like the magicians of the East who grow mango-trees in an hour, he develops the “inward potential” at will. The mere artisan in letters goes forth and finds a villain and then describes him, but the artist knows a better way: “I am that man.”
One of the very sweetest, gentlest characters in literature is Colonel Newcome. The stepfather of Thackeray, Major Carmichael Smyth, was made to stand for the portrait of the lovable Colonel; and when that all-round athlete, F. Hopkinson Smith, gave us that other lovable old Colonel he paid high tribute to “The Newcomes.”
Thackeray was a poet, and as such was often caught in the toils of doubt–the crux of the inquiring spirit. He aspired for better things, and at times his imperfections stood out before him in monstrous shape, and he sought to hiss them down.
In the heart of the artist-poet there is an Inmost Self that sits over against the acting, breathing man and passes judgment on his every deed. To satisfy the world is little; to please the populace is naught; fame is vapor; gold is dross; and every love that has not the sanction of that Inmost Self is a viper’s sting. To satisfy the demands of the God within is the poet’s prayer.
What doubts beset, what taunting fears surround, what crouching sorrows lie in wait, what dead hopes drag, what hot desires pursue, and what kindly lights do beckon on–ah! “’tis we musicians know.”
Thackeray came to America to get a pot of money, and was in a fair way of securing it, when he chanced to pick up a paper in which a steamer was announced to sail that evening for England. A wave of homesickness swept over the big boy–he could not stand it. He hastily packed up his effects and without saying good-by to any one, and forgetting all his engagements, he hastened to the dock, leaving this note for the kindest of kind friends: “Good-by, Fields; good-by, Mrs. Fields–God bless everybody, says W.M.T.”
CHARLES DICKENS
I hope for the enlargement of my mind, and for the improvement of my understanding. If I have done but little good, I trust I have done less harm, and that none of my adventures will be other than a source of amusing and pleasant recollection. God bless you all!
–_Pickwick_
[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS]
The path of progress in certain problems seems barred as by a flaming sword.
More than a thousand years before Christ, an Arab chief asked, “If a man die shall he live again?” Every man who ever lived has asked the same question, but we know no more today about the subject than did Job.
There are one hundred five boy babies born to every one hundred girls. The law holds in every land where vital statistics have been kept; and Sairey Gamp knew just as much about the cause why as Brown-Sequard, Pasteur, Agnew or Austin Flint.
There is still a third question that every parent, since Adam and Eve, has sought to solve: “How can I educate this child so that he will attain eminence?” And even in spite of shelves that groan beneath tomes and tomes, and advice from a million preachers, the answer is: Nobody knows.
“There is a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.”
Moses was sent adrift, but the tide carried him into power. The brethren of Joseph “deposited him into a cavity,” but you can not dispose of genius that way!
Demosthenes was weighted (or blessed) with every disadvantage; Shakespeare got into difficulty with a woman eight years his senior, stole deer, ran away, and–became the very first among English poets; Erasmus was a foundling.
Once there was a woman by the name of Nancy Hanks; she was thin-breasted, gaunt, yellow and sad. At last, living in poverty, overworked, she was stricken by death. She called her son–homely as herself–and pointing to the lad’s sister said, “Be good to her, Abe,” and died–died, having no expectation for her boy beyond the hope that he might prosper in worldly affairs so as to care for himself and his sister. The boy became a man who wielded wisely a power mightier than that ever given to any other American. Seven college-bred men composed his cabinet; and Proctor Knott once said that “if a teeter were evenly balanced, and the members of the cabinet were all placed on one end, and the President on the other, he would send the seven wise men flying into space.”
On the other hand, Marcus Aurelius wrote his “Meditations” for a son who did not read them, and whose name is a symbol of profligacy; Charles Kingsley penned “Greek Heroes” for offspring who have never shown their father’s heroism; and Charles Dickens wrote “A Child’s History of England” for his children–none of whom has proven his proficiency in historiology.
Charles Dickens himself received his education at the University of Hard Knocks. Very early in life he was cast upon the rocks and suckled by the she-wolf. Yet he became the most popular author the world has ever known, and up to the present time no writer of books has approached him in point of number of readers and of financial returns. These are facts–facts so hard and true that they would be the delight of Mr. Gradgrind.
At twelve years of age, Charles Dickens was pasting labels on blacking-boxes; his father was in prison. At sixteen, he was spending odd hours in the reading-room of the British Museum. At nineteen, he was Parliamentary reporter; at twenty-one, a writer of sketches; at twenty-three, he was getting a salary of thirty-five dollars a week, and the next year his pay was doubled. When twenty-five, he wrote a play that ran for seventy nights at Drury Lane Theater. About the same time he received seven hundred dollars for a series of sketches written in two weeks. At twenty-six, publishers were at his feet.
When Dickens was at the flood-tide of prosperity, Thackeray, one year his senior, waited on his doorstep with pictures to illustrate “Pickwick.”
He worked steadily, and made from eight to twenty-five thousand dollars a year. His fame increased, and the “New York Ledger” paid him ten thousand dollars for one story which he wrote in a fortnight. His collected works fill forty volumes. There are more of Dickens’ books sold every year now than in any year in which he lived. There were more of Dickens’ books sold last year than any previous year.
“I am glad that the public buy his books,” said Macready; “for if they did not he would take to the stage and eclipse us all.”
“Not So Bad As We Seem,” by Bulwer-Lytton, was played at Devonshire House in the presence of the Queen, Dickens taking the principal part. He gave theatrical performances in London, Liverpool and Manchester, for the benefit of Leigh Hunt, Sheridan Knowles and various other needy authors and actors. He wrote a dozen plays, and twice as many more have been constructed from his plots.
He gave public readings through England, Scotland and Ireland, where the people fought for seats. The average receipts for these entertainments were eight hundred dollars per night.
In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-three, he made a six months’ tour of the United States, giving a series of readings. The prices of admission were placed at extravagant figures, but the box-office was always besieged until the ticket-seller put out his lights and hung out a sign: “The standing-room is all taken.”
The gross receipts of these readings were two hundred twenty-nine thousand dollars; the expenses thirty-nine thousand dollars; net profit, one hundred ninety thousand dollars.
Charles Dickens died of brain-rupture in Eighteen Hundred Seventy, aged fifty-eight. His dust rests in Westminster Abbey.
* * * * *
“To know the London of Dickens is a liberal education,” once said James T. Fields, who was affectionately referred to by Charles Dickens as “Massachusetts Jemmy.” And I am aware of no better way to become acquainted with the greatest city in the world than to follow the winding footsteps of the author of “David Copperfield.”
Beginning his London life when ten years of age, he shifted from one lodging to another, zigzag, tacking back and forth from place to place, but all the time making head, and finally dwelling in palaces of which nobility might be proud. It took him forty-eight years to travel from the squalor of Camden Town to Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.
He lodged first in Bayham Street. “A washerwoman lived next door, and a Bow Street officer over the way.” It was a shabby district, chosen by the elder Dickens because the rent was low. As he neglected to pay the rent, one wonders why he did not take quarters in Piccadilly.
I looked in vain for a sign reading, “Washin dun Heer,” but I found a Bow Street orf’cer who told me that Bayham Street had long since disappeared.
Yet there is always a recompense in prowling about London, because if you do not find the thing you are looking for, you find something else equally interesting. My Bow Street friend proved to be a regular magazine of rare and useful information–historical, archeological and biographical.
A Lunnun Bobby has his clothes cut after a pattern a hundred years old, and he always carries his gloves in his hand–never wearing them–because this was a habit of William the Conqueror.
But never mind; he is intelligent, courteous and obliging, and I am perfectly willing that he should wear skirts like a ballet-dancer and a helmet too small, if it is his humor.
My perliceman knew an older orf’cer who was acquainted with Mr. Dickens. Mr. Dickens ‘ad a full perliceman’s suit ‘imself, issued to ‘im on an order from Scotland Yard, and he used to do patrol duty at night, carrying ‘is bloomin’ gloves in ‘is ‘and and ‘is chinstrap in place. This was told me by my new-found friend, who volunteered to show me the way to North Gower Street.
It’s only Gower Street now and the houses have been renumbered, so Number Four is a matter of conjecture; but my guide showed me a door where were the marks of a full-grown plate that evidently had long since disappeared. Some days afterward I found this identical brass plate at an old bookshop in Cheapside. The plate read: “Mrs. Dickens’ Establishment.” The man who kept the place advertised himself as a “Bibliopole.” He offered to sell me the plate for one pun ten; but I did not purchase, for I knew where I could get its mate with a deal more verdigris–all for six and eight.
Dickens has recorded that he can not recollect of any pupils coming to the Establishment. But he remembers when his father was taken, like Mr. Dorrit, to the Debtors’ Prison. He was lodged in the top story but one, in the very same room where his son afterwards put the Dorrits. It’s a queer thing to know that a book-writer can imprison folks without a warrant and even kill them and yet go unpunished–which thought was suggested to me by my philosophic guide.
From this house in Gower Street, Charles used to go daily to the Marshalsea to visit Micawber, who not so many years later was to act as the proud amanuensis of his son.
The next morning after I first met Bobby he was off duty. I met him by appointment at the Three Jolly Beggars (a place pernicious snug). He was dressed in a fashionable, light-colored suit, the coat a trifle short, and a high silk hat. His large, red neckscarf–set off by his bright, brick-dust complexion–caused me to mistake him at first for a friend of mine who drives a Holborn bus.
Mr. ‘Awkins (for it was he) greeted me cordially, pulled gently at his neck-whiskers, and, when he addressed me as Me Lud, the barmaid served us with much alacrity and things.
We went first to the church of Saint George; then we found Angel Court leading to Bermondsey, also Marshalsea Place. Here is the site of the prison, where the crowded ghosts of misery still hover; but small trace could we find of the prison itself, neither did we see the ghosts. We, however, saw a very pretty barmaid at the public in Angel Court. I think she is still prettier than the one to whom Bobby introduced me at the Sign of the Meat-Axe, which is saying a good deal. Angel Court is rightly named.
The blacking-warehouse at Old Hungerford Stairs, Strand, in which Charles Dickens was shown by Bob Fagin how to tie up the pots of paste, has rotted down and been carted away. The coal-barges in the muddy river are still there, just as they were when Charles, Poll Green and Bob Fagin played on them during the dinner-hour. I saw Bob and several other boys, grimy with blacking, chasing each other across the flatboats, but Dickens was not there.
Down the river aways there is a crazy, old warehouse with a rotten wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the tide is in, and on the mud when the tide is out–the whole place literally overrun with rats that scuffle and squeal on the moldy stairs. I asked Bobby if it could not be that this was the blacking-factory; but he said, No, for this one allus wuz.
Dickens found lodgings in Lant Street while his father was awaiting in the Marshalsea for something to turn up. Bob Sawyer afterward had the same quarters. When Sawyer invited Mr. Pickwick “and the other chaps” to dine with him, he failed to give his number, so we can not locate the house. But I found the street and saw a big, wooden Pickwick on wheels standing as a sign for a tobacco-shop. The old gentleman who runs the place, and runs the sign in every night, assured me that Bob Sawyer’s room was the first floor back. I looked in at it, but seeing no one there whom I knew, I bought tuppence worth of pigtail in lieu of fee, and came away.
If a man wished to abstract himself from the world, to remove himself from temptation, to place himself beyond the possibility of desire to look out of the window, he should live in Lant Street, said a great novelist. David Copperfield lodged here when he ordered that glass of Genuine Stunning Ale at the Red Lion and excited the sympathy of the landlord, winning a motherly kiss from his wife.
The Red Lion still crouches (under another name) at the corner of Derby and Parliament Streets, Westminster. I daydreamed there for an hour one morning, pretending the while to read a newspaper. I can not, however, recommend their ale as particularly stunning.
As there are authors of one book, so are there readers of one author–more than we wist. Children want the same bear story over and over, preferring it to a new one; so “grown-ups” often prefer the dog-eared book to uncut leaves.
Mr. Hawkins preferred the dog-eared, and at the station-house, where many times he had long hours to wait in anticipation of a hurry-up call, he whiled away the time by browsing in his Dickens. He knew no other author, neither did he wish to. His epidermis was soaked with Dickensology, and when inspired by gin and bitters he emitted information at every pore. To him all these bodiless beings of Dickens’ brain were living creatures. An anachronism was nothing to Hawkins. Charley Bates was still at large, Quilp was just around the corner, and Gaffer Hexam’s boat was moored in the muddy river below.
Dickens used to haunt the publics, those curious resting-places where all sorts and conditions of thirsty philosophers meet to discuss all sorts of themes. My guide took me to many of these inns which the great novelist frequented, and we always had one legend with every drink. After we had called at three or four different snuggeries, Hawkins would begin to shake out the facts.
Now, it is not generally known that the so-called stories of Dickens are simply records of historic events, like What-do-you-call-um’s plays! F’r instance, Dombey and Son was a well-known firm, who carried over into a joint stock company only a few years ago. The concern is now known as The Dombey Trading Company; they occupy the same quarters that were used by their illustrious predecessors.
I signified a desire to see the counting-house so minutely described by Dickens, and Mr. Hawkins agreed to pilot me thither on our way to Tavistock Square. We twisted down to the first turning, then up three, then straight ahead to the first right-hand turn, where we cut to the left until we came to a stuffed dog, which is the sign of a glover. Just beyond this my guide plucked me by the sleeve; we halted, and he silently and solemnly pointed across the street. Sure enough! There it was, the warehouse with a great stretch of dirty windows in front, through which we could see dozens of clerks bending over ledgers, just as though Mr. Dombey were momentarily expected. Over the door was a gilt sign, “The Bombay Trading Co.”
Bobby explained that it was all the same.
I did not care to go in; but at my request Hawkins entered and asked for Mister Carker, the Junior, but no one knew him.
Then we dropped in at The Silver Shark, a little inn about the size of a large dustbin of two compartments and a sifter. Here we rested a bit, as we had walked a long way.
The barmaid who waited upon us was in curl-papers, but she was even then as pretty if not prettier than the barmaid at the public in Angel Court, and that is saying a good deal. She was about as tall as Trilby or as Ellen Terry, which is a very nice height, I think.
As we rested, Mr. Hawkins told the barmaid and me how Rogue Riderhood came to this very public, through that same doorway, just after he had his Alfred David took down by the Governors Both. He was a slouching dog, was the Rogue. He wore an old, sodden fur cap, Winter and Summer, formless and mangy; it looked like a drowned cat. His hands were always in his pockets up to his elbows, when they were not reaching for something, and when he was out after game his walk was a half-shuffle and run.
Hawkins saw him starting off this way one night and followed him–knowing there was mischief on hand–followed him for two hours through the fog and rain. It was midnight and the last stroke of the bells that tolled the hour had ceased, and their echo was dying away, when all at once—-
But the story is too long to relate here. It is so long that when Mr. Hawkins had finished it was too late to reach Tavistock Square before dark. Mr. Hawkins explained that as bats and owls and rats come out only when the sun has disappeared, so there are other things that can be seen best by night. And as he did not go on until the next day at one, he proposed that we should go down to The Cheshire Cheese and get a bite of summat and then sally forth.
So we hailed a bus and climbed to the top.
“She rolls like a scow in the wake of a liner,” said Bobby, as we tumbled into seats. When the bus man came up the little winding ladder and jingled his punch, Hawkins paid our fares with a heavy wink, and the guard said, “Thank you, sir,” and passed on.
We got off at The Cheese and settled ourselves comfortably in a corner.
The same seats are there, running along the wall, where Doctor Johnson, “Goldy” and Boswell so often sat and waked the echoes with their laughter. We had chops and tomato-sauce in recollection of Jingle and Trotter. The chops were of that delicious kind unknown outside of England. I supplied the legend this time, for my messmate had never heard of Boswell.
Hawkins introduced me to “the cove in the white apron” who waited upon us, and then explained that I was the man who wrote “Martin Chuzzlewit.”
He kissed his hand to the elderly woman who presided behind the nickel-plated American cash-register. The only thing that rang false about the place was that register, perked up there spick-span new. Hawkins insisted that it was a typewriter, and as we passed out he took a handful of matches (thinking them toothpicks) and asked the cashier to play a tune on the thingumabob, but she declined.
We made our way to London Bridge as the night was settling down. No stars came out, but flickering, fluttering gaslights appeared, and around each post was a great, gray, fluffy aureole of mist. Just at the entrance to the bridge we saw Nancy dogged by Noah Claypole. They turned down towards Billingsgate Fish-Market, and as the fog swallowed them, Hawkins answered my question as to the language used at Billingsgate.
“It’s not so bloomin’ bad, you know; why, I’ll take you to a market in Islington where they talk twice as vile.”
He started to go into technicalities, but I excused him.
Then he leaned over the parapet and spat down at a rowboat that was passing below. As the boat moved out into the glimmering light we made out Lizzie Hexam at the oars, while Gaffer sat in the stern on the lookout.
The Marchioness went by as we stood there, a bit of tattered shawl over her frowsy head, one stocking down around her shoetop. She had a penny loaf under her arm, and was breaking off bits, eating as she went.
Soon came Snagsby, then Mr. Vincent Crummels, Mr. Sleary, the horseback-rider, followed by Chops, the dwarf, and Pickleson, the giant. Hawkins said there were two Picklesons, but I saw only one. Just below was the Stone pier and there stood Mrs. Gamp, and I heard her ask:
“And which of all them smoking monsters is the Anxworks boat, I wonder? Goodness me!”
“Which boat do you want?” asked Ruth.
“The Anxworks package–I will not deceive you, Sweet; why should I?”
“Why, that is the Antwerp packet, in the middle,” said Ruth.
“And I wish it was in Jonidge’s belly, I do,” cried Mrs. Gamp.
We came down from the bridge, moved over toward Billingsgate, past the Custom-House, where curious old sea-captains wait for ships that never come. Captain Cuttle lifted his hook to the brim of his glazed hat as we passed. We returned the salute and moved on toward the Tower.
“It’s a rum place; let’s not stop,” said Hawkins. Thoughts of the ghosts of Raleigh, of Mary Queen of Scots and of Lady Jane Grey seemed to steady his gait and to hasten his footsteps.
In a few moments we saw just ahead of us David Copperfield and Mr. Peggotty following a woman whom we could make out walking excitedly a block ahead. It was Martha, intent on suicide.
“We’ll get to the dock first and ‘ead ‘er orf,” said ‘Awkins. We ran down a side street. But a bright light in a little brick cottage caught our attention–men can’t run arm in arm anyway. We forgot our errand of mercy and stood still with open mouths looking in at the window at little Jenny Wren hard at work dressing her dolls and stopping now and then to stab the air with her needle. Bradley Headstone and Charlie and Lizzie Hexam came in, and we then passed on, not wishing to attract attention.
There was an old smoke-stained tree on the corner which I felt sorry for, as I do for every city tree. Just beyond was a blacksmith’s forge and a timber-yard behind, where a dealer in old iron had a shop, in front of which was a rusty boiler and a gigantic flywheel half buried in the sand.
There were no crowds to be seen now, but we walked on and on–generally in the middle of the narrow streets, turning up or down or across, through arches where tramps slept, by doorways where children crouched; passing drunken men, and women with shawls over their heads.
Now and again the screech of a fiddle could be heard or the lazy music of an accordion, coming from some “Sailors’ Home.” Steps of dancing with rattle of iron-shod boot-heels clicking over sanded floors, the hoarse shout of the “caller-off,” and now and again angry tones with cracked feminine falsettos broke on the air; and all the time the soft rain fell and the steam seemed to rise from the sewage-laden streets.
We were in Stepney, that curious parish so minutely described by Walter Besant in “All Sorts and Conditions of Men”–the parish where all children born at sea were considered to belong. We saw Brig Place, where Walter Gay visited Captain Cuttle. Then we went with Pip in search of Mrs. Wimple’s house, at Mill-Pond Bank, Chink’s Basin, Old Green Copper Rope Walk; where lived old Bill Barley and his daughter Clara, and where Magwitch was hidden. It was the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a dark corner as a club for tomcats.
Then, standing out in the gloom, we saw Limehouse Church, where John Rokesmith prowled about on a ‘tective scent; and where John Harmon waited for the third mate Radfoot, intending to murder him. Next we reached Limehouse Hole, where Rogue Riderhood took the plunge down the steps of Leaving Shop.
Hawkins thought he saw the Artful Dodger ahead of us on the dock. He went over and looked up and down and under an old upturned rowboat, then peered over the dock and swore a harmless oath that if we could catch him we would run him in without a warrant. Yes, we’d clap the nippers on ‘im and march ‘im orf.
“Not if I can help it,” I said; “I like the fellow too well.” Fortunately Hawkins failed to find him.
Here it was that the Uncommercial Traveler did patrol duty on many sleepless nights. Here it was that Esther Summerson and Mr. Bucket came. And by the light of a match held under my hat we read a handbill on the brick wall: “Found Drowned!” The heading stood out in big, fat letters, but the print below was too damp to read, yet there is no doubt it is the same bill that Gaffer Hexam, Eugene Wrayburn and Mortimer Lightwood read, for Mr. Hawkins said so.
As we stood there we heard the gentle gurgle of the tide running under the pier, then a dip of oars coming from out the murky darkness of the muddy river: a challenge from the shore with orders to row in, a hoarse, defiant answer and a watchman’s rattle.
A policeman passed us running and called back, “I say, Hawkins, is that you? There’s murder broke loose in Whitechapel again! The reserves have been ordered out!”
Hawkins stopped and seemed to pull himself together–his height increased three inches. A moment before I thought he was a candidate for fatty degeneration of the cerebrum, but now his sturdy frame was all atremble with life.
“Another murder! I knew it. Bill Sykes has killed Nancy at last. There ‘s fifty pun for the man who puts the irons on ‘im–I must make for the nearest stishun.”
He gave my hand a twist, shot down a narrow courtway–and I was left to fight the fog, and mayhap this Bill Sykes and all the other wild phantoms of Dickens’ brain, alone.
* * * * *
A certain great general once said that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Just why the maxim should be limited to aborigines I know not, for when one reads obituaries he is discouraged at the thoughts of competing in virtue with those who have gone hence.
Let us extend the remark–plagiarize a bit–and say that the only perfect men are those whom we find in books. The receipt for making them is simple, yet well worth pasting in your scrapbook. Take the virtues of all the best men you ever knew or heard of, leave out the faults, then mix.
In the hands of “the lady novelist” this composition, well molded, makes a scarecrow, in the hair of which the birds of the air come and build their nests. But manipulated by an expert a figure may appear that starts and moves and seems to feel the thrill of life. It may even take its place on a pedestal and be exhibited with other waxworks and thus become confounded with the historic And though these things make the unskilful laugh, yet the judicious say, “Dickens made it, therefore let it pass for a man.”
Dear old M. Taine, ever glad to score a point against the British, and willing to take Dickens at his word, says, “We have no such men in France as Scrooge and Squeers!”
But, God bless you, M. Taine, England has no such men either.
The novelist takes the men and women he has known, and from life, plus imagination, he creates. If he sticks too close to nature he describes, not depicts: this is “veritism.” If imagination’s wing is too strong, it lifts the luckless writer off from earth and carries him to an unknown land. You may then fall down and worship his characters, and there is no violation of the First Commandment.
Nothing can be imagined that has not been seen; but imagination can assort, omit, sift, select, construct. Given a horse, an eagle, an elephant, and the “creative artist” can make an animal that is neither a horse, an eagle, nor an elephant, yet resembles each. This animal may have eight legs (or forty) with hoofs, claws and toes alternating; a beak, a trunk, a mane; and the whole can be feathered and given the power of rapid flight and also the ability to run like the East Wind. It can neigh, roar or scream by turn, or can do all in concert, with a vibratory force multiplied by one thousand.
The novelist must have lived, and the novelist must have imagination. But this is not enough. He must have power to analyze and separate, and then he should have the good taste to select and group, forming his parts into a harmonious whole.
Yet he must build large. Life-size will not do: the statue must be heroic, and the artist’s genius must breathe into its nostrils the breath of life.
The men who live in history are those whose lives have been skilfully written. “Plutarch is the most charming writer of fiction the world has ever known,” said Emerson.
Dickens’ characters are personifications of traits, not men and women. Yet they are a deal funnier–they are as funny as a box of monkeys, as entertaining as a Punch-and-Judy show, as interesting as a “fifteen puzzle,” and sometimes as pretty as chromos. Quilp munching the eggs, shells and all, to scare his wife, makes one shiver as though a Jack-in-the-box had been popped out at him. Mr. Mould, the undertaker, and Jaggers, the lawyer, are as amusing as Humpty-Dumpty and Pantaloon. I am sure that no live lawyer ever gave me half the enjoyment that Jaggers has, and Doctor Slammers’ talk is better medicine than the pills of any living M.D. Because the burnt-cork minstrel pleases me more than a real “nigger” is no reason why I should find fault!
Dickens takes the horse, the eagle and the elephant and makes an animal of his own. He rubs up the feathers, places the tail at a fierce angle, makes the glass eyes glare, and you are ready to swear that the thing is alive.
By rummaging over the commercial world you can collect the harshness, greed, avarice, selfishness and vanity from a thousand men. With these sins you can, if you are very skilful, construct a Ralph Nickleby, a Scrooge, a Jonas Chuzzlewit, an Alderman Cute, a Mr. Murdstone, a Bounderby or a Gradgrind at will.
A little more pride, a trifle less hypocrisy, a molecule extra of untruth, and flavor with this fault or that, and your man is ready to place up against the fence to dry.
Then you can make a collection of all the ridiculous traits–the whims, silly pride, foibles, hopes founded on nothing and dreams touched with moonshine–and you make a Micawber. Put in a dash of assurance and a good thimbleful of hypocrisy, and Pecksniff is the product. Leave out the assurance, replacing it with cowardice, and the result is Doctor Chillip or Uriah Heap. Muddle the whole with stupidity, and Bumble comes forth.
Then, for the good people, collect the virtues and season to suit the taste and we have the Cheeryble Brothers, Paul Dombey or Little Nell. They have no development, therefore no history–the circumstances under which you meet them vary, that’s all. They are people the like of whom are never seen on land or sea.
Little Nell is good all day long, while live children are good for only five minutes at a time. The recurrence with which these five-minute periods return determines whether the child is “good” or “bad.” In the intervals the restless little feet stray into flowerbeds; stand on chairs so that grimy, dimpled hands may reach forbidden jam; run and romp in pure joyous innocence, or kick spitefully at authority. Then the little fellow may go to sleep, smile in his dreams so that mamma says angels are talking to him (nurse says wind on the stomach); when he awakens the five-minute good spell returns.
Men are only grown-up children. They are cheerful after breakfast, cross at night. Houses, lands, barns, railroads, churches, books, racetracks are the playthings with which they amuse themselves until they grow tired, and Death, the kind old nurse, puts them to sleep.
So a man on earth is good or bad as mood moves him; in color his acts are seldom pure white, neither are they wholly black, but generally of a steel-gray. Caprice, temper, accident, all act upon him. The North Wind of hate, the Simoon of Jealousy, the Cyclone of Passion beat and buffet him. Pilots strong and pilots cowardly stand at the helm by turn. But sometimes the South Wind softly blows, the sun comes out by day, the stars at night: friendship holds the rudder firm, and love makes all secure.
Such is the life of man–a voyage on life’s unresting sea; but Dickens knows it not. Esther is always good, Fagin is always bad, Bumble is always pompous, and Scrooge is always–Scrooge. At no Dickens’ party do you ever mistake Cheeryble for Carker; yet in real life Carker is Carker