knees, I made shift to limp along, bent almost double, and ended by sitting down for a couple of hours, and looking about me, in a country which would have seemed dreary enough, I suppose, to any one but a freshly-liberated captive, such as I was. At last I got up and limped on, stiffer than ever from my rest, when a gig drove past me towards Cambridge, drawn by a stout cob, and driven by a tall, fat, jolly-looking farmer, who stared at me as he passed, went on, looked back, slackened his pace, looked back again, and at last came to a dead stop, and hailed me in a broad nasal dialect–
“Whor be ganging, then, boh?”
“To Cambridge.”
“Thew’st na git there that gate. Be’est thee honest man?”
“I hope so,” said I, somewhat indignantly.
“What’s trade?”
“A tailor,” I said.
“Tailor!–guide us! Tailor a-tramp? Barn’t accoostomed to tramp, then?”
“I never was out of London before,” said I, meekly–for I was too worn-out to be cross–lengthy and impertinent as this cross-examination seemed.
“Oi’ll gie thee lift; dee yow joomp in. Gae on, powney! Tailor, then! Oh! ah! tailor, saith he.”
I obeyed most thankfully, and sat crouched together, looking up out of the corner of my eyes at the huge tower of broad-cloth by my side, and comparing the two red shoulders of mutton which held the reins, with my own wasted, white, woman-like fingers.
I found the old gentleman most inquisitive. He drew out of me all my story–questioned me about the way “Lunnon folks” lived, and whether they got ony shooting or “pattening”–whereby I found he meant skating–and broke in, every now and then, with ejaculations of childish wonder, and clumsy sympathy, on my accounts of London labour and London misery.
“Oh, father, father!–I wonders they bears it. Us’n in the fens wouldn’t stand that likes. They’d roit, and roit, and roit, and tak’ oot the dook-gunes to un–they would, as they did five-and-twenty year agone. Never to goo ayond the housen!–never to go ayond the housen! Kill me in a three months, that would–bor’, then!”
“Are you a farmer?” I asked, at last, thinking that my turn for questioning was come.
“I bean’t varmer; I be yooman born. Never paid rent in moy life, nor never wool. I farms my own land, and my vathers avore me, this ever so mony hoondred year. I’ve got the swoord of ’em to home, and the helmet that they fut with into the wars, then when they chopped off the king’s head–what was the name of um?”
“Charles the First?”
“Ees–that’s the booy. We was Parliament side–true Britons all we was, down into the fens, and Oliver Cromwell, as dug Botsham lode, to the head of us. Yow coom down to Metholl, and I’ll shaw ye a country. I’ll shaw ‘ee some’at like bullocks to call, and some’at like a field o’ beans–I wool,–none o’ this here darned ups and downs o’ hills” (though the country through which we drove was flat enough, I should have thought, to please any one), “to shake a body’s victuals out of his inwards–all so flat as a barn’s floor, for vorty mile on end–there’s the country to live in!–and vour sons–or was vour on ’em–every one on ’em fifteen stone in his shoes, to patten again’ any man from Whit’sea Mere to Denver Sluice, for twenty pounds o’ gold; and there’s the money to lay down, and let the man as dare cover it, down with his money, and on wi’ his pattens, thirteen-inch runners, down the wind, again’ either a one o’ the bairns!”
And he jingled in his pockets a heavy bag of gold, and winked, and chuckled, and then suddenly checking himself, repeated in a sad, dubious tone, two or three times, “Vour on ’em there was–vour on ’em there was;” and relieved his feelings by springing the pony into a canter till he came to a public-house, where he pulled up, called for a pot of hot ale, and insisted on treating me. I assured him that I never drank fermented liquors.
“Aw? Eh? How can yow do that then? Die o’ cowd i’ the fen, that gate, yow would. Love ye then! they as dinnot tak’ spirits down thor, tak’ their pennord o’ elevation, then–women-folk especial.”
“What’s elevation?”
“Oh! ho! ho!–yow goo into druggist’s shop o’ market-day, into Cambridge, and you’ll see the little boxes, doozens and doozens, a’ ready on the counter; and never a ven-man’s wife goo by, but what calls in for her pennord o’ elevation, to last her out the week. Oh! ho! ho! Well, it keeps women-folk quiet, it do; and it’s mortal good agin ago pains.”
“But what is it?”
“Opium, bor’ alive, opium!”
“But doesn’t it ruin their health? I should think it the very worst sort of drunkenness.”
“Ow, well, yow moi soy that-mak’th ’em cruel thin then, it do; but what can bodies do i’ th’ago? Bot it’s a bad thing, it is. Harken yow to me. Didst ever know one called Porter, to yowr trade?”
I thought a little, and recollected a man of that name, who had worked with us a year or two before–a great friend of a certain scatter-brained Irish lad, brother of Crossthwaite’s wife.
“Well, I did once, but I have lost sight of him twelve months, or more.”
The old man faced sharp round on me, swinging the little gig almost over, and then twisted himself back again, and put on a true farmer-like look of dogged, stolid reserve. We rolled on a few minutes in silence.
“Dee yow consider, now, that a mon mought be lost, like, into Lunnon?”
“How lost?”
“Why, yow told o’ they sweaters–dee yow think a mon might get in wi’ one o’ they, and they that mought be looking for un not to vind un?”
“I do, indeed. There was a friend of that man Porter got turned away from our shop, because he wouldn’t pay some tyrannical fine for being saucy, as they called it, to the shopman; and he went to a sweater’s–and then to another; and his friends have been tracking him up and down this six months, and can hear no news of him.”
“Aw! guide us! And what’n, think yow, be gone wi’ un?”
“I am afraid he has got into one of those dens, and has pawned his clothes, as dozens of them do, for food, and so can’t get out.”
“Pawned his clothes for victuals! To think o’ that, noo! But if he had work, can’t he get victuals?”
“Oh!” I said, “there’s many a man who, after working seventeen or eighteen hours a day, Sundays and all, without even time to take off his clothes, finds himself brought in in debt to his tyrant at the week’s end. And if he gets no work, the villain won’t let him leave the house; he has to stay there starving, on the chance of an hour’s job. I tell you, I’ve known half a dozen men imprisoned in that way, in a little dungeon of a garret, where they had hardly room to stand upright, and only just space to sit and work between their beds, without breathing the fresh air, or seeing God’s sun, for months together, with no victuals but a few slices of bread-and-butter, and a little slop of tea, twice a day, till they were starved to the very bone.”
“Oh, my God! my God!” said the old man, in a voice which had a deeper tone of feeling than mere sympathy with others’ sorrow was likely to have produced. There was evidently something behind all these inquiries of his. I longed to ask him if his name, too, was not Porter.
“Aw yow knawn Billy Porter? What was a like? Tell me, now–what was a like, in the Lord’s name! what was a like unto?”
“Very tall and bony,” I answered.
“Ah! sax feet, and more? and a yard across?–but a was starved, a was a’ thin, though, maybe, when yow sawn un?–and beautiful fine hair, hadn’t a, like a lass’s?”
“The man I knew had red hair,” quoth I.
“Ow, ay, an’ that it wor, red as a rising sun, and the curls of un like gowlden guineas! And thou knew’st Billy Porter! To think o’ that, noo.”–
Another long silence.
“Could you find un, dee yow think, noo, into Lunnon? Suppose, now, there was a mon ‘ud gie–may be five pund–ten pund–twenty pund, by * * *–twenty pund down, for to ha’ him brocht home safe and soun’–Could yow do’t, bor’? I zay, could yow do’t?”
“I could do it as well without the money as with, if I could do it at all. But have you no guess as to where he is?”
He shook his head sadly.
“We–that’s to zay, they as wants un–hav’n’t heerd tell of un vor this three year–three year coom Whitsuntide as ever was–” And he wiped his eyes with his cuff.
“If you will tell me all about him, and where he was last heard of, I will do all I can to find him.”
“Will ye, noo? will ye? The Lord bless ye for zaying that.” And he grasped my hand in his great iron fist, and fairly burst out crying.
“Was he a relation of yours?” I asked, gently.
“My bairn–my bairn–my eldest bairn. Dinnot yow ax me no moor–dinnot then, bor’. Gie on, yow powney, and yow goo leuk vor un.”
Another long silence.
“I’ve a been to Lunnon, looking vor un.”
Another silence.
“I went up and down, up and down, day and night, day and night, to all pot-houses as I could zee; vor, says I, he was a’ways a main chap to drink, he was. Oh, deery me! and I never cot zight on un–and noo I be most spent, I be.”–
And he pulled up at another public-house, and tried this time a glass of brandy. He stopped, I really think, at every inn between that place and Cambridge, and at each tried some fresh compound; but his head seemed, from habit, utterly fire-proof.
At last, we neared Cambridge, and began to pass groups of gay horsemen, and then those strange caps and gowns–ugly and unmeaning remnant of obsolete fashion.
The old man insisted on driving me up to the gate of * * * College, and there dropped me, after I had given him my address, entreating me to “vind the bairn, and coom to zee him down to Metholl. But dinnot goo ax for Farmer Porter–they’s all Porters there away. Yow ax for Wooden-house Bob–that’s me; and if I barn’t to home, ax for Mucky Billy–that’s my brawther–we’re all gotten our names down to ven; and if he barn’t to home, yow ax for Frog-hall–that’s where my sister do live; and they’ll all veed ye, and lodge ye, and welcome come. We be all like one, doon in the ven; and do ye, do ye, vind my bairn!” And he trundled on, down the narrow street.
I was soon directed, by various smart-looking servants, to my cousin’s rooms; and after a few mistakes, and wandering up and down noble courts and cloisters, swarming with gay young men, whose jaunty air and dress seemed strangely out of keeping with the stem antique solemnity of the Gothic buildings around, I espied my cousin’s name over a door; and, uncertain how he might receive me, I gave a gentle, half-apologetic knock, which, was answered by a loud “Come in!” and I entered on a scene, even more incongruous than anything I had seen outside.
“If we can only keep away from Jesus as far as the corner, I don’t care.”
“If we don’t run into that first Trinity before the willows, I shall care with a vengeance.”
“If we don’t it’s a pity,” said my cousin. “Wadham ran up by the side of that first Trinity yesterday, and he said that they were as well gruelled as so many posters, before they got to the stile.”
This unintelligible, and to my inexperienced ears, irreverent conversation, proceeded from half a dozen powerful young men, in low-crowned sailors’ hats and flannel trousers, some in striped jerseys, some in shooting-jackets, some smoking cigars, some beating up eggs in sherry; while my cousin, dressed like “a fancy waterman,” sat on the back of a sofa, puffing away at a huge meerschaum.
“Alton! why, what wind on earth has blown you here?”
By the tone, the words seemed rather an inquiry as to what wind would be kind enough to blow me back again. But he recovered his self-possession in a moment.
“Delighted to see you! Where’s your portmanteau? Oh–left it at the Bull! Ah! I see. Very well, we’ll send the gyp for it in a minute, and order some luncheon. We’re just going down to the boat-race. Sorry I can’t stop, but we shall all be fined–not a moment to lose. I’ll send you in luncheon as I go through the butteries; then, perhaps, you’d like to come down and see the race. Ask the gyp to tell you the way. Now, then, follow your noble captain, gentlemen–to glory and a supper.” And he bustled out with his crew.
While I was staring about the room, at the jumble of Greek books, boxing-gloves, and luscious prints of pretty women, a shrewd-faced, smart man entered, much better dressed than myself.
“What would you like, sir? Ox-tail soup, sir, or gravy-soup, sir? Stilton cheese, sir, or Cheshire, sir? Old Stilton, sir, just now.”
Fearing lest many words might betray my rank–and, strange to say, though I should not have been afraid of confessing myself an artisan before the “gentlemen” who had just left the room, I was ashamed to have my low estate discovered, and talked over with his compeers, by the flunkey who waited on them–I answered, “Anything–I really don’t care,” in as aristocratic and off-hand a tone as I could assume.
“Porter or ale, sir?”
“Water,” without a “thank you,” I am ashamed to say for I was not at that time quite sure whether it was well-bred to be civil to servants.
The man vanished, and reappeared with a savoury luncheon, silver forks, snowy napkins, smart plates–I felt really quite a gentleman.
He gave me full directions as to my “way to the boats, sir;” and I started out much refreshed; passed through back streets, dingy, dirty, and profligate-looking enough; out upon wide meadows, fringed with enormous elms; across a ferry; through a pleasant village, with its old grey church and spire; by the side of a sluggish river, alive with wherries. I had walked down some mile or so, and just as I heard a cannon, as I thought, fire at some distance, and wondered at its meaning, I came to a sudden bend of the river, with a church-tower hanging over the stream on the opposite bank, a knot of tall poplars, weeping willows, rich lawns, sloping down to the water’s side, gay with bonnets and shawls; while, along the edge of the stream, light, gaudily-painted boats apparently waited for the race,–altogether the most brilliant and graceful group of scenery which I had beheld in my little travels. I stopped to gaze; and among the ladies on the lawn opposite, caught sight of a figure–my heart leapt into my mouth! Was it she at last? It was too far to distinguish features; the dress was altogether different–but was it not she? I saw her move across the lawn, and take the arm of a tall, venerable-looking man; and his dress was the same as that of the Dean, at the Dulwich Gallery–was it? was it not? To have found her, and a river between us! It was ludicrously miserable–miserably ludicrous. Oh, that accursed river, which debarred me from certainty, from bliss! I would have plunged across–but there were three objections–first, that I could not swim; next, what could I do when I had crossed? and thirdly, it might not be she after all.
And yet I was certain–instinctively certain–that it was she, the idol of my imagination for years. If I could not see her features under that little white bonnet, I could imagine them there; they flashed up in my memory as fresh as ever. Did she remember my features, as I did hers? Would she know me again? Had she ever even thought of me, from that day to this? Fool! But there I stood, fascinated, gazing across the river, heedless of the racing-boats, and the crowd, and the roar that was rushing up to me at the rate of ten miles an hour, and in a moment more, had caught me, and swept me away with it, whether I would or not, along the towing-path, by the side of the foremost boats.
And yet, after a few moments, I ceased to wonder either at the Cambridge passion for boat-racing, or at the excitement of the spectators. “_Honi soit qui mal y pense_.” It was a noble sport–a sight such as could only be seen in England–some hundred of young men, who might, if they had chosen, been lounging effeminately about the streets, subjecting themselves voluntarily to that intense exertion, for the mere pleasure of toil. The true English stuff came out there; I felt that, in spite of all my prejudices–the stuff which has held Gibraltar and conquered at Waterloo–which has created a Birmingham and a Manchester, and colonized every quarter of the globe–that grim, earnest, stubborn energy, which, since the days of the old Romans, the English possess alone of all the nations of the earth. I was as proud of the gallant young fellows as if they had been my brothers–of their courage and endurance (for one could see that it was no child’s-play, from the pale faces, and panting lips), their strength and activity, so fierce and yet so cultivated, smooth, harmonious, as oar kept time with oar, and every back rose and fell in concert–and felt my soul stirred up to a sort of sweet madness, not merely by the shouts and cheers of the mob around me, but by the loud fierce pulse of the rowlocks, the swift whispering rush of the long snake-like eight oars, the swirl and gurgle of the water in their wake, the grim, breathless silence of the straining rowers. My blood boiled over, and fierce tears swelled into my eyes; for I, too, was a man, and an Englishman; and when I caught sight of my cousin, pulling stroke to the second boat in the long line, with set teeth and flashing eyes, the great muscles on his bare arms springing up into knots at every rapid stroke, I ran and shouted among the maddest and the foremost.
But I soon tired, and, footsore as I was, began to find my strength fail me. I tried to drop behind, but found it impossible in the press. At last, quite out of breath, I stopped; and instantly received a heavy blow from behind, which threw me on my face; and a fierce voice shouted in my ear, “Confound you, sir! don’t you know better than to do that?” I looked up, and saw a man twice as big as myself sprawling over me, headlong down the bank, toward the river, whither I followed him, but alas! not on my feet, but rolling head over heels. On the very brink he stuck his heels into the turf, and stopped dead, amid a shout of, “Well saved, Lynedale!” I did not stop; but rolled into some two-feet water, amid the laughter and shouts of the men.
I scrambled out, and limped on, shaking with wet and pain, till I was stopped by a crowd which filled the towing-path. An eight-oar lay under the bank, and the men on shore were cheering and praising those in the boat for having “bumped,” which word I already understood to mean, winning a race.
Among them, close to me, was the tall man who had upset me; and a very handsome, high-bred looking man he was. I tried to slip by, but he recognized me instantly, and spoke.
“I hope I didn’t hurt you much, Really, when I spoke so sharply, I did not see that you were not a gownsman!”
The speech, as I suppose now, was meant courteously enough. It indicated that though he might allow himself liberties with men of his own class, he was too well bred to do so with me. But in my anger I saw nothing but the words, “not a gownsman.” Why should he see that I was not a gownsman? Because I was shabbier?–(and my clothes, over and above the ducking they had had, were shabby); or more plebeian in appearance (whatsoever that may mean)? or wanted something else, which the rest had about them, and I had not? Why should he know that I was not a gownsman? I did not wish, of course, to be a gentleman, and an aristocrat; but I was nettled, nevertheless, at not being mistaken for one; and answered, sharply enough–
“No matter whether I am hurt or not. It serves me right for getting among you cursed aristocrats.”
“Box the cad’s ears, Lord Lynedale,” said a dirty fellow with a long pole–a cad himself, I should have thought.
“Let him go home and ask his mammy to hang him out to dry,” said another.
The lord (for so I understood he was) looked at me with an air of surprise and amusement, which may have been good-natured enough in him, but did not increase the good-nature in me.
“Tut, tut, my good fellow. I really am very sorry for having upset you. Here’s half-a-crown to cover damages.”
“Better give it me than a muff like that,” quoth he of the long pole; while I answered, surlily enough, that I wanted neither him nor his money, and burst through the crowd toward Cambridge. I was so shabby and plebeian, then, that people actually dare offer me money! Intolerable!
The reader may say that I was in a very unwholesome and unreasonable frame of mind.
So I was. And so would he have been in my place.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LOST IDOL FOUND.
On my return, I found my cousin already at home, in high spirits at having, as he informed me, “bumped the first Trinity.” I excused myself for my dripping state, simply by saying that I had slipped into the river. To tell him the whole of the story, while the fancied insult still rankled fresh in me, was really too disagreeable both to my memory and my pride.
Then came the question, “What had brought me to Cambridge?” I told him all, and he seemed honestly to sympathize with my misfortunes.
“Never mind; we’ll make it all right somehow. Those poems of yours–you must let me have them and look over them; and I dare say I shall persuade the governor to do something with them. After all, it’s no loss for you; you couldn’t have got on tailoring–much too sharp a fellow for that;–you ought to be at college, if one could only get you there. These sizarships, now, were meant for–just such cases as yours–clever fellows who could not afford to educate themselves; if we could only help you to one of them, now–
“You forget that in that case,” said I, with something like a sigh, “I should have to become a member of the Church of England.”
“Why, no; not exactly. Though, of course, if you want to get all out of the university which you ought to get, you must do so at last.”
“And pretend to believe what I do not; for the sake of deserting my own class, and pandering to the very aristocrats, whom–“
“Hullo!” and he jumped with a hoarse laugh. “Stop that till I see whether the door is sported. Why, you silly fellow, what harm have the aristocrats, as you call them, ever done you? Are they not doing you good at this moment? Are you not, by virtue of their aristocratic institutions, nearer having your poems published, your genius recognized, etc. etc., than ever you were before?”
“Aristocrats? Then you call yourself one?”
“No, Alton, my boy; not yet,” said he quietly and knowingly. “Not yet: but I have chosen the right road, and shall end at the road’s end; and I advise you–for really, as my cousin, I wish you all success, even for the mere credit of the family, to choose the same road likewise.”
“What road?”
“Come up to Cambridge, by hook or by crook, and then take orders.”
I laughed scornfully.
“My good cousin, it is the only method yet discovered for turning a snob (as I am, or was) into a gentleman; except putting him into a heavy cavalry regiment. My brother, who has no brains, preferred the latter method. I, who flatter myself that I have some, have taken the former.” The thought was new and astonishing to me, and I looked at him in silence while he ran on–
“If you are once a parson, all is safe. Be you who you may before, from that moment you are a gentleman. No one will offer an insult. You are good enough for any man’s society. You can dine at any nobleman’s table. You can be friend, confidant, father confessor, if you like, to the highest women in the land; and if you have person, manners, and common sense, marry one of them into the bargain, Alton, my boy.”
“And it is for that that you will sell your soul–to become a hanger-on of the upper classes, in sloth and luxury?”
“Sloth and luxury? Stuff and nonsense! I tell you that after I have taken orders, I shall have years and years of hard work before me; continual drudgery of serving tables, managing charities, visiting, preaching, from morning till night, and after that often from night to morning again. Enough to wear out any but a tough constitution, as I trust mine is. Work, Alton, and hard work, is the only way now-a-days to rise in the Church, as in other professions. My father can buy me a living some day: but he can’t buy me success, notoriety, social position, power–” and he stopped suddenly, as if he had been on the point of saying something more which should not have been said.
“And this,” I said, “is your idea of a vocation for the sacred ministry? It is for this, that you, brought up a dissenter, have gone over to the Church of England?”
“And how do you know”–and his whole tone of voice changed instantly into what was meant, I suppose, for a gentle seriousness and reverent suavity–“that I am not a sincere member of the Church of England? How do you know that I may not have loftier plans and ideas, though I may not choose to parade them to everyone, and give that which is holy to the dogs?”
“I am the dog, then?” I asked, half amused, for I was too curious about his state of mind to be angry.
“Not at all, my dear fellow. But those great men to whom we (or at least I) owe our conversion to the true Church, always tell us (and you will feel yourself how right they are) not to parade religious feelings; to look upon them as sacred things, to be treated with that due reserve which springs from real reverence. You know, as well as I, whether that is the fashion of the body in which we were, alas! brought up. You know, as well as I, whether the religious conversation of that body has heightened your respect for sacred things.”
“I do, too well.” And I thought of Mr. Wigginton and my mother’s tea parties.
“I dare say the vulgarity of that school has, ere now, shaken your faith in all that was holy?”
I was very near confessing that it had: but a feeling came over me, I knew not why, that my cousin would have been glad to get me into his power, and would therefore have welcomed a confession of infidelity. So I held my tongue.
“I can confess,” he said, in the most confidential tone, “that it had for a time that effect on me. I have confessed it, ere now, and shall again and again, I trust. But I shudder to think of what I might have been believing or disbelieving now, if I had not in a happy hour fallen in with Mr. Newman’s sermons, and learnt from them, and from his disciples, what the Church of England really was; not Protestant, no; but Catholic in the deepest and highest sense.”
“So you are one of these new Tractarians? You do not seem to have adopted yet the ascetic mode of life, which I hear they praise up so highly,”
“My dear Alton, if you have read, as you have, your Bible, you will recollect a text which tells you not to appear to men to fast. What I do or do not do in the way of self-denial, unless I were actually profligate, which I give you my sacred honour I am not, must be a matter between Heaven and myself.”
There was no denying that truth; but the longer my cousin talked the less I trusted in him–I had almost said, the less I believed him. Ever since the tone of his voice had changed so suddenly, I liked him less than when he was honestly blurting out his coarse and selfish ambition. I do not think he was a hypocrite. I think he believed what he said, as strongly as he could believe anything. He proved afterwards that he did so, as far as man can judge man, by severe and diligent parish work: but I cannot help doubting at times, if that man ever knew what believing meant. God forgive him! In that, he is no worse than hundreds more who have never felt the burning and shining flame of intense conviction, of some truth rooted in the inmost recesses of the soul, by which a man must live, for which he would not fear to die.
And therefore I listened to him dully and carelessly; I did not care to bring objections, which arose thick and fast, to everything he said. He tried to assure me–and did so with a great deal of cleverness–that this Tractarian movement was not really an aristocratic, but a democratic one; that the Catholic Church had been in all ages the Church of the poor; that the clergy were commissioned by Heaven to vindicate the rights of the people, and to stand between them and the tyranny of Mammon. I did not care to answer him that the “Catholic Church” had always been a Church of slaves, and not of free men; that the clergy had in every age been the enemies of light, of liberty; the oppressors of their flocks; and that to exalt a sacerdotal caste over other aristocracies, whether of birth or wealth, was merely to change our tyrants. When he told me that a clergyman of the Established Church, if he took up the cause of the working classes, might be the boldest and surest of all allies, just because, being established, and certain of his income, he cared not one sixpence what he said to any man alive, I did not care to answer him, as I might–And more shame upon the clergy that, having the safe vantage-ground which you describe, they dare not use it like men in a good cause, and speak their minds, if forsooth no one can stop them from so doing. In fact, I was distrustful, which I had a right to be, and envious also; but if I had a right to be that, I was certainly not wise, nor is any man, in exercising the said dangerous right as I did, and envying my cousin and every man in Cambridge.
But that evening, understanding that a boating supper, or some jubilation over my cousin’s victory, was to take place in his rooms, I asked leave to absent myself–and I do not think my cousin felt much regret at giving me leave–and wandered up and down the King’s Parade, watching the tall gables of King’s College Chapel, and the classic front of the Senate House, and the stately tower of St. Mary’s, as they stood, stern and silent, bathed in the still glory of the moonlight, and contrasting bitterly the lot of those who were educated under their shadow to the lot which had befallen me. [Footnote: It must be remembered that these impressions of, and comments on the universities, are not my own. They are simply what clever working men thought about them from 1845 to 1850; a period at which I had the fullest opportunities for knowing the thoughts of working men.]
“Noble buildings!” I said to myself, “and noble institutions! given freely to the people, by those who loved the people, and the Saviour who died for them. They gave us what they had, those mediaeval founders: whatsoever narrowness of mind or superstition defiled their gift was not their fault, but the fault of their whole age. The best they knew they imparted freely, and God will reward them for it. To monopolize those institutions for the rich, as is done now, is to violate both the spirit and the letter of the foundations; to restrict their studies to the limits of middle-aged Romanism, their conditions of admission to those fixed at the Reformation, is but a shade less wrongful. The letter is kept–the spirit is thrown away. You refuse to admit any who are not members of the Church of England, say, rather, any who will not sign the dogmas of the Church of England, whether they believe a word of them or not. Useless formalism! which lets through the reckless, the profligate, the ignorant, the hypocritical: and only excludes the honest and the conscientious, and the mass of the intellectual working men. And whose fault is it that THEY are not members of the Church of England? Whose fault is it, I ask? Your predecessors neglected the lower orders, till they have ceased to reverence either you or your doctrines, you confess that, among yourselves, freely enough. You throw the blame of the present wide-spread dislike to the Church of England on her sins during ‘the godless eighteenth century.’ Be it so. Why are those sins to be visited on us? Why are we to be shut out from the universities, which were founded for us, because you have let us grow up, by millions, heathens and infidels, as you call us? Take away your subterfuge! It is not merely because we are bad churchmen that you exclude us, else you would be crowding your colleges, now, with the talented poor of the agricultural districts, who, as you say, remain faithful to the church of their fathers. But are there six labourers’ sons educating in the universities at this moment! No! the real reason for our exclusion, churchmen or not, is, because we are _poor_–because we cannot pay your exorbitant fees, often, as in the case of bachelors of arts, exacted for tuition which is never given, and residence which is not permitted–because we could not support the extravagance which you not only permit, but encourage–because by your own unblushing confession, it insures the university ‘the support of the aristocracy.'”
“But, on religious points, at least, you must abide by the statutes of the university.”
Strange argument, truly, to be urged literally by English Protestants in possession of Roman Catholic bequests! If that be true in the letter, as well as in the spirit, you should have given place long ago to the Dominicans and the Franciscans. In the spirit it is true, and the Reformers acted on it when they rightly converted the universities to the uses of the new faith. They carried out the spirit of the founders’ statutes by making the universities as good as they could be, and letting them share in the new light of the Elizabethan age. But was the sum of knowledge, human and divine, perfected at the Reformation? Who gave the Reformers, or you, who call yourselves their representatives, a right to say to the mind of man, and to the teaching of God’s Spirit, “Hitherto, and no farther”? Society and mankind, the children of the Supreme, will not stop growing for your dogmas–much less for your vested interests; and the righteous law of mingled development and renovation, applied in the sixteenth century, must be reapplied in the nineteenth; while the spirits of the founders, now purged from the superstitions and ignorances of their age, shall smile from heaven, and say, “So would we have had it, if we had lived in the great nineteenth century, into which it has been your privilege to be born.”
But such thoughts soon passed away. The image which I had seen that afternoon upon the river banks had awakened imperiously the frantic longings of past years; and now it reascended its ancient throne, and tyrannously drove forth every other object, to keep me alone with its own tantalizing and torturing beauty. I did not think about her–No; I only stupidly and steadfastly stared at her with my whole soul and imagination, through that long sleepless night; and, in spite of the fatigue of my journey, and the stiffness proceeding from my fall and wetting, I lay tossing till the early sun poured into my bedroom window. Then I arose, dressed myself, and went out to wander up and down the streets, gazing at one splendid building after another, till I found the gates of King’s College open. I entered eagerly, through a porch which, to my untutored taste, seemed gorgeous enough to form the entrance to a fairy palace, and stood in the quadrangle, riveted to the spot by the magnificence of the huge chapel on the right.
If I had admired it the night before, I felt inclined to worship it this morning, as I saw the lofty buttresses and spires, fretted with all their gorgeous carving, and “storied windows richly dight,” sleeping in the glare of the newly-risen sun, and throwing their long shadows due westward down the sloping lawn, and across the river which dimpled and gleamed below, till it was lost among the towering masses of crisp elms and rose-garlanded chestnuts in the rich gardens beyond.
Was I delighted? Yes–and yet no. There is a painful feeling in seeing anything magnificent which one cannot understand. And perhaps it was a morbid sensitiveness, but the feeling was strong upon me that I was an interloper there–out of harmony with the scene and the system which had created it; that I might be an object of unpleasant curiosity, perhaps of scorn (for I had not forgotten the nobleman at the boat-race), amid those monuments of learned luxury. Perhaps, on the other hand, it was only from the instinct which makes us seek for solitude under the pressure of intense emotions, when we have neither language to express them to ourselves, nor loved one in whose silent eyes we may read kindred feelings–a sympathy which wants no words. Whatever the cause was, when a party of men, in their caps and gowns, approached me down the dark avenue which led into the country, I was glad to shrink for concealment behind the weeping-willow at the foot of the bridge, and slink off unobserved to breakfast with my cousin.
We had just finished breakfast, my cousin was lighting his meerschaum, when a tall figure passed the window, and the taller of the noblemen, whom I had seen at the boat-race, entered the room with a packet of papers in his hand.
“Here, Locule mi! my pocket-book–or rather, to stretch a bad pun till it bursts, my pocket-dictionary–I require the aid of your benevolently-squandered talents for the correction of these proofs. I am, as usual, both idle and busy this morning; so draw pen, and set to work for me.”
“I am exceedingly sorry, my lord,” answered George, in his most obsequious tone, “but I must work this morning with all my might. Last night, recollect, was given to triumph, Bacchus, and idleness.”
“Then find some one who will do them for me, my Ulysses polumechane, polutrope, panurge.”
“I shall be most happy (with a half-frown and a wince) to play Panurge to your lordship’s Pantagruel, on board the new yacht.”
“Oh, I am perfect in that character, I suppose? And is she after all, like Pantagruel’s ship, to be loaded with hemp? Well, we must try two or three milder cargoes first. But come, find me some starving genius–some graeculus esuriens–“
“Who will ascend to the heaven of your lordship’s eloquence for the bidding?”
“Five shillings a sheet–there will be about two of them, I think, in the pamphlet.”
“May I take the liberty of recommending my cousin here?”
“Your cousin?” And he turned to me, who had been examining with a sad and envious eye the contents of the bookshelves. Our eyes met, and first a faint blush, and then a smile of recognition, passed over his magnificent countenance.
“I think I had–I am ashamed that I cannot say the pleasure, of meeting him at the boat race yesterday.”
My cousin looked inquiringly and vexed at us both. The nobleman smiled.
“Oh, the fault was mine, not his.”
“I cannot think,” I answered, “that you have any reasons to remember with shame your own kindness and courtesy. As for me,” I went on bitterly, “I suppose a poor journeyman tailor, who ventures to look on at the sports of gentlemen, only deserves to be run over.”
“Sir,” he said, looking at me with a severe and searching glance, “your bitterness is pardonable–but not your sneer. You do not yourself think what you say, and you ought to know that I think it still less than yourself. If you intend your irony to be useful, you should keep it till you can use it courageously against the true offenders.”
I looked up at him fiercely enough, but the placid smile which had returned to his face disarmed me.
“Your class,” he went on, “blind yourselves and our class as much by wholesale denunciations of us, as we, alas! who should know better, do by wholesale denunciations of you. As you grow older, you will learn that there are exceptions to every rule.”
“And yet the exception proves the rule.”
“Most painfully true, sir. But that argument is two-edged. For instance, am I to consider it the exception or the rule, when I am told that you, a journeyman tailor, are able to correct these proofs for me?”
“Nearer the rule, I think, than you yet fancy.”
“You speak out boldly and well; but how can you judge what I may please to fancy? At all events, I will make trial of you. There are the proofs. Bring them to me by four o’clock this afternoon, and if they are well done, I will pay you more than I should do to the average hack-writer, for you will deserve more.”
I took the proofs; he turned to go, and by a side-look at George beckoned him out of the room. I heard a whispering in the passage; and I do not deny that my heart beat high with new hopes, as I caught unwillingly the words–
“Such a forehead!–such an eye!–such a contour of feature as that!–Locule mi–that boy ought not to be mending trousers.”
My cousin returned, half laughing, half angry.
“Alton, you fool, why did you let out that you were a snip?”
“I am not ashamed of my trade.”
“I am, then. However, you’ve done with it now; and if you can’t come the gentleman, you may as well come the rising genius. The self-educated dodge pays well just now; and after all, you’ve hooked his lordship–thank me for that. But you’ll never hold him, you impudent dog, if you pull so hard on him”–He went on, putting his hands into his coat-tail pockets, and sticking himself in front of the fire, like the Delphic Pythoness upon the sacred tripod, in hopes, I suppose, of some oracular afflatus–“You will never hold him, I say, if you pull so hard on him. You ought to ‘My lord’ him for months yet, at least. You know, my good fellow, you must take every possible care to pick up what good breeding you can, if I take the trouble to put you in the way of good society, and tell you where my private birds’-nests are, like the green schoolboy some poet or other talks of.”
“He is no lord of mine,” I answered, “in any sense of the word, and therefore I shall not call him so.”
“Upon my honour! here is a young gentleman who intends to rise in the world, and then commences by trying to walk through the first post he meets! Noodle! can’t you do like me, and get out of the carts’ way when they come by? If you intend to go ahead, you must just dodge in and out like a dog at a fair. ‘She stoops to conquer’ is my motto, and a precious good one too.”
“I have no wish to conquer Lord Lynedale, and so I shall not stoop to him.”
“I have, then; and to very good purpose, too. I am his whetstone, for polishing up that classical wit of his on, till he carries it into Parliament to astonish the country squires. He fancies himself a second Goethe, I hav’n’t forgot his hitting at me, before a large supper party, with a certain epigram of that old turkeycock’s about the whale having his unmentionable parasite–and the great man likewise. Whale, indeed! I bide my time, Alton, my boy–I bide my time; and then let your grand aristocrat look out! If he does not find the supposed whale-unmentionable a good stout holding harpoon, with a tough line to it, and a long one, it’s a pity, Alton my boy!”
And he burst into a coarse laugh, tossed himself down on the sofa, and re-lighted his meerschaum.
“He seemed to me,” I answered, “to have a peculiar courtesy and liberality of mind towards those below him in rank.”
“Oh! he had, had he? Now, I’ll just put you up to a dodge. He intends to come the Mirabeau–fancies his mantle has fallen on him–prays before the fellow’s bust, I believe, if one knew the truth, for a double portion of his spirit; and therefore it is a part of his game to ingratiate himself with all pot-boy-dom, while at heart he is as proud, exclusive an aristocrat, as ever wore nobleman’s hat. At all events, you may get something out of him, if you play your cards well–or, rather, help me to play mine; for I consider him as my property, and you only as my aide-de-camp.”
“I shall play no one’s cards,” I answered, sulkily. “I am doing work fairly, and shall be fairly paid for it, and keep my own independence.”
“Independence–hey-day! Have you forgotten that, after all, you are my–guest, to call it by the mildest term?”
“Do you upbraid me with that?” I said, starting up. “Do you expect me to live on your charity, on condition of doing your dirty work? You do not know me, sir. I leave your roof this instant!”
“You do not!” answered he, laughing loudly, as he sprang over the sofa, and set his back against the door. “Come, come, you Will-o’-the-Wisp, as full of flights, and fancies, and vagaries, as a sick old maid! can’t you see which side your bread is buttered? Sit down, I say! Don’t you know that I’m as good-natured a fellow as ever lived, although I do parade a little Gil Bias morality now and then, just for fun’s sake? Do you think I should be so open with it, if I meant anything very diabolic? There–sit down, and don’t go into King Cambyses’ vein, or Queen Hecuba’s tears either, which you seem inclined to do.”
“I know you have been very generous to me,” I said, penitently; “but a kindness becomes none when you are upbraided with it.”
“So say the copybooks–I deny it. At all events, I’ll say no more; and you shall sit down there, and write as still as a mouse till two, while I tackle this never-to-be-enough-by-unhappy-third-years’-men-execrated Griffin’s Optics.”
* * * * *
At four that afternoon, I knocked, proofs in hand, at the door of Lord Lynedale’s rooms in the King’s Parade. The door was opened by a little elderly groom, grey-coated, grey-gaitered, grey-haired, grey-visaged. He had the look of a respectable old family retainer, and his exquisitely neat groom’s dress gave him a sort of interest in my eyes. Class costumes, relics though they are of feudalism, carry a charm with them. They are symbolic, definitive; they bestow a personality on the wearer, which satisfies the mind, by enabling it instantly to classify him, to connect him with a thousand stories and associations; and to my young mind, the wiry, shrewd, honest, grim old serving-man seemed the incarnation of all the wonders of Newmarket, and the hunting-kennel, and the steeple-chase, of which I had read, with alternate admiration and contempt, in the newspapers. He ushered me in with a good breeding which surprised me;–without insolence to me, or servility to his master; both of which I had been taught to expect.
Lord Lynedale bade me very courteously sit down while he examined the proofs. I looked round the low-wainscoted apartment, with its narrow mullioned windows, in extreme curiosity. What a real nobleman’s abode could be like, was naturally worth examining, to one who had, all his life, heard of the aristocracy as of some mythic Titans–whether fiends or gods, being yet a doubtful point–altogether enshrined on “cloudy Olympus,” invisible to mortal ken. The shelves were gay with morocco, Russia leather, and gilding–not much used, as I thought, till my eye caught one of the gorgeously-bound volumes lying on the table in a loose cover of polished leather–a refinement of which poor I should never have dreamt. The walls were covered with prints, which soon turned my eyes from everything else, to range delighted over Landseers, Turners, Roberts’s Eastern sketches, the ancient Italian masters; and I recognized, with a sort of friendly affection, an old print of my favourite St. Sebastian, in the Dulwich Gallery. It brought back to my mind a thousand dreams, and a thousand sorrows. Would those dreams be ever realized? Might this new acquaintance possibly open some pathway towards their fulfilment?–some vista towards the attainment of a station where they would, at least, be less chimerical? And at that thought, my heart beat loud with hope. The room was choked up with chairs and tables, of all sorts of strange shapes and problematical uses. The floor was strewed with skins of bear, deer, and seal. In a corner lay hunting-whips, and fishing-rods, foils, boxing-gloves, and gun-cases; while over the chimney-piece, an array of rich Turkish pipes, all amber and enamel, contrasted curiously with quaint old swords and daggers–bronze classic casts, upon Gothic oak brackets, and fantastic scraps of continental carving. On the centre table, too, reigned the same rich profusion, or if you will, confusion–MSS., “Notes in Egypt,” “Goethe’s Walverwandschaften,” Murray’s Hand-books, and “Plato’s Republic.” What was there not there? And I chuckled inwardly, to see how _Bell’s Life in London_ and the _Ecclesiologist_ had, between them, got down “McCulloch on Taxation,” and were sitting, arm-in-arm, triumphantly astride of him. Everything in the room, even to the fragrant flowers in a German glass, spoke of a travelled and cultivated luxury–manifold tastes and powers of self-enjoyment and self-improvement, which, Heaven forgive me if I envied, as I looked upon them. If I, now, had had one-twentieth part of those books, prints, that experience of life, not to mention that physical strength and beauty, which stood towering there before the fire–so simple; so utterly unconscious of the innate nobleness and grace which shone out from every motion of those stately limbs and features–all the delicacy which blood can give, combined, as one does sometimes see, with the broad strength of the proletarian–so different from poor me!–and so different, too, as I recollected with perhaps a savage pleasure, from the miserable, stunted specimens of over-bred imbecility whom I had often passed in London! A strange question that of birth! and one in which the philosopher, in spite of himself, must come to democratic conclusions. For, after all, the physical and intellectual superiority of the high-born is only preserved, as it was in the old Norman times, by the continual practical abnegation of the very caste-lie on which they pride themselves–by continual renovation of their race, by intermarriage with the ranks below them. The blood of Odin flowed in the veins of Norman William; true–and so did the tanner’s of Falaise!
At last he looked up and spoke courteously–
“I’m afraid I have kept you long; but now, here is for your corrections, which are capital. I have really to thank you for a lesson in writing English.” And he put a sovereign into my hand.
“I am very sorry,” said I, “but I have no change.”
“Never mind that. Your work is well worth the money.”
“But,” I said, “you agreed with me for five shillings a sheet, and–I do not wish to be rude, but I cannot accept your kindness. We working men make a rule of abiding by our wages, and taking nothing which looks like–“
“Well, well–and a very good rule it is. I suppose, then, I must find out some way for you to earn more. Good afternoon.” And he motioned me out of the room, followed me down stairs, and turned off towards the College Gardens.
I wandered up and down, feeding my greedy eyes, till I found myself again upon the bridge where I had stood that morning, gazing with admiration and astonishment at a scene which I have often expected to see painted or described, and which, nevertheless, in spite of its unique magnificence, seems strangely overlooked by those who cater for the public taste, with pen and pencil. The vista of bridges, one after another spanning the stream; the long line of great monastic palaces, all unlike, and yet all in harmony, sloping down to the stream, with their trim lawns and ivied walls, their towers and buttresses; and opposite them, the range of rich gardens and noble timber-trees, dimly seen through which, at the end of the gorgeous river avenue, towered the lofty buildings of St. John’s. The whole scene, under the glow of a rich May afternoon, seemed to me a fragment out of the “Arabian Nights” or Spencer’s “Fairy Queen.” I leaned upon the parapet, and gazed, and gazed, so absorbed in wonder and enjoyment, that I was quite unconscious, for some time, that Lord Lynedale was standing by my side, engaged in the same employment. He was not alone. Hanging on his arm was a lady, whose face, it seemed to me, I ought to know. It certainly was one not to be easily forgotten. She was beautiful, but with the face and figure rather of a Juno than a Venus–dark, imperious, restless–the lips almost too firmly set, the brow almost too massive and projecting–a queen, rather to be feared than loved–but a queen still, as truly royal as the man into whose face she was looking up with eager admiration and delight, as he pointed out to her eloquently the several beauties of the landscape. Her dress was as plain as that of any Quaker; but the grace of its arrangement, of every line and fold, was enough, without the help of the heavy gold bracelet on her wrist, to proclaim her a fine lady; by which term, I wish to express the result of that perfect education in taste and manner, down to every gesture, which Heaven forbid that I, professing to be a poet, should undervalue. It is beautiful; and therefore I welcome it, in the name of the Author of all beauty. I value it so highly, that I would fain see it extend, not merely from Belgravia to the tradesman’s villa, but thence, as I believe it one day will, to the labourer’s hovel, and the needlewoman’s garret.
Half in bashfulness, half in the pride which shrinks from anything like intrusion, I was moving away; but the nobleman, recognising me with a smile and a nod, made some observation on the beauty of the scene before us. Before I could answer, however, I saw that his companion’s eyes were fixed intently on my face.
“Is this,” she said to Lord Lynedale, “the young person of whom you were speaking to me just now? I fancy that I recollect him, though, I dare say, he has forgotten me.”
If I had forgotten the face, that voice, so peculiarly rich, deep, and marked in its pronunciation of every syllable, recalled her instantly to my mind. It was the dark lady of the Dulwich Gallery!
“I met you, I think,” I said, “at the picture gallery at Dulwich, and you were kind enough, and–and some persons who were with you, to talk to me about a picture there.”
“Yes; Guido’s St. Sebastian. You seemed fond of reading then. I am glad to see you at college.”
I explained that I was not at college. That led to fresh gentle questions on her part, till I had given her all the leading points of my history. There was nothing in it of which I ought to have been ashamed.
She seemed to become more and more interested in my story, and her companion also.
“And have you tried to write? I recollect my uncle advising you to try a poem on St. Sebastian. It was spoken, perhaps, in jest; but it will not, I hope, have been labour lost, if you have taken it in earnest.”
“Yes–I have written on that and on other subjects, during the last few years.”
“Then, you must let us see them, if you have them with you. I think my uncle, Arthur, might like to look over them; and if they were fit for publication, he might be able to do something towards it.”
“At all events,” said Lord Lynedale, “a self-educated author is always interesting. Bring any of your poems, that you have with you, to the Eagle this afternoon, and leave them there for Dean Winnstay; and to-morrow morning, if you have nothing better to do, call there between ten and eleven o’clock.”
He wrote me down the dean’s address, and nodding a civil good morning, turned away with his queenly companion, while I stood gazing after him, wondering whether all noblemen and high-born ladies were like them in person and in spirit–a question which, in spite of many noble exceptions, some of them well known and appreciated by the working men, I am afraid must be answered in the negative.
I took my MSS. to the Eagle, and wandered out once more, instinctively, among those same magnificent trees at the back of the colleges, to enjoy the pleasing torment of expectation. “My uncle!” was he the same old man whom I had seen at the gallery; and if so, was Lillian with him? Delicious hope! And yet, what if she was with him–what to me? But yet I sat silent, dreaming, all the evening, and hurried early to bed–not to sleep, but to lie and dream on and on, and rise almost before light, eat no breakfast, and pace up and down, waiting impatiently for the hour at which I was to find out whether my dream, was true.
And it was true! The first object I saw, when I entered the room, was Lillian, looking more beautiful than ever. The child of sixteen had blossomed into the woman of twenty. The ivory and vermilion of the complexion had toned down together into still richer hues. The dark hazel eyes shone with a more liquid lustre. The figure had become more rounded, without losing a line of that fairy lightness, with which her light morning-dress, with its delicate French semi-tones of colour, gay and yet not gaudy, seemed to harmonize. The little plump jewelled hands–the transparent chestnut hair, banded round the beautiful oval masque–the tiny feet, which, as Suckling has it,
Underneath her petticoat
Like little mice peeped in and out–
I could have fallen down, fool that I was! and worshipped–what? I could not tell then, for I cannot tell even now.
The dean smiled recognition, bade me sit down, and disposed my papers, meditatively, on his knee. I obeyed him, trembling, choking–my eyes devouring my idol–forgetting why I had come–seeing nothing but her–listening for nothing but the opening of these lips. I believe the dean was some sentences deep in his oration, before I became conscious thereof.
“–And I think I may tell you, at once, that I have been very much surprised and gratified with them. They evince, on the whole, a far greater acquaintance with the English classic-models, and with the laws of rhyme and melody, than could have been expected from a young man of your class–_macte virtute puer_. Have you read any Latin?”
“A little.” And I went on staring at Lillian, who looked up, furtively, from her work, every now and then, to steal a glance at me, and set my poor heart thumping still more fiercely against my side.
“Very good; you will have the less trouble, then, in the preparation for college. You will find out for yourself, of course, the immense disadvantages of self-education. The fact is, my dear lord” (turning to Lord Lynedale), “it is only useful as an indication of a capability of being educated by others. One never opens a book written by working men, without shuddering at a hundred faults of style. However, there are some very tolerable attempts among these–especially the imitations of Milton’s ‘Comus.'”
Poor I had by no means intended them as imitations; but such, no doubt, they were.
“I am sorry to see that Shelley has had so much influence on your writing. He is a guide as irregular in taste, as unorthodox in doctrine; though there are some pretty things in him now and then. And you have caught his melody tolerably here, now–“
“Oh, that is such a sweet thing!” said Lillian. “Do you know, I read it over and over last night, and took it up-stairs with me. How very fond of beautiful things you must be, Mr. Locke, to be able to describe so passionately the longing after them.”
That voice once more! It intoxicated me, so that I hardly knew what I stammered out–something about working men having very few opportunities of indulging the taste for–I forget what. I believe I was on the point of running off into some absurd compliment, but I caught the dark lady’s warning eye on me.
“Ah, yes! I forgot. I dare say it must be a very stupid life. So little opportunity, as he says. What a pity he is a tailor, papa! Such an unimaginative employment! How delightful it would be to send him to college and make him a clergyman!”
Fool that I was! I fancied–what did I not fancy?–never seeing how that very “_he_” bespoke the indifference–the gulf between us. I was not a man–an equal; but a thing–a subject, who was to be talked over, and examined, and made into something like themselves, of their supreme and undeserved benevolence.
“Gently, gently, fair lady! We must not be as headlong as some people would kindly wish to be. If this young man really has a proper desire to rise into a higher station, and I find him a fit object to be assisted in that praiseworthy ambition, why, I think he ought to go to some training college; St. Mark’s, I should say, on the whole, might, by its strong Church principles, give the best antidote to any little remaining taint of _sansculottism_. You understand me, my lord? And, then, if he distinguished himself there, it would be time to think of getting him a sizarship.”
“Poor Pegasus in harness!” half smiled, half sighed, the dark lady.
“Just the sort of youth,” whispered Lord Lynedale, loud enough for me to hear, “to take out with us to the Mediterranean as secretary–s’il y avait la de la morale, of course–“
Yes–and of course, too, the tailor’s boy was not expected to understand French. But the most absurd thing was, how everybody, except perhaps the dark lady, seemed to take for granted that I felt myself exceedingly honoured, and must consider it, as a matter of course, the greatest possible stretch of kindness thus to talk me over, and settle everything for me, as if I was not a living soul, but a plant in a pot. Perhaps they were not unsupported by experience. I suppose too many of us would have thought it so; there are flunkeys in all ranks, and to spare. Perhaps the true absurdity was the way in which I sat, demented, inarticulate, staring at Lillian, and only caring for any word which seemed to augur a chance of seeing her again; instead of saying, as I felt, that I had no wish whatever to rise above my station; no intention whatever of being sent to training schools or colleges, or anywhere else at the expense of other people. And therefore it was that I submitted blindly, when the dean, who looked as kind, and was really, I believe, as kind as ever was human being, turned to me with a solemn authoritative voice–
“Well, my young friend, I must say that I am, on the whole, very much pleased with your performance. It corroborates, my dear lord, the assertion, for which I have been so often ridiculed, that there are many real men, capable of higher things, scattered up and down among the masses. Attend to me, sir!” (a hint which I suspect I very much wanted). “Now, recollect; if it should be hereafter in our power to assist your prospects in life, you must give up, once and for all, the bitter tone against the higher classes, which I am sorry to see in your MSS. As you know more of the world, you will find that the poor are not by any means as ill used as they are taught, in these days, to believe. The rich have their sorrows too–no one knows it better than I”–(and he played pensively with his gold pencil-case)–“and good and evil are pretty equally distributed among all ranks, by a just and merciful God. I advise you most earnestly, as you value your future success in life, to give up reading those unprincipled authors, whose aim is to excite the evil passions of the multitude; and to shut your ears betimes to the extravagant calumnies of demagogues, who make tools of enthusiastic and imaginative minds for their own selfish aggrandisement. Avoid politics; the workman has no more to do with them than the clergyman. We are told, on divine authority, to fear God and the king, and meddle not with those who are given to change. Rather put before yourself the example of such a man as the excellent Dr. Brown, one of the richest and most respected men of the university, with whom I hope to have the pleasure of dining this evening–and yet that man actually, for several years of his life, worked at a carpenter’s bench!”
I too had something to say about all that. I too knew something about demagogues and working men: but the sight of Lillian made me a coward; and I only sat silent as the thought flashed across me, half ludicrous, half painful, by its contrast, of another who once worked at a carpenter’s bench, and fulfilled his mission–not by an old age of wealth, respectability, and port wine; but on the Cross of Calvary. After all, the worthy old gentleman gave me no time to answer.
“Next–I think of showing these MSS. to my publisher, to get his opinion as to whether they are worth printing just now. Not that I wish you to build much on the chance. It is not necessary that you should be a poet. I should prefer mathematics for you, as a methodic discipline of the intellect. Most active minds write poetry, at a certain age–I wrote a good deal, I recollect, myself. But that is no reason for publishing. This haste to rush into print is one of the bad signs of the times–a symptom of the unhealthy activity which was first called out by the French revolution. In the Elizabethan age, every decently-educated gentleman was able, as a matter of course, to indite a sonnet to his mistress’s eye-brow, or an epigram on his enemy; and yet he never dreamt of printing them. One of the few rational things I have met with, Eleanor, in the works of your very objectionable pet Mr. Carlyle–though indeed his style is too intolerable to have allowed me to read much–is the remark that ‘speech is silver’–‘silvern’ he calls it, pedantically–‘while silence is golden.'”
At this point of the sermon, Lillian fled from the room, to my extreme disgust. But still the old man prosed–
“I think, therefore, that you had better stay with your cousin for the next week. I hear from Lord Lynedale that he is a very studious, moral, rising young man; and I only hope that you will follow his good example. At the end of the week I shall return home, and then I shall be glad to see more of you at my house at D * * * *, about * * * * miles from this place. Good morning.”
I went, in rapture at the last announcement–and yet my conscience smote me. I had not stood up for the working men. I had heard them calumniated, and held my tongue–but I was to see Lillian. I had let the dean fancy I was willing to become a pensioner on his bounty–that I was a member of the Church of England, and willing to go to a Church Training School–but I was to see Lillian. I had lowered myself in my own eyes–but I had seen Lillian. Perhaps I exaggerated my own offences: however that may be, love soon, silenced conscience, and I almost danced into my cousin’s rooms on my return.
* * * * *
That week passed rapidly and happily. I was half amused with the change in my cousin’s demeanour. I had evidently risen immensely in his eyes; and I could not help applying, in my heart, to him, Mr. Carlyle’s dictum about the valet species–how they never honour the unaccredited hero, having no eye to find him out till properly accredited, and countersigned, and accoutred with full uniform and diploma by that great god, Public Opinion. I saw through the motive of his new-fledged respect for me–and yet encouraged it; for it flattered my vanity. The world must forgive me. It was something for the poor tailor to find himself somewhat appreciated at last, even outwardly. And besides, this sad respect took a form which was very tempting to me now–though the week before it was just the one which I should have repelled with scorn. George became very anxious to lend me money, to order me clothes at his own tailor’s, and set me up in various little toilette refinements, that I might make a respectable appearance at the dean’s. I knew that he consulted rather the honour of the family, than my good; but I did not know that his aim was also to get me into his power; and I refused more and more weakly at each fresh offer, and at last consented, in an evil hour, to sell my own independence, for the sake of indulging my love-dream, and appearing to be what I was not.
I saw little of the University men; less than I might have done; less, perhaps, than I ought to have done. My cousin did not try to keep me from them; they, whenever I met them, did not shrink from me, and were civil enough: but I shrank from them. My cousin attributed my reserve to modesty, and praised me for it in his coarse fashion: but he was mistaken. Pride, rather, and something very like envy, kept me silent. Always afraid (at that period of my career) of young men of my own age, I was doubly afraid of these men; not because they were cleverer than I, for they were not, but because I fancied I had no fair chance with them; they had opportunities which I had not, read and talked of books of which I knew nothing; and when they did touch on matters which I fancied I understood, it was from a point of view so different from mine, that I had to choose, as I thought, between standing up alone to be baited by the whole party, or shielding myself behind a proud and somewhat contemptuous silence. I looked on them as ignorant aristocrats; while they looked on me, I verily believe now, as a very good sort of fellow, who ought to talk well, but would not; and went their way carelessly. The truth is, I did envy those men. I did not envy them their learning; for the majority of men who came into my cousin’s room had no learning to envy, being rather brilliant and agreeable men than severe students; but I envied them their opportunities of learning; and envied them just as much their opportunities of play–their boating, their cricket, their foot-ball, their riding, and their gay confident carriage, which proceeds from physical health and strength, and which I mistook for the swagger of insolence; while Parker’s Piece, with its games, was a sight which made me grind my teeth, when I thought of the very different chance of physical exercise which falls to the lot of a London artisan.
And still more did I envy them when I found that many of them combined, as my cousin did, this physical exercise with really hard mental work, and found the one help the other. It was bitter to me–whether it ought to have been so or not–to hear of prizemen, wranglers, fellows of colleges, as first rate oars, boxers, foot-ball players; and my eyes once fairly filled with tears, when, after the departure of a little fellow no bigger or heavier than myself, but with the eye and the gait of a game-cock, I was informed that he was “bow-oar in the University eight, and as sure to be senior classic next year as he has a head on his shoulders.” And I thought of my nights of study in the lean-to garret, and of the tailor’s workshop, and of Sandy’s den, and said to myself bitter words, which I shall not set down. Let gentlemen readers imagine them for themselves; and judge rationally and charitably of an unhealthy working-man like me, if his tongue be betrayed, at moments, to envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.
However, one happiness I had–books. I read in my cousin’s room from morning till night. He gave me my meals hospitably enough: but disappeared every day about four to “hall”; after which he did not reappear till eight, the interval being taken up, he said, in “wines” and an hour of billiards. Then he sat down to work, and read steadily and well till twelve, while I, nothing loth, did the same; and so passed, rapidly enough, my week at Cambridge.
CHAPTER XIV.
A CATHEDRAL TOWN.
At length, the wished-for day had arrived; and, with my cousin, I was whirling along, full of hope and desire, towards the cathedral town of D * * * *–through a flat fen country, which though I had often heard it described as ugly, struck my imagination much. The vast height and width of the sky-arch, as seen from those flats as from an ocean–the grey haze shrouding the horizon of our narrow land-view, and closing us in, till we seemed to be floating through infinite space, on a little platform of earth; the rich poplar-fringed farms, with their herds of dappled oxen–the luxuriant crops of oats and beans–the tender green of the tall-rape, a plant till then unknown to me–the long, straight, silver dykes, with their gaudy carpets of strange floating water-plants, and their black banks, studded with the remains of buried forests–the innumerable draining-mills, with their creaking sails and groaning wheels–the endless rows of pollard willows, through which the breeze moaned and rung, as through the strings of some vast AEolian harp; the little island knolls in that vast sea of fen, each with its long village street, and delicately taper spire; all this seemed to me to contain an element of new and peculiar beauty.
“Why!” exclaims the reading public, if perchance it ever sees this tale of mine, in its usual prurient longing after anything like personal gossip, or scandalous anecdote–“why, there is no cathedral town which begins with a D! Through the fen, too! He must mean either Ely, Lincoln, or Peterborough; that’s certain.” Then, at one of those places, they find there is dean–not of the name of Winnstay, true–“but his name begins with a W; and he has a pretty daughter–no, a niece; well, that’s very near it;–it must be him. No; at another place–there is not a dean, true–but a canon, or an archdeacon-something of that kind; and he has a pretty daughter, really; and his name begins–not with W, but with Y; well, that’s the last letter of Winnstay, if it is not the first: that must be the poor man! What a shame to have exposed his family secrets in that way!” And then a whole circle of myths grow up round the man’s story. It is credibly ascertained that I am the man who broke into his house last year, after having made love to his housemaid, and stole his writing-desk and plate–else, why should a burglar steal family-letters, if he had not some interest in them?… And before the matter dies away, some worthy old gentleman, who has not spoken to a working man since he left his living, thirty years ago, and hates a radical as he does the Pope, receives two or three anonymous letters, condoling with him on the cruel betrayal of his confidence–base ingratitude for undeserved condescension, &c., &c.; and, perhaps, with an enclosure of good advice for his lovely daughter.
But wherever D * * * * is, we arrived there; and with a beating heart, I–and I now suspect my cousin also–walked up the sunny slopes, where the old convent had stood, now covered with walled gardens and noble timber-trees, and crowned by the richly fretted towers of the cathedral, which we had seen, for the last twenty miles, growing gradually larger and more distinct across the level flat. “Ely?” “No; Lincoln!” “Oh! but really, it’s just as much like Peterborough!” Never mind, my dear reader; the essence of the fact, as I think, lies not quite so much in the name of the place, as in what was done there–to which I, with all the little respect which I can muster, entreat your attention.
It is not from false shame at my necessary ignorance, but from a fear lest I should bore my readers with what seems to them trivial, that I refrain from dilating on many a thing which struck me as curious in this my first visit to the house of an English gentleman. I must say, however, though I suppose that it will be numbered, at least, among trite remarks, if not among trivial ones, that the wealth around me certainly struck me, as it has others, as not very much in keeping with the office of one who professed to be a minister of the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. But I salved over that feeling, being desirous to see everything in the brightest light, with the recollection that the dean had a private fortune of his own; though it did seem at moments, that if a man has solemnly sworn to devote himself, body and soul, to the cause of the spiritual welfare of the nation, that vow might be not unfairly construed to include his money as well as his talents, time, and health: unless, perhaps, money is considered by spiritual persons as so worthless a thing, that it is not fit to be given to God–a notion which might seem to explain how a really pious and universally respected archbishop, living within a quarter of a mile of one of the worst _infernos_ of destitution, disease, filth, and profligacy–can yet find it in his heart to save L120,000 out of church revenues, and leave it to his family; though it will not explain how Irish bishops can reconcile it to their consciences to leave behind them, one and all, large fortunes–for I suppose from fifty to a hundred thousand pounds is something–saved from fees and tithes, taken from the pockets of a Roman Catholic population, whom they have been put there to convert to Protestantism for the last three hundred years–with what success, all the world knows. Of course, it is a most impertinent, and almost a blasphemous thing, for a working man to dare to mention such subjects. Is it not “speaking evil of dignities”? Strange, by-the-by, that merely to mention facts, without note or comment, should be always called “speaking evil”! Does not that argue ill for the facts themselves? Working men think so; but what matter what “the swinish multitude” think?
When I speak of wealth, I do not mean that the dean’s household would have been considered by his own class at all too luxurious. He would have been said, I suppose, to live in a “quiet, comfortable, gentlemanlike way”–“everything very plain and very good.” It included a butler–a quiet, good-natured old man–who ushered us into our bedrooms; a footman, who opened the door–a sort of animal for which I have an extreme aversion–young, silly, conceited, over-fed, florid–who looked just the man to sell his soul for a livery, twice as much food as he needed, and the opportunity of unlimited flirtations with the maids; and a coachman, very like other coachmen, whom I saw taking a pair of handsome carriage-horses out to exercise, as we opened the gate.
The old man, silently and as a matter of course, unpacked for me my little portmanteau (lent me by my cousin), and placed my things neatly in various drawers–went down, brought up a jug of hot water, put it on the washing-table–told me that dinner was at six–that the half-hour bell rang at half-past five–and that, if I wanted anything, the footman would answer the bell (bells seeming a prominent idea in his theory of the universe)–and so left me, wondering at the strange fact that free men, with free wills, do sell themselves, by the hundred thousand, to perform menial offices for other men, not for love, but for money; becoming, to define them strictly, bell-answering animals; and are honest, happy, contented, in such a life. A man-servant, a soldier, and a Jesuit, are to me the three great wonders of humanity–three forms of moral suicide, for which I never had the slightest gleam of sympathy, or even comprehension.
* * * * *
At last we went down to dinner, after my personal adornments had been carefully superintended by my cousin, who gave me, over and above, various warnings and exhortations as to my behaviour; which, of course, took due effect, in making me as nervous, constrained, and affected, as possible. When I appeared in the drawing-room, I was kindly welcomed by the dean, the two ladies, and Lord Lynedale.
But, as I stood fidgeting and blushing, sticking my arms and legs, and head into all sorts of quaint positions–trying one attitude, and thinking it looked awkward, and so exchanged it for another, more awkward still–my eye fell suddenly on a slip of paper, which had conveyed itself, I never knew how, upon the pages of the Illustrated Book of Ballads, which I was turning over:–
“Be natural, and you will be gentlemanlike. If you wish others to forget your rank, do not forget it yourself. If you wish others to remember you with pleasure, forget yourself; and be just what God has made you.”
I could not help fancying that the lesson, whether intentionally or not, was meant for me; and a passing impulse made me take up the slip, fold it together, and put it into my bosom. Perhaps it was Lillian’s handwriting! I looked round at the ladies; but their faces were each buried behind a book.
We went in to dinner; and, to my delight, I sat next to my goddess, while opposite me was my cousin. Luckily, I had got some directions from him as to what to say and do, when my wonders, the servants, thrust eatables and drinkables over nay shoulders.
Lillian and my cousin chatted away about church-architecture, and the restorations which were going on at the cathedral; while I, for the first half of dinner, feasted my eyes with the sight of a beauty, in which I seemed to discover every moment some new excellence. Every time I looked up at her, my eyes dazzled, my face burnt, my heart sank, and soft thrills ran through every nerve. And yet, Heaven knows, my emotions were as pure as those of an infant. It was beauty, longed for, and found at last, which I adored as a thing not to be possessed, but worshipped. The desire, even the thought, of calling her my own, never crossed my mind. I felt that I could gladly die, if by death I could purchase the permission to watch her. I understood, then, and for ever after, the pure devotion of the old knights and troubadours of chivalry. I seemed to myself to be their brother–one of the holy guild of poet-lovers. I was a new Petrarch, basking in the light-rays of a new Laura. I gazed, and gazed, and found new life in gazing, and was content.
But my simple bliss was perfected, when she suddenly turned to me, and began asking me questions on the very points on which I was best able to answer. She talked about poetry, Tennyson and Wordsworth; asked me if I understood Browning’s Sordello; and then comforted me, after my stammering confession that I did not, by telling me she was delighted to hear that; for she did not understand it either, and it was so pleasant to have a companion in ignorance. Then she asked me, if I was much struck with the buildings in Cambridge?–had they inspired me with any verses yet?–I was bound to write something about them–and so on; making the most commonplace remarks look brilliant, from the ease and liveliness with which they were spoken, and the tact with which they were made pleasant to the listener: while I wondered at myself, for enjoying from her lips the flippant, sparkling tattle, which had hitherto made young women to me objects of unspeakable dread, to be escaped by crossing the street, hiding behind doors, and rushing blindly into back-yards and coal-holes.
The ladies left the room; and I, with Lillian’s face glowing bright in my imagination, as the crimson orb remains on the retina of the closed eye, after looking intently at the sun, sat listening to a pleasant discussion between the dean and the nobleman, about some country in the East, which they had both visited, and greedily devouring all the new facts which, they incidentally brought forth out of the treasures of their highly cultivated minds.
I was agreeably surprised (don’t laugh, reader) to find that I was allowed to drink water; and that the other men drank not more than a glass or two of wine, after the ladies had retired. I had, somehow, got both lords and deans associated in my mind with infinite swillings of port wine, and bacchanalian orgies, and sat down at first, in much fear and trembling, lest I should be compelled to join, under penalties of salt-and-water; but I had made up my mind, stoutly, to bear anything rather than get drunk; and so I had all the merit of a temperance-martyr, without any of its disagreeables.
“Well” said I to myself, smiling in spirit, “what would my Chartist friends say if they saw me here? Not even Crossthwaite himself could find a flaw in the appreciation of merit for its own sake, the courtesy and condescension–ah! but he would complain of it, simply for being condescension.” But, after all, what else could it be? Were not these men more experienced, more learned, older than myself? They were my superiors; it was in vain for me to attempt to hide it from myself. But the wonder was, that they themselves were the ones to appear utterly unconscious of it. They treated me as an equal; they welcomed me–the young viscount and the learned dean–on the broad ground of a common humanity; as I believe hundreds more of their class would do, if we did not ourselves take a pride in estranging them from us–telling them that fraternization between our classes is impossible, and then cursing them for not fraternizing with us. But of that, more hereafter.
At all events, now my bliss was perfect. No! I was wrong–a higher enjoyment than all awaited me, when, going into the drawing-room, I found Lillian singing at the piano. I had no idea that music was capable of expressing and conveying emotions so intense and ennobling. My experience was confined to street music, and to the bawling at the chapel. And, as yet, Mr. Hullah had not risen into a power more enviable than that of kings, and given to every workman a free entrance into the magic world of harmony and melody, where he may prove his brotherhood with Mozart and Weber, Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Great unconscious demagogue!–leader of the people, and labourer in the cause of divine equality!–thy reward is with the Father of the people!
The luscious softness of the Italian airs overcame me with a delicious enervation. Every note, every interval, each shade of expression spoke to me–I knew not what: and yet they spoke to my heart of hearts. A spirit out of the infinite heaven seemed calling to my spirit, which longed to answer–and was dumb–and could only vent itself in tears, which welled unconsciously forth, and eased my heart from the painful tension of excitement.
* * * * *
Her voice is hovering o’er my soul–it lingers, O’ershadowing it with soft and thrilling wings; The blood and life within those snowy fingers Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings. My brain is wild, my breath comes quick. The blood is listening in my frame;
And thronging shadows, fast and thick, Fall on my overflowing eyes.
My heart is quivering like a flame; As morning-dew that in the sunbeam dies, I am dissolved in these consuming ecstacies. * * * * *
The dark lady, Miss Staunton, as I ought to call her, saw my emotion, and, as I thought unkindly, checked the cause of it at once.
“Pray do not give us any more of those die-away Italian airs, Lillian. Sing something manful, German or English, or anything you like, except those sentimental wailings.”
Lillian stopped, took another book, and commenced, after a short prelude, one of my own songs. Surprise and pleasure overpowered me more utterly than the soft southern melodies had done. I was on the point of springing up and leaving the room, when my raptures were checked by our host, who turned round, and stopped short in an oration on the geology of Upper Egypt.
“What’s that about brotherhood and freedom, Lillian? We don’t want anything of that kind here.”
“It’s only a popular London song, papa,” answered she, with an arch smile.
“Or likely to become so,” added Miss Staunton, in her marked dogmatic tone.
“I am very sorry for London, then.” And he returned to the deserts.
CHAPTER XV.
THE MAN OF SCIENCE.
After breakfast the next morning, Lillian retired, saying laughingly, that she must go and see after her clothing club and her dear old women at the almshouse, which, of course, made me look on her as more an angel than ever. And while George was left with Lord Lynedale, I was summoned to a private conference with the dean, in his study.
I found him in a room lined with cabinets of curiosities, and hung all over with strange horns, bones, and slabs of fossils. But I was not allowed much time to look about me; for he commenced at once on the subject of my studies, by asking me whether I was willing to prepare myself for the university, by entering on the study of mathematics?
I felt so intense a repugnance to them, that at the risk of offending him–perhaps, for what I knew, fatally–I dared to demur. He smiled–
“I am convinced, young man, that even if you intended to follow poetry as a profession–and a very poor one you will find it–yet you will never attain to any excellence therein, without far stricter mental discipline than any to which you have been accustomed. That is why I abominate our modern poets. They talk about the glory of the poetic vocation, as if they intended to be kings and world-makers, and all the while they indulge themselves in the most loose and desultory habits of thought. Sir, if they really believed their own grandiloquent assumptions, they would feel that the responsibility of their mental training was greater, not less, than any one’s else. Like the Quakers, they fancy that they honour inspiration by supposing it to be only extraordinary and paroxysmic: the true poet, like the rational Christian, believing that inspiration is continual and orderly, that it reveals harmonious laws, not merely excites sudden emotions. You understand me?”
I did, tolerably; and subsequent conversations with him fixed the thoughts sufficiently in my mind, to make me pretty sure that I am giving a faithful verbal transcript of them.
“You must study some science. Have you read any logic?”
I mentioned Watts’ “Logic,” and Locke “On the Use of the Understanding”–two books well known to reading artizans.
“Ah,” he said, “such books are very well, but they are merely popular. ‘Aristotle,’ ‘Bitter on Induction,’ and Kant’s ‘Prolegomena’ and ‘Logic’–when you had read them some seven or eight times over, you might consider yourself as knowing somewhat about the matter.”
“I have read a little about induction in Whately.”
“Ah, very good book, but popular. Did you find that your method of thought received any benefit from it?”
“The truth is–I do not know whether I can quite express myself clearly–but logic, like mathematics, seems to tell me too little about things. It does not enlarge my knowledge of man or nature; and those are what I thirst for. And you must remember–I hope I am not wrong in saying it–that the case of a man of your class, who has the power of travelling, of reading what he will, and seeing what he will, is very different from that of an artisan, whose chances of observation are so sadly limited. You must forgive us, if we are unwilling to spend our time over books which tell us nothing about the great universe outside the shop-windows.”
He smiled compassionately. “Very true, my boy, There are two branches of study, then, before you, and by either of them a competent subsistence is possible, with good interest. Philology is one. But before you could arrive at those depths in it which connect with ethnology, history, and geography, you would require a lifetime of study. There remains yet another. I see you stealing glances at those natural curiosities. In the study of them, you would find, as I believe, more and more daily, a mental discipline superior even to that which language or mathematics give. If I had been blest with a son–but that is neither here nor there–it was my intention to have educated him almost entirely as a naturalist. I think I should like to try the experiment on a young man like yourself.”
Sandy Mackaye’s definition of legislation for the masses, “Fiat experimentum in corpore vili,” rose up in my thoughts, and, half unconsciously, passed my lips. The good old man only smiled.
“That is not my reason, Mr. Locke. I should choose, by preference, a man of your class for experiments, not because the nature is coarser, or less precious in the scale of creation, but because I have a notion, for which, like many others, I have been very much laughed at, that you are less sophisticated, more simple and fresh from nature’s laboratory, than the young persons of the upper classes, who begin from the nursery to be more or less trimmed up, and painted over by the artificial state of society–a very excellent state, mind, Mr. Locke. Civilization is, next to Christianity of course, the highest blessing; but not so good a state for trying anthropological experiments on.”
I assured him of my great desire to be the subject of such an experiment; and was encouraged by his smile to tell him something about my intense love for natural objects, the mysterious pleasure which I had taken, from my boyhood, in trying to classify them, and my visits to the British Museum, for the purpose of getting at some general knowledge of the natural groups.
“Excellent,” he said, “young man; the very best sign I have yet seen in you. And what have you read on these subjects?”
I mentioned several books: Bingley, Bewick, “Humboldt’s Travels,” “The Voyage of the Beagle,” various scattered articles in the Penny and Saturday Magazines, &c., &c.
“Ah!” he said, “popular–you will find, if you will allow me to give you my experience–“
I assured him that I was only too much honoured–and I truly felt so. I knew myself to be in the presence of my rightful superior–my master on that very point of education which I idolized. Every sentence which he spoke gave me fresh light on some matter or other; and I felt a worship for him, totally irrespective of any vulgar and slavish respect for his rank or wealth. The working man has no want for real reverence. Mr. Carlyle’s being a “gentlemen” has not injured his influence with the people. On the contrary, it is the artisan’s intense longing to find his real _lords_ and guides, which makes him despise and execrate his sham ones. Whereof let society take note.
“Then,” continued he, “your plan is to take up some one section of the subject, and thoroughly exhaust that. Universal laws manifest themselves only by particular instances. They say, man is the microcosm, Mr. Locke; but the man of science finds every worm and beetle a microcosm in its way. It exemplifies, directly or indirectly, every physical law in the universe, though it may not be two lines long. It is not only a part, but a mirror, of the great whole. It has a definite relation to the whole world, and the whole world has a relation to it. Really, by-the-by, I cannot give you a better instance of what I mean, than in my little diatribe on the Geryon Trifurcifer, a small reptile which I found, some years ago, inhabiting the mud of the salt lakes of Balkhan, which fills up a long-desired link between the Chelonia and the Perenni branchiate Batrachians, and, as I think, though Professor Brown differs from me, connects both with the Herbivorous Cetacea,–Professor Brown is an exceedingly talented man, but a little too cautious in accepting any one’s theories but his own.
“There it is,” he said, as he drew out of a drawer a little pamphlet of some thirty pages–“an old man’s darling. I consider that book the outcome of thirteen years’ labour.”
“It must be very deep,” I replied, “to have been worth such long-continued study.”
“Oh! science is her own reward. There is hardly a great physical law which I have not brought to bear on the subject of that one small animal; and above all–what is in itself worth a life’s labour–I have, I believe, discovered two entirely new laws of my own, though one of them, by-the-by, has been broached by Professor Brown since, in his lectures. He might have mentioned my name in connection with the subject, for I certainly imparted my ideas to him, two years at least before the delivery of those lectures of his. Professor Brown is a very great man, certainly, and a very good man, but not quite so original as is generally supposed. Still, a scientific man must expect his little disappointments and injustices. If you were behind the scenes in the scientific world, I can assure you, you would find as much party-spirit, and unfairness, and jealousy, and emulation there, as anywhere else. Human nature, human nature, everywhere!”
I said nothing, but thought the more; and took the book, promising to study it carefully.
“There is Cuvier’s ‘Animal Kingdom,’ and a dictionary of scientific terms to help you; and mind, it must be got up thoroughly, for I purpose to set you an examination or two in it, a few days hence. Then I shall find out whether you know what is worth all the information in the world.”
“What is that, sir?”
“The art of getting information _artem discendi_, Mr. Locke, wherewith the world is badly provided just now, as it is overstocked with the _artem legendi_–the knack of running the eye over books, and fancying that it understands them, because it can talk about them. You cannot play that trick with my Geryon Trifurcifer, I assure you; he is as dry and tough as his name. But, believe me, he is worth mastering, not because he is mine, but simply because he is tough.”
I promised all diligence.
“Very good. And be sure, if you intend to be a poet for these days (and I really think you have some faculty for it), you must become a scientific man. Science has made vast strides, and introduced entirely new modes of looking at nature, and poets must live up to the age. I never read a word of Goethe’s verse, but I am convinced that he must be the great poet of the day, just because he is the only one who has taken the trouble to go into the details of practical science. And, in the mean time, I will give you a lesson myself. I see you are longing to know the contents of these cabinets. You shall assist me by writing out the names of this lot of shells, just come from Australia, which I am now going to arrange.”
I set to work at once, under his directions; and passed that morning, and the two or three following, delightfully. But I question whether the good dean would have been well satisfied, had he known, how all his scientific teaching confirmed my democratic opinions. The mere fact, that I could understand these things when they were set before me, as well as any one else, was to me a simple demonstration of the equality in worth, and therefore in privilege, of all classes. It may be answered, that I had no right to argue from myself to the mob; and that other working geniuses have no right to demand universal enfranchisement for their whole class, just because they, the exceptions, are fit for it. But surely it is hard to call such an error, if it be one, “the insolent assumption of democratic conceit,” &c., &c. Does it not look more like the humility of men who are unwilling to assert for themselves peculiar excellence, peculiar privileges; who, like the apostles of old, want no glory, save that which they can share with the outcast and the slave? Let society among other matters, take note of that.
CHAPTER XVI.
CULTIVATED WOMEN.
I was thus brought in contact, for the first time in my life, with two exquisite specimens of cultivated womanhood; and they naturally, as the reader may well suppose, almost entirely engrossed my thoughts and interest.
Lillian, for so I must call her, became daily more and more agreeable; and tried, as I fancied, to draw me out, and show me off to the best advantage; whether from the desire of pleasing herself, or pleasing me, I know not, and do not wish to know–but the consequences to my boyish vanity were such as are more easy to imagine, than pleasant to describe. Miss Staunton, on the other hand, became, I thought, more and more unpleasant; not that she ever, for a moment, outstepped the bounds of the most perfect courtesy; but her manner, which was soft to no one except to Lord Lynedale, was, when she spoke to me, especially dictatorial and abrupt. She seemed to make a point of carping at chance words of mine, and of setting me, down suddenly, by breaking in with some severe, pithy observation, on conversations to which she had been listening unobserved. She seemed, too, to view with dislike anything like cordiality between me and Lillian–a dislike, which I was actually at moments vain enough (such a creature is man!) to attribute to–jealousy!!! till I began to suspect and hate her, as a proud, harsh, and exclusive aristocrat. And my suspicion and hatred received their confirmation, when, one morning, after an evening even more charming than usual, Lillian came down, reserved, peevish, all but sulky, and showed that that bright heaven of sunny features had room in it for a cloud, and that an ugly one. But I, poor fool, only pitied her, made up my mind that some one had ill-used her; and looked on her as a martyr–perhaps to that harsh cousin of hers.
That day was taken up with writing out answers to the dean’s searching questions on his pamphlet, in which, I believe, I acquitted myself tolerably; and he seemed far more satisfied with my commentary than I was with his text. He seemed to ignore utterly anything like religion, or even the very notion of God, in his chains of argument. Nature was spoken of as the wilier and producer of all the marvels which he describes; and every word in the book, to my astonishment, might have been written just as easily by an Atheist as by a dignitary of the Church of England.
I could not help, that evening, hinting this defect, as delicately as I could, to my good host, and was somewhat surprised to find that he did not consider it a defect at all.
“I am in no wise anxious to weaken the antithesis between natural and revealed religion. Science may help the former, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the latter. She stands on her own ground, has her own laws, and is her own reward. Christianity is a matter of faith and of the teaching of the Church. It must not go out of its way for science, and science must not go out of her way for it; and where they seem to differ, it is our duty to believe that they are reconcilable by fuller knowledge, but not to clip truth in order to make it match with doctrine.”
“Mr. Carlyle,” said Miss Staunton, in her abrupt way, “can see that the God of Nature is the God of man.”
“Nobody denies that, my dear.”
“Except in every word and action; else why do they not write about Nature as if it was the expression of a living, loving spirit, not merely a dead machine?”
“It may be very easy, my dear, for a Deist like Mr. Carlyle to see _his_ God in Nature; but if he would accept the truths of Christianity, he would find that there were deeper mysteries in them than trees and animals can explain.”
“Pardon me, sir,” I said, “but I think that a very large portion of thoughtful working men agree with you, though, in their case, that opinion has only increased their difficulties about Christianity. They complain that they cannot identify the God of the Bible with the God of the world around them; and one of their great complaints against Christianity is, that it demands assent to mysteries which are independent of, and even contradictory to, the laws of Nature.”
The old man was silent.
“Mr. Carlyle is no Deist,” said Miss Staunton; “and I am sure, that unless the truths of Christianity contrive soon to get themselves justified by the laws of science, the higher orders will believe in them as little as Mr. Locke informs us that the working classes do.”
“You prophesy confidently, my darling.”
“Oh, Eleanor is in one of her prophetic moods to-night,” said Lillian, slyly. “She has been foretelling me I know not what misery and misfortune, just because I choose to amuse myself in my own way.”
And she gave another sly pouting look at Eleanor, and then called me to look over some engravings, chatting over them so charmingly!–and stealing, every now and then, a pretty, saucy look at her cousin, which seemed to say, “I shall do what I like, in spite of your predictions.”
This confirmed my suspicions that Eleanor had been trying to separate us; and the suspicion received a further corroboration, indirect, and perhaps very unfair, from the lecture which I got from my cousin after I went up-stairs.
He had been flattering me very much lately about “the impression” I was making on the family, and tormenting me by compliments on the clever way in which I “played my cards”; and when I denied indignantly any such intention, patting me on the back, and laughing me down in a knowing way, as much as to say that he was not to be taken in by my professions of simplicity. He seemed to judge every one by himself, and to have no notion of any middle characters between the mere green-horn and the deliberate schemer. But to-night, after commencing with the usual compliments, he went on:
“Now, first let me give you one hint, and be thankful for it. Mind your game with that Eleanor–Miss Staunton. She is a regular tyrant, I happen to know: a strong-minded woman, with a vengeance. She manages every one here; and unless you are in her good books, don’t expect to keep your footing in this house, my boy. So just mind and pay her a little more attention and Miss Lillian a little less. After all, it is worth the trouble. She is uncommonly well read; and says confounded clever things, too, when she wakes up out of the sulks; and you may pick up a wrinkle or two from her, worth pocketing. You mind what she says to you. You know she is going to be married to Lord Lynedale.”
I nodded assent.
“Well, then, if you want to hook him, you must secure her first.”
“I want to hook no one, George; I have told you that a thousand times.”
“Oh, no! certainly not–by no means! Why should you?” said the artful dodger. And he swung, laughing, out of the room, leaving in my mind a strange suspicion, of which I was ashamed, though I could not shake it off, that he had remarked Eleanor’s wish to cool my admiration for Lillian, and was willing, for some purpose of his own, to further that wish. The truth is, I had very little respect for him, or trust in him: and I was learning to look, habitually, for some selfish motive in all he said or did. Perhaps, if I had acted more boldly upon what I did see, I should not have been here now.
CHAPTER XVII.
SERMONS IN STONES.
The next afternoon was the last but one of my stay at D * * *. We were to dine late, after sunset, and, before dinner, we went into the cathedral. The choir had just finished practising. Certain exceedingly ill-looking men, whose faces bespoke principally sensuality and self-conceit, and whose function was that of praising God, on the sole qualification of good bass and tenor voices, were coming chattering through the choir gates; and behind them a group of small boys were suddenly transforming themselves from angels into sinners, by tearing off their white surplices, and pinching and poking each other noisily as they passed us, with as little reverence as Voltaire himself could have desired.
I had often been in the cathedral before–indeed, we attended the service daily, and I had been appalled, rather than astonished, by what I saw and heard: the unintelligible service–the irreverent gabble of the choristers and readers–the scanty congregation–the meagre portion of the vast building which seemed to be turned to any use: but never more than that evening, did I feel the desolateness, the doleful inutility, of that vast desert nave, with its aisles and transepts–built for some purpose or other now extinct. The whole place seemed to crush and sadden me; and I could not re-echo Lillian’s remark:
“How those pillars, rising story above story, and those lines of pointed arches, all lead the eye heavenward! It is a beautiful notion, that about pointed architecture being symbolic of Christianity.”
“I ought to be very much ashamed of my stupidity,” I answered; “but I cannot feel that, though I believe I ought to do so. That vast groined roof, with its enormous weight of hanging stone, seems to crush one–to bar out the free sky above. Those pointed windows, too–how gloriously the western sun is streaming through them! but their rich hues only dim and deface his light. I can feel what you say, when I look at the cathedral on the outside; there, indeed, every line sweeps the eye upward–carries it from one pinnacle to another, each with less and less standing-ground, till at the summit the building gradually vanishes in a point, and leaves the spirit to wing its way, unsupported and alone, into the ether.
“Perhaps,” I added, half bitterly, “these cathedrals may be true symbols of the superstition which created them–on the outside, offering to enfranchise the soul and raise it up to heaven; but when the dupes had entered, giving them only a dark prison, and a crushing bondage, which neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear.”
“You may sneer at them, if you will, Mr. Locke,” said Eleanor, in her severe, abrupt way. “The working classes would have been badly off without them. They were, in their day, the only democratic institution in the world; and the only socialist one too. The only chance a poor man had of rising by his worth, was by coming to the monastery. And bitterly the working classes felt the want of them, when they fell. Your own Cobbett can tell you that.”
“Ah,” said Lillian, “how different it must have been four hundred years ago!–how solemn and picturesque those old monks must have looked, gliding about the aisles!–and how magnificent the choir must have been, before all the glass and carving, and that beautiful shrine of St. * * * *, blazing with gold and jewels, were all plundered and defaced by those horrid Puritans!”
“Say, reformer-squires,” answered Eleanor; “for it was they who did the thing; only it was found convenient, at the Restoration, to lay on the people of the seventeenth century the iniquities which the country-gentlemen committed in the sixteenth.”
“Surely,” I added, emboldened by her words, “if the monasteries were what their admirers say, some method of restoring the good of the old system, without its evil, ought to be found; and would be found, if it were not–” I paused, recollecting whose guest I was.
“If it were not, I suppose,” said Eleanor, “for those lazy, overfed, bigoted hypocrites, the clergy. That, I presume, is the description of them to which you have been most accustomed. Now, let me ask you one question. Do you mean to condemn, just now, the Church as it was, or the Church as it is, or the Church as it ought to be? Radicals have a habit of confusing those three questions, as they have of confusing other things when it suits them.”
“Really,” I said–for my blood was rising–“I do think that, with the confessed enormous wealth of the clergy, the cathedral establishments especially, they might do more for the people.”
“Listen to me a little, Mr. Locke. The laity now-a-days take a pride in speaking evil of the clergy, never seeing that if they are bad, the laity have made them so. Why, what do you impute to them? Their worldliness, their being like the world, like the laity round them–like you, in short? Improve yourselves, and by so doing, if there is this sad tendency in the clergy to imitate you, you will mend them; if you do not find that after