Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet by Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

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This was quite a new fact to me. "And what sort of folks were the parsons
all round."

"Oh, some of all sorts, good and bad. About six and half a dozen. There's
two or three nice young gentlemen come'd round here now, but they're all
what's-'em-a-call it?--some sort o' papishes;--leastwise, they has prayers
in the church every day, and doesn't preach the Gospel, no how, I hears
by my wife, and she knows all about it, along of going to meeting. Then
there's one over thereaway, as had to leave his living--he knows why. He
got safe over seas. If he had been a poor man, he'd been in * * * * *
gaol, safe enough, and soon enough. Then there's two or three as goes
a-hunting--not as I sees no harm in that; if a man's got plenty of money,
he ought to enjoy himself, in course: but still he can't be here and there
too, to once. Then there's two or three as is bad in their healths, or
thinks themselves so--or else has livings summer' else; and they lives
summer' or others, and has curates. Main busy chaps is they curates,
always, and wonderful hands to preach; but then, just as they gets a little
knowing like at it, and folks gets to like 'em, and run to hear 'em, off
they pops to summat better; and in course they're right to do so; and so
we country-folks get nought but the young colts, afore they're broke, you
see."

"And what sort of a preacher was his parson?"

"Oh, he preached very good Gospel, not that he went very often himself,
acause he couldn't make out the meaning of it; he preached too high, like.
But his wife said it was uncommon good Gospel; and surely when he come to
visit a body, and talked plain English, like, not sermon-ways, he was a
very pleasant man to heer, and his lady uncommon kind to nurse folk. They
sot up with me and my wife, they two did, two whole nights, when we was in
the fever, afore the officer could get us a nurse."

"Well," said I, "there are some good parsons left."

"Oh, yes; there's some very good ones--each one after his own way; and
there'd be more on 'em, if they did but know how bad we labourers was off.
Why bless ye, I mind when they was very different. A new parson is a mighty
change for the better, mostwise, we finds. Why, when I was a boy, we never
had no schooling. And now mine goes and learns singing and jobrafy, and
ciphering, and sich like. Not that I sees no good in it. We was a sight
better off in the old times, when there weren't no schooling. Schooling
harn't made wages rise, nor preaching neither."

"But surely," I said, "all this religious knowledge ought to give you
comfort, even if you are badly off."

"Oh! religion's all very well for them as has time for it; and a very good
thing--we ought all to mind our latter end. But I don't see how a man can
hear sermons with an empty belly; and there's so much to fret a man, now,
and he's so cruel tired coming home o' nights, he can't nowise go to pray a
lot, as gentlefolks does."

"But are you so ill off?"

"Oh! he'd had a good harvesting enough; but then he owed all that for he's
rent; and he's club money wasn't paid up, nor he's shop. And then, with
he's wages"--(I forget the sum--under ten shillings)--"how could a man
keep his mouth full, when he had five children! And then, folks is so
unmarciful--I'll just tell you what they says to me, now, last time I was
over at the board--"

And thereon he rambled off into a long jumble of medical-officers, and
relieving-officers, and Farmer This, and Squire That, which indicated a
mind as ill-educated as discontented. He cursed or rather grumbled at--for
he had not spirit, it seemed, to curse anything--the New Poor Law; because
it "ate up the poor, flesh and bone";--bemoaned the "Old Law," when "the
Vestry was forced to give a man whatsomdever he axed for, and if they
didn't, he'd go to the magistrates and make 'em, and so sure as a man got a
fresh child, he went and got another loaf allowed him next vestry, like a
Christian;"--and so turned through a gate, and set to work forking up some
weeds on a fallow, leaving me many new thoughts to digest.

That night, I got to some town or other, and there found a night's lodging,
good enough for a walking traveller.

CHAPTER XII.

CAMBRIDGE.

When I started again next morning, I found myself so stiff and footsore,
that I could hardly put one leg before the other, much less walk upright. I
was really quite in despair, before the end of the first mile; for I had no
money to pay for a lift on the coach, and I knew, besides, that they would
not be passing that way for several hours to come. So, with aching back and
knees, I made shift to limp along, bent almost double, and ended by sitting
down for a couple of hours, and looking about me, in a country which would
have seemed dreary enough, I suppose, to any one but a freshly-liberated
captive, such as I was. At last I got up and limped on, stiffer than ever
from my rest, when a gig drove past me towards Cambridge, drawn by a stout
cob, and driven by a tall, fat, jolly-looking farmer, who stared at me as
he passed, went on, looked back, slackened his pace, looked back again, and
at last came to a dead stop, and hailed me in a broad nasal dialect--

"Whor be ganging, then, boh?"

"To Cambridge."

"Thew'st na git there that gate. Be'est thee honest man?"

"I hope so," said I, somewhat indignantly.

"What's trade?"

"A tailor," I said.

"Tailor!--guide us! Tailor a-tramp? Barn't accoostomed to tramp, then?"

"I never was out of London before," said I, meekly--for I was too worn-out
to be cross--lengthy and impertinent as this cross-examination seemed.

"Oi'll gie thee lift; dee yow joomp in. Gae on, powney! Tailor, then! Oh!
ah! tailor, saith he."

I obeyed most thankfully, and sat crouched together, looking up out of
the corner of my eyes at the huge tower of broad-cloth by my side, and
comparing the two red shoulders of mutton which held the reins, with my own
wasted, white, woman-like fingers.

I found the old gentleman most inquisitive. He drew out of me all my
story--questioned me about the way "Lunnon folks" lived, and whether they
got ony shooting or "pattening"--whereby I found he meant skating--and
broke in, every now and then, with ejaculations of childish wonder, and
clumsy sympathy, on my accounts of London labour and London misery.

"Oh, father, father!--I wonders they bears it. Us'n in the fens wouldn't
stand that likes. They'd roit, and roit, and roit, and tak' oot the
dook-gunes to un--they would, as they did five-and-twenty year agone. Never
to goo ayond the housen!--never to go ayond the housen! Kill me in a three
months, that would--bor', then!"

"Are you a farmer?" I asked, at last, thinking that my turn for questioning
was come.

"I bean't varmer; I be yooman born. Never paid rent in moy life, nor never
wool. I farms my own land, and my vathers avore me, this ever so mony
hoondred year. I've got the swoord of 'em to home, and the helmet that they
fut with into the wars, then when they chopped off the king's head--what
was the name of um?"

"Charles the First?"

"Ees--that's the booy. We was Parliament side--true Britons all we was,
down into the fens, and Oliver Cromwell, as dug Botsham lode, to the head
of us. Yow coom down to Metholl, and I'll shaw ye a country. I'll shaw
'ee some'at like bullocks to call, and some'at like a field o' beans--I
wool,--none o' this here darned ups and downs o' hills" (though the country
through which we drove was flat enough, I should have thought, to please
any one), "to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards--all so flat as a
barn's floor, for vorty mile on end--there's the country to live in!--and
vour sons--or was vour on 'em--every one on 'em fifteen stone in his shoes,
to patten again' any man from Whit'sea Mere to Denver Sluice, for twenty
pounds o' gold; and there's the money to lay down, and let the man as
dare cover it, down with his money, and on wi' his pattens, thirteen-inch
runners, down the wind, again' either a one o' the bairns!"

And he jingled in his pockets a heavy bag of gold, and winked, and
chuckled, and then suddenly checking himself, repeated in a sad, dubious
tone, two or three times, "Vour on 'em there was--vour on 'em there was;"
and relieved his feelings by springing the pony into a canter till he came
to a public-house, where he pulled up, called for a pot of hot ale, and
insisted on treating me. I assured him that I never drank fermented
liquors.

"Aw? Eh? How can yow do that then? Die o' cowd i' the fen, that gate, yow
would. Love ye then! they as dinnot tak' spirits down thor, tak' their
pennord o' elevation, then--women-folk especial."

"What's elevation?"

"Oh! ho! ho!--yow goo into druggist's shop o' market-day, into Cambridge,
and you'll see the little boxes, doozens and doozens, a' ready on the
counter; and never a ven-man's wife goo by, but what calls in for her
pennord o' elevation, to last her out the week. Oh! ho! ho! Well, it keeps
women-folk quiet, it do; and it's mortal good agin ago pains."

"But what is it?"

"Opium, bor' alive, opium!"

"But doesn't it ruin their health? I should think it the very worst sort of
drunkenness."

"Ow, well, yow moi soy that-mak'th 'em cruel thin then, it do; but what can
bodies do i' th'ago? Bot it's a bad thing, it is. Harken yow to me. Didst
ever know one called Porter, to yowr trade?"

I thought a little, and recollected a man of that name, who had worked with
us a year or two before--a great friend of a certain scatter-brained Irish
lad, brother of Crossthwaite's wife.

"Well, I did once, but I have lost sight of him twelve months, or more."

The old man faced sharp round on me, swinging the little gig almost over,
and then twisted himself back again, and put on a true farmer-like look of
dogged, stolid reserve. We rolled on a few minutes in silence.

"Dee yow consider, now, that a mon mought be lost, like, into Lunnon?"

"How lost?"

"Why, yow told o' they sweaters--dee yow think a mon might get in wi' one
o' they, and they that mought be looking for un not to vind un?"

"I do, indeed. There was a friend of that man Porter got turned away from
our shop, because he wouldn't pay some tyrannical fine for being saucy, as
they called it, to the shopman; and he went to a sweater's--and then to
another; and his friends have been tracking him up and down this six
months, and can hear no news of him."

"Aw! guide us! And what'n, think yow, be gone wi' un?"

"I am afraid he has got into one of those dens, and has pawned his clothes,
as dozens of them do, for food, and so can't get out."

"Pawned his clothes for victuals! To think o' that, noo! But if he had
work, can't he get victuals?"

"Oh!" I said, "there's many a man who, after working seventeen or eighteen
hours a day, Sundays and all, without even time to take off his clothes,
finds himself brought in in debt to his tyrant at the week's end. And if
he gets no work, the villain won't let him leave the house; he has to stay
there starving, on the chance of an hour's job. I tell you, I've known half
a dozen men imprisoned in that way, in a little dungeon of a garret, where
they had hardly room to stand upright, and only just space to sit and work
between their beds, without breathing the fresh air, or seeing God's sun,
for months together, with no victuals but a few slices of bread-and-butter,
and a little slop of tea, twice a day, till they were starved to the very
bone."

"Oh, my God! my God!" said the old man, in a voice which had a deeper
tone of feeling than mere sympathy with others' sorrow was likely to have
produced. There was evidently something behind all these inquiries of his.
I longed to ask him if his name, too, was not Porter.

"Aw yow knawn Billy Porter? What was a like? Tell me, now--what was a like,
in the Lord's name! what was a like unto?"

"Very tall and bony," I answered.

"Ah! sax feet, and more? and a yard across?--but a was starved, a was a'
thin, though, maybe, when yow sawn un?--and beautiful fine hair, hadn't a,
like a lass's?"

"The man I knew had red hair," quoth I.

"Ow, ay, an' that it wor, red as a rising sun, and the curls of un like
gowlden guineas! And thou knew'st Billy Porter! To think o' that, noo."--

Another long silence.

"Could you find un, dee yow think, noo, into Lunnon? Suppose, now,
there was a mon 'ud gie--may be five pund--ten pund--twenty pund, by
* * *--twenty pund down, for to ha' him brocht home safe and soun'--Could
yow do't, bor'? I zay, could yow do't?"

"I could do it as well without the money as with, if I could do it at all.
But have you no guess as to where he is?"

He shook his head sadly.

"We--that's to zay, they as wants un--hav'n't heerd tell of un vor this
three year--three year coom Whitsuntide as ever was--" And he wiped his
eyes with his cuff.

"If you will tell me all about him, and where he was last heard of, I will
do all I can to find him."

"Will ye, noo? will ye? The Lord bless ye for zaying that." And he grasped
my hand in his great iron fist, and fairly burst out crying.

"Was he a relation of yours?" I asked, gently.

"My bairn--my bairn--my eldest bairn. Dinnot yow ax me no moor--dinnot
then, bor'. Gie on, yow powney, and yow goo leuk vor un."

Another long silence.

"I've a been to Lunnon, looking vor un."

Another silence.

"I went up and down, up and down, day and night, day and night, to all
pot-houses as I could zee; vor, says I, he was a'ways a main chap to drink,
he was. Oh, deery me! and I never cot zight on un--and noo I be most spent,
I be."--

And he pulled up at another public-house, and tried this time a glass of
brandy. He stopped, I really think, at every inn between that place and
Cambridge, and at each tried some fresh compound; but his head seemed, from
habit, utterly fire-proof.

At last, we neared Cambridge, and began to pass groups of gay horsemen, and
then those strange caps and gowns--ugly and unmeaning remnant of obsolete
fashion.

The old man insisted on driving me up to the gate of * * * College, and
there dropped me, after I had given him my address, entreating me to "vind
the bairn, and coom to zee him down to Metholl. But dinnot goo ax for
Farmer Porter--they's all Porters there away. Yow ax for Wooden-house
Bob--that's me; and if I barn't to home, ax for Mucky Billy--that's my
brawther--we're all gotten our names down to ven; and if he barn't to home,
yow ax for Frog-hall--that's where my sister do live; and they'll all veed
ye, and lodge ye, and welcome come. We be all like one, doon in the ven;
and do ye, do ye, vind my bairn!" And he trundled on, down the narrow
street.

I was soon directed, by various smart-looking servants, to my cousin's
rooms; and after a few mistakes, and wandering up and down noble courts and
cloisters, swarming with gay young men, whose jaunty air and dress seemed
strangely out of keeping with the stem antique solemnity of the Gothic
buildings around, I espied my cousin's name over a door; and, uncertain how
he might receive me, I gave a gentle, half-apologetic knock, which,
was answered by a loud "Come in!" and I entered on a scene, even more
incongruous than anything I had seen outside.

"If we can only keep away from Jesus as far as the corner, I don't care."

"If we don't run into that first Trinity before the willows, I shall care
with a vengeance."

"If we don't it's a pity," said my cousin. "Wadham ran up by the side of
that first Trinity yesterday, and he said that they were as well gruelled
as so many posters, before they got to the stile."

This unintelligible, and to my inexperienced ears, irreverent conversation,
proceeded from half a dozen powerful young men, in low-crowned
sailors' hats and flannel trousers, some in striped jerseys, some in
shooting-jackets, some smoking cigars, some beating up eggs in sherry;
while my cousin, dressed like "a fancy waterman," sat on the back of a
sofa, puffing away at a huge meerschaum.

"Alton! why, what wind on earth has blown you here?"

By the tone, the words seemed rather an inquiry as to what wind would be
kind enough to blow me back again. But he recovered his self-possession in
a moment.

"Delighted to see you! Where's your portmanteau? Oh--left it at the Bull!
Ah! I see. Very well, we'll send the gyp for it in a minute, and order some
luncheon. We're just going down to the boat-race. Sorry I can't stop, but
we shall all be fined--not a moment to lose. I'll send you in luncheon as
I go through the butteries; then, perhaps, you'd like to come down and see
the race. Ask the gyp to tell you the way. Now, then, follow your noble
captain, gentlemen--to glory and a supper." And he bustled out with his
crew.

While I was staring about the room, at the jumble of Greek books,
boxing-gloves, and luscious prints of pretty women, a shrewd-faced, smart
man entered, much better dressed than myself.

"What would you like, sir? Ox-tail soup, sir, or gravy-soup, sir? Stilton
cheese, sir, or Cheshire, sir? Old Stilton, sir, just now."

Fearing lest many words might betray my rank--and, strange to say, though
I should not have been afraid of confessing myself an artisan before the
"gentlemen" who had just left the room, I was ashamed to have my low estate
discovered, and talked over with his compeers, by the flunkey who waited on
them--I answered, "Anything--I really don't care," in as aristocratic and
off-hand a tone as I could assume.

"Porter or ale, sir?"

"Water," without a "thank you," I am ashamed to say for I was not at that
time quite sure whether it was well-bred to be civil to servants.

The man vanished, and reappeared with a savoury luncheon, silver forks,
snowy napkins, smart plates--I felt really quite a gentleman.

He gave me full directions as to my "way to the boats, sir;" and I started
out much refreshed; passed through back streets, dingy, dirty, and
profligate-looking enough; out upon wide meadows, fringed with enormous
elms; across a ferry; through a pleasant village, with its old grey church
and spire; by the side of a sluggish river, alive with wherries. I had
walked down some mile or so, and just as I heard a cannon, as I thought,
fire at some distance, and wondered at its meaning, I came to a sudden bend
of the river, with a church-tower hanging over the stream on the opposite
bank, a knot of tall poplars, weeping willows, rich lawns, sloping down to
the water's side, gay with bonnets and shawls; while, along the edge of
the stream, light, gaudily-painted boats apparently waited for the
race,--altogether the most brilliant and graceful group of scenery which I
had beheld in my little travels. I stopped to gaze; and among the ladies on
the lawn opposite, caught sight of a figure--my heart leapt into my mouth!
Was it she at last? It was too far to distinguish features; the dress was
altogether different--but was it not she? I saw her move across the lawn,
and take the arm of a tall, venerable-looking man; and his dress was the
same as that of the Dean, at the Dulwich Gallery--was it? was it not?
To have found her, and a river between us! It was ludicrously
miserable--miserably ludicrous. Oh, that accursed river, which debarred me
from certainty, from bliss! I would have plunged across--but there were
three objections--first, that I could not swim; next, what could I do when
I had crossed? and thirdly, it might not be she after all.

And yet I was certain--instinctively certain--that it was she, the idol of
my imagination for years. If I could not see her features under that little
white bonnet, I could imagine them there; they flashed up in my memory as
fresh as ever. Did she remember my features, as I did hers? Would she know
me again? Had she ever even thought of me, from that day to this? Fool!
But there I stood, fascinated, gazing across the river, heedless of the
racing-boats, and the crowd, and the roar that was rushing up to me at the
rate of ten miles an hour, and in a moment more, had caught me, and swept
me away with it, whether I would or not, along the towing-path, by the side
of the foremost boats.

And yet, after a few moments, I ceased to wonder either at the Cambridge
passion for boat-racing, or at the excitement of the spectators. "_Honi
soit qui mal y pense_." It was a noble sport--a sight such as could only be
seen in England--some hundred of young men, who might, if they had chosen,
been lounging effeminately about the streets, subjecting themselves
voluntarily to that intense exertion, for the mere pleasure of toil.
The true English stuff came out there; I felt that, in spite of all
my prejudices--the stuff which has held Gibraltar and conquered at
Waterloo--which has created a Birmingham and a Manchester, and colonized
every quarter of the globe--that grim, earnest, stubborn energy, which,
since the days of the old Romans, the English possess alone of all the
nations of the earth. I was as proud of the gallant young fellows as if
they had been my brothers--of their courage and endurance (for one could
see that it was no child's-play, from the pale faces, and panting lips),
their strength and activity, so fierce and yet so cultivated, smooth,
harmonious, as oar kept time with oar, and every back rose and fell in
concert--and felt my soul stirred up to a sort of sweet madness, not merely
by the shouts and cheers of the mob around me, but by the loud fierce pulse
of the rowlocks, the swift whispering rush of the long snake-like eight
oars, the swirl and gurgle of the water in their wake, the grim, breathless
silence of the straining rowers. My blood boiled over, and fierce tears
swelled into my eyes; for I, too, was a man, and an Englishman; and when I
caught sight of my cousin, pulling stroke to the second boat in the long
line, with set teeth and flashing eyes, the great muscles on his bare arms
springing up into knots at every rapid stroke, I ran and shouted among the
maddest and the foremost.

But I soon tired, and, footsore as I was, began to find my strength fail
me. I tried to drop behind, but found it impossible in the press. At last,
quite out of breath, I stopped; and instantly received a heavy blow from
behind, which threw me on my face; and a fierce voice shouted in my ear,
"Confound you, sir! don't you know better than to do that?" I looked up,
and saw a man twice as big as myself sprawling over me, headlong down the
bank, toward the river, whither I followed him, but alas! not on my feet,
but rolling head over heels. On the very brink he stuck his heels into the
turf, and stopped dead, amid a shout of, "Well saved, Lynedale!" I did not
stop; but rolled into some two-feet water, amid the laughter and shouts of
the men.

I scrambled out, and limped on, shaking with wet and pain, till I was
stopped by a crowd which filled the towing-path. An eight-oar lay under the
bank, and the men on shore were cheering and praising those in the boat for
having "bumped," which word I already understood to mean, winning a race.

Among them, close to me, was the tall man who had upset me; and a very
handsome, high-bred looking man he was. I tried to slip by, but he
recognized me instantly, and spoke.

"I hope I didn't hurt you much, Really, when I spoke so sharply, I did not
see that you were not a gownsman!"

The speech, as I suppose now, was meant courteously enough. It indicated
that though he might allow himself liberties with men of his own class, he
was too well bred to do so with me. But in my anger I saw nothing but the
words, "not a gownsman." Why should he see that I was not a gownsman?
Because I was shabbier?--(and my clothes, over and above the ducking they
had had, were shabby); or more plebeian in appearance (whatsoever that may
mean)? or wanted something else, which the rest had about them, and I had
not? Why should he know that I was not a gownsman? I did not wish,
of course, to be a gentleman, and an aristocrat; but I was nettled,
nevertheless, at not being mistaken for one; and answered, sharply enough--

"No matter whether I am hurt or not. It serves me right for getting among
you cursed aristocrats."

"Box the cad's ears, Lord Lynedale," said a dirty fellow with a long
pole--a cad himself, I should have thought.

"Let him go home and ask his mammy to hang him out to dry," said another.

The lord (for so I understood he was) looked at me with an air of surprise
and amusement, which may have been good-natured enough in him, but did not
increase the good-nature in me.

"Tut, tut, my good fellow. I really am very sorry for having upset you.
Here's half-a-crown to cover damages."

"Better give it me than a muff like that," quoth he of the long pole; while
I answered, surlily enough, that I wanted neither him nor his money, and
burst through the crowd toward Cambridge. I was so shabby and plebeian,
then, that people actually dare offer me money! Intolerable!

The reader may say that I was in a very unwholesome and unreasonable frame
of mind.

So I was. And so would he have been in my place.

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.