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

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"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 £120,000 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."