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

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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
all, it is they who will have to mend you. 'As with the people, so with the
priest,' is the everlasting law. When, fifty years ago, all classes were
drunkards, from the statesman to the peasant, the clergy were drunken
also, but not half so bad as the laity. Now the laity are eaten up with
covetousness and ambition; and the clergy are covetous and ambitious, but
not half so bad as the laity. The laity, and you working men especially,
are the dupes of frothy, insincere, official rant, as Mr. Carlyle would
call it, in Parliament, on the hustings, at every debating society and
Chartist meeting; and, therefore, the clergyman's sermons are apt to be
just what people like elsewhere, and what, therefore, they suppose people
will like there."

"If, then," I answered, "in spite of your opinions, you confess the clergy
to be so bad, why are you so angry with men of our opinions, if we do plot
sometimes a little against the Church?"

"I do not think you know what my opinions are, Mr. Locke. Did you not hear
me just now praising the monasteries, because they were socialist and
democratic? But why is the badness of the clergy any reason for pulling
down the Church? That is another of the confused irrationalities into which
you all allow yourselves to fall. What do you mean by crying shame on a man
for being a bad clergyman, if a good clergyman is not a good thing? If the
very idea of a clergyman, was abominable, as your Church-destroyers ought
to say, you ought to praise a man for being a bad one, and not acting out
this same abominable idea of priesthood. Your very outcry against the sins
of the clergy, shows that, even in your minds, a dim notion lies somewhere
that a clergyman's vocation is, in itself, a divine, a holy, a beneficent
one."

"I never looked at it in that light, certainly," said I, somewhat
staggered.

"Very likely not. One word more, for I may not have another opportunity
of speaking to you as I would on these matters. You working men complain
of the clergy for being bigoted and obscurantist, and hating the cause of
the people. Does not nine-tenths of the blame of that lie at your door? I
took up, the other day, at hazard, one of your favourite liberty-preaching
newspapers; and I saw books advertised in it, whose names no modest woman
should ever behold; doctrines and practices advocated in it from which
all the honesty, the decency, the common human feeling which is left in
the English mind, ought to revolt, and does revolt. You cannot deny it.
Your class has told the world that the cause of liberty, equality, and
fraternity, the cause which the working masses claim as theirs, identifies
itself with blasphemy and indecency, with the tyrannous persecutions of
trades-unions, with robbery, assassinations, vitriol-bottles, and midnight
incendiarism. And then you curse the clergy for taking you at your word!
Whatsoever they do, you attack them. If they believe you, and stand up for
common, morality, and for the truths which they know are all-important to
poor as well as rich, you call them bigots and persecutors; while if they
neglect, in any way, the very Christianity for believing which you insult
them, you turn round and call them hypocrites. Mark my words, Mr. Locke,
till you gain the respect and confidence of the clergy, you will never
rise. The day will come when you will find that the clergy are the only
class who can help you. Ah, you may shake your head. I warn you of it. They
were the only bulwark of the poor against the mediæval tyranny of Rank;
you will find them the only bulwark against the modern tyranny of Mammon."

I was on the point of entreating her to explain herself further, but at
that critical moment Lillian interposed.

"Now, stay your prophetic glances into the future; here come Lynedale and
papa." And in a moment, Eleanor's whole manner and countenance altered--the
petulant, wild unrest, the harsh, dictatorial tone vanished; and she
turned to meet her lover, with a look of tender, satisfied devotion, which
transfigured her whole face. It was most strange, the power he had over
her. His presence, even at a distance, seemed to fill her whole being
with rich quiet life. She watched him with folded hands, like a mystic
worshipper, waiting for the afflatus of the spirit; and, suspicious and
angry as I felt towards her, I could not help being drawn to her by this
revelation of depths of strong healthy feeling, of which her usual manner
gave so little sign.

This conversation thoroughly puzzled me; it showed me that there might be
two sides to the question of the people's cause, as well as to that of
others. It shook a little my faith in the infallibility of my own class,
to hear such severe animadversions on them, from a person who professed
herself as much a disciple of Carlyle as any working man; and who evidently
had no lack either of intellect to comprehend or boldness to speak out his
doctrines; who could praise the old monasteries for being democratic and
socialist, and spoke far more severely of the clergy than I could have
done--because she did not deal merely in trite words of abuse, but showed a
real analytic insight into the causes of their short-coming.

* * * * *

That same evening the conversation happened to turn on dress, of which Miss
Staunton spoke scornfully and disparagingly, as mere useless vanity and
frippery--an empty substitute for real beauty of person as well as the
higher beauty of mind. And I, emboldened by the courtesy with which I was
always called on to take my share in everything that was said or done,
ventured to object, humbly enough, to her notions.

"But is not beauty," I said, "in itself a good and blessed thing,
softening, refining, rejoicing the eyes of all who behold?" (And my eyes,
as I spoke, involuntary rested on Lillian's face--who saw it, and blushed.)
"Surely nothing which helps beauty is to be despised. And, without the
charm of dress, beauty, even that of expression, does not really do itself
justice. How many lovely and lovable faces there are, for instance,
among the working classes, which, if they had but the advantages which
ladies possess, might create delight, respect, chivalrous worship in the
beholder--but are now never appreciated, because they have not the same
fair means of displaying themselves which even the savage girl of the South
Sea Islands possesses!"

Lillian said it was so very true--she had really never thought of it
before--and somehow I gained courage to go on.

"Besides, dress is a sort of sacrament, if I may use the word--a sure sign
of the wearer's character; according as any one is orderly, or modest, or
tasteful, or joyous, or brilliant"--and I glanced again at Lillian--"those
excellences, or the want of them, are sure to show themselves, in the
colours they choose, and the cut of their garments. In the workroom, I and
a friend of mine used often to amuse ourselves over the clothes we were
making, by speculating from them on the sort of people the wearers were to
be; and I fancy we were not often wrong."

My cousin looked daggers at me, and for a moment I fancied I had committed
a dreadful mistake in mentioning my tailor-life. So I had in his eyes, but
not in those of the really well-bred persons round me.

"Oh, how very amusing it must have been! I think I shall turn milliner,
Eleanor, for the fun of divining every one's little failings from their
caps and gowns!"

"Go on, Mr. Locke," said the dean, who had seemed buried in the
"Transactions of the Royal Society." "The fact is novel, and I am more
obliged to any one who gives me that, than if he gave me a bank-note. The
money gets spent and done with; but I cannot spend the fact: it remains for
life as permanent capital, returning interest and compound interest _ad
infinitum_. By-the-by, tell me about those same workshops. I have heard
more about them than I like to believe true."

And I did tell him all about them; and spoke, my blood rising as I went on,
long and earnestly, perhaps eloquently. Now and then I got abashed, and
tried to stop; and then the dean informed me that I was speaking well and
sensibly, while Lillian entreated me to go on. She had never conceived
such things possible--it was as interesting as a novel, &c., &c.; and Miss
Staunton sat with compressed lips and frowning brow, apparently thinking of
nothing but her book, till I felt quite angry at her apathy--for such it
seemed to me to be.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MY FALL.

And now the last day of our stay at D * * * had arrived, and I had as yet
heard nothing of the prospects of my book; though, indeed, the company
in which I had found myself had driven literary ambition, for the time
being, out of my head, and bewitched me to float down the stream of daily
circumstance, satisfied to snatch the enjoyment of each present moment.
That morning, however, after I had fulfilled my daily task of arranging
and naming objects of natural history, the dean settled himself back in
his arm-chair, and bidding me sit down, evidently meditated a business
conversation.

He had heard from his publisher, and read his letter to me. "The poems were
on the whole much liked. The most satisfactory method of publishing for all
parties, would be by procuring so many subscribers, each agreeing to take
so many copies. In consideration of the dean's known literary judgment and
great influence, the publisher would, as a private favour, not object to
take the risk of any further expenses."

So far everything sounded charming. The method was not a very independent
one, but it was the only one; and I should actually have the delight of
having published a volume. But, alas! "he thought that the sale of the book
might be greatly facilitated, if certain passages of a strong political
tendency were omitted. He did not wish personally to object to them as
statements of facts, or to the pictorial vigour with which they were
expressed; but he thought that they were somewhat too strong for the
present state of the public taste; and though he should be the last to
allow any private considerations to influence his weak patronage of rising
talent, yet, considering his present connexion, he should hardly wish to
take on himself the responsibility of publishing such passages, unless with
great modifications."

"You see," said the good old man, "the opinion of respectable practical
men, who know the world, exactly coincides with mine. I did not like to
tell you that I could not help in the publication of your MSS. in their
present state; but I am sure, from the modesty and gentleness which I have
remarked in you, your readiness to listen to reason, and your pleasing
freedom from all violence or coarseness in expressing your opinions, that
you will not object to so exceedingly reasonable a request, which, after
all, is only for your good. Ah! young man," he went on, in a more feeling
tone than I had yet heard from him, "if you were once embroiled in that
political world, of which you know so little, you would soon be crying like
David, 'Oh that I had wings like a dove, then would I flee away and be
at rest!' Do you fancy that you can alter a fallen world? What it is, it
always has been, and will be to the end. Every age has its political and
social nostrums, my dear young man, and fancies them infallible; and
the next generation arises to curse them as failures in practice, and
superstitious in theory, and try some new nostrum of its own."

I sighed.

"Ah! you may sigh. But we have each of us to be disenchanted of our dream.
There was a time once when I talked republicanism as loudly as raw youth
ever did--when I had an excuse for it, too; for when I was a boy, I saw the
French Revolution; and it was no wonder if young, enthusiastic brains
were excited by all sorts of wild hopes--'perfectibility of the species,'
'rights of man,' 'universal liberty, equality, and brotherhood.'--My dear
sir, there is nothing new under the sun; all that is stale and trite to
a septuagenarian, who has seen where it all ends. I speak to you freely,
because I am deeply interested in you. I feel that this is the important
question of your life, and that you have talents, the possession of which
is a heavy responsibility. Eschew politics, once and for all, as I have
done. I might have been, I may tell you, a bishop at this moment, if I had
condescended to meddle again in those party questions of which my youthful
experience sickened me. But I knew that I should only weaken my own
influence, as that most noble and excellent man, Dr. Arnold, did, by
interfering in politics. The poet, like the clergyman and the philosopher,
has nothing to do with politics. Let them choose the better part, and it
shall not be taken from them. The world may rave," he continued, waxing
eloquent as he approached his favourite subject--"the world may rave, but
in the study there is quiet. The world may change, Mr. Locke, and will; but
'the earth abideth for ever.' Solomon had seen somewhat of politics, and
social improvement, and so on; and behold, then, as now, 'all was vanity
and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and
that which is wanting cannot be numbered. What profit hath a man of all his
labour which he taketh under the sun? The thing which hath been, it is that
which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun. One generation
passeth away, and another cometh; but the earth abideth for ever.' No
wonder that the wisest of men took refuge from such experience, as I have
tried to do, in talking of all herbs, from the cedar of Lebanon to the
hyssop that groweth on the wall!