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

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Kingsley took his text from Luke iv. verses 16 to 21: "The spirit of the
Lord is upon me because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the
poor," &c. What then was that gospel? Kingsley asks, and goes on--"I assert
that the business for which God sends a Christian priest in a Christian
nation is, to preach freedom, equality, and brotherhood in the fullest,
deepest, widest meaning of those three great words; that in as far as he so
does, he is a true priest, doing his Lord's work with his Lord's blessing
on him; that in as far as he does not he is no priest at all, but a traitor
to God and man"; and again, "I say that these words express the very
pith and marrow of a priest's business; I say that they preach freedom,
equality, and brotherhood to rich and poor for ever and ever." Then he goes
on to warn his hearers how there is always a counterfeit in this world of
the noblest message and teaching.

Thus there are two freedoms--the false, where a man is free to do what he
likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought.

Two equalities--the false, which reduces all intellects and all characters,
to a dead level, and gives the same power to the bad as to the good, to the
wise as to the foolish, ending thus in practice in the grossest inequality;
the true, wherein each man has equal power to educate and use whatever
faculties or talents God has given him, be they less or more. This is the
divine equality which the Church proclaims, and nothing else proclaims as
she does.

Two brotherhoods--the false, where a man chooses who shall be his brothers,
and whom he will treat as such; the true, in which a man believes that
all are his brothers, not by the will of the flesh, or the will of man,
but by the will of God, whose children they all are alike. The Church has
three special possessions and treasures. The Bible, which proclaims man's
freedom, Baptism his equality, the Lord's Supper his brotherhood.

At the end of this sermon (which would scarcely cause surprise to-day
if preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Chapel Royal), the
incumbent got up at the altar and declared his belief that great part of
the doctrine of the sermon was untrue, and that he had expected a sermon of
an entirely different kind. To a man of the preacher's vehement temperament
it must have required a great effort not to reply at the moment. The
congregation was keenly excited, and evidently expected him to do so.
He only bowed his head, pronounced the blessing, and came down from the
pulpit.

I must go back a little to take up the thread of his connection with, and
work for, the Society for Promoting Working Men's Associations. After it
had passed the first difficulties of starting, he was seldom able to
attend either Council or Central Board. Every one else felt how much more
important and difficult work he was doing by fighting the battle in the
press, down at Eversley, but he himself was eager to take part in the
everyday business, and uneasy if he was not well informed as to what was
going on.

Sometimes, however, he would come up to the Council, when any matter
specially interesting to him was in question, as in the following example,
when a new member of the Council, an Eton master, had objected to some
strong expressions in one of his letters on the Frimley murder, in the
"Christian Socialist":--

1849.--"The upper classes are like a Yankee captain sitting on the safety
valve, and serenely whistling--but what will be will be. As for the worthy
Eton parson, I consider it infinitely expedient that he be entreated to
vent his whole dislike in the open Council forthwith, under a promise on my
part not to involve him in any controversy or reprisals, or to answer in
any tone except that of the utmost courtesy and respect. Pray do this. It
will at once be a means of gaining him, and a good example, please God,
to the working men; and for the Frimley letter, put it in the fire if you
like, or send it back to have the last half re-written, or 'anything else
you like, my pretty little dear.'"

But his prevailing feeling was getting to be, that he was becoming an
outsider--

"Nobody deigns to tell me," he wrote to me, "how things go on, and who
helps, and whether I can help. In short, I know nothing, and begin to fancy
that you, like some others, think me a lukewarm and timeserving aristocrat,
after I have ventured more than many, because I had more to venture."

The same feeling comes out in the following letter, which illustrates
too, very well, both his deepest conviction as to the work, the mixture
of playfulness and earnestness with which he handled it, and his humble
estimate of himself. It refers to the question of the admission of a new
association to the Union. It was necessary, of course, to see that the
rules of a society, applying for admission to the Union, were in proper
form, and that sufficient capital was forthcoming, and the decision lay
with the Central Board, controlled in some measure by the Council of
Promoters.

An association of clay-pipe makers had applied for admission, and had been
refused by the vote of the central board. The Council, however, thought
there were grounds for reconsidering the decision, and to strengthen the
case for admission, Kingsley's opinion was asked. He replied:--

"EVERSLEY, _May 31, 1850_.

"The sight of your handwriting comforted me--for nobody takes any notice of
me, not even the printers; so I revenge myself by being as idle as a dog,
and fishing, and gardening, and basking in this glorious sun. But your
letter set me thanking God that he has raised up men to do the work of
which I am not worthy. As for the pipe-makers, give my compliments to the
autocrats, and tell them it is a shame. The Vegetarians would have quite
as much right to refuse the Butchers, because, forsooth, theirs is now
discovered not to be a necessary trade. Bosh! The question is this--If
association be a great Divine law and duty, the realization of the Church
idea, no man has _a right_ to refuse any body of men, into whose heart
God has put it to come and associate. It may be answered that these men's
motives are self-interested. I say, 'Judge no man.' You dare not refuse
a heathen baptism because you choose to think that his only motive for
turning Christian is the selfish one of saving his own rascally soul. No
more have you a right to refuse to men an entrance into the social Church.
They must come in, and they will, because association is not men's dodge
and invention but God's law for mankind and society, which He has made, and
we must not limit. I don't know whether I am intelligible, but what's more
important, I know I am right. Just read this to the autocrats, and tell
them, with my compliments, they are Popes, Tyrants, Manichees, Ascetics,
Sectarians, and everything else that is abominable; and if they used as
many pipes as I do, they would know the blessing of getting them cheap,
and start an associate baccy factory besides. Shall we try? But, this one
little mistake excepted (though, if they repeat it, it will become a great
mistake, and a wrong, and a ruinous wrong), they are much better fellows
than poor I, and doing a great deal more good, and at every fresh news of
their deeds I feel like Job's horse, when he scents the battle afar off."

No small part of the work of the Council consisted in mediating and
arbitrating in the disputes between the associates and their managers;
indeed, such work kept the legal members of the board (none of whom were
then overburdened with regular practice) pretty fully occupied. Some such
dispute had arisen in one of the most turbulent of these associations, and
had been referred to me for settlement. I had satisfied myself as to the
facts, and considered my award, and had just begun to write out the draft,
when I was called away from my chambers, and left the opening lines lying
on my desk. They ran as follows:--"The Trustees of the Mile End Association
of Engineers, seeing that the quarrels between the associates have not
ceased"--at which word I broke off. On returning to my chambers a quarter
of an hour later, I found a continuation in the following words:--

"And that every man is too much inclined to behave himself like a beast,
In spite of our glorious humanity, which requires neither God nor priest,
Yet is daily praised and plastered by ten thousand fools at least--
Request Mr. Hughes' presence at their jawshop in the East,
Which don't they wish they may get it, for he goes out to-night to feast
At the Rev. C. Kingsley's rectory, Chelsea, where he'll get his gullet
greased
With the best of Barto Valle's port, and will have his joys increased
By meeting his old college chum, McDougal the Borneo priest--
So come you thief, and drop your brief,
At six o'clock without relief;
And if you won't may you come to grief,
Says Parson Lot the Socialist Chief,
Who signs his mark at the foot of the leaf--thus"

and, at the end, a clenched fist was sketched in a few bold lines, and
under it, "Parson Lot, his mark" written.

I don't know that I can do better than give the history of the rest of the
day. Knowing his town habits well, I called at Parker, the publisher's,
after chambers, and found him there, sitting on a table and holding forth
on politics to our excellent little friend, John Wm. Parker, the junior
partner.

We started to walk down to Chelsea, and a dense fog came on before we had
reached Hyde Park Corner. Both of us knew the way well; but we lost it half
a dozen times, and his spirit seemed to rise as the fog thickened. "Isn't
this like life," he said, after one of our blunders: "a deep yellow fog all
round, with a dim light here and there shining through. You grope your way
on from one lamp to another, and you go up wrong streets and back again;
but you get home at last--there's always light enough for that." After a
short pause he said, quite abruptly, "Tom, do you want to live to be old?"
I said I had never thought on the subject; and he went on, "I dread it more
than I can say. To feel one's powers going, and to end in snuff and stink.
Look at the last days of Scott and Wordsworth, and Southey." I suggested
St. John. "Yes," he said, "that's the right thing, and will do for Bunsen,
and great, tranquil men like him. The longer they live the better for all.
But for an eager, fiery nature like mine, with fierce passions eating one's
life out, it won't do. If I live twenty years I know what will happen to
me. The back of my brain will soften, and I shall most likely go blind."

The Bishop got down somehow by six. The dinner did not last long, for the
family were away, and afterwards we adjourned to the study, and Parson Lot
rose to his best. He stood before the fire, while the Bishop and I took the
two fireside arm chairs, and poured himself out, on subject after subject,
sometimes when much moved taking a tramp up and down the room, a long
clay pipe in his right hand (at which he gave an occasional suck; it was
generally out, but he scarcely noticed it), and his left hand passed behind
his back, clasping the right elbow. It was a favourite attitude with him,
when he was at ease with his company.

We were both bent on drawing him out; and the first topic, I think, raised
by the Bishop was, Fronde's history, then recently published. He took up
the cudgels for Henry VIII., whom we accused of arbitrariness. Henry was
not arbitrary; arbitrary men are the most obstinate of men? Why? Because
they are weak. The strongest men are always ready to hear reason and change
their opinions, because the strong man knows that if he loses an opinion
to-day he can get just as good a one to-morrow in its place. But the weak
man holds on to his opinion, because he can't get another, and he knows it.

Soon afterwards he got upon trout fishing, which was a strong bond of union
between him and me, and discoursed on the proper methods of fishing chalk
streams. "Your flies can't be too big, but they must be on small gut, not
on base viol fiddle strings, like those you brought down to Farnham last
year. I tell you gut is the thing that does it. Trout know that flies don't
go about with a ring and a hand pole through their noses, like so many
prize bulls of Lord Ducie's."

Then he got on the possible effect of association on the future of England,
and from that to the first International Exhibition, and the building which
was going up in Hyde Park.

"I mean to run a muck soon," he said, "against all this talk about genius
and high art, and the rest of it. It will be the ruin of us, as it has been
of Germany. They have been for fifty years finding out, and showing people
how to do everything in heaven and earth, and have done nothing. They are
dead even yet, and will be till they get out of the high art fit. We were
dead, and the French were dead till their revolution; but that brought us
to life. Why didn't the Germans come to life too? Because they set to work
with their arts, sciences, and how to do this, that, and the other thing,
and doing nothing. Goethe was, in great part, the ruin of Germany. He was
like a great fog coming down on the German people, and wrapping them up."

Then he, in his turn, drew the Bishop about Borneo, and its people, and
fauna and flora; and we got some delightful stories of apes, and converts,
and honey bears, Kingsley showing himself, by his questions, as familiar
with the Bornean plants and birds, as though he had lived there. Later on
we got him on his own works, and he told us how he wrote. "I can't think,
even on scientific subjects, except in the dramatic form. It is what Tom
said to Harry, and what Harry answered him. I never put pen to paper till I
have two or three pages in my head, and see them as if they were printed.
Then I write them off, and take a turn in the garden, and so on again." We
wandered back to fishing, and I challenged his keenness for making a bag.
"Ah!" he said, "that's all owing to my blessed habit of intensity, which
has been my greatest help in life. I go at what I am about as if there were
nothing else in the world for the time being. That's the secret of all
hard-working men; but most of them can't carry it into their amusements.
Luckily for me I can stop from all work, at short notice, and turn head
over heels in the sight of all creation, and say, I won't be good or bad,
or wise, or anything, till two o'clock to-morrow."

At last the Bishop would go, so we groped our way with him into the King's
Road, and left him in charge of a link-boy. When we got back, I said
something laughingly about his gift of talk, which had struck me more that
evening than ever before.

"Yes," he said, "I have it all in me. I could be as great a talker as any
man in England, but for my stammering. I know it well; but it's a blessed
thing for me. You must know, by this time, that I'm a very shy man, and
shyness and vanity always go together. And so I think of what every fool
will say of me, and can't help it. When a man's first thought is not
whether a thing is right or wrong, but what will Lady A., or Mr. B. say
about it, depend upon it he wants a thorn in the flesh, like my stammer.
When I am speaking for God, in the pulpit, or praying by bedsides, I never
stammer. My stammer is a blessed thing for me. It keeps me from talking in
company, and from going out as much as I should do but for it."

It was two o'clock before we thought of moving, and then, the fog being as
bad as ever, he insisted on making me up a bed on the floor. While we were
engaged in this process, he confided to me that he had heard of a doctor
who was very successful in curing stammering, and was going to try him. I
laughed, and reminded him of his thorn in the flesh, to which he replied,
with a quaint twinkle of his eye, "Well, that's true enough. But a man has
no right to be a nuisance, if he can help it, and no more right to go about
amongst his fellows stammering, than he has to go about stinking."

At this time he was already at work on another novel; and, in answer to a
remonstrance from a friend, who was anxious that he should keep ail his
strength for social reform, writes--

1851.--"I know that He has made me a parish priest, and that that is the
duty which lies nearest me, and that I may seem to be leaving my calling
in novel writing. But has He not taught me all these very things _by my_
parish priest life? Did He, too, let me become a strong, daring, sporting,
wild man of the woods for nothing? Surely the education He has given me so
different from that which authors generally receive, points out to me a
peculiar calling to preach on these points from my own experience, as it
did to good old Isaac Walton, as it has done in our own day to that truly
noble man, Captain Marryat. Therefore I must believe, '_si tu sequi la tua,
stella_,' with Dante, that He who ordained my star will not lead me _into_
temptation, but _through_ it, as Maurice says. Without Him all places and
methods of life are equally dangerous--with Him, all equally safe. Pray for
me, for in myself I am weaker of purpose than a lost grey hound, lazier
than a dog in rainy weather."

While the co-operative movement was spreading in all directions, the same
impulse was working amongst the trades unions, and the engineers had set
the example of uniting all their branches into one society. In this winter
they believed themselves strong enough to try conclusions with their
employers. The great lock-out in January, 1852, was the consequence. The
engineers had appealed to the Council of Promoters to help them in putting
their case--which had been much misrepresented--fairly before the public,
and Kingsley had been consulted as the person best able to do it. He had
declined to interfere, and wrote me the following letter to explain his
views. It will show how far he was an encourager of violent measures or
views:--

"EVERSLEY, _January 28, 1852_.

"You may have been surprised at my having taken no part in this Amalgamated
Iron Trades' matter. And I think that I am bound to say why I have not, and
how far I wish my friends to interfere in it.

"I do think that we, the Council of Promoters, shall not be wise in
interfering between masters and men; because--1. I question whether the
points at issue between them can be fairly understood by any persons not
conversant with the practical details of the trade...

"2. Nor do I think they have put their case as well as they might. For
instance, if it be true that they themselves have invented many, or most,
of the improvements in their tools and machinery, they have an argument in
favour of keeping out unskilled labourers, which is unanswerable, and yet,
that they have never used--viz.: 'Your masters make hundreds and thousands
by these improvements, while we have no remuneration for this inventive
talent of ours, but rather lose by it, because it makes the introduction
of unskilled labour more easy. Therefore, the only way in which we can get
anything like a payment for this inventive faculty of which we make you a
present over and above our skilled labour, for which you bargained, is to
demand that we, who invent the machines, if we cannot have a share in the
profits of them, shall at least have the exclusive privilege of using them,
instead of their being, as now, turned against us.' That, I think, is a
fair argument; but I have seen nothing of it from any speaker or writer.

"3. I think whatever battle is fought, must be fought by the men
themselves. The present dodge of the Manchester school is to cry out
against us, as Greg did. 'These Christian Socialists are a set of mediæval
parsons, who want to hinder the independence and self-help of the men, and
bring them back to absolute feudal maxims; and then, with the most absurd
inconsistency, when we get up a corporation workshop, to let the men work
on the very independence and self-help of which they talk so fine, they
turn round and raise just the opposite yell, and cry, The men can't be
independent of capitalists; these associations will fail _because_ the men
are helping themselves'--showing that what they mean is, that the men shall
be independent of every one but themselves--independent of legislators,
parsons, advisers, gentlemen, noblemen, and every one that tries to help
them by moral agents; but the slaves of the capitalists, bound to them by
a servitude increasing instead of lightening with their numbers. Now, the
only way in which we can clear the cause of this calumny is to let the men
fight their own battle; to prevent any one saying, 'These men are the tools
of dreamers and fanatics,' which would be just as ruinously blackening to
them in the public eyes, as it would be to let the cry get abroad, 'This is
a Socialist movement, destructive of rights of property, communism, Louis
Blanc and the devil, &c.' You know the infernal stuff which the devil gets
up on such occasions--having no scruples about calling himself hard names,
when it suits his purpose, to blind and frighten respectable old women.

"Moreover, these men are not poor distressed needlewomen or slop-workers.
They are the most intelligent and best educated workmen, receiving incomes
often higher than a gentleman's son whose education has cost £1000, and if
they can't fight their own battles, no men in England can, and the people
are not ripe for association, and we must hark back into the competitive
rot heap again. All, then, that we can do is, to give advice when asked--to
see that they have, as far as we can get at them, a clear stage and no
favour, but not by public, but by private influence.

"But we can help them in another way, by showing them the way to associate.
That is quite a distinct question from their quarrel with their masters,
and we shall be very foolish if we give the press a handle for mixing up
the two. We have a right to say to masters, men, and public, 'We know and
care nothing about the iron strike. Here are a body of men coming to us,
wishing to be shown how to do that which is a right thing for them to
do--well or ill off, strike or no strike, namely, associate; and we will
help and teach them to do _that_ to the very utmost of our power.'

"The Iron Workers' co-operative shops will be watched with lynx eyes,
calumniated shamelessly. Our business will be to tell the truth about them,
and fight manfully with our pens for them. But we shall never be able to
get the ears of the respectabilities and the capitalists, if we appear at
this stage of the business. What we must say is, 'If you are needy and
enslaved, we will fight for you from pity, whether you be associated or
competitive. But you are neither needy, nor, unless you choose, enslaved;
and therefore we will only fight for you in proportion as you become
associates. Do that, and see if we can't stand hard knocks for your
sake.'--Yours ever affectionate, C. KINGSLEY."

In the summer of 1852 (mainly by the continued exertions of the members of
the Council, who had supplied Mr. Slaney's committee with all his evidence,
and had worked hard in other ways for this object) a Bill for legalizing
Industrial Associations was about to be introduced into the House of
Commons. It was supposed at one time that it would be taken in hand by the
Government of Lord Derby, then lately come into office, and Kingsley had
been canvassing a number of persons to make sure of its passing. On hearing
that a Cabinet Minister would probably undertake it, he writes--

"Let him be assured that he will by such a move do more to carry out true
Conservatism, and to reconcile the workmen with the real aristocracy, than
any politician for the last twenty years has done. The truth is, we are in
a critical situation here in England. Not in one of danger--which is the
vulgar material notion of a crisis, but at the crucial point, the point of
departure of principles and parties which will hereafter become great and
powerful. Old Whiggery is dead, old true blue Toryism of the Robert Inglis
school is dead too-and in my eyes a great loss. But as live dogs are better
than dead lions, let us see what the live dogs are.

"1.--The Peelites, who will ultimately, be sure, absorb into themselves all
the remains of Whiggery, and a very large proportion of the Conservative
party. In an effete unbelieving age, like this, the Sadducee and the
Herodian will be the most captivating philosopher. A scientific laziness,
lukewarmness, and compromise, is a cheery theory for the young men of
the day, and they will take to it _con amore_. I don't complain of Peel
himself. He was a great man, but his method of compromise, though useful
enough in particular cases when employed by a great man, becomes a most
dastardly "_schema mundi_" when taken up by a school of little men.
Therefore the only help which we can hope for from the Peelites is that
they will serve as ballast and cooling pump to both parties, but their very
trimming and moderation make them fearfully likely to obtain power. It
depends on the wisdom of the present government, whether they do or not.