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

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The crowd growled a dubious assent.

"Oh, yes, you can grumble at the farmers, acause you deals with them
first-hand; but you be too stupid to do aught but hunt by sight. I be an
old dog, and I hunts cunning. I sees farther than my nose, I does, I larnt
politics to London when I was a prentice; and I ain't forgotten the plans
of it. Look you here. The farmers, they say they can't live unless they can
make four rents, one for labour, and one for stock, and one for rent, and
one for themselves; ain't that about right? Very well; just now they can't
make four rents--in course they can't. Now, who's to suffer for that?--the
farmer as works, or the labourer as works, or the landlord as does nothing?
But he takes care on himself. He won't give up his rent--not he. Perhaps
he might give back ten per cent, and what's that?--two shillings an acre,
maybe. What's that, if corn falls two pound a load, and more? Then the
farmer gets a stinting; and he can't stint hisself, he's bad enough off
already; he's forty shillings out o' pocket on every load of wheat--that's
eight shillings, maybe, on every acre of his land on a four-course
shift--and where's the eight shillings to come from, for the landlord's
only given him back two on it? He can't stint hisself, he daren't stint
his stock, and so he stints the labourers; and so it's you as pays the
landlord's rent--you, my boys, out o' your flesh and bones, you do--and you
can't afford it any longer, by the look of you--so just tell 'em so!"

This advice seemed to me as sadly unpractical as the rest. In short, there
seemed to be no hope, no purpose among them--and they felt it; and I could
hear, from the running comment of murmurs, that they were getting every
moment more fierce and desperate at the contemplation of their own
helplessness--a mood which the next speech was not likely to soften.

A pale, thin woman scrambled up on the stone, and stood there, her scanty
and patched garments fluttering in the bitter breeze, as, with face
sharpened with want, and eyes fierce with misery, she began, in a
querulous, 'scornful falsetto:

"I am an honest woman. I brought up seven children decently; and never axed
the parish for a farden, till my husband died. Then they tells me I can
support myself and mine--and so I does. Early and late I hoed turmits, and
early and late I rep, and left the children at home to mind each other; and
one on 'em fell into the fire, and is gone to heaven, blessed angel! and
two more it pleased the Lord to take in the fever; and the next, I hope,
will soon be out o' this miserable sinful world. But look you here: three
weeks agone, I goes to the board. I had no work. They say they could not
relieve me for the first week, because I had money yet to take.--The
hypocrites! they knowing as I couldn't but owe it all, and a lot more
beside. Next week they sends the officer to inquire. That was ten days
gone, and we starving. Then, on board-day, they gives me two loaves. Then,
next week, they takes it off again. And when I goes over (five miles) to
the board to ax why--they'd find me work--and they never did; so we goes
on starving for another week--for no one wouldn't trust us; how could they
when we was in debt already a whole lot?--you're all in debt!"

"That we are."

"There's some here as never made ten shillings a week in their lives, as
owes twenty pounds at the shop!"

"Ay, and more--and how's a man ever to pay that?"

"So this week, when I comes, they offers me the house. Would I go into
the house? They'd be glad to have me, acause I'm strong and hearty and a
good nurse. But would I, that am an honest woman, go to live with they
offscourings--they"--(she used a strong word)--"would I be parted from my
children? Would I let them hear the talk, and keep the company as they will
there, and learn all sorts o' sins that they never heard on, blessed be
God! I'll starve first, and see them starve too--though, Lord knows, it's
hard.--Oh! it's hard," she said, bursting into tears, "to leave them as I
did this morning, crying after their breakfasts, and I none to give 'em.
I've got no bread--where should I? I've got no fire--how can I give one
shilling and sixpence a hundred for coals? And if I did, who'd fetch 'em
home? And if I dared break a hedge for a knitch o' wood, they'd put me in
prison, they would, with the worst. What be I to do? What be you going to
do? That's what I came here for. What be ye going to do for us women--us
that starve and stint, and wear our hands off for you men and your
children, and get hard words, and hard blows from you? Oh! if I was a man,
I know what I'd do, I do! But I don't think you be men three parts o' you,
or you'd not see the widow and the orphan starve as you do, and sit quiet
and grumble, as long as you can keep your own bodies and souls together.
Eh! ye cowards!"

What more she would have said in her excitement, which had risen to an
absolute scream, I cannot tell; but some prudent friend pulled her down off
the stone, to be succeeded by a speaker more painful, if possible; an aged
blind man, the worn-out melancholy of whose slow, feeble voice made my
heart sink, and hushed the murmuring crowd into silent awe.

Slowly he turned his grey, sightless head from side to side, as if feeling
for the faces below him--and then began:

"I heard you was all to be here--and I suppose you are; and I said I would
come--though I suppose they'll take off my pay, if they hear of it. But I
knows the reason of it, and the bad times and all. The Lord revealed it to
me as clear as day, four years agone come Easter-tide. It's all along of
our sins, and our wickedness--because we forgot Him--it is. I mind the old
war times, what times they was, when there was smuggled brandy up and down
in every public, and work more than hands could do. And then, how we all
forgot the Lord, and went after our own lusts and pleasures--squires and
parsons, and farmers and labouring folk, all alike. They oughted to
ha' knowed better--and we oughted too. Many's the Sunday I spent in
skittle-playing and cock-fighting, and the pound I spent in beer, as might
ha' been keeping me now. We was an evil and perverse generation--and so one
o' my sons went for a sodger, and was shot at Waterloo, and the other fell
into evil ways, and got sent across seas--and I be left alone for my
sins. But the Lord was very gracious to me and showed me how it was all a
judgment on my sins, he did. He has turned his face from us, and that's why
we're troubled. And so I don't see no use in this meeting. It won't do no
good; nothing won't do us no good, unless we all repent of our wicked ways,
our drinking, and our dirt, and our love-children, and our picking and
stealing, and gets the Lord to turn our hearts, and to come back again, and
have mercy on us, and take us away speedily out of this wretched world,
where there's nothing but misery and sorrow, into His everlasting glory,
Amen! Folks say as the day of judgment's a coming soon--and I partly think
so myself. I wish it was all over, and we in heaven above; and that's all I
have to say."

It seemed a not unnatural revulsion, when a tall, fierce man, with a
forbidding squint, sprung jauntily on the stone, and setting his arms
a-kimbo, broke out:

"Here be I, Blinkey, and I has as good a right to speak as ere a one.
You're all blamed fools, you are. So's that old blind buffer there. You
sticks like pigs in a gate, hollering and squeeking, and never helping
yourselves. Why can't you do like me? I never does no work--darned if I'll
work to please the farmers. The rich folks robs me, and I robs them,
and that's fair and equal. You only turn poachers--you only go stealing
turmits, and fire-ud, and all as you can find--and then you'll not need to
work. Arn't it yourn? The game's no one's, is it now?--you know that. And
if you takes turmits or corn, they're yourn--you helped to grow 'em. And
if you're put to prison, I tell ye, it's a darned deal warmer, and better
victuals too, than ever a one of you gets at home, let alone the Union.
Now I knows the dodge. Whenever my wife's ready for her trouble, I gets
cotched; then I lives like a prince in gaol, and she goes to the workus;
and when it's all over, start fair again. Oh, you blockheads'--to stand
here shivering with empty bellies.--You just go down to the farm and burn
they stacks over the old rascal's head; and then they that let you starve
now, will be forced to keep you then. If you can't get your share of the
poor-rates, try the county-rates, my bucks--you can get fat on them at the
Queen's expense--and that's more than you'll do in ever a Union as I hear
on. Who'll come down and pull the farm about the folks' ears? Warn't he as
turned five on yer off last week? and ain't he more corn there than 'ud
feed you all round this day, and won't sell it, just because he's
waiting till folks are starved enough, and prices rise? Curse the old
villain!--who'll help to disappoint him 'o that? Come along!"

A confused murmur arose, and a movement in the crowd. I felt that now or
never was the time to speak. If once the spirit of mad aimless riot broke
loose, I had not only no chance of a hearing, but every likelihood of
being implicated in deeds which I abhorred; and I sprung on the stone and
entreated a few minutes' attention, telling them that I was a deputation
from one of the London Chartist committees. This seemed to turn the stream
of their thoughts, and they gaped in stupid wonder at me as I began hardly
less excited than themselves.

I assured them of the sympathy of the London working men, made a comment
on their own speeches--which the reader ought to be able to make for
himself--and told them that I had come to entreat their assistance towards
obtaining such a parliamentary representation as would secure them their
rights. I explained the idea of the Charter, and begged for their help in
carrying it out.

To all which they answered surlily, that they did not know anything about
politics--that what they wanted was bread.

I went on, more vehement than ever, to show them how all their misery
sprung (as I then fancied) from being unrepresented--how the laws were made
by the rich for the poor, and not by all for all--how the taxes bit deep
into the necessaries of the labourer, and only nibbled at the luxuries of
the rich--how the criminal code exclusively attacked the crimes to which
the poor were prone, while it dared not interfere with the subtler
iniquities of the high-born and wealthy--how poor-rates, as I have just
said, were a confession on the part of society that the labourer was not
fully remunerated. I tried to make them see that their interest, as much as
common justice, demanded that they should have a voice in the councils of
the nation, such as would truly proclaim their wants, their rights, their
wrongs; and I have seen no reason since then to unsay my words.

To all which they answered, that their stomachs were empty, and they wanted
bread. "And bread we will have!"

"Go, then," I cried, losing my self-possession between disappointment and
the maddening desire of influence--and, indeed, who could hear their story,
or even look upon their faces, and not feel some indignation stir in him.
unless self-interest had drugged his heart and conscience--"go," I cried,
"and get bread! After all, you have a right to it. No man is bound to
starve. There are rights above all laws, and the right to live is one. Laws
were made for man, not man for laws. If you had made the laws yourselves,
they might bind you even in this extremity; but they were made in spite of
you--against you. They rob you, crash you; even now they deny you bread.
God has made the earth free to all, like the air and sunshine, and you are
shut out from off it. The earth is yours, for you till it. Without you it
would be a desert. Go and demand your share of that corn, the fruit of your
own industry. What matter, if your tyrants imprison, murder you?--they can
but kill your bodies at once, instead of killing them piecemeal, as they do
now; and your blood will cry against them from the ground:--Ay, Woe!"--I
went on, carried away by feelings for which I shall make no apology; for,
however confused, there was, and is, and ever will be, a God's truth in
them, as this generation will find out at the moment when its own serene
self-satisfaction crumbles underneath it--"Woe unto those that grind the
faces of the poor! Woe unto those who add house to house, and field to
field, till they stand alone in the land, and there is no room left for the
poor man! The wages of their reapers, which they have held back by fraud,
cry out against them; and their cry has entered into the ears of the God of
heaven--"

But I had no time to finish. The murmur swelled into a roar for "Bread!
Bread!" My hearers had taken me at my word. I had raised the spirit; could
I command him, now he was abroad?

"Go to Jennings's farm!"

"No! he ain't no corn, he sold un' all last week."

"There's plenty at the Hall farm! Rouse out the old steward!"

And, amid yells and execrations, the whole mass poured down the hill,
sweeping me away with them. I was shocked and terrified at their threats.
I tried again and again to stop and harangue them. I shouted myself hoarse
about the duty of honesty; warned them against pillage and violence;
entreated them to take nothing but the corn which they actually needed;
but my voice was drowned in the uproar. Still I felt myself in a measure
responsible for their conduct; I had helped to excite them, and dare not,
in honour, desert them; and trembling, I went on, prepared to see the
worst; following, as a flag of distress, a mouldy crust, brandished on the
point of a pitchfork.

Bursting through the rotting and half-fallen palings, we entered a wide,
rushy, neglected park, and along an old gravel road, now green with grass,
we opened on a sheet of frozen water, and, on the opposite bank, the huge
square corpse of a hall, the close-shuttered windows of which gave it a
dead and ghastly look, except where here and there a single one showed, as
through a black empty eye-socket, the dark unfurnished rooms within. On the
right, beneath us, lay, amid tall elms, a large mass of farm-buildings,
into the yard of which the whole mob rushed tumultuously--just in time to
see an old man on horseback dart out and gallop hatless up the park, amid
the yells of the mob.

"The old rascal's gone! and he'll call up the yeomanry. We must be quick,
boys!" shouted one, and the first signs of plunder showed themselves in an
indiscriminate chase after various screaming geese and turkeys; while a
few of the more steady went up to the house-door, and knocking, demanded
sternly the granary keys.

A fat virago planted herself in the doorway, and commenced railing at them,
with the cowardly courage which the fancied immunity of their sex gives
to coarse women; but she was hastily shoved aside, and took shelter in an
upper room, where she stood screaming and cursing at the window.

The invaders returned, cramming their mouths with bread, and chopping
asunder flitches of bacon. The granary doors were broken open, and the
contents scrambled for, amid immense waste, by the starving wretches. It
was a sad sight. Here was a poor shivering woman, hiding scraps of food
under her cloak, and hurrying out of the yard to the children she had
left at home. There was a tall man, leaning against the palings, gnawing
ravenously at the same loaf as a little boy, who had scrambled up behind
him. Then a huge blackguard came whistling up to me, with a can of ale.
"Drink, my beauty! you're dry with hollering by now!"

"The ale is neither yours nor mine; I won't touch it."

"Darn your buttons! You said the wheat was ourn, acause we growed it--and
thereby so's the beer--for we growed the barley too."

And so thought the rest; for the yard was getting full of drunkards, a
woman or two among them, reeling knee-deep in the loose straw among the
pigs.

"Thresh out they ricks!" roared another.

"Get out the threshing-machine!"

"You harness the horses!"

"No! there bain't no time. Yeomanry'll be here. You mun leave the ricks."

"Darned if we do. Old Woods shan't get naught by they."

"Fire 'em, then, and go on to Slater's farm!"

"As well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb," hiccuped Blinkey, as he rushed
through the yard with a lighted brand. I tried to stop him, but fell on my
face in the deep straw, and got round the barns to the rick-yard just in
time to here a crackle--there was no mistaking it; the windward stack was
in a blaze of fire.

I stood awe-struck--I cannot tell how long--watching how the live
flame-snakes crept and hissed, and leapt and roared, and rushed in long
horizontal jets from stack to stack before the howling wind, and fastened
their fiery talons on the barn-eaves, and swept over the peaked roofs, and
hurled themselves in fiery flakes into the yard beyond--the food of man,
the labour of years, devoured in aimless ruin!--Was it my doing? Was it
not?

At last I recollected myself, and ran round again into the straw-yard,
where the fire was now falling fast. The only thing which saved the house
was the weltering mass of bullocks, pigs, and human beings drunk and sober,
which, trampled out unwittingly the flames as fast as they caught.

The fire had seized the roofs of the cart-stables, when a great lubberly
boy blubbered out:--

"Git my horses out! git my horses out o' the fire! I be so fond o' mun!"

"Well, they ain't done no harm, poor beasts!" And a dozen men ran in to
save them; but the poor wretches, screaming with terror, refused to stir. I
never knew what became of them-but their shrieks still haunt my dreams....

The yard now became a pandemonium. The more ruffianly part of the mob--and
alas! there were but too many of them--hurled the furniture out of the
windows, or ran off with anything that they could carry. In vain I
expostulated, threatened; I was answered by laughter, curses, frantic
dances, and brandished plunder. Then I first found out how large a portion
of rascality shelters itself under the wing of every crowd; and at the
moment, I almost excused the rich for overlooking the real sufferers, in
indignation at the rascals. But even the really starving majority, whose
faces proclaimed the grim fact of their misery, seemed gone mad for the
moment. The old crust of sullen, dogged patience had broken up, and their
whole souls had exploded into reckless fury and brutal revenge--and yet
there was no hint of violence against the red fat woman, who, surrounded
with her blubbering children, stood screaming and cursing at the
first-floor window, getting redder and fatter at every scream. The worst
personality she heard was a roar of laughter, in which, such is poor
humanity, I could not but join, as her little starved drab of a
maid-of-all-work ran out of the door, with a bundle of stolen finery under
her arm, and high above the roaring of the flames, and the shouts of the
rioters, rose her mistress's yell.

"O Betsy! Betsy! you little awdacious unremorseful hussy!--a running away
with my best bonnet and shawl!"

The laughter soon, however, subsided, when a man rushed breathless into the
yard, shouting, "The yeomanry!"

At that sound; to my astonishment, a general panic ensued. The miserable
wretches never stopped to enquire how many, or how far off, they were--but
scrambled to every outlet of the yard, trampling each other down in their
hurry. I leaped up on the wall, and saw, galloping down the park, a mighty
armament of some fifteen men, with a tall officer at their head, mounted on
a splendid horse.

"There they be! there they be! all the varmers, and young Squire Clayton
wi' mun, on his grey hunter! O Lord! O Lord! and all their swords drawn!"

I thought of the old story in Herodotus--how the Scythian masters returned
from war to the rebel slaves who had taken possession of their lands and
wives, and brought them down on their knees with terror, at the mere sight
of the old dreaded dog-whips.

I did not care to run. I was utterly disgusted, disappointed with
myself--the people. I longed, for the moment, to die and leave it all; and
left almost alone, sat down on a stone, buried my head between my hands,
and tried vainly to shut out from my ears the roaring of the fire.

At that moment "Blinkey" staggered out past me and against me, a
writing-desk in his hands, shouting, in his drunken glory, "I've vound ut
at last! I've got the old fellow's money! Hush! What a vule I be, hollering
like that!"--And he was going to sneak off, with a face of drunken cunning,
when I sprung up and seized him by the throat.

"Rascal! robber! lay that down! Have you not done mischief enough already?"

"I wain't have no sharing. What? Do you want un yourself, eh? Then we'll
see who's the stronger!"

And in an instant he shook me from him, and dealt me a blow with the corner
of the desk, that laid me on the ground....

I just recollect the tramp of the yeomanry horses, and the gleam and jingle
of their arms, as they galloped into the yard. I caught a glimpse of the
tall young officer, as his great grey horse swept through the air, over
the high yard-pales--a feat to me utterly astonishing. Half a dozen long
strides--the wretched ruffian, staggering across the field with his booty,
was caught up.--The clear blade gleamed in the air--and then a fearful
yell--and after that I recollect nothing.

* * * * *

Slowly I recovered my consciousness. I was lying on a truckle-bed--stone
walls and a grated window! A man stood over me with a large bunch of
keys in his hand. He had been wrapping my head with wet towels. I knew,
instinctively, where I was.

"Well, young man," said he, in a not unkindly tone--"and a nice job you've
made of it! Do you know where you are?".

"Yes," answered I, quietly; "in D * * * * gaol."

"Exactly so!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE TRIAL.

The day was come--quickly, thank Heaven; and I stood at the bar, with four
or five miserable, haggard labourers, to take my trial for sedition, riot,
and arson.

I had passed the intervening weeks half stupified with the despair of
utter disappointment; disappointment at myself and my own loss of
self-possession, which had caused all my misfortune,--perhaps, too, and the
thought was dreadful, that of my wretched fellow-sufferers:--disappointment
with the labourers, with The Cause; and when the thought came over me, in
addition, that I was irreparably disgraced in the eyes of my late patrons,
parted for ever from Lillian by my own folly, I laid down my head and
longed to die.

Then, again, I would recover awhile, and pluck up heart. I would plead my
cause myself--I would testify against the tyrants to their face--I would
say no longer to their besotted slaves, but to the men themselves, "Go to,
ye rich men, weep and howl! The hire of your labourers who have reaped down
your fields, which is by you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of
them that have reaped hath entered into the ears of the Lord God of Hosts."
I would brave my fate--I would die protesting, and glory in my martyrdom.
But--

"Martyrdom?" said Mackaye, who had come down to D * * * *, and was busy
night and day about my trial. "Ye'll just leave alone the martyr dodge, my
puir bairn. Ye're na martyr at a', ye'll understand, but a vera foolish
callant, that lost his temper, an' cast his pearls before swine--an' very
questionable pearls they, too, to judge by the price they fetch i' the
market."

And then my heart sank again. And a few days before the trial a letter
came, evidently in my cousin's handwriting, though only signed with his
initials:

"SIR,--You are in a very great scrape--you will not deny that. How you
will get out of it depends on your own common sense. You probably won't be
hanged--for nobody believes that you had a hand in burning the farm; but,
unless you take care, you will be transported. Call yourself John Nokes;
entrust your case to a clever lawyer, and keep in the background. I warn
you, as a friend--if you try to speechify, and play the martyr, and let out
who you are, the respectable people who have been patronizing you will find
it necessary for their own sakes to clap a stopper on you for good and all,
to make you out an impostor and a swindler, and get you out of the way for
life: while, if you are quiet, it will suit them to be quiet too, and say
nothing about you, if you say nothing about them; and then there will be a
chance that they, as well as your own family, will do everything in their
power to hush the matter up. So, again, don't let out your real name; and
instruct your lawyers to know nothing about the W.'s; and then, perhaps,
the Queen's counsel will know nothing about them either. Mind--you are
warned, and woe to you if you are fool enough not to take the warning.

"G.L."

Plead in a false name! Never, so help me Heaven! To go into court with a
lie in my mouth--to make myself an impostor--probably a detected one--it
seemed the most cunning scheme for ruining me, which my evil genius could
have suggested, whether or not it might serve his own selfish ends. But as
for the other hints, they seemed not unreasonable, and promised to save me
trouble; while the continued pressure of anxiety and responsibility was
getting intolerable to my over-wearied brain. So I showed the letter to
Mackaye, who then told me that he had taken it for granted that I should
come to my right mind, and had therefore already engaged an old compatriot
as attorney, and the best counsel which money could procure.