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

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"2.--Next you have the Manchester school, from whom Heaven defend us; for
of all narrow, conceited, hypocritical, and anarchic and atheistic schemes
of the universe, the Cobden and Bright one is exactly the worst. I have no
language to express my contempt for it, and therefore I quote what Maurice
wrote me this morning. 'If the Ministry would have thrown Protection to
the dogs (as I trust they have, in spite of the base attempts of the Corn
Law Leaguers to goad them to committing themselves to it, and to hold them
up as the people's enemies), and thrown themselves into social measures,
who would not have clung to them, to avert that horrible catastrophe
of a Manchester ascendency, which I believe in my soul would be fatal
to intellect, morality, and freedom, and will be more likely to move a
rebellion among the working men than any Tory rule which can be conceived.'

"Of course it would. To pretend to be the workmen's friends, by keeping
down the price of bread, when all they want thereby is to keep down wages,
and increase profits, and in the meantime to widen the gulf between the
working man and all that is time-honoured, refined, and chivalrous in
English society, that they may make the men their divided slaves, that
is-perhaps half unconsciously, for there are excellent men amongst
them--the game of the Manchester School."

"I have never swerved from my one idea of the last seven years, that the
real battle of the time is, if England is to be saved from anarchy and
unbelief, and utter exhaustion caused by the competitive enslavement of
the masses, not Radical or Whig against Peelite or Tory--let the dead bury
their dead-but the Church, the gentlemen, and the workman, against the
shop-keepers and the Manchester School. The battle could not have been
fought forty years ago, because, on one side, the Church was an idle
phantasm, the gentleman too ignorant, the workman too merely animal; while,
on the other, the Manchester cotton-spinners were all Tories, and the
shopkeepers were a distinct class interest from theirs. But now these
two latter have united, and the sublime incarnation of shop-keeping and
labour-buying in the cheapest market shines forth in the person of Moses &
Son, and both cotton-spinners and shop-keepers say 'This is the man!'" and
join in one common press to defend his system. Be it so: now we know our
true enemies, and soon the working-men will know them also. But if the
present Ministry will not see the possibility of a coalition between them,
and the workmen, I see no alternative but just what we have been straining
every nerve to keep off--a competitive United States, a democracy before
which the work of ages will go down in a few years. A true democracy, such
as you and I should wish to see, is impossible without a Church and a
Queen, and, as I believe, without a gentry. On the conduct of statesmen it
will depend whether we are gradually and harmoniously to develop England
on her ancient foundations, or whether we are to have fresh paralytic
governments succeeding each other in doing nothing, while the workmen and
the Manchester School fight out the real questions of the day in ignorance
and fury, till the '_culbute generale_' comes, and gentlemen of ancient
family, like your humble servant, betake themselves to Canada, to escape,
not the Amalgamated Engineers, but their 'masters,' and the slop-working
savages whom their masters' system has created, and will by that time have
multiplied tenfold.

"I have got a Thames boat on the lake at Bramshill, and am enjoying
vigorous sculls. My answer to 'Fraser' is just coming out; spread it where
you can."

In the next year or two the first excitement about the co-operative
movement cooled down. Parson Lot's pen was less needed, and he turned to
other work in his own name. Of the richness and variety of that work this
is not the place to speak, but it all bore on the great social problems
which had occupied him in the earlier years. The Crimean war weighed on
him like a nightmare, and modified some of his political opinions. On the
resignation of Lord Aberdeen's Government on the motion for inquiry into
the conduct of the war, he writes, February 5, 1855, "It is a very bad job,
and a very bad time, be sure, and with a laughing House of Commons we shall
go to Gehenna, even if we are not there already--But one comfort is, that
even Gehenna can burn nothing but the chaff and carcases, so we shall be
none the poorer in reality. So as the frost has broken gloriously, I wish
you would get me a couple of dozen of good flies, viz., cock a bondhues,
red palmers with plenty of gold twist; winged duns, with bodies of hare's
ear and yellow mohair mixed well; hackle duns with grey bodies, and a wee
silver, these last tied as palmers, and the silver ribbed all the way down.
If you could send them in a week I shall be very glad, as fishing begins
early."

In the midst of the war he was present one day at a council meeting, after
which the manager of one of the associations referring to threatened bread
riots at Manchester, asked Kingsley's opinion as to what should be done.
"There never were but two ways," he said, "since the beginning of the world
of dealing with a corn famine. One is to let the merchants buy it up and
hold it as long as they can, as we do. And this answers the purpose best in
the long run, for they will be selling corn six months hence when we shall
want it more than we do now, and makes us provident against our wills.
The other is Joseph's plan." Here the manager broke in, "Why didn't our
Government step in then, and buy largely, and store in public granaries?"
"Yes," said Kingsley, "and why ain't you and I flying about with wings and
dewdrops hanging to our tails. Joseph's plan won't do for us. What minister
would we trust with money enough to buy corn for the people, or power to
buy where he chose." And he went on to give his questioner a lecture in
political economy, which the most orthodox opponent of the popular notions
about Socialism would have applauded to the echo.

By the end of the year he had nearly finished "Westward Ho!"--the most
popular of his novels, which the war had literally wrung out of him. He
writes--

? "_December 18, 1855_.

"I am getting more of a Government man every day. I don't see how they
could have done better in any matter, because I don't see but that _I_
should have done a thousand times worse in their place, and that is the
only fair standard.

"As for a ballad--oh! my dear lad, there is no use fiddling while Rome is
burning. I have nothing to sing about those glorious fellows, except 'God
save the Queen and them.' I tell you the whole thing stuns me, so I cannot
sit down to make fiddle rhyme with diddle about it--or blundered with
hundred like Alfred Tennyson. He is no Tyrtæus, though he has a glimpse of
what Tyrtæus ought to be. But I have not even that; and am going rabbit
shooting to-morrow instead. But every man has his calling, and my novel
is mine, because I am fit for nothing better. The book" ('Westward Ho!')
"will be out the middle or end of January, if the printers choose. It is
a sanguinary book, but perhaps containing doctrine profitable for these
times. My only pain is that I have been forced to sketch poor Paddy as a
very worthless fellow then, while just now he is turning out a hero. I have
made the deliberate _amende honorable_ in a note."

Then, referring to some criticism of mine on 'Westward Ho!'--"I suppose you
are right as to Amyas and his mother; I will see to it. You are probably
right too about John Hawkins. The letter in Purchas is to me unknown,
but your conception agrees with a picture my father says he has seen of
Captain John (he thinks at Lord Anglesey's, at Beaudesert) as a prim, hard,
terrier-faced, little fellow, with a sharp chin, and a dogged Puritan eye.
So perhaps I am wrong: but I don't think _that_ very important, for there
must have been sea-dogs of my stamp in plenty too." Then, referring to the
Crimean war--"I don't say that the two cases are parallel. I don't ask
England to hate Russia as she was bound to hate Spain, as God's enemy; but
I do think that a little Tudor pluck and Tudor democracy (paradoxical as
the word may seem, and inconsistently as it was carried out then) is just
what we want now."

"Tummas! Have you read the story of Abou Zennab, his horse, in Stanley's
'Sinai,' p. 67? What a myth! What a poem old Wordsworth would have writ
thereon! If I didn't cry like a babby over it. What a brick of a horse he
must have been, and what a brick of an old head-splitter Abou Zennab must
have been, to have his commandments keeped unto this day concerning of his
horse; and no one to know who he was, nor when, nor how, nor nothing. I
wonder if anybody'll keep _our_ commandments after we be gone, much less
say, 'Eat, eat, O horse of Abou Kingsley!'"

By this time the success of "Westward Ho!" and "Hypatia" had placed him in
the first rank of English writers. His fame as an author, and his character
as a man, had gained him a position which might well have turned any man's
head. There were those amongst his intimate friends who feared that it
might be so with him, and who were faithful enough to tell him so. And I
cannot conclude this sketch better than by giving his answer to that one
of them with whom he had been most closely associated in the time when, as
Parson Lot, every man's hand had been against him--

"MY DEAR LUDLOW,

"And for this fame, &c.,

"I know a little of her worth.

"And I will tell you what I know,

"That, in the first place, she is a fact, and as such, it is not wise to
ignore her, but at least to walk once round her, and see her back as well
as her front.

"The case to me seems to be this. A man feels in himself the love of
praise. Every man does who is not a brute. It is a universal human faculty;
Carlyle nicknames it the sixth sense. Who made it? God or the devil? Is
it flesh or spirit? a difficult question; because tamed animals grow to
possess it in a high degree; and our metaphysician does not yet allow
them spirit. But, whichever it be, it cannot be for bad: only bad when
misdirected, and not controlled by reason, the faculty which judges between
good and evil. Else why has God put His love of praise into the heart of
every child which is born into the world, and entwined it into the holiest
filial and family affections, as the earliest mainspring of good actions?
Has God appointed that every child shall be fed first with a necessary
lie, and afterwards come to the knowledge of your supposed truth, that the
praise of God alone is to be sought? Or are we to believe that the child is
intended to be taught as delicately and gradually as possible the painful
fact, that the praise of all men is not equally worth having, and to use
his critical faculty to discern the praise of good men from the praise
of bad, to seek the former and despise the latter? I should say that the
last was the more reasonable. And this I will say, that if you bring up
any child to care nothing for the praise of its parents, its elders, its
pastors, and masters, you may make a fanatic of it, or a shameless cynic:
but you will neither make it a man, an Englishman, or a Christian.

"But 'our Lord's words stand, about not seeking the honour which comes from
men, but the honour which comes from God only!' True, they do stand, and
our Lord's fact stands also, the fact that He has created every child to
be educated by an honour which comes from his parents and elders. Both are
true. Here, as in most spiritual things, you have an antinomia, an apparent
contradiction, which nothing but the Gospel solves. And it does solve it;
and your one-sided view of the text resolves itself into just the same
fallacy as the old ascetic one. 'We must love God alone, therefore we must
love no created thing.' To which St. John answers pertinently 'He who
loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath
not seen?' If you love your brethren, you love Christ in them. If you love
their praise, you love the praise of Christ in them. For consider this,
you cannot deny that, if one loves any person, one desires that person's
esteem. But we are bound to love all men, and that is our highest state.
Therefore, in our highest state, we shall desire all men's esteem.
Paradoxical, but true. If we believe in Christmas-day; if we believe in
Whitsunday, we shall believe that Christ is in all men, that God's spirit
is abroad in the earth, and therefore the dispraise, misunderstanding, and
calumny of men will be exquisitely painful to us, and ought to be so; and,
on the other hand, the esteem of men, and renown among men for doing good
deeds will be inexpressibly precious to us. They will be signs and warrants
to us that God is pleased with us, that we are sharing in that 'honour and
glory' which Paul promises again and again, with no such scruples as yours,
to those who lead heroic lives. We shall not neglect the voice of God
within us; but we shall remember that there is also a voice of God without
us, which we must listen to; and that in a Christian land, _vox populi_,
patiently and discriminately listened to, is sure to be found not far off
from the _vox Dei_.

"Now, let me seriously urge this last fact on you. Of course, in listening
to the voice of the man outside there is a danger, as there is in the use
of any faculty. You may employ it, according to Divine reason and grace,
for ennobling and righteous purposes; or you may degrade it to carnal and
selfish ones; so you may degrade the love of praise into vanity, into
longing for the honour which comes from men, by pandering to their passions
and opinions, by using your powers as they would too often like to use
theirs, for mere self-aggrandisement, by saying in your heart--_quam
pulchrum digito monstrari el diceri hic est_. That is the man who wrote the
fine poem, who painted the fine picture, and so forth, till, by giving way
to this, a man may give way to forms of vanity as base as the red Indian
who sticks a fox's tail on, and dances about boasting of his brute cunning.
I know all about that, as well as any poor son of Adam ever did. But I
know, too, that to desire the esteem of as many rational men as possible;
in a word, to desire an honourable, and true renown for having done good
in my generation, has nothing to do with that; and the more I fear and
struggle against the former, the more I see the exceeding beauty and
divineness, and everlasting glory of the latter as an entrance into the
communion of saints.

"Of course, all this depends on whether we do believe that Christ is in
every man, and that God's spirit is abroad in the earth. Of course, again,
it will be very difficult to know who speaks by God's spirit, and who
sees by Christ's light in him; but surely the wiser, the humbler path, is
to give men credit for as much wisdom and rightness as possible, and to
believe that when one is found fault with, one is probably in the wrong.
For myself, on Looking back, I see clearly with shame and sorrow, that the
obloquy which I have brought often on myself and on the good cause, has
been almost all of it my own fault--that I have given the devil and bad
men a handle, not by caring what people would say, but by _not caring_--by
fancying that I was a very grand fellow, who was going to speak what I knew
to be true, in spite of all fools (and really did and do intend so to do),
while all the while I was deceiving myself, and unaware of a canker at
the heart the very opposite to the one against which you warn me. I mean
the proud, self-willed, self-conceited spirit which made no allowance for
other men's weakness or ignorance; nor again, for their superior experience
and wisdom on points which I had never considered--which took a pride in
shocking and startling, and defying, and hitting as hard as I could, and
fancied, blasphemously, as I think, that the word of God had come to me
only, and went out from me only. God forgive me for these sins, as well
as for my sins in the opposite direction; but for these sins especially,
because I see them to be darker and more dangerous than the others.

"For there has been gradually revealed to me (what my many readings in the
lives of fanatics and ascetics ought to have taught me long before), that
there is a terrible gulf ahead of that not caring what men say. Of course
it is a feeling on which the spirit must fall back in hours of need, and
cry, 'Thou, God, knowest mine integrity. I have believed, and therefore I
will speak; thou art true, though all men be liars!' But I am convinced
that that is a frame in which no man can live, or is meant to live;
that it is only to be resorted to in fear and trembling, after deepest
self-examination, and self-purification, and earnest prayer. For otherwise,
Ludlow, a man gets to forget that voice of God without him, in his
determination to listen to nothing but the voice of God within him, and so
he falls into two dangers. He forgets that there is a voice of God without
him. He loses trust in, and charity to, and reverence for his fellow-men;
he learns to despise, deny, and quench the Spirit, and to despise
prophesyings, and so becomes gradually cynical, sectarian, fanatical.

"And then comes a second and worse danger. Crushed into self, and his own
conscience and _schema mundi_, he loses the opportunity of correcting his
impression of the voice of God within, by the testimony of the voice of God
without; and so he begins to mistake more and more the voice of that very
flesh of his, which he fancies he has conquered, for the voice of God,
and to become, without knowing it, an autotheist. And out of that springs
eclecticism, absence of tenderness _for_ men, for want of sympathy _with_
men; as he makes his own conscience his standard for God, so he makes his
own character the standard for men; and so he becomes narrow, hard, and
if he be a man of strong will and feelings, often very inhuman and cruel.
This is the history of thousands-of Jeromes, Lauds, Puritans who scourged
Quakers, Quakers who cursed Puritans; nonjurors, who though they would die
rather than offend their own conscience in owning William, would plot with
James to murder William, or to devastate England with Irish Rapparees and
Auvergne dragoons. This, in fact, is the spiritual diagnosis of those many
pious persecutors, who though neither hypocrites or blackguards themselves,
have used both as instruments of their fanaticism.

"Against this I have to guard myself, you little know how much, and to
guard my children still more, brought up, as they will be, under a father,
who, deeply discontented with the present generation, cannot but express
that discontent at times. To make my children '_banausoi_,' insolent and
scoffing radicals, believing in nobody and nothing but themselves, would be
perfectly easy in me if I were to make the watchword of my house, 'Never
mind what people say.' On the contrary, I shall teach them that there are
plenty of good people in the world; that public opinion has pretty surely
an undercurrent of the water of life, below all its froth and garbage;
and that in a Christian country like this, where, with all faults, a man
(sooner or later) has fair play and a fair hearing, the esteem of good men,
and the blessings of the poor, will be a pretty sure sign that they have
the blessing of God also; and I shall tell them, when they grow older, that
ere they feel called on to become martyrs, in defending the light within
them against all the world, they must first have taken care most patiently,
and with all self-distrust and humility, to make full use of the light
which is around them, and has been here for ages before them, and would be
here still, though they had never been born or thought of. The antinomy
between this and their own conscience may be painful enough to them some
day. To what thinking man is it not a life-long battle? but I shall not
dream that by denying one pole of the antinomy I can solve it, or do
anything but make them, by cynicism or fanaticism, bury their talent in the
earth, and _not_ do the work which God has given them to do, because they
will act like a parson who, before beginning his sermon, should first kick
his congregation out of doors, and turn the key; and not like St. Paul, who
became all things to all men, if by any means he might save some.

"Yours ever affectionately, with all Christmas blessings,

"C. KINGSLEY.

"FARLY COURT, _December 26, 1855_.

"I should be very much obliged to you to show this letter to Maurice."

One more letter only I will add, dated about the end of the "Parson Lot"
period. He had written to inform me that one of the old Chartist leaders,
a very worthy fellow, was in great distress, and to ask me to do what I
could for him. In my reply I had alluded somewhat bitterly to the apparent
failure of the Association movement in London, and to some of our blunders,
acknowledging how he had often seen the weak places, and warned us against
them. His answer came by return of post:--

"EVERSLEY, _May, 1856_.

"DEAR TOM,--It's an ill bird that fouls its own nest; and don't cry
stinking fish, neither don't hollow till you're out of the wood--which you
oughtn't to have called yourself Tom fool, and blasphemed the holy name
thereby, till you knowed you was sich, which you wasn't, as appears by
particulars. And I have heard from T---- twice to-day, and he is agreeable,
which, if he wasn't, he is an ass, and don't know half a loaf is better
than no bread, and you musn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but all is as
right as a dog-fox down wind and vi. _millia passuum_, to the next gorse.
But this £25 of his is a grueller, and I learnt with interest that you are
inclined to get the fishes nose out of the weed. I have offered to lend him
£10--hopes it may be lending--and have written a desperate begging letter
to R. Monckton Milnes, Esq., which 'evins prosper. Poor T---- says to-night
that he has written to Forster about it--which he must have the small of
his back very hard against the ropes so to do, so the sooner we get the
ginger-beer bottle out the longer he'll fight, or else he'll throw up the
sponge at once; for I know his pride. I think we can raise it somehow. I
have a last card in old ----, the judge who tried and condemned him, and is
the dearest old soul alive, only he will have it T---- showed dunghill, and
don't carry a real game nackle. If I am to tackle he you must send me back
those letters to appeal to his piety and 'joys as does abound,' as your
incomparable father remarks. When _will_ you give me that canticle? He
says Tom Taylor (I believe all the world is called Thomas) has behaved to
him like a brother, which, indeed, was to be expexed, and has promised
him copying at a shilling an hour, and _will_ give him a chop daily free
gracious; but the landlord won't wait, which we musn't neither.

"Now, business afore pleasure. You are an old darling, and who says no,
I'd kick him, if it warn't for my cloth; but you are green in cottoning to
me about our '48 mess. Because why? I lost nothing--I risked nothing. You
fellows worked like bricks, spent money, and got midshipman's half-pay
(nothing a-day and find yourself), and monkey's allowance (more kicks than
halfpence). I risked no money; 'cause why, I had none; but _made_ money out
of the movement, and fame too. I've often thought what a dirty beast I was.
I made £150 by Alton Locke, and never lost a farthing; and I got, not in
spite of, but by the rows, a name and a standing with many a one who would
never have heard of me otherwise, and I should have been a stercoraceous
mendicant if I had hollowed when I got a facer, while I was winning by the
cross, though I didn't mean to fight one. No. And if I'd had £100,000, I'd
have, and should have, staked and lost it all in 1848-50. I should, Tom,
for my heart was and is in it, and you'll see it will beat yet; but we
ain't the boys. We don't see but half the bull's eye yet, and don't see
_at all_ the policeman which is a going on his beat behind the bull's eye,
and no thanks to us. Still, _some_ somedever, it's in the fates, that
Association is the pure caseine, and must be eaten by the human race if it
would save its soul alive, which, indeed, it will; only don't you think me
a good fellow for not crying out, when I never had more to do than scratch
myself and away went the fleas. But you all were real bricks; and if you
were riled, why let him that is without sin cast the first stone, or let me
cast it for him, and see if I don't hit him in the eye.

"Now to business; I have had a sortér kindèr sample day. Up at 5, to see a
dying man; ought to have been up at 2, but Ben King the rat-catcher, who
came to call me, was taken nervous!!! and didn't make row enough; was from
5.30 to 6.30 with the most dreadful case of agony--insensible to me, but
not to his pain. Came home, got a wash and a pipe, and again to him at
8. Found him insensible to his own pain, with dilated pupils, dying of
pressure of the brain--going any moment. Prayed the commendatory prayers
over him, and started for the river with West. Fished all the morning
in a roaring N.E. gale, with the dreadful agonized face between me and
the river, pondering on THE mystery. Killed eight on 'March brown' and
'governor,' by drowning the flies, and taking _'em out gently to see_ if
ought was there--which is the only dodge in a north-easter. 'Cause why? The
water is warmer than the air--_ergo_, fishes don't like to put their noses
out o' doors, and feeds at home down stairs. It is the only wrinkle, Tom.
The captain fished a-top, and caught but three all day. They weren't going
to catch a cold in their heads to please him or any man. Clouds burn up at
1 P.M. I put on a minnow, and kill three more; I should have had lots, but
for the image of the dirty hickory stick, which would 'walk the waters like
a thing of life,' just ahead of my minnow. Mem.--Never fish with the sun in
your back; it's bad enough with a fly, but with a minnow it's strichnine
and prussic acid. My eleven weighed together four and a-half pounds--three
to the pound; not good, considering I had spased many a two-pound fish, I
_know_.