A L T N LOCKE,
TAILOR AND POET.
/ 7 6 L
21 n ^Vutobicgrapijtj,
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
187.5.
5 J ' ; r
:•>
CONTENTS,
CHAPTER I.
fag a
A. Poet's Childhood , 7
CHAPTER II.
The Tailors' Work-room 21
CHAPTER III.
Sandy Mackaye , 34
CHAPTER IV.
Tailors and Soldiers 41
CHAPTER V.
The Skeptic's Mother 51
CHAPTER VI.
The Dulwich Gallery gg
CHAPTER VII.
First Love
72
CHAPTER VIII.
Light in a Dark Place gj
CHAPTER IX.
Poetry and Poets go
CHAPTER X,
Ho-w Foles turn Chartists ,... . 96
iv CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XI.
than
" The Yakd where the Gentlemen Live" 109
CHAPTER XII.
Cambridge 118
CHAPTER XIII.
The Lost Idol Found 127
CHAPTER XIV.
A Cathedral Town ■ 148
CHAPTER XV.
The Man of Science , 155
CHAPTER XVI.
Cultivated Women 1 60
CHAPTER XVII.
Sermons and Stones 163
CHAPTER XVIII.
My Fall 16*
CHAPTER XIX.
Short and Sad 175
CHAPTER XX.
Pegasus in Harness 177
CHAPTER XXI.
The Sweater's Den 186
CHAPTER XXII.
An Emersonian Sermon 196
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Freedom of the Press 204
CONTENTS. V
CHAPTER XXIV.
PICK
The Townsman's Sermon to the Gownsman 210
CHAPTER XXV.
A True Nobleman 220
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Triumphant Author 225
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Plush Breeches Tragedy 231
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Men who are Eaten 242
CHAPTER XXIX.
The Trial 260
CHAPTER XXX.
Prison Thoughts 269
CHAPTER XXXI.
The New Church 279
CHAPTER XXXII.
The Tower of Babel 282
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A Patriot's Reward 290
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The Tenth of April 304
CHAPTER XXXV.
The Lowest Deep 310
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Dream Land 319
Vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
The True Demagogue 336
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Miracles and Science 348
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Nemesis 354
CHAPTER XL.
Priests and People 359
CHAPTER XLI.
Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood 36*
ALTON LOCKE,
TAILOR AND POET.
CHAPTER I.
A POETS CHILDHOOD.
I am a Cockney among Cockneys. Italy and the Tropics,
the Highlands and Devonshire, I know only in dreams. Even
the Surrey hills, of whose loveliness I have heard so much,
are to me a distant fairy-land, whose gleaming ridges I am
worthy only to hehold afar. With the exception of two
journeys, never to be forgotten, my knowledge of England is
bounded by the horizon which encircles Richmond hill.
My earliest recollections are of a suburban street ; of its;
jumble of little shops and little terraces, each exhibiting some
fresh variety of capricious ugliness ; the little scraps of garden
before the doors, with their dusty, stunted lilacs and balsam
poplars, were my only forests ; my only wild animals, the
dingy, merry sparrows, who quareled fearlessly on my window-
sill, ignorant of trap or gun. From my earliest childhood,
through long nights of sleepless pain, as the midnight bright-
ened into dawn, and the glaring lamps grew pale, I used
to listen, with a pleasant awe, to the ceaseless roll of the
market-wagons, bringing up to the great city the treasures
of the gay green country, the land of fruits and flowers, for
which I have yearned all my life in vain. They seemed to
my boyish fancy mysterious messengers from another world .
the silent, lonely night, in which they were the only moving
things, added to the wonder. I used to get out of bed to gaze
at tnem, and envy the coarse men and sluttish women who
attended them, their labor among verdant plants and rich
brown mould, on breezy slopes, under God's own clear sky.
I fancied that they learnt what I knew I should have learnt
there ; I knew not then that " the eye only sees that which
8 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET.
it brings with it the power of seeing." "When will their eyea
be opened 1 When will priests go forth into the highways
and the hedges, and preach to the plowman and the gipsy
the blessed news, that there, too, in every thicket and fallow
field, is the house of God, there, too, the gate of Heaven !
I do not complain that I am a Cockney. That, too, is
God's gift. He made me one, that I might learn to feel for
l>oor wretches who sit stifled in reeking garrets and workrooms,
drinking in disease with every breath — bound in their prison-
house of brick and iron, with their own funeral pall hanging
over them, in that canopy of fog and poisonous smoke, from
'( their cradle to their grave. I have drank of the cup of which
I they drink. And so I have learnt — if, indeed, I have learnt
j — to be a poet — a poet of the people. That honor, surely, was
worth buying with asthma, and rickets, and consumption, and
weakness, and — worst of all to me — with ugliness. It was
God's purpose about me ; and, therefore, all circumstances
combined to imprison me in London. I used once, when I
worshiped circumstance, to fancy it my curse, Fate's injustice
to me, which kept me from developing my genius, and asserting
my rank among poets. I longed to escape to glorious Italy
or some other southern climate, wdiere natural beauty would
have become the very element which I breathed ; and yet,
what would have come of that? Should I not, as nobler
spirits than I have done, have idled away my life in Elysian
dreams, singing out like a bird into the air, inarticulately, pur-
poseless, for mere joy and fullness of heart ; and taking no
share in the terrible questionings, the terrible strugglings of
this great, awful, blessed time — feeling no more the pulse of
the great heart of England stirring me? I used, as I said, to
call it the curse of circumstance that I was a sickly, decrepit
! Cockney. My mother used to tell me that it was the cross
which God had given me to bear. I know now that she
' was right there. She used to say that my-disease was God's
will. I do not think, though, that she spoke right there also.
I think that it was the will of the world and of the devil, of
man's avarice, and laziness, and ignorance. And so would my
readers, perhaps, had they seen the shop in the city where I
,was born and nursed, with its little garrets reeking with human
.'breath, its kitchens and areas with noi;-ome sewers. A sani-
tary reformer would not be long in' guessing the cause of my
unhealthiness. He would not rebuke me — nor would she,
sweet soul ! now that she is at rest in bliss — for my wild
longings to escape, for my envying the very flies and sparrows
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. 9
their wings that I might flee miles away into the country, and
breathe the air of heaven once, and die. I have had my wish.
[ have made two journeys far away into the country, and they
have been enough for me.
My mother was a widow. My father, whom I can not rec-
ollect, was a small retail tradesman in the city. He was un-
fortunate ; and when he died my mother came down, and
lived penuriously enough, I knew not how till I grew older,
down in that same suburban street. She had been brought J
up an Independent. After my father's death she became a /
Baptist, from conscientious scruples. She considered the /
Baptists, as I do, as the only sect who thoroughly embody/
the Calvinistic doctrines. She held it, as I do, an absurd and/
impious thing for those who believe mankind to be children oil
the devil till they have been consciously "converted," to bap-l
tize unconscious infants and give them the sign of God's mer-1
cy on the mere chance of that mercy being intended for them, j
When God had proved, by converting them, that they were
not reprobate and doomed to hell by His absolute and eternal
will, then, and not till then, dare man baptize them into His
name. She dared not palm a presumptuous fiction on herself,
and call it " charity." So, though we had both been christened
during my father's lifetime, she purposed to have us rebaptized,
if ever that happened — which, in her sense of the word, never
happened, I am afraid, to me.
\^/ She gloried in her dissent ; for she was sprung from old
Puritan blood, which had flowed again and again beneath the
knife of Star-Chamber butchers, and on the battle fields of
Naseby and Sedgemoor. And on winter evenings she used
to sit with her Bible on her knee, while I and my little sistei
Susan stood beside her and listened to the stories of Gideon
and Barak, and Samsou and Jephthah, till her eye kindled
up and her thoughts passed forth from that old Hebrew time
home into those English times which she fancied, and not un-
truly, like them. And we used to shudder, and yet listen with
a strange fascination, as she told us how her ancestor called
his seven sons off their small Cambridge farm, and horsed and
armed them himself to follow behind Cromwell, and smite
kings and prelates with "the sword of the Lord and of Gid-
eon." "Whether she were right or wrong, what is it to me ]
What is it now to her, thank God ? ^ut those stories, and/
the strict, stern Puritan education, learnt from the Independ-l>J
ents, and not the Baptists, which accompanied them, had]
their cfiect on me for good and iUTX
A* ^
j
10 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
My mother moved by rule and method ; by God's law, as
she considered, and that only. She seldom smiled. Her word
was absolute. She never commanded twice, without punish-
ing. And yet there were abysses of unspoken tenderness in
her, as well as clear, sound, womanly sense and insight. But
she thought herself as much bound to keep down all tender-
ness as if she had been some ascetic of the middle ages — so do
extremes meet ! It was " carnal," she considered. She had
as yet no right to have any "spiritual affection" for us. We
were still " children of wrath and of the devil" — not yet " con-
vinced of sin," "converted, born again." She had no more
spiritual bond with us, she thought, than she had with a
heathen or a Papist. She dared not even pray for our con-
version, earnestly as she prayed on every other subject. For
though the majority of her sect would have done so, her clear
logical sense would yield to no such tender inconsistency. Had
it not been decided from all eternity 1 We were elect, or we
were reprobate. Could her prayers alter that ? ' If He had
chosen us, He would call us in his own good time : and if
not — . Only, again and again, as I afterward discovered
from a journal of hers, she used to beseech God with agonized
tears to set her mind at rest by revealing to her His will to-
ward us. For that comfort she could at least rationally pray.
But she received no answer. Poor, beloved mother ! If thou
couldst not read the answer written in every flower and every
sunbeam, written in the very fact of our existence here at all,
what answer would have sufficed thee 1
[And yet, with all this, she kept the strictest watch over
our morality^ Fear, of course, was the only motive she em-
ployed ; for how could our still carnal understandings be af-
fected with love to GodJ[ And love to herself was too paltry
and temporary to be urged by one who knew that her life was
uncertain, and who was always trying to go down to the
deepest eternal ground and reason of every thing, and take
her stand upon that. So our god, or gods rather, till we were
twelve years old, were hell, the rod, the ten commandments,
and public opinion. Yet under them, not they, but something
deeper far, both in her and us, preserved us pure. Call it
natural character, conformation of the spirit — conformation oi'
the brain, if you like, if you are a scientific man and a phre-
nologist. I never yet could dissect and map out my own being.,
or my neighbor's, as you analysts do. To me, 1 myself, ay,
and each person round me, seem one inexplicable whole ; to
take away a single faculty whereof, is to destroy the harmony,
J
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POLT *
the meaning, the life of all the rest, \That there is a duality I ^U^
in us — a lifelong battle between flesh and spirit — we all, alas ! \^
know well enougff^ but which is flesh and which is spirit,
what philosophers in these days can tell us ! Still less had
we two found out any such duality or discord in ourselves ; for
we were gentle and obedient children. The pleasures of the
world did not tempt us. We did not know of their existence ,
and no foundlings educated in a nunnery ever grew up in more
virginal and spotless innocence — if ignorance be such — than
. did Susan and I.
The narrowness of my sphere of observation only concen-
l trated the faculty into greater strength. The few natural
objects which I met — and they, of course, constituted my
whole outer world (for art and poetry were tabooed both by
my rank and my mother's sectarianism, and the study of hu-
man beings only develops itself as the boy grows into the
man) — these few natural objects, I say, I studied with intense
keenness. I knew every leaf and flower in the little front
garden ; every cabbage and rhubarb-plant in Battersea-fields
was wonderful and beautiful to me. Clouds and water I
learnt to delight iu, from my occasional lingerings on Batter-
sea-bridge, and yearning westward looks toward the sun setting
above rich meadows and wooded gardens, to me a forbidden
El Dorado.
I brought home wild-flowers and chance beetles and butter-
flics, and pored over them, not in the spirit of a naturalist, but
of a poet. They were to me God's angels, shining in coats of
mail and fairy masquerading dresses. I envied them their
beauty, their freedom. At last I made up my mind, in the
simple tenderness of a child's conscience, that it was wrong to
rob them of the liberty for which I pined — to-feke them away
from the beautiful broad country whither I longed to follow
them ; and I used to keep them a day or two, and then, re-
gretfully, carry them back, and set them loose on the first
opportunity, with many compunctions of heart, when, as gen-
erally happened, they had been starved to death in the mean
time.
They were my only recreations after the hours of the small
day-school at the neighboring chapel, where I learnt to read,
write, and sum ; except, now, and then, a London walk, with
my mother holding my hand tight the whole way. She
would have hoodwinked me, stopped my ears with cotton, and
led me in a string — kind, careful soul ' — if it had been
reasonably safe on a crowded pavement, so fearful was she lesf
12 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
I should be polluted by some chance sight or sound of the
Babylon which she feared and hated — almost as much as she
did_ the bishops.
l/LThe only books which I knew were the Pilgrim's Progress
^| and the Bibki3 The former was my Shakespeare, my Dante,
my Vedas, by which I explained every fact and phenomenon
of life. LoHden-was the city of Destruction, from which I
was to flee ; I was Christian ; the Wicket of the way of Life
I had strangely identified with the turnpike at Battersea-
bridge end ; and the rising ground of Mortlake and Wimble-
don was the land of Beulah — the Enchanted Mountains of
the Shepherds. If I could once get there, I was saved ; — a
carnal view, perhaps, and a childish one ; but there was a dim
meaning and human reality in it nevertheless.
As for the Bible, I knew nothing of it really, beyond ihe
Old Testament. Indeed, the life of Christ had little chance
of becoming interesting to me. My mother had given me
y formally to understand that it spoke of matters too deep for
me ; that, F£jtill converted the natural man could not understand
the things of God~jV and I obtained little more explanation
of it from the two unintelligible, dreary sermons to which I
listened every dreary Sunday, in terror lest a chance shuffle
of my feet, or a hint of drowsiness — the natural result of the
stifling gallery and glaring windows and gaslights — should
bring down a lecture and a punishment when I returned
home. Oh, those " sabbaths !" — days, not of rest, but utter
weariness, when the beetles and the flowers were put by, and
there was nothing to fill up the long vacuity but books of
which I could not understand a word ; when play, laughter,
or even a stare out of window at the sinful, merry, sabbath-
breaking promenaders, were all forbidden, as if the command-
ment had run, ^' In it thou shalt take no manner of amuse-
ment, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter." By what strange
[ascetic perversion has tiiat got to mean " keeping holy the
sabbath-day ?"
Yet there was an hour's relief in the evening, when either
my mother told us Old Testament stories, or some preacher
or two came in to supper after meeting ; and I used to sit in
the corner and listen to their talk ; not that I understood a
word, but the mere struggle to understand — the mere watching
my mother's earnest face — my pride in the reverent flattery
with which the worthy men addressed her as " a mother in
Israel," were enough to fill up the blank for me till bed-time.
Of "vital Christianity" I heard much; but, with all my
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 13
efforts, could find out nothing. Indeed, it did not seem inter-
esting enough to tempt me to find out much. It seemed a set
of doctrines, believing in which was to have a magical effect
on people, by saving them from the everlasting^ torture due to
sins and temptations which I had never felt. CNow and then,
believing, in obedience to my mother's assurances, and the
solemn prayers of the ministers about me, that I was a child
of hell, and a lost and miserable sinner, I used to have ac- v
cesses of terror, and fancy that I should surely wake next
morning in everlasting flames. \ Once I put my finger a
moment into the fire, as certain Papists, and Protestants too,
have done, not only to themselves, but to their disciples, to see
if it would be so very dreadfully painful ; with what conclu-
sions the reader may judge. . . . Still, I could not keep up the
excitement. Why should I ? — The fear of pain is not the
fear of sin, that I know of ; and, indeed, the thing was unreal
altogether in my case, and my heart, my common sense re-
belled against it again and again ; till at last I got a terrible
whipping for taking my little sister's part, and saying that if
she was to die — so gentle, and obedient, and affectionate as
she was — God would be very unjust in sending her to hell-
lire, and that I was quite certain He would do no such thing —
unless He were the Devil : an opinion which I have since seen
no reason to change. The confusion between the King of
Hell and the King of Heaven has cleared up, thank God/
since then !
So I was whipped and put to bed — the whipping altering
my secret heart just about as much as the dread of hell-fire
did.
I speak as a Christian man — an orthodox Churchman (if
you require that shibboleth). Was I so very wrong ? What
was there in the idea of religion which was presented to me
at home to captivate me ? What was the use of a child's
hearing of " God's great love manifested in the scheme of re-
demption," when he heard, in the same breath, that the effects
of that redemption were practically confined only to one hu-
man being out of a thousand, and that the other nine hundred
and ninety-nine were lost and damned from their birth-hour
to all eternity — not only by the absolute will and reprobation
of God (though that infernal blasphemy I heard often enough),
but also, putting that out of the question, by the mere fact of
being born of Adam's race. And this to a generation to whom I
God's love shines out in every tree, and flower, and hedge-side- ]
Vud ; to whom the daily discoveries of science are revealing f
14 ALTON LOCKE. TAILOR AND POET.
that love in every microscopic animalcule which peoples the
stagnant pool ! This to working men, whose craving is only
for some idea which shall give equal hopes, claims, and deliver-
ances, to all mankind alike ! This to working men, who, in
the smiles of their innocent children, see the heaven which
they have lost — the messages of baby-cherubs made in God's
own image ! This to me, to whom every butterfly, every look
at my little sister, contradicted the lie ! You may say that
such thoughts were too deep for a child ; that I am ascribing
to my boyhood the skepticism of my manhood; but it is not
so ; and what went on in my mind goes on in the minds of
thousands. It is the cause of the contempt into which not
merely sectarian Protestantism, but Christianity altogether,
has fallen, in the minds of the thinking workmen. Clergymen,
who anathematize us for wandering into Unitarianism — you,
jyou have driven us thither. You must find some explanation
: of the facts of Christianity more in accordance with the truths
I which we do know, and will live and die for, or you can never
I hope to make us Christians ; or, if we do return to the true
i fold, it will be as I returned, after long, miserable years of
darkling error, to a higher truth than most of you have yet
learned to preach.
But those old Jewish heroes did fill my whole heart and
soul. I learnt from them lessons which I never wish to un-
learn. Whatever else I saw about them, this I saw — that
they were patriots, deliverers from that tyranny and injustice
from which the child's heart — "child of the devil" though
you may call him — instinctively, and, as I believe, by a
divine inspiration, revolts. Moses leading his people out of
Egypt ; Gideon, Barak, and Samson, slaying their oppressors ;
David hiding in the mountains from the tyrant, with his little
band of those who had fled from the oppreesions of an aristoc-
racy of Nabals ; Jehu executing God's vengeance on the kin irs
— they were my heroes, my models ; they mixed themselves
up with the dim legends about the Reformation martyrs,
Cromwell and Hampden, Sidney and Monmouth, which I had
heard at my mother's knee. Not that the perennial oppression
of the masses, in all ages and countries, had yet risen on mc
as an awful, torturing, fixed idea. I fancied, poor fool ! that
tyranny was the exception, and not the rule. But it was the
mere sense of abstract pity and justice which was delighted in
me. I thought that these were old fairy tales, such as never
need be realized again. I learnt otherwise in after years.
I have often wondered since, why all can not read the sama
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. ,3
lesson as I did in those old Hebrew Scriptures — that they, ol
all books in the world, have been wrested into proofs of the
divine right of kings, the eternal necessity of slavery ! But the
eye only sees what it brings with it, the power of seeing. The
upper classes, from their first day at school to their last day at
college, read of nothing but the glories of Salamis and Mara-
thon, of freedom and of the old republics. And what comes
of it ? No more than their tutors know will come of it, when
they thrust into the boys' hands books which give the lie in
every page to their own political superstitions.
But when I was just turned of thirteen, an altogether new
fairly-land was opened to me by some missionary tracts and
iournals, which were lent to my mother by the ministers.
Pacific coral islands and volcanoes, cocoa-nut groves and
bananas, graceful savages with paint and feathers — what an
El Dorado ! How I devoured them and dreamt of them, and
went there in fancy, and preached small sermons as I lay in
bed at night to Tahitians and New Zealanders, though I con-
fess my spiritual eyes were, just as my physical eyes would
have been, far more busy with the scenery than with the souls
of my audience. However, that was the place for me, I saw
clearly. And one day, I recollect it well, in the little dingy,]
foul, reeking, twelve-foot-square back yard, where huge smoky V
party-walls shut out every breath of air and almost all the
light of heaven, I had climbed up between the water-butt and
the angle of the wall for the purpose of fishing out of the
dirty fluid which lay there, crusted with soot and alive with
insects, to be renewed only three times in the seven days, some
,' of the great larvae and kicking monsters which made up a
large item in my list of wonders : all of a sudden the horror \
of the place came over me ; those grim prison-walls above, J
with their canopy of lurid smoke ; the dreary, sloppy, broken
pavement ; the horrible stench of the stagnant cesspools ; the
utter want of form, color, life, in the whole place, crushed me
down, without my being able to analyze my feelings as I can - ,
now; and then came over me that dream of Pacific Islands,
and the free, open sea ; and I slid down from my perch, and
bursting into tears threw myself upon my knees in the court jL''
and prayed aloud to God to let me be a missionary.
Half fearfully I let out my wishes to my mother when she
came home. She gave me no answer ; but, as I found out
afterward — too late, alas ! for her, if not for me — she, like
Mary, had " laid up all these things, and treasured them in
her heart."
16 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
You may guess then my delight when, a few days after-
ward, I heard that a real live missionary was coming to take
tea with us. A man who had actually been in New Zea-
land ! — the thought was rapture. I painted him to myself
Dver and over again ; and when, after the first burst of fancy,
I recollected that he might possibly not have adopted the
native costume of that island, or, if he had, that perhaps it
would look too strange for him to wear it about London, I
settled within myself that he was to be a tall venerable-looking
man, like the portraits of old Puritan divines which adorned
our day-room ; and as I had heard that " he was was power-
ful in prayer," I adorned his right-hand with that mystic
weapon " all-prayer," with which Christian, when all other
means had failed, finally vanquishes the fiend — which instru-
ment, in my mind, was somewhat after the model of an
infernal sort of bill or halbert — all hooks, edges, spikes, and
crescents — which I had passed, shuddering, once, in the
hand of an old suit of armor in Wardour-street.
He came — and with him the two ministers who often
drank tea with my mother ; both of whom, as they played
some small part in the drama of my after-life, I may as well
describe here. The elder was a little, sleek, silver-haired old
man, with a bland, weak face, just like a white rabbit. He
loved me, and I loved him too, for there were always lollipops
in his pocket for me and Susan. Had his head been equal to
his heart ! — but what has been was to be — and the dissenting
clergy, with a few noble exceptions among the Independents,
are not the strong men of the day — none know that better
than the workmen. The old man's name was Eowyer. The
other, Mr. Wigginton, was a yonnger man ; tall, grim, dark",
bilious, with a narrow forehead, retreating suddenly from his
eyebrows up to a conical peak of black hair over his ears.
He preached "higher doctrine," i.e., more fatalist and anti-
nomian than his gentler colleague — and, having also a sten-
torian voice, was much the greater favorite at the chapel. I
hated him — and if any man ever deserved hatred, he did.
Well, they came, My heart was in my mouth as I opened
the door to them, and sunk back again to the very lowest
depths of my inner man when my eyes fell on the face and
figure of the missionary — a squat, red-faced, pig-eyed, low-
browed man, with great soft lips that opened back to his very
ears ; sensuality, conceit, and cunning marked on every feat-
ure — an innate vulgarity, from which the artisan and the
child recoil with an instinct as true, perhaps truer, than that
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. ]7
of the courtier, showing itself in every tone and motion — I
shrunk into a corner, so crest-fallen that I could not even exert
myself to hand round the bread-and-butter, for which I pot
duly scolded afterward. Oh! that man! — how he bawled
and contradicted, and laid down the law, and spoke to my
mother in a fondling, patronizing way, which made me, J
knew not why, boil over with jealousy and indignation. How
he filled his teacup half full of the white sijgar to buy which
my mother had curtailed her yesterday's dinner — how he
drained the few remaining drops of the three-pennyworth of
cream, with which Susan was stealing off, to keep it as an
unexpected treat for my mother at breakfast the next morn-
ing — how he talked of the natives, not as St. Paul might of
his converts, but as a planter might of his slaves ; overlaying
all his unintentional confessions of his own greed and prosper-
ity, with cant, flimsy enough for even a boy to see through,
while his eyes were not blinded with the superstition that a
man must be pious who sufficiently interlards his speech with
a jumble cf old English picked out of our translation of the
New Testament. Such was the man I saw. I don't deny
that all are not like him. I believe there are noble men of
all denominations, doing their best according to their light,
all over the world ; but such was one I saw — and the men
who are sent home to plead the missionary cause, whatever
the men may be like who stay behind and work, are, from
my small experience, too often such. It appears to me to be
the rule that many of those who go abroad as missionaries, go
simply because they are men of such inferior powers and at-
tainments that if they staid in England they would starve.
Three parts of his conversation, after all, was made up of
abuse of the missionaries of the Church of England, not fjr
doing nothing, but for being so much more successful than
his own sect ; accusing them, in the same breath, of being
just of the inferior type of which he was himself, and also of
being mere University fine gentlemen. Pteally, I did not
wonder, upon his own showing, at the savages preferring them
to him ; and I was pleased to hear the old white-headed
minister gently interpose at the end of one of his tirades —
" We must not be jealous, my brother, if the Establishment
has discovered what we, I hope, shall find out some day, that
it is not wise to draft our missionaries from the ofiscouring of
the ministry, and serve God with that which costs us nothing
except the expense of providing for them beyond seas."
There was somewhat of a roguish twinkle in the old man's
13
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
eye as he said it, which emboldened me to whisper a questioi.
to him.
" Why is it, sir, that in old times the heathens used to
( rucify the missionaries and burn them, and now they give
them beautiful farms, and build them houses, and carry them
about on their backs'?"
The old man seemed a little puzzled, and so did the com-
pany, to whom he smilingly retailed my question.
As nobody seemed inclined to offer a solution, I ventured
one myself.
" Perhaps the heathens are grown better than they used
to be?"
''The heart of man," answered the tall, dark minister, "is,
and ever was, equally at enmity with GodZj
"Then, perhaps," I ventured again, "what the mission-
aries preach now is not quite the same as what the mission-
aries used to preach in St. Paul's time, and so the heathens
are not so angry at it ?"
My mother looked thunder at me, and so did all except my
white-headed friend, who said, gently enough —
"It may be that the child's words come from God."
Yv'hether they did or not, the child took very good care to
speak no more words till he was alone with his mother ; and
then finished ofFthat disastrous evening by a punishment for
the indecency of saying, before his little sister, that he thought
it " a great pity the missionaries taught black people to wear
ugly coats and trowsers ; they must have looked so much
handsomer running about with nothing on but feathers and
strings of shells."
So the missionary dream died out of me, by a foolish and
illogical antipathy enough ; though, after all, it was a child
of my imagination only, not of my heart ; and the fancy,
having bred it, was able to kill it also. And David became
my ideal. To be a shepherd-boy, and sit among beautiful
mountains, and sing hymns of my own making, and kill lions
and bears, with now and then the chance of a stray giant —
what a glorious life ! And if David slew giants with a sling
and a stone, Avhy should not I ? — at all events, one ought to
know how ; so I made a sling out of an old garter and some
stiintr, and began to practice in the little back-yard. But
ray first shot broke my neighbor's window, value seven-pence,
and the next flew back in my face, and cut my head open ,
bo I was sent supperless to bed for a week, till the seven-pence
had been duly saved out of my hungry stomach — and, on the
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOIt AND POET. 19
whole, I found the hymn-writing side of David's character
the more feasible ; so I tried, and with much brainsbeating,
committed the following lines to a scrap of dirty paper. And
it was strangely significant, that in this, my first attempt,
there was an instinctive denial of the very doctrine of " par-
ticular redemption," which I had been hearing all my' life,
and an instinctive yearning after the very Being in whom I
had been told I had "no part nor lot " till I was "converted."
Here they are. I am not ashamed to call them — doggrel
though they be — an inspiration from Him of whom they
speak. If not from Him, good readers, from whom'?
Jesus, He loves one and all;
Jesus, He loves children small ;
Their souls are sitting round His feet,
On high, before His mercy-seat.
When on earth He walked in shame,
Children small unto Him came ;
At his feet they knelt and prayed,
On their heads His hands He laid.
Came a spirit on them then,
Greater than of mighty men ;
A spirit gentle, meek, and mild,
A spirit good for king and child.
Oh ! that spirit give to me,
Jesus, Lord, where'er I be !
So—
But I did not finish them, not seeing very clearly what to
do with that spirit when I obtained it ; for, indeed, it seemed
a much finer thing to fight material Apollyons with material
swords of iron, like my friend Christian, or to go bear and lion
hunting with David, than to convert heathens by meekness —
at least, if true meekness was at all like that of the missionary
whom I had lately seen.
I showed the verses in secret to my little sister. My
mother heard us singing them together, and extorted, grimly
enough, a confession of the authorship. I expected to be
punished for them (I was accustomed weekly to be punished
for all sorts of deeds and words, of the harmfulness of which I
had not a notion). It was, therefore, an agreeable surprise
when the old minister, the next Sunday evening, patted my
head, and praised me for them.
" A hopeful sign of young grace, brother," said he to the
dark, tall man. "May we behold here an infant Timothy!"
" Bad doctrine, brother, in that first line — bad doetrino,
20 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
which I am sure he did not learn from our excellent sister
here. Remember, my boy, henceforth, that Jesus does not
love one and all — not that I am angry with you. The carnal
mind can not be expected to understand divine things, any
I more than the beasts that perish. Nevertheless, the blessed
message of the Gospel stands true, that Christ loves none but
His Bride, the Church. His merits, my poor child, extend to
none but the elect. Ah ! my dear sister Locke, how delight-
ful to think of the narrow way of discriminating grace !
How it enhances the believer's view of his own exceeding
privileges, to remember that there be few that be saved !"
I said nothing. I thought myself only too lucky to escape
so well from the danger of having done any thing out of my
own head. But somehow Susan and I never altered it when
we sang it to ourselves.
/ I thought it necessary for the sake of those who might read
my story, to string together these few scattered recollections
of my boyhood — to give, as it were, some sample of the
cotyledon leaves of my young life-plant, and of the soil in
which it took root, ere it was transplanted — but I will not
forestall rny sorrows. After all, they have been but types of
the woes of thousands who " die and give no sign." Those
to whom the struggles of every, even the meanest, human
being are scenes of an awful drama, every incident of which
is to be noted with reverent interest, will not find them void
of meaning ; while the life which opens in my next chapter
is, perhaps, full enough of mere dramatic interest (and whoso
life is not, were it but truly written ?) to amuse merely as a
i novel. Ay, grim and real is the action and suffering which
^begins with my next page — as you yourself would have found,
high-born reader (if such chance to light upon this story), had
you found yourself at fifteen, after a youth of convent-like
.seclusion, settled, apparently for life — in a tailor's workshop.
Ay — laugh ! we tailors can quote poetry as well as make
your court-dresses :
You sit in a cloud and sing, like pictured angels,
And say the world runs smooth — while right below
Welters the black fermenting heap of griefs
Whereon your state is built
CHAPTER II.
THE TAILORS' WORK-ROOM.
Have you done laughing ? Then I will tell you how tho
thing came to pass.
My father had a brother, who had steadily risen in life, in
proportion as my father fell. They had both begun life in a
grocer's shop. My father saved enough to marry, when of
middle age, a woman of his own years, and set up a little
shop, where there were far too many such already, in the
hope — to him, as to the rest of the world, quite just and in-
nocent — of drawing away as much as possible of his neighbors'
custom. He failed, died — as so many small tradesmen do —
of bad debts and a broken heart, and left us beggars. His
brother, more prudent, had in the mean time, risen to be fore-
man ; then he married, on the strength of his handsome per-
son, his master's blooming widow ; and rose and rose, year by
year, till, at the time of which I speak, he was owner of a
first-rate grocery establishment in the city, and a pleasant
villa near Heme Hill, and had a son a year or two older than
myself, at King's College preparing for Oxford and the Church
— that being nowadays the approved method of converting /
a tradesman's son into a gentleman, whereof let artisans, and/
gentlemen also take note.
My aristocratic readers — if I ever get any, which I pray God 1
I may — may be surprised at so great an inequality of fortune
between two cousins; but the thing is common in our class.
In the higher ranks, a difference in income implies none in
.-■.ducation or manners, and the poor "gentleman" is a fit
sompanion for dukes and princes — thanks to the old usages
if Norman chivalry, which after all were a democratic protest
jgainst the sovereignty, if not of rank, at least of money. The
Knight, however penniless, was the prince's equal, even his
superior, from whose hands he must receive knighthood; and
tlu "squire of low degree," who honorably earned his spurs,
rose also into that guild, whose qualifications, however bar-
baric were still higher ones than any which the pocket gives.
But in the commercial classes money most truly and fearfully
"makes the man." A difference in income, as you go lower,
I
22 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
makes more and more difference in the supply of the common
necessaries of life ; and worse, in education and manners, in
all which polishes the man, till you may see often as in my
case, one cousin an Oxford undergraduate, and the other a
tailor's journeyman.
My uncle one day came down to visit us, resplendent in a
black velvet waistcoat, thick gold chain, and acres of shirt-
front ; and I and Susan were turned to feed on our own curi-
osity and awe in the back-yard, while he and my mother
were closeted together for an hour or so in the living-room.
When he was gone, my mother called me in, and with eyes
which would have been tearful had she allowed herself such
a weakness before us, told me very solemnly and slowly, as if
to impress upon me the awfulness of the matter, that I was
to be sent to a tailor's work-rooms the next day.
And an awful step it was in her eyes, as she laid her hands
on my head and murmured to herself, " Behold, I send you
forth as a lamb in the midst of wolves. Be ye, therefore,
wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." And then, rising
hastily to conceal her own emotion, fled up-stairs, where we
could hear her throw herself on her knees by the bedside, and
sob piteously.
That evening was spent dolefully enough, in a sermon of
warnings against all manner of sins and temptations, the very
names of which I had never heard, but to which, as she in-
formed me, I was by my fallen nature altogether prone : and
right enough was she in so saying, though, as often happens,
the temptations from which I was in real danger were just
fthe ones of which she had no notion — fighting more or less
jextinct Satans, as Mr. Carlyle says, and quite unconscious of
-tthe real, modern, man-devouring Satan close at her elbow.
\. To me, in spite of all the terror which she tried to awaken
in me, the change was not unwelcome ; at all events, it
promised me food for my eyes and my ears — some escape from
the narrow cage in which, though I hardly dare confess it to-.
myself, I was beginning to pine. Little I dreamt to what
a darker cage I was to be translated ! Not that I accuse
my uncle of neglect or cruelty, though the thing was alto-
gether of his commanding. He was as generous to us as so-
ciety required him to be. We were entirely dependent on
him. as my mother told me then lor the first time, for support.
And had he not a right to dispose of my person, having bought
it by an allowance to my mother of five-and-twenty pounds a
year ? I did not forget that fact ; the thought of my depend-
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET 23
ence on him rankled in me, till it almost bred hatred in me
to a man who had certainly never done or meant any thing
to me but in kindness. For what could he make me but a
tailor, or a shoemaker ? A pale, consumptive, rickety, weak-
ly boy, all forehead and no muscle — have not clothes and
shoes been from time immemorial the appointed work of
such 1 The fact that that weakly frame is generally
compensated by a proportionally increased activity of brain,
is too unimportant to enter into the calculations of the great
King Laissez-faire. Well, my dear Society, it is you that
suffer for the mistake, after all, more than we. If you do
tether your cleverest artisans on tailors' shop-boards and cob-
blers' benches, and they — as sedentary folk will — fall a-think-
ing, and come to strange conclusions thereby, they really ought
to be much more thankful to you than you are to them. If
Thomas Cooper had passed his first five-and-twenty years at
the plough tail instead of the shoemaker's awl, many words
would have been left unsaid which, once spoken, working-
men are not likely to forget
With a beating heart I shambled along by my mother's
side next day to Mr. Smith's shop, in a street off Piccadilly ;
and stood by her side, just within the door, waiting till some
one would condescend to speak to us, and wondering when
the time would come when I, like the gentlemen who skip-
ped up and down the shop, should shine glorious in patent-
leather boc'^s, and a blue satin tie sprigged with gold.
Two personages, both equally magnificent, stood talking
with their backs to us ; and my mother, in doubt, like myself,
as to which of them was the tailor, at last summoned up
courage to address the wrong one, by asking if he were
Mr. Smith.
The person addressed answered by a most polite smile and
bow, and assured her that he had not that honor ; while the
other he-he'ed, evidently a little nattered by the mistake, and
then uttered in a tremendous voice these words —
" I have nothing for you, my good woman — go. Mr.
Elliot ! how did you come to allow these people to get into
the establishment ?"
"My name is Locke, sir, and I was to bring my son nere
this morning."
" Oh — ah ! — Mr. Elliot, see to these persons. As I was
saying, my lard, the crimson velvet suit, about thirty-five
guineas. By-thc-by, that coat ours ? I thought so — idea
grand and light — masses well broken — very fine chiaroscuro
21 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
about the whole — an aristocratic wrinkle just above the hips
— which I flatter myself no one but myself and my friend Mr.
Cooke really do understand. The vapid smoothness of the
door dummy, my lard, should be confined to the regions of the
Strand. Mr. Elliot, where are you ? Just be so good as to
show his lardship that lovely new thing in drab and bleu
foncec. Ah ! your lardship can't wait. Now, my good woman,
is this the young man ?"
"Yes," said my mother: "and — and — God deal so with
you, sir, as you deal with the widow and the orphan."
"Oh — ah — that will depend very much, I should say, on
how the widow and the orphan deal with me. Mr. Elliot,
take this person into the office and transact the little formal-
ities with her. Jones, take the young man up-stairs to the
work-room."
I stumbled after Mr. Jones up a dark, narrow iron stair-
case till we emerged through a trap-door into a garret at the
top of. the house. I recoiled with disgust at the scene before
me ; and here I was to work — perhaps through life ! A low
lean-to room, stifling me with the combined odors of human
breath and perspiration, stale beer, the sweet sickly smell oi
gin, and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new cloth.
On the floor, thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends
of thread, sat some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, with
a mingled look of care and recklessness that made me shudder.
The windows were tight closed to keep out the cold winter
air ; and the condensed breath ran in streams down the panes,
checkering the dreary out-look of chimney tops and smoke.
The conductor handed me over to one of the men.
"Here, Crossthwaite, take this younker and make a tailor
of him. Keep him next you, and prick him up with your
needle if he shirks."
He disappeared down the trap-door, and mechanically, as
if in a dream, I sat down by the man and listened to his
instructions, kindly enough bestowed. But I did not remain
in peace two minutes. A burst of chatter rose as the fore-
man vanished, and a tall, bloated, sharp-nosed young man
next me bawled in my ear,
"I say, young 'un, fork out the tin and pay your footing at
Conscrumption Hospital !"
" What do you mean V
"'Aint he just green? — Down with the stumpy — a tizzy
(or a pot of half-and-half."
" I never drink beer."
ALTON LOCKF., TAILOR AND POET. 21
' Then never do," whispered the man at my side; "as
ure as hell's hell, it's your only chance."
There was a fierce, deep earnestness in the tone which mado
me look up at the speaker, but the other instantly chimed in,
'• Oh, yer dont, don't yer, my young Father Mathy ! then
yer'll soon learn it here if yer want to keep yer victuals
down."
" And I have promised to take my wages home to my
mother."
" O criminy ! hark to that, my coves ! here's a chap as is
going to take the blunt home to his mammy."
" T'aint much of it the old un'll see," said another. " Ven
yer pockets it at the Cock and Bottle, my kiddy, yer won't
rind much of it left o' Sunday mornings."
"Don't his mother know he's out?" asked another; "and
won't she know it —
Ven he's sitting in his glory-
Half-price at the Victory.
Oh ; no, ve never mentions her — her name is never heard.
Certainly not, by no means. Why should it V
" Well, if yer won't stand a pot," quoth the tall man, " I
will, that's all, and blow temperance. ' A short life and a
merry one,' says the tailor.
The ministers talk a great deal about port,
And they makes Cape wine very dear,
But blow their hi's if ever they tries
To deprive a poor cove of his beer.
Here, Sam, run to the Cock and Bottle for a pot of half-and
half to my score."
A thin, pale lad jumped up and vanished, while my tor-
mentor turned to me :
" I say, young 'an, do you know why we're nearer heaven "
here than our neighbors ?"
" I shouldn't have thought so," answered I with a naivete
which raised a laugh, and dashed the tall man lor a moment.
" Yer don't 1 then I'll tell yer. Acause we're atop of
the house in the first place, and next place yer'll die here six
months sooner nor if yer worked in the room below. 'Aint
that logic and science, Orator V appealing to Crossthwaite.
"Why?" asked I.
" Acause you get all the other floors' stinks up here, as
well as your own. Concentrated essence of man's flesh, is
this here as you're a-breathing. . Cellar work-room we calls
B
86 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
Rheumatic Ward, because of the damp. Ground-floor'ti
Fever Ward — them as don't get typhus gets dysentery, and
them as don't get dysentery gets typhus — your nose 'd ted
yer why if you opened the back windy. First floor's Ashrny
Ward — don't you hear 'urn now through the cracks in the
boards, a-puffing away like a nest of young locomotives ?
And this here more august and upper-crust cockloft is the
Conscrumptive Hospital. First you begins to cough, then
you proceed to expectorate — spittoons, as you see, perwided
free gracious for nothing — fined a kivarten if you spits on the
floor,
Then your cheeks they grows red, and } r our nose it grows thin,
And your bones they sticks out, till they comes through your skin .
and then, when you've sufficiently covered the poor dear
shivering bare backs of the hairystocracy,
Die, die, die,
Away you fly,
Your soul is in the sky !
as the hinspired Shakspeare wittily remarks."
And the ribald lay down on his back, stretched himself out
and pretended to die in a fit of coughing, which last was
alas ! no counterfeit, while poor I, shocked and bewildered, let
my tears falls fast upon my knees.
" Fine him a pot !" roared one, "for talking about kicking
the bucket. He's a nice young man to keep a cove's spirits
up, and talk about ' a short life and a merry one.' Here
comes the heavy. Hand it here to take the taste of that fe!
low's talk out of my mouth."
" Well, my young 'un," re-commenced my tormentor, " and
how do you like your company V
"Leave the boy alone," growled Crossthwaite ; "don't
you see he's crying?"
" Is that any thing good to eat ? Give me some on it if
it is — it'll save me washing my face." And he took hold of
my hair and pulled my head back.
"I'll tell you what, Jemmy Downes," said Crossthwaite,
in a voice which made him draw back, "if you don't drop
that, I'll give you such a taste of my tongue as shall turn
you blue."
"You'd better try it on then. Do — only just now — if you
please."
" Be quiet, you fool !" said another. " You're a pretty fel
ALTON LOCKF., TAILOR AND POET 27
low to chaff the orator. He'll slang you up the chimney
afore you can get your shoes on. :;
" Fine him a kivarten for quarreling," cried another ; and
the bully subsided into a minute's silence, after a solto voce —
" Blow temperance, and blow all Chartists, say I !" and then
delivered himself of his feelings in a doggrel song :
Some folks leads coves a dance.
With their pledge of temperance,
And their plans for donkey soeiation ;
And their pocket-fulls they crams
By their patriotic flams,
And then swears 'tis for the good of the nation.
But I don't care two inions
For political opinions,
While I can stand my heavy and my quartern;
For to drown dull care within,
In baccy, beer, and pin.
Is the prime of a working-tailor's fortin !
" There's common sense for yer now ; hand the pot here."
I recollect nothing more of that day, except that I bent
myself to my work with assiduity enough to earn praises
from Crossthwaite. It was to be done, and I did it. The
only virtue I ever possessed (if virtue it be) is the power of
absorbing my whole heart and mind in the pursuit of the
moment, however dull or trivial, if there be good reason why
it should be pursued at all.
I owe, too, an ap ology to my readers for introducing all
this ribaldry. God knows it is as little tcTmv taste as it can'
T3e to theirs, but the iliiug_exists ; and those who live, if not
by, yet still beside such a state of things, ought to know what
the men are like, to whose labor, ay, life-blood, they owe their
luxuries. They are " their brothers' keepers," let thern deny
it as they will. Thank God, many are finding that out ;
and the morals of the working-tailors, as well as of other
classes of artisans, are rapidly improving : a change which
has been brought about partly by the wisdom and kindness
of a lew master-tailors, who have built workshops fit for
human beings- and have resolutely stood out against the
iniquitous and destructive alterations in the system of employ-
ment. Among them I may, and will, whether they like it
or not, make honorable mention of Mr. Willis, of St. James's-
ftreet, and Mr. Stultz, of Bond-street.
But nine-tenths of the improvement has been owing, not to
the masters, but to the men themselves; and who among-
28 ALTON LOCKL', TAILOR AND POET.
them, my aristocratic readers, do yon think, have been the
great preachers and practicers of temperance, thrift, chastity,
self-respect, and education ? Who 1 shriek not in your Bel-
gravian saloons — the Chartists ; the communist Chartists ;
upon whom you and your venal press heap every kind of
cowardly execration and ribald slander. You have found out
many things, since Peterloo ; add that fact to the number.
It may seem strange that I did not tell my mother into
what a pandemonium I had fallen, and get her to deliver
me ; but a delicacy, which was not all evil kept me back. I
shrank from seeming to dislike to earn my daily bread ; and
still more from seeming to object to what she had appointed
(or me. Her will had been always law ; it seemed a deadly
sin to dispute it. I took for granted, too, that she knew what
the place was like, and that, therefore, it must be right for
me. And when I came home at night, and got. back to ray
beloved missionary stories: I gathered materials enough to
occupy my thoughts during the next day's work, and make
me blind and deaf to all the evil around me. My mother,
poor dear creature, would have denounced my day-dreams
sternly enough, had she known of their existence : but were
they not holy angels from heaven? guardians sent by that
Father, whom I had been taught not to believe in, to shield
my senses from pollution ?
I was ashamed, too, to mention to my mother the wicked-
ness which I saw and heard. AVith the delicacy of an inno-
cent boy, I almost imputed the very witnessing of it as a sin
to myself; and soon I began to be ashamed of more than the
mere sitting by and hearing. I found myself gradually learn-
ing slang insolence, laughing at coarse jokes, taking part in
angry conversations ; my moral tone was gradually becoming
lower ; but yet the habit of prayer remained, and every night
at my bedside, when 1 prayed to " be converted, and made a
child of God," I prayed that the same mercy might be ex-
tended to my fellow- workmen, "if they belonged to the num-
ber of the elect." Those prayers may have been answered in
a wider and deeper sense than I then thought of.
But, altogether, I felt myself in a most distracted, rudderless
state. ]\Iy mother's advice I felt daily less and less inclined
to ask. A gulf was opening between us : we were moving
in two different worlds, and she saw it, and imputed it to me
as a sin ; and was the more cold to me by day, and prayed for
rac (as I knew afterward) the more passionately while I
slept. But help or teacher I had none. I knew not that
ALTON LOCKE. TAILOR AND POET. S3
1 had a Father in Heaven. How could he be my Father till
I was converted ? I was a child of the Devil they told me ;
and now and then I felt inclined to take them at their word,
and behave like one. No sympathizing face looked on me
out of the wide heaven — off the wide earth, none. I was all
boiling with new hopes, new temptations, new passions, new
sorrows, and " I looked to the right hand and to the left, and
no man cared ibr my soul."
I had felt myself from the first strangely drawn toward
Crossthwaite, carefully as he seemed to avoid me, except lo
give me business directions in the work-room. He alone had
shown me any kindness; and he, too, alone was untainted
with the sin around him. Silent, moody, and pre-occupied,
he was yet the king of the room. His opinion was always
asked, and listened to. His eye always cowed the ribald and
the blasphemer ; his songs, when he rarely broke out into
merriment, were always rapturously applauded. Men hated,
and yet. respected him. I shrank from him at first, when I
heard him called a Chartist; for my dim notions of that class
were, that they were a very wicked set of people, who want-
ed to kill all the soldiers and policemen, and respectable peo-
ple, and rob all the shops of their contents. But Chartist or
none, Crossthwaite fascinated me. I often found myself neg-
lecting my work to study his face. I liked him, too, because
he was as I was — small, pale, and weakly. He might have
been five-and-twenty ; but his looks, like those of too many a
working-man, were rather those of a man of forty. Wild
gray eyes gleamed out from under huge knitted brows, and
a perpendicular wall of brain, too large for his puny body.
He was not only, I soon discovered, a water-drinker, but a
strict vegetarian also; to which, perhaps, he owed a great
deal of the almost preternatural clearness, volubility and sens-
itiveness of his mind. But whether from his ascetic habits,
or the unhealthiness of his trade, the marks of ill-health were
upon him ; and his sallow cheek, and ever-working lip, pro-
claimed too surely —
The fiery soul which, working out its way,
• Fretted the pigmy body to decay;
And o'er informed the tenement of clay.
I longed to open my heart to him. Instinctively I felt
that he was a kindred spirit. Often, turning round suddenly
in the work-room, I caught him watching me with an ex-
pression which seemed to say, " Poor boy, and art thou tiu
30 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
one of us? Hast thou too to fight with poverty and guide-
lessness, and the cravings of an unsatisfied intellect, as I have
done !" But when I tried to speak to him earnestly, his
manner was peremptory and repellent. It was well for me
that so it was — well for me I see now, that it was not from
him my mind received the first lessons in self-development.
For guides did come to me in good time, though not such,
perhaps, as either my mother or my readers would have chosen
for me.
My great desire now was to get knowledge. By getting
that I fancied, as most self-educated men are apt to do, I
should surely get wisdom. Books, I thought would tell me
all I needed. But where to get the books? And which? I
had exhausted our small stock at home; I was sick and tired,
without knowing why, of their narrow, conventional view of
every thing. After all, I had been reading them all along
not lor their doctrines but for their facts, and knew not where
to find more except in forbidden paths. I dare not ask my
mother for books, for I dare not confess to her that religious
ones were just what I did not want ; and all history, poetry,
science, I had been accustomed to hear spoken of as "carnal
learning, human philosophy," more or less diabolic and ruin-
ous to the soul, foo, as usually happens in this life, " by the
law was the knowledge of sin," and unnatural restrictions on
the .development of the human spirit only associated with
guilt of conscience, what ought to have been an innocent and
necessary blessing.
My poor mother, not singular in her mistake, had sent me
forth, out of an unconscious paradise into the evil world, with-
out allowing me even the sad strength which comes from eat-
ing of the tree of knowledge of good and evil ; she expected in
me the innocence of the dove, as if that was possible on such
an earth as this, without the wisdom of the serpent to sup-
port it. She forbade me strictly to stop and look into the
windows of print shops, and I strictly obeyed her. But she
forbade me, too, to read any book which I had not first shown
her; and that restriction, reasonable enough in the abstract,
practically meant, in the case of a poor boy like myself, read-
ing no books at all. And then came my first act of disobedi-
i ace , the parent of many more. Bitterly have I repented it,
and bitterly been punished. Yet, strange contradiction ! I
dare not wish it undone. But such is the great law of life.
Punished for our sins we surely are ; and yet how often they
l x-'00tne our blessings, teaching us that which 110111111": else can
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 31
teach us ! Nothing else ? One says so. Rich parents, I
suppose, say so, when they send their sons to public schools
"to learn life." We working-men have too often no other
teacher than our own errors But surely, surely, the rich
ought to have been able to discover some mode of education
in which knowledge may be acquired without the price of
conscience. Yet they have .not; and we must not complain
of them for not giving such a one to the working-man, when
they have not yet even given it to their own children.
In a street through which I used to walk homeward was
an old book shop, piled and fringed outside and in with books
of every age, size, and color. And here I at last summoned
courage to stop, and timidly and stealthily taking out some
volume whose title attracted me, snatch hastily a few pages
and hasten on, half fearful of being called on to purchase, half
ashamed of a desire which I fancied every one else consider-
ed as unlawful as my mother did. Sometimes I was lucky
enough to find the same volume several days running, and to
take up the subject where I had left it off; and thus I con-
trived to hurry through a great deal of " Childe Harold,"
" Lara," and the " Corsair" — a new world of wonders to me.
They fed, those poems, both my health and my diseases ; while
they gave me, little of them as I could understand, a thou-
sand new notions about scenery and man, a sense of poetic
melody and luxuriance as yet utterly unknown. They chimed
in with all my discontent, my melancholy, my thirst after any
life of action and excitement, however frivolous, insane, or
even worse. I forgot the Corsair's sinful trade in his free and
daring life ; rather, I honestly eliminated the bad element —
in which, God knows, I took no delight — and kept the good
one. However that might be, the innocent, guilty pleasure
greAV on me day by day. Innocent because human — guilty,
because disobedient. But have I not paid the penalty ?
One evening, however, I fell accidentally on a new book —
" The Life and Poems of J. Bethune." I opened the story
of his life — became interested, absorbed — and there I stood,
I know not how long, on the greasy pavement, heedless of the
passers who thrust me right and left, reading by the flaring
gas-light that sad history of labor, sorrow, and death. How
the Highland cotter, in spite of disease, penury, starvation it-
self, and the daily struggle to earn his bread by digging and
ditching, educated himself — how he toiled unceasingly with
his hands — how he wrote his poems in secret on dirty scraps
of paper and old leaves of books — how thus he wore himself
32 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET
out, manful and godly, " bating not a jot of heart or hope,"
till the weak flesh would bear no more; and the noble spirit,
unrecognized by the lord of the soil, returned to God who gave
it. I seemed to see in his history a sad presage of my own.
If he, stronger, more self-restrained, more righteous far than
ever I could be, had died thus unknown, unassisted, in the
stern battle with social disadvantages, what must be my lot ?
And tears of sympathy, rather than of selfish fear, fell fast
upon the book.
A harsh voice from the inner darkness of the shop startled
me.
" Hoot, laddie, ye'll better no spoil my books wi' greeting
jwer them."
I replaced the book hastily, and was hurrying on, but the
same voice called me back in a more kindly tone.
" Stop a wee, my laddie. I'm no angered wi' ye. Come
in, and we'll just ha' a bit crack thegither."
I went in, for there was a geniality in the tone, to which I
was unaccustomed, and something whispered to me the hope
of an adventure, as indeed it proved to be, if an event deserves
that name which decided the course of my whole destiny.
"What war ye greeting -about, then? What was the
book V
" ' Bethune's Life and Poems,' sir," I said. " And cer-
tainly they did afiect me very much."
"Affect ye? Ah, Johnnie Bethune, puir fellow! Ye
maunna take on about sic like laddies, or ye'll greet your e'en
out o' your head. It's mony a braw man beside Johnnie
Bethune has gane Johnnie Bethune's gate."
Though unaccustomed to the Scotch accent, I could make
out enough of this speech to be in nowise consoled by it. But
the old man turned the conversation by asking me abruptly
my name, and trade, and family.
" Hum, hum, widow, eh ? puir body ! work at Smith's
shop, eh ? Ye'll ken John Crossthwaite, then ? ay ? hum
hum ; an' ye're desirous o' reading books, vara weel — let's
Bee your cawpabilities."
And he pulled me into the dim light of the little back win-
dow, shoved back his spectacles, and peering at me from un-
derneath them, began, to my great astonishment, to feel my
head all over.
" Hum, hum, a vara gude forehead — vara good indeed.
Causative organs large, perceptive, ditto. Imagination super-
abundant — mun be heeded. Benevolence, conscientiousness,
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 3J>
ditto, ditto. Caution — no — that — largo — might be devel-
oped," with a quiet chuckle, " under a gude Scot's education.
Just turn your head into profile, laddie. Hum, hum. Back
o' the head a'thegither defective. Firmness sma' — love of
approbation unco big. Beware o' leeing, as ye live ; ye'll
need it. Philoprogenitiveness gude. Ye'll be fond o' bairns,
T'm guessing? 1 '
"Of what?"
" Children, laddie— ^children."
" Very," answered I, in utter dismay, at what seemed to
rne a magical process for getting at all my secret failings.
'• Hum, hum ! Amative and combative organs sma' — a
general want o' healthy animalism, as my freeu' Mr. Deville
wad say. And ye want to read books ?
"Vara weel ; then books I'll lend ye, after I've had a
crack wi' Crossthwaite aboot ye, gin I find his opinion o' ye
satisfactory. Come to me the day after to-morrow. An'
mind, here are my rules : a' damage done to a book to be
paid for, or na mair books but ; ye'll mind to take no books
without leave ; specially ye'll mind no to read in bed o'
nights — industrious folks ought to be sleepin' betimes, an' I'd
no be a party to burning pair weans in their beds ; and
lastly', ye'll observe not to read mair than five books at
once."
I assured him that I thought such a thing impossible ; but
he smiled in his saturnine way, and said,
" We'll see this day fortnight. Now, then, I've observed
ye for a month past over that aristocrat Byron's poems. And
I'm willing to teach the young idea how to shoot — but no to
shoot itself; so ye'll just leave alane that vinegary, soul-
destroying trash, and I'll lend ye, gin I hear a gude report of
ye, ' The Paradise Lost,' o' John Milton — a gran' classic
model ; and for the doctrine o't, it's just aboot as gude as
ye'll hear elsewhere the noo. So gang your gate, and tell
John Crossthwaite, privately, auld Sandy Mackaye wad like
to see him the morn's night."
I went home in wonder and delight. Books ! books ! books !
I should have my fill of them at last. And when I said my
prayers at night, I thanked God for this unexpected boon ;
and then remembered that my mother had forbidden it.
That thought checked the thanks, but not the pleasure. Oh,
parents ! are there not real sins enough in the world already,
without your defiling it, over and abcve, by inventing new
ones ?
CHAPTER III.
SANDY MACKAYE.
That day fortnight came — and the old Scotchman's words
came true. Four books of his I had already, and I came in
to borrow a fifth ; whereon he began with a solemn chuckle :
" Eh, laddie, laddie, I've been treating ye as the grocers do
their new prentices. They first gie the boys three days' free
warren among the figs and the sugar-candy, and they get
scunnered wi' sweets after that. Noo, then, my lad ye've
just been reading four books in three days — and here's a fifth.
Ye'll no open this again." *
" Oh !" I cried, piteously enough, "just let me finish what
I am reading. I'm in the middle of such a wonderful account
of the Hornitos of Jorullo."
" Hornets or wasps, a swarm o' them ye' re like to have at
this rate ; and a very bad substitute ye'll find them for the
Attic bee. Now tak tent. I'm no in the habit of speaking
without deliberation, for it saves a man a great deal of trouble
in changing his mind. If ye canna traduce to me a page o'
Virgil by this day three months, ye read no more o' my books.
Desultory reading is the bane o' lads. Ye maun begin with
self-restraint and method, my man, gin ye intend to gie your-
sel' a liberal education. So I'll just mak' you a present of an
auld Latin grammar, and ye maun begin where your betters
ha' begun before you."
"But who will teach me Latin V
" Hoot ! man ! who'll teach a man any thing except him-
sel' ? It's only gentle folks and puir aristocrat bodies that go
to be spoilt wi' tutors and pedagogues, cramming and loading
them wi' knowledge, as ye'd load a gun, to shoot it all out
again, just as it went down, in a college examination, and
ibrget all aboot it after."
" Ah !" I sighed, " if I could have gone to college !"
" What for, then 1 My father was a Hicland farmer, and
yet lie was a weel learned man ; and 'Sandy, my lad,' he
used to say, ' a man kens just as much as he's taught hansel',
ard ua mair. So get wisdom ; and wi' all your getting, get
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 35
understanding.' And so I did. And mony's the Greek ex-
ercise I've written in the eowbyres. And mony's the page
o' Virgil, too, I've turned into good Dawric Scotch to ane
that's dead and gane, puir hizzie, sitting under the same plaid,
with the sheep feeding round us, up among the hills, looking
out ower the broad blue sea, and the wee haven wi' the fish-
ing cobles — "
There was a long solemn pause. I can not tell why, but
I loved the man from that moment ; and I thought, too,
that he began to love me. Those few words seemed a proof
of confidence, perhaps all the deeper, because accidental and
unconscious.
I took the Virgil which he lent me, with Hamilton's literal
translation between the lines, and an old tattered Latin
grammar ; 1 felt myself quite a learned man — actually the
possessor of a Latin book ! I regarded as something almost
miraculous the opening of this new field for my ambition.
Not that I was consciously, much less selfishly, ambitious.
1 had no idea as yet to be any thing but a tailor to the end ;
to make clothes — perhaps in a less infernal atmosphere — but
still to make clothes and live thereby. I did not suspect that
I possessed powers above the mass. My intense longing after
knowledge had been to me like a girl's first love — a thing to
be concealed from every eye — to be looked at askance, even
by myself, delicious as it was, with holy shame and trembling.
And thus it was not cowardice merely, but natural modesty,
which put me on a hundred plans of concealing my studies
from my mother, and even from my sister.
I slept in a little lean-to garret at the back ol the house,
some ten feet long by six wide. I could just stand upright
against the inner wall, while the roof on the other side ran
down to the floor. There was no fireplace in it, or any
means of ventilation. No wonder I coughed all night ac-
cordingly, and woke about two every morning with choking
throat and aching head. My mother often said that the
room was " too small for a Christian to sleep in, but where
could she get a better ?"
Such was my only study. I could not use it as such, how-
ever, at night without discovery ; for my mother carefully
looked in every evening to see that my candle was out. But
when my kind cough woke me, I rose, and creeping like a
mouse about the room — for my mother and sister slept in the
next chamber, and every sound was audible through the
narrow partition — I drew my darling books out from under a
3b ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET
board of the floor, one end of which I had gradually loosener
at odd minutes, and with them a rushlight, earned by running
on messages, or by taking bits of work home, and finishing
them for my fellows.
No wonder that with this scanty rest, and this complicated
exertion of hands, eyes, and brain, followed by the long
dreary day's work of the shop, my health began to fail ; my
eyes grew weaker and weaker ; my cough became more
acute ; my appetite failed me daily. My mother noticed the
change, and questioned me about it, affectionately enough,
But I durst not, alas ! tell the truth. It was not one offense,
but the arrears of months of disobedience which I should have
had to confess ; and so arose infinite false excuses, and petty
prevarications, which embittered and clogged still more my
already overtasked spirit. About my own ailments — formid-
able as I believe they were — I never had a moment's anxiety.
The expectation of early death was as unnatural to me as it
is, I suspect, to almost all. I die "? Had I not hopes, plans,
desires, infinite ? Could I die while they were unfulfilled ?
Even now, I do not believe I shall die yet. I will not believe
it — but let that pass.
Yes, let that pass. Perhaps I have lived long enough —
longer than many a gray-headed man.
There is a race of mortals who become
Old in their youth, and die ere middle age.
And might not those days of mine then have counted as
months ? those days when, before starting forth to walk two
miles to the shop at six o'clock in the morning, I sat some
three or four hours shivering on my bed, putting myself into
cramped and painful postures, not daring even to cough, lest
my mother should fancy me unwell, and come in to see me,
poor dear soul ! my eyes aching over the page, my feet
wrapped up in the bedclothes, to keep them from the miser-
able pain of the cold; longing, watching, dawn after dawn,
for the kind summer mornings, when I should need no candle-
light. Look at the picture awhile, ye comfortable folks, who
take down from your shelves what books you like best at the
moment, and then lie back, amid prints and statuettes, to
grow wise in an easy chair, with a blazing fire and a cam-
phine lamp. The lower classes uneducated ! Perhaps you
would be so too, if learning cost you the privation which it
costs some of them.
But this concealment could not last. Mv onlv wonder is,
ALTON LOCKE. TAILOR AND POE1 37
that 1 continued to get whole mouths of undiscovered study.
One morning, about four o'clock, as might have been expect-
ed, my mother heard me stirring, came in, and found me sit-
ting crossdegged on my bed, stitching away, indeed, with all
my might, but with a Virgil open before me.
She glanced at the book, clutched it with one hand and
my arm with the other, and sternly asked,
"Where did you get this heathen stuff?"
A lie rose to my lips ; but I had been so gradually en-
tangled in the loathed meshes of a system of concealment,
and consequent prevarication, that 1 felt as if one direct false-
hood would ruin for ever my fast-failing self-respect, and I
told her the whole truth. She took the book and left the
room. It was Saturday morning, and I spent two miserable
days, for she never spoke a word to me till the two ministers
had made their appearance, and drank their tea on Sunday
evening ; then at last she opened —
" And now, Mr. Wigginton, what account have you of
this Mr. Mackaye, who has seduced my unhappy boy from
the paths of obedience ?"
" I am sorry to say. madam," answered the dark man, with
a solemn snuffle, " that he proves to be a most objectionable
and altogether unregenerate character. He is, as I am in-
formed, neither more nor less than a Chartist and an open
blasphemer."
" He is not !" I interrupted, angrily. " He has told me
more about God, and given me better advice, than any hu-
man being, except my mother."
" Ah ! madam, so thinks the unconverted heart, ignorant
that the god of the Deist is not the God of the Bible — a con-
suming fire to all but His beloved elect ; the god of the Deist,
unhappy youth, is a mere self-invented, all-indulgent phan-
tom — a will-o'-the-wisp, deluding the unwary, as he has
deluded you, into the slough of carnal reason and shameful
profligacy."
" Do you mean to call me a profligate?" I retorted fiercely,
for my blood was up, and I felt I was fighting for all wlnr.li
I prized in the world : '• if you do, you lie. Ask my mother
when I ever disobeyed her before ? I have never touched a
drop of any thing stronger than water ; I have slaved over-
hours to pay for my own candle, I have — I have no sins to
accuse myself of, and neither you nor any other person know
of any. Do you call me a profligate because I wish to edu-
cate mvself and rise in life?" ....
38 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET.
"Ah!" groaned my poor mother to herself, "still uncon-
vinced of sin !" .
" The old Adam, my dear madam, you see — standing, as
lie always does, on his own filthy rags of works, while all the
imaginations of his heart are only evil continually. Listen to
me, poor sinner — "
" I will not listen to you," I cried, the accumulated disgust
of years bursting out once and for all, " for I hate and despise
you, eating my poor mother here out of house and home. You
are one of those who creep into widows' houses, and ibr pre-
tense make long prayers. You, sir, I will hear," I went on,
turning to the dear old man who had sat by shaking his white
locks with a sad and puzzled air, " for I love you."
"My dear sister Locke," he began, "I really think some-
times — that is, ahem — with your leave, brother — I am almost
disposed — but I should wish to defer to your superior zeal —
yet, at the same time, perhaps, the desire for information,
however carnal in itself, may be an instrument in the Lord's
hands — you know what I mean. I always thought him a
gracious youth, madam, didn't you ? And perhaps — I only
observe it in passing — the Lord's people among the dissenting
connections are apt to undervalue human learning as a means
— of course, I mean only as a means. It is not generally
known, I believe, that our reverend Puritan patriarchs, Howe,
and Baxter, Owen and many more, were not altogether un-
acquainted with heathen authors ; nay, that they may have
been called absolutely learned men. And some of our leading
ministers are inclined — no doubt they will be led rightly in so
important a matter — to follow the example of the Indepen-
dents in educating their young ministers, and turning Satan's
weapons of heathen mythology against himself, as St. Paul
is said to have done. My dear boy, what books have you now
got by you of Mr. Mackaye's ?"
" Milton's Poems and a Latin Virgil."
"Ah!" groaned the dark man; "will poetry, will Latin
save an immortal soul ?"
"I'll tell you what, sir; you say yourself that it depends
on God's absolute counsel whether I am saved or not. So, if I
am elect, 1 shall be saved whatever I do ; and if I am not, I
shall be damned whatever I do ; and in the meantime you
had better mind your own business, and let me do the best I
can for this life, as the next is all settled for me."
This flippant, but after all not unreasonable speech, set med
[to silence the man ; and I took the opportunity of running up-
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. S'.)
stairs and bringing down my Milton. The old man was
speaking as I re-entered.
"And yon know, my dear madam, Mr. Milton was a true
converted man, and a Puritan."
" He was Oliver Cromwell's secretary," I added.
"Did he teach you to disobey your mother]" asked my
mother."
I did not answer ; and the old man, after turning over a
few leaves, as if he knew the book well, looked up.
"I think, madanv you might let the youth keep these booics,
if he will promise, as 1 am sure he will, to see no more of
Mr. Mackaye."
I was ready to burst out crying, but I made up my mind
and answered,
" I must see him once again, or he will think me so ungrate-
ful. He is the best friend that I ever had, except you, mother.
Besides, I do not know if he will lend me any, alter this."
My mother looked at the old minister, and then gave a
sullen assent. "Promise me only to see him once — but I
can not trust you. You have deceived me once.. Alton, and
you may again !"
"I shall -not, I shall not," I answered proudly. "You do
not know me !" — and I spoke true.
"You do not know yourself, my poor dear foolish child!"
she replied — and that was true too.
"And now, dear friends," said the dark man, "let us join
in offering up a few words of special intercession."
We all knelt down, and I soon discovered that by the special
intercession was meant a string of bitter and groundless slan-
ders against poor me, twisted into the form of a prayer for my
conversion, "if it were God's will." To which I responded
with a closing "Amen," ibr which I was sorry afterward,
when I recollected that it was said in merely insolent mockery.
But the little faith I had was breaking up fast — not alto-
gether, surely, by my own fault.*
* The portraits of the minister and the missionary are surely excep-
tions to their class, rather than the average. The Baptists have had
their Andrew Fuller and Robert Hall, and among missionaries, Dr.
Care}', and noble spirits in plenty. But such men as those who excited 1
Alton Locke's disgust are to be met with in every sect; in the Church
of England, and in the Church of Rome. And it is a real and fearful
scandal to the young, to see such mtn listened to as God's messengers,
in spite of their utter want of any manhood or virtue, simply because
they are "orthodox," each according to the shibboleths of his hearers,
and possess that vulpine "discretion of dullness," whose miraculous
40 ALTON LOCKE, TAILuR AND POET.
At all events, from that day I was emancipated from modern
Puritanism. The ministers both avoided all serious convers-
ation with me ; and my mother did the same ; while with
a strength of mind, rare among women, she never alluded to
the scene of that Sunday evening. It was a rule with her.
never to recur to what was once done and settled. What was
to be. might be prayed over. But it was to be endured in
silence ; yet wider and wider ever from that time opened the
gulf between us.
I went trembling the next afternoon to Mackaye, and told
my story. He first scolded me severely for disobeying my
mother. "He that begins o' that gate, laddie, ends by dis-
obeying God and his ain conscience. Gin ye're to be a scholar,
God will make you one — and if not, ye'll no mak' yoursel' ane
in spite o' Him and His commandments." And then he
filled his pipe and chuckled aw? ; y in silence ; at last, he ex-
ploded in a horse-laugh.
" So ye gied the ministers a bit o' yer mind ? ' The deil's
amang the tailors' in gude earnest, as the sang says. There's
Johnnie Crossthwaite kicked the Papist priest out o' his house
yestreen ; puir ministers, it's ill times wi' them ! They gang
about keckling and screighing after the working-men, like a
hen that's hatched ducklings, when she sees them talc' the
water. Little Dunkeld's coming to London sune, I'm think-
Hech ! sic a parish, a parish, a parish ;
Heeh ! sic a parish as little Dunkeld,
They hae stickit the minister, hanged the precentor.
Dung down the steeple, and drucken the bell."
" But may I keep the books a little while, Mr. Mackaye !"
" Keep them till ye die, gin ye will. What is the worth
o' them to me 1 What is the worth o' any thing to me, puir
auld deevil, that ha' no half-a-dizen years to live, at the
furthest. God bless ye, my bairn ; gang hame, and mind
your mither, or it's little gude books '11 do ye."
might Dean Swift sets forth in his " Essay on the Fates of Clergymen."
Such men do exist, and prosper ; and as long as they are allowed to do
so, Alton Loekes will meet them, and be scandalized by them. — Ed-
CHAPTER IV.
TAILORS AND SOLDIERS.
I was now thrown again utterly on my own resources. 1
read and re-read Milton's " Poems" and Virgil's " iEneid" foi
six more months at every spare moment ; thus spending over
them, I suppose, all in all, far more time than most gentle-
men have. done. I found, too, in the last volume of Milton a
few of his select prose works : the " Areopagitica," the " Defense
of the English People," and one or two more, in which I
gradually began to take an interest ; and, little of them as I
could comprehend, I was awed by their tremendous depth
and power, as well as excited by the utterly new trains of
thought into which they led me. Terrible was the amount
of bodily fatigue which I had to undergo in reading at every
spare moment, while walking to and fro from my work, while
sitting up. often from midnight till dawn, stitching away to
pay for the tallow-candle which I burnt, till I had 1o resort
to all sorts of uncomfortable contrivances for keeping myself
awake even at the expense of bodily pain — Heaven forbid that
I should weary my readers by describing them ! Young men
of the upper classes, to whom study — pursue it as intensely
as you will — is but the business of the day, and every spare
moment relaxation ; little you guess the frightful drudgery
undergone by a man of the people who has vowed to educate
himself — to live at once two lives, each as severe as the
whole of yours — to bring to the self-imposed toil of intellectual
improvement, a body and brain already worn out by a day of
toilsome manual labor. I did it. God forbid, though, that
I should take credit to myself for it. Hundreds more have
done it, with still fewer advantages than mine. Hundreds
more, an ever increasing army of martyrs, are doing it at
this moment : of some of them too, perhaps you may hear
hereafter.
I had read through Milton, as I said, again and again ; I
had got out of him all that my youth and my unregulated
mind enabled me to get. I had devoured, too, not without
profit, a large old edition of "Fox's Martyrs," which the
4-2 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET.
venerable minister lent me, and now I was hungering again
for fresh food, and again at a loss where to find it.
I was hungering, too, for more than information — for a
friend. Since my intercourse with Sandy Mackaye had been
stopped, six months had passed without my once opening my
lips to any human being upon the subjects with which my
mind was haunted day and night. I wanted to know more
about poetry, history, politics, philos >phy — all things in heaven
and earth. But, above all, I waited a faithful and sym-
pathizing ear into which to pour ah my doubts, discontents,
and aspirations. My sister Susan, wao was one year younger
than myself, was growing into a slei. der, pretty, hectic girl
of sixteen. But she was altogether a devout Puritan. She
had just gone through the process of conviction of sin and
conversion ; and being looked upon at the chapel as an
especially gracious professor, was either unable or unwilling
to think or speak on any subject, except on those to which I
felt a growing distaste. She had shrunk from me, too, very
much, since my ferocious attack that. Sunday evening on
the dark minister, who was her special favorite. I remarked
it, and it was a fresh cause of unhappiness and perplexity.
At last 1 made up my mind, come what would, to force
myself upon Crossthwaite. He was the oidy man whom 1
knew who seemed able to help me ; and his very reserve had
invested him with a mystery, which served to heighten my
imagination of his powers. I waylaid him one day coming
out of the work-room to go home, and plunged at once despe-
rately into the matter.
" Mr. Crossthwaite, I want to speak to you. I want to
ask you to advise me/'
" I have known that a long time."
" Then why did you never say a kind word to me V
" Because I was waiting to see whether you wei\3 worth
saying a kind word to. It was but the other day, remember,
you were a bit of a boy. Now, I think, I may trust yo.i with
a thing or two. Besides, I wanted to see whether you trusted
me enough to ask me. Now you've broke the ice at last, in
with you, head and ears, and see what you can fish out."
" I am very unhappy — "
" That's no new disorder that I know of."
" No; but I think the reason I am unhappy is a strange
one ; at least, I never read of hut one person else in the same
way. I want to educate myself, and I can't."
" You must have read precious little then, if you think
ALTON LOCKE, TAi^oti AND POET. 13
yourself in a strange way. Bless the boy's heart! And
what the d.ckens do you want to be educating yourself for,
pray]"
This was said in a tone of good-humored banter, which
pave me courage. He oflered to walk homeward with me ;
and, as I shambled along by his side, I told hirn all my story
and all v y griefs.
I ne«e? shall forget that walk. Every house, tree, turning,
which we passed that day on our way, is indissolubly, con-
nected in my mind with some strange new thought which
arose in me just at each spot ; and recurs, so are the mind
and the senses connected, as surely as I repass it.
I had been telling him about Sandy Mackaye. He con-
fessed to an acquaintance with him : hut in a reserved and
mysterious way, which only heightened my curiosity.
We were going through the Horse Guards, and I could not
help lingering to look with wistful admiration on the huge
mustached war-machines who sauntered about the court-yard.
A tall and handsome officer, blazing in scarlet and gold,
cantered in on a superb horse, and, dismounting, threw the
reins to a dragoon as grand and gaudy as himself. Did I
envy him 1 ? Well — I was but seventeen. And there is
something noble to the mind, as well as to the eye, in the
gnat, strong man, who can fight — a completeness, a self-
resiraint, a terrible sleeping power in him. As Mr. Carlyle
says, " A soldier, after all, is one of the few remaining reali-
ties of the ajre. All other professions almost, promise one
thing, and perform — alas! what? But this man promises to
fight, and does it; and, if he be told, will veritably take out
a long sword and kill me."
So thought my companion, though the mood in which he
viewed the fact was somewhat different from my own.
" Come on," he said, peevishly clutching me by the arm ;
"what do you want dawdling? Are you a nursery-maid,
that you must stare at those red-coated butchers ? ' And a
deep curse followed.
" What harm have they done you ?"
" I should think I owed them turn enough."
"What?"
"They cut my father down at Sheffield — perhaps with the
very swords he helped to make — because he would not sit
still" and starve, and see us starving round him, while those
who fattened on the sweat of his brow, and on those lungs of
Ins, -which the sword-grinding dust was eating out day by
44 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
day, were wantoning on venison and champagne. That's the
harm they've done me, my chap !"
" Poor fellows ! — they only did as they were ordered, I
suppose."
" And what business have they to let themselves be order-
ed ? What right, I say — what right has any free, reason-
able soul on earth, to sell himself for a shilling a day to murder
any man, right or wrong — even his own brother or his own
father — just because such a whiskered, profligate jackanapes
as that officer, without learning, without any god except his
own looking-glass and his opera-dancer — a fellow who, just
because he is born a gentleman, is set to command gray-head-
ed men before he can command his own meanest passions.
Good heavens ! that the lives of free men should be intrusted
to such a stuffed cockatoo ; and that free men should be such
traitors to their country, traitors to their own flesh and blood,
as to sell themselves, lor a shilling a day and the smirks of
the nursery-maids, to do that fellow's bidding !"
" What are you a-grumbling about here, my man? — gotten
the cholera ?" asked one of the dragoons, a huge, stupid-look-
ing lad.
"About you, you young long legged cut-throat," answered
Crossthwaite, "and all your crew of traitors."
" Help, help, coomrades o' mine !" quoth the dragoon, burst-
ing with laughter; "I'm gane be moorthered wi' a little booy
that's gane mad, and toorned Chartist."
I dragged Crossthwaite off; for what was jest to the sol-
diers I saw, by his face, was fierce enough earnest to him.
We walked on a little in silence.
"Now," I said, "that was a good-natured fellow enough,
though he was a soldier. You and he might have cracked
many a joke together, if you did but understand each other ;
and he was a countryman of yours, too."
" I may crack something else besides jokes with him some
day," answered he, moodily.
" 'Pon my word, you must take care how you do it. He
is as big as four of us."
"That vile aristocrat, the old Italian poet — what's his
name ? — Ariosto — ay ! — he knew which quarter the wind
was making for, when he said that fire-arms would be the
end of all your old knights and gentlemen in armor, that
hewed down unarmed innocents as if they had been sheep.
Gunpowder is your true leveler — dash physical strength ! A
boy's a man with a musket in his hand, my chap !"
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. 45
"God forbid," I said, " that I should ever he made a man
of in that way, or you either. I do not think we are quite
big enough to make fighters ; and if we were, what have we
got to fight about ?"
" Big enough to make fighters ?" said he, half to himself;
" or strong enough perhaps ? — or clever enough ? — and yet
Alexander was a little man, and the Petit Caporal, and
Nelson, and Caesar, too ; and so was Saul of Tarsus, and
weakly he was into the bargain. /Esop was a dwarf, and so
was Attila ; Shakespeare w r as lame ; Alfred a rickety weak-
ling; Byron, clublboted ; — so much for body versus spirit —
brute force versus genius — genius."
I looked at him ; his eyes glared like two balls of fire.
Suddenly he turned to me.
li Locke, my boy, I've made an ass of myself, and got into
> rage, and broken a good old resolution of mine, and a prom-
ise that I made to my dear little woman — bless her! — and
said things to you that you ought to know nothing; of for this
long time ; but those red-coats always put me beside myself.
God forgive me !" And he held out his hand to me cor-
dially.
" I can quite understand your feeling deeply on one point,"
I said, as I took it, " after the sad story you told me ; but
why so bitter on all 1 What is there so very wrong about
things, that we must begin fighting about it?"
" Bless your heart, poor innocent ! What is wrong — what
is not wrong ? Wasn't there enough in that talk with
Mackaye, that you told me of just now, to show any body
that, who can tell a hawk from a handsaw ?"
" Was it wrong in him to give himself such trouble about
the education of a poor young fellow, who has no tie on him.
who can never repay him ?"
" No ; that's just like him. He feels for the people, for he
has been one of us. He worked in a printing-office himself
many a year, and he knows the heart of the working man.
But he didn't tell you the whole truth about education. He
daren't tell you. No one who has money dare speak out his
heart ; not that he has much, certainly ; but, the cunning old
Scot that he is, he lives by the present system of things, and
he won't speak ill of the bridge which carries him over — till
the time comes."
I could not understand whither all this tended, and walked
on, silent and somewhat angry, at hearing the least slight
east on Mackaye.
46 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
"Don't you see, stupid]" he broke out at last. "What
did he say to you about gentlemen being crammed by tutors
and professors 1 Have not you as good a right to them as
any gentleman ?"
" But he told me they were no use — that every man must
educate himself."
" Oh ! all very fine to tell you the grapes are sour, when
you can't reach them. Bah, lad ! Can't you see what comes
of education ? that any dolt, provided he be a gentleman, can
be doctored up at school and college, enough to make him
play his part decently — his mighty part of ruling us, and riding
over our heads, and picking our pockets, as parson, doctor,
lawyer, member of parliament — while we — you now, for in-
stance — cleverer than ninety-nine gentlemen out of a hundred,
if you had one-tenth the trouble taken with you that is taken
with every pig-headed son of an aristocrat — "
" Am 1 clever ?" asked I, in honest surprise.
" What ! haven't you found that out yet ? Don't try to
put that on me. Don't a girl know when she's pretty, with-
out asking her neighbors V
" Really, I never thought about it."
"More simpleton you. Old Mack-aye has, at all events;
though, canny Scotchman that he is, he'll never say a word to
you about it, yet he makes no secret of it to other people. I
heard him the other day telling some of our friends that you
were a thorough young genius."
I blushed scarlet, between pleasure and a new feeling;
was it ambition ]
" Why, haven't you a right to aspire to a college education
as any do-nothing canon there at the abbey, lad ?"
" I don't know that I have a right to any thing."
" What, not become what Nature intended you to become ]
What has she given you brains lor, but to be educated and
used ? Oh ! I heard a fine lecture upon that at our club the
other night. There was a man there — a gentleman, too, but
a thorough-going people's man, I can tell you, Mr. O'Flynn.
What an orator that man is, to be sure ! The Irish iEschines,
I hear they call him in Conciliation Hall. Isn't he the man
to pitch into the Mammonites ? ' Gentlemen and ladies,'
says he, ' how long will a diabolic society' — no, an effete so-
ciety it was — ' how long will an effete, emasculate, and eflem
iuate society, in the diabolic selfishness of its eclecticism, re
fuse to acknowledge what my immortal countryman, Burke,
calls the " Dei voluntatem in rebi;s revelatam" — the revela
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 47
lion of Nature's will in the phenomena of matter ? the cere-
bration of each in the prophetic sacrament of the yet unde-
veloped possibilities of his mentation 1 The form of the brain
alone, and not the possession of the vile gauds of wealth and
rank, constitute man's only right to education — to the glories
of art and science. Those beaming eyes and roseate lips be-
neath me proclaim a bevy of undeveloped Aspasias, of embryo
Cleopatras. destined by Nature, and only restrained by man's
injustice, from ruling the world by their beauty's eloquence.
Those massive and beetling brows, gleaming with the lambent
flames of patriotic ardor — what is needed to unfold them into
a race of Shakspeares and of Gracchi, ready to proclaim with
sword and lyre the divine harmonies of liberty, equality, and
fraternity, before a quailing universe ?' "
" It sounds very grand," replied I, meekly ; " and I should
iike very much certainly to have a good education. But I
can't see whose injustice keeps me out of one, if I can't afford
to pay for it."
" Whose 1 Why, the parsons' to be sure. They've got the
monopoly of education in England, and they get their bread
by it at their public schools and universities ; and of course
it's their interest to keep up the price of their commodity, and
let no man have a taste of it who can't pay down handsomely.
And so those aristocrats of college dons go on rolling in riches,
and fellowships, and scholarships, that were bequeathed by
the people's friends in old times, just to educate poor scholars
tike you and me, and give us our rights as free men."
" But I thought the clergy were doing so much to educate
the poor. At least, I hear all the dissenting ministers grum-
bling at their continual interference."
" Ay, educating them to make them slaves and bigots.
They don't teach them what they teach their own sons.
Look at the miserable smattering of general information — just
enough to serve as sauce for their great first and last lesson
of 'Obey the powers that be' — whatever they be ; leave us
alone in our comforts, and starve patiently ; do, like good
boys, for it's God's will. And then, if a boy does show talent
in school, do they help him up in life 1 Not they ; when he
has just learnt enough to whet his appetite for more, they
turn him adrift again, to sink and drudge — to do his duty, as
they call it, in that state of life to which society and the devil
have called him."
" But there are innumerable stories of great Englishmen
who have risen from the lowest ranks."
I
48 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET.
"""Ay ; but where are the stories of those who have not risen
— of all the noble geniuses who have ended in desperation.,
drunkenness, starvation, suicide, because no one would take
the trouble of lifting them up, and enabling them to walk in
the path which nature had marked out for them? Dead
men tell no tales ; and this old whited sepulchre, society, ain't
going to turn informer against itself."
"I trust and hope," I said, sadly, "that if God intends me
to rise, He will open the way for me ; perhaps the very strug-
gles and sorrows of a poor genius may teach hirn more than
ever wealth^and prosperity could."
" True, Alton my boy ! and that's my only comfort. It
does makV men of us, this bitter battle of life. We working
men, when we do come out of the furnace, come out, not tin-
sel and papier mache, like those fops of red-tape statesmen,
but steel and granite, Alton, my boy — that has been seven
times tried in the fire : and woe to the papier mache gentle-
man that runs against us! But," he went on, sadly, "for one
who comes safe through the furnace, there are a hundred who
crack in the burning. You are a young bear, my lad, with
all your sorrows before you ; and you'll find that a working
man's training is like the Red Indian children's. The few
who are strong enough to stand it grow up warriors; but all
those who are not fire-and- water- proof by nature — -just die,
Alton, my lad, and the tribe thinks itself well rid of them."
So that conversation ended. But it had implanted in my
bosom a new seed of mingled good and evil, which was des-
tined to bear fruit, precious perhaps as well as bitter. God
knows it has hung on the tree long enough. Sour and harsh
from the first, it has been many a year in ripening. But the
sweetness of the apple, the potency of the grape, as the chem-
ists tell us, are born out of acidity — a developed sourness.
Will it be so with my thoughts ? Dafe I assert, as I sit
writing here, with the wild waters slipping past the cabin
windows, backward and backward ever, every plunge of the
vessel one forward leap from the old world — worn-out world,
I had almost called it, of sham civilization and real penury — •
dare I hope ever to return and triumph ? Shall I, after all,
lay my bones among my own people, and hear the voices of
freemen whisper in my dying ears?
Silence, dreaming heart ! Sufficient for the day is the evil
thereof — and the good thereof also. Would that 1 had known
that before ! Above all, that I had known it on that night,
when first the burning thought arose in my heart, that I was
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND i'OET. 49
Unjustly used; that society hau not given me my rights. It
came to me as a revelation, celestial-infernal, full of glorious
hopes of the possible future in store for me through the per-
fect development of all my faculties; and full, too, of fierce
present rage, wounded vanity, bitter grudgings against those
more favored than myself, which grew in time almost to
cursing against the God who had made me a poor untutored
working-man, and seemed to have given me genius only to
keep me in a Tantalus'-hell of unsatisfied thirst.
Ay, respectable gentlemen and ladies, I will confess all to
you — you shall have, if you enjoy it, a fresh opportunity for
indulging that supreme pleasure which the press daily affords
you of insulting the classes whose powers most of you know as
little as you do their Bufferings. Yes ; the Chartist poet is vain,
conceited, ambitious, uneducated, shallow, inexperienced, en-
vious, ferocious, scurrilous, seditious, traitorous. Is your char-
itable vocabulary exhausted ? Then ask yourselves, how
often have you yourself honestly resisted and conquered the
temptation to any one of these sins, when it has come across
you, just once in a way, and not as they came to me, as they
come to thousands of the working-men, daily and hourly, "till
their torments do, by length of time, become their elements?"
What, are we covetous, too ? Yes ! And if those who have,
like you, still covet more, what wonder if those who have
nothing, covet something ] Profligate too ? Well, though
that imputation as a generality is utterly calumnious, though
your amount of respectable animal enjoyment per annum is a
hundred times as great as that of the most self-indulgent art-
isan, yet if you had ever felt what it is to want, not only
every luxury of the senses, but even bread to eat, you would
think more mercifully of the man who makes up by rare ex-
cesses, and those only of the limited kinds possible to him, for
long intervals of dull privation, and says in his madness, "Let
us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die !" We have our sins,
and you have yours. Ours may be the more gross and bar-
baric, but yours are none the less damnable ; perhaps all the
more so, for being the sleek, subtle, respectable, religious sins
they are. You are frantic enough if our part of the press
calls you hard names, but you can not see that your part of
the press repays it back to us with interest. We see those
insults, and feel them bitterly enough ; and do not forget them,
alas ! soon enough, while they pass unheeded by your delicate
eyes as trivial truisms. Horrible, unprincipled, villainous, se-
ditious, frantic, blasphemous, are epithets of course, when
C
50 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET
applied to — to how large a portion of the English people, yon
will some day discover to your astonishment. When will
that day come and how ? In thunder, and storm, and gar-
ments rolled in hlood ? Or like the dew on the mown grass.
and the clear shining of the sunlight after April rain ?
Yes, it was true. Society had not given me my rights.
And woe unto the man on whom that idea, true or false, rises
lurid, filling all his thoughts with stifling glare, as of the pit
itself. Be it true, be it false, it is ecmally a woe to believe it ;
to have to live on a negation ; to have to worship for our only
idea, as hundreds of thousands of us have this day, the hatred
of the things which are. Ay, though one of us, here and there,
may die in faith, in sight of the promised land, yet is it not
hard, when looking from the top of Pisgah into " the good
time coming," to watch the years slipping away one by one,
and death crawling nearer and nearer, and the people
wearying themselves in the fire for very vanity, and Jor-
dan not yet passed, the promised land not yet entered ?
while our little children die around us, like lambs beneath
the knife, of cholera, and typhus, and consumption, and all
the diseases which the good time can and will prevent ;
which, as science has proved, and you the rich confess, might
be prevented at once, if you dared to bring in one bold and
comprehensive measure, and not sacrifice yearly the lives
of thousands to the idol of vested interests and a majority in
the House. Is it not hard to men who smart beneath such
things to help crying aloud — "Thou cursed Moloch-Mam-
mon, take my life if thou wilt; let me die in the wilderness,
for I have deserved it ; but these little ones in mines aud
factories, in typhus-cellars, and Tooting pandemoniums, what
have they done ? If not in their fathers' cause, yet still in
theirs, were it so great a sin to die upon a barricade ?"
Or, after all, my working brothers, is it true of our promised
land, even as of that Jewish one of old, that the ^nes^s' feet
must first cross the mystic stream into the good land and
large which God has prepared for us ?
Is it so indeed 1 Then, in the name of the Lord of Hosts,
ye priests of His, why will ye not awake, and arise and go
over Jordan, that the people of the Lord may follow you ?
o
CHAPTER, V.
THE SKEPTIC'S MOTHER.
My readers will perceive, from what I have detailed, that
T was not likely to get any very positive ground of comfort
from Crossthwaite ; and from wrihin myself there was daily
and less hope of any. Daily the struggle became more
intolerable between my duty to my mother, and my duty
to myself — that inward thirst for mental self-improvement,
which, without any clear consciousness of its sanctity or
inspiration, I felt, and could not help feeling, that I must
follow. No doubt it was very self-willed and ambitious of
me to do that which rich men's sons are flogged for not
doing, and rewarded with all manner of prizes, scholarships,
fellowships, for doing. But the nineteenth year is a time
of life at which self-will is apt to exhibit itself in other people
besides tailors ; and those religious persons who think it no
sin to drive their sons on through classics and mathematics,
in hopes of gaining them a station in life, ought not to be very
hard upon me for driving myself on through the same path
without any such selfish hope of gain — though perhaps the
very fact of my having no wish or expectation of such ad-
vantage will constitute in their eyes my sin and folly, and
prove that I Avas following the dictates merely of a carnal
lust, and not of a proper worldly prudence. I really do not
wish to be flippant or sneering. I have seen the evil of it as
much as any man, in myself and in my own class. But there
are excuses for such a fault in the working-man. It does
sour and madden him to be called presumptuous and ambi-
tious for the very same aspirations which are lauded up tc
the skies in the sons of the rich — unless, indeed, he will do
one little thing, and so make his peace with society. If he
will desert his own class ; if he will try to become a sham
gentleman, a parasite, and, if he can, a Mammonite, the
world will compliment him on his noble desire to "rise in
life." He will have won his spurs, and be admitted into
that exclusive pale of knighthood, beyond which it is a sin to
carry aims even in self-defense. But if the working genius
52 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET
dares to be true to his own class — to stay among them — to
regenerate them — to defend them — to devote his talents to
those among whom God placed him and brought him up —
then he is the demagogue, the incendiary, the fanatic, the
dreamer. So you would have the monopoly of talent, too,
exclusive worldlings ? And yet you pretend to believe in the
miracle of Pentecost, and the religion that was taught by the
Cai-penter's Son, and preached across the world by fishermen !
I was several times minded to argue the question out with
my mother, and assert for myself the same independence of
soul which I was now earning for my body by my wages.
Once I had resolved to speak to her that very evening ; but
strangely enough, happening to open the Bible, which, alas !
I did seldom at that time, my eye fell upon the chapter where
Jesus, after having justified to His parents His absence in the
Temple, while hearing the doctors and asking them questions,
yet went down with them to Nazareth, after all, and was
subject unto them. The story struck me vividly as a symbol
of my own duties. But on reading further, I found more
than one passage which seemed to me to convey a directly
opposite lesson, where His mother and His brethren, fancying
Him mad, attempted to interfere Avith His labors, and assert-
ing their family rights as reasons for retaining Him, met with
a peremptory rebuff. I puzzled my head for some time to
find out which of the two cases was the more applicable to
my state of self-development. The notion of asking for teach-
ing from on high on such a point had never crossed me. In-
deed, if it had, I did not believe sufficiently either in the story
©r in the doctrines connected with it, to have tried such a
resource. And so, as may be supposed, my growing self-con-
ceit decided for me that the latter course was a fitting one.
And yet I had not energy to carry it out. I was getting so
worn out in body and mind from continual study and labor,
stinted food and want of sleep, that I could not face the
thought of an explosion, such as I knew must ensue, and I
lingered on in the same unhappy state, becoming more and
more morose in manner to my mother, while I was as assidu-
ous as ever in all filial duties. But I had no pleasure in home.
She seldom spoke to me. Indeed, there was no common topic
about which we could speak. Besides, ever since that fatal
Sunday evening, I saw that she suspected me and watched
me. I had good reason to believe that she set spies upon my
conduct. Poor dear mother ! God forbid that I should accuso
thee for a single care of thine, for a single suspicion even.
ALTON LOCKi:, TAILOR AND POET.
prompted as they all were by a mother's anxious love. [
would never have committed these things to paper, hadst thou
not been far beyond the reach or hearing oi" them ; and only
now, in hopes that they may serve as a warning, in some
degree to mothers, but ten times more to children. For 1
sinned against thee, deeply and shamefully, in thought ami
deed, while thou didst never sin against me ; though all thy
caution did but hasten the fatal explosion which came, and
perhaps must have come, under some form or other, in
any case.
I had been detained one night in the shop till late ; and on
my return my mother demanded, in a severe tone, the reason
of my stay ; and on my telling her, answered as severely that
she did not believe me ; that she had too much reason to sus-
pect that I had been with bad companions.
" Who dared to put such a thought into your head ?"
She "would not give up her authorities, but she had too
much reason to believe them."
Again I demanded the name of my slanderer, and was re-
fused it. And then I burst out, for the first time in my life,
into a real fit of rage with her. I can not tell how I dared to
say what I did, but I was weak, nervous, irritable — my brain
excited beyond all natural tension. Above all, I felt that she
was unjust to me ; and my good conscience, as well as my
pride, rebelled.
" You have never trusted me," I cried ; " you have watched
me —
"Did you not deceive me once already V
"And if I did," I answered, more and more excited, "have
I not slaved for you, stinted myself of clothes to pay your rent ?
Have I not run to and fro for you like a slave, while I knew
all the time you did not respect me or trust me ? If you had
only treated me as a child and an idiot, I could have borne it.
But you have been thinking of me all the while as an incar-
nate fiend — dead in trespasses and sins — a child of wrath and
the devil. What right have you to be astonished if I should
do my father's works ?"
"You may be ignorant of vital religion," she answered ;
" and you may insult me. But if you make a mock of God's
word, you leave my house. If you can laugh at religion, you
can deceive me."
The pent-up skepticism of years burst forth.
"Mother," I said, "don't talk to me about religion, and
election, and conversion, and all that — I don't believe one
54 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET
word of it. Nobody does, except good kind people — (like you,
alas ! I was going to say, but the devil stopped the words at
my lips) — who must needs have some reason to account for
their goodness. That Bowyer — he's a soft heart by nature,
and as he is, so he does — religion has had nothing to do with
that, any more than it has with that black-faced, canting
scoundrel who has been telling you lies about me. Much hig
heart is changed. He carries sneak and slanderer written in
his face — and sneak and slanderer he will be, elect or none.
Religion ? Nobody believes in it. The rich don't ; or they
wouldn't fill their churches up with pews and shut the poor
out, all the time they are calling them bi others. They be-
lieve the gospel 1 Then why do they leave the men who
make their clothes to starve in such hells on earth as our
work-room 1 No more do the tradespeople believe in it; or
they wouldn't go home from sermon to sand the sugar, a.*y?.
put sloe-leaves in the tea, and send out lying puffs of their
vamped-up goods, and grind the last farthing out of the poor
creatures who rent their wretched stinking houses. And as
for the workmen — they laugh at it all, I can tell you. Much
good religion is doing for them ! You may see it's fit only for
women and children — for go where you will, church or chapel,
you see hardly any thing but bonnets and babies ! I don't
believe a word of it — once and for all. I'm old enough to
think for myself, and a free-thinker I will be, and believe
nothing but what I know and understand."
1 had hardly spoken the words, when I would have given
worlds to recall them — but it was to be — and it was.
Sternly she looked at me full in the face, till my eyes drop-
ped before her gaze. Then she spoke steadily and slowly :
" Leave this house this moment. You are no son of mine
henceforward. Do you think I will have my daughter pol-
luted by the company of an infidel and a blasphemer ?"
" I will go," I answered fiercely ; " I can get my own liv-
ing, at all events !" And before I had time to think, I had
rushed up-stairs, packed up my bundle, not forgetting the
precious books, and was on my way through the frosty echo-
ing streets under the cold glare of the winter's moon.
I had gone perhaps half a mile, when the thought of home
rushed over me — the little room where I had spent my life —
the scene of all my childish joys and sorrows — which I should
never see again, for I felt that my departure was for ever.
Then I longed to see my mother once again — not to speak to
her — for I was at once too proud and too cowardly to do that
ALTON LOCK!], TAILOR AND POET. afl
— but to have a look at her through the window. One look
l'or all the while, though I was boiling over with rage ami
indignation, I felt that it was all on the surface — that in the
depths of our hearts I loved her and she loved me. And yet
I wished to be angry, wished to hate her. Strange contra-
diction of the flesh and spirit !
Hastily and silently I retraced my steps to the house.
The gate was padlocked. I cautiously stole ovor the palings
to the window — the shutter was closed and fast. I longed
to knock — I lifted my hand to the door, and dare not; indeed,
I knew that it was useless, in my dread of my mother's habit
of stern determination. That room — that mother I never i
saw again. I turned away ; sickened at heart, I was clam-/
bering back again, looking behind me toward the window,
when I felt a strong grip on my collar, and turning round,
had a policeman's lantern flashed in my face
" Hullo, young 'un, and what do you want here ?" with a
strong emphasis, after the fashion of policemen, on all his
pronouns.
" Hush ! or you'll alarm my mother !"
" Oh ! eh ! Forgot the latch-key you sucking Don Juan
that's it, is it ? Late home from the Victory V
I told him simply how the case stood, and entreated him 1
to get me a night's lodging, assuring him that my mother
would not admit me, or I ask to be admitted.
The policeman seemed puzzled, but after scratching his hat
in lieu of his head for some seconds, replied,
" This here is the dodge — you goes outside and lies down
on the kerb-stone ; whereby I espies you a-sleeping in the
streets, contrary to act o' parliament ; whereby it is my duty
to take you to the station-house ; whereby you gets a night's
lodging free gracious for nothing, and company perwided by
her Majesty."
" Oh, not to the station-house !" I cried, in shame and
terror.
" Werry well ; then you must keep moving all night con-
tinually, whereby you avoids the hact ; or else you goes to a
twopenny-rope shop and gets a lie down. And your bundle
you'd best leave at my house. Twopenny-rope society a'n't
particular. I'm going off my beat ; you walk home with
me and leave your traps. Every body knows me — Costello,
V 21, that's my number."
So on I went with the kind-hearted man, who preached
solemnly to me all the way on the fifth commandment. But
56 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
I heard very little of it ; for before I had proceeded a quartc <
of a mile, a deadly faintness and dizziness came over me, J
staggered, and fell against the railings.
" And have you been a-drinking arter all ?"
" I never — a drop in my life — nothing but bread-and-watei
this fortnight."
And it was true. I had been paying for my own food, and
had stinted myself to such an extent, that between starvation,
want of sleep, and over exertion, I was worn to a shadow,
and the last drop had filled the cup ; the evening's scene and
its consequences had been too much for me, and in the middle
of an attempt to explain matters to the policeman, I dropped
on the pavement, bruising my face heavily.
He picked me up, put me under one arm and my bundle
under the other, and was proceeding on his march, when three
men came rollicking up.
" Hullo, Poleax— Costello— What's that ? Work for us 1
A dem unpleasant body ?"
" Oh, Mr. Bromley, sir ! Hope you're well, sir ! Werry
rum go this here, sir ! I finds this cove in the streets He
says his mother turned him out o' doors. He seems vevy fair
spoken, and very bad in he's head, and very bad in he's cb^st,
and very bad in he's legs, he does. And I can't come to no
conclusion respecting my conduct in this here case, nohow ! '
" Memorialize the Health of Towns Commission," sug
gested one.
" Bleed him in the great toe/' said the second.
" Put a blister on the back of his left eye-ball," said a
third.
"Case of male asterisks," observed the first. Kj. Aqua>
pumpis puraj quantum surf". Applicatur extero pro re nata.
J. Bromley, M.D., and don't he wish he may get through !'
" Tip us your daddle, my boy," said the second speaker.
I'll tell you what, Bromley, this fellow's very bad. He's got
no more pulse than the Pimlico sewer. Bun him into the
next pot'us. Here — you lay hold of him, Bromley — that
last round with the cabman nearly put my humerus out."
The huge, burly, pea-jacketed medical student — for such I
saw at once he was — laid hold of me on the right, tenderly
enough, and walked me off between him and the policeman.
I fell again into a faintness, from which I was awakened
by being shoved through the folding-doors of a gin shop, into
a glare of light and hubbub of blackguardism, and placed on
a settle, while my conductor called out,
ALTON LOCKK, TAILOR AND POET. 57
" Pots round, Mary, and a go of brandy hot with, for the
patient. Here, young 'un ; toss it off, it'll make your hair
grow."
I feebly answered tbat I never had drunk any thing stronger
than water.
" High time to begin then ; no wonder you're so ill. Weil,
if you won't, I'll make you — "
And taking my head under his arm, he seized me by the
nose, while another poured the liquor down my throat — and
certainly it revived me at once.
A drunken drab pulled another drunken drab off the settle
to make room for the " poor young man ;" and I sat there
with a confused notion that something strange and dreadful
had happened to me, while the party drained their respective
quarts of porter, and talked over the last boat-race with the
Leander.
"Now then, gen'l'men," said the policeman, "if you think
he's recovered, we'll take him home to his mother; she ought
for to take him in, surely."
"Yes, if she has as much heart in her as a dried walnut.'
But I resisted stoutly ; though I longed to vindicate my
mother's affection, yet I could not face her. I entreated to
be taken to the station-house ; threatened, in my desperation,
to break the bar glasses, which, like Doll Tearsheet's abuse,
only elicited from the policeman a solemn "Very well ;" and,
under the unwonted excitement of the brandy, struggled so
fiercely, and talked so incoherently, that the medical students
interfered.
" We shall have this fellow in phreuitis, or laryngitis, or
dothen-enteritis, or some other itis, before long, if he's aggra-
vated."
" And whichever it is, it'll kill him. He has no more
stamina left than a yard of pump water."
" I should consider him chargeable to the parish," suggest-
ed the bar-keeper."
" Exactually so, my Solomon of licensed victualers. Get
a workhouse order for him, Costello."
"And I should consider, also, sir," said the licensed vic-
tualer, with increased importance, " having been a guardian
myself, and knowing the hact, as the parish couldn't refuse,
because they're in power to recover all hexpenses out of hit!
mother."
" To be sure ; it's all the unnatural old witch's fault."
" No, it is not," said I, faintly.
SF ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
"Wait till your opinion's asked, yoang un. Go kick up
the authorities, policeman."
" Now I'll just tell you how that'll work, gemmen," an-
swered the policeman, solemnly. " I goes to the overseer —
werry good sort o' man — hut he's in bed. I knocks for half
an hour. He puts he's nightcap out o' windy, and sends me
to the relieving officer. Werry good sort of man he too; but
he's in bed. I knocks for another half hour. He puts he's
nightcap out o' windy — sends me to the medical officer for a
certificate. Medical officer's gone to a midwifery case. I
hunts him for an hour or so. He's got hold of a babby with
three heads, or summat else ; and two more women a-calling
out for him like blazes. 'He'll come to-morrow morning.'
Now, I just axes your opinion of that there most procrastina-
tionest go."
The big student, having cursed the parochial authorities in
general, offered to pay for my night's lodging at the public-
house. The good man of the house demurred at first, but
relented on being reminded of the value of a medical student's
custom ; whereon, without more ado, two of the rough dia-
monds took me between them, carried me up-stairs, undressed
me, and put me into bed, as tenderly as if they had been
women.
" He'll have the tantrums before morning, I'm afraid,"
said one.
" Very likely to turn to typhus," said the other.
" Well, I suppose — it's a horrid bore, but
"What must be must; man is but dust,
If you cant get crumb, you must just eat crust.
Send me up a go of hot with, and I'll sit up with him till
he's asleep, dead, or better."
"Well, then, I'll stay too; we may just as well make a
night of it here as well as any where else."
And he pulled a short black pipe out of his pocket, and sat
down to meditate, with his feet on the hobs of the empty
grate; the other man went down for the liquor; Avhile I,
between the brandy and exhaustion fell fast asleep, and never
stirred till 1 woke the next morning with a racking headache,
and saw the big student standing by my bedside, having, as
I afterward heard, sat by me till four in the morning.
" Hullo, young 'un, come to your senses'? Headache, eh ?
Slightly comato-crapulosc ? We'll give you some soda and
e::l volatile, and I'll pay for your breakfast."
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POKT. 59
And so he did, and when he was joined by his companions
on their way to St. George's, they were very anxious, having
heard my story, to force a few shillings on me " for luck,"
which, I need not say, I peremptorily refused, assuring them
that I could and would get my own living, and never take a
farthing from any man.
" That's a plucky dog, though he's a tailor," I heard them
say, as, after overwhelming them with thanks, and vowing,
amid shouts of laughter, to repay them every farthing I had
cost them, I took my way, sick and stunned, toward my dear
old Sandy Mackaye's street.
Rough diamonds indeed ! I have never met you again,
but I have not forgotten you. Your early life may be a
coarse, too often a profligate one — but you know the people,
and the people know you ; and your tenderness and care, be-
stowed without hope of repayment, cheers <Jaily many a poor
soul in hospital wards and fever-cellars — to meet its reward
some day at the people's hands. You belong to us at heart,
as the Paris barricades can tell. Alas ! for the society which
stifles in after-life too many of your better feelings, by making
you mere flunkies and parasites, dependent for your livelihood
3ii the caprices and luxuries of the rich.
CHAPTER VI.
THE DULWICH GALLERY.
I Sandy Mackaye received me in a characteristic way —
growled at me for half an hour for quarreling with my mother,
and when I was at my wit's end, suddenly offered me a bed
in his house and the use of his little sitting-room — and, bliss
too great to hope ! of his books also ; and when I talked of
payment, told me to hold my tongue and mind my own busi-
ness. So I settled myself at once; and that very evening he
{installed himself as my private tutor, took down a Latin book,
land set me to work on it.
" An' mind ye, laddie," said he, half in jest and half in
earnest, " gin I find ye playing truant, and reading a' sorts o'
nonsense instead of minding the scholastic methods and pro-
prieties, I'll just bring ye in a bill at the year's end o' twa
guineas a week for lodgings and tuition, and tak the law o' ye ,
so mind and read what I tell ye. Do ye comprehend noo V
I did comprehend, and obeyed him, determining to repay
hirn some day — and somehow — how I did not very clearly
see. Thus I put myself more or less into the old man's
power ; foolishly enough, the wise world will say. But I had
no suspicion in my character ; and I could not look at those
keen gray eyes, when, after staring into vacancy during some
long preachment, they suddenly flashed round at me, and
through me, full of fun and quaint thought, and kindly
earnestness, and fancy that man less honest than his face
seemed to proclaim him.
By-the-by, I have as yet given no description of the old
eccentric's abode — an unpardonable omission, I suppose, in
these days of Dutch painting and Boz. But the omission
was correct, both historically and aristically, for I had as yet
only gone to him for books, books, nothing but books ; and I
had been blind to every thing in his shop but that fairy-land
of shelves, filled, in my simple fancy, with inexhaustible
treasures, wonder-working, omnipotent, as the magic seal of
Solomon.
It was not ill] I had been settled and at work for several
ALTON LOCKi;, TAILOR AND POET. m
nights in his sanctum, behind the shop, that I began to be-
come conscious what a strange den that sanctum was.
It was so dark, that without a gas-light no one but he
could see to read there, except on very sunny days. Not only
were the shelves which covered every inch of wall crammed
with books and pamphlets, but the little window was blocked
up with them, the floor was piled with bundles of them, in
some places three feet deep, apparently in the wildest confu-
sion — though there was some mysterious order in them which
he understood, and symbolized, I suppose, by the various
strange and ludicrous nick-names on their tickets — for he
never was at fault a moment if a customer asked for a book,
though it were buried deep in the chaotic stratum. Out of
this book-alluvium a hole seemed to have been dug near the
fireplace, just big enough to hold his arm-chair and a table,
book-strewn like every thing else, and garnished with odds
and ends of MSS., and a snuffer-tray containing scraps of
half-smoked tobacco, "pipe-dottles," as he called them, which
were carefully resmoked over and over again, till nothing but
ash was left. His whole culinary utensils — for he cooked as
well as ate in this strange hold — were an old rusty kettle,
which stood on one hob, and a blue plate which, when wash-
ed, stood on the other. A barrel of true Aberdeen meal
peered out of a corner, half buried in books, and " a keg o'
whusky, the gift o' freens," peeped in like case out of another.
This was his only food. " It was a' poison," he used to
say, "in London. Bread full o' alum and bones, and sic filth
— meat over-driven till it was a' braxy — water sopped wi'
dead men's juice. Xaething was safe but gude Scots par-
ritch and Athol brose." He carried his water-horror so far
as to walk some quarter of a mile every morning to fill his
kettle at a favorite pump. " Was he a cannibal, to drink
out o' that pump hard-by, right under the kirkyard V But
it was little he either ate or drank — he seemed to live upon
tobacco. From four in the morning till twelve at night, the
pipe never left his lips, except when he went into the outer
shop. " It promoted meditation, and drove awa' the lusts o'
the flesh. Ech ! it was worthy o' that auld tyrant Jamie,
to write his counter-blast to the poor man's freen ! The
hypocrite ! to gang preaching the virtues o' evil-savored
smoke ' ad dsemones abigendos' — and then rail again tobacco,
as if it was no as gude for the purpose as auld rags and horn
shavings ?"
Sandy Mackaye had a great fancy iff political caricatures.
62 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
rows of which, there being no room for them on the walls,
hung on strings from the ceiling — like clothes hung out to dry
— and among them dangled various hooks to which he had
taken an antipathy, principally High Tory and Benthamite,
crucified, impaled through their covers, and suspended in all
sorts of torturing attitudes. Among them, right over the
table, figured a copy of Icon Basilike, dressed up in a paper
shirt, all drawn over with figures of flames and devils, and
surmounted by a peaked paper cap, like a victim at an auto-
da-fe. And in the midst of all this chaos grinned from the
chimney-piece, among pipes and pens, pinches of salt and
scraps of butter, a tall cast of Michael Angelo's well known
skinless model — his pristine white defaced by a cap of soot
upon the top of his scalpless skull, and every muscle and ten-
don thrown into horrible relief by the dirt which had lodged
among the cracks. There it stood, pointing with its ghastly
arm toward the door, and holding on its wrist a label with
the following inscription :
Here stand I, the working-man,
Get more off me if you can.
I questioned Mackaye one evening about those hanged and
crucified books, and asked him if he ever sold any of them.
" On, ay," he said ; "if folks are fools enough to ask for
them, I'll just answer a fool according to his folly."
'•But," I said, "Mr. Mackaye, do you think it right to sell
books of the very opinions of which you disapprove so much?"
" Hoot, laddie, it's just a spoiling o' the Egyptians; so mind
yer book, and dinna tak in hand cases o' conscience for ither
folk. Ye'll ha' wark eneugh wi' yer ain before ye're dune."
And he folded round his knees his Joseph's coat, as he
called it, an old dressing-gown with one plaid sleeve, and one
blue one, red shawl skirts, and a black broadcloth back, not
to mention innumerable patches of every imaginable stuff and
color, filled his pipe, and buried his nose in " Harrington's
Oceana." He read at least twelve hours every day of his
life, and that exclusively old history and politics, though his
favorite books were Thomas Carlyle's works. Two or three
evenings in the week, when he had seen me safe settled at
my studies, he used to disappear mysteriously for several hours,
and it was some time before I found out, by a chance ex-
pression, that he was attending some meeting or committee
of working men. I begged him to take me there with him.
But I was stopped by a laconic answer.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. ft
" When ye're ready."
"And when shall 1 be ready, Mr. Mackaye?"
" Read yer book till I tell ye."
And he twisted himself in his best coat, which had once
been black, squeezed on his little Scotch cap, and went out.
I now found myself, as the reader may suppose, in an ele-
ment far more congenial to my literary tastes, and which
compelled far less privation of sleep and food in order to find
lime and means for reading; and my health began to mend
from the very first day. But the thought of my mother
haunted me; and Mackaye seemed in no hurry to let me
escape from it, for he insisted on my writing to her in a peni-
tent strain, informing her of my whereabouts, and offering to
return home if she should wish it. With feelings strangely
mingled between the desire of seeing her again and the dread
of returning to the old drudgery of surveillance, I sent the
letter, and waited a whole week without any answer. At
last, one evening, when I returned from work, Sandy seemed
in a state of unusual exhilaration. He looked at me again
and again, winking and chuckling to himself in a way which
showed me that his good spirits had something to do with my
concerns ; but he did not open on the subject till I had. set-
tled to my evening's reading. Then, having brewed himself
an unusually strong mug of whisky-toddy, and brought out
with great ceremony a clean pipe, he commenced.
" Alton, laddie, I've been fiechting Philistines for ye the
day."
" Ah ! have you heard from my mother '.'"
" I wadua say that exactly ; but there's been a gran baillio
body wi' me that calls himsel' your uncle, and a braw young
callant, a bairn o' his, I'm thinking."
" Ah ! that's my cousin George ; and tell me — do tell me,
what you said to them."
" Ou — that'll be mair concern o' mine than o' yourn. But
ye're no going back to your mither."
My heart leaped up with — joy ; there is no denying it —
and then I burst into tears.
" And she won't see me ? Has she really cast me ofT?"
;< Why, that'll be verra much as ye prosper, I'm thinking.
Ye're an unaccreedited hero, the noo, as Thomas Carlyle has
it. 'But gin ye do weel by yoursel,' saith the Psalmist,
4 ye'll find a' men speak well o' ye' — if ye gang their gate.
But ye're to gang to see your uncle at his shop o' Monday
5i ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AM) POET.
next, at one o'clock. Now stint your greeting, and read
awa'."
On the next Monday I took a holiday, the first in which I
had ever indulged myself; and having spent a good hour in
scrubbing away at my best shoes and Sunday suit, started, in
fear and trembling, for my uncle's "establishment."
I was agreeably surprised, on being shown into the little
back office at the back of the shop, to meet with a tolerably
gracious reception from the good-natured Mammonite. He
did not shake hands with me, it is true ; was I not a poor
relation ? But he told me to sit down, commended me for
the excellent character which he had of me both from my
master and Mackaye, and then entered on the subject of my
literary tastes. He heard I was a precious clever fellow.
No wonder, I came of a clever stock ; his poor dear brother
had plenty of brains for every thing but business. " And you
see, my boy (with a glance at the big ledgers and busy shop
without), " I knew a thing or two in my time, or I should not
have been here. But without capital, / think brains a curse,
Still we must make the best of a bad matter ; and if you are
inclined to help to raise the family name — not that I think
much of book writers myself — poor starving devils, half of
them — but still people do talk about them — and a man might
get a snug thing as newspaper editor, with interest ; or clerk
to something or other — always some new company in the
wind now — and I should have no objection, if you seemed
likely to do us credit, to speak a word for you. I've none of
your mother's confounded puritanical notions, I can tell you ;
and, what's more, I have, thank Heaven, as fine a city con-
nection as any man. But you must mind and make yourself
a good accountant — learn double entry on the Italian method
— that's a good practical study ; and if that old Sawney is
soft enough to teach you other things gratis, he may as well
teach you that too. I'll bet he knows something about it —
the old Scotch fox. There now — that'll do — there's five
shillings for you — mind you don't lose them — and if I hear a
good account of you, why. perhaps — but there's no use making
promises."
At this moment a tall, handsome young man, whom 1 did
not at first recognize as my cousin George, swung into the
office, and shook me cordially by the hand.
" Hullo, Alton, how are you ] Why, I hear you're coming
out as a regular genius — breaking out in a new jlace, upon
my honor ! Have you done with him, governor?"
ALTON LOCKE TAILOR AND POET. 65
" Well, I think I have. I wish you'd have a talk with
him, my hoy, I'm sorry I can't see more of him, but I have
to meet a party on business at the West-end at two, and
Alderman Tumbril and family dine with us this evening,
don't they ? I think our small table will be full."
" Of course it will. Come along with me, and we'll have
a chat in some quiet out-of-the-way place. This city is really
so noisy that you can't hear your own ears, as our dean says
in lecture."
So he carried me off, down back streets and alleys, a little
puzzled at the extreme cordiality of his manner. Perhaps it
sprung, as I learned afterward to suspect, from his consistent
and perpetual habit of ingratiating himself with every one
whom he approached. He never cut a chimney-sweep if he
knew him. And he found it pay. The children of this world
are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
Perhaps it sprung also, as I began to suspect in the first
hundred yards of our walk, from the desire of showing ofl"
before me the university clothes, manners, and gossip, which
he had just brought back with him from Cambridge.
I had not seen him more than three or lour times in my
life before, and then he appeared to me merely a tall, hand-
some conceited, slangy boy. But I now found him much im-
proved — in all externals at least. He had made it his busi-
ness, I knew, to perfect himself in all athletic pursuits which
were open to a Londoner. As he told me that day — he found
it pay, when one got among gentlemen. Thus he had gone
up to Cambridge a capital skater, rower, pugilist — and bil-
liard player. Whether or not that last accomplishment ought
to be classed in the list of athletic sports, he contrived, by his
own account, to keep it in that of paying ones In both these
branches he seemed to have had plenty of opportunities of dis-
tinguishing himself at college ; and his tall, powerful figure
showed the fruit of these exercises in a stately and confident,
almost martial, carriage. Something jaunty, perhaps swag-
gering, remained still in his air and dress, which yet sat not
ungracefully on him ; but I could see that he had been mix-
ing in society more polished and artificial than that to which
we had either of us been accustomed, and in his smart Roch-
ester, well-cut trowsers, and delicate French boots, he ex-
cited, I will not deny it, my boyish admiration and envy.
" Well," he said, as soon as we were out of the shop,
" which way ? Got a holiday 1 And how did you intend
to spend if?"
GO ALTON LOCKH, TAILOU AND POET.
"I wanted very much," I said, meekly "to see the pie
tures at the National Gallery."
" Oh ' ah ! pictures don't pay ; hut, if you like — much hot-
ter ones at Dulwich — that's the place to go to — you can see
the others any day — and at Dulwich, you know, they've got
— why let me.see — " And he ran over half-a-dozen outland-
ish names of painters, which, as I have never again met with
them, I am inclined on the whole to consider as somewhat
extemporaneous creations. However, I agreed to go.
" Ah ! capital — very nice quiet walk, and convenient for
me — very little out of my way home. I'll walk there with
you.
" One word for your neighbor and two for yourself," thought
I ; but on we walked. To see good pictures had been a long-
cherished hope of mine. Every thing beautiful in form or
color was beginning of late to have an intense fascination for
me. I had, now that I was emancipated, gradually dared to
feed my greedy eyes by passing stares into the print-shop
windows, and had learnt from them a thousand new notions,
new emotions, new longings after beauties of Nature, which
seemed destined never to be satisfied. But pictures, above
all, foreign ones, had been, in my mother's eyes, Anathema
Maranatha, as vile Popish and Pagan vanities, the rags of
the scarlet woman, no less than the surplice itself — and now,
when it came to the point, I hesitated at an act of such awful
disobedience, even though unknown to her. My cousin, how-
ever, laughed down my scruples, told me I was out of leading-
strings now, and, which was true enough, that it was "a —
deal better to amuse oneself in picture galleries without leave,
than live a life of sneaking and lying under petticoat govern-
ment, as all home-birds were sure to do in the long run."
And so I went on, while my cousin kept up a running fire
of chat the whole way, intermixing shrewd, bold observations
upon every woman who passed, with sneers at the fellows of
the college to which we were going — their idleness and luxury
— the large grammar-school which they were bound by their
charter to keep up, and did not — and hints about private
interest in high quarters, through which their wealthy useless-
ness had been politely overlooked, when all similar institutions
in the kingdom were subject to the searching examination of
/i government commission. Then there were stories of boat-
races and gay noblemen, breakfast parties, and lectures on
Greek plays, flavored with a spice of Cambridge slang, all
equally new to me — glimpses into a world of wonders- which
ALTON LOCKE. TAILOR AND TOET. 0?
made me feel, as I shambled along at his side, trying to keep
Btep with his strides, more weakly and awkward and ignorant
than ever.
We entered the gallery. I was in a fever of expectation.
The rich sombre light of the rooms, the rich heavy warmth
of the stove-heated air, the brilliant and varied coloring and
gilded frames which embroidered the walls, the hushed earn-
estness of a few artists who were copying, and the few visitors
who were lounging from picture to picture, struck me at once
with mysterious awe. But my attention was in a moment
concentrated on one figure opposite to me at the furthest
end. I hurried straight toward it. When I had got hall-
way up the gallery I looked round for my cousin. He had
turned aside to some picture of a Venus which caught my eye
also, but which, I remember now, only raised in me then a
shudder and a blush, and a fancy that the clergymen must be
really as bad as my mother had taught me to believe, if they
could allow in their galleries pictures of undressed women. I
have learnt to view such things differently now, thank God.
I have learnt that to the pure all things are pure. I have
learnt the meaning of that great saying — the foundation of all
art, as well as all modesty, all love, which tells us how " the
man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed." BuT~
this book is the history of my mental growth ; and my mistakes
as well as my discoveries are steps in that development, and
may bear a lesson in them. •'**'
How I have rambled ! But as that day was the turning ,|
point of my whole short life, I may be excused for lingering j
upon every feature of it.
Timidly, but eagerly, I went up to the picture, and stood /
entranced before it. It was Guide's St. Sebastian. All the '
world knows the picture, and all the world knoAvs, too, the
defects of the master, though in this instance he seems to have
risen above himself, by a sudden inspiration, into that true
naturalness, which is the highest expression of the Spiritual
But the very defects of the picture, its exaggeration, its
theatricality, were especially calculated to catch the eye of a
boy awaking out of the narrow dullness of Puritanism. The
breadth and vastness of light and shade upon those manly
limbs, so grand and yet so delicate, standing out against the
background of lurid night, the helplessness of the bound arms,
the arrow quivering in the shrinking side, the upturned brow,
the eyes in whose dark depths enthusiastic faith seemed con-
quering agony and shame, the parted lips, which seemed to
68 ALTON LOCKE, TAIIOR AND POET.
ask, like those martyrs in the Revelations, reproachful, half-
i - esigned, "O Lord how long? — " Gazing at that picture
6ince, I have understood how the idolatry of painted saints
could arise in the minds even of the most educated, who were
not disciplined by that stern regard for fact which is — or ought
to be — the strength of Englishmen. I have understood the
heart of that Italian girl, whom some such picture of St.
Sebastian, perhaps this very one, excited, as the Venus of
Praxiteles the Grecian boy, to hopeless love, madness, and
death. Then I had never heard of St. Sebastian. I did not
dream of any connection between that, or indeed any picture,
and Christianity ; and yet, as I stood before it, I seemed to
be face to face with the ghosts of my old Puritan forefathers,
to see the spirit which supported them on pillories and
scaffolds — the spirit of that true St. Margaret, the Scottish
maiden whom Claverhouse and his soldiers chained to a post
on the sea-sands to die by inches in the rising tide, till the
sound of her hymns was slowly drowned in the dash of the
hungry, leaping waves. My heart swelled within me, my eyes
seemed bursting from my head, with the intensity of my gaze,
and great tears, I knew not why, rolled slowly down my face.
A woman's voice close to me, gentle yet of deepei cone than
most, woke me from my trance.
" You seem to be deeply interested in that picture ?"
I looked round, yet not at the speaker. My eyes, before they
could meet hers, were caught by an apparition the most beau-
tiful I had ever yet beheld. And what — what — have I seen
equal to her since ? Strange, that I should love to talk of
her. Strange, that I fret at myself now because I can not
set down on paper line by line, and hue by hue, that wonderful
loveliness of which But no matter. Had I but such
an imagination as Petrarch, or rather, perhaps, had I his de-
liberate cold self-consciousness, what volumes of similes and
conceits I might pour out, connecting that peerless face and
figure with all lovely things which heaven and earth contain.
As it is, because I can not say all, I will say nothing, but re-
peat to the end again and again, Beautiful, beautiful, beau-
tiful, beyond all statue, picture, or poet's dream. Seventeen
— slight but rounded, a mask and features delicate and reg-
ular, as if fresh from the chisel of Praxiteles — I must try to
describe, after all, you see — a skin of alabaster (privet flowers,
Horace and Ariosto would have said, more true to Nature),
6tained with the faintest flush : auburn hair, with that pecu-
liar crisped wave seen in the old Italian pictures, and the
ALTON LOCKB, TAILOR AND POET. 6«
warm, dark hazel eyes which so often accompany it; lipslikt
a thread of vermilion, somewhat too thin, perhaps — but \
thought little of that then; with such perfect finish and grace
in every line and hue of her features and her dress, down to
the little fingers and nails which showed through her thin
gloves, that she seemed to my fancy fresh from the innermost
chamber of some enchanted palace, " where no air of heaven
could visit her cheek too roughly." I dropped my eyes, quite
dazzled. The question was repeated by a lady who stood
with her, whose face I remarked then — as I did to the last,
alas ! — too little ; dazzled at the first by outward beauty,
perhaps because so utterly unaccustomed to it.
"It is indeed a wonderful picture," I said, timidly. "May
I ask what is the subject of it?"
"Oh! don't you know?" said the young beauty, with a
smile that thrilled through me. "It is St. Sebastian."
"I — I am very much ashamed," I answered, coloring up,
" but I do not know who St. Sebastian was. Was he a
Popish saint ?"
A tall, stately old man, who stood with the two ladies,
laughed kindly. "No, not till they made him one against his
will ; and at the same time, by putting him in the mill which
grinds old folks young again, converted him from a grizzled
old Roman tribune into the young Apollo of Popery."
"You will puzzle your hearer, my dear uncle," said the.
same deep-toned woman's voice which had first spoken to me.
"As you volunteered the saint's name, Lillian, you shall also
tell his history."
Simply and shortly, with just feeling enough to send through
me a fresh thrill of delighted interest, without trenching the
least on the most stately reserve, she told me the well-known
history of the saint's martyrdom.
If I seem minute in my description, let those who read my
story remember that such courteous dignity, however natural,
I am bound to believe, it is to them, was to me an utterly
new excellence in human nature. All my mother's Spartan
nobleness of manner seemed unexpectedly combined with all
my little sister's careless ease.
" What a beautiful poem the story would make !" said I,
as soon as I recovered my thoughts.
"Well spoken, young man," answered the old gentleman.
"Let us hope that your seeing a subject for a good poem will
be the first step toward your writing one."
As he spoke, he bent on me two clear gray eyes, full of
70 ALTON LOCKE.. TAILOR AND l'OET.
kindliness, mingled with practiced discernment. I saw that
he was evidently a clergyman ; but what his tight silk stock-
ings and peculiar hat denoted I did not know. There was
about him the air of a man accustomed equally to thought,
to men, and to power. And I remarked somewhat mali-
ciously, that my cousin, who had strutted up toward us, on
seeing me talking to two ladies, the instant he caught sight
of those black silk stockings and that strange hat, fell sud-
denly in countenance, and sidling oil" somewhat meekly into
the back-ground, became absorbed in the examination of a
Holy Family.
I answered something humbly, I forget what, which led to
a conversation. They questioned me as to my name, my
mother, my business, my studies ; while I reveled in the de-
light of stolen glances at my new-found Venus Victrix, who
was as forward as any of them in her questions and her in-
terest. Perhaps she enjoyed, at least she could not help
seeing, the admiration for herself which I took no pains to
conceal. At last the old man cut the conversation short by a
quiet "Good morning, sir," which astonished me. I had
never heard words whose tone was so courteous and yet so
chillingly peremptory. As they turned away, he repeated to
himself once or twice, as if to fix them in his mind, my name
and my master's, and awoke in me, perhaps too thoughtlessly,
a tumult of vague hopes. Once and again the beauty and her
companion looked back toward me, and seemed talking of me,
and my face was burning scarlet, when my cousin swung up
in his hard, offhand way.
"By Jove, Alton, my boy! you're a knowing fellow. I
congratulate you ! At your years, indeed ! to rise a dean and
two beauties at the first throw, and hook them fast !"
"A dean !" I said, in some trepidation.
"Ay, a live dean — didn't you see the cloven foot sticking-
out from under his shoe-buckle 1 What news for your mother !
What will the ghosts of your grandfathers to the seventh gen-
eration say to this, Alton 1 Colloguing in pagan picture-
galleries with shovel-hatted Philistines ! And that's not the
worst, Alton," he ran on. " Those daughters of Moab — those
daughters of Moab — "
"Hold your tongue," I said, almost crying with vexation.
" Look there, if you want to save your good temper. There,
she is looking back again — not at poor me, though. What
a lovely girl she is ! — and a real lady— Vair noble — the ra'al
genuine grit, as Sam Slick says, and no mistake. By Jove,
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET 71
what a face ! what hands ! what feet ! what a figure — in
spite of crinolines and all abominations ! And didn't she know
it ? And didn't she know that you knew it too V And he
ran on, descanting coarsely on beauties which I dared not even
have profaned by naming, in a way that made me, I knew
not why, mad with jealousy and indignation. She seemed
mine alone in all the world. "What right had any other
human being, above all, he, to dare to mention her ] I turned
again to my St. Sebastian. That movement only brought on
me a fresh volley of banter.
"Oh, that's the dodge, is it, to catch intellectual fine ladies?
to fall into an ecstatic attitude before a picture — But then we
must have Alton's genius, you know, to find out which the
fine pictures are. I must read up that subject, by-the-by.
It might be a paying one among the dons. For the present,
here goes in for an attitude. "Will this do, Alton V And he
arranged himself admiringly before the picture in an attitude
60 absurd and yet so graceful, that I did not know whether
to laugh at him or hate him.
" At all events," he added, dryly, " it will be as good as
playing the evangelical at Carus's tea-parties, or taking the
sacrament regularly for fear one's testimonials should be re-
fused." And then he looked at me, and through me, in his
intense, confident way, to see that his hasty words had not
injured him with me. He used to meet one's eye as boldly
as any man I ever saw.; but it was not the simple gaze of
honesty and innocence, but an imperious, searching look, as
if defying scrutiny- His was a true mesmeric eye, if ever
there was one. No wonder it worked the miracles it did.
" Come along," he said, suddenly seizing my arm. "Don't
you see they're leaving ] Out of the gadery after them, and
get a good look at the carriage and the arms upon it. I saw
one standing there as we came in. It may pay us — you, that
is — to know it again."
We went out, I holding him back, I knew not why, and
arrived at the outer gate just in time to see them enter the
carriage and drive off I gazed to the last, but did not stir.
" Good boy," he said ; " knowing still. If you had bowed
or showed the least sign of recognition, you would have broken
the spell."
But I hardly heard what he said, and stood gazing stupidly
after the carriage as it disappeared. I did not know then
what had happened to me. I know now, alas ! too well.
CHAPTER VII.
FIRST LOVE.
TR\rLY I said, I did not know what had happened to me.
I did not attempt to analyze the intense, overpowering instinct
which from that moment made the lovely vision I had seen
the lodestar of all my thoughts. Even now, I can see noth-
ing in those feelings of mine but simple admiration — idolatry
if you will — of physical beauty. Doubtless there was more —
doubtless — I had seen pretty faces before, and knew that they
were pretty, but they had passed from my retina, like the
prints of beauties which I saw in the shop windows, without
exciting a thought — even a conscious emotion of complacency,
But this face did not pass away. Day and night I saw it,
just as I had seen it in the gallery. The same playful smile —
the same glance, alternately turned to me and the glowing
picture above her head — and that was all I saw or felt. No
child ever nestled upon its mother's shoulder with feelings
more celestially pure, than those with which I counted over
day and night each separate lineament of that exceeding love-
liness. Romantic ? extravagant ? Yes ; if the world be
right in calling a passion romantic just in proportion as it is
not merely hopeless, but pure and unselfish, drawing its deli-
cious power from no hope or faintest desire of enjoyment, but
merely from simple delight in its object — then my passion
was most romantic. I never thought of disparity in rank.
Why should I ? That could not blind the eyes of my imag-
ination. She was beautiful, and that was all, and all in all,
to me ; and had our stations been exchanged, or more than
exchanged ; had I been King Cophetua, and she the beggar-
maid, I should have gloried in her just as much.
Beloved sleepless hours, which I spent in picturing that
scene to myself, with all the brilliance of fresh recollection !
Beloved hours ! how soon you passed away ! Soon — soon my
imagination began to fade; the traces of her features on my
mind's eye became confused and dim ; and then came over
me the fierce desire to see her again, that I might renew the
freshness of that charming image. Thereon grew up an ago-
ny of longing — an agony of weeks, and months, and yeara
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND FOET. 73
Where could I find that face again ? was my ruling thought
from morning until eve. I knew that it was hopeless to look
for her at the gallery where I had first seen her. My only
hope was, that at some place of public resort at the West-end
I might catch, if but for a moment, an inspiring glance of
that radiant countenance. I lingered round the Burton Arcli
and Hyde Park Gate — but in vain. I peered into every car-
riage, every bonnet that passed me in the thoroughfares — in
vain. I stood patiently at the doors of exhibitions, and con-
certs, and playhouses, to be shoved back by policemen, and
insulted by footmen — but in vain. Then I tried the fashion-
able churches, one by one ; and sat in the free seats, to listen
to prayers and sermons, not a word of which, alas ! 1 cared
to understand, with my eyes searching carefully every pew
and gallery, face by face ; always fancying, in self-torturing
waywardness, that she might be just in the part of the gal-
lery which I could not see. Oh ! miserable days of hope de-
ferred, making the heart sick ! Miserable gnawing of disap-
pointment with which I returned at nightfall, to force myself
down to my books ! Equally miserable rack of hope on which
my nerves were stretched every morning when I rose, count-
ing the hours till my day's work should be over, and my mad
search begin again ! At last " my torment did by length of
time become my element." I returned steadily as ever to the
studies which I had at first neglected, much to Mackaye's
wonder and disgust ; and the vain hunt after that face be-
came a part of my daily task, to be got through with the
Earae dull, sullen effort, with which all I did was now trans-
acted.
Mackaye, I suppose, at first, attributed my absences, and
idleness to my having got into bad company. But it was
some weeks before he gently enough told me his suspicions,
and they were answered by a burst of tears, and a passionate
denial, which set them at rest forever. But I had not courage
to tell him what was the matter with me. A sacred modesty,
as well as a sense of the impossibility of explaining my emo-
tions, held me back. I had a half-dread, too, to confess the
whole truth, of his ridiculing a fancy, to say the least, so ut-
terly impracticable ; and my only confidant was a picture iu
the National Gallery, in one of the faces of which I had dis-
covered some likeness to my Venus ; and there I used to so
and stand at spare half hours, and feel the happier for staring
and staring, and whispering to the dead canvas the extrava-
gances of my idolatry.
D
74 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
s But soon the bitter draught of disappointment b< gan to
breed harsher thoughts in me. Those fine gentlemen who
rode past me in the park, who rolled by in carriages, sitting
face to face with ladies, as richly dressed, if not as beautiful,
as she was — they could see her when they liked — why not 1 1
What right had their eyes to a feast denied to mine ? They,
too, who did not appreciate, adore that beauty as I did — loi
jyho could worship her like me ? At least they had not suf-
fered for her as I had done ; they had not stood in rain and
frost, fatigue and blank despair — watching — watching — month
after month ; and I was making coats for them ! The
very garment I was stitching at, might, in a day's time, be
in her presence — touching her dress ; and its wearer bow-
ing, and smiling, and whispering — he had not bought that
bliss by watching in the rain. It made me mad to think
of it.
I will say no more about it. That is a period of my life
on which I can not even now look back without a shudder.
At last, after perhaps a year or more, I summoned up cour-
age to tell my story to Sandy Mackaye, and burst out with
complaints more pardonable, perhaps, than reasonable.
" Why have I not as good a right to speak to her, to move
in the same society in which she moves, as any of the fops
of the day 1 Is it because these aristocrats are more intel-
lectual than I ] I should not fear to measure brains against
most of them now ; and give me the opportunities which they
have, and I would die if I did not outstrip them. Why have
I not those opportunities? Is that fault of others to be visit-
ed on me 1 Is it because they are more refined than I !
What right have they, if this said refinement be so necessary
a qualification, a difference so deep — that without it, there is
to be an everlasting gulf between man and man — what right
have they to refuse to let me share in it, to give me the op-
portunity of acquiring it ?"
" Wad ye ha' them set up a dancing academy for working
men, wi' ' manners tocht here to the lower classes]' They'll
no break up their ain monopoly ; trust them for it ! Na : if
ye want to get amang them, I'll tell ye the way o't. Write
a book o' poems, and ca' it ' A Voice fra' the Goose, by a
Working Tailor' — and then — why, after a dizen years or so
of starving scribbling for your bread, ye'll ha' a chance o' find-
•ng yoursel' a lion, and a flunkey, and a licker o' trenchers —
anc that jokes for his dinner, and sells his soul for a fine leddy's
pmilo — till ye presume to think they're in earnest, and fancy
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 75
yuursel' a man o' the same blude as they, and fa' in love wi'
one of them — and then they'll teach you your level, ;tnd send
ye off to gauge wfausky like Burns, or leave ye to die in a
ditch as they did wi' pair Thorn."
" Let me die, any where or any how, if I can but be near
her — see her — "
" Married to anither body ? and nursing anither body's
bairns ? Ah boy, boy — do ye think that was what ye were
made for ; to please yersel' A\i' a woman's smiles, or e'en a
woman's kisses — or to please yersel 1 at all 1 How do ye ex-
pect ever to be happy, or strong, or a man at a', as long as
ye go on looking to enjoy yersel' — yersel' ? I ha' tried it. Moiiy
was the year I looked ibr naught but my ain pleasure, and got
it too, when it was a'
Sandy Mackaye, bonny Sandy Mackayc,
There he sits singing the lang simmer's day;
Lassies gae to him,
And kiss him. and woo him —
Na bird is sa merry as Sandy Mackaye.
An' muckle good cam' o't. Ye may fancy I'm talking like a
sour, disappointed auld carle. But I tell ye nav. I've got
that's worth living for, though I am down-hearted at times.
and fancy a's wrong, and there's na hope ibr us on earth, we
be a' sic. liars — a' liars, I think ; ' a universal liars-rock snb-
strawtum,' as Mr. Carlyle says. I'm a great liar often mysel',
specially when I'm praying. Do ye think I'd live on here in
this meeserable crankit auld bane-barrel of a body, if it was
not for The Cause, and for the puir young fellows that come
in to me whiles to get some book-learning about the gran'
auld Roman times, when folks didtia care ibr themselves, but I
for the nation, and a man counted wife and bairns and money
as dross and dung, in comparison with the Great Roman city,
that was the mither of them a', and wad last on, free and
glorious, after they and their bairns were a' dead thegither ]
Hoot man ! If I had na The Cause to care for and to work
for, whether I ever see it triumphant on earth or no — I'd
just tak the cauld-water-cure off Waterloo-bridge, and mak'
mysel' a ease for the Humane Society."
li And what is The Cause ?" I asked.
" Wud I tell ye ? "We want no ready-made freens o' The
Cause. I dinna hould wi' thae French indoctrinating ped-
ants, that took to stick free opinions into a man as ye'd stick pins
into a pincushion, to fa' out again the first shake. Na — The
Cause must find a man, and tak liauld o' him, willy-nilly
76 f ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
and grow up in him like an inspiration, till he can see nocht
but in the light o't. Puir bairn !" he went on, looking with
a half-sad, half-comic face at me — " puir bairn — like a young
bear, wi' a' your sorrows before you ! This time seven years
ye'll ha' no need to come speering and questioning what The
Cause is, and the Gran' Cause, and the Only Cause worth
working for on the earth o' God. And noo gang your gate,
and mak' fine feathers for foul birds. I'm gaun whar ye'll
be ganging too, before long."
As I went sadly out of the shop, he called me back.
" Stay a wee, bairn ; there's the Roman History for ye.
There ye'll read what The Cause is, and how they that seek
their ain are no worthy thereof."
I took the book, and found in the legends of Brutus, and
Codes, and Scsevola, and the retreat to the Mons Sacer, and
the Gladiator's War, what The Cause was, and forgot awhile
in those tales of antique heroism and patriotic self-sacrifice
my own selfish longings and sorrows.
But, after all, the very advice which was meant to cure
me of those selfish longings, only tended, by diverting me from
my living outward idol, to turn my thoughts more than ever
inward, and tempt them to feed on their own substance. I
passed whole days on the work-room floor in brooding silence
— my mind peopled with an incoherent rabble of phantasms
patched up from every object of which I had ever read. I
could not control my day-dreams ; they swept me away with
them over sea and land, and into the bowels of the earth.
My soul escaped on every side from my civilized dungeon of
brick and mortar, into the great free world from which my
body was debarred. Now I was the Corsair in the pride of
freedom on the dark blue sea. Now I wandered in fairy
caverns among the bones of primaeval monsters. I fought at
the side of Leonidas, and the Maccabee who stabbed the
Sultan's elephant, and saw him crushed beneath its falling
bulk. Now I was a hunter in tropic forests — I heard the
parrots scream, and saw the humming-birds flit on from gor-
geous flower to flower. Gradually I took a voluntary pleas-
ure in calling up these images, and working out their details
into words with all the accuracy and care for which my small
knowledge gave me materials. And as the self-indulgent
habit grew on me, I began to live two lives — one mechanical
and outward, one inward and imaginative. The thread
passed through my fingers without knowing 't ; I did my
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 77
work as a machine might do it. The dingy stilling room, the
wan faces of rny companions, the scanty meals which I
snatched, I saw dimly, as in a dream. The tropics, and
Greece, the imaginary battles which I fought, the phantoms
into whose mouths I put my thoughts, were real and true to
me. They met me when I woke — they floated along beside
me as I walked to work — they acted their fantastic dramas
before me through the sleepless hours of night. Gradually
certain faces among them became familiar — certain person-
ages grew into coherence, as embodiments of those few types
of character which had struck me the most, and played an
analogous part in every fresh fantasia. Sandy Mackaye's
face figured incongruously enough as Leonidas, Brutus, a
Pilgrim Father ; and gradually, in spite of myself, and the
fear with which I looked on the recurrence of that dream,
Lillian's figure re-entered my fairly-laud. I saved her from
a hundred dangers ; I followed her through dragon-guarded
caverns and the corridors of magic castles ; I walked by her
side through the forests of the Amazon
And now I began to crave for some means of expressing
these fancies to myself. While they were mere thoughts,
parts of me, they were unsatisfactory, however delicious. I
longed to put them outside me, that I might look at them
and talk to them as permanent, independent things. First I
tried to sketch them on the whitewashed walls of my garret,
on scraps' of paper begged from Maekaye, or picked up in the
work-room. But from my ignorance of any rules of drawing,
they were utterly devoid of beauty, and only excited my dis-
gust. Besides, I had thoughts as well as objects to express
— thoughts strange, sad. wild, about my own feelings, my
own destiny, and drawing could not speak them for me.
Then I turned instinctively to poetry: with its rules I was
getting rapidly conversant. The mere desire of imitation
urged me on, and when I tried, the grace of rhyme and metre
covered a thousand defects. I tell my story, not as I saw it
then, but as I see it now. A long and lonely voyage, with
its monotonous days and sleepless nights — its sickness and
heart-loneliness, has given me opportunities for analyzing my
past history which were impossible then, amid the ceaseless
in-rush of new images, the ceaseless ferment of their re-com-
bination, in which my life has passed from sixteen to twenty-
five. The poet, I suppose, must be a seer as long as he is a
worker, and a seer only. He has no time to philosophize — to
"think about thinking,'' as Goethe, I have somewhere read,
'8 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
says that he never could do It is too often only in sickness
and prostration and sheer despair, that the fierce voracity and
6\vift digestion of his soul can cease, and give him time to
know himself and God's dealings with him ; and for that
reason it is good for him, too, to have been afflicted.
I do not write all this to boast of it ; I am ready to bear
sneers at my romance — my day-dreams — my unpractical
habits of mind, for I know that 1 deserve them. But such
was the appointed growth of my uneducated mind ; no more
unhealthy a growth, if I am to believe books, than that of
many a carefully trained one. High-born geniuses, they tell
me, have their idle visions as well as we working men ; and
Oxford has seen of late years as wild Icarias conceived as
ever were fathered by a red Republic. For, indeed, we have
the same flesh and blood, the same God to teach us, the same
devil to mislead us, whether we choose to believe it or not.
But there were excuses for me. -We Londoners are not ac-
customed from our youth to the poems of a great democratic
genius, as the Scotchmen are to their glorious Burns. We
have no chance of such an early acquaintance with poetic art
as that which enabled John Bethune, one of the great unre-
presented — the starving Scotch day-laborer, breaking stones
upon the parish roads, to write at the age of seventeen such
words as these :
Hail, hallow'd evening ! sacred hour to me !
Thy clouds of gray, thy vocal melody,
Thy dreamy silence oft to me have brought
A sweet exchange from toil to peaceful thought.
Ye purple heavens ! how often has my eye,
Wearied with its long gaze on drudgery,
Look'd up and found refreshment in the hues
That gild thy vest with coloring profuse !
0, evening gray ! how oft have I admired
Thy airy tapestry, whose radiance fired
The glowing minstrels of the olden time,
Until their very souls flow'd forth in rhyme.
And I have listened, till my spirit grew
Familiar with their deathless strains, and drew
From the same source some portion of the glow
Which fill'd their spirits, when from earth below
They scann'd thy golden imagery. And I
Have consecrated thee, bright evening sky
My fount of inspiration : and I fling
My spirit on thy clouds — an offering
To the great Deity of dying day,
Who hath transfused o'er thee his purple ray.
ALTON LOCKL, TAILOR AND I'OKT. 73
After all, our dreams do little harm to the rich. Those
who consider Chartism as synonymous with devil-worship,
should bless and encourage them, for the very reason for
which we working men ought to dread them ; for, quickened
into prurient activity by the low, novel-mongering press, they
help to enervate and besot all but the noblest minds among
us. Here and there a Thomas Cooper, sitting in Stafford
jail, after a youth spent in cobbling shoes, vents his treasures
of classic and historic learning in a "Purgatory of Suicides ;"
or a Prince becomes the poet of the poor, no less for having
fed his boyish fancy with " The Arabian Nights" and " The
Pilgrim's Progress." But, w'.th the most of us, sedentary and
monotonous occupations, as has long been known, create of
themselves a morbidly-meditative and fantastic turn of mind.
And what else, in Heaven's name, ye fine gentlemen — what
else can a working-man do with his imagination, but dream ?
What else will you let him do with it, oh ye education-
pedants, who fancy that you can teach the masses as you
would drill soldiers, eveiy soul alike, though you will not
bestir yourselves to do even that ? Are there no differences
of rank — God's rank, not man's — among us ? You have
discovered, since your school-boy days, the fallacy of the old
nomenclature which civilly classed us all together as " the
snobs," " the blackguards ;" which even — so strong is habit
— tempted Burke himself to talk of us as "the swinish mul-
titude." You are finding yourselves wrong there. A few
more years' experience, not in mis-educating the poor, but in
watching the poor really educate themselves, may teach you
that we are not all by nature dolts and idiots; that there
are differences of brain among us, just as great as there are
between you ; that there are those among us whose education
ought not to end, and will not end, with the putting off of
the parish cap and breeches; whom it is cruelty, as well as
folly, to toss back into the hell of mere manual drudgery, as
soon as you have — if, indeed, you have been even so bounti-
ful as that — oxcited in them a new thirst of the intellect and
imagination. If you provide that craving with no whole-
some food, you at least have no right to blame it if it shall
grge itself with poison.
Dare for once to do a strange thing, and let yourself be
laughed at ; go to a workman's meeting — a Chartist meet-
ing, if you will ; and look honestly at the faces and brows
of those so-called incendiaries, whom your venal caricaturists
have taught you to believe a mixture of cur-dog and baboon
80 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
— we, for our part, shall not be ashamed to show forehead*
against your laughing House of Commons — and then say,
what employment can those men find in the soulless routine
of mechanical labor for the mass of brain which they almost
universally possess ? They must either dream or agitate ;
perhaps they are now learning how to do both to some pur-
pose.
But I have found, by sad experience, that there is little
use in declamation. I had much better simply tell my story,
and leave my readers to judge of the facts, if, indeed, they
will be so far courteous as to believe them.
CHAPTER VIII.
LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE.
So I made my first attempt at poetry — need I say that mj
Bubject was the beautiful Lillian ? And need I say, too, that
I was utterly disgusted at my attempt to express her in words,
as I had been at my trial with the pencil ? It chanced also,
that after hammering out half-a-dozen verses, I met with Mr.
Tennyson's poems ; and the unequaied sketches of women that
I found there, while they had, with the rest of the book, a
new and abiding influence on my mind, were quite enough to
show me my own fatal incompetency in that line. I threw
my verses away, never to resume them. Perhaps I proved
thereby the depth of my affection. Our mightiest feelings
are always those which remain most unspoken. The most
intense lovers and the greatest poets have generally, I think,
written very little personal love-poetry, while they have
shown in fictitious characters a knowledge of the passion too
painfully intimate to be spoken of in the first person.
But to escape from my own thoughts, I could not help
writing something ; and to escape from my own private sor-
rows, writing on some matter with which I had no personal
concern. And so, after much casting about for subjects,
Childe Harold and the old missionary records contrived to
celebrate a spiritual wedding in my brain, of which anomalous
marriage came a proportionately anomalous offspring.
My hero was not to be a pirate, but a pious sea-rover, who,
with a crew of saints, or at least uncommonly fine fellows,
who could be very manly and jolly, and yet all be good
Christians, of a somewhat vague and latitudinarian cast of
doctrine (for my own was becoming rapidly so), set forth
under the red-cross flag to colonize and convert one of my old
paradises, a South Sea Island.
I forget most of the lines — they were probably great trash,
but I hugged them to my bosom as a young mother does hei
first child.
'Twas sunset in the lone Pacific world,
The rich gleams fading in the western sky ;
Within the still Lagoon the sails were furled,
The red-cross flag alone was flaunting high.
Before them was the low and palm-fringed shore,
Behind, the outer ocean's baffled roar.
D*
82 ALTON LOCKE. TAILOR AND POET.
After which valiant plunge in medias res, came a great
lump of description, after the manner of youths — of the
island, and the white houses, and the banana groves, and
above all, the single volcano towering over the whole, which
Fhaking a sinful isle with thundering shocks,
Reproved the worshipers of stones and stocks.
Then how a line of foam appears on the Lagoon, which is
supposed at first to be a shoal offish, but turns out to be a troop
of naked island beauties, swimming out to the ship. The
decent missionaries were certainly guiltless of putting it into
my head, whether they ever saw it or not — a great many
things happening in the South Seas of which they find it con-
venient to say nothing. I think I picked it up from Wall is,
or Cook, or some other plain-spoken voyager.
The crew gaze in pardonable admiration, but the hero,
in a long speech, reproves them for their light-mindedness,
reminds them of their sacred mission, and informs them that,
The soldiers of the cross should turn their eyes
From carnal lusts and heathen vanities ;
beyond which indisputable assertion I never got ; for this
being about the fiftieth stanza, I stopped to take breath a
little ; and reading and re-reading, patching and touching
continually, grew so accustomed to my bantling's face, that,
like a mother, I could not tell whether it was handsome or
hideous, sense or nonsense. I have since found out that the
true plan, for myself at least, is to write oft' as much as
possible at a time, and then lay it by and forget it for weeks
— if I can, for months. After that, on returning to it, the
mind regards it as something altogether strange and new, and
can, or rather ought to judge of it as it would of the work ol
another pen.
But really, between conceit and disgust, fancying myself
one day a great new poet, and the next a mere twaddler, I got
so puzzled and anxious, that I determined to pluck up courage,
go to Mackaye, and ask him to solve the problem for me.
" Hech, sirs, poetry ! I've been expecting it. I suppose it's
the appointed gate o' a workman's intellectual life — that same
lust o' versification. Aweel, aweel — let's hear."
Blushing and trembling, I read my verses aloud in as re-
sonant and magniloquent a voice as I could command. .1
thought Mackaye's upper lip would never stop lengthening,
or his lower lip protruding. He chuckled intensely at the
ALTON LOCXE, TAILOR AND POET. 03
unfortunate rhyme between "shocks" and "stocks." Indeed
it kept, him in chuckling matter for a whole month afterward ;
but when I had got to the shoal of naked girls, he could bear
no more, and burst out —
" What the deevil ! is there no harlotry and idolatry here
in England, that ye maun gang speering after it in the Can-
nibal Islands? Are ye gaun to be like thae puir aristocrat
bod es, that wad suner hear an Italian dog howl, than an
English nightingale sing, and winna hearken to Mr. John
Thomas till he. calls himself Giovanni Thomasino ; or do ye
tak yoursel' for a singing-bird, to go all your days tweedle-
dumdeeing out into the lift, just for the lust o' hearing your
ain clan clatter ? Will ye be a man or a lintie ? Coral
Islands] Pacific? What do ye ken about Pacifies ? Are ye
a cockney or a Cannibal Islander ? Dinna stand there, ye
gowk, as fusionless as a docken, but tell me that. Where do
ye live ?"
" What do you mean, Mr. Mackaye V asked I, with a
doleful and disappointed visage.
" Mean — why, if God had meant ye to write about Pa-
cifies, He'd ha' put ye there — and because He means ye to
write aboot London town He's put ye there — and gie'n ye
an unco sharp taste o' the ways o't; and I'll gie ye anither.
Come along wi' me."
And he seized me by the arm, and hardly giving me time
to put on my hat, marched me out into the streets, and away
through Clare Market to St. Giles's.
It was a foul, chilly, foggy Saturday night. From the
butchers' and green-grocers' shops the gas-lights flared and
flickered, wild and ghastly, over haggard groups of slipshod
dirty women, bargaining for scraps of stale meat and frostbit-
ten vegetables, wrangling about short weight and bad quality.
Fish-stalls and fruit-stalls lined the edge of the greasy pave-
ment, sending up odors as foul as the language of sellers and
buyers. Blood and sewer-water crawled from under doors and
out of spouts, and reeked down the gutters among offal, ani-
mal and vegetable, in every stage of putrefaction. Foul va-
pors rose from cowsheds and slaughter-houses, and the door
ways of undrained alleys, where the inhabitants carried tht
filth out on their shoes from the back-yard into the court, and
from the court up into the main street; while above, hanging
like cliffs over the streets — those narrow, brawling torrents of
filth, and poverty, and sin — the houses with their teeming
load if life were piled up into the dingy, choking night. A
81 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
ghastly, deafening, sickening sight it was. Go, scented Bel-
gravian ! and see what London is ! and then go to the library
which God has given thee — one often fears in vain — and see
what science says this London might he !
"Ay," he muttered to himself as he strode along, "sing
awa' ; get yoursel' wi' child wi' pretty fancies and gran' words,
like the rest of the poets, and gang to hell for it."
"To hell, Mr. Mackaye?"
" Ay, to a verra real hell, Alton Locke, laddie — a warse
ane than any fiends' kitchen or subterranean Smithfield that
ye'll hear o' in the pulpits — the hell on earth o' being a flunky,
and a humbug, and a useless peacock, wasting God's gifts on
your ain lusts and pleasures — and kenning it — and not being
able to get oot o' it, for the chains o' vanity and self-indulgence.
I've warned ye. Now look there — "
lie stopped suddenly before the entrance of a miserable
alley —
" Look ! there's not a soul down that yard but's either beg-
gar, drunkard, thief, or warse. Write aboot that ! Say how
ye saw the mouth o' hell, and the twa pillars thereof at the
entry — the pawn-broker's shop o' one side and the gin palace at
the other — twa monstrous deevils, eating up men, and women,
and bairns, body aud soul. Look at the jaws o' the monsters,
how they open and open, and swallow in anither victim and
anither. Write aboot that."
" What jaws, Mr. Mackaye !"
' Thae faulding-doors o' the gin-shop, goose. Are na they
a mair damnable man-devouring idol than ony red-hot statue
o' Moloch, or wicked Gogmagog, wherein the auld Britons
burnt their prisoners 1 Look at thae barefooted, bare-backed
hizzies, with their arms round the men's necks, and their
mouth's full o' vitriol and beastly words ! Look at that Irish-
woman pouring the gin down the babbie's throat ! Look at
that raff'o' a boy gaun out o' the pawnshop, where he's been
pledging the handkerchief he stole the morning, into the gin-
shop, to buy beer poisoned wi' grains o' paradise, and cocculus
indicus, and saut, and a' damnable, maddening, thirst-breed-
ing, lust-breeding drugs! Look at that girl that went in w r i'
a shawl on her back, and came out wi'out ane ! Drunkards
i'rae the breast ! harlots frae the cradle ! damned before they're
born ! John Calvin had an inkling o' the truth there, I'm
a'most driven to think, wi' his reprobation deevil's doctrines !"
" Well — but — Mr. Mackaye, I know nothing about these
poor creatures."
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 85
" Then ye ought. What do ye ken ahoot the Pacific ?
Which is maist to your business ? That hare-backed hizzies
that play the harlot o' the other side o' the warld, or these —
these thousands o' barebacked hizzies that play the harlot o'
your ain side — made out o' your ain flesh and blude?- You a
poet ! True poetry, like true charity, my laddie, begins at
hame. If ye'Jl be a poet at a', ye maun be a cockney poet ;
and while the cockneys be what they be, ye maun write, like
Jeremiah of old, o' lamentation, and mourning, and woe, for
the sins o' your people. Gin ye want to learn the spirit o' a
people's poet, down wi' your Bible and read the auld Hebrew
prophets ; gin ye wad learn the style, read your Burns frae morn-
ing till night ; and gin ye'd learn the matter, just gang after
your nose, and keep your eyes open, and ye'll no miss it."
"But all this is so — so unpoetical."
" Hech ! Is there no the heeven above them there, and
the hell beneath them ? And God frowning and the deevil
grinning ? No poetry there ! Is no the verra idea of the
classic tragedy defined to be, man conquered by circum-
stance? Canna ye see it there'? And the verra idea of
the modern tragedy, man conquering circumstance ? and I'll
show ye that, too — in mony a garret where no eye but the
gude God's enters, to see the patience, and the fortitude, and
the self-sacrifice, and the luve stronger than death, that's shin-
ing in thae dark places o' the earth. Come wi' me, and see."
We went on through a back street or two, and then into a
huge, miserable house, which, a hundred years ago, perhaps,
had witnessed the luxury, and rung to the laughter of some
one great fashionable family alone there in their glory. Now
every room of it held its family, or its group of families — a
phalanstery of all the fiends ; its grand staircase, with tho
carved ballustrades rotting .and crumbling away piecemeal,
converted into a common sewer for all its inmates. Up stair
after stair we went, while wails of children, and curses of men,
Bteamed out upon the hot stifling rush of air from every door
way, till, at the topmost story, we knocked at a garret door.
We entered. Bare it was of furniture, comfortless, and
freezing cold; but, with the exception of the plaster dropping
from the roof, and the broken windows patched with rags and
paper, there was a scrupulous neatness about the whole, which
contrasted strangely with the filth and slovenliness outside.
There was no bed in the room — no table. On a broken
chair by the chimney sat a miserable old woman, fancying
that she was warming her hands over embers which had long
83 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
been cold, shaking her head, and muttering to herself with
palsied lips about the guardians and the workhouse ; while
upon a few rags on the floor lay a girl, ugly, small-pox-mark-
ed, hollow-eyed, emaciated, her only bed-clothes the skirt of a
large handsome new riding habit, at which two other girls,
wau and tawdry, were stitching busily, as they sat right and
left of hei on the floor. The old woman took no notice of us
as we entered ; but one of the girls looked up, and with a
pleased gesture of recognition, put her finger up to her lips,
and whispered, "Ellen's asleep."
" I'm not asleep, dears," answered a faint, unearthly voice ,
" I was only praying. Is that Mr. Mackaye ?"
"Ay, my lasses; but ha' ye gotten na fire the nicht ]"
"No," said one of them, bitterly, " we've earned no fire to-
night, by fair trade, or foul either."
The sick girl tried to raise herself up and speak, but was
stopped by a frightful fit of coughing and expectoration, as
painful, apparently, to the sufferer as it was, I confess, dis-
gusting even to me.
I saw Mackaye slip something into the hand of one of the
girls, and whisper, "A half-hundred of coals ;" to which she
replied with an eager look of gratitude that I never can for-
get, and hurried out. Then the sufferer, as if taking advantage
of her absence, began to speak quickly and eagerly.
" Oh, Mr. Mackaye — dear, kind Mr. Mackaye — do speak
to her ; and do speak to poor Lizzy here ! I'm not afraid to
say it before her, because she's more gentle like, and hasn't
learnt to say bad words yet — but do speak to them, and tell
them not to go the bad way, like all the rest. Tell them
it'll never prosper. I know it is want that drives them to it,
as it drives all of us — but tell them it's best to starve and die
honest girls, than to go about with the shame and the curse
of God on their hearts, for the sake of keeping this poor,
miserable, vile body together a few short years more in this
world o' sorrow. Do tell them, Mr. Mackaye."
" I'm thinking," said he, with the tears running down his
old, withered face, " ye'll mak a better preacher at that text
than I shall, Ellen."
"Oh, no, no ; who am I, to speak to them .' — it's no merit
o' mine, Mr. Mackaye, that the Lord's kept me pure through
it all. I should have been just as bad as any of them, if the
Lord had not kept me out of temptation in His great mercy,
by making me the poor, ill-favored creature I am. From
that time I was br.rnt when I was a child, and had the
ALTON LOCKE, 1AILOR AND POET. 87
small-pox afterward, oh ! how sinful I was, and repined an.l
rebelled against the Lord ! And now I see it was all His
blessed mercy to keep me out of evil, pure and unspotted iur
my dear Jesus, when he comes to take me to himself. I saw
Him last night, Mr. Mackaye, as plain as I see you now, all
in a flame of beautiful white fire, smiling at me so sweetly ;
and He showed me the wounds in His hands and His feet,
and He said, " Ellen, my own child, those that suffer with
me here, they shall be glorified with me hereafter, for I'm
fuming very soon to take you home."
Sandy shook his head at all this with a strange expression
of face, as if he sympathized and yet disagreed, respected and
yet smiled at the shape which her religious ideas had as
sumed ; and I remarked in the mean time that the poor girl's
neck and arm were all scarred and distorted, apparently from
the effects of a burn.
" Ah," said Sandy, at length, ,; I tauld ye ye were the
better preacher of the two ; ye've mair comfort to gie Sandy
than he has to gie the like o' ye. But how is the wound in
your back the day ?"
Oh, it was wonderfully better ! the doctor had come and
given her such blessed ease with a great thick leather he had
put under it, and then she did not feel the boards through so
much. " But oh, Mr. Mackaye, I'm so afraid it will make
me live longer to keep me away flora my dear Saviour. And
there's one thing, too, that's breaking my heart, and makes
me long to die this very minute, even if I didu't go to Heaven
at all, Mr. Mackaye." (And she burst out crying, and. be-
tween her sobs it came out, as well as I could gather, that
her notion was, that her illness was the cause of keeping the
giils in " the bad way" as she called it.) " For Lizzy here, I
did hope that she had repented of it after all my talking to her ;
but since I've been so bad, and the girls have had to keep me
most o' the time, she's gone out of nights just as bad as ever."
Lizzy had hid her face in her hands the greater part of this
speech. Now she looked, up passionately, almost fiercely —
" Repent — I have repented — 1 repent of it every hour — I
hate myself, and hate all the world because of it ; but I must
— 1 must ; I can not see her starve, and I can not starve
myself. When she first fell sick she kept on as long as she
could, doing what she could, and then between us we only
earned three shillings a week, and there was ever so much to
take off for fire, and twopence for thread, and fivepence for
candles ; and then we were always getting fined, because
S3 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
they never gave us out the work till too late on purpose, and
then they lowered prices again ; and now Ellen can't work
at all, and there's four of us with the old lady, to keep off
two's work that couldn't keep themselves alone."
" Doesn't the parish allow the old lady any thing V I ven-
tured to ask.
" They used to allow half-a-crown for a bit ; and the doc-
tor ordered Ellen things from the parish, hut it isn't half of
'em she ever got ; and when the meat came, it was half
times not fit to eat, and when it was her stomach turned
against it. If she was a lady she'd be cockered up with all
sorts of soups and jellies, and nice things, just the minute she
fancied 'em, and lie on a water bed instead of the bare floor —
and so she ought ; but where's the parish '11 do that 1 And
the hospital wouldn't take her in because she was incurable ;
and, besides, the old 'un wouldn't let her go — nor into the
union neither. When she's in a good-humor like, she'll sit
by her by the hour, holding her hand and kissing of it, and
nursing of it, for all the world like a doll. But she wont
hear of the workhouse ; so now, these last three weeks, they
takes off all her pay, because they says she must go into the
house, and not kill her daughter by keeping her out — as if
they warn't a killing her themselves."
" No workhouse — no workhouse !" said the old woman,
turning round suddenly, in a clear, lofty voice. " No work-
house, sir, for an officer's daughter."
And she relapsed into her stupor.
At that moment the other girl entered with the coals —
but without staying to light the fire, ran up to Ellen with
some trumpery dainty she had bought, and tried to persuade
her to eat it.
"We have been telling Mr. Mackaye every thing." said
poor Lizzy.
" A pleasant story, isn't it ? Oh ! if that fine lady, as
we're making that riding-habit for, would just spare only
half the money that goes in dressing her up to ride in the
park, to send us out to the colonies, wouldn't I be an honest
girl there ? Maybe an honest man's wife ! Oh ! my God !
wouldn't I slave my fingers to the bone for him ! Wouldn't
1 mend my life then ! I couldn't help it — it would be like
getting into heaven out of hell. But now — we must — we
must — I tell you. I shall go mad soon, I think, or take tc
drink. When I passed the gin-shop down there just now, I
had to run like mad for fear I should go in — and if I once
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 89
took to that — Now then to work again. Make up the fire,
Mrs. , please do."
And she sat down and began stitching frantically at the
riding-habit, from which the other girl had hardly lifted her
hands or eyes for a moment during our visit.
We made a motion as if to go.
"God bless you," said Ellen ; " come again soon, dear Mr.
Mackaye."
" Good-by," said the elder girl! "and good night to you.
Night and day's all the same here — we must have this home
by seven o'clock to-morrow morning. My lady's going to
ride early they say, whoever she may be, and we must just
sit up all night. It's often we haven't had our clothes off for
a week together, from four in the morning till two the next
morning sometimes — stitch, stitch, stitch. Somebody's wrote
a song about that — I'll learn to sing it — it '11 sound fitting-
like, up here."
" Better sing hymns," said Ellen.
" Hymns for ?" answered the other, and then burst
out into that peculiar wild, ringing, fiendish laugh — has my
reader never heard it ?
I pulled out the two or three shillings which I possessed, and
tried to make the girls take them, for the sake of poor Ellen.
" No ; you're a working-man, and we won't feed on you —
you'll want it some day — all the trade's going the same way
as we, as fast as ever it can !"
Sandy and I went down the stairs.
" Poetic element ? Yon lassie, rejoicing in her disfigure-
ment and not her beauty, like the nuns of Peterborough in
auld time — is their no poetry there ? That puir lassie, dying
on the bare boards and seeing her Saviour in her dreams, is
there na poetry there, callant ? That auld body owre the
fire, wi' her ' an officer's dochter,' is there na poetry there ?
That ither, prostituting hersel to buy food for her freen — is
there na poetry there ? — tragedy,
With hues as when some mighty painter dips
His pen in dyes of earthquake and eclipse.
Ay, Shelley's gran' ; always gran' ; but Fact is grander — ■
God and Satan are grander. All around ye, in every gin-
shop and costermonger's cellar,* are God and Satan at death
grips ; every garret is a haill Paradise Lost or Paradise
Regained : and will ve think it beneath ye to be the ' Peo-
ple's Poet ?'"
CHAPTER IX.
POETRY AND POETS.
In the history of individuals, as well as in that of naticti3,
there is often a period of sudden blossoming — a short luxuriant
summer, not without its tornados and thunder glooms, in
which all the buried seeds of past observation leap forth
together into life, and form, and beauty. And such with
/ me were the two years that followed. I thought — I talked
/ poetry to myself all day long. I wrote nightly on my return
from work. I am astonished, on looking back, at the variety
and quantity of my productions during that short time. My
/ subjects were intentionally and professedly cockney ones. I
had taken Mackaye at his word. I had made up my mind,
that if I had any poetic power, I must do my duty therewith
in that station of life to which it had pleased God to call me,
and look at every thing simply and faithfully as a London
artisan. To this, I suppose, is to be attributed the little
geniality and originality for which the public have kindly
praised my verses ; a geniality which sprung, not from the
atmosphere whence I drew, but from the honesty and single-
mindedness with which, I hope, 1 labored. Not from the
atmosphere, indeed — that was ungenial enough ; crime and
poverty, all-devouring competition, and hopeless struggles
against Mammon and Moloch, amid the roar of wheels, the
ceaseless stream of pale, hard faces, intent on gain, or brood-
ing over woe ; amid endless prison-walls of brick, beneath a
lurid, crushing sky of smoke and mist. It was a dark, noisy,
thunderous element, that London life ; a troubled sea that
can not rest, casting up mire and dirt ; resonant of the clank-
ing of chains, the grinding of remorseless machinery, the wail
of lost spirits from the, pit. And it did its work upon me ; it
gave a gloomy coloring, a glare as of some Dantean " Inferno,"
to all my utterances. It did not excite me, or make me
fierce — I was too much inured to it — but it crushed and sad-
dened me ; it deepened in me that peculiar melancholy of
intellectual youth, which Mr. Carlyle has christened forever
oy one of his immortal nicknames, " Werterism ;" I battened
on my own melancholy. I believed, I love to believe, that
every faco I passed bore the traces of discontent as deep aa
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 91
was my own — and was I so far wrong ] Was I so far wrong
either in the gloomy tone of my own poetry ? Should not a
London poet's work just now be to cry, like the Jew of old,
about the walls of Jerusalem, " Woe, woe to this city !" Is
this a time to listen to the voices of singing men and singing
women ? or to cry, " Oh ! that my head were a fountain of
tears, that I might weep for the sins of my people ?" Is it
not noteworthy, also, that it is in this vein that the Loudon
poets have always been the greatest ? Which of poor Hood's
lyrics have an equal chance of immortality with " The Song
of the Shirt" and " The Bridge of Sighs," rising, as they do,
right out of the depths of that Inferno, sublime from their
very simplicity ? Which of Charles Mackay's lyrics can
compare lor a moment with the Eschylean grandeur, the ter-
rible rhythmic lilt of his <: Cholera Chaunt,"
Dense on the stream the vapors lay,
Thick as wool on the cold highway ;
Spungy and dim each lonely lamp,
Shone o'er the streets so dull and damp;
The moonbeams could not pierce the cloud
That swathed the city like a shroud ;
There stood three shapes on the bridge alone,
Three figures by the coping-stone •
Gaunt and tall and undefined,
Spectres built of mist and wind.
* * # *
I see his foot-marks east and west —
I hear his tread in the silence fall —
He shall not sleep, he shall not rest —
He comes to aid us one and all.
Were men as wise as men might be,
They would not work for you, for me,
For him that cometh over the sea;
But they will not hear the warning voice :
The Cholera comes — Rejoice ! rejoice !
He shall be lord of the swarming town !
And mow them down, and mow them down !
* # * #
Not that I neglected, on the other hand, every means of ex-
tending the wanderings of my spirit into sunnier and more
verdant pathways. If I had to tell the gay ones above of
the gloom around me, I had also to go forth into the sunshine
to bring home if it were but a wild-flower garland to those
that sit in darkness and the shadow of death. That was all
that I could offer them. The reader shall judge, when he
has read this book throughout, whether I did not at last find
for them something tetter than even all the beauties of nature
92 ALTON LOCKK, TAILOR AND POET.
But it was on canvas, and not among realities, that I had
to choose ray garlands ; and therefore the picture galleries
hecame more than ever my favorite — haunt, I was going to
say ; but, alas ! it was not six times a year that I got access
to them. Still, when once every May I found myself, by
dint of a hard-saved shilling, actually within the walls of that
to me enchanted palace, the Royal Academy Exhibition —
Oh, ye rich ! who gaze round you at will upon your prints and
pictures, if hunger is, as they say, a better sauce than any
Ude invents, and fasting itself may become the handmaid of
luxury, you should spend, as I did perforce, weeks and months
shut out from every glimpse of Nature, if you would taste
her beauties, even on canvas, with perfect relish and childish
self-abandonment. How I loved and blest those painters !
how I thanked Creswick for every transparent, shade-check-
ered pool ; Fielding, for every rain-clad down ; Cooper, for
every knot of quiet cattle beneath the cool, gray willows ;
Stanfield, for every snowy peak, and sheet of foam-fringed
sapphire — each and every one of them a leaf out of the magic
book which else was ever closed to me. Again, I say, how I
loved and blest those painters ! On the other hand, I was
not neglecting to read as well as to write poetry ; and, to
speak first of the highest, I know no book, always excepting
Milton, which at once so quickened and exalted my poetical
view of man and his history, as that great prose poem, the
single epic of modern days, Thomas Carlyle's " French Rev-
olution." Of the general effect which his works had on me,
I shall say nothing : it was the same as they have had, thank
God, on thousands of my class and of every other. But that
book above all first recalled me to the overwhelming and yet
ennobling knowledge that there was such a thing as Duty ;
first taught me to see in history not the mere farce-tragedy of
man's crimes and follies, but the dealings of a righteous Ruler
of the universe, whose ways are in the great deep, and whom
the sins and errors, as well as the virtues and discoveries of
man, must obey and justify.
Then, in a happy day, I fell on Alfred Tennyson's poetry,
and found there, astonished and delighted, the embodiment of
thoughts about the earth around me which I had concealed,
because I fancied them peculiar to myself. Why is it that
the latest poet has generally the greatest influence over the
minds of the young ? Surely not for the mere charm of nov-
elty ? The reason is, that be, living amid the same hopes,
^he same temptationr *he same sphere of observation as they,
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 93
gives utterance and outward form to the very questions "which,
vague and wordless, have been exercising- their hearts. Andy
what endeared Tennyson especially to me, the working-man.
was, as I afterward discovered, the altogether democratic ten-
dency of his poems. True, all great poets are by their office
democrats ; seers of man only as man ; singers of the joys, the
sorrows, the aspirations common to all humanity ; but in Al-
fred Tennyson there is an element especially democratic, truly
leveling; not his political opinions, about which I know noth-
ing, and care less, but his handling of the trivial, evcry-d ay J
sights and sounds of nature. Brought up, as 1 understand, in a
part of England which possesses not much of the picturesque,
and nothing of that which the vulgar call sublime, he has
learnt to see that in all nature, in the hedgerow and the sand-
bank, as well as in the Alp peak and the ocean waste, is a
world of true sublimity, a minute infinite — an ever-fertile gar-
den of poetic images, the roots of which are in the unfathom-
able and the eternal, as truly as any phenomenon which as
tonishes and awes the eye. The descriptions of the desolate
pools and creeks where the dying swan floated, the hint of the
silvery marsh mosses by Mariana's moat, came to me like
revelations. 1 always knew there was something beautiful,
wonderful, sublime in those flowery dykes of Battersea-fields ;
in the long gravelly sweeps of that lone tidal shore ; and here
was a man who had put them into words for me ! This is
what I call democratic art — the revelation of the poetry which
lies in common things. And surely all the age is tending in
that direction : in Landseer and his dogs — in Fielding and
his downs, with a host of noble fellow-artists — and in all
authors who have really seized the nation's mind, from Crabbe
and Burns and Wordsworth to Hood and Dickens, the great .
tide sets ever onward, outward, toward that which is common I
to the many, not that which is exclusive to the few — toward
the likeness of Him who causes His rain to fall on the just
and on the unjust, and His sun to shine on the evil and the
good ; who knoweth the cattle upon a thousand hills, and all
the beasts of the field are in His sight.
Well — I must return to my story. And here some one
may ask me, "But did you not find this true spiritual de-
mocracy, this universal knowledge and sympathy, in Shaks-
peare above all other poets ?" It may be my shame to have
to confess it ; but though I find it now, I did not then. I do
not think, however, my case is singular : from what I can
ascertain, there is even with regularly educated minds a
9 J ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
period of life at which that great writer is not appreciated,
just on account of his very greatness; on account of the deep
and large experience which the true understanding of his plays
requires — experience of man, of history, of art, and above all
of those sorrows whereby, as Hezekiah says, and as I have
learnt almost too well — "whereby men live, and in all which
is the life of the spirit." At seventeen, indeed, I had devour-
ed Shakspeare, though merely for the food to my fancy which
his plots and incidents supplied, for the gorgeous coloring of
his scenery ; but at the period of which I am now writing, I
bad exhausted that source of mere pleasure ; I was craving
for more explicit and dogmatic teaching than any which he
seemed to supply ; and lor three years, strange as it may ap-
pear, I hardly ever looked into his pages. Under what circum-
stances I afterward recurred to his exhaustless treasures, my
leaders shall in due time be told.
So I worked away manfully with such tools and stock as
I possessed, and of course produced, at first, like all young
writers, some sufficiently servile imitations of my favorite poets.
"Ugh !" said Sandy, " wha wants mongrels atween Burns
and Tennyson 1 A gude stock baith, but gin ye'd cross the
breed ye maun unite the spirits, and no the manners, o' the
men. Why maun ilk a one the noo steal his neebor's barna-
cles before he glints out o' windows? Mak' a style for yoursel',
laddie ; ye're na mair Scots hind than ye are Lincolnshire
laird ; sae gang yer ain gate' and leave them to gang theirs;
and just mak a gran', brode. simple Saxon style lor yoursel'."
" But how can T, till I know what sort of a style it ouffht
to be ?"
"O! but yon's amazing like lom Sheridan's answer to his
father. 'Tom,' says the auld man, 'I'm thinking ye maun
tak a wife.' ' Verra weel, father,' says the puir skellum ;
' and wha's wife shall I tak ?' Wha's style shall I tak ] say
all the callants the noo. Mak' a style as ye would mak' a
wife, by marrying her a' to yoursel' ; and ye'll nae mair ken
what's your style till it's made, than ye'll ken what your
wile's like till she's been mony a year by your ingle."
" My dear Mackaye," I said, " you have the most unmer-
ciful way of raising difficulties, and then leaving poor fellows
to lay the ghost for themselves."
"Hech, then, I'm a'thegither a negative teacher, as they
ca' it in the new lallans. I'll gang out o' my gate to tell a
man his kye are laired, but I'm no obligated thereby to pu'
them out for him. After a', nae man is rid o' a difficulty tiU
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 95
he's conquered it single-handed for himsel' : besides, I'm nae
poet, mair's the glide hap for you."
" Why, then ?"
" Och, och ! they're puir, feckless, crabbit, unpractical
bodies, thae poets : but if it's your doom, ye maun dree it ;
and I'm sair afearcd ye ha' gotten the disease o' genius,
mair's the pity, and maun write, I suppose, willy-nilly. Some
folks' booels are that made o' catgut, that they canna stir
without chirruping and screeking."
However, astro pcrcitzis, I wrote on ; and in about two
years and a half had got together " Songs of the Hig hways "
enough to fill a small octavo volume, the circumstances ot
whose birth shall be given hereafter. Whether I ever at-
tained to any thing like an original style, readers must judge
for themselves — the readers of the said volume, I mean, for I
have inserted none of those poems in this my autobiography ;
first, because it seems too like puffing my own works ; and
next, because I do not want to injure the as yet not over
great sale of the same. But, if any one's curiosity is so far
excited that he wishes to see what I have accomplished, the
best advice which I can give him is, to go forth and buy all
the working-men's poetry which has appeared during the last
twenty years, without favor or exception ; among which he
must needs, of course, find mine, and also, I am happy to say,
a great deal which is much better and more instructive than
mine.
CHAPTER X.
HOW FOLKS TURN CHARTISTS.
Those who read my story only for amusement, I advise
to skip this chapter. Those, on the other hand, who really
wish to ascertain what working-men actually do suffer — to see
whether their political discontent has not its roots, not merely
in fanciful ambition, but in misery and slavery most real and
agonizing — those in whose eyes the accounts of a system, or
rather barbaric absence of all system, which involves starva-
tion, nakedness, prostitution, and long imprisonment in dun-
geons worse than the cells of the Inquisition, will be invested
with something at least of tragic interest, may, I hope, think
it worth their while to learn how the clothes which they
wear are made, and listen to a few occasional statistics, which
though they may seem to the wealthy mere lists of dull fig-
ures, are to the workmen symbols of terrible physical realities
— of hunger, degradation, and despair.*
Well : one day our employer died. He had been one of
the old sort of fashionable West-end tailors in the fast decreas-
ing honorable trade ; keeping a modest shop, hardly to be dis-
tinguished from a dwelling-house, except by his name on the
window-blinds. He paid good prices for worl. , though net
as good, of course, as he had given twenty years before, and
prided himself upon having all his work done at home. His
work-rooms, as I have said, were no elysiums ; but still, as
good, alas ! as those of three tailors out of four. He was
proud, luxurious, foppish ; but he was honest and kindly
enough, and did many a generous thing by men who had
been long in his employ. At all events, his journeymen
could live on what he paid them.
But his son, succeeding to the business, determined, like
Rehoboam of old, to go ahead Avith the times. Fired with
the great spirit of the nineteenth century — at least with that
one which is vulgarly considered its especial glory — he resolved
to make haste to be rich. His father had made money very
* Facts still worse than those which Mr. Locke's story contains have
been made public by the Morning Chronicle in a series of noble letters
on "Labor and the Poor; 1 ' which we entreat all Christian people to
"read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest." "That will be better foi
them ;" as Mahomet, in similar cases, used to Bay.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 97
slowly of late ; while dozens, who had begun business long
after him, had now retired to luxurious ease and suburban
villas. Why should he remain in the minority? Why
should he not get rich as fast as he could 1 Why should he
stick to the old, slow-going, honorable trade ? Out of some
450 West-end tailors, there were not one hundred left who
were old-fashioned and stupid enough to go on keeping down
their own profits by having all their work done at home and
at first-hand. - Ridiculous scruples ! The government knew
none such. Were not the army clothes, the post-office clothes,
the policemen's clothes, furnished by contractors and sweaters,
who hired the work at low prices, and let it out again to
journeyman at still lower ones ? Why should he pay his
men two shillings where the government paid them one ?
Were there not cheap houses even at the West-end, which
had saved several thousands a year merely by reducing their
workmen's wages 1 And if the workmen chose to take lower
wages, he was not bound actually to make them a present of
more than they asked for ! They would go to the cheapest
market for any thing they wanted, and so must he. Besides,
wages had really been quite exorbitant. Half his men threw
each of them as much money away in gin and beer yearly,
as would pay two workmen at a cheap house. Why was he
to be robbing his family of comforts to pay for their extrava-
gance 1 And charging his customers, too, unnecessarily high
prices — it was really robbing the public !
Such, I suppose, were some of the arguments which led to
an official announcement, one Saturday night, that our young
employer intended to enlarge his establishment, for the purpose y
of commencing business in the " show trade ;" and that, em- \
ulous of Messrs. Aaron, Levi, and the rest of that class, mag-
nificent alterations were to take place in the premises, to make
room for which our work-rooms were to be demolished, and
that for that reason — for of course it was only for that reason
— all work would in future be given out, to be made up at
the men's own homes.
Our employer's arguments, if they were such as I suppose,
were reasonable enough according to the present code of com
mercial morality. But strange to say, the auditory, insensible
to the delight with which the public would view the splendid
architectural improvements — with taste too groveling to ap-
preciate the glories of plate-glass shop fronts and brass scroll
work — too selfish to rejoice, for its own sake, in the beauty of
arabesques and chandeliers, which though they never might
E
b
98 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
behold, the astonished public would — with souls too niggardly
to leap for joy at the thought that gents would henceforth buy
the registered guanaco vest, and the patent elastic omni-seas
onura paletot half-a-crown cheaper than ever — or that needy
nobleman would pay three pound-ten, instead of five pounds,
for their footmen's liveries — received the news, clod-hearted
as they were, in sullen silence, and actually', when they got
into the street, broke out into murmurs, perhaps into execra-
tions.
" Silence !" said Crossthwaite ; " walls have ears. Come
down to the nearest house of call, and talk it out like men.
instead of grumbling in the street, like fish-fags."
So down we went. Crossthwaite, taking my arm, strode
on in moody silence — once muttering to himself bitterly,
" Oh, yes ; all right and natural ! What can the little
sharks do but follow the big ones ?"
We took a room, and Crossthwaite coolly saw us all in ; and
locking the door, stood with his back against it.
" Now then, mind, ' One and all,' as the Cornishmen say,
and no peaching. If any man is scoundrel enough to carry
tales, I'll—"
" Do what ?" asked Jemmy Downes, who had settled him-
self on the table with a pipe and a pot of porter. " You
arn't the King of the Cannibal Islands, as I know of, to cut
a cove's head off!"
" No ; but if a poor man's prayer can bring God's curse
down upon a traitor's head — it may stay on his rascally-
shoulders till it rots."
" If if 's and an's were pots and pans. — Look at Shechem
Isaacs, that sold penknives in the street six months ago, now
a-riding in his own carriage, all along of turning sweater. If
God's curse is like that — I'll be happy to take any man's
shai-e of it."
Some new idea seemed twinkling in the fellow's cunning
bloated face as he spoke. I, and others also, shuddered at
his words ; but we all forgot them a moment afterward, as
Crossthwaite began to speak.
" We were all bound to expect this. Every working tailoi
must come to this at last, on the present system ; and we are
only lucky in having been spared so long. You all know
where this will end — in the same misery as fifteen thousand
out of twenty thousand of our class are enduring now. We
shall become the slaves, often the bodily prisoners, of Jews,
middlemen, and sweaters, who draw their livelihood out of our
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. M
starvation. We shall have to face, as the rest have, ever de-
creasing prices oflabor, ever increasing profits made out of that
labor by the contractors who will employ us — arbitrary fines,
inflicted at the caprice of hirelings — the competition of women,
and children, and starving Irish — our hours of work will in-
crease one-third, our actual pay decrease to less than one-half;
and iu all this we shall have no hope, no chance of improve-
ment in wages, but ever more penury, slavery, misery, as we
are pressed on by those who are sucked by fifties — almost by
hundreds — yearly, out of the honorable trade in which we
were brought up, into the infernal system of contract work.
which is devouring our trade and many others, body and soul.
Our wives will be forced to sit up night and day to help us —
our children must labor from the cradle, without chance cf
going to school, hardly of breathing the fresh air of Heaven,
our boys, as they grow up must turn beggars or paupers — our
daughters, as thousands do, must eke out their miserable earn-
ings by prostitution. And, after all, a whole family will not
gain what one of us had been doing, as yet, single-handed.
You know there will be no hope for us. There is no us<T
appealing to government or parliament. I don't want to
talk politics here. I shall keep them for another place. But
you can recollect as well as I can, when a deputation of us
went up to a member of parliament — one that was reputed a
philosopher, and a political economist, and a liberal — and set
before him the ever-increasing penury and misery of our trade
and of those connected with it ; you recollect his answer —
that, however glad he would be to help us, it was impossible
— he could not alter the laws of nature — that wages were
regulated by the amount of competition among the men them-
selves, and that it was no business of government, or any one
else, to interfere in contracts between the employer and em-
ployed, that those things regulated themselves by the laws of
political economy, which it was madness and suicide to op
pose. He may have been a wise man. I only know that he
was a rich one. Every one speaks well of the bridge which
carries him over. Every one fancies the laws which fill his
pockets to be God's laws. But I say this : If neither gov-
ernment nor members of parliament can help us, Ave must
help ourselves. Help yourselves, and Heaven will help you.
Combination among ourselves is the only chance. One thing
we can do — sit still."
" And starve !" said some one.
" Yes, and starve ! Better starve than sin. I say, it is a
100 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND l'OET.
fciu tc give in to this system. It is a sin to add our weight
to the crowd of artisans who are now choking and strang-
ling each other to death, as the prisoners did in the black hole
of Calcutta. Let those who will, turn beasts of prey, and
feed upon their fellows ; but let us at least keep ourselves
pure. It may be the law of political civilization, the law of
nature, that the rich should eat up the poor, and the poor eat
up each other. Then I here rise up and curse that law, that
civilization, that nature. Either I will destroy them, or they
shall destroy me. As a slave, as an increased burden on my
fellow-suflerers, I will not live. So help me God ! I will
take no work home to my house ; and I call upon every one
here to combine, and to sign a protest to that effect."
" What's the use of that, my good Mr. Crossthwaitc V in-
terrupted some one querulously. " Don't you know what
come of the strike a few years ago, when this piece-work and
sweating first came in ? The masters made fine promises,
and never kept 'em ; and the men who stood out had their
places filled up with poor devils who were glad enough to
take the work at any price — just as ours will be. There's
no use kicking against the pricks. All the rest have come to
it, and so must we. We must live somehow, and half a
leaf is better than no bread ; and even that half-loaf will go
into other men's mouths, if we don't snap it at once. Besides,
we can't force others to strike. We may strike and starve
ourselves, but what's the use of a dozen striking out of twenty
thousand 1"
"Will you sign the protest, gentlemen, or not?" asked
Crossthwaite, in a determined voice.
Some half-dozen said they would, if the others would.
" And the others won't. Well, after all, one man must
take the responsibility, and I am that man. I will sign the
protest by myself. I will sweep a crossing — I will turn cress-
gatherer, rag-picker ; I will starve piecemeal, and see my
wife starve with me ; but do the wrong thing I will not !
The Cause wants martyrs. If I must be one, I must."
All this while my mind had been undergoing a strange
perturbation The notion of escaping that infernal work-
room and the company I met there — of taking my work
home, and thereby, as I hoped, gaining more time for study
— at least, having my books on the spot ready at every odd
moment, was most enticing. I had hailed the proposed change
as a blessing to me, till I heard Crossthwaite's arguments :
ict that I had not known the facts before, but. it had never
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 101
struck me till then that it -was a real sin against my class tc
make myself a party in the system by which they were allow-
ing themselves (under temptation enough, God knows), to be
enslaved. But now I looked with honor on the gulf of pen-
ury before me, into the vortex of which not only I, but my
whole trade, seemed irresistibly sucked. I thought with
shame and remorse of the few shillings which I had earned,
at various times by taking piece-work home, to buy my can-
dles for study. I whispered my doubts to Crossthwaite, as
he sat, pale and determined, watching the excited and queru-
lous discussions among the other workmen.
" What ? So you expect to have time to read ? Study,
after sixteen hours a day stitching? Study, when you can
not earn money enough to keep you from wasting and shrink-
ing away day by day ? Study with your heart full of shame
and indignation, fresh from daily insult and injustice"? Study,
with the black cloud of despair and penury in front of you ?
Little time, or heart, or strength, will you have to study,
when you are making the same coats you make now, at half
the price."
I put my r name down beneath Crossthwaite's on the paper
which he handed me, and went out with him.
"Ay," he muttered to himself, "be slaves — what you are
worthy to be, that you will be ! You dare not combine — you
dare not starve — you dare not die — and therefore you dare not
be free ! Oh ! for six hundred men like Barbaroux's Marseil-
lois — ' who knew how to die !' "
" Surely, Crossthwaite, if matters were properly represented
to the government, they would not, for their own existence
sake, to put conscience out of the question, allow such a
system to continue growing."
" Government — government ? You a tailor, and not know
that government are the very authors of this system ? Not
to know that they first set the example, by getting the army
and navy clothes made by contractors, and taking the lowest
tenders ? Not to know that the police clothes, the postmen's
clothes, the convicts' clothes, are all contracted for on the
same infernal plan, by sweaters, and sweater's sweaters, and
sweater's sweater's sweaters, till government work is just the
very last, lowest resource to which a poor starved-out wretch,
betakes himself to keep body and soul together? Why, the
government prices, in almost every department, are half, and
less than half, the very lowest living price. I tell you, the
careless iniquity of government about these things will come
102 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
out some day. It will be known, the whole abomination,
and future generations will class it with the tyrannies of the
Roman emperors and the Norman barons. Why, it's a fact,
that the colonels of the regiments — noblemen, most of them
— make their own vile profit out of us tailors — out of the
pauperism of the men, the slavery of the children, the prosti-
tution of the women. They get so much a uniform allowed
them by government to clothe the men with ; and then — then,
they let out the jobs to the contractors at less than half what
government give them, and pocket the difference. And then
you talk of appealing to government !"
" Upon my word," I said, bitterly, "we tailors seem to owe
the army a double grudge. They not only keep under other
artisans, but they help to starve us first, and then shoot us,
if we complain too loudly."
/ " Oh, ho ! your blood's getting up, is it ? Then you're in
the humor to be told what you have been hankering to know
so long — where Mackaye and I go at night. We'll strike
while the iron's hot, and go down to the Chartist meeting
at ."
" Pardon me, my dear fellow," I said. " I can not bear the
thought of being mixed up in conspiracy — perhaps, in revolt
and bloodshed. Not that I am afraid. Heaven knows, I am
not. But I am too much harassed, miserable, already. I see
too much wretchedness around me, to lend my aid in increas-
ing the sum of suffering, by a single atom, among rich and
poor, even by righteous vengeance."
" Conspiracy ? Bloodshed ? What has that io do with
the Charter ? It suits the venal Mammonite press well
enough to jumble them together, and cry 'Murder, rape, and
robbery,' whenever the six points are mentioned ; but they
know, and any man of common sense ought to know, that
the Charter is just as much an open political question as the
Reform Bill, and ten times as much as Magna Charta was,
when it got passed. What have the six points, right or wrong,
to do with the question whether they can be obtained by
moral force, and the pressure of opinion alone, or require what
we call ulterior measures to get them carried ? Come along !"
So with him I went that nijrht.
O
" Well, Alton ! where was the treason and murder ? Your
nose must have been a sharp one, to smell out any there.
Did you hear any thing that astonished your weak mind so
very exceedingly, after all ?"
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. I0:t
" The only thing that did astonish me, was to hear men oi
my own class — and lower still, perhaps, some of them — speak
with such fluency and eloquence. Such a fund of information
— such excellent English — where did they get it all ?"
" From the God who knows nothing about ranks. They're
the unknown great, the unaccredited heroes, as Master Thomas
Carl vie would say, whom the flunkies aloft have not ac-
knowledged yet — though they'll be forced to, some day, with
a vengeance. Are you convinced, once for all ?"
I really do not understand political questions, Crossth-
waite."
" Does it want so very much wisdom to understand the
rights and the wrongs of all that? Are the people represent-
ed? Are, you represented? Do you feel like a man that's
got any one to fight your battle in parliament, my young
friend, eh?"
"I'm sure I don't know — "
" Why, what in the name of common sense — what interest
or feeling of yours or mine, or any man's you ever spoke to,
except the shopkeeper, do Alderman A or Lord C
D represent ? They represent property — and we have
none. They represent rank — we have none. Vested inter-
ests — we have none. Large capitals — those are just what
crush us. Irresponsibility of employers, slavery of the em-
ployed, competition among masters, competition among work-
men, that is the system they represent — they preach it — they
glory in it. Why, it is the very ogre that is eating us all up.
They are chosen by the few, they represent the few, and they
make laws for the many — and yet you don't know whether
or not the people arc represented !"
We were passing by the door of the Victoria Theatre ; it
was just half-price time — and the beggary and rascality of
London were pouring in to their low amusement, from the
neighboring gin palaces and thieves' cellars. A herd of rag-
ged boys, vomiting forth slang, filth, and blasphemy, pushed
past us, compelling us to take good care of our pockets.
" Look there ! look at the amusements, the training, the
civilization, which the government permits to the children of
Ihe people ! These licensed pits of darkness, traps of tempta-
tion, profligacy, and ruin, triumphantly yawning night after
night — and then tell me that the people who see their chil-
dren thus kidnapped into hell, are represented by a govern-
ment who licenses such things !"
" WouH a change in the franchise cure that ?'
\
104 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
' Household suffrage mightn't — hut give us the Charter,
and we'll see about it ! Give us the Charter, and we'll send
workmen into parliament that shall soon find out whether
something better can't be put in the way of the ten thousand
boys and girls in London who live by theft and prostitution,
than the tender mercies of the Victoria— a pretty name !
They say the Queen's a good woman — and I don't doubt it.
I wonder often if she knows what her precious namesake here
is like 1"
" But, really, I can not see how a mere change in repre-
sentation can cure such things as that."
"Why, didn't they tell us, before the Reform Bill, that ex-
tension of the suffrage was to cure every thing? And how
jean you have too much of a good thing ? We've only taken
\them at their word, we Chartists. Haven't all politicians
peen preaching for years that England's national greatness
was all owing to her political institutions — to Magna Charta,
and the Bill of Bights, and representative parliaments, and
all that? It was but the other day I got hold of some Tory
paper, that talked about the English constitution, and the
balance of queen, lords, and commons, as the ' Talismanic
Palladium' of the country. 'Gad, we'll see if a move onward
in the same line won't better the matter. If the balance of
classes is such a blessed thine:, the sooner we get the balance
equal, the better; for its rather lopsided just now, no one
can deny. So, representative institutions are the talismanic
palladium of the nation, are they ? The palladium of the
classes that have them, I dare say ; and that's the very best
reason why the classes that haven't got 'em should look out
for the same palladium for themselves. What's sauce for
the gander is sauce for the goose, isn't it ? We'll try — we'll
see whether the talisman they talk of has lost its power all
of a sudden since '32 — whether we can't rub the magic ring
a little for ourselves, and call up genii to help us out of the
mire, as the shopkeepers and the gentlemen have done."
From that night I was a Chartist, heart and soul — and so
were a million and a half more of the best artisans in En-
gland — at least, I had no reason to be ashamed of my com-
pany. Yes ; I too, like Crossthwaite, took the upper classes
at their word ; bowed down to the idol of political institutions,
and pinned my hopes of salvation on ' the possession of one.
tenthousandth part of a talker in the national palaver.'
True, 1 desired the Charter, at first (as I do, indeed, at thi
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. uu
moment), as a means lo glorious ends — not only because il
Mould give a chance of elevation, a free sphere of action, to
lowly worth and talent ; but because it was the path to
reforms — social, legal, sanitary, educational — to which the
veriest Tory — certainly not the great and good Lord. Ashley
— would not object. But soon, with me, and I am afraid
with many, many more, the means became, by the frailty of
poor human nature, an end, an idol in itself. I had so made
up my mind that it was the only method of getting what I
wanted, that I neglected, alas ! but too often, to try the
methods which lay already by me. "If we had but the
Charter" — was the excuse for a thousand lazinesses, procras-
tinations. "If we had but the Charter" — 1 should be good,
and free, and happy. Fool that I was! It was within,
rather than without, that I needed reform.
And so I began to look on man (and too many of us, I am
afraid, are doing so) as the creature and puppet of circum-
stances — of the particular outward system, social or political,
in which he happens to find himself. An abominable heresy,
no doubt; but, somehow, it appears to ma just the same as
Benthamites, and economists, and high-churchmen, too, for
that matter, have been preaching for the last twenty years
with great applause from their respective parties. One set
informs the world that it is to be regenerated by cheap bread,
free trade, and that peculiar form of the " freedom of indus-
try" which, in plain language, signifies " the despotism of
capital ;" and which, whatever it means, is merely some out-
ward system, circumstance, or "dodge," about man, and not
in him. Another party's nostrum is more churches, more
schools, more clergymen — excellent things in their way — bet-
ter even than cheap bread, or free trade, provided only that
they are excellent — that the churches, schools, clergymen,
are good ones. But the party of whom I am speaking seem
to us workmen to consider the quality quite a secondary con-
sideration, compared with the quantity. They expect the
world to be regenerated, not by becoming more a Church —
none would gladlier help them in bringing that about than
the Chartists themselves, paradoxical as it may seem — but
by being dosed somewhat more with a certain " Church sys-
tem," circumstance, or " dodge." For my part, I seem tu
have learnt that the only thing to regenerate the world is not
more of any system, good or bad, but simply more of the
Spirit of God.
About tlio supposed omnipotence "f 'h* 1 Charter I hav f
IOC ALTON LOCKE.. TAILOR AND POET.
found out my mistake. I believe no more in " Morison's-
Pill-remedies," as Thomas Carlyle calls them. Talismans
are worthless. The age of spirit-compelling spells, whether of
parchment or carbuncle, is past — if, indeed, it ever existed.
The Charter will no more make men good, than political
economy, or the observance of the Church Calendar — a i'act
which we working-men, I really believe, have, under the
pressure of wholesome defeat and God-sent affliction, found
out sooner than our more " enlightened" fellow-idolaters.
But, at that time, as I have confessed already, we took
our betters at their word, and believed in Morison's Pills.
Only, as we looked at the world from among a class of facts
(somewhat different from theirs, we differed from them pro-
portionably as to our notions of the proper ingredients in the
said Pill.
But what became of our protest.
It was received — and disregarded. As for turning us off,
we had, dc facto, like Coriolanus banished the Romans,
turned our master off All the other hands, some forty in
number, submitted and took the yoke upon them, and went
down into the house of bondage, knowing whither they went.
Every man of them is now a beggar, compared with what
he was then. Many are dead in the prime of life of con-
sumption, bad food and lodging, and the peculiar diseases of
our trade. Some have not been heard of lately — we fancy
them imprisoned in some sweaters' dens — but thereby hangs a
tale, whereof more hereafter.
But it was singulai*, that every one of the six who had
merely professed their conditional readiness to sign the protest,
were contumeliously discharged the next day, without any
reason being assigned. It was evident that there had been
a traitor at the meeting ; and every one suspected Jemmy
Downes, especially as he fell into the new system with sus-
piciously strange alacrity. But it was as impossible to prove
the offense against him as to punish him lor it. Of that
wretched man, too, and his subsequent career, 1 shall have
somewhat to say hereafter. ~ iT ~~ -'" there is a God who
judgeth the earth !
But now behold me and my now intimate and beloved
friend, Crossthwaite, with nothing to do — a gentlemanlike
occupation; but, unfortunately, in our class, involving starv-
ation. "What was to be done? We applied for work at
neverul "honorable shops ;" but at all we received the same
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 107
answer. Their trailo was decreasing — the public ran daily
more and more to the cheap show shops — and they themselves
were forced, in order to compete with these latter, to put
more and more of their work out at contract prices. Facilis
descensus Avcrni! Having once been hustled out of the
serried crowd of competing workmen, it was impossible to
force our way in again. So, a week or ten days past, our
little stocks of money were exhausted. I was downhearted
at once ; but Crossthwaite bore up gayly enough.
" Katie and I can pick a crust together without snarling
over it. And, thank God, I have no children, and never in-
tend to have, if I can keep true to myself, till the good times
come."
"Oh ! Crossthwaite, are not children a blessing ?"
"Would they be a blessing to me now? No, my lad.
Let those bring slaves into the world who will ! I will never
beget children to swell the numbers of those who are tram-
pling each other down in the struggle for daily bread, to
minister in ever deepening poverty and misery to the rich
man's luxury — perhaps his lust."
" Then you believe in the Malthusian doctrines?"
"I believe them to be an infernal lie, Alton Locke ; though
good and wise people like Miss Martineau may sometimes
be deluded into preaching them. I believe there's room on
English soil for twice the number there is now ; and when
we get the Charter we'll prove it ; we'll show that God
meant living human heads and hands to be blessings and not
curses, tools and not burdens. But in such times as these,
let those who have wives be as though they had none — as
St. Paul said, when he told his people under the Roman em-
peror to be above begetting slaves and martyrs. A man of
the people should keep himself as free from incumbrances
as he can just now. He will find it all the more easy to
dare and suffer for the people, when their turn comes — "
And he set his teeth firmly, almost savagely.
'T think I can earn a few shillings, now and then, by
writing for a paper I know of. If that won't do, I must take
up agitating for a trade, and live by spouting, as many a
Vory member as well as Radical ones do. A man may do
worse, for he may do nothing. At all events, my only chance
now is to help on the Charter; for the sooner it comes the
better for me. And if I die — why the little woman won't be
long in coming after me, I know that well ; and there's a
tough business got well over for both of us ! '
105 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
" Hech," said Sandy,
" To every man
Death comes but once a life —
as my countryman, Mr. Macaulay says, in thae gran' Roman
ballants o' his. But for ye, Alton, laddie, ye're owre young
to start off in the People's Church Meelitant, sae just bide
wi' me, and the barrel o' meal in the corner there winna
waste, nae mair than it did wi' the widow o' Zareptha ; a
tale which coincides sae weel wi' the everlasting righteous-
nesses, that I'm at times no inclined to consider it a'thegither
mythical."
But I, with thankfulness which vented itself through my
eyes, finding my lips alone too narrow for it, refused to eat
the bread of idleness.
" A weel, then, ye'll just mind the shop, and dust books
whiles ; I'm getting auld and stiff, and ha' need o' help i' the
business."
" No," 1 said ; <; you say so out of kindness; but if you can
afford no greater comforts than these, you can not afford to
keep me in addition to yourself."
" Hech, then ! How do ye ken that the auld Scot eats a'
he makes? I was na born the spending side o' Tweed, my
man. But gin ye dauer, why dinna ye pack up your duds,
and the poems wi' them, and gang till your cousin i' the uni-
versity ? he'll surely put you in the way o' publishing them.
He's bound to it by blude ; and there's na shame in asking
him to help you toward reaping the fruits o' your ain labors.
A few punds on a bond for repayment when the edition was
sauld, noo, I'd do that for mysel' ; but I'm thinking ye'd
better try to get a list o' subscribers. Dinna mind your in-
dependence ; it's but spoiling the Egyptians, ye ken ; and
thae bit ballants will be their money's worth, I'll warrant,
and tell them a wheen facts they're no that well acquentit
wi'. Hech? Johnnie, my Chartist ?"
" Why not go to my uncle ?"
" Puir sugar-and-spice-selling baiilie bodie ! is there aught
in his ledger about poetry, and the incommensurable value o'
the products o' genius? Gang till the young scholar : he's a
canny one, too, and he'll ken it to be worth his while to fash
himsel' a wee anent it."
So I packed up my little bundle, and lay awake all that
night in a fever of expectation about the as yet unknown
world of green fields and woods through which my road t<i
Cambridge lay.
CHAPTER XI.
"THE YARD WHERE THE GENTLEMEN LIVE."
I may be forgiven, surely, if I run somewhat into detail
about this my first visit to the country.
I had, as I have said before, literally never been farther a-
field than Fulham or Battersea Pu'se. One Sunday evening,
indeed, I had got as far as Wandsworth Common ; but it was
March, and, to my extreme disappointment, the heath was
not in flower.
But, usually, my Sundays had been spent entirely in study ;
which to me was rest, so worn out were both my body and
my mind with the incessant drudgery of my trade, and the
slender fare to which I restricted myself. Since I had lodged
with Mackaye, certainly, my food had been better. I had
not required to stint my appetite for money wherewith to buy
candles, ink, and pens. My wages, too, had increased with
my years, and altogether I found myself gaining in strength,
though I had no notion how much I possessed till I set forth
on this walk to Cambridge.
It was a glorious morning at the end of May ; and when
I escaped from the pall of smoke which hung over the city, I
found the sky a sheet of cloudless blue. How I watched for
the ending of the rows of houses, which lined the road for
miles — the great roots of London, running far out into the
country, up which poured past me an endless stream of food,
and merchandise, and human beings — the sap of the huge
metropolitan life-tree ! How each turn of the road opened a
fresh line of terraces or villas, till hope deferred made the heart
sick, and the country seemed — like the place where the rain-
bow touches the ground, or the El Dorado of Raleigh's Guiana
settlers — always a little farther off! How, between gaps in
the houses, right and left. I caught tantalizing glimpses of
green fields, shut from me by dull lines of high-spiked palings !
How I peeped through gates and over fences at trim lawns
and gardens, and longed to stay, and admire, and speculate
on the names of the strange plants and gaudy flowers ; and
then hurried on, always expecting to find something still finer
ahead — something really worth stopping to look at — till the
houses thickened again into a street, and I found myself, to
my disappointment, in the midst of a town ' And then more
110 ALTOM LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
villas and palings ; and then a village ; when would they stoj
those endless houses 1
At last they did stop. Gradually the people whom I pass
ed began to look more and more rural, and more toil-worn
and ill-fed. The houses ended, cattle yards and farm build-
ings appeared; and, right and left, far away, spread the low
rolling sheet of green meadows and corn fields. Oh, the joy !
The lawns with their high elms and firs, the green hedge-
rows, the delicate hue and scent of the fresh clover fields,
the steep clay banks where I stopped to pick nosegays of wild
flowers, and became again a child, and then recollected my
mother, and a walk with her on the river bank toward the
E-ed House. I hurried on again, but could not be unhappy,
while my eyes ranged free, for the first time in my life, over
the checkered squares of cultivation, over glittering brooks,
and hills quivering in the green haze, while above hung the
skylarks, pouring out their souls in melody. And then, as the
sun grew hot, and the larks dropped one by one into the grow-
ing corn, the new delight of the blessed silence ! I listened to
the stillness ; for noise had been my native element ; I had
become in London quite unconscious of the ceaseless roar of
the human sea, casting up mire and dirt. And now, for the
first time in my life, the crushing, confusing hubbub had flowed
away, and left my brain calm and free. How I felt at that
moment a capability of clear, bright meditation, which was as
new to me, as I believe it would have been to most London-
ers in my position. I can not help fancying that our unnatu-
ral atmosphere of excitement, physical as well as moral, is to
blame for very much of the working-men's restlessness and
fierceness. As it was, I felt that every step forward, every
\ breath of fresh air, gave me new life. I had gone fifteen
\ miles before I recollected that, for the first time for many
\ months, I had not coughed since I rose.
So on I went, down the broad, bright road, which seemed to
beckon me forward into the unknown expanses of human life.
The world was all before me, where to choose,
and I saw it both with my eyes and my imagination, in the
temper of a boy broke loose from school. My heart kept
holiday. I loved and blessed the birds which flitted past me r
and the cows which lay dreaming on the sward. I recollect
stopping with delight at a picturesque descent into the road,
to watch a nursery garden, full of roses of every shade, from
brilliant yellow to darkest purple; and as I wondered at the
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. HI
innumerable variety of beauties which man's art had devel-
oped from a few poor and wild species, it seemed to me the
most delightful life on earth, to follow in such a place the
primaeval trade of gardener Adam; to study the secrets of
the flower world, the laws of soil and climate; to create new
species, and gloat over the living fruit of one's own science
and perseverance. And then I recollected the tailor's shop,
and the Charter, and the starvation, and the oppression, which
I had left behind, and ashamed of my own selfishness, went
hurrying on again.
At last I came to a wood — the first real wood that I had
ever seen ; not a mere party of stately park trees growing out
of smooth turf, but a real wild copse ; tangled branches and
gray stems fallen across each other ; deep, ragged underwoods
of shrubs, and great ferns like princes' leathers, and gay beds
of flowers, blue and pink and yellow, with butterflies flitting
about them, and trailers that climbed and dangled from bough
to bough — a poor commonplace bit of copse, I daresay, in the
world's eyes, but to me a fairy wilderness of beautiful forms,
mysterious gleams and shadows, teeming with manifold life.
As I stood looking wistfully over the gate, alternately at the
inviting vista of the green embroidered path, and then at the
grim notice over my head, "All trespassers prosecuted," a
young man came up the ride, dressed in velveteen jacket and
leather gaiters, sufficiently bed rabbled with mud. A fishing-
rod and basket bespoke him some sort of destroyer, and I saw
in a moment that he was "a gentleman." After all, there
is such a thing as looking like a gentleman. There are men
whose class no dirt or rags could hide, any more than they
could Ulysses. I have seen such men in plenty among work-
men, too ; but, on the whole, the gentlemen — by whom I do
not mean just now the rich — have the superiority in that
point. But not, please God, forever. Give us the same air,
water, exercise, education, good society, and you will see
whether this " haggardness," this "coarseness," &c, &c, for
the list is too long to specify, be an accident, or a property, ol
the man of the people.
" May I go into your wood ?" asked I at a venture, curios-
ity conquering pride.
" Well ! what do you want there, my good fellow ?"
" To see what a wood is like — I never was in one in my
life."
" Il/imph ! well — you may go in for that, and welcome.
Never was in a wood in his life ! poor devil !"
112 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
'•■ Thank you '" quoth I. And I slowly clambered ovet
the gate. He put his hand carelessly on the top rail, vaulted
over it like a deer, and then turned to stare at me.
" Hullo ! I say — I forgot — don't go far in, or ramble up
and down, or you'll disturb the pheasants."
I thanked him again for what license he had given me — went
in, and lay down by the path-side.
Here, I suppose, by the rules of modern art, a picturesque
description of the said wood should follow; but I am the most
incompetent person in the world to write it. And, indeed,
the whole scene was so novel to me, that I had no time to
analyze ; I could only enjoy. I recollect lying on my face and
fingering over the delicately cut leaves of the weeds, and won-
dering whether the people who lived in the country thought
them as wonderful and beautiful as I did ; and then I recol-
lected the thousands whom I had left behind, who, like me,
had never seen the green face of God's earth ; and the answer
of the poor gamin in St. Giles's, who, when he was asked
what the country was, answered, "the yard where the gentle-
men live when they go out of town", significant that, and
pathetic; then I wondered whether the time would ever come
when society would be far enough advanced to open to even
such as he a glimpse, ifit were only once a year, of the fresh
clean face of God's earth ; and then I became aware of a soft
mysterious hum, above me and around rne, and turned on my
back to look whence it proceeded, and saw the leaves, gold —
green and transparent in the sunlight, quivering against the
deep heights of the empyrean blue; and, hanging in the sun-
beams that pierced the foliage, a thousand insects, like specks
of fire, that poised themselves motionless on thrilling wings,
and darted away, and returned to hang motionless again; and
I wondered what they eat, and whether they thought about
any thing, and whether they enjoyed the sunlight ; and then
that brought back to me the times when 1 used to lie dream-
ing in my crib on summer mornings, and watched the flies
dancing reels between me and the ceiling; and that again
brought the thought of Susan and my mother ; and I prayed
for them — not sadly — I could not be sad there; and prayed
that we might all meet again some day and live happily to-
gether; perhaps in the country, where I could write poems in
peace ; and then, by degrees, my sentences and thoughts grew
incoherent, and in happy, stupid animal comfort, I faded away
into a heavy sleep, which lasted an hour or more, till I was
awakened by the efforts of certain enterprising great black
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 113
and red ants, who were trying to found a small Algeria in
my left ear.
I rose and left the wood, and a gate or two on, stopped
again to look at the same sportsman fishing in a clear silver
brook. I could not help admiring with a sort of childish won-
der the graceful and practiced aim with which he directed his
tiny bait, and called up mysterious dimples on the surface,
which in a moment increased to splashings and strujrodinn's
of a great fish, compelled, as if by some invisible spell, to fol-
low the point of the bending rod till he lay panting on the
bank. I confess, in spite of all my class prejudices against
"game-preserving aristocrats," I almost envied the man; at
least I seemed to understand a little of the universally attract-
ive charms which those same outwardly contemptible field
sports possess ; the fresh air, fresh fields and copses, fresh run-
ning brooks, the exercise, the simple freedom, the excitement
just sufficient to keep alive expectation and banish thought.
After all, his trout produced much the same mood in him as
my turnpike road did in me. And perhaps the man did not
go fishing or shooting every day. The laws prevented him
from shooting at least all the year round ; so sometimes there
might be something in which he made himself of use. An
honest, jolly face too he had — not without thought and
strength in it. " Well, it is a strange world," said I to my-
self, "where those who can, need not: and those who can not
must !"
Then he came close to the gate, and I left it just in time
to see a little group arrive at it — a woman of his own rank,
young, pretty, and simply dressed, with a little boy, decked
out as a Highlander, on a shaggy Shetland pony, which his
mother, as I guessed her to be, was leading. And then they
all met, and the little fellow held up a basket of provisions to
his father, who kissed him across the gate, and hung his creel
of fish behind the saddle, and patted the mother's shoulder,
as she looked up lovingly and laughingly in his face. Alto-
gether, a joyous, genial bit of Nature ? Yes, Nature.
Shall I grudge simple happiness to the few, because it is as
yet, alas ! impossible for the many ?
And yet the whole scene contrasted so painfully with me
— with my past, my future, my dreams, my wrongs, that I
could not look at it ; and with a swelling heart I moved on
— all the faster because I saw they were looking at me and
talking of me, and the fair wife threw after me a wistful,
pitying glance, which I was afraid might develop itself into
IN ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET.
some offer of food or money — a thing which I scorned ;ind
dreaded, because it involved the trouble of a refusal.
Then, as I walked on once more, my heart smote me. Tf
they had wished to be kind, why had I grudged them the
opportunity of a good deed ? At all events, I might have
asked their advice. In a natural and harmonious state, when
society really means brotherhood, a man could go up to any
stranger, to give and receive, if not succor, yet still experience
and wisdom : and was I not bound to tell them what I knew ?
was sure that they did not know ? Was I not bound to
preach the cause of my class wherever I went ? Here were
kindly people who, for aught I knew, would do right the
moment they were told where it was wanted ; if there was
an accursed artificial gulf between their class and mine, had
I any right to complain of it, as long as I helped to keep it
up by my false pride and surly reserve? No! I would speak
my mind henceforth — I would testify of what I saw and
knew of the wrongs, if not of the rights, of the artisan, before
whomsoever I might come. Oh! valiant conclusion of half
an hour's self-tormenting scruples ! How I kept it, remains
to be shown.
I really fear that I am getting somewhat trivial and pro
lix : but there was hardly an incident in my two days' tramp
which did not give me some small fresh insight into the terra
incognita of the country ; and there may be those among my
readers, to whom it is not uninteresting to look, for once, at
even the smallest objects with a cockney workman's eyes.
Well, I trudged on — and the shadows lengthened, and I
grew footsore and tired ; but every step was new, and won
me forward with fresh excitements for my curiosity.
At one village I met a crowd of little, noisy, happy boys
and girls pouring out of a smart new Gothic school-house. 1
could not resist the temptation of snatching a glance through
the open door. I saw on the walls maps, music charts, ainS
pictures. How I envied those little urchins ! A solemn
sturdy elder, in a while cravat, evidently the parson of the
parish, was patting children's heads, taking down names, and
laying down the law to a shrewd, prim young schoolmaster.
Presently, as I went up the village, the clergyman strode
past me, brandishing a thick stick and humming a chant,
and joined a motherly-looking wife, who, basket on arm, was
popping in and out of the cottages, looking alternately serious
and funny, cross and kindly — I suppose, according to the say-
ings and doings of the folks within.
ALTON LOCKE TAILOR AND l'OET. 115
" Come," I thought, "this looks like work at least." And
as I went ont of the village, I accosted a laborer, who was
trudging my way, fork on shoulder, and asked him if that
was the parson and his wife?
I was surprised at the difficulty with which I got into con-
versation with the man ; at his stupidity, feigned or real, I
could not tell which ; at the dogged, suspicious reserve with
which he eyed me. and asked me whether I was " one of
thae parts?" and whether I was a Londoner, and what I
wanted on the tramp, and so on, before he seemed to think it
safe to answer a single question. He seemed, like almost
every laborer I ever met, to have something on his mind ; to
live in a state of perpetual fear and concealment. When,
however, he found I was both a cockney and a passer-by, he
bewail to grow more communicative, and told me, " Ees —
that were the parson, sure enough."
" And what sort of man was he ?"'
" Oh ! he was a main kind man to the poor ; leastwise in
the matter of visiting 'em, and praying with 'em, and getting
'em to put into clubs, and such like ; and his lady too. Not
that there was any fault to find with the man about money
— but 'twasn't to be expected of him."
" Why, was he not rich ?"
•' Oh, rich enough to the likes of us. But his own tithes
here arn't more than a thirty pounds, we hears tell ; and if
hud hadn't summat of his own, he couldn't do not nothing
by the poor ; as it be, he pays for that ere school all to his
own pocket, next part. All the rest o' the tithes goes to
come great lord or other — they say he draws a matter of a
thousand a year out of the parish, and not a foot ever he sot
into it ; and that's the way with a main lot o' parishes, up
and down."
This was quite a new fact to me. " And what sort of
Jblks were the parsons all round?"
" Oh, some of all sorts, good and bad. About six and a
half-a-dozen. There's two or three nice young gentlemen
come'd round here now, but they're all what's-'em-a-call-it ?
— some sort o' papishes ; — leastwise, they has prayers in the
church every day, and doesn't preach the Gospel, no how, I
hears by my wife, and she knows all about it, along of going
to meeting. Then there's one over thereaway, as had to
leave his living — he knows why. He got safe over seas. If
he had been a poor man, he'd a been in jail, safe enough,
and soon enough. Then there's two or three as goes a-hunt-
116 ALTON LOCKE. TAILOR AND POET.
ing — not as I sees no harm in that ; if a man's got plenty of
money, he ought to enjoy himself, in course : but still he can't
be here and there too, to once. Then there's two or three as
is bad in their healths, or thinks themselves so — or else has
livings summer' else ; and they lives summer' or others, and
has curates. Main busy chaps is thae curates, always, and
wonderful hands to preach ; but then, just as they gets a little
knowing like at it, and folks gets to like 'em, and run to hear
'em, oft' they pops to summat better ; and in course they're
right to do so ; and so we country folks get nought but the
young colts, afore they're broke, you see."
" And what sort of a preacher was his parson ?"
" Oh, he preached very good Gospel. Not that he went
very often hisself, acause he couldn't make out the meaning
of it ; he preached too high, like. But his wife said it was
uncommon good Gospel ; and surely when he come to visit a
body, and talked plain English, like, not sermon-ways, he
was a very pleasant man to heer, and his lady uncommon
kind to nurse folk. They sot up with me and my Avife, they
two did, two whole nights, when we was in the fever, afore
the officer could get us a nurse."
"Well," said I, "there are some good parsons left."
" Oh, yes; there's some very good ones — each one after his
own way ; and there'd be more on 'em, if they did but know
how bad we laborers was off Why bless ye, I mind when
they was very different. A new parson is a mighty change
for the better, most wise, we finds. Why, when I was a boy,
we never had no schooling. And now mine goes and learns
singing and jobrafy, and ciphering, and sich like. Not that I
sees no good in it. We was a sight better off in the old times,
when there weren't no schooling. Schooling ham t made
wages rise, nor preaching neither."
"But surely," I said, "all this religious knowledge ought
to give comfort, even if you are badly off."
" Oh ! religion's all very well for them as has time for it ,
and a very good, thing — we ought all to mind our latter end.
But I don't seeWiow a man can hear sermons with an empty
belly; and there's so much to fret a man, now, and he's so
cruel tired coming home o' nights, he can't nowise go. to pray
a lot, as gentlefolks does."
"But are you so ill oft'?"
" Oh ! he'd had a good harvesting enough ; but then he
owed all that for he's rent ; and he's club-money was-'t paio
:ip, nor he's shop. And then, with he's wages — " ( C-"^e»
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 117
the sum — under ten shillings), "how could a man keep his
mouth full, when he had five children? And then, folks is
so unmarcifiil — I'll just tell you what they says to me, now,
last time I was over at the board — "
And thereon he rambled off into a long jumble of medical-
officers, and relieving officers, and Farmer This, and Squire
That, which indicated a mind as ill-educated as discontented.
He cursed, or rather grumbled at — for he had not spirit, it
seemed, to curse any thing — the New Poor Law; because it
" aK up the poor, flesh and bone ;" — bemoaned the " Old
Law," when " the vestry was forced to give a man what-
somdever he axed for, and if they didn't he'd go to the magis-
trates and make 'em, and so sure as a man got a fresh child
he went and got another loaf allowed him next vestry, like a
Christian ;" — and so turned through a gate, and set to work
forking up some weeds on a fallow, leaving me many new
thoughts to digest.
That night. I got to some town or other, and there founa a
flight's lodging, good enough for a walking traveler.
CHAPTER XII.
CAMBRIDGE.
When I started again next morning-, I found myself so stitl
and footsore, that I could hardly put one leg before the other,
much less walk upright. I was really quite in despair, before
the end of the first mile; for I had no money to pay for a lift
on the coach, and I knew, besides, that they would not b<
passing that way for several hours to come. So, with achins
back and knees, I made shift to limp along, bent almost double
and ended by siting down for a couple of hours, and looking
about me, in a country which would have seemed drean
enough, I suppose, to any one but a freshly-liberated captive
such as I was. At last I got up and limped on, stiffer than
ever from my rest, when a gig drove past me toward Cam-
bridge, drawn by a stout cob, and driven by a tall, fat, jolly-
looking farmer, who stared at me as he passed, went on, look-
ed back, slackened his pace, looked back again, and at last
came to a dead stop, and hailed me in a broad nasal dialect,
" Whor be ganging, then, boh V
"To Cambridge."'
" Thew'st na git there that gate. B.e'est thee honest
man ?"
" I hope so, : ' said I, somewhat indignantly.
" What's trade ?"
" A tailor," I said.
" Tailor ' — guide us ! Tailor a-tramp ? Barn't accoos-
tomed to tramp, then ?"
" I never was out of London before," said I, meekly ; for
I was too worn-out to be cross — lengthy and impertinent as
this cross-examination seemed.
"Oi'il gie thee lift ; dee yow jump in. Gae on, powney !
Tailor, then ! Oh ! ah ! tailor," saith he.
I obeyed most thankfully, and sat crouched together, look-
ing up out of the corner of my eyes at the huge tower of broad
cloth by my side, and comparing the two red shoulders ot
mutton which held the reins, with my own wasted, while,
woman-like fingers.
I iound the old gentleman most inquisitive. He drew out
of me all my story — questioned me about the way " Lunnon
folks" lived, and whether they got ony shooting or "pattening*
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET 115
— whereby I found he meant skating — and broke in, every
now and then, with ejaculations of childish wonder, and
clumsy sympathy, on my accounts of London labor and Lon-
don misery.
" Oh, father, father ! — I wonders they bears it. Us'n in
the fens wouldn't stand that likes. They'd roit, and roit,
and roit, and talc' oot the duck-gunes to 'un — they would, as
they did fiveand-twenty year agone. Never to goo ayond the
housen ! — never to goo ayond the housen ! Kill me in a
three months, that would — bor', then !"
"Are you a farmer 1 ?" I asked, at last, thinking that my
turn for questioning was come.
" I bean't varmer; I be yooman born. Never paid rent in
moy life, nor never wool. I farms my own land, and my
vathers avore me, this ever so mony hoondred year. I've
got the swoord of 'em to home, and the helmet that they fut
with into the wars, then when they chopped off the king's
head — what was the name of urn ?"
" Charles the First ?"
" Ees — that's the booy. We was Parliament side — true
Britons all we was, down into the fens, and Oliver Cromwell,
as dug Botsham lode, to the head of us. You coom down to
Metholl, and I'll shaw ye a country. I'll shaw 'ee some'at
like bullocks to call, and some'at like a field o' beans — I wool,
— none o' this here darned ups and downs o' hills" (though
the country through which we drove was flat enough, I should
have thought, to please any one), " to shake a body's victuals
out of his inwards — all so flat as a barn's floor, for vorty mile
on end — there's the country to live in ! — and vour sons — or
was vour on 'em — every one on 'em fifteen stone in his shoes,
to patten again' any man from Whit'sea Mere to Denver
Sluice, for twenty pounds o' gold ; and there's the money to
lay down, and let the man as dare cover it, down with his
money, and on wi' his pattens, thirtecn-inch runners, down
the wind, again' ether a one o' the bairns !"
And he jingled in his pocket a heavy bag of gold, and
wnked, and chuckled, and then suddenly checking himself,
repeated in a sad, dubious tone, two or three times, " vour on
'em there was — vour on 'em there was ;" and relieved his
feelings, by springing the pony into a canter till he came to a
public house, where he pulled up, called for a pot of hot ale,
And insisted on treating me. I assured him that I never
drank fermented liquors.
" Aw 1 Eh ? How can yow do that then ? Die o' oowd j
120 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
the fen, that gate, yow would. Love ye then ! they as din-
not tak' their spirits down thor tak' their pennord o' eleva-
tion, then — women folk especial."
" What's elevation ?"
" Oh ! ho ! ho ! — yow goo into druggist's shop o' market
day, into Cambridge, and you'll see the little boxes, doozens
and doozens, a' ready on the counter ; and never a ven-man's
wife goo by, but what calls in for her pennord o' elevation, to
last her out the week. Oh ! ho ! ho ! Well, it keeps wom-
en-folk quiet, it do ; and it's mortal good agin ago pains."
"But what is it?"
" Opium, bor' alive, opium !"
" But doesn't it ruin their health 1 I should think it the
very worst sort of drunkenness."
"Ow, well, yow moi say that — mak'th 'em cruel thin then,
it do ; but what can bodies do i' th' ago ? Bot it's a bad
thing, it is. Harken yow to me. Did'st ever know one call-
ed Porter, to yowr trade 1"
I thought a little, and recollected a man of that name, who
had worked with us a year or two before — a great friend of a
certain scatter-brained Irish lad, brother of Crossth wake's wife.
" Well, I did once, but I have lost sight of him twelve
months, or more."
The old man faced sharp round on me, swinging the little
gig almost over, and then twisted himself back again, and
put on a true farmer-like look of dogged, stolid reserve. We
rode on a few minutes in silence.
" Dee yow consider, now, that a mon mought be lost, like,
into Lunnon ?"
"How lost r
" Why, yow told o' thae sweaters — dee yow think a mon
might get in wi' one o' they, and they that mought be looking
vor un not to find un ?"
"I do, indeed. There was a friend of that man Porter
got turned away from our shop, because he wouldn't pay some
tyrannical fine for being sancy, as they called it, to the shop-
man ; and he went to a sweater's — and then to another ;
and his friends have been tracking him up and down this six
months, and can hear no news of him."
" Aw ! guide us ! And what'n think yow, be gone wi'
un?"
" I am afraid he has got into one of those dens, and has
pawned his clothes, as dozens of them do, for food, and so
can't get out."
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND I'OET. 121
" Pawned his clothes for victuals ! To think o' that, noo !
But it' he had work, can't he get victuals ?"
" Oh !" I said, " there's many a man who, alter working
seventeen or eighteen hours a day, Sundays and all, without
even time to take off his clothes, finds himself brought in
debt to his tyrant at the week's end. And if he gets no
work, the villain won't let him leave the house ; he has to
stay there starving, on the chance of an hour's job. I tell
you, I've known half-a-dozcn men imprisoned in that way, in
a little dungeon of a garret, where they had hardly room to
stand upright, and only just space to sit and work between
their beds, without breathing the fresh air, or seeing God's
sun, for months together, with no victuals but a few slices of
bread-and-butter, and a little slop of tea, twice a clay, till
they were starved to the very bone."
" Oh, my God ! my God !" said the old man, in a voice
which had a deeper tone of feeling than mere sympathy with
others' sorrow was likely to have produced. There was evi-
dently something behind all these inquiries of his. I longed
to ask him if his name, too, was not Porter.
' : Aw yow knawn Billy Porter] What was a like? Tell
me, now — what was a like, in the Lord's name ! what was
a like unto ?"
" Very tall and bony," I answered.
"Ah! sax feet, and more? and a yard across? — but a was
starved, a was a' thin, though, maybe, when yow sawn un ?
— and beautiful fine hair, hadn't a, like a lass's?"
" The man I knew had red hair," epioth I.
"Off, ay, an' that it wor, red as a rising sun, and the curls
of un like gowlden guineas ! And thou knew'st Billy Porter !
To think o' that, noo — "
Another long silence.
"Could you find un, dee yow think, noo, into Lunnon ?
Suppose, now, there was a mon 'ud gie — may be five pund —
ten pund — twenty pund, by twenty pund down, for to
ha' him brocht home safe and soun' — could yow do't, bor' ? I
zay, could yow do't ?"
'• I could do it as well without the money as with, if I could
do it at all. But have you no guess as to where he is ?"
lie shook his head sadly.
" We — that's to zay, they as wants un — havn't heerd tell
of un vor this three year — three year come Whitsuntido as
ever was — "
And he wiped his eyes with his cuff
F
122 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
" Tf you will tell me all about him, and where he was last
heard of, I will do all I can to find him."
"Will .ye, noo? will ye] The Lord bless ye for zaying
that" — and he grasped my hand in his great iron fist, and
fairly burst out crying.
" Was he a relation of yours ?" I asked, gently
"My bairn — my bairn — my eldest bairn. Dinnot yow ax
me no moor — dinnot then, bor'. Gie on, yow powney, and
yow goo leuk vor un."
Another long silence.
" I've a been to Lunnon, looking vor un."
Another silence.
" I went up and down, up and down, day and night, day
and night, to all pot-houses as I could zee ; vor, says I, he was
a' ways a main chap to drink, he was. Oh, deery me ! and 1
never cot zight on un — and noo I be most spent, I be — "
And he pulled up at another public-house, and tried this
time a glass of brandy. He stopped, I really think, at every
inn between that place and Cambridge, and at each tried
some fresh compound ; but his head seemed, from habit, utter-
ly fire-proof.
At last, we neared Cambridge, and began to pass groups of
gay horsemen, and then those strange caps and gowns — ugly
md unmeaning remnant of obsolete fashion.
The old man insisted on driving me up to the gate of Trinity,
and there dropped me, after I had given him my address, en-
treating me to "vind the bairn, and coom to zee him down to
Method. But dinnot goo ax for Farmer Porter — they's all
Porters there away. Yow ax for Wooden-house Bob — that's
me ; and if I barn't to home, ax for Mucky Billy — that's my
brawther — we're all gotten our names down to ven ; and if
he barn't to home, yow ax for Frog-hall — that's where my
sister do live ; and they'll all veed ye, and lodge ye, and wel-
come come. We be all like one, doon in the ven ; and do ye,
do ye vind my bairn !" And he trundled on, down the nar-
row street.
I was soon directed, by various smart-looking servants, to
my cousin's rooms ; and after a few mistakes, and wandering
up and down noble courts and cloisters, swarming with gay
young men, whose jaunty air and dress seemed strangely out
of keeping with the stern, antique solemnity of the Gothic
buildings around, I espied my cousin's name over a door; and,
uncertain how he might receive me, I gave a gentle, half
apologetic knock, which was answered by a loud "Come in
i»i
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. 123
and I entered on a scene, even more incongruous than an}
thing I had seen outside.
" It" we can only keep away from that d — d Jesus as far as
the corner, I don't care."
"If we don't run into that first Trinity before the willows,
I shall care with a vengeance."
" If we don't, it's a pity," said my cousin. " Wadham ran
up by the side of that first Trinity yesterday, and he said that
they were as well grueled as so many posters, before they got
to the stile."
This unintelligible, and, to my inexperienced ears, blas-
phemous conversation, proceeded from half-a-dozen powerful
young men, in low-crowned sailors' hats and flannel trowsers,
some in striped jerseys, some in shooting-jackets, some smokina
cigars, some beating up eggs in sherry; while my cousin :
dressed like "a fancy waterman," sat on the back of a sola,
puffing away a huge meerschaum.
" Alton ! why, Avhat wind on earth has blown you here V
By the tone, the words seemed rather an inquiry as to what
wind would be kind enough to blow me back again. But he
recovered his self-possession in a moment.
" Delighted to see you ! Where's your portmanleau ? Oh
—left it at the Bull ! Ah ! I see. Very well, we'll send the
gyp for it iu a minute, and order som# luncheon. We're just
going down to the boat-race. Sorry I can't stop, but we
shall all be fined — not a moment to lose. I'll send you in
luncheon as I go through the butteries ; then, perhaps, you'd
like to come down and see the race. Ask the gyp to tell
you the way. Now, then, follow your noble captain, gentle-
men — to glory and a supper." And he bustled out with his
crew.
While I was staring about the room, at the jumble oi
Greek books, boxing-gloves, and luscious prints of pretty
women, a shrewd-faced, smart man entered, much better
dressed than myself.
"What would you like, sir? Ox-tail soup, sir, or gravy-
soup, sir ? Stilton cheese, sir, or Cheshire, sir ? Old Stilton,
sir, just now."
Fearing lest many words might betray my rank — and,
strange to say, though I should not have been afraid of con
fessing myself an artisan before the "gentlemen" who had
just left the room, I was ashamed to have my low estate dis-
covered, and talked over with his compeers, by the flunky
who waited on them — I answered, "Any thing — I really
124 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
don't care," in as aristocratic and off-hand a tone as I could
assume.
" Porter or ale, sir ]"
" Water," without a "thank you," I am ashamed to say,
for I was not at that time quite sure whether it was well-bred
to be civil to servants.
The man vanished, and re-appeared with a savory luncheon,
silver forks, snowy napkins, smart plates — I felt really quite
a gentleman.
He gave me full directions as to my "way to the boats,
sir ;" and I started out much refreshed ; passed through back
streets, dingy, dirty, and profligate-looking enough ; out upon
wide meadows, fringed with enormous elms ; across a ferry ;
through a pleasant village, with its old gray church and spire;
by the side of a sluggish river, alive with wherries ; along a
towing-path swarming with bold, bedizened women, who jested
with the rowers — of their profession, alas! there could be no
doubt. I had walked down some mile or so, and just as I
heard a cannon, as I thought, fire at some distance, and
wondered at its meaning, I came to a sudden bend of the
river, with a church-tower hanging over the stream on the
opposite bank, a knot of tall poplars, weeping willows, rich
lawns, sloping down to the water's side, gay with bor.nets
and shawls ; while, afcng the edge of the stream, light,
gaudily-painted boats apparently waited for the race, altogeth-
er the most brilliant and graceful group of scenery which I
had beheld in my little travels. I stopped to gaze ; and
among the ladies on the lawn opposite, caught sight of a
figure — my heart leapt into my mouth ! Was it she at last ?
It was too far to distinguish features ; the dress was altogether
different — but was it not she ? I saw her move across the
lawn, and take the arm of a tall, venerable looking man ;
and his dress was the same as that of the dean, at the Dul-
wich Gallery — was it? was it not? To have found her,
and a river between us ! It was ludicrously miserable —
miserably ludicrous. Oh, that accursed river, which debarred
me from certainty, from bliss ! I would have plunged across
— but there were three objections — first, that I could not
swim ; next, what could I do when I had crossed ? and
thirdly, it might not be she, alter all.
And yet I was certain — instinctively certain — that it was
she, the idol of my imagination for years. If I could not see
her features under that little white bonnet, I could imagine
them there; they flashed up in my memory as fresh as evei
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND To:: . JU5
Did she remember my features, as I did hers 1 Would she
Know me again ? Had she ever even thought of me, from
that day to this ? Fool ! But there I stood, fascinated,
gazing across the river, heedless of the racing-boats, and the
crowd, and the roar that was rushing up to me at the rate
of ten miles an hour, and, in a moment more, had caught me,
and swept me away with it, whether 1 would or not, along
the towing-path, by the side of the foremost boats.
Oh, the Babel of horse and foot, young and old ! the cheer-
ing, and the exhorting, and the objurgations of number this,
and number that ! and the yelling of the most sacred names,
intermingled too often with oaths. And yet, after a few
moments, I ceased to wonder either at the Cambridge passion
for boat- racing, or at the excitement of the spectators. " Honi
soit qui mat y jiense." It was a noble sport — a sight such
as could only be seen in England — some hundred of young
men, who might, if they had chosen, been lounging eHerni-
nately about the streets, subjecting themselves voluntarily to
that intense exertion, for the mere pleasure of toil. The true
English stuff came out there ; I felt that, in spite of all my
prejudices — the stuff which has held Gibraltar and conquered
at Waterloo — which has created a Birmingham and a Man-
chester, and colonized every quarter of the globe — that grim,
earnest, stubborn energy, -which, since the days of the old
Romans, the English possess alone of all the nations of the
earth. I was as proud of the gallant young follows, as if
they had been my brothers — of their courage and endurance
(for one could see that it was no child's-play, from the pale
iiices and panting lips), their strength and activity, so fierce
and yet so cultivated, smooth, harmonious, as oar kept time
with oar, and every back rose and fell in concert — and felt
my soul stirred up to a sort of sweet madness, not merely by
the shouts and cheers of the mob around me, but by the loud,
lierce pulse of the rowlocks, the swift whispering rush of the
long, snake-like eight oars, the swirl and gurgle of the water
in their wake, the grim, breathless silence of the straining
rowers. My blood boiled over, and fierce tears swelled into
my eyes ; for I, too, was a man, and an Englishman ; and
when I caught sight of my cousin, pulling stroke to thfl
second boat in the long line, with set teeth and flashing eyes
the great muscles on his bare arms springing up into knots
at every rapid stroke, I ran and shouted among the maddest
and the foremost.
But I soon tired, and, footsore as I was, began to find m.\
126 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
strength ,1iil me. I tried to drop behind, but found it impos-
sible in the press. At last, quite out of breath, I stopped ;
and instantly received a heavy blow from behind, which
threw me on my face. I looked up, and saw a huge long-
legged gray horse, with his knees upon my back, in the act
of falling over me. His rider, a little ferret- visaged boy,
dressed in sporting style, threw himself back in the saddle,
and recovered the horse in an instant, with a curse at me, as
I rolled down the steep bank into the river, among the laugh-
ter and shouts of the women, who seemed to think it cpjite a
grand act on the part of the horseman.
" Well saved, upon my word, my lord !" shouted cut a rider
beside him.
" Confound the snob ! — I'm glad he got his ducking.
What do the fellows want here, getting in a gentleman's
way?"
" For shame, Swindon ! the man is hurt," said another
rider, a very tall and handsome man, who pulled up his horse,
and, letting the crowd pass, sprang off to my assistance.
" Leave him alone, Lord Lynedale," said one of the wo-
men ; " let him go home and ask his mammy to hang him
out to dry."
" Why do you bother yourself with such muffs ?" &c, &c ,
&c.
But I had scrambled out, and stood there dripping, and
shaking with rage and pain.
"I hope you are not much hurt, my man?" asked thx
nobleman, in a truly gentlemanlike, because truly gentle,
voice ; and he pulled out half-a-crown, and offered it to me,
saying, " I am quite ashamed to see one of my own rank
behave in a way so unworthy of it."
But I, in my shame and passion, thrust back at once the
coin and the civility.
" I want neither you nor your money," said I, limping off
down the bank. " It serves me right, lor getting among you
cursed aristocrats."
How the nobleman took my answer I did not stay to see,
for I was glad to escape the jeers of the bystanding black-
guards, male and female, by scramblijffg over the fences, and
making my way across the fields back to Cambridge.
" CHAPTER, XIII.
THE LOST IDOL FOUND.
O.i my return. I found my cousin already at home, m high
spirits at having, as he informed me, " humped the first Trin-
ity." I excused myself for my dripping state, simply by say-
ing that I had slipped into the river. To tell him the whole
of the story, while the insult still rankled fresh in me, was
really too disagreeable both to my memory and my pride.
"Then came the question, "What had brought me to
Cambridge ?" I told him all, and he seemed honestly to
sympathize with my misfortunes.
" Never mind ; we'll make it all right somehow. Those
poems of yours — you must let me have them and look over
them ; and I daresay I shall persuade the governor to do
something with them. After all, it's no loss for you ; you
couldn't have gone on tailoring — much too sharp a fellow for
that ; you ought to be at college, if one could only get you
there. These sizarships, now, were meant for just such cases
as yours — clever fellows who could not afford to educate
themselves ; but, like every thing in the university, the people
for whom they are meant never get them. Do you know
what the golden canon is, Alton, for understanding all uni-
versity questions ?"
" No."
" Then I'll tell you. That the employment of any money
whatsoever, for any purpose whatsoever, is a certain sign that
it was originally meant for some purpose totally different."
" What do you mean ?" I asked.
" Oh ! you shall stay here with me a few days, and you'll
soon find out. Hush ! now ; don't come the independent
dodge. One cousin may visit another, I hope, without con-
tracting obligations, and all that. I'll find you a bedroom
out of college, and you'll live in my rooms all day, and I'll
show you a thing or two. How do you like the university V
" The buildings," I said, " strike me as very noble and rev-
erent."
" They are the only noble and reverent things you'll find
here, I can tell you. It's a system of humbug, from one end
to the other. But the Dons get their living by it, and their
livings too, and their bishopricks, now and then ; and I intend
123 ALTON LOCKE, 'iAILOR AND POET.
to do the same, if I have a chance. Do at Rome as Rome
does." And he lighted his pipe and winked knowingly at rne.
I mentioned the profane use of sacred names which had so
disgusted me at the boat-race He laughed.
"Ah! my dear fellow, it's a very fair specimen of Cam-
bridge — shows what's the matter with us all — putting new
wine into old bottles, and into young bottles, too, as you'll
see at my supper party to-night."
" Really," I said, "I am not fit for presentation at any
such aristocratic amusements."
" Oh ! I'll lend you clothes till your own are dried; and as
for behavior, hold your tongue, and don't put your knife in
your mouth, are quite rules enough to get any man mistaken
for a gentleman here." And he laughed again in his peculiar
sneering way.
' ; By-the-by, don't get drunk ; for in vino Veritas. You
know what that means."
" So well," I answered, " that I never intend to touch a
drop of fermented licpior."
" Capital rule for a poor man. I've got a strong head,
luckily. If I hadn't, I should keep sober on principle. It's
great fun to have a man taking you into his confidence after
the second bottle ; and then to see the funk he's in next day,
when he recollects he's shown you more of his hand than is
good for his own game."
All this sickened me ; and I tried to turn the conversation,
by asking him what he meant by new wine in old bottles.
" Can't you see 1 The whole is monastic — dress, unmar-
ried fellows, the very names of the colleges. I dare say it did
very well for the poor scholars in the middle ages, who, three-
fourths of them, turned either monks or priests ; but it won't
do for the young gentlemen of the 19th century. Those
very names of colleges are of a piece with the rest. The col-
leges were dedicated to various sacred personages and saints,
to secure their interest in heaven for the prosperity of the col-
lege ; but who believes in all that now ? And therefore the
names remain only to be desecrated. The men can't help it.
They must call the colleges by their names."
" Why don't they alter the names ?" I said.
" Because, my dear fellow, they are afraid to alter any
thing, for fear of bringing the whole rotten old house down
about their cars. They say themselves, that the slightest
innovation will be a precedent for destroying the whole sys-
tem, bit by bit. Why should they be afraid of that, if they
ALTON LOCKL, TAILOR AND POLT. 129
did not know that the whole system would not bear canvass-
ing an instant] That's why they retain statutes that can't
be observed ; because they know, if they once began altering
the statutes the least, the world would find out how they
have themselves been breaking the statutes. That's why
they keep up the farce of swearing to the Thirty-Nine Articles,
and all that ; just because they know, if they attempted to
alter the letter of the old forms, it would come out, that half
the young men of the university don't believe three words of
them at heart. They know the majority of us are at heart
neither churchmen nor Christians, nor even decent lv moral :
but the one thing they are afraid of is scandal. So they con-
nive at the young men's ill-doings ; they take no real steps to
put down profligacy ; and, in the mean time, they just keep
up the forms of Church of Englandisrn, and pray devoutly that
the whole humbug may last out their time. There isn't one
Don in a hundred who has any personal influence over the
gownsmen. A man may live here from the time he's a
freshman, to the time he's taken his degree, without evei
being spoken to as if he had a soul to be saved ; unless he
happens to be one of the Simconitc party ; and they are get-
ting fewer and fewer every year ; and in ten years more there
won't be one of them left, at the present rate. Besides, they
have no influence ever the rest of the under-graduates. They
are very good, excellent fellows in their way, I do believe ;
but they are not generally men of talent ; and they keep
entirely to themselves ; and know nothing, and care nothing
for the cmestions of the day."
And so he rambled on, complaining and sneering, till sup-
per time ; when we went out and lounged about the vener-
able cloi«ters, while the room was being cleared and the
cloth laid.
To describe a Cambridge supper party among gay young
men is a business as little suited to my taste as to my powers.
The higher classes ought to know pretty well what such
things are like; and the working-men are not altogether
ignorant, seeing that Peter Priggins and other university men
have been turning Alma Mater's shame to as lucrative ac-
count in their fictions, as the Irish, scribblers have that of
their mother country. But I must say, that 1 was utterly
disgusted ; and when, after the removal of the eatables, the
whole party, twelve or fourteen in number, set to work to
drink hard and deliberately at milk punch, and bishop, and
copus, and grog, and I know not what other inventions of
130 ALTON LOCKE, TA1LOK AND POET.
bacchanalian luxury, and to sing, one after another, songs of
the most brutal indecency, I was glad to escape into the cool
night air, and under pretense of going home, wander up and
down the King's Parade, and watch the tall gables of King's
College Chapel, and the classic front of the Senate-house, and
the stately tower of St. Mary's, as they stood, stern and silent,
bathed in the still glory of the moonshine, and seeming to
watch, with a steadfast sadness, the scene of frivolity and sin,
pharisaism, formalism, hypocrisy, and idleness below.
Noble buildings ! and noble institutions ! given freely to the
people, by those who loved the people, and the Saviour who
died for them. They gave us what they had, those mediaeval
founders : whatsoever narrowness of mind or superstition de-
filed their gift was not their fault, but the fault of their whole
age. The best they knew they imparted freely, and God
will reward them for it. To monopolize those institutions
for the rich, as is done now, is to violate both the spirit and
the letter of the foundations ; to restrict their studies to the
limits of middle- age Romanism,* their conditions of admission
to those fixed at the Reformation, is but a shade less wrong-
ful. The letter is kept — the spirit is thrown away. You
refuse to admit any who are not members of the Church of
England ; say, rather, any who will not sign the dogmas of
the Church of England, whether they believe a word of them
3r not. Useless formalism ! which lets through the reckless,
< Lhe profligate, the ignorant, the hypocritical ; and only ex-
j eludes the honest and the conscientious, and the mass of the
^intellectual Avorking-men. And whose fault is it that tiiey
are not members of the Church of England ? Whose fault
is it, I ask] Your predecessors neglected the lower orders,
till they have ceased to reverence either you or your doctrines ;
you confess that, among yourselves, freely enough. You
throw the blame of the present wide-spread dislike to the
Church of England on her sins during " the godless 18th cen-
tury." Be it so. Why are those sins to be visited on us?
Why are we to be shut out from the universities, which were
founded for us, because you have let us grow up, by millions,
heathens and infidels, as you call us 1 Take away your
* This, like the rest of Mr. Locke's Cambridge reminiscences may
appear to many exaggerated and unfair. But he seems to be speaking
of both universities, and at a time when they had not even commenced
lhe process of reformation. We fear, however, that in spile of many
noble exceptions, his picture of Cambridge represents, if not the whole
truth, still the impression which she leaves on the minds of too many,
ftrangers and, alas! students also. — En.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 131
subterfuge ! It is not merely because wc are bad church-
mcn that you exclude us, else you would be crowding your col-
leges, now, with the talented poor of the agricultural districts,
who, as you say, remain faithful to the church of their fathers.
But are there six laborers' sons educating in the universities
at this moment? No! The real reason for our exclusion,
churchmen or not, is because we are poor — because we can
not pay your exorbitant fees, often, as in the case of bachelors
of arts, exacted for tuition which is never given, and residence
which is not permitted — because we could not support the
extravagance which you not only permit, but encourage, be-
cause, by your own unblushing confession, it insures the uni-
versity "the support of the aristocracy."
" But, on religious points, at least, you must abide by the
statutes of the university."
Strange argument, truly, to be urged literally by English
Protestants in possession of Roman Catholic bequests ! If
that be true in the letter, as well as in the spirit, you should
have given place long ago to the Dominicans and the Fran-
ciscans. In the spirit it is true, and the Reformers acted on
it when they rightly converted the universities to the uses of
the new faith. They carried out the spirit of the founders'
statutes by making the universities as good as they could be,
and letting them share in the new light of the Elizabethan
age. But was the sum of knowledge, human and divine, per-
fected at the Reformation ? Who gave the B-eformers, or yon,
who call yourselves their representatives, a right to say to the
mind of man, and to the teaching of God's Spirit, "Hitherto,
and no farther!" Society and mankind, the children of the
Supreme, will not stop growing for your dogmas — much less
for your vested interests ; and the righteous law of mingled
development and renovation, applied in the sixteenth century,
must be re-applied in the nineteenth ; while the spirits of the
founders, now purged from the superstitions and ignorances
of their age, shall smile from heaven, and say, "So woujd we
have had it, if we had lived in the great nineteenth century,
into which it has been your privilege to be born."
But such thoughts soon passed away. The image which 1
had seen that afternoon upon the river-banks, had awakened
imperiously the frantic longings of past years; and now it re-
aoeended its ancient throne, and tyrannously drove forth every
other object, to Keep me alone with its own tantalizing and
torturing beauty. I did not think about her — No; 1 only
(stupidly and steadfastly stared at her with my whole soul and
132 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
imagination, through that long sleepless night ; and in spite
of the fatigue of my journey, and the stillness proceeding from
my fall and wetting, I lay tossing till the early sun poured
into my bedroom window. Then I arose, dressed myself, and
went out to wander up and down the streets, gazing at one
splendid building after another, till I found the gates of King's
College open. I entered eagerly, through a porch which, to
my untutored taste, seemed gorgeous enough to form the en-
trance to a fairy palace, and stood in the quadrangle, riveted
to the spot by the magnificence of the huge chapel on the
right.
If I had admired it the night before, I felt inclined to wor-
ship it this morning, as I saw the lofty buttresses and spires,
fretted with all their gorgeous carving, and " storied windows
richly dight," sleeping in the glare of the newly risen sun, and
throwing their long shadows due westward down the sloping
lawn, and across the river which dimpled and gleamed below,
till it was lost among the towering masses of crisp elms and
rose-garlanded chestnuts in the rich gardens beyond.
Was I delighted] Yes, and yet no. There is a painful
feeling in seeing any thing magnificent which one can not un-
derstand. And perhaps it was a morbid sensitiveness, but
the feeling was strong upon me that I was an interloper there
— out of harmony with the scene and the system which had
created it ; that I might be an object of unpleasant curiosity,
perhaps of scorn (for 1 had not forgotten the nobleman at the
boat-race), amid those monuments of learned luxury. Per-
haps, on the other hand, it was only from the instinct which
makes us seek for solitude under the pressure of intense emo-
tions, when we have neither language to express them to
ourselves, nor loved one in whose silent eyes we may read
kindred feelings — a sympathy which wants no words. What-
ever the cause was, when a party of men, in their caps and
gowns, approached me down the dark avenue which led int6
the country, I was glad to shrjnk for concealment behind the
weeping-willow at the foot of the bridge, and slink off unob-
served to breakfast with my cousin.
We had just finished breakfast, my cousin was lighting his
meerschaum, when a tall figure passed the window, and the
taller of the noblemen, whom I had seen at the boat-race,
entered the room with a packet of papers in his hand.
"Here, Locule mi! my pocket-book — or rather, to stretch
a bad pun till it bursts, my pocket dictionary. I require the
aid of your benevolently-squandered talents for the correction
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 131
of these proofs. I am, as usual, both idle and busy this morn-
ing ; so draw pen, and set to work for me."
" I am exceedingly sorry, my lord," answered George, in
his most obsequious tone, " but I must work this morning with
all my might. Last night, recollcot, was given to triumph,
Bacchus, and idleness."
" Then find some one who will do them for me, my Ulysses
polumeohane, polutrope, panurge."
"I shall be most happy (with a half-frown and a wince),
to play Panurge to your lordship's Pantagruel on board the
new yacht."
"Oh, I am perfect in that character, I suppose? And is
she, after all, like Pantagruel's ship to be loaded with hemp ?
Well, we must try two or three milder cargoes first. But come,
find me some starving genius — some grocculus esuriens — "
" Who will ascend to the heaven of your lordship's elo-
quence for the bidding?"
"Five shillings a sheet — there will be about two of them, 1
think, in the pamphlet."
" May I take the liberty of recommending my cousin here ?"
" Your cousin ?" And he turned to me, who had been
examining with a sad and envious eye the contents of the
bookshelves. Our eyes met, and first a faint blush, and
then a smile of recognition passed over his magnificent coun-
tenance.
'■ 1 think I had — I am ashamed that 1 can not say the
pleasure of meeting him at the boat-race yesterday."
My cousin looked inquiringly and vexed at us both. The
nobleman smiled.
"Oh, the shame was ours, not his."
" I can not think," I answered, "that you have any reasons
to remember with shame your own kindness and courtesy.
As lor me," I went on bitterly, " I suppose a poor journeyman
tailor, who ventures to look on at the sports of gentlemen
only deserves to be ridden over."
" Sir," he said, looking at me with a severe and searching
glance, " Your bitterness is pardonable — but not your sneer.
You do. not yourself think what you say, and you ought to
know that I think it still less than yourself. If you intend
your irony to be useful, you should keep it till you can use it
courageously against the true offenders."
I looked up at him fiercely enough, but the placid smile
which had returned to his face disarmed me.
"Your class," lie went on, "blind vourselves and our claai
134 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
as much by wholesale denunciations of us, as we, alas ! who
should know better, do by wholesale denunciations of you.
As you grow older, you will learn that there are exceptions
to cvefy r rule."
" And yet the exception proves the rule."
" Most painfully true, sir. But that argument is two-edged.
For instance, am I to consider it the exception or the rule,
when I am told, that you, a journeyman tailor, are able to
correct these proofs for me ?"
" Nearer the rule, I think, than you yet fancy."
" You speak out boldly and well ; but how can you judge
what I may please to fancy ? At all events, I will make
trial of you. There are the proofs. Bring them to me by
four o'clock this afternoon, and if they are well done, I will
pay you more than I should to the average hack-writer, for
you will deserve more."
I took the proofs ; he turned to go, and by a side-look at
George beckoned him out of the room. I heard a whispering
in the passage; and I do not deny that my heart beat high
with new hopes as I caught unwillingly the words —
" Such a forehead ! such an eye ! such a contour of feature
as that ! Locule mi — that boy ought not to be mending
trowsers."
My cousin returned, half laughing, half angry.
'■' Alton, you fool, why did you let out that you were a
snip ?
" I am not ashamed of my trade."
" I am, then. However you've done with it now; and if
you can't come the gentleman, you may as well come the
rising genius. The self-educated dodge pays well just now ;
and after all, you've hooked his lordship — thank me for that.
But you'll never hold him, you impudent dog, if you pull so
hard on him," he went on, putting his hands into his coat-tail
pockets and sticking himself in front of the fire, like the Del-
phic Pythoness upon the sacred tripod, in hopes, I suppose of
some oracular alllatus, " you will never hold him, I say, if you
pull so hard on him. You ought to 'My lord' him for months
yet at least. You know, my good fellow, you must take
every possible care to pick up what good breeding you can, if
I take the trouble to put you in the way of good society, and
tell you where my private bird's-nests are, like the green
school-boy some poet or other talks of."
" He is no lord of mine," I answered, " in any sense of the
word, and therefore I shall not call him so."
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 13.i
'' Upon my honor ! here is a young gentleman who intends
to rise in the world, and then commences hy trying to walk
through the first post he meets ! Noodle ! can't you do like
me, and get out of the carts' way when they come by ? If
you intend to go ahead, you must just dodge in and out, like a
dog at a fair. ' She stoops to conquer' is my motto, and a pre-
cious good one too."
" I have no wish to conquer Lord Lynedale, and so I shall
not stoop to him."
" I have then, and to very good purpose, too. I am his
whetstone, for polishing up that classical wit of his on, till he
carries it into parliament to astonish the country squires. He
fancies himself a second Goethe ; I hav'n't forgot his hitting
at me, before a large supper-party, with a certain epigram of
that old turkey-cock's, about the whale having his unraeu-
tionable parasite — and the great man likewise. Whale, in-
deed ! I bide my time, Alton, my boy, I bide my time ; and
then let your grand aristocrat look out ! If he does not find
the supposed whale-unmentionable a good stout holding har-
poon, with a tough line to it, and a long one, it's a pity, Al-
ton, my boy !"
And he burst into a coarse laugh, tossed himself down on
the sofa, and re-lighted his meerschaum.
" He seemed to me," I answered, " to have a peculiar court-
esy and liberality of mind toward those below him in rank."
" Oh ! he had, had he 1 Now, I'll just put you up to a
dodge. He intends to come the Mirabeau — fancies his mantle
has fallen on him, prays before the fellow's bust, I believe,
if one knew the truth, for a double portion of his spirit ; and
therefore it is a part of his game to ingratiate himself with all
pot-boy-dom, while at heart he is as proud, exclusive an aris-
tocrat as ever wore nobleman's hat. At all events, you may
get something out of him if you play your cards well — or,
rather help me to play mine ; lor I consider him as my prop-
erty, and you only as my aid-dc-catnp."
" I shall play no one's cards," I answered, sulkily. " I am
doing work fairly, and shall be fairly paid for it, and keep my
own independence."
" Independence! hey-day ! Have you forgotten that, after
all, you are my — guest, to call it by the mildest term ?"
" Do you upbraid me with that ?" I said, starting up. I'
" Do you expect me to live on your charity, on condition of
doing your dirty work? You do not know me, sir. I leave
your roof this instant !"
136 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
" You do not !" answered he, laughing loudly, as he sprang
over the sofa, and set his back against the door. " Come,
come, you Will-o'-the-Wisp, as full of flights, and fancies,
and vagaries, as a sick old maid ! can't you see which side
your bread is buttered ? Sit down, I say ! Don't you know
that I'm as good-natured a fellow as ever lived, although I do
parade a little Gil Bias morality now and then, just for fun's
sake ? Do you think I should be so open with it, if I meant
any thing very diabolic ? There — sit down, and don't go
into King Cambyses' vein, or Queen Hecuba's tears, either,
which you seem inclined to do."
" I know you have been very generous to me," said I, peni-
tently, "Jput a kindness becomes none when you are upbraided
with it."
" So say the copy books — I deny it. At all events, I'll
say no more ; and you shall sit down there, and write as still
as a mouse, till two, while I tackle this never-to-be-enough-
by-unhappy-third-years'-men-execrated Griffin's Optics."
At four that afternoon, I knocked, proofs in hand, at the
door of Lord Lynedale's rooms in the King's Parade. The
door was opened by a little elderly groom, gray-coated, gray-
gaitered, gray-haired, gray-visaged. He had the look of a
respectable old family retainer, and his exquisitely neat groom's
dress gave him a sort of interest in my eyes. Class costumes,
relics though they are of feudalism, carry a charm with thern.
They are symbolic, definitive; they bestow a personality on
the wearer, which satisfies the mind, by enabling it instantly
to classify him, to connect him with a thousand stories and as-
sociations ; and to my young mind, the wiry, shrewd, honest,
grim old serving-man seemed the incarnation of all the wonders
of Newmarket, and the hunting-kennel, and the steeple-chase,
of which I had read, with alternate admiration and contempt,
in the newspapers.
From between his legs peeped out a mass of shaggy griz-
zled hair, containing a Skye-terrier's eyes, and a long snout,
which, by its twisting and sniffing, seemed investigating
whether my trowsers came within the biting degree of shah-
biness.
" And what do you want here, young man ?"
" I was bidden by Lord Lynedale to come here at fcui
with these papers."
" Oh, yes ! very likely ! that's an old story ; and to be paid
money, I guess ]"
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND l'OET. 137
" And to be paid money."
" Not a doubt ou't. Then you must wait a little longer,
like the rest of you bloodsuckers. Go back, and tell your
master, that he needn't send your sort here any more, with
his post obits, and post morteins, and the like devilry. The
old earl's good to last these three months more, tne Lord be
praised. Therefore, come, sir — you go back to your master,
and take him my compliments, and — "
" I have no master," quoth I, puzzled, but half laughing ;
for I liked the old fellow's iron honest visage.
" No master, eh ? then darned if you shall come in. Comes
on your own account, eh? Got a little bit of paper for his
lordship in that bundle'?"
" I told you already that I had," said I, peevishly.
" Werry good ; but you didn't tell me whether they come
from the bayleaves or not."
"Nonsense ! Take the papers in yourself, if you like."
" Oh, you young wagabond ! Do you take me for Judas
Iscariot ? And what do you expect — to set a man on serving
a writ on a man's own master ? Wait a bit, till I gets the
hors'up, that's all, and I'll show you what's what."
If I could not understand him, the dog did; for he ran in-
stantly at my legs, secured a large piece of my best trowsers,
and was returning for a second, if I had not, literally, in my
perplexity thrust the clean proofs into his mouth, which he
worried and shook, as if they had been the grandfather of all
white mice. At this moment, the inner door opened, and
Lord Lytiedale appeared. There was an explanation, and a
laugh, in which I could not but join, in spite of the torn
trowsers, at the expense of the groom. The old man retired,
mingling his growls with those of the terrier, and evidently
quite disappointed at my not being a dun — an honest, douce
barn-door fowl, and not /era natures, and fair game for his
sporting propensities.
Lord Lynedale took me into the inner room, and bade me
sit down while he examined the proofs. I looked round the
low-wainscoted apartment, with its narrow mullioned win-
dows, in extreme curiosity. What a real nobleman's abode
could be like, was naturally worth examining, to one who had,
all his life, heard of the aristocracy as of some mythic Titans
— whether fiends or gods being yet a doubtful point — alto-
gether enshrined on " cloudy Olympus," invisible to mortal
ken. The shelves were gay with Morocco, Prussia leather,
and gilding — not much used, as I thought, till my eye caught
k38 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND l'OET.
one of the gorgeously-bound volumes lying on the table in
a loose cover of polished leather — a refinement of which poor
I should never have dreamt. The Avails were covered with
prints, which soon turned my eyes from every thing else,
to range delighted over Landseers, Turners, Roberts's Eastern
Sketches, the ancient Italian masters ; and I recognized, with
a sort of friendly affection, an old print of my favorite St.
Sebastian, in the Dulwich Gallery. It brought back to my
mind a thousand dreams, and a thousand sorrows. Would
those dreams be ever realized! Might this new acquaintance
possibly open some pathway toward their fulfillment? — some
vista toward the attainment of a station where they would, at
least, be less chimerical ? And at that thought, my heart
beat loud with hope. The room was choked up with chairs
and tables, of all sorts of strange shapes and problematical
uses. The floor was strewed with skins of bear, deer, and
seal. In a corner lay hunting-whips and fishing-rods, foils,
boxing-gloves, and gun-cases ; while over the chimney-piece,
an array of rich Turkish pipes, all amber and enamel, con-
trasted curiously with quaint old swords and daggers — bronze
classic casts, upon gothic oak brackets, and fantastic scraps
of continental carving. On the centre-table, too, reigned the
same rich profusion, or, if you will, confusion — MSS. "Notes
in Egypt," "Goethe's Walverwandschaften," Murray's Hand-
books, and "Plato's Republic." What was there not there?
And I chuckled inwardly, to see how Bell's Life in London
and the Ecclcsiologist had, between them, got down "McCul-
loch on Taxation," and were sitting, arm-in-arm, triumphantly
astride of him. Every thing in the room, even to the fragrant
flowers in a German glass, spoke of a traveled and cultivated
luxury — manifold tastes and powers of self-enjoyment and
self-improvment, which Heaven forgive me if I envied, as I
looked upon them. If I, now, had had one-twentieth part of
those books, prints, that experience of life, not to mention
that physical strength and beauty, which stood towering
there before the fire — so simple — so utterly unconscious of
the innate nobleness and grace which shone out from every
motion of those stately limbs and features — all the delicacy
which blood can give, combined, as one does sometimes see,
with the broad strength of the proletarian — so different from
poor me ! — and so different too, as I recollected with perhaps
a savage pleasure, from the miserable, stunted specimen of
over-bred imbecility which had ridden over me the day before .
A strange question that of birth ! and one in which the phi-
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND l'OKT. 139
josopher, in spite of himself, must come to democratic conclu-
sions. For, after all, the physical and intellectual superiority
of the high-born is only preserved, as it was in the old Norman
times, by the continual practical abnegation of the very caste-
lie on which they pride themselves — by continual renovation
of their race, by intermarriage with the ranks below them.
The blood of Odin flowed in the veins of Norman William ;
true — and so did the tanner's of Falaise !
At last he looked up, and spoke courteously —
" I'm afraid I have kept you long ; but now, here is for
your corrections, which are capital. I have really to thank
you for a lesson in writing English." And he put a sovereign
into my hand.
" I am very sorry," said I, " but I have no change."
" Never mind that. Your work is well worth the money."
"But," I said, "you agreed with me for five shillings a
sheet, and — I do not wish to be rude, but I can not accept
your kindness. We working-men make a rule of abiding by
our wages, and taking nothing which looks like — "
" Well, well — and a very good rule it is. I suppose,
then, I must find out some way for you to earn more. Good
afternoon." And he motioned me out of the room, fol-
lowed me down-stairs, and turned ofl' toward the College
Gardens.
i wandered up and down, feeding my greedy eyes, till I found
mysslf again upon the bridge where I had stood that morning,
gazing with admiration and astonishment at a scene which
I have often expected to see painted or described, and which,
nevertheless, in spite of its unique magnificence, seems strangely
overlooked by those who cater for the public taste, with pen
and pencil. The vista of bridges, one after another, spanning
the stream ; the long line of great monastic palaces, all un-
like, and yet all in harmony, sloping down to the stream, with
their trim lawns and ivied-walls, their towers and buttresses ;
and opposite them, the range of rich gardens and noble tim-
ber-trees, dimly seen through which, at the end of the gor-
geous river avenue, towered the lofty buildings of St. John's.
The whole scene, under the glow of a rich May afternoon,
seemed to me a fragment out of the " Arabian Nights" or
Spenser's " Fairy Queen." I leaned upon the parapet, and
gazed, and gazed, so absorbed in wonder and enjoyment, that
I was quite unconscious, for some time, that Lord Lynedalo
was standing by my side, engaged in the same employment.
He was not alone. Hanging on his arm was a lady, whoso
MO ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AAD POET.
face, it seemed to me, I ought to know. It certainly was 4
not to be easily forgotten. She was beautiful, but with it
face and figure rather of a Juno than a Venus — dark, imj ;ri-
ous, restless — the lips almost too firmly set, the brow almost
too massive and projecting — a queen, rather to be feared than
loved — but a queen still, as truly royal as the man into whose
face she was looking up with eager admiration and delight, as
he pointed out to her eloquently the several beauties of the
landscape. Her dress was as plain as that of any Quaker ,
but the grace of its arrangement, of every line and fold, wan
enough, without the help of the heavy gold bracelet on hei
wrist, to proclaim her a line lady ; by which term, I wish tt
express the result of that perfect education in taste and man
ner, down to every gesture, which Heaven forbid that I, pro
fessing to be a poet, should undervalue. It is beautiful; anu
therefore I welcome it, in the name of the Author of ah
beauty. I value it so highly, that I would fain see it extend,
not merely from Belgravia to the tradesman's villa, but thence,
as I believe it one day will, to the laborer's hovel, and the
needlewoman's garret.
Half in bashfulness, half in the pride which shrinks from
any thing like intrusion, I was moving away ; but the nobie-
man, recognizing me with a smile and a nod, made some ob-
servation on the beauty of the scene before us. Before I could
answer, however, I saw that his companion's eyes were fixed
intently on my face.
"Is this," she said to Lord Lynedale, " the young person of
whom you were speaking to me just now ! I fancy that I rec-
ollect him, though, I dare say, he has forgotten me."
If I had forgotten the face, that voice, so peculiarly rich,
deep, and marked in its pronunciation of every syllable, re-
's called her instantly to my mind. It was the dark lady of
l the Hulwich Gallery !
" I met, you, I think," I said, " at the picture-gallery at
Dulvvich, and you were kind enough, and — and some persons
who were with you, to talk to me about a picture there."
"Yes; Guido's St. Sebastian. You seemed fond of reading,
then. I am glad to see you at college."
I explained, that I was not at college. That led to fresh
gentle questions on her part, till I had given her all the lead
ing points of my history. There was nothing in it of which
I ought to have been ashamed.
She seemed to become more and more interested in my
story, and her companion also.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 141
" And have you tried to write ? I recollect my undo
advising you to try a poem on St. Sebastian. It was spoken,
perhaps, in jest ; hut it will not, I hope, have been laboi
lost, if you have taken it in earnest."
"Yes — I have written on that and on other subjects, during
the last few years."
"Then, you must let us see them, if you have them with
you. I think my uncle, Arthur, might like to look ovei
them ; and if they were fit for publication, he might be abk
to do something toward it."
"At all events," said Lord Lynedale, "a self-educated
author is always interesting. Bring any of your poems that
you have with you, to the Eagle this afternoon, and leave
them there for Dean Winnstay ; and to-morrow morning, if
you have nothing bettor to do, call there between ten and
eleven o'clock."
lie wrote me down the dean's address, and nodding a civil
good morning, turned away with his queenly companion, while
I stood gazing after him, wondering whether all noblemen
and high-born ladies were like them in person and in spirit —
a question, which, in spite of many noble exceptions, some of
them well known and appreciated by the working-men, I am
afraid must be answered in the negative.
I took my MSS. to the Eagle, and wandered out once
more, instinctively, among those same magnificent trees at the
back of the colleges, to enjoy the pleasing torment of expecta-
tion. "My uncle !" was he the same old man whom I had
seen at the gallery ; and if so, was Lillian with him ? De-
licious hope ! And yet, what if she was with him — what to
me ? But yet I sat silent, dreaming, all the evening, and hur-
ried early to bed — not to sleep, but to lie and dream on and on,
and rise almost before light, eat no breakfast, and pace up and
down, waiting impatiently for the hour at which I was to find
out whether my dream was true.
And it was true ! The first object I saw, when I entered
the room, Avas Lillian, looking more beautiful than ever. The
child of sixteen had blossomed into the woman of twenty.
The ivory and vermillion of the complexion had toned down
together into still richer hues. The dark hazel eyes shone
with a more liquid lustre. The figure had become more
rounded, without losing a line of that fairy lightness, with
which her light morning-dress, with its delicate French semi-
tones of color, gay and yet not gaudy, seemed to harmonize.
The iittle plump jeweled hands — the transparent chestnut,
]f
142 • ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
hair, banded round the beautiful oval mask — the tiny feet,
which, as Suckling has it,
"Underneath her petticoat
Like little mice peeped in and out" —
I could have fallen down, fool that I was ! and worshiped—
what ? I could not tell then, for I can not tell even now.
The dean smiled recognition, bade me sit down, and dis-
posed my papers, meditatively, on his knee. 1 obeyed him.
trembling, choking — my eyes devouring my idol — forgetting
why I had come — seeing nothing but her — listening for noth-
ing but the opening of those lips. I believe the dean was
some sentences deep in his oration, before I became conscious
thereof.
" — And I think I may tell you, at once, that I have
been very much surprised and gratified with them. They
evince, on the whole, a far greater acquaintance with the
English classic models, and with the laws of rhyme and
melody, than could have been expected from a young man
of your class — made virtatc puer. Have you read any
Latin?"
•' A little." And I w r ent on staring at Lillian, who looked
up, furtively, from her work, every now and then, to steal a
glance at me, and set my poor heart thumping still more
fiA'Cfely against my side.
" Very good ; you will have the less trouble, then, in the
preparation for college. You will find out for yourself, of
course, the immense disadvantages of self-education. The
fact is, my dear lord" (turning to Lord Lynedale), " it is only
useful as an indication of a capability of being educated by
others. One never opens a book written by working-men,
without shuddering at a hundred faults of style. However,
there are some very tolerable attempts among these — espe
cially the imitations of Milton's " Comus."
Poor I had by no means intended them as imitations ; but
such, "no doubt, they were.
"I am sorry to see that Shelley has had so much influence
on your writing. He is a guide as irregular in taste, as un-
orthodox in doctrine ; though there are some pretty things in
him now and then. And you have caught his melody toler-
ably here, now — "
" Oh, that is such a sweet thing !" said Lilian. " Do you
know, I read it over and over last night, and took it up-stairs
with me. tj.ow very fond of beautiful things you must be,
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET 143
Mr. Locke, to be able to describe so passionately the longing
alter them "
That voice once more ! It intoxicated me, so that I hardly
knew what I stammered out — something about working-men
having very few opportunities of* indulging the taste lor — I
foro-et what. I believe I was on the point of running off into
some absurd compliment, but I caught the dark lady's warn
ing eye on me.
""Ah, yes! I forgot. I daresay it must be a very stupid
life. So little opportunity, as he says. What a pity he is a
tailor, papa ! Such an unimaginative employment ! How
delightful it would be to send him to college, and make him
a clergyman !"
Fool that I was ! I fancied — what did I not fancy 1
Never seeing how that very " he' bespoke the indifference — ■
the gulf between us. I was not a man — an equal ; but a
thing — a subject, who was to be talked over, and examined,
and made into something like themselves, of their supreme
and undeserved benevolence.
" Gently, gently, fair lady ! We must not be as headlong
as some people would kindly wish to be. If this young man
really has a proper desire to rise into a higher station, and I
find him a fit object to be assisted in that praiseworthy ambi-
tion, why, I think he ought to go to some training college ;
St. Mark's, I should say, on the whole, might, by its stitnrg
Church principles, give the best antidote to any little remain-
ing taint of sans-culottism. You understand me, my lord ?
And, then, if he distinguished himself there, it would be time
to think of getting him a sizarship."
" Poor Pegasus in harness !" half smiled, half sighed, the
dark lady.
" Just the sort of youth," whispered Lord Lynedale, loud
enough for me to hear, " to take out with us to the Mediter-
ranean, as secretary — s'il y avait la de la morale, of course —
Yes — and of course, too, the tailor's boy was not expected
to understand French. But the most absurd thing was, how
every body, except perhaps the dark lady, seemed to take for
granted that I felt myself exceedingly honored, and must con-
sider it, as a matter of course, the greatest possible stretch of
kindness thus to talk me over, and settle every thing for me,
as if I was not a living soul, but a plant in a pot. Perhaps
'.hey were not unsupported by experience. I suppose too
many of us would have thought it. so ; there are flunkies in
all ranks and to spare. Perhaps the true absurdity was tin
244 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
way in which I sat, demented, inarticulate, staring at Lillian,
and only caring for any word which seemed to augur a chance
of seeing her again ; instead of saying, as I felt, that I had
no wish whatever to rise above my station ; no intention
whatever of being sent to training-schools or colleges, or any
where else at the expense of other people. And therefore it
was that I submitted blindly, when the dean, who looked as
kind, and was really, I believe, as kind, as ever was human
being, turned to me with a solemn authoritative voice —
" Well, my young friend, I must say that I am, on the
whole, very much pleased with your performance. It corrob-
orates, my dear lord, the assertion, for which I have been so
often ridiculed, that there are many real men, capable of
higher things, scattered up and down among the masses.
Attend to me, sir !" (a hint which I suspect I very much
wanted). " Now, recollect ; if it should be hereafter in our
power to assist your prospects in life, you must give up, once
and for all, the bitter tone against the higher classes, which I
am sorry to see in your MSS. As you know more of the
world, you will find that the poor are not by any means as
ill-used as they are taught, in these days, to believe. 'The
rich have their sorrows too — no one knows it better than I"
(and he played pensively with his gold pencil case) — " and
good and evil are pretty equally distributed among all ranks,
by a just and merciful God. I advise you most earnestly, as
you value your future success in life, to give up reading those
unprincipled authors, whose aim is to excite the evil passions
of the multitude ; and to shut your ears betimes to the ex-
travagant calumnies of demagogues, who make tools of enthu-
siastic and imaginative minds, for their own selfish aggrand-
izement. Avoid politics ; the workman has no more to do
with them than the clergyman. We are told, on divine
authority, to fear God and the king, and meddle not with
those who are given to change. Rather put before yourself
the example of such a man as the excellent Dr. Brown, one
of the richest and most respected men of the university, with
whom I hope to have the pleasure of dining this evening —
and yet that man actually, for several years of his life, worked
at a carpenter's bench !"
I too had something to say about all that. I too knew
something about demagogues and working-men: but the sight
of Lillian made me a coward ; and I only sat silent as the
thought flashed across me, half ludicrous, half painful, by its
contrast, of another who once worked at a carpenter's bench,
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR A.ND POET. 145
and fulfilled his mission — not by an old age of wealth, respect-
ability, and port wine ; but on the cross of Calvary. After
all, the worthy old gentleman gave me no time to answer.
" Next — I think of showing these MSS. to my publisher,
to get his opinion as to whether they are worth printing just
now. Not that I wish you to build much on the chance. It
is not necessary that you should be a poet. I should prefer
mathematics for you, as a methodic discipline of the intellect.
Most active minds write poetry, at a certain age — I wrote a
<rood deal, I recollect, myself. But that is no reason for pub-
lishing. This haste to rush into print is one of the bad signs
of the times — a symptom of the unhealthy activity which was
first called out by the French revolution. In the Elizabethan
age, every decently-educated gentleman was able, as a matter
of course, to indite a sonnet to his mistress's eyebrow, or an
epigram on his enemy ; and yet he never dreamt of printing
them. One of the few rational things I have met with,
Eleanor, in the works of your very objectionable pet, Mr.
Carlyle — though indeed his style is too intolerable to have
ullowed me to read much — is the remark that 'speech is silver'
— ' silvern' he calls it pedantically — ' while silence is golden.' '
At this point of the sermon, Lillian fled from the room, to
my extreme disgust. But still the old man prosed —
" I think, therefore, that you had better stay with your
cousin for the next week. I hear from Lord Lynedale, that
he is a very studious, moral, rising young man ; and I only
hope that you will follow his good example. At the end of
the week I shall return home, and then I shall be glad to see
more of you at my house at D , about — miles from this
place. Good morning."
I went, in rapture at the last announcement — and yet my
conscience smote me. I had not stood up for the working-
men. I had heard them calumniated, and held my tongue —
but I was to see Lillian. I had let the dean fancy I was will-
ing to become a pensioner on his bounty — that I was a mem-
ber of the Church of England, and willing to go to a Church
Training School — but I was to see Lillian. I had lowered
myself in my own eyes — but I had seen Lillian. Perhaps 1
exaggerated my own offenses : however that may be, love
soon silenced conscience, and I almost danced into my cousin's
rooms on my return.
That week passed rapidly and happily. I was half amused
with the change in my cousin's demeanor. I had evidently
a
M6 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
risen immensely in his eyes : and I could not help applying,
in my heart, to him, Mr. Carlyle's dictum about the valet
species — how they never honor the unaccredited hero, having
no eye to find him out till properly accredited, and counter-
signed, and accoutred with full uniform and diploma by that
great God, Public Opinion. I saw through the motive of his
new-fledged respect for me — and yet I encouraged it ; for it
flattered my vanity. The world must forgive me. It was
something for the poor tailor to find himself somewhat appre-
ciated at last, even outwardly. And besides, this said respect
took a form which was very tempting to me now — though the
week before it was just the one which I should have repelled
with scorn. George became very anxious to lend me money,
to order me clothes at his own tailor's, and set me up in vari-
ous little toilet refinements, that I might make a respectable
appearance at the dean's. I knew that he consulted rather
the honor of the family, than my good ; but I did not know
that his aim was also to get me into his power ; and I refused
more and more weakly at each fresh offer, and at last consent-
ed, in an evil hour, to sell my own independence, for the sake of
indulging my love-dream, and appearing to be what I was not.
I saw a good deal more of the young university men that
week. I can not say that my recollections of them were
pleasant. A few of them were very bigoted Tractarians —
some of whom seemed to fancy that a dilettante admiration
for crucifixes and Gothic architecture, was a form of religion,
which, by its extreme perfection, made the virtues of chastity
and sobriety quite unnecessary — and the rest, of a more as-
cetic and moral turn, seemed as narrow, bitter, flippant, and
un-earnest young men as I had ever met, dealing in second-
hand party statements, gathered, as I could discover, entirely
from periodicals of their own party — taking pride in reading
nothing but what was made for them, indulging in the most
violent nick-names and railing, and escaping from any thing
like severe argument by a sneer or an expression of theatrical
horror at so " painful" a notion. I had good opportunities of
seeing what they were really like ; for my cousin seemed to
take delight in tormenting them — making them contradict
themselves, getting them into dilemmas, and putting them
into passions, while the whole time he professed to be of their
party, as indeed he was. But his consciousness of power, and
his natural craft, seemed to make him consider his own party
as his private preserve for sporting over ; and when he was
tired with the amusement, he used to try to call me in, and
ALTON LOCKK, TAILOR AND I'OET. 147
set me by the ears with his guests, which he had no great
trouble in doing. And then, when he saw me at all confused,
or borne down by statements from authors, of whose very
names I had never heard, or by expressions of horror and sur-
prise which made me suspect that I had unconsciously com-
mitted myself to an absurdity, he used to come "hurling into
the midst of the press," like some knight at a tournament, or
Socrates when he saved Alcibiades at Delium, and, by a dex-
terous repartee, turn the tide of battle, and get me off safe —
taking care, by-the-by, to hint to me the obligation which he
considered himself to have conferred upon me.
But the great majority of the young men whom I met were
even of a lower stamp. I was utterly shocked and disap- 1
pointed at the contempt and unbelief with which they seem- 1
ed to regard every thing beyond mere animal enjoyment, and
here and there the selfish advantage of a good degree. They
seemed, if one could judge from appearances, to despise
and disbelieve every thing generous, enthusiastic, enlarged.
Thoughtfulness was a "bore;" earnestness, "romance." —
Above all, they seemed to despise the university itself. The /
"Dons" were "idle, fat old humbugs;" chapel, "a humbug
too;" tutors, " humbugs" too, who played into the tradesmen's
hands, and charged men high fees for lectures not worth at-
tending — so that any man who wanted to get on, was forced
to have a private tutor, besides his college one. The univers-
ity studies were " a humbug" — no use to a man in after-life.
The masters of arts were "humbugs" too; for "they knew
all the evils, and clamored for reform till they became Dons
themselves ; and then, as soon as they found the old system
pay, they settled down on their lees, and grew fat on port
wine, like those before them." They seemed to consider
themselves in an atmosphere of humbug — living in a lie — out
of which lie-element those who chose were very right in mak-
ing the most, for the gaining of fame or money. And the
tone which they took about every thing — the coarseness, hol-
lowness, Gil Bias selfishness — was just what might have been
expected. Whether they were right or wrong in their com-
plaints, I, of course, have no means of accurately knowing.
But it did seem strange to me, as it has to others, to find in
the mouths of almost all the gownsmen, those very same
charges against the universities which, when working-men
dare to make them, excite outcries of "calumny," "sedition,"
" vulgar radicalism," " attacks on our time-honored institu-
tions," &c, &c.
CHAPTER XIV.
A CATHEDRAL TOWN.
At length, the wished-for day had arrived ; and, with my
cousin, I was whirling along full of hope and desire, toward
the cathedral town of D , through a flat fen country, which,
though I had often heard it descrihed as ugly, struck my im-
agination much. The vast height and width of the sky-arch,
as seen from those flats, as from an ocean — the gray haze
shrouding the horizon of our narrow land-view, and closing
us in, till we seemed to be floating through infinite space, on
a little platform of earth ; the rich poplar-fringed farms, with
their herds of dappled oxen — the luxuriant crops of oats and
beans — the tender green of the tall rape, a plant till then
unknown to me — the long, straight, silver dykes, with their
gaudy carpets of strange floating water plants, and their black
banks studded with the remains of buried forests — the innum-
erable draining-mills, with their creaking sails and groaning
wheels — the endless rows of pollard willows, through which
the breeze moaned and rung, as through the strings of some
vast iEolian harp ; the little island knolls in that vast sea
of fen, each with its long village street, and delicately taper
spire ; all this seemed to me to contain an element of new
and peculiar beauty.
" Why !" exclaims the reading public, if perchance it ever
sees this tale of mine, in its usual purient longing after any
thing like personal gossip, or scandalous anecdote, " why, there
is no cathedral town which begins with a D ! Through the
fen, too ! He must mean either Ely, Lincoln, or Peterborough :
that's certain." Then, at one of those places, they find there
is a dean — not of the name of Winnstay, true — but his name
begins with a W ; and he has a pretty daughter — no, a
niece ; well, that's very near it ; it must be him. No ; at
another place — there is not a dean, true — but a canon, or an
archdeacon — something of that kind ; and he has a pretty
daughter, really ; and his name begins not with W, but with
Y ; well, that's the last letter of Winnstay, if it is not the
first ; that must be the poor man ! What a shame to have
exposed his family secrets in that way !" And then a whole
circle of myths grow up around the man's story. It is credi-
bly ascertained that I am the man who broke into his houso
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. [9
last year, after having made love to his housemaid, and stow
his writing-desk and plate — else, why should a burglar steal
family-let l°ers, if he had not some interest in them 1 — And be-
fore the matter dies away, some worthy old gentleman, who
has not spoken to a working-man since he left his living,
thirty years ago, and hates a radical as he does the Pope, re-
ceives two or three anonymous letters, condoling with him
on the cruel betrayal of his confidence — base ingratitude for
undeserved condescension, &c, &c; and, perhaps, with an
inclosure of good advice for his lovely daughter.
But, wherever D is, we arrived there ; and with a
beating heart, I — and I now suspect my cousin also — walk-
ed up the sunny slopes, where the old convent had stood,
now covered with walled gardens and noble timber trees, and
crowned by the richly-fretted towers of the cathedral, which
we had seen, for the last twenty miles, growing gradu-
ally larger and more distinct across the level flat. " Ely ]"
" No ; Lincoln !" " Oh ! but really, it's just as much like
Peterborough !" Never mind, my dear reader ; the essence
of the fact, as I think, lies not quite so much in the name of
the place, as in what was done there — to which I, with all
the little respect which I can muster, entreat your attention.
It is not from false shame at my necessary ignorance, but
from a fear lest I should bore my readers with what seems to
them trivial, that I refrain from dilating on many a thing,
which struck me as curious in this my first visit to the house
of an English gentleman. I must say, however, though 1
suppose that it will be numbered, at least, among trite re-
marks, if not among trivial ones, that the wealth around me
certainly struck me, as it has others, as not very much in
keeping with the office of one who professed to be a minister
of the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. But I salved over that
feeling, being desirous to see every thing in the brightest light,
with the recollection that the dean had a private fortune of
his own ; though it did seem, at moments, that if a man has
solemnly sworn to devote himself, body and soul, to the cause
of the spiritual welfare of the nation, that vow might be not
unfairly construed to include his money, as well as his talents,
time, and health ; unless, perhaps, money is considered by
spiritual persons as so worthless a thing, that it is not fit to
be given to God — a notion which might seem to explain how
a really pious and universally respected archbishop — living
within a quarter of a mile of one of the worst infernos of
destitution, disease, filth, and profligacy — can yet find it lq
150 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
his heart to save .£120,000, out of church revenues, and
leave it to his family ; though it will not explain how Irish
bishops can reconcile it to their consciences to leave behind
them, one and all, large fortunes — for I suppose from fifty to
a hundred thousand pounds is something — saved from fees
and tithes, taken from the pockets of a Roman Catholic pop-
ulation, whom they have been put there to convert to Protest-
antism, for the last three hundred years — with what success,
all the world knows. Of course, it is a most impertinent, and
almost a blasphemous thing, for a working-man to daro to
mention such subjects. Is it not " speaking evil of dignities ?"
Strange, by-the-by, that merely to mention facts, without note or
comment, should be always called " speaking evil !" Does not
that argue ill for the facts themselves ? Working-men think
so ; but what matter what " the swinish multitude" think ?
When I speak of wealth, I do not mean that the dean's
household would have been considered by his own class at all
too luxurious. He would have been said, I suppose, to live
in a " quiet, comfortable, gentlemanlike way" — " every thing
very plain and very good." It included a butler — a quiet,
good-natured old man — who ushered us into our bedrooms ;
a footman, who opened the door — a sort of animal for which
I have an extreme aversion — young, silly, conceited, over-fed,
florid — who looked just the man to sell his soul for a livery,
twice as much food as he needed, and the opportunity of un-
limited flirtations with the maids ; and a coachman, very like
other coachmen, whom I saw taking a pair of handsome car-
riage-horses out to exercise, as we opened the gate.
The old man, silently and as a matter of course, unpacked
for me my little portmanteau (lent me by my cousin), and
placed my things neatly in various drawers — went down,
brought up a jug of hot water, put it on the washing-table —
told me that dinner was at six — that the half-hour bell rang
at half-past five — and that, if I wanted any thing, the foot-
man would answer the bell (bells seeming a prominent idea
in his theory of the universe) — and so left me, wondering at
the strange fact that free men, with free wills, do sell them-
selves, by the hundred thousand, to perform menial offices for
other men, not for love, but for money ; becoming, to define
them strictly, bell-answering animals : and are honest, happy,
contented, in such a life. A man-servant, a soldier, and a
Jesuit, are to me the three great wonders of humanity — three
forms of moral suicide, for which I never had the slightest
gleam of sympathy, or even comprehension.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 151
At last we went down to dinner, after my personal adorn-
aients had been carefully superintended by my cousin, who
cave me, over-and-above, various warnings and exnortations
as to my behavior ; which, of course, took due effect, in
making me as nervous, constrained, and affected, as possible.
When I appeared in the drawing-rorn, I was kindly wel-
comed by the dean, the two ladies, and Lord Lynedale.
But as I stood fidgeting and blushing, sticking my arms,
and legs, and head, into all sorts of quaint positions — trying
one attitude, and thinking it looked awkward, and so exchang-
ing it for another, more awkward still — my eye fell suddenly
on a slip of paper, which had conveyed itself, I never knew
how, upon the pages of the Illustrated Book of Ballads, which
I was turning over :
" Be natural, and you will be gentlemanlike. If you wish
others to forget your rank, do not forget it yourself. If you
wish others to remember you with pleasure, forget yourself;
and be just what God has made you."
I could not help fancying that the lesson, whether inten-
tionally or not, was meant for me ; and a passing impulse
made me take up the slip, fold it together, and put it in my
bosom. Perhaps it was Lillian's hand-writing ! I looked
round at the ladies ; but their faces were each buried behind
a book.
We went in to dinner ; and to my delight, I sat next to my
goddess, while opposite me was my cousin. Luckily I had
got some directions from him as to what to say and do, when
my wonders, the servants, thrust eatables and drinkables over
my shoulders.
Lillian and my cousin chatted away about church-archi-
tecture, and the restorations which were going on at the cathe-
dral ; while I, for the first-half of dinner, feasted my eyes with
the sight of a beauty, in which I seemed to discover every
moment some new excellence. Every time I looked up at
her, my eyes dazzled, my face burnt, my heart sank, and soft
thrills ran through every nerve. And yet, Heaven knows,
my emotions were as pure as those of an infant. It was
beauty longed for, and found at last, which I adored as a
thing not to be possessed, but worshiped. The desire, even
the thought, of calling her my own, never crossed my mind.
I felt that I could gladly die, if by death I could purchase
the permission to watch her. I understood, then, and forever
after, the pure devotion of the old knights and troubadours of
chivalry. 1 seemed to myself to be their brother — one of the
152 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POtiT.
holy guild of poet-lovers. I was a new Petrarch, basking <u
the light-rays of a new Laura. I gazed, and gazed, and fo» ad
new life in gazing, and was content.
But my simple bliss was perfected, when she suddenly
turned to me, and began asking me questions on the very
points on which I was best able to answer. She talked about
poetry, Tennyson and Wordsworth ; asked me if I understood
Browning's Sordello ; and then comforted me, after my stam-
mering confession that I did not, by telling me she was de-
lighted to hear that ; for she did not understand it either, and
it was so pleasant to have a companion in ignorance. Then
she asked, if I was much struck with the buildings in Cam-
bridge ? — had they inspired me with any verses yet ? — I was
bound to write something about them — and so on ; making the
most commonplace remarks look brilliant, from the ease and
liveliness with which they were spoken, and the tact with which
they were made pleasant to the listener : while I wondered at
myself, lor enjoying from her lips the flippant, sparkling tattle,
which had hitherto made young women to me objects of un-
speakable dread, to be escaped by crossing the street, hiding be-
hind doors, and rushing blindly into back-yards and coal-holes.
The ladies left the room : and I, with Lillian's face glow-
ing bright in my imagination, as the crimson orb remains on
the retina of the closed eye, after looking intently at the sun,
sat listening to a pleasant discussion between the dean and
the nobleman, about some country in the East, which they
had both visited, and greedily devouring all the new facts
which they incidentally brought forth out of (he treasures of
their highly-cultivated minds.
I was agreeably surprised (don't laugh, reader) to find that
I was allowed to drink water ; and that the other men drank
not more than a glass or two of wine, after the ladies had re-
tired. I had, somehow, got both lords and deans associated
in my mind with infinite swillings of port wine, and bacchan-
alian orgies, and sat down, at first, in much fear and trem-
bling, lest I should be compelled to join, under penalties of
salt-and-water ; but I had made up my mind, stoutly, to bear
any thing rather than get drunk ; and so I had all the merit
of a temperance-martyr, without any of its disagreeables.
" Well," said I to myself, smiling in spirit, "what would
my Chartist friends say if they saw me here 1 Not even
Crossthwaite himself could find a flaw in the appreciation of
merit for its own sake, the courtesy and condescension — ah '
but he would complain of it, simply for being condescension.*
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 153
But, alter all, what else could it be ? Were not these men
more experienced, more learned, older than myself? They
were my superiors ; it was in vain for me to attempt to hide
it from myself. But the wonder was, that they themselves
were the ones to appear utterly unconscious of it. They treat-
ed me as an equal ; they welcomed me — the young viscount
and the learned dean — on the broad ground of a common hu-
manity ; as I believe hundreds more of their class would do,
if we did not ourselves take a pride in estranging them from
us — telling them that fraternization between our classes is
impossible, and then cursing them for not fraternizing with
us. But of that, more hereafter.
At all events, now my bliss was perfect. No ! I was wrong
— a higher enjoyment than all awaited me, when, going into
the drawing-room, I found Lillian singing at the piano. I had
no idea that music was capable of expressing and conveying
emotions so intense and ennobling. My experience was confined
to street-music, and to the bawling at the chapel. And, as yet,
Mr. Hullah had not risen into a power more enviable than that
of kings, and given to every workman a free entrance into the
magic world of harmony and melody, where he may prove his
brotherhood with Mozart and Weber, Beethoven and Men-
delssohn. Great unconscious demagogue ! — leader of the peo-
ple, and laborer in the cause of divine equality ! — thy reward
is with the Father of the people !
The luscious softness of the Italian airs overcame me with
a delicious enervation. Every note, every interval, each shade
of expression spoke to me — I kneAv not what : and yet they
spoke to my heart of hearts. A spirit out of the infinite
heaven seemed calling to my spirit, which longed to answer
— and was dumb — and could only vent itself in tears, which
welled unconsciously forth, and eased my heart from the pain
ful tension of excitement.
tt* • • , *■ * *
Her voice is hovering oer my soul — it lingers,
O'ershadowing it with soft and thrilling wings;
The blood and life within those snowy fingers
Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings.
My brain is wild, my breath comes quick,
The blood is listening in my frame ;
And thronging shadows, fast and quick,
Fall on my overflowing eyes.
My heart is quivering like a name ;
As morning-dew that in the sunbeam die3,
I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasie».
• # * *
\
154 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
The dark lady, Miss Staunton, as I ought to call her, saw
my emotion, and, as I thought unkindly, checked the cause
of it at once.
" Pray do not give us any more of those die-away Italian
airs, Lillian. Sing something manful, German or English, or
any thing you like, except those sentimental wailings."
Lillian stopped, took another book, and commenced, after
a short prelude, one of my own songs. Surprise and pleasure
overpowered me more utterly than the soft southern melodies
had done. I was on the point of springing up and leaving
the room, when my raptures were checked by our host, who
turned round, and stopped short in an oration on the geology
of Upper Egypt.
i: What's that about brotherhood and freedom, Lillian 1
We don't want any thing of that kind here."
" It's only a popular London song, papa," answered she,
with an arch smile.
" Or likely to become so," added Miss Staunton, in her
marked dogmatic tone.
" I'm very sorry for London, then." And he turned to
the deserts.
CHAPTER XV.
THE MAN OF SCIENCE.
After breakfast the next morning, Lillian retired, saying
laughingly, that she must go and see after her clothing-club
and her dear old women at the almshouse, which, of course,
made me look on her as more an angel than ever. And
while George was left with Lord Lynedale, I was summoned!/
to a private conference with the dean in his study.
I found him in a room lined with cabinets of curiosities,
and hung all over with strange horns, bones and slabs of fos-
sils. But I was not allowed much time to look about me ;
for he commenced at once on the subject of my studies, by
asking me whether I was willing to prepare myself for the
university by entering on the study of mathematics 1
I felt so intense a repugnance to them, that at the risk of
offending him — perhaps, for aught I knew, fatally- -I dared
to demur. He smiled :
" I am convinced, young man, that even if you intended to
follow poetry as a profession — and a very poor one you- will
find it — yet you will never attain to any excellence therein, j
without far stricter mental discipline than any to which you/
have been accustomed. That is why I abominate our mod I
em poets. They talk about the glory of the poetic vocation,
as if they intended to be kings and world-makers, and all the
while they indulge themselves in the most loose and desultory
habits of thought. Sir, if they really believed their own gran-
diloquent assumptions, they would feel that the responsibility
of their mental training was greater, not less, than any one's
else. Like the Quakers, they fancy that they honor inspira-
tion by supposing it to be only extraordinary and paroxysmic :
the true poet, like the rational Christian, believing that in-
spiration is continual and orderly, that it reveals harmonious
laws, not merely excites sudden emotions. You understand
me?"
I did, tolerably ; and subsequent conversations with him
fixed the thoughts sufficiently in my mind, to make me pretty
sure that I am giving a faithful verbal transcript of them.
" You must study some science. Have you read any logic V
I mentioned Watts' " Logic," and Locke " On the use
156 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POE'I.
of the Understanding 1 ' — two books well known to reading
artisans.
"Ah," he said; "such books are very well, but they are
merely popular. ' Aristotle,' ' Ritter on Induction,' and
Kant's 'Prolegomena' and 'Logic' — when you had read them
some seven or eight times over, you might consider yourseli
as knowing somewhat about the matter."
" I have read a little about induction in Whately."
" Ah — very good book, but popular. Did you find that
your method of thought received any benefit from it ?"
" The truth is — I do not know whether I can quite express
myself clearly — but logic, like mathematics, seems to tell me
too little about things. It does not enlarge my knowledge
of man or nature ; and those are what I thirst for. And you
must remember — I hope I am not wrong in saying it — that
the case of a man of your class, who has the power of travel-
ing, of reading what he will, and seeing what he will, is very
different from that of an artisan, whose chances of observa-
tion are so sadly limited. You must forgive us, if we are un-
willing to spend our time over books which tell us nothing
about the great universe outside the shop-windows."
He smiled compassionately. " Very true, my boy. There
are two branches of study, then, before you, and by either of
them a competent subsistence is possible, with good interest.
Philology is one. But before you could arrive at those depths
in it which connect with ethnology, history, and geography,
you would require a lifetime of study. There remains yet
another. I see you stealing glances at those natural curiosi-
ties. In the study of them, you would find, as I believe more
and more daily, a mental discipline superior even to that
which language or mathematics give If I had been blest
with a son — but that is neither here nor there — it was my
\ intention to have educated him almost entirely as a natural-
i ist. I think I shor.ld like to try the experiment on a young
I man like yourself."
Sandy Mackaye's definition of legislation for the masses,
" Fiat experimentum in corpore vili," rose up in my thoughts,
and, half unconsciously, passed my lips. The good old man
only smiled.
" That is not my reason, Mr. Locke. I should choose, by
preference, a man of your class for experiments, not because
the nature is coarser, or less precious in the scale of creation,
but because I have a notion, for which, like many others, 1
have been very much laughed at, that you are less sophisti
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 157
cated, more simple and fresh from nature's laboratory, than
the young persons of the upper classes, who begin from the
nursery to be more or less trimmed up, and painted over by
the artificial state of society — a very excellent state, mind,
Mr. Locke. Civilization is, next to Christianity of- course, the
highest blessing; but not so good a state for trying anthropo-
logical experiments on."
I assured him of my great desire to be the subject of such
an experiment ; and was encouraged by his smile to tell him
something about my intense love for natural objects, the mys-
terious pleasure which I had taken, from my boyhood, in trying
to classify them, and my visits to the British Museum, for
the purpose of getting at some general knowledge of the nat-
ural groups.
"Excellent," he said, "young man; the very best sign 1
have yet seen in you. And what have you read on these
subjects'?" I mentioned several books: Bingley, Bewick,
" Humboldt's Travels,"," " The Voyage of the Beagle," vari-
ous scattered articles in the Penny and Saturday Maga-
zines, &c, &c.
" Ah !" he said, " popular — you will find, if y r ou will allow
me to give you my experience — "
I assured him that I was only too much honored — and I
truly felt so. I knew myself to be in the presence of my
rightful superior — my master on that very point of education
which I idolized. Every sentence which he spoke gave me
fresh light on some matter or other ; and I felt a worship for
him, totally irrespective of any vulgar and slavish respect for
his rank or wealth. The working-man has no want for real
reverence. Mr. Carlyle's being a " gentleman," has not in-
jured his influence with the people. On the contrary, it is
the artisan's intense longing to find his real lords and guides,
which makes him despise and execrate his sham ones.
Whereof let society take note.
"Then," continued he, "your plan is to take up some one
section of the subject, and thoroughly exhaust that. Univer-
sal laws manifest themselves only by particular instances.
They say, man is the microcosm, Mr. Locke ; but the man
of science finds every worm and beetle a microcosm in its
way. It exemplifies, directly or indirectly, every physical law
in the universe, though it may not be two lines long. It i3
not only a part, but a mirror, of the great whole. It has a
definite relation to the whole world, and the whole world has
a relation to it. Really, by-the-by, I can not give you a bet
153 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
ter instance of what I mean, than in my little diatribe on the
Geryon Trifurcifer, a small reptile which I found, some years
ago, inhabiting the mud of the salt-lakes of Balkhan, which
fills up a long-desired link between the Chelonia and the
Perenni branchiate Batrachians, and, as I think, though Pro-
fessor Brown differs from me, connects both with the Herb-
ivorous Cetacea. Professor Brown is an exceedingly talented
man, but a little too cautious in accepting any one's theo-
ries but his own. There it is," he said, as he drew out of a
drawer a little pamphlet of some thirty pages — " an old man's
darling. I consider that book the outcome of thirteen years'
labor."
"It must be very deep," I replied, "to have been worth
such long-continued study."
"Oh! science is her own reward. There is hardly a great
physical law which I have not brought to bear on the subject
of that one small animal; and above all — what is in itself
worth a life's labor — I have, I believe, discovered two entirely
new laws of my own, though one of them, by-the-by, has been
broached by Professor Brown since, in his lectures. He might
have mentioned my name in connection with the subject, for
I certainly imparted my ideas to him, two years at least be-
fore the delivery of those lectures of his. Professor Brown is
a very great man, certainly, and a very good man, but not
quite so original as is generally supposed. Still, a scientific
man must expect his little disappointments and injustices. If
you were behind the scenes in the scientific world, I can as-
sure you, you would find as much party-spirit, and unfairness,
and jealousy, and emulation there, as any where else. Human
nature, human nature, every where !"
I said nothing, but thought the more ; and took the book,
promising to study it carefully.
"There is Cuvier's 'Animal Kingdom,' and a dictionary
of scientific terms to help you ; and mind, it must be got up
thoroughly, for I purpose to set you an examination or two in
it, a few days hence. Then I shall find out whether you know
what is worth all the information in the world."
" What is that, sir?"
" The art of getting information — artem discendi, Mr.
Locke, wherewith the world is badly provided just now, as it
is overstocked with the artem le^endi — the knack of running
the eye over books, and fancying that it understands them,
because it can talk about them. You can not play that trick
with my Geryon Trifurcifer, I assure you ; he i? as dry and
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. t59
tough as his name. But, believe me, he is worth mastering,
not because he is mine, but simply because he is tough."
I promised all diligence.
" Very good. And be sure, if you intend to be a poet foi
these days (and I really think yuii have some faculty for it),
you must become a scientific man. Science has made vast
strides, and introduced entirely new modes of looking at na-
ture ; and poets must live up to tbe age. I never read a word
of Goethe's verse, but I am convinced that he must be the
great poet of the day ; just because he is the only one who
has taken the trouble to go into the details of practical science.
And, in the mean time, I will give you a lesson myself. I
see you are longing to know the contents of these cabinets.
You shall assist me, by writing out the names of this lot of
shells, just come from Australia, which I am now going to
arrange."
""1 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 con
firmed 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 my-
self 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 inso-
lent 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 not share with the outcast and the slave ? Let
society, among other matters, take note of that.
I
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 en-
tirely 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 Avere
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, out-
stepped 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 any thing 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 1
began to suspect and hate her, as a proud, harsh, and exclu-
sive 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 tn the
dean's searching questions on his pamphlet, in which, I be-
lieve, I acquitted myself tolerably ; and he seemed far more
satisfied with my commentary, than I was with his text.
He seemed to ignore utterly any thing 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 described ; and every word in the book, to mv
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. j6I
astonishment, might have been written, just as easily, Ly an
Atheist, as by a dignitary of the Church of England.
I could not help, that evening, hinting this defect, as deli-
cately as I could, to my good host, and was somewhat sur-
prised to find that he did not consider it a defect at all.
" I am in nowise 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 lor it ; and where
they seem to differ, it is our duty to believe that they are
reconcilable by fuller knowledge, hut 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. Car-
lyle to see his God in Nature ; but if he would accept the
trui hs 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 can not iden-
tify 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,'
Baid Lillian, slyly. "She has been foretelling me I know nut
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
1«2 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
then called me to look over some engravings, chatting ovei
them so charmingly ! — and stealing, every now and then, a
pretty , saucy look at her cousin, which seemed to say, " I shaii
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 corrobo-
ration, 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 him-
self, and to have no notion of any middle characters, between
the mere greenhorn and 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 oft', 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 1 had acted more
boldly upon what I did see, \ should not have been here now.
CHAPTER XVII.
SERMONS AND STONES.
The next afternoon was the last but one of my stay at
13 Wi were to dine late, after sunset, and, before din-
ner, we went into the cathedral. The choir had just finished
practicing. Certain exceedingly ill-looking men, whose faces
bespoke principally sensuality and self-conceit, and whose func-
tion 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 oft" 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 at-
tended the service daily, and I had been appalled, rather than
astonished by what I saw and heard ; the unintelligible ser-
vice — 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 Lil-
lian'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 sym-
bolic of Christianity."
" I ought to be very much ashamed of my stupidity," I
answered ; "but I can not 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 painted 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
'ho summit the building gradually vanishes in a point, and
164 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
leaves the spirit to wing its way unsupported and alone itnu
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, two. 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 m.ist 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 17th century the in-
iquities which the country gentlemen committed in the 16th."
" 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 jjuest 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 accus-
tomed. 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 1 ? 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 nowadays
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 165
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 as bad as the laity. Now
the laity are eaten up with covetousness and ambition ; and
the clergy are covetous and ambitious, but not half as 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 debat-
ing society and Chartist meeting ; and therefore the clergy-
men'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 monas-
teries, 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 1 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, some-
what 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
ltd ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
took up, the other day, at hazard, one of your favorite liberty-
preaching newspapers ; and I saw hooks 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 can not
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 in-
decency, with the tyrannous persecutions of trades-unions, with
obbery, assassination, vitriol-bottles, and midnight incendiar-
ism. And then you curse the clergy for taking you at your
word 1 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 mediaeval 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 trans-
figured 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 worshiper, waiting for the
afflatus of the spirit ; and, suspicious and angry as I felt
toward her, I could not help being drawn to her by this reve-
lation 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 bear such severe ani
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 167
mad versions 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, 01
boldness to speak out his doctrines ; who could praise the old
monasteries ibr being democratic and socialist, and spoke lar
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 disparag-
ingly, as mere useless vanity and frippery — an empty substi-
tute 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 every thing that was
said or done, ventured to object, humbly enough, to her
notions.
" But is not beauty," 1 said, " in itself a good and blessed
thing, softening, refining, rejoicing the eyes of all who behold ?"
(and my eyes, as I spoke, involuntarily rested on Lillian's
face — who saw it, and blushed.) " Surely nothing which helps
beauty is to be despised. And, without the charms 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 advant-
ages which ladies possess, might create delight, respect, chiv-
alrous worship, in the beholder — but are now never appre-
ciated, because they have not the same fair means of display-
ing 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 colors 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 *ny
163 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
tailor-life. So I had in his eyes, but not in those of the really
weil-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 R,cyal 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 can not spenrl the fact ; it re-
mains for life as permanent capital, returning interest and
compound-interest ad infi^iitum. 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 con-
ceived such things possible — it was as interesting as a novel,
Sec, &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 tc
rue 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 circum-
stance, satisfied to snatch the enjoyment of each present mo-
ment. 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 sat-
isfactory 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 judg-
ment and great influence, the publisher would, as a private
favor, not object to take the risk of any further expenses."
So far every thing sounded charming. The method was
not a very independent one, but it was the only one ; and 1
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 ten-
dency were omitted. He did not wish personally to object to
them as statements of facts, or to the pictorial vigor 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 consid-
erations to influence his weak patronage of rising talent, yet,
considering his present connection, 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 respect-
able 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 re-
marked in you, your readiness to listen to reason, and your
pleasing freedom from all violence or coarseness in expressing
II
170 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
your opinions, that you will not object to so exceedingly rea-
sonable 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 po-
litical 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 so-
cial nostrums, my dear young man, and fancies them infalli-
ble ; and the next generation arises to curse them as failures
in practice, and superstitious in theory, and try some new nos-
trum of its own."
I sighed.
" Ah ! you may sigh. But we have each of us to be dis
enchanted of our dream. There was a time once when 1
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, enthusi-
astic brains were excited by all sorts of wild hopes — 'perfect-
ibility 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 import-
ant question of your life, and that you have talents the pos-
session 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 contin-
ued, waxing eloquent as he approached his favorite subject —
" the world may rave, but in the study there is quiet. The
world may change. Mr. Locke, and will ; but ' the earth
abideth forever.' 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 crook-
ed can not be made straight, and that which is wanting can
not be numbered. What profit hath a man of all his labor
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 17 t
which he takclh 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 forever.' 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 !
" Ah ! Mr. Locke," he went on, in a soft, melancholy, half-
abstracted tone — " ah ! Mr. Locke, I have felt deeply, and
you will feel some day, the truth of Jarno's saying in 'Wil-
helm Meister,' when he was wandering alone in the Alps,
with his geological hammer, ' These rocks, at least, tell me no
lies, as men do.' Ay ; there is no lie in Nature, no discord
in the revelations of science, in the laws of the universe. In-
finite, pure, unfallen, earth-supporting Titans, fresh as on the
morning of creation, those great laws endure ; your only true
democrats, too — for nothing is too great or too small for them
to take note of. No tiniest gnat, or speck of dust, but they
feed it, guide it, and preserve it. Hail and snow, wind and
vapor, fulfilling their Maker's word ; and like him, too, hiding
themselves from the wise and prudent, and revealing them-
selves unto babes. Yes, Mr. Locke; it is the childlike, sim-
ple, patient, reverent heart, which science at once demands
and cultivates. To prejudice or haste, to self-conceit or am-
bition, she proudly shuts her treasuries — to open them to men
of humble heart, whom this world thinks simple dreamers —
her Newtons, and Owens, and Faradays. Why should you
not become such a man as they ] You have the talents
— you have the love for Nature — you seem to have the
gentle and patient spirit, which, indeed, will grow up more
and more in you, if you become a real student of science. Or.
if you must be a poet, why not sing of Nature, and leave those
to sing political squabbles, who have no eye for the beauty ol
her repose ? How few great poets have been politicians !"
I gently suggested Milton.
" Ay ! he became a great poet only when he had deserted
politics, because they had deserted him. In blindness and
poverty, in the utter failure of all his national theories, he
wrote the works which have made him immortal. Was
Shakspeare a politician? or any one of the great poets who
have arisen during the last thirty years ? Have they not all
seemed to consider it a sacred duty to keep themselves, as far
as they could, out of party-strife ?"
I quoted Southey, Shelley, and Burns, as instances to tlia
172 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POKT.
contrary ; "but his induction was completed already, to his own
satisfaction.
" Poor dear Southey was a great verse-maker, rather than
a great poet ; and I always consider that his party-prejudices
and party-writing narrowed and harshened a mind which
ought to have been flowing forth freely and lovingly toward
all forms of life. And as for Shelley and Burns, their politics
dictated to them at once the worst portions of their poetry
and of their practice. Shelley, what little I have read of him,
only seems himself when he forgets radicalism for nature; and
you would not set Burns's life or death, either, as a model for
imitation in any class. Now, do you know, I must ask you
to leave me a little. I am somewhat fatigued with this long
discussion" (in which, certainly, I had borne no great share) ;
" and I am sure that, after all I have said, you will see the
propriety of acceding to the publisher's advice. Go and think
over it, and let me have your answer by post-time."
I did go and think over it — too long for my good. If ]
had acted on the first impulse, I should have refused, and
been safe. These passages were the very pith and marrow
of the poems ; they were the very words which I had felt
it my duty, my glory, to utter. I, who had been a work-
ing-man, who had experienced all their sorrows and tempta-
tions — I, seemed called by every circumstance of my life to
preach their cause, to expose their wrongs — I to quash my
convictions, to stultify my book, for the sake of popularity,
money, patronage ! And yet — all that involved seeing more
of Lillian. They were only too powerful inducements in
themselves, alas ! but I believe I could have resisted them
tolerably, if they had not been backed by love. And so a
struggle arose, which the rich reader may think a very fantas-
tic one, though the poor man will understand it, and surely
pardon it also — seeing that he himself is Man. Could I not,
just once in a way, serve God and Mammon at once ? — or
rather, not Mammon, but Venus : a worship which looked ta
me, and really was in my case, purer than all the Mariolatry
in Popedom. After all, the fall might not be so great as it
seemed — perhaps I was not infallible on these same points.
(It is wonderful how humble and self-denying one becomes
when one is afraid of doing one's duty.) Perhaps the dean
might be right. He had been republican himself once, cer-
tainly. The facts, indeed, which I had stated, there could bo
no doubt of; but I might have viewed them through a pre
judiced and angry medium — I might have been not quite
ALTON LOCKIC, TAILOR AND 1*01: 1 . 171
logical in my deductions from them — I might — . In short
between " perhapses" and "mights," I fell — a very deep, real,
damnable fall ; and consented to emasculate my poems, and
become a flunky and a dastard.
I mentioned my consent that evening to the party ; the
dean purred content thereat. Eleanor, to my astonishment,
just said, sternly and abruptly,
" Weak!" and then turned away, while Lillian began :
" Oh ! what a pity ! And really they were some of the
prettiest verses of all ! But of course my father must know
best ; you are quite right to be guided by him, and do what
ever is proper and prudent. After all, papa, I have got the
naughtiest of them all, you know, safe. Eleanor set it to
music, and wrote it out in her book ; and I thought it so
charming that I copied it."
What Lillian said about herself, I drank in as greedily as
usual ; what she said about Eleanor, fell on a heedless ear, and
vanished, not to re-appear in my recollection till — . But I j
must not anticipate.
So it was all settled pleasantly ; and I sat up that even-
ing, writing a bit of verse for Lillian, about the Old Cathe-
dral, and "Heaven-aspiring towers," and "Aisles of cloistered
shade," and all that sort of thing ; which I did not believe,
or care for ; but I thought it would please her, and so it did ;
and I got golden smiles and compliments for my first, though
not my last, insincere poem. I was going fast dowi hill ir
my hurry to rise. However, as I said, it was all pleasan'
enough. I was to return to town, and there wait the dean'
orders ; and, most luckily, I had received that morning from
Sandy Mackaye a characteristic letter :
"Gowk, Telemachus, hearken ! Item 1. Ye'r fou wi' the
Cireean cup, aneath the shade o' shovel hats and steeple-
houses.
"Item 2. I, cuif-Mentor that I am, wearing out a gude
pair o' gude Scots brogues, that my sister's husband's third
cousin sent me a towmond gane fra Aberdeen, rinning ower
the town to a' journals, respectable and ither, anent the sel-
lin' o' your 'Autobiography of an Engine-Boiler in the Vanx-
hall-road,' the whilk I ha' disposit o' at the last, to O'Flynn's
Weekly Warivhoop ; and gin ye ha' only mair sic trash in
your head, ye may get your mea whiles out o' the same kist ;
unless, as I sair misdoubt, ye're praying already, like Eli's
bairns, 'to be put into ane o' the priest's offices, that ye may
eat a piece o' bread.'
174 \LTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
" Ye'll be coming the morrow ? I'm lane without ye ;
though I look for ye surely to come ben wi' a gowd shoulder-
knot, and a red nose."
This letter, though it hit me hard, and made me, I confess,
a little angry at the moment with my truest friend, still offer-
ed me a means of subsistence, and enabled me to decline safe-
ly the pecuniary aid which I dreaded the dean's offering me.
And yet I felt dispirited and ill at ease. My conscience would
not let me enjoy the success I felt I had attained. But next
morning I saw Lillian.; and I forgot books, people's cause,
conscience, and every thing.
I went home by coach — a luxury on which my cousin in-
sisted — as he did on lending me the fare ; so that in all I
owed him somewhat more than eleven pounds. But I was
loo happy to care for a fresh debt, and home I went, consid-
ering my fortune made.
My heart fell, as I stepped into the dingy little old shop.
Was it the meanness of the place, after the comfort and ele-
gance of my late abode ? Was it disappointment at not find-
ing Mackaye at home 1 Or was it that black-edged letter
which lay waiting for me on the table ? I was afraid to open
it : I knew not why. I turned it over and over several times,
trying to guess whose the handwriting on the cover might be;
the post-mark was two days old ; and at last I broke the seal
" Sir — This is to inform you, that your mother, Mrs. Locke,
died this morning, a sensible sinner, not without assurance of
her election ; and that her funeral is fixed for Wednesday,
the 29th instant.
" The humble servant of the Lord's people,
" J. Wigginton."
CHAPTER XIX.
SHORT AND SAD.
I miall pass over the agonies of the next few days. There
is self-exenteration enough and to spare in my story, without
dilating on them. They are too sacred to publish', and too
painful, alas ! even to recall. I write my story, too, as a
working-man. Of those emotions which are common to hu-
manity, I shall say hut little — except when it is necessary to
piove that the working-man has feelings like the rest of his ,
kind. But those feelings may, in this case, he supplied hy the/
reader's own imagination. Let him represent them to himself
as hitter, as remorseful as he will, he will not equal the real-
ity. True, she had cast me off; but had I not rejoiced in that
rejection which should have been my shame ? True, I had j
fed on the hope of some day winning reconciliation, hy win-
ning fame ; hut before the fame had arrived, the reconciliation
had become impossible. I had shrunk from going back to her,
as I ought to have done, in filial humility, and, therefore, I was
not allowed to go back to her in the pride of success. Heaven
knows, I had not forgotten her. Night and day I had thought
of her with prayers and blessings; but I had made a merit
of my own love to her — my forgiveness of her, as I dared to
call it. I had pampered my conceit with the notion that I
was a martyr in the cause of genius and enlightenment. How
hollow, windy, heartless, all that looked now. There ! I will
say no more. Heaven preserve any who read these pages,
from such days and nights as I dragged on till that funeral,
and for weeks after it was over, when I had sat once more in
the little old chapel, with all the memories of my childhood
crowding up, and tantalizing me with the vision of their sim
pie peace— never, never to return ! I heard my mother's
dying pangs, her prayers, her doubts her agonies, for my rep-
robate soul, dissected for the public good by my old enemy,
Mr. Wigginton, who dragged in, among his fulsome eulogies
of my mother's " signs of grace," rejoicings that there were
'• babes span-long in hell." I saw my sister Susan, now a
tall handsome woman, but become all rigid, sour, with coarse
grim lips, and that crushed, self-conscious, reserved, almost
dishonest look about the eyes, common to fanatics of every
3reed. I heard her cold farewell, as she put into my hands
certain notes and diaries of my mother's which she had be-
176 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
queathed to me on her death-bed. I heard myself proclaimed
inheritor of some small matters of furniture, which had belong-
ed to her ; told Susan, carelessly to keep them for herself; and
went forth fancying that the curse of Cain was on my brow.
I took home the diary ; but several days elapsed before I had
courage to open it. Let the words I read there be as secret
as the misery which dictated them . I had broken my mother's
heart ! — no ! I had not ! — The infernal superstition which
taught her to fancy that Heaven's love was narrower than her
own — that God could hate his creature, not for its sins, but for
its very nature which he had given it — that, that had killed her !
And I remarked, too, with a gleam of hope, that in several
places where sunshine seemed ready to break through the
black cloud of fanatic gloom ; where she seemed inclined not
merely to melt toward me (for there was, in every page, an
under-current of love, deeper than death, and stronger than
the grave), but also to dare to trust God on my behalf — be-
hold lines carefully erased, page after page torn out, evidently
long after the MSS. were written. I believe, to this day,
that either my poor sister or her father-confessor was the per-
petrator of that act. The fraus pia is not yet extinct; and
it is as inconvenient now as it was in popish times, to tell the
whole truth about saints, when they dare to say or do things
which will not quite fit into the formulae of their sect.
But what was to become of Susan ] Though my uncle
continued to her the allowance which he had made to my
mother, yet I was her natural protector — and she was my
only tie on earth. Was I to lose her, too 1 Might we not,
after all, be happy together, in some little hole in Chelsea,
like Elia and his Bridget? That question was solved for me.
She declined my offers ; saying, that she could not live with
any one whose religious opinions differed from her own, and
that she had already engaged a room at the house of a Chris-
tian friend ; and was shortly to be united to that dear man
of God, Mr. Wigginton, who was to be removed to the work
of the Lord in Manchester.
I knew the scoundrel, but it would have been impossible
for me to undeceive her. Perhaps he was only a scoundrel —
perhaps he would not ill-treat her. And yet — my own little
^ Susan ! my playfellow ! my only tie on earth — to lose her —
and not only her, but her respect, her love ! And my spirit,
deep enough already, sank deeper still into sadness ; and ]
felt myself alone on earth, and clung to Mackaye as to
father — and a father indeed that old man was to me '
a
i
\
CHAPTER XX.
PEGASUS IN HARNESS.
J3tJT, in sorrow or in joy, I had to earn my bread ; and so,
too, had Crossthwaite, poor fellow ! How he contrived to
feed himself and his little Katie for the next few years, is
more than I can tell ; at all events, he worked hard enough
He scribbled, agitated ; ran from London to Manchester, and
Manchester to Bradford, spouting, lecturing — sowing the east
wind, I am afraid, and little more. Whose fault was it 1
What could such a man do, with that fervid tongue, and
heart, and brain of his, in such a station as his, such a time
as this ? Society had helped to make him an agitator. So-
ciety has had, more or less, to take consequences of her own
handiwork. For Crossthwaite did not speak without hearers.
He could make the fierce, shrewd artisan nature flash out
into fire — not always celestial, nor always, either, infernal.
So he agitated, and lived — how, I know not. That he did do
so, is evident from the fact that he and Katie are at this mo-
ment playing chess in the cabin, before my eyes, and making
love, all the while, as if they had not been married a week —
Ah, well !
I, however, had to do more than get my bread ; I had to
pay off those fearful eleven pounds odd, which, now that all
the excitement of my stay at D had been so sadly quench-
ed, lay like lead upon my memory. My list of subscribers
filled slowly, and I had no power of increasing it, by any can-
vassings of my own. My uncle, indeed, had promised to take
two copies, and my cousin one ; not wishing, of course, to be
so uncommercial as to run any risk, before they had seen
whether my poems would succeed. But, with those excep-
tions, the dean had it all his own way ; and he could not be
expected to forego his own literary labors for my sake ; so,
through all that glaring summer, and sad foggy autumn, and
nipping winter, I had to get my bread as I best could — by my
pen. Mackaye grumbled at my writing so much, and so last,
and sneered about the furor scribendi. But it was hardly
fair upon me. " My mouth craved it of me," as Solomon
says. I had really no other means of livelihood. Even if I
could have got employment as a tailor, in the honorable trade,
T loathed the business utterly — perhaps, alas ! to confess the
H*
178 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
truth, I was beginning to despise it. I could bear to think
of myself as a poor genius, in connection with my new wealthy
and high-bred patrons ; for there was precedent for the thing.
Penniless bards and squires of low degree, low-born artists,
ennobled by their pictures — there was something grand in the
notion of mind triumphant over the inequalities of rank, and
associating with the great and wealthy, as their spiritual equal,
on the mere footing of its own innate nobility ; no matter to
what den it might return, to convert it into a temple of the
Muses, by the glorious creations of its fancy, &c, &c. But
to go back daily from the drawing-room and the publisher's
to the goose and the shop-board, was too much for my weak-
ness, even if it had been physically possible, as, thank Heaven,
it was not.
So I became a hack writer, and sorrowfully, but deliber-
ately, " put my Pegasus into heavy harness," as my betters
l had done before me. It was miserable work, there is no
^denying it — only not worse than tailoring. To try and serve
VGod and Mammon too ; to make miserable compromises
laily, between the two great incompatibilities — what was true,
md what would pay ; to speak my mind, in fear and trem-
bling, by hints, and halves, and quarters ; to be daily hauling
poor Truth just up to the top of her well, and then, frightened
at my own success, let her plump down again to the bottom ;
to sit there, trying to teach others, while my mind was in a
whirl of doubt ; to feed others' intellects, while my own were
hungering ; to grind on in the Philistines' mill, or occasion-
ally make sport for them, like some weary-hearted clown
grinning in a pantomime, in a " light article," as blind as
Samson, but not, alas ! as strong, for indeed my Delilah of
the West-end had clipped my locks, and there seemed little
chance of their growing again. That face and that drawing-
room flitted before me from morning till eve, and enervated
and distracted my already over-wearied brain.
I had no time, besides, to concentrate my thoughts suffi-
ciently for poetry ; no time to wait for inspiration. From the
moment 1 had swallowed my breakfast, I had to sit scribbling
off my thoughts anyhow in prose ; and soon my own scanty
stock was exhausted, and I was forced to beg, borrow, and
steal notions and facts, wherever I could get them. Oh ! the
misery of having to read, not what I longed to know, but
what I thought would pay! — to skip page after page of in-
teresting matter, just to pick out a single thought or sentence
which could ho stitched into my patchwork! — and then the
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 179
still greater misery of seeing the article which I had sent to
press a tolerably healthy and lusty bantling, appear in print
next week, after suffering the inquisition-tortures of the edi-
torial censorship, all maimed, and squinting, and one-sided,
with the color rubbed off its poor cheeks, and generally a vil-
lainous hang-dog look of ferocity, so different from its birth-
smile that I often did not know my own child again ! — and
then, when I dared to remonstrate, however feebly, to be told,
by way of comfort, that the public taste must be consulted !
It gave me a hopeful notion of the said taste, certainly ; and
often and often I groaned in spirit over the temper of my own
class, which not only submitted to, but demanded, such one-
sided bigotry, prurience, and ferocity, from those who set up
as its guides and teachers.
Mr. O'Flynn, editor of the Weekly Warhoop, whose white
slave I now found myself, was, I am afraid, a pretty faithful
specimen of that class, as it existed beibre the bitter lesson of
the 10th of April brought the Chartist w'orking men and the
Chartist press to their senses. Thereon sprang up a new
race of papers, whose moral tone, whatever may be thought
of their political or doctrinal opinions, was certainly not in-
ferior to that of the Whig and Tory press. The Common-
tcealth, the Sta?idard of Freedom, the Flam Speaker, were
reprobates, if to be a Chartist is to be a reprobate : but none
except the most one-sided bigots could deny them the praise
of a stern morality and a lofty earnestness, a hatred of evil
and craving after good, which would often put to shame many
a paper among the oracles of Belgravia and Exeter Hall.
But those were the days of lubricity and O'Flynn. Not that
the man was an unredeemed scoundrel. He was no more
profligate, either in his literary or his private morals, than
many a man who earns his hundreds, sometimes his thousands,
a year, by prophesying smooth things to Mammon, crying in
daily leaders, " Peace ! peace !" when there is no peace, and
daubing the rotten walls of careless luxury and self-satisfied
covetousness with the untempered mortar of party statistics
and garbled foreign news — till " the storm shall fall, and the
breaking thereof cometh suddenly in an instant.'"' Let those
of the respectable press who are without sin, cast the first
stone at the unrespectable. Many of the latter class, who
have been branded as traitors and villains, were single-minded,
earnest, valiant men ; and, as for even O'Flynn, and those
worse than him, what was really the matter with them was,
that they were too honest — they spoke out too much of their
180 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
whole minds. Bewildered, like Lear, amid the social storm,
they had determined, like him, to hecome "unsophisticated/'
" to owe the worm no silk, the cat no perfume" — seeing:, in
deed, that if they had, they could not have paid for them ; so
they tore off, of their own will, the peacock's feathers of gen
tility, the sheep's clothing of moderation, even the fig-leaves
of decent reticence, and became just what they really were —
just what hundreds more would become, who now sit in the
high places of the earth, if it paid them as well to be unre-
spectable as it does to be respectable ; if the selfishness and
covetousness, bigotry and ferocity, which are in them, and
more or less in every man, had happened to enlist them
against existing evils, instead of for them. O'Flynn would
have been gladly as respectable as they ; but, in the first
place, he must have starved ; and in the second place, he
must have lied ; for he believed in his own radicalism with
his whole soul. There was a ribald sincerity, a frantic cour-
age in the man. He always spoke the truth when it suited
him, and very often when it did not. He did see, which is
more than all do, that oppression is oppression, and humbug,
humbug. He had faced the gallows before now, without
flinching. He had spouted rebellion in the Birmingham
Bullring, and elsewhere, and taken the consequences like a
man ; while his colleagues left their dupes to the tender mer-
cies of broadswords and bayonets, and decamped in the dis-
guise of sailors, old women, and dissenting preachers. He had
sat three months in Lancaster Castle, the Bastile of England,
one day perhaps to fall like that Parisian one, for a libel
which he never wrote, because he would not betray his cow-
ardly contributor. He had twice pleaded his own cause,
without help of attorney, and showed himself as practiced in
every law-quibble and practical cheat as if he had been a
regularly-ordained priest of the blue-bag ; and each time,
when hunted at last into a corner, had turned valiantly to
bay, with wild witty Irish eloquence, " worthy," as the press
say of poor misguided Mitchell, " of a better cause." Al-
together, a much-enduring Ulysses, unscrupulous, tough-hided,
ready to do and sutler any thing fair or foul, for what he
honestly believed — if a confused, virulent positiveness be
worthy of the name " belief" — to be the true and righteous
cause.
Those who class all mankind compendiously and comforta-
bly under the two exhaustive species of saints and villains,
may consider such a description garbled and impossible, I
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 181
have seen few men, but never yet met I among those few
either perfect saint or perfect villain. I draw men as I have
found them — inconsistent, piecemeal, better than their own
actions, worse than their own opinions, and poor O'Flynn
among the rest. Not that theie were no questionable spots
in the sun of his fair fame. It was whispered that he had in
old times done dirty work for Dublin Castle bureaucrats —
nay, that he had even, in a very hard season, written court
poetry for the Morning Post ; but all these little peccadilloes
he carefully vailed in that kindly mist which hung over his
youthful years, lie had been a medical student, and got
plucked, his foes declared, in his examination. He had set
up a saving's bank, which broke. He had come over from
Ireland, to agitate for " repale " and "rint," and, like a wise
man as he was, had never gone back again. He had set up
three or four papers in his time, and entered into partnership
with every leading democrat in turn ; but his papers failed,
and he quarreled with his partners, being addicted to profane
swearing and personalities. And now at last, after Ulyssean
wanderings, he had found rest in the office of the Weekly
Warwhoop, if rest it could be called, that perennial hurricane
of plotting, railing, sneering, and bombast, in which he lived,
never writing a line, on principle, till he had worked himself
up into a passion.
I will dwell no more on so distasteful a subject. Such
leaders, let us hope, belong only to the past — to the. youthful
self-will and licentiousness of democracy ; and as for reviling
O'Flynn, or any other of his class, no man has less right than
myself, I fear, to cast stones at such as they, 1 fell as low
as almost any, beneath the besetting sins of my class ; and
shall I take merit to myself, because God has shown me, a
little earlier, perhaps, than to them, somewhat more of the true
duties and destinies of The Many 1 Oh, that they could see
the depths of my affection for them ! Oh, that they could
see the shame and self-abasement with which, in rebuking
their sins, I confess my own ! If they are apt to be flippant
and bitter, so was I. If they lust to destroy, without know-
ing what to build up instead, so did I. If they make an
almighty idol of that Electoral Reform, which ought to be,
and can be, only a preliminary means, and expect final deliv-
erance, from " their twenty-thousandth part of a talker in the
national palaver," so did I. Unhealthy and noisome as was
the literary atmosphere in which I now found myself, it was
one to my taste. The verv contrast between the peaceful,
182 ALTON LOCKK TAILOR AND POET.
intellectual luxary which I had just witnessed, and the mis
ery of my class and myself, quicked my delight in it. In bit-
terness, in sheer envy, I threw my whole soul into it, and
spoke evil, and rejoiced in evil. It was so easy to find fault !
It pampered my own self-conceit, my own discontent, while
it saved me the trouble of inventing remedies. Yes ; it was
indeed easy to find fault. " The world was all before me,
where to choose." In such a disorganized, anomalous,
grumbling, party-embittered element as this English society,
and its twin pauperism and luxury, I had but to look
straight before me to see my prey.
And thus 1 became daily more and more cynical, fierce,
reckless. My mouth was filled with cursing — and too often
justly. And all the while, like tens of thousands of my class,
I had no man to teach me. Sheep scattered on the hills, we
were, that had no shepherd. What wonder if our bones lay
bleaching among rocks and quagmires, and M'olves devoured
the heritage of God ?
Mackaye had nothing positive, after all, to advise or pro-
pound. His wisdom was one of apopthegms and maxims,
utterly impractical, too often merely negative, as was his
creed, which, though he refused to be classed with any sect,
was really a somewhat undefined Unitarianism — or rather
[slamism. He could say, with the old Moslem, " God is
great— who hath resisted his will ?" And he believed what
he said, and lived manful and pure, reverent and self-denying,
by that belief, as the first Moslem did. But that was not
enough.
" Not enough ? Merely negative ?"
No — that was positive enough, and mighty ; but I repeat
it, it was not enough. He felt it so himself; for he grew
more and more cynical, more and more hopeless about the
prospects of his class and of all humanity. Why not ? Poor
suflering wretches ! what is it to them to know that " God is
great," unless you can prove to them that God is also merci-
ful ? Did he indeed care for men at all ? was what I longed
to know ; Avas all this misery and misrule around us his will
— his stern and necessary law — his lazy connivance ? And
were we to free ourselves from it by any frantic means that
came to hand? or had he ever interfered himself? Was
there a chance, a hope, of his interfering now, in our own
time, to take the matter into his own hand, and come out of
his place to judge the earth in righteousness? That waa
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. Jfi3
what we wanted to know ; and poor Mackaye could give no
comfort there. " God was great — the wicked would be
turned into hell." Ay — the few willful, triumphant wicked ;
but the millions of suffering, starving wicked, the victims of
6ociely and circumstance — what hope for them ? " God was
great." And for the clergy, our professed and salaried teach-
ers, all I can say is — and there are tens, perhaps hundreds of
thousands of workmen who can re-echo my words — with the
exception of the dean and my cousin, and one who shall be
mentioned hereafter, a clergymen never spoke to me in my
life.
Why should he? Was I not a Chartist and an Infi-
del ? The truth is. the clergy are afraid of us To read the
Dispatch, is to be excommunicated. Young men's classes 1
Honor to them, however few they are — however hampered
by the restrictions of religious bigotry and political cowardice.
But the working-men, whether rightly or wrongly, do not
trust them ; they do not trust the clergy who set them on
foot ; they do not expect to be taught at them the things
they long to know — to be taught the whole truth in them
about history, politics, science, the Bible. They suspect them
to be mere tubs to the whale — mere substitutes for education,
slowly and late adopted, in order to stop the mouths of the
importunate. They may misjudge the clergy ; but whose
fault is it if they do ? Clergymen of England ! — look at the
history of your Establishment for the last fifty years, and say,
what wonder is it if the artisan mistrust you ? Every spirit-
ual reform, since the time of John Wesley, has had to establish
itself in the teeth of insult, calumny, and persecution. Every
ecclesiastical reform comes not from within, but from without
your body. Mr. Horsman, struggling against every kind of
temporizing and trickery, has to do the work which bishops,
by virtue of their seat in the House of Lords, ought to have
been doing years ago. Every where we see the clergy, with
a few persecuted exceptions (like Dr. Arnold), proclaiming
themselves the advocates of Toryism, the dogged opponents of
our political liberty, living either by the accursed system of
pew-rents, or else by one which depends on the high price of
corn ; chosen exclusively from the classes who crush us down ;
prohibiting all free discussion on religious points ; command-
ing us to swallow down, with faith as passive and implicit as
that of a Papist, the very creeds from which their own bad
example, and their scanda.ous neglect, have, in the last three
generations, alienated us; never mixing with the thought
184 . ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET
ful working-men, except in the prison, the hospital, or in
extreme old age ; betraying, in every tract, in every sermon,
an ignorance of the doubts, the feelings, the very language of
the masses, which would be ludicrous, were it not accursed
before God and man. And then will you show us a few
tardy improvements here and there, and ask us, indignantly,
why we distrust you ? Oh ! gentlemen, if you can not see for
yourselves the causes of our distrust, it is past our power to
show you. We must leave it to God.
But to return to my own story. I had, as I said before, to
live by my pen ; and in that painful, confused, maimed way,
I contrived to scramble on the long winter through, writing
regularly for the Weekly Warwlioop, and sometimes getting
an occasional scrap into some other cheap periodical, often on
the very verge of starvation, and glad of a handful of meal
from Sandy's widow's barrel. If I had had more than my
share of feasting in the summer, I made the balance even,
during those frosty months, by many a bitter fast.
And, here let me ask you, gentle reader, who are just now
considering me ungentle, virulent, and noisy, did you ever, for
one day in your whole life, literally, involuntarily, and in
spite of all your endeavors, longings, and hungerings, not get
enough to cat ? If you ever have, it must have taught you
several things.
But all this while, it must not be supposed that I had for-
, gotten my promise to good Farmer Porter, to look for his
: missing son. And, indeed, Crossthwaite and I were already
engaged in a similar search for a friend of his — the young
tailor, who, as I told Porter, had been lost for several months.
He was the brother of Crossthwaite's wife, a passionate, kind-
hearted Irishman, Mike Kelly by name, reckless and scatter-
brained enough to get himself into every possible scrape, and
weak enough of will never to get himself out of one. For
these two, Crossthwaite and I had searched from one sweater's
den to another, and searched in vain. And though the pres-
ent interest and exertion kept us both from brooding over our
own difficulties, yet in the long run, it tended only to embitter
and infuriate our minds. The frightful scenes of hopeless
misery which we witnessed — ihe ever widening pit of pauper-
ism and slavery, gaping for fresh victims day by day, as they
dropped out of the last lessening "honorable trade,'' into the
ever-increasing miseries of sweating, piece-work, and starva-
tion-prices ; the horrible certainty that the eame process
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET 1155
which was devouring our trade, was slowly, but surely, eat-
ing up every other alio ; the knowledge that there was no
remedy, no salvation for us in man, that political economists
had declared such to le the law and constitution of society,
and that our rulers had believed that message, and were
determined to act upon it ; — if all these things did not go far
toward maddening us, we must have been made of sterner
stuff than any one who reads this book.
At last, about the middle of January, just as we had given
up the search as hopeless, and poor Katie's eyes were getting
red and swelled with daily weeping, a fresh spur was given to
our exertions, by the sudden appearance of no less a person
than the farmer himself. What ensued upon his coming,
must be kept for another chapter.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE SWEATER'S DEN.
I was greedily devouring Lane's " Arabian Nights," which
had made their lirst appearance in the shop that day.
Mackaye sat in his usual place, smoking a clean pipe, and
assisting his meditations by certain mysterious chironomic
signs ; while opposite to him was Farmer Porter — a stone or
two thinner than when I had seen him last, but one stone
is not much missed out of seventeen. His forehead looked
smaller, and his jaws larger than ever ; and his red face was
sad, and furrowed with care.
Evidently, too, he was ill at ease about other matters be
sides his son. He was looking out of the corners of his eyes,
first at the skinless cast on the chimney-piece, then at the
crucified books hanging over his head, as if he considered them
not altogether safe companions, and rather expected some-
thing " uncanny" to lay hold of him from behind — a process
which involved the most horrible contortions of visage, as he
carefully abstained from stirring a muscle of his neck or body,
but sat. bolt upright, his elbows pinned to his sides, and his
knees as close together as his stomach would permit, like a
huge corpulent Egyptian Memnon — the most ludicrous con-
trast to the little old man opposite, twisted up together in his
Joseph's coat, like some wizard magician in the stories which
I was reading. A curious pair of " poles" the two made ;
the mesothet Whereof, by no means a " punctum indifferent"
but a true connecting spiritual idea, stood on the table — in
the whisky-bottle.
Farmer Porter was evidently big with some great thought,
and had all a true poet's bashfulness about publishing the
fruit of his creative genius. He looked round again at the
skinless man, the caricatures, the books ; and as his eye wan-
dered from pile to pile, and shelf to shelf, his face brightened,
and he seemed to gain courage.
Solemnly he put his hat on his knees, and began solemnly
brushing it with his cuff Then he saw me watching him, and
stopped. Then he put his pipe solemnly on the hob, and clear-
ed his throat fcr action, while I buried my face in the book.
" Them's a sight o' larned beuks, Mr. Mackaye ?"
" Humph !"
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 187
" Yorw maun ha' g&t a deal o' scholarship among they,
noo ]"
" Humph !"
" Dee yow think, noo, yow could find of my boy out of uii,
be any ways o' conjuring like V
" By what ?"
" Conjuring — to strick a perpendicular, noo, or say the
Lord's Prayer backwards?"
" Wadna yc prefer a meeracle or twa ?" asked Sandy, after
'i long pull at the whisky-toddy.
" Or a few efreets V added I.
" Whatsoever you likes, gentlemen. You're best judges,
v .o be sure," answered Farmer Porter, in an awed and help-
'ces voice.
" Aweel — I'm no that disinclined to believe in the occult
jciences. I dinna haud a'thegither wi' Salverte. There
was niair in them than Magia naturalis, I'm thinking. Mes-
merism and magic-lanterns, benj and opium, winna explain
all facts, Alton, laddie. Dootless they were an unco' barbaric
an' empiric method o' expressing the gran' truth o' man's
mastery ovver matter. But the interpenetration o' the spirit-
ual an' physical worlds is a gran' truth too; an' aiblins the
Deity might ha' allowed witchcraft, just to teach that to puir
bu.barous folk — signs and wonders, laddie, to make them be-
1 .e in somewhat mair than the beasts that perish : an' so
ghosts an' warlocks might be a necessary element o' the
divine education in dark and carnal times. But I've no read
o' a case in which necromancy, nor geomancy, nor coskino-
mancy, nor ony ither mancy, was applied to sic a purpose as
this. Unco gude they were, may be, for the discovery o'
stolen spunes — but no that o' stolen tailors."
Farmer Porter had listened to this harangue, with mouth
and eyes gradually expanding between awe and the desire
to comprehend ; but at the last sentence his countenance fell.
" So I'm thinking Mister Porter, that the best witch in
siccan a case is ane that ye may find at the police-office."
"Anan?"
" Thae detective police are gran' necromancers an' canny
in their way : an' I just took the liberty, a week agone, to ha'
a crack wi' ane o' 'em. And noo, gin ye're inclined, we'll
leave the whusky awhile, an' gang up to that cave o' Troph-
awnius, ca'd by the vulgar Bow-street, an' speir for tidings
p' the twa lost sheep."
Ho to Bow-street we went and found our man, to whom
188 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
i
the farmer bowed with obsequiousness most unlike his us* .,1
burly independence. He evidently half suspected him to
have dealings with the world of spirits : but whether he had
such or not, they had been utterly unsuccessful ; and we
walked back again, with the farmer between us half blub-
bering:
"I tell ye, there's nothing like ganging to a wise 'ooman.
Bless ye, I mind one up to Guy Hall, when I was a barn,
that two Irish reapers coom down, and murthured her for the
money — and if you lost aught she'd vind it, so sure as the
church — and a mighty hand to cure burns; and they two
villians coom back, after harvest, seventy mile to do it — and
when my vather's cows was shrew-struck, she made un be
draed under a brimble as growed together at the both ends,
she a-praying like mad all the time ; and they never got
nothing but fourteen shilling and a orooked sixpence ; for
why, the devil carried off all the rest of her money : and I
seen 'um both a-hanging in chains by Wisbeach river, with
my own eyes. So when thae Irish reapers comes into the
vens, our chaps always says, ' Yow goo to Guy Hall, there's
yor brithren a-waitin' for yow,' and that do make 'um joost
mad loike, it do. I tell ye there's riowt like a wise 'ooman,
for vinding out the likes o' this."
At this hopeful stage of the argument I left them, to go to
the Magazine-office. As I passed through Covent Garden, a
pretty young woman stopped me under a gas-lamp. I was
pushing on, when I saw that it was Jemmy Downes's Irish
wife, and saw, too, that she did not recognize me. A sudden
instinct made me stop and hear what she had to say.
" Shure then, and yer a tailor, my young man?"
" Yes," I said, nettled a little that my late loathed profes-
sion still betrayed itself in my gait.
"From the counthry V
I nodded, though I dare not speak a white lie to that effect.
I fancied that, somehow, through her I might hear of poor
Kelly and his friend Porter.
" Ye'll be wanting work thin 1"
" I have no work."
" Och men, it's I can show ye the flower o' work, I can
Bedad, there's a shop I know of where ye'll earn — bedad, if
ye're the ninth part of a man, let alone a handy young fellow
like the lo >ks of you — och, ye'll earn thirty shillings the week,
to the very least — an' beautiful lodgings; oeh, thin, just come
and seo em— as chape as mother's milk ! Come alon*
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 189
thin — och, it's the beauty ye are — just the nate figure for a
tailor."
The fancy still possessed rne; and I went with her through
one dingy back street after another. She seemed to be pur-
posely taking an indirect road, to mislead me as to my where-
abouts ; but after a half-hour's walking, I knew, as well as
she, that we were in one of the most miserable slop-working
nests of the East-end.
She stopped at a house door, and hurried me in, up to the
first floor, and into a dirty, slatternly parlor, smelling infa-
mously of gin ; where the first object I beheld was Jemmy
Dowries, sitting before the fire, three parts drunk, with a
couple of dirty, squalling children on the hearth rug, whom
he was kicking and cuffing alternately.
"Och, thin, ye villain, bating the poor darlints whinever I
lave ye a minute '" and pouring out a volley of Irish curses,
she caught up the urchins, one under each arm, and kissed
and hugged them till they were nearly choked.
" Och, ye plague o' my life — as drunk as a baste ; an' I
brought home this darlint of a young gentleman to help ye in
the business."
Downes got up, and steadying himself by the table, leered
at me with lack-lustre eyes, and attempted a little ceremoni-
ous politeness. How this was to end I did not see ; but I
was determined to carry it through, on the chance of success,
infinitely small as that might be.
" An' I've told him thirty shillings a week's the least he'll
earn; and charges for board and lodging only seven shillings."
"Thirty! — she lies; she's always a-lying ; don't you
mind her. Five-and-forty is the werry lowest figure. Ask
my respectable and most piousest partner, Shemei Solomons.
Why, blow me — it's Locke !"
" Yes, it is Locke ; and surely you're my old friend, Jemmy
Downes ? Shake hands. What an unexpected pleasure to
meet you again !"
" Werry unexpected pleasure. Tip us your daddle ! De-
lighted — delighted, as I was a-saying, to be of the least use to
yer. Take a caulker ? Summat heavy, then? No? 'Tak'
a drap o' kindness yet, for auld langsyne V '
" You forget I was always a teetotaler."
"Ay," with a look of unfeigned pity. "An you're a-going
to lend us a hand 1 Oh, ah ! perhaps you'd like to begin ?
Heres a most beautiful uniform, now, for a markis in her
Majesty's Guards; we don't mention names — tarn't business
190 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
like. PYaps you'd like best to work here to-night, for com-
pany — ' for auld langsyne, my boys ;' and I'll introduce yer to
to the gents up-stairs to-morrow."
"No," I said ; "I'll go up at once, if you've no objection.'
" Och, thin, but the sheets isn't aired — no — faix ; and I'm
thinking the gentleman as is a-going isn't gone yet."
But I insisted on going up at once ; and, grumbling, she
followed me. 1 stopped on the landing of the second floor.
and asked which way; and seeing her in no hurry to answer,
opened a door, inside which I heard the hum of many voices,
saying in as sprightly a tone as I could muster, that I sup-
posed that was the workroom.
As I had expected, a fetid, choking den, with just room
enough in it for the seven or eight sallow, starved beings,
who, coatless, shoeless, and ragged, sat stitching, each on his
truckle-bed. I glanced round ; the man whom I sought was
not there.
My heart fell ; why it had ever risen to such a pitch of
hope I can not tell ; and half-cursing myself for a fool, in thus
wildly thrusting my head into a squabble, I turned back and
shut the door, saying,
" A very pleasant room, ma'am, but a leetle too crowded."
Before she could answer, the opposite door opened ; and ?
face appeared — unwashed, unshaven, shrunken to a skeleton
I did not recognize it at first.
" Blessed Vargen ! but that wasn't your voice, Locke?"
" And who are you ?"
" Tear and ages ! and he don't know Mike Kelly !"
My first impulse was to catch him up in my arms, and
run down stairs with him. I controlled myself however, not
knowing how far he might be in his tyrant's power. But his
voluble Irish heart burst out at once :
" Oh ! blessed saints, take me out o' this ! — take me out,
for the love of Jesus ! — take me out o r this hell, or I'll go mad
intirely ! Och ! will nobody have pity on poor sowls in pur-
gatory — here in prison like negur slaves ] We're starved to
the bone, we are, and kilt intirely with cowld."
And as he clutched my arm, with his long, skinny, trem-
bling fingers, I saw that his hands and feet were all chapped
and bleeding. Neither shoe nor stocking did he possess ; his
only garments were a ragged shirt and trowsers ; and — and,
in horrible mockery of his own misery, a grand new flowered
satin vest, which to-morrow was to figure in some gorgeous
shop-window !
ALTON LOCKE, TAILC R AND FOET 191
"Och! Mother of Heaven !" he went on, wildly, ,: when
will I get out to the fresh air ? For five months I haven't
6een the blessed light of sun, nor spoken to the praste, nor ate
a bit o' mate, barring bread-and-butter. Shure it's all the
blessed sabbatbs and saints' days I've been a-working like a
haythen Jew, and niver seen the insides o' the chapel to con-
fess my sins, and me poor sowl's lost intirely — and they've
pawned the relaver* this fifteen weeks, and not a boy of us
iver sot foot in the street since."
"Vot's that row?" roared at this juncture Downes's voice
from below.
" Och, thin," shrieked the woman, " here's that thief o'
the warld, Micky Kelly, slandhering o' us afore the blessed
heaven, and he owing £2. 14s. 0|d. for his board an' lodgin',
let alone pawn-tickets, and goin' to rin away, the black-heart
ed ongrateful sarpent !" And she began yelling, indiscrimi
nately " Thieves !" "Murder!" "Blasphemy!" and such other
ejaculations, which (the English ones at least) had not the
slightest reference to the matter in hand.
" I'll come to him !" said Downes, with an oath, and rush-
ed stumbling up the stairs, while the poor wretch sneaked in
again, and slammed the door to. Downes battered at it, but
was met with a volley of curses from the men inside ; while,
profiting by the Babel, I blew out the light, ran down-stairs,
and got safe into the street.
In two hours afterward, Mackaye, Porter, Crossthwaite,
and I were at the door, accompanied by a policeman, and a
search-warrant. Porter had insisted on accompanying us.
He had made up his mind that his son was at Downes's ;
and all representations of the smallness of his chance were
fruitless. He worked himself up into a state of complete
frenzy, and flourished a huge stick in a way which shocked
the policeman's orderly and legal notions.
" That may do very well down in your country, sir ; but
you aren't a goin' to use that there weapon here, you know,
not by no hact o' Parliament as I knows on."
" Ow, it's joost a way I ha' wi' me." And the stick was
quiet for fifty yards or so, and then recommenced smashing
imaginary skulls.
" You'll do somebody a mischief, sir, with that. You'd
much better a lend it me."
* A coal, we understand, which is kept by the coatless wretches in
these sweaters' dungeons, to be used by each of them in turn whoa
thev want to go out. — Editor.
)9b ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
Porter tucked it under his arm for fifty yards more ; and
so on, till we reached Downes's house.
The policeman knocked ; and the door was opened, cau-
tiously hy an old Jew, of a most un-" Caucasian" cast of
features, however " high nosed," as Mr. Disraeli has it.
The policeman asked to see Michael Kelly.
" Michaelsh 1 I do't know such namesh — " But before
the parley could go further, the farmer burst past policeman
and Jew, and rushed into the passage, roaring, in a voice
which made the very windows rattle,
"Billy Poorter ! Billy Poorter ! whor be yow ? whor be
yow ]"
We all followed him up-stairs, in time to see him charging
valiantly, with his stick for a bayonet, the small person of a
Jew-boy, who stood at the head of the stairs in a scientific
attitude. The young rascal planted a dozen blows in the
huge carcase — he might as well have thumped the rhinoceros
in the Regent's Park ; the old man ran right over him, with-
out stopping, and dashed up the stairs ; at the head of which
— oh, joy ! — appeared a long, shrunken, red-haired figure, the
tears on its dirty cheeks glittering in the candle-glare. In an
instant, father and son were in each other's arms.
" Oh, my barn ! my barn ! my barn ! my barn !" and then
the old Hercules held him off at arm's length, and looked at
him with a wistful face, and hugged him again with " My
barn ! my barn !" He had nothing else to say. Was it not
enough? And poor Kelly danced frantically around them,
hurrahing ; his own sorrows forgotten in his friend's deliver-
ance.
The Jew-boy shook himself, turned, and darted down-staira
past us ; the policeman quietly put out his foot, tripped him
headlong, and jumping down after him, extracted from his
grasp a heavy pocket-book.
" Ah ! my dear mothersh's dying gift ! Oh, dear ! oh
dear ! give it back to a poor orphansh !"
" Didn't I see you take it out o' the old 'un's pocket — you
young villain ?" answered the maintainer of order, as he
shoved the book into his bosom, and stood with one foot on his
writhing victim, a complete nineteenth-century St. Michael
" Let me hold him," I said, " while you go up-stairs."
" You hold a Jew-boy ! — you hold a mad cat !" answered
the policeman, contemptuously — and with justice — for at that
rnoment Dowries appeared on the first-floor landing, cursing
and blaspheming.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND PORT. 193
"He's my 'prentice! he's my servant! I've got a bond,
with his own hand to it, to serve me for three years. I'll
have the law of yon — I will !"
Then the meaning of the big stick came out. The old
man leapt down the stairs, and seized Downes. " You're the
tyrant as has locked my barn up here !" and a thrashing com-
menced, which it made my bones ache only to look at.
Downes had no chance ; the old man felled him on his face
in a couple of blows, and taking both hands to his stick,
nowed away at him as if he had heen a log.
" I waint hit a's head ! I waint hit a's head !" — whack,
whack. "Let me be!" — whack, whack — puff. "It does
me gude, it does me gude !" puff, puff, puff — whack. " I've
been a bottling of it up for three years, come Whitsuntide !"
— whack, whack, whack — while Mackaye and Crossthwaite
stood coolly looking on, and the wife shut herself up in the
side-room, and screamed murder.
The unhappy policeman stood at his wit's end, between
the prisoner below, and the breach of the peace above, bel-
lowing in vain, in the Queen's name, to us, and to the grin-
ning tailors on the landing. At last, as Downes's life seemed
in danger, he wavered ; the Jew-boy seized the moment, jump-
ed up, upsetting the constable, dashed like an eel between
Crossthwaite and Mackaye, gave me a back-handed blow in
passing, which I felt for a week after, and vanished through
the street-door, which he locked after hirn.
"Very well!" said the functionary, rising solemnly, and
pulling out a note-book — " Scar under left eye, nose a little
twisted to the right, bad chilblains on the hands. You'll
keep till next time, young man. Now, you fat gentleman
up there, have you done a qualifying of yourself for New-
gate?"
The old man had run up-stairs again, and was hugging his
son ; but when the policeman lifted Downes, he rushed back-
to his victim, and begged like a great school-boy, for leave to
" bet him joost won bit moor."
" Let me bet un ! I'll pay un ! — I'll pay all as my son
owes un ! Marcy me ! where's my pooss '.'" and so on raged
the Babel, till we got the two poor fellows safe out of the
nouse — we had to break open the door to do it, thanks to that
imp of Israel.
" For God's sake, take us too !" almost screamed five or
nix other voices.
"Thev'r) all in debt — every onesh ; they sha'n't go till
r
i:»l ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET.
they paysli, if there's law in England," whined t'le old Jew,
who had re-appeared.
" I'll pay for 'em — I'll pay every farden, if so be as they
treated my boy well. Here, you, Mr. Locke, there's the ten
pounds as I promised yon. Why, whor is my pooss ?"
The policeman solemnly handed it to him. He took it,
turned it over, looked at the policeman half frightened, and
pointed with his fat thumb at Mackaye.
" Well, he said as you was a conjurer — and sure he was
right."
lie paid me the money. I had no mind to keep it in
such company ; so I got the poor fellows' pawn-tickets, and
Crossthwaite and I took their things out lor them. When
we returned, we found them in a group in the passage, hold-
ing the door open, in their fear lest we should be locked up.
or entrapped in some way. Their spirits seemed utterly
broken. Some three or four went off to lodge where they
could ; the majority went up-stairs again to work. That,
even that dungeon, was their only home — their only hope, as
it is of thousands of " free" Englishmen at this moment.
We returned, and found the old man with his new-found
prodigal sitting on his knee, as if he had been a baby. Sandy
told me afterward, that he had scarcely kept him from carry-
ing the young man all the way home ; he was convinced that
the poor fellow Avas dying of starvation. I think really he
was not far wrong. In the corner sat Kelly, crouched to-
gether like a baboon, blubbering, hurrahing, invoking the
saints, cursing the sweaters, and blessing the present company.
We were afraid, for several days, that his wits were seriously
affected.
And, in his old arm-chair, pipe in mouth, sat good Sandy
Mackaye, wiping his eyes with the many-colored sleeve, and
moralizing to himself, sotto voce :
" The auld Romans riade slaves o' their debitors ; sae did
the Anglo-Saxons, for a good Major Cartwright has writ to
the contrary. But I didna ken the same Christian practice
was part o' the Breetish constitution. Aweel, aweel — atween
lviot Acts, Government by Commissions, and ither little ex-
travagants and codicils o' Mammon's making, it's no that
easy to ken, the day, what is the Breetish constitution, and
what isn't. Tak' a drappie, Billy Porter, lad V
"Never again so long as I live. I've learnt a lesson and
a half about that, these last few months."
" Aweel, moderation's best, but abstinence better than nae
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. ;g
thing. Nae man sail deprive me o' my leeberty, but I'll
tempt nae man to gie up his." And he actually put the
whisky-bottle by into the cupboard.
The old man and his son went home next day, promising
rne, if I would but come to see them.. " twa hundert acres o'
the best partridge-shooting, and wild dooks as plenty as spar-
rows; and to live in clover till I bust, if I liked." And so,.
as Bunyan has it, they went on their way, and I saw them
lio more.
CHAPTER XXII.
AN EMERSONIAN SERMON.
Certainly, if John Crossthwaite held the victim-of-circum-
6tance doctrine in theory, he did not allow Mike Kelly to
plead it in practice, as an extenuation of his misdeeds. Very
different from his Owenite " it's-nobody's-fault" harangues in
the debating society, or his admiration for the teacher of
whom my readers shall have a glimpse shortly, was his lec-
ture that evening to the poor Irishman on " It's all your own
fault." Unhappy Kelly ! he sat there like a beaten cur.
looking first at one of us, and then at the other, for mercy
and finding none. As soon as Crossthwaite's tongue was
tired, Mackaye's began, on the sins of drunkenness, hastiness,
improvidence, over-trustfulness, &c, &c, and, above all, on the
cardinal offense of not having signed the protest years before,
and spurned the dishonorable trade, as we had done. Even
his most potent excuse that " a boy must live somehow,"
Crossthwaite treated as contemptuously as if he had been a
very Leonidas, while Mackaye chimed in with,
" An' ye a Papist! ye talk o' praying to saints an' martyrs,
that died in torments because they wad na do what they
should na do ? What ha' ye to do wi' martyrs ? a meeser-
able wretch that sells his soul for a mess o' pottage — four
slices per diem o' thin bread and butter ? Et propter veetam
veevendi perdere causas ! Dinna tell me o' your hardships —
ye've had your deserts — your rights were just equivalent to
your mights, an' so ye got them."
"Faix then, Misther Mackaye, darlint, an' whin did I
dcsarve to pawn me own goose an' board, an' sit looking at
the spidthers for the want o' them 1"
" Pawn his ain goose ? Pawn himsel' ! pawn his needle —
gin it had been worth the pawning, they'd ha' ta'en it. An
yet there's a command in Deuteronomy, Ye shall na talc' the
millstone in pledge, for it's a man's life ; nor yet keep his
raiment owre night, but gie it the puir body back, that he
may sleep in his ain claes, an' bless ye. O — but pawn
brokers dinna care for blessings — na marketable value in them
whatsoever."
" And the thopkeeper," said I, " in the ' Arabian Nights,'
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 193
refuses to take the fisherman's net in pledge, because lie gels
his living thereby."
" Ech ! but, laddie, they were puir legal Jews, under car*
nal ordinances, an' daur na even tak an honest five per cent,
interest for their money. An' the baker o' Bagdad, why he
was a benighted heathen, ye ken, and deceivit by that fause
prophet, Mahomet, to his eternal damnation, or he wad never
ha' gone aboot to fancy a fisherman was his blither "
" Faix, an' ain't we all brothers ?" asked Kelly.
" Ay, and no," said Sandy, with an expression which
would have been a smile, but for its depth of bitter earnest-
ness ; " brethern in Christ, my laddie."
" An' ain't that all over the same ?"
" Ask the preachers. Gin they meant brothers, they'd say
brothers, be sure ; but because they don't mean brothers at
a', they say brethern — ye'll mind, brethern — to soun' anti-
cpiate, an' professional, an' perfunctory-like, for fear it should
be owre real, an' practical, an' startling, an' a' that ; and
then jist limit it down wi' a ' in Christ,' for fear o' owre wide
applications, and a' that. But
< For a' that, an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
When man an' man, the \varld owre,
Shall brothers be for a' that —
An' na brithren ony mair at a' !"
" An' didn't the blessed Jesus die for all ?"
'• What ? for heretics, Micky ?'"
" Bedan thin, an' I forgot that intirely !"
" Of course you did ! It's strange, laddie," said he turning
to me, " that that Name suld be every where, fra tho thun-
derers o' Exeter Ha' to this puir feckless Paddy, the watch-
word o' exclusiveness. I'm thinking ye'll no find the work-
men believe in 't, till somebody can fin' the plan o' making it
the sign o' universal comprehension. Gin I had na seen in
my youth that a brither in Christ meant less a thousandfold
than a brither out o' him, I might ha' believit the noo — we'll
no say what. I've an owre great organ o' marvelousness,
an' o' veneration too, I'm afeard."
" Ah," said Crossthwaite, " you should come and hear Mr.
Windrush to-night, about the all-embracing benevolence of
the Deity, and the abomination of limiting it by all those nar-
row creeds and dogmas."
"An' wha's Meester Windrush, then?"
" Oh, he's an American ; he was a Calvinist preachei
193 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
originally, I believe ; but, as he told us last Sunday evening,
he soon cast away the worn-out vestures of an obsolete faith,
which were fast becoming only crippling fetters."
" An' ran oot sarkless on the public, eh ? I'm afeard
there's mony a man else that throws awa' the gude auld
plaid o' Scots Puritanism, an' is unco fain to cover his naked-
ness wi' ony cast popinjay's feathers he can forgather wi'.
Aweel, aweel — a puir priestless age it is, the noo. We'll
e'en gang hear him the nicht, Alton, laddie ; ye ha' na dark-
ened the kirk door this mony a day — nor I neither, mair by
token."
" It was too true. I had utterly given up the whole prob-
lem of religion as insoluble. I believed in poetry, science,
and democracy — and they were enough for me then ; enough,
at least, to leave a mighty hunger in my heart, I knew not
• for what. And as for Mackaye, though brought up, as he
told me, a rigid Scotch Presbyterian, he had gradually ceased
to attend the church of his fathers.
" It was no the kirk o' his fathers — the auld God-trusting
kirk that Clavers dragoonit down by burns and muirsides. It
was a' gane dead an' dry ; a piece of Auld-Bailey barristration
anent soul-saving dodges. What did he want wi' proofs o'
the being o' God, an' o' the doctrine o' original sin ? He
could see eneugh o' them ayont the shop-door, ony tide. They
made puir Rabbie Burns an anything-arian, wi' their blethers,
an' he was near gaun the same gate."
And, besides, he absolutely refused to enter any place of
worship where there were pews. " He wad na follow after a
multitude to do evil ; he wad na gang before his Maker wi'
a lee in his right hand. Nae wonder folks were so afraid o'
the names of equality an' britherhood, when they kicked them
out e'en o' the kirk o' God. Pious folks may ca' me a sinfu'
auld Atheist. They winna gang to a harmless stage-play —
an' richt they — for fear o' countenancing the sin that's dune
there ; an' I winna gang to the kirk, for fear o' countenancing
the sin that's dune there, by putting down my hurdies on that
stool o' antichrist, a haspit pew !"
I was, therefore, altogether surprised at the promptitude
with which he agreed to go and hear Crossthwaite's new-found
prophet. His reasons for so doing may be, I think, gathered
from the conversation toward the end of this chapter.
Well, we went ; and I, for my part, was charmed with
Mr. Windrush's eloquence. His style, which was altogether
Emersonian, quite astonished me by its alternate bursts of
AITON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 19!)
what I considered Vrilliant declamation, and of forcible epi-
grammatic antithesis. I do not deny that I was a little
startled by some of his doctrines, and suspected that he had
not seen much of St. Giles's cellars or tailors' workshop's-
either, when he talked of sin as " only a lower form of good." i
" Nothing," he informed us, " was produced in nature without
pain and disturbance ; and what we had been taught to call
sin, was, in fact, nothing hut the birth-throes attendant on
the progress of the species. As for the devil, Novalis, indeed,
had gone so far as to suspect him to be a necessary illusion.
Novalis was a mystic, and tainted by the old creeds. The
illusion was not necessary — it was disappearing before the
fast-approaching meridian light of philosophic religion. Like
the myths of Christianity, it had grown up in an age of su-
perstition, when men, blind to the wondrous order of the uni-
verse, believed that supernatural beings, like the Homeric gods,
actually interfered in the affairs of mortals. Science had re-
vealed the irrevocability of the laws of nature — was man
alone to be exempt from them ? No. The time would come
when it would be as obsolete an absurdity to talk of the
temptation of a fiend, as it was now to talk of the wehr-
worf, or the angel of the thunder-cloud. The metaphor might
remain, doubtless, as a metaphor, in the domain of poetry,
whose office was to realize, in objective symbols, the subject
ive ideas of the human intellect; but philosophy, and the pure
sentiment of religion, which found all things, even God him-
self, in the recesses of its own enthusiastic heart must abjure
such a notion
" What!" he asked again, "shall all nature be a harmoni-
ous whole, reflecting, in every drop of dew which gems the
footsteps of the morning, the infinite love and wisdom of its
Maker, and man alone be excluded from his part in that con-
cordant choir? Yet such is the doctrine of the advocates of
.free-will, and of sin — its phantom-bantling. Man disobey his
Maker! disarrange and break the golden wheels and springs
of the infinite machine ! The thought were blasphemy ! —
impossibility! All things fulfill their destiny; and so does,
man, in a higher or lower sphere of being. Shall I puuisl
the robber ] Shall I curse the profligate ? As soon destroy
the toad, because my partial taste may judge him ugly ; or
doom to hell, for his carnivorous appetite, the muscalonge of
my native lakes! Toad is not horrible to toad, or thief to
thief. Philanthropists or statesmen may environ him with
more gonial circumstances, and so enable his propensities to
■200 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
work more directly for the good of society ; but to punish him
— to punish nature for daring to be nature ! — Never ! I may
thank the Upper Destinies that they have not made me as
other men are — that they have endowed me with nobler in-
stincts, a more delicate conformation than the thief; but 1
1 have my part +o play and he has his. Why should we wish
I to be other than the All- wise has made us ?"
"Fine doctrine that," grumbled Sandy; "gin ye've first
made up your mind wi' the Pharisee, that ye are no like ither
men."
" Shall I pray, then? For what? I will coax none, flat-
ter none — not even the Supreme ! I will not be absurd enough
to wish to change that order, by which sun and stars, saints
and sinners, alike fulfill their destinies. There is one comfort,
my friends ; coax and flatter, as we will, he will not hear
us."
"Pleasant for puir deevils like us !" quoth Mackaye.
" What then remains? Thanks, thanks — not of words, bul
of actions. Worship is a life, not a ceremony. He who would
honor the Supreme, let him cheerfully succumb to the destiny
which the Supreme has allotted, and like the shell or the
flower" — (" or the pick-pocket," added Mackaye, almost audi-
bly), " become the happy puppet of the universal impulse. Ho
who would honor Christ, let him become a Christ himself!
Theodore of Mopsuestia — born, alas ! before his time — a
prophet for whom as yet no audience stood ready in the am-
phitheatre of souls — 'Christ!' he was won r t to say; 'I can
become Christ myself, if I will.' Become thou Christ, my
brother ! He is an idea — the idea of utter submission — abne-
gation of his own fancied will before the supreme necessities
Fulfill that idea, and thou art he ! Deny thyself, and then
only wilt thou be a reality ; for thou hast no self. If thou
hadst a self, thou wouldst but lie in denying it — and would
The Being thank thee for denying what he had given thee ?
But thou hast none ! God is circumstance, and thou his
creature ! Be content ! Fear not, strive not, change not, re-
pent not ! Thou art nothing ! be nothing, and thou becomest
a part of all things !"
And so Mr. Windrush ended his discourse, which Cross-
thwaite had been all the while busily taking down in short-
hand, for the edification of the readers of a certain periodical,
and also for those of this my Life.
I plead guilty to having been entirely carried away by what
ard. There was so much which was true, so much mora
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 3d
which seemed true, so much which it would have heen con
venient to helieve true, and all put so eloquently and originally
as I then considered, that, in short, I was in raptures, and so
was poor dear Crossthwaite ; and as we walked home, we
dinned Mr. Windrush's praises one into each of Mackaye's
ears. The old man, however, paced on silent and meditative.
At last —
" A hunder sects or so in the land o' Gret Britain ; an' a
hunder or so single preachers, each man a sect of his ain ! an'
this the last fashion ! Last indeed ! The moon of Calvin-
ism's far gone in the fourth quarter, when it's come to the
like o' that. Truly, the soul-saving business is a'thegither
i'a'n to a low ebb, as Master Tummas says somewhere !"
" Well, but," asked Crossthwaite, "was not that man, at
least, splendid ?"
" An' hoo much o' thae gran' objectives an' subjectives did
ye comprehen', then, Johnnie, my man ?"
"Quite enough for me," answered John in a somewhat net-
tled tone.
"An, sae did I.'
" But you ought to hear him often. You can't judge of
his system from one sermon, in this way."
" Seestem ! and what's that like ?"
" Why, he has a plan for uniting all sects and parties, on
the one broad fundamental ground of the unity of God as re-
vealed by science — "
" Verra like uniting o' men by just pu'ing aff their claes,
and telling 'em, ' There, ye're a' brithers noo, on the one broad
fundamental principle o' want o' breeks.' "
"Of course," went on Crossthwaite, without taking notice
of this interruption, " he allows full liberty of conscience. All
he wishes for is the emancipation of intellect. He will allow
every one, he says, to realize that idea to himself, by the rep-
resentations which suit him best."
" An' so he has no objection to a wee playing at Papistry,
gin a man finds it good to tickle up his soul?"
" Ay, he did speak of that — Avhat did he call it ? Oh '
'one of the ways in which the Christian idea naturally em-
bodied itself in imaginative minds ! but the higher intellects,
of course, would want fewer helps of that kind. They would
see — ' ay, that was it — ' the pure white light of truth, without
requiring those colored refracting media.' "
" That wad depend muckle on whether the light o' truth
chose or not — I'm thinking. But, Johnnie, lad — <niide us
i*
202 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
and save us ! whaur got ye a' these gran' outlandish words
the nicht ?"
" Haven't I been taking down every one of these lectures
for the press ?"
" The press gang to the father o't — and you too, for lending
your han' in the matter — for a mair accursed aristocrat I
never heerd, sin' I first ate haggis. Oh, ye gowk — ye gowk !
Dinna ye see what be the upshot o' siccan doctrine ? That
every puir fellow as has no gret brains in his head will be left
to his superstition, an' his ignorance, to fulfill the lusts o' his
flesh ; while the few that are geniuses, or fancy themselves
sae, are to ha' the monopoly o' this private still o' philosophy
— these carbonari, illuminati, vehmgericht, Samothracian mys-
teries o' bottled moonshine. An' when that comes to pass,
I'll just gang back to my schule and my catechism, and begin
again wi' ' who was born o' the Virgin Mary, suffered oonder
Pontius Pilate !' Hech ! lads, there's no subjectives and
objectives there, na beggarly, windy abstractions, but joost a
plain fact, that God cam' down to look for puir bodies, instead
o' leaving puir bodies to gang looking for Him. An' here's a
pretty place to be left looking for Him in — between gin-shops
and gutters ! A pretty gospel for the publicans an' harlots,
to tell 'em that if their bairns are canny eneugh, they may
possibly some day be allowed to believe that there is one God,
and not twa ! And then, by way of practical application —
'Hech! my dear, starving, simple brothers, ye manna be sae
owre conscientious, and gang fashing yourselves atient being
brutes, an' deevils, for the gude God's made ye sae, and He's
vei - ra weel content to see ye sae, gin ye be content or no."
" Then, do you believe in the old doctrines of Christianity ?"
I asked.
" Dinna speir what I believe in. I canna tell ye. I've
been seventy years trying to believe in God, and to meet an-
either man that believed in him. So I'm just like the Quaker
o' the town o' Redcross, that met by himself every First-day
in his ain hoose."
" Well, but," I asked again, " is not complete freedom of
thought a glorious aim — to emancipate man's noblest part —
the intellect — from the trammels of custom and ignorance?"
" Intellect — intellect !" rejoined he, according to his fashion,
catching one up at a word, and playing on that in order to
answer, not what one said, but what one's words led to.
" I'm sick o' all the talk ancnt intellect I hear noo. An'
what's the use o' intellect ? ' Aristocracy o' intellect,' they
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 203
cry. Curse a' aristocracies — intellectual anes, as weel as
anes o' birth, or rank, or money! What ! will I ca' a man
my superior, because he's cleverer than mysel' 1 will I boo
down to a bit o' brains, ony mair than to a stock or a stane?
Let a man prove himscl' better than me, my laddie — honest-
er, humbler, kinder, wi' mair sense o' the duty o' man, an'
the weakness o' man — and that man I'll acknowledge — that
man's my king, my leader, though he war as stupid as Eppe
Dalgleish, that could na count five on her fingers, and yet
keepit her drucken father by her ain hand's labor, for twenty-
three yeers."
We could not agree to all this, but we made a rule of
never contradicting the old sage in one of his excited moods,
for fear of bringing on a week's silent fit — a state which gen-
erally ended in his smoking himself into a bilious melancholy,
but I made up my mind to be henceforth a frequent auditor
of* Mr. Windrush's oratory.
" An' sae the deevil's dead !" said Sandy, half to himself,
as he sat crooning and smoking that night over the fire.
" Gone at last, puir fallow ! an' he sae little appreciated, too !
Every gowk laying his ain sins on Nickie's back. Puir
Nickie ! verra like that much misunderstood politeecian, Mr.
John Cade, as Charles Buller ca'd him in the Hoose o' Com-
mons — an' he to be dead at last ! The warld '11 seem quite
unco without his auld-farrant phizog on the streets. Aweel,
aweel — aihlins he's but shammin.'
When pleasant Spring came on apace,
And showers began to fa',
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surprised them a'.
At ony rate, I'd no bury him till he began smell a wee
strong, like. It's a grewsome thing, is premature interment,
Alton laddie !"
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE FREEDOM OF THE PEESJ.
But all this while, my slavery to Mr. O'Flynn's party-
spirit and coarseness was becoming daily more and more in-
tolerable : an explosion was inevitable ; and an explosion
came.
Mr. O'Flynn found out that I had been staying at Cam-
bridge, and at a cathedral city too ; and it was quite a god-
send to him to find any one who knew a word about the in-
stitutions at which he had been railing weekly for years. So
nothing would serve him, but my writing a set of articles on
the Universities, as a prelude to one on the Cathedral Estab-
lishments. In vain I pleaded the shortness of my stay there,
and the smallness of my information.
" Och, were not abuses notorious? And couldn't I get
them up out of any Ptadical paper — and just put in a little
of my own observations, and a dashing personal cut or two,
to spice the thing up, and give it an original look ? and if I
did not choose to write that — why," with an enormous oath,
"I should write nothing." So — for I was growing weaker
and weaker, and indeed my hack-writing was breaking down
my moral sense, as it does that of most of men — I complied ;
and burning with vexation, feeling myself almost guilty of a
breach of trust toward those from whom I had received nothing
but kindness, I scribbled off my first number and sent it to
the editor — to see it appear next week, three-parts rewritten,
and every fact of my own furnishing twisted and misapplied,
till the whole thing was as vulgar and commonplace a piece
of rant as ever disgraced the people's cause. And all this, in
spite of a solemn promise, confirmed by a volley of oaths, that
I "should say what I liked, and speak my whole mind, as
one who had seen things with his own eyes had a right to
do."
Furious, I set off to the editor ; and not only my pride, but
what literary conscience I had left, was stirred to the bottom
by seeing myself made, whether I would or not, a blackguard
and a slanderer.
As it was ordained, Mr. O'Flynn was gone out for an hour
or two; and, unable to settle down to any work till I had
lit my battle with him fairly out, I wandered onward
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 20\
toward the West-end, staring into print-shop windows, and
meditating on many things.
As it was ordained, also, I turned up Regent-street, and
into Langham-place ; when, at the door of All-Souls Church.
behold a crowd, and a long string of carriages arriving, and
all the pomp and glory of a grand wedding.
I joined the crowd from mere idleness, and somehow found
myself in the first rank, just as the bride was stepping out of
I he carriage — it was Miss Staunton ; and the old gentleman
who handed her out was no other than the dean. They
were, of course, far too deeply engaged to recognize insignili-
eant little me, so that I could stare as thoroughly to my
heart's content as any of the butcher-boys and nursery-maids
around me.
She was closely vailed — but not too closely to prevent my
seeing her magnificent lip and nostril curling with pride, re-
solve, rich tender passion. Her glorious black-brown hair —
ihe true "purple locks'' which Homer so often talks of — rolled
down beneath her vail in great heavy ringlets ; and with her
tall and rounded figure, and step as firm and queenly as if she
were going to a throne, she seemed to me the very ideal of
those magnificent Eastern Zubeydehs and Nourmahals, whom
I used to dream of after reading the " Arabian Nights."
As they entered the door-way, almost touching me, she
looked round, as if for some one. The dean whispered some-
thing in his gentle, stately way, and she answered by one of
those looks so intense, and yet so bright, so full of unutterable
depths of meaning and emotion, that, in spite of all my antip-
athy, I felt an admiration akin to awe thrill through me, and
cazed after her so intently, that Lillian — Lillian herself — was I
at my side, and almost passed me before I was aware of it.
Yes, there she was, the foremost among a bevy of fair girls,
" herself the fairest far," all April smiles and tears, golden
curls, snowy rosebuds, and hovering clouds of lace — a fairy
queen ; but yet — but yet — how shallow that hazel eye, how
empty of meaning those delicate features, compared with the
strength and intellectual richness of the face which had pre-
ceded her !
It was too true — I had ne\er remarked it before; but now
it dashed across me like lightning — and like lightning vanish-
ed ; for Lillian's eye caught mine, and there was the faintest
spark of a smile of recognition, and pleased surprise, and a
nod. I blushed scarlet with delight ; some servant girl or
other, who stood next to me, had seen it too — quick-eyed that
206 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
women are — and was looking curiously at me. I turned, I
know not why, in my delicious shame, and plunged through
the crowd to hide I knew not what.
I walked on — poor fool !— in an ecstasy ; the whole world
was transfigured in my eyes, and virtue and wisdom beamed
from every face I passed. The omnibus-horses were racers,
and the drivers — were they not my brothers of the people ?
The very policemen looked sprightly and philanthropic. I
shook hands earnestly with the crossing-sweeper of the Regent-
circus, gave him my last two-pence, and rushed on, like a young
David, to exterminate that Philistine O'Flynn.
Ah well ! I was a great fool, as others too have been ; but
yet, that little chance-meeting did really raise me. It made
me sensible that I was made for better things than low abuse
of the higher classes. It gave me courage to speak out, and
act without fear of consequences, once at least in that con-
fused facing-both-ways period of my life. O woman ! woman !
i only true missionary of civilization and brotherhood, and gen-
\ tie, forgiving charity ; it is in thy power, and perhaps in thine
only, to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to
the captives ! One real lady, who should dare to stoop, what
might she not do with us — with our sisters ? If —
There are hundreds, answers the reader, who do stoop.
Elizabeth Fry was a lady, well-born, rich, educated, and she
has many scholars.
True, my dear readers, true — and may God bless her and
her scholars. Do you think the working-men forget them ?
But look at St. Giles's, or Spitalfields, or Shadwell, and say,
is not the harvest plentiful, and the laborers, alas! few? No
one asserts that nothing is done ; the question is, is enough
done ? Does the supply of mercy meet the demand of miserv ?
Walk into the next court and see !
I found Mr. O'Flynn in his sanctum, busy with paste and
Ecissors, in the act of putting in a string of advertisements —
indecent French novels, Atheistic tracts, quack medicines,
and slopsellers' puffs ; and commenced with as much dignity
as I could muster,
" What on earth, do you mean, sir, by re-writing my
arlicle?"
" What — (in the other place) — do you mean by giving me
the trouble of re-writing it ? Me head's splitting now with
sitting up, cutting out, and putting in. Poker o : Moses ! but
yt'd given it an intirely aristocratic tendency. What did ye
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 207
mane" (and ti.ree or four oaths rattled out) "by talking about
the pious intentions of the original founders, and the demo-
cratic tendencies of monastic establishment?"
" I wrote it because I thought it."
"Is that any reason ye should write it 1 And there was
another bit, too — it made my hair stand on end when 1 saw
it, to think how near I was sending the copy to press with-
out looking at it — something about a French Socialist, and
Church Property."
" Oh ! you mean, I suppose, the story of the French Social-
ist, who told me that church property was just the only prop-
erty in England which he would spare, because it was the
only one which had definite duties attached to it ; that the
real devourers of the people were not the bishops, who, how-
ever rich, were at least bound to work in return for their
riches, but the landlords and millionaires, who refuse to
confess the duties of property, while they raved about its
rights."
"Bedad, that's it; and pretty doctrine, too!"
" But it's true : it's an entirely new, and a very striking
notion, and I consider it my duty to mention it."
" Thrue ! What the devil does that matter? There's a
time to speak the truth, and a time not, isn't there ? It'll
make a grand hit, now, in a leader upon the Irish Church
question, to back the prastcs against the landlords. But if
I'd let that in as it stood, bedad, I'd have lost three-parts of
my subscribers the next week. Every soul of the Indepen-
dents, let alone the Chartists, would have bid me good morn-
ing. Now do, like a good boy, give us something more the
right thing next time. Draw it strong. — A good drunken
supper-party and a police row ; if ye haven't seen one, get it
up out of Peter Priggins — or Laver might do, if the other
wasn't convenient. That's Dublin to be sure, but one uni-
versity's just like another. And give us a seduction or two,
and a brace of Dons carried home drunk from Barnwell by
the Procthors."
"Really I never saw any thing of the kind; and as lur
profligacy among the Dons, 1 don't believe it exists. I'll call
them idle, and bigoted, and careless of the morals of the young
men, because I know that they are so ; but as for any thing
more, I believe them to be as sober, respectable a set of Phar-
isees as the world ever saw."
Mr. O'Fiynn was waxing warm, and the bully-vein began
fast to show itself.
208 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
" I don't care a curse, sir! My subscribers won't stand it,
and they shan't ! I am a man of business, sir, and a man of
the world, sir, and faith that's more than you are, and I know
what will sell the paper, and by J — s I'll let no upstart spal-
peen dictate to me !"
" Then I'll tell you what, sir," quoth I, waxing warm in
my turn, " I don't know which are the greater rogues, you or
your subscribers. You a patriot ! You are a humbug. Look
at those advertisements, and deny it if you can. Crying out
for education, and helping to debauch the public mind with
Voltaire's ' Candide,' and Eugene Sue — swearing by Jesus,
and puffing Atheism and blasphemy — yelling at a quack gov-
ernment, quack law, quack priesthoods, and then dirtying your
lingers with half-crowns for advertising Holloway's ointment,
and Parr's life pills — shrieking about slavery of labor to cap-
ital, and inserting Moses & Son's doggrel — ranting about
searching investigations and the march of knowledge, and
concealing every fact which can not be made to pander to the
passions of your dupes — extolling the freedom of the press, and
showing yourself in your own office a tyrant and a censor of
the press. You a patriot ! You the people's friend ! You
are doing every thing in your power to blacken the people's
cause in the eyes of their enemies. You are simply a hum-
bug, a hypocrite, and a scoundrel ; and so I bid you good
morning."
Mr. O'Flynn had stood, during this harrangue, speechless
with passion, those loose lips of his wreathing like a pair of
earth-worms. It was only when I stopped that he regained
his breath, and with a volley of incoherent oaths, caught up
his chair and hurled it at my head. Luckily. I had seen
enough of his temper already, to keep my hand on the lock ol
the door for the last five minutes. I darted out of the room
quicker than I ever did out of one before or since. The chair
took effect on the luckless door ; and as I threw a flying
glance behind me, I saw one leg sticking through the middle
pannel, in a way that augured ill for my skull, had it been in
the way of Mr. O'Flynn' s fury.
I ran home to Mackaye in a state of intense self-glorifica-
tion, and told him the whole story. He chuckled, he crowed,
he hugged me to his bosom.
" Leeze me o' ye ! but I kenned ye were o' the true Norse
bhule after a' !
' For a' tl at, an' a that,
A man's a man for a 1 that.'
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. ZO'J
Oh, but I hae expeckit it this month an' mair! Oh, but I
prophesied it, Johnnie!"
" Then, why in Heaven's name did you introduce me to
such a scoundrel .'"
" I sent ye to schule, lad, I sent ye to schule. Ye wad na
be ruled by me. Ye tuk me for a puir doited auld misan-
thrope; an' I thocht to gie ye the meat ye lusted after, an'
till ye wi' the fruit o' your ain desires. An' noo that yc've
gane doon into the fire o' temptation, an' concpaered, here's
your reward standin' ready. Special prawvidences ! — wha
can doot them ? I ha' had mony — miracles I might ca'
them, to see how they cam' just when I was gaun daft wi'
despair."
And then he told me that the editor of a popular journal,
of the Howitt and Eliza Cook school, had called on me that
morning-, and promised me work enough, and pay enough, to
meet all present difficulties.
I did indeed accept the curious coincidence, if not as a
reward for an act of straightforwardness, in which I saw no
merit, at least, as proof that the upper powers had not alto-
gether forgotten me. I found both the editor and his periodi-
cal, as I should have wished them, temperate and sunny —
somewhat clap-trap and sentimental, perhaps, and afraid of
speaking out, as all parties are, but still willing to allow my
fancy free range in light fictions, descriptions of foreign coun-
tries, scraps of showy rose-pink morality, and such like ; which,
though they had no more power against the raging mass of
crime, misery, and discontent, around, than a peacock's feather
against a three-decker, still were all genial, graceful, kindly,
humanizing, and soothed my discontented and impatient heart
in the work of composition.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE TOWNMAN'S SERMON TO THE GOWNSMAN.
Oxe morning in February a few days after this explosion, 1
was on the point of starting to go to the dean's house about
that weary list of subscribers, which seemed destined never to
be filled up, when my cousin George burst in upon me. He
was in the highest good spirits at having just taken a double
first-class at Cambridge ; and after my congratulations, sin-
cere and hearty enough, were over, he offered to accompany
me to that reverend gentleman's house.
He said, in an off-hand way, that he had no particular
business there, but he thought it just as well to call on the
dean and mention his success, in case the old fellow should
not have heard of it.
"For you see," he said, " I'm a sort of protege, both on my
own account and on Lord Lynedale's — Ellerton, he is now —
you know he's just married to the dean's niece, Miss Staunton
— and Ellerton's a capital fellow — promised me a living as
soon as I'm in priest's orders. So my cue is now," he went
on, as we walked down the Strand together, " to get ordained
as fast as ever I can."
" But," I asked, " have you read much for ordination, or
seen much of what a clergyman's work should be 1 ?"
" Oh ! as for that — you know it isn't one out of ten who's
ever entered a school, or a cottage even, except to light his
cigar, before he goes into the church : and as for the examina-
tion, that's all humbug ; any man may cram it all up in a
month — and thanks to King's College, I knew all I wanted
to know before I went to Cambridge. And I shall be three-
and-twenty by Trinity Sunday, and then in I go, neck or
nothing. Only the confounded bore is, that this Bishop of
London won't give one a title — won't let any man into his
diocese, who has not been ordained two years ; and so I shall
be shoved down into some poking little country-curacy, with-
out a chance of making play before the world, or getting
myself known at all. Horrid bore ! isn't it?"
"I think," I said, "considering what London is just now
the bishop's regulation seems to be one of the best specimens
of episcopal wisdom that I've heard of for some time."
" Great bore for me, though, all the same ; for I must make
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. 21]
a name, I can. tell you, if I intend to get on. A person must
work like a horse nowadays, to succeed at all ; and Lyne-
d ale's a desperately particular fellow, with all sorts of outre
notions about people's duties, and vocations, and heaven knows
what."
" Well," I said, " my dear cousin, and have you no high
notions of a clergyman's vocation ? because we — I mean the
working-men — have. It's just their high idea of what a
clergyman should be, which makes them so furious at clergy-
men for being what they are."
" It's a queer way of showing their respect to the priest-
hood," he answered, " to do all they can to exterminate it."
" I dare say they are liable, like other men, to confound the
thing with its abuses ; but if they hadn't some dim notion
that the thing might be made a good thing in itself, you may
depend upon it they would not rave against those abuses so
fiercely." (The reader may see that I had not forgotten my
conversation with Miss Staunton.) "And," thought I to
myself, " is it not you, and such as you, who do so incorporate
the abuses into the system, that one really can not tell which
is which, and longs to shove the whole thing aside as rotten
to the core, and make a trial of something new?"
" Well, but," I said, again returning to tho charge, for the
subject was altogether curious and interesting to me, " do you
really believe the doctrines of the Prayer-book, George ?"
" Believe them !" he answered, in a tone of astonishment,
" why not? I was brought up a Churchman, whatever my
parents were ; I was always intended for the ministry. I'd
sign the Thirty-nine Articles now, against any man in the
three kingdoms ; and as for all the proofs out of Scripture and
Church History, I've known them ever since I was sixteen
— I'll get them all up again in a week as fresh as ever."
" But," I rejoined, astonished in my turn at my cousin's
notion of what belief was, " have you any personal faith ? you
know what I mean — I hate using cant words — but inward
experience of the truth of all these great ideas, which, true or
false, you will have to preach and teach ? Would you live
by them, die for them, as a patriot would for his country,
now ?"
"My dear fellow, I dont know any thing about all those
Methodistical, mystical, Calvinistical inward experiences,
and all that. I'm a Churchman, remember, and a High
Churchman, too ; and the doctrine of the Church is, that
children are regenerated in holy baptism ; ami there's not the
212 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
least doubt, from the authority both of Scripture and the
fathers, that that's the — "
"For heaven's sake," I said, "no polemical discussions!
Whether you're right or wrong, that's not what I'm talking
about. What I want to know is this : You are going to
teach people about God and Jesus Christ. Do you delight
in God ? Do you love Jesus Christ .' Never mind what 1
do, or think, or believe. What do you do, George ?"
" Well, my dear fellow, if you take things in that way, you
know, of course — " and he dropped his voice into that pecu-
liar tone, by which all sects seem to think they show their
reverence ; Avhile to me, as to most other Avorking-men, it
never seemed any thing but a symbol of the separation and
discrepancy between their daily thoughts and their religious
ones — " of course, we don't any of us think of these things
half enough, and I'm sure I wish I could be more earnest
than I am ; but I can only hope it will come in time. The
Church holds that there's a grace given in ordination ; and
really — really, I do hope and wish to do my duty — indeed,
one can't help doing it ; one is so pushed on by the immense
competition for preferment ; an idle parson hasn't a chance
nowadays."
"But," I asked again, half-laughing, half-disgusted, "do you
know what your duty is ?"
" Bless you, my good fellow, a man can't go wrong there.
Carry out the Church-system ; that's the thing — all laid
down by rule and method. A man has but to work out that
— and it's the only one for the lower classes, I'm convinced."
" Strange," I said, " that they have from the first been so
little of that opinion, that every attempt to enforce it, for the
last three hundred years, has ended either in persecution or
revolution."
" Ah ! that was all those vile Puritans' fault. The)
would'nt give the Church a chance of showing her powers."
" What ! not when she had it all her own way, during the
whole eighteenth century ?"
" Ah ! but things are very different now. The clergy are
awakened now to the real beauty of the Catholic machinery ;
and you have no notion how much is doinir in church-buildin^,
and schools, and societies of every sort and kind. It is quite
incredible what is being done now for the lower orders by the
Church."
" I believe," I said, " that the clergy are exceedingly im-
proved ; and I believe, too, that the men to whom they owe
ALTON LOCKE. TAILOR AND TOET. «2I3
all their improvement, are the Wesleys, and Whitflelds — in
short, the very men whom they drove one by one out of the
Church, from persecution or disgust. And I do think it
strange, that if so much is doing for the lower classes, the
working-men who form the mass of the lower classes, are just
those who scarcely feel the effects of it ; while the churches
seem to be filled with children, and rich and respectable, to
the almost entire exclusion of the adult lower classes. A
strange religion this !" I went on, " and, to judge by its
effects, a very different one from that preached in Judea eight-
een hundred years ago, if we are to believe the Gospel story."
" What on earth do you mean ? Is not the Church of
England the very purest form of Apostolic Christianity]''
" It may be — and so may the other sects. But, somehow,
in Judea, it was the publicans and harlots who pressed into
the kingdom of heaven ; it was the common people who
heard Christ gladly. Christianity, then, was a movement in
the hearts of the lower order. But now, my dear fellow, you
rich, who used to be told in St. James's time, to weep and
howl, have turned the tables upon us poor. It is you who
are talking, all day long, of converting tis. Look at any
place of worship you like, orthodox and heretical. Who fill
the pews ? the outcast and the reprobate 1 No ! the Phari-
sees and the covetous, who used to deride Christ, fill His
churches, and say still ' This people, these masses, who know
not the Gospel, are accursed.' And the universal feeling, as
far as I can judge, seems to be, not ' how hardly shall they
who have,' but how hardly shall they who have not 'riches
enter into the kingdom of Heaven!' "
" Upon my word," said he, laughing, li I did not give you
credit for so much eloquence : you seem to have studied the
Bible to some purpose, too. I didn't think that so much
Radicalism could be squeezed out of a few texts of Scripture.
It's quite a new light to me. I'll just mark that card, and
play it when I get a convenient opportunity. It may be a
winning one in these democratic times."
And he did play it, as I heard hereafter ; but at present he
seemed to think, that the less that was said further on clerical
subjects the better, and commenced quizzing the people whom
we passed, humorously and neatly enough ; while I walked
oti in silence, and thought of Mr. Bye-Ends, in the " Pil-
grim's Progress." And yet I believe the man was really in
earnest. He was really desirous to do what was right, as far
as h«- knew it ; and all the more desirous, because he saw, in
214 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
the present state of society, what was right would pay him
God shall judge him, not I. Who can unravel the confusion
of mingled selfishness and devotion that exists even in his own
heart, much less in that of another ?
The dean was not at home that day, having left town on
business. George nodded familiarly to the footman who
opened the door.
" You'll mind and send me word the moment your master
comes home — mind, now !"
The fellow promised obedience, and we walked away.
"You seem to be very intimate here," said I, "with all
parties'?"
" Oh ! footmen are useful animals — a half-sovereign now
and then is not altogether thrown away upon them. But as
lor the higher powers, it is very easy to make one's self at
home in the dean's study, but not so much so to get a footing
in the drawing-room above. I suspect he keeps a precious
sharp eye upon the fair Miss Lillian.'"'
" But," I asked, as a jealous pang shot through my heart,
"how did you contrive to get this same footing at all]
When I met you at Cambridge, you seemed already Avell
acquainted with these people."
" How ? — how does a hound get a footing on a cold scent ?
By working and casting about and about, and drawing on it
inch by inch, as I drew on them for years, my boy ; and cold
enough the scent was. You recollect that day at the Dul-
wich Gallery 1 I tried to see the arms on the carriage, but
there were none ; so that cock wouldn't fight."
" The arms! I should never have thought of such a plan."
" Dare say you wouldn't. Then I harked back to the door-
keeper, while you were St. Sebastianizing. He didn't know
their names, or didn't choose to show me their ticket, on
which it ought to have been ; so I went to one of the fellows
whom I knew, and got him to find out. There comes out the
value of money — for money makes acquaintances. Well, I
found who they were. Then I saw no chance of getting at
them. But for the rest of that year, at Trinity, I beat every
bush in the University, to find some one who knew them ;
and as fortune favors the brave, at last I hit off this Lord
Lynedale ; and he, of course, was the ace of trumps — a fine
catch in himself, and a double catch, because he was going to
marry the cousin. So I made a dead set at him ; and tight
work I had to nab him, I can te-1 you, for he was three or
ibur years older that 1, and had traveled a good deal and
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. 215
»een life. But every man has his weak side ; and I found his
was a sort of a High-Church Radicalism, and that suited me
well enough, for I was always a deuce of a radical myself;
so I stuck to him like a leech, and stood all his temper, and
his pride, and those unpractical, windy visions of his, that
made a common-sense fellow like me sick to listen to ; hut I
stood it, and here I am."
" And what on earth induced you to stoop to all this — "
meanness I was on the point of saying. " Surely you are in
no want of money — your father could huy you a good living
to-morrow."
" And he will, but not the one I want ; and he could not
buy me reputation, power, rank, do you see, Alton, my gen-^
ius ? And what's more he couldn't buy me a certain little
tit-bit, a jewel, worth a Jew's-eye and a half, Alton, that
I set my heart on from the first moment I set my eye
on it."
My heart beat fast and fierce, but he ran on,
"Do you think I'd have eaten all this dirt, if it hadn't lain
in my way to her 1 Eat dirt ! I'd drink blood, Alton —
though I don't often deal in strong words — if it lay in that
road. I never set my heart on the thing yet, that I didn't
get it at last by fair means or foul — and I'll get her ! I don't
care for her money, though that's a pretty plumb. — Upon my
life, I don't. I worship her, limbs and eyes. — I worship the
very ground she treads on. She's a duck and a darling," said
he, smacking his lips like an Ogre over his prey, " and I'll
have her before I've done, so help me — "
" Whom do you mean?" I stammered out.
" Lillian ! you blind beetle !" F
I dropped his arm — " Never, as I live !"
He started back, and burst into a horse-laugh.
" Hullo ! my eye and Betty Martin ! You don't mean to
say that I have the honor of finding a rival in my talented
cousin i
I made no answer.
" Come, come, my dear fellow, this is too ridiculous. You
and I are very good friends, and we may help each other, if we
choose, like kith and kin in this here wale. So if you're fool
enough to quarrel with me, I warn you I'm not fool enough
to return the compliment. Only" (lowering his voice), "just
bear one little thing in mind — that I am, unfortunately, of a
somewhat determined humor ; and if folks will get in my
Way, why it's not my fault if I drive over them. You under-
i:
216 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
stand 1 Well, if you intend to be sulky, I don't. So good
morning, till you fell yourself better."
And he turned gayly down a side-street, and disappeared,
looking taller, handsomer, manfuller than ever.
I returned home miserable; I now saw in my cousin, not
merely a rival, but a tyrant : and I began to hate him with
that bitterness which fear alone can inspire. The eleven
pounds still remained unpaid. Between three and four pounds
was the utmost which I had been able to hoard up that
autumn, by dint of scribbling and stinting; there was no
chance of profit from my book for months to come — if indeed
it ever got published, which I hardly dared believe it would ;
and I knew him too well to doubt that neither pity nor deli-
cacy would restrain him from using his power over me, if I
dared even to seem an obstacle in his way.
I tried to write, but could not. I found it impossible to
direct my thoughts, even to sit still; a vague spectre of terror
and degradation crushed me. Day after day I sat over the
fire, and jumped up and went into the shop to find some-
thing which I did not want, and peep listlessly into a dozen
books, one after the other, and then wandered back again to
the fireside, to sit mooning and moping, staring at that horri-
ble incubus of debt — a devil which may give mad strength to
the strong, but only paralyzes the weak. And I was weak,
as every poet is more Qr less. There was in me, as I have
somewhere read that there is in all poets that feminine vein
— a receptive as well as a creative faculty — which kept up
in me a continual thirst after beauty, rest, enjoyment. And
here was circumstance after circumstance goading me on-
ward, as the gadfly did Io, to continual wanderings, never
ceasing exertions ; every hour calling on me to do, while 1
•was only longing to be — to sit and observe, and fancy, and
build freely at my own will. And then — as if this necessity
of perpetual petty exertion was not in itself sufficient torment
— to have that accursed debt — that knowledge that I was in
a rival's power, rising up like a black wall before me, to crip-
ple, and render hopeless, for aught I knew, the very exertions
to which it compelled me ! I hated the bustle — the crowds ;
the ceaseless roar of the street outside maddened me. I long-
sd in vain for peace — for one day's freedom — to be one hour
u. shepherd-boy, and lie looking up at the blue sky, without
a thought beyond the rushes I was plaiting! "Oh, that I
bad wings as a dove ! — then would I flee away, and be at
rest !"
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND 1'OET. 217
And then, more than once, or twice either, the thought of
suicide crossed me ; and I turned it over, and looked at it, and
dallied with it, as a last chance in reserve. And then the
thought of Lillian came, and drove away the fiend. And
then the thought of my cousin came, and paralyzed mo
again ; for it told me that one hope was impossible. And
then some fresh instance of misery or oppression forced itself
upon me, and made me feel the awful sacredness of my call-
ing, as a champion of the poor, and the base cowardice of
deserting them for any selfish love of rest. And then I rec-
ollected how I had betrayed my suffering brothers. How,
for the sake cf vanity and patronage, I had consented to hide
the truth about their rights — their wrongs. And so on,
through weary weeks of moping melancholy — " a double-
minded man, unstable in all his ways !"
At last, Mackaye, who, as I found afterward, had been
watching all along my altered mood, contrived to worm my
secret out of me. I had dreaded, that whole autumn, having
to tell him the truth, because I knew that his first impulse
would be to pay the money instantly out of his own pocket ; and
my pride, as well as my sense of justice, revolted at that, and
sealed my lips. But now this fresh discovery — the knowledge \
that it was not only in my cousin's power to crush me, but
also his interest to do so — had utterly unmanned me ; and,
after a little innocent and fruitless prevarication, out came the
truth, with tears of bitter shame.
The old man pursed up his lips, and, without answering
me, opened his table drawer, and commenced fumbling among
accounts and papers. .
" No ! no ! no ! best, noblest of friends ! I will not burden \
you with the fruits of my own vanity and extravagance. I
will starve, go to jail, sooner than take your money. If you
ofier il me, I will leave the house, bafj and hao-ofa^e, this
' ' O OCT O '
moment." And I rose to put my threat into execution.
" 1 havena at present ony sic intention," answered he, de-
liberately ; seeing that there's na necessity for paying debits
twice ewer, when ye ha' the stampt receipt for them." And
he put into my hands, to my astonishment and rapture, a re- I
ceipt in full lor the money, signed by my cousin.
Not daring to believo my own eyes, I turned it over and
over, looked at it, looked at him — there was nothing but clear,
smiling assurance in his beloved old face, as he twinkled, and
winked, and chuckled, and pulled off his spectacles, and wiped
them, and put them on upside-down ; and then relieved him-
K
218 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POliT.
Eelf by rushing at his pipe, and cramming it fiercely with Ic
bacco till he burst the bowl.
Yes, it was no dream ! — the money was paid, and I wat
free ! The sudden relief was as intolerable as the long
burden had been ; and, like a prisoner suddenly loosed from
off the rack, my whole spirit seemed to collapse, and I sunk
with my head upon the table, too faint even for gratitude.
But who was my benefactor? Mackaye vouchsafed no
(answer, but that I " suld ken better than he." But when he
[found that I was really utterly at a loss to whom to attribute
the mercy, he assured me, by way of comfort, that he was
! just as ignorant as myself; and at last, piecemeal, in his cir-
cumlocutory and cautious Scotch method, informed me, that
some six weeks back he had received an anonymous letter,
" a'thegither o' a Belgravian cast o' phizog," containing a
bank-note for twenty pounds, and setting forth the writer's
suspicions that I owed my cousin money, and their desire that
Mr. Mackaye "o' whose uprightness an' generosity they were
pleased to confess themselves no that ignorant," should write
to George, ascertain the sum, and pay it without my knowl-
edge, handing over the balance, if any, to me, when he
thought fit — " Sae there's the remnant — audit pounds, sax
shillings, an' saxpence ; tippence being deduckit for expense
o' twa letters, anent the same transaction."
"But what sort of hand- writing was it]" asked I, almost
disregarding the welcome coin.
" Ou, then — aiblins a man's, aiblins a maid's. He was na
chirographosophic himsel' — an' he had na curiosity anent ony
sic passages o' aristocratic romance."
"But what was the post-mark of the letter?"
" Why for suld I ha' speired ? Gin the writers had been
minded to be beknown, they'd ha' sign't their names upon
the document. An' gin they didna sae intend, wad it be
coorteous o' me to gang speiring an' peering ower covers an'
seals?"
" But where is the cover ?'
" Ou, then," he went on, with the same provoking coolness,
" white paper's o' geyan use, in various operations o' the
domestic economy. Sae I just tare it up — aiblins for pipe-
lights — I canna mind at this time."
"And why — " asked I, more vexed and disappointed than
I liked to confess — " why did you not tell me belbre ?"
" How would I ken that you had need o't? An' verily, J
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POF.T. 219
thocht it no that bad a lesson for ye, to let the experiment a
towmond mair on the precious balms that break the head —
whereby I opine the psalmist was minded to denote the
delights o' spending borrowed siller."
There was nothing more to be extracted from him ; so I
was fain to set to work again (a pleasant compulsion truly)
with a free heart, eight pounds in my pocket, and a brainl'ul
of conjectures. Was it the dean ] Lord Lynedale ? or was
it — could it be — Lillian herself? That thought was so deli-
cious, that I made up my mind, as I had free choice among
half-a-dozen equally improbable fancies, to determine that the
most pleasant should be the true one ; and I hoarded the
money, which I shrunk from spending as much as I should
from selling her minature or a lock of her beloved golden hair.
They were a gift from her — a pledge — the first fruits of — I
dared not confess to myself what.
Whereat the reader will smile, and say, not without reason,
that I was fast fitting myself for Bedlam ; if indeed, I had
not proved my fitness for it already, by paying the tailors'
debts, instead of my own, with the ten pounds which Farmer
Porter had given me. I am not sure that he would not bt
correct., but so I did, and so I suffered.
CHAPTER XXV.
A TRUE NOBLEMAN.
At last my list of subscribers was completed, and my poerw
actually in the press. Oh ! the childish joy with which I
fondled my first set of proofs ! And. how much finer the
words looked in print than they ever did in manuscript ! —
One took in the idea of a whole page so charmingly at a
glance, instead of having to feel one's way through line after
line, and sentence after sentence. There was only one draw-
back to my happiness — Mackaye did not seem to sympathize
with it. He had never grumbled at what I considered,
and still do consider, my cardinal offense, the omission of
the strong political passages ; he seemed, on the contrary,
in his inexplicable waywardness, to be rather pleased at it
than otherwise. It was my publishing at all at which he
growled.
" Ech," he said, " owre young to marry, is owre young to
write ; but it's the way o' these puir distractit times. ( Nae
chick can find a grain o' corn, but oot he rins cackling wi'
the shell on his head, to tell it to a' the warld, as if there war-
never barley grown on the face o' the earth before. I wonder
whether Isaiah began to write before his beard was grown,
or Dawvid either ? He had mony a long year o' shepherding
an' moss-trooping, an' rugging an' riving i' the wildnerness,
I'll warrant, afore he got thae gran' lyrics o' his oot o' him.
Ye might talc' example too, gin ye were minded, by Moses,
the man o' God, that was joost forty years at the learning o'
the Egyptians, afore he thocht gude to come forward into
public life, an' then fun', to his gran' surprise, I warrant, that
he'd begun forty years too sune — an' then had forty years
inair, after that, o' marching an' law-giving, an' bearing the
burdens o' the people, before he turned poet."
" Toet, sir ! I never saw Moses in that light before."
" Then ye'll just read the 90th Psalm — ' the prayer o'
Moses, the Man o' God' — the grandest piece o' lyric, to my
taste, that I ever heard o' on the face o' God's earth, an' see
what a man can write that'll have the patience to wait a
century or twa before he rins to the publisher's. I gie ye up
fra' this moment ; the letting out o' ink is like the letting out
o' waters, or the eating o' opium, or the getting up at public
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND l'OET. 2'.»l
meetings. When a man begins he canna stop. There's nat
mail enslaving lust o' the ilesh under the heaven than that
same furor scribendi, as the Latins hae it."
But at last my poems were printed, and bound, and act-
ually published ; and I sat staring at a book of my own mak-
ing, and wondering how it ever got into being ! And what
was more, the book " took," and sold, and was reviewed in
People's journals, and in newspapers ; and Mackaye himself
relaxed into a grin, when his oracle, the Spcctatar, the only
honest paper, according to him, on the face of the earth, con-
descended, after asserting its impartiality by two or three
searching sarcasms, to dismiss me, grimly-benignant, with a
paternal pat on the shoulder. Yes — I was a real live author
at last, and signed myself, by special request, in the Mag-
azine, as " the author of Songs of the Highways." At last
it struck me, and Mackaye too, who, however he hated flun-
kydom, never overlooked an act of discourtesy, that it would
be right for me to call upon the dean, and thank him formally
for all the real kindness he had shown me. So I went to the
handsome house off Harley-street, and was shown into his
stud}', and saw my own book lying on the table ; and was
welcomed by the good old man, and congratulated on my suc-
cess, and asked if I did not see my own wisdom in " yielding
to more experienced opinions than my own, and submitting to
a censorship which, however severe it might have appeared
at first, was, as the event proved, benignant both in its inten-
tions and effects V
And then I was asked, even I, to breakfast there the next
morning. And I went, and found no one there but some
scientific gentlemen, to whom I was introduced as " the young
man whose poems we were talking of last night." And
Lillian sat at the head of the table, and poured out the coffee
and tea. And between ecstasy at seeing her, and the intense
relief of not finding my dreaded and now hated cousin there,
I sat in a delirium of silent joy, stealing glances at her beauty,
and listening with all my ears to the conversation, which turn-
ed upon the new-married couple.
I heard endless praises, to which. I could not but assent in
silence, of Lord Ellerton's perfections. His very personal ap-
pearance had been enough to captivate my fancy; and then'
they went on to talk of his magnificent philanthropic schemes,
and his deep sense of the high duties of a landlord ; and how,
finding himself, at his father's death, the possessor of two vast
but neglected estates, he had fold one in order to be able to
222 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
do justice to the other, instead of laying house to house, and
field to field, like most of his compeers, " till he stood alone in
the land, and there was no place left ;" and how he had low-
ered his rents, even though it had forced him to put down the
ancestral pack of hounds, and live in a corner of the old castl? ;
and how he was draining, claying, breaking up old moorlands,
and building churches, and endowing schools, and improving
cottages ; and how he was expelling the old ignorant bankrupt
race of farmers, and advertising every where for men of capi-
tal, and science, and character, who would have courage to
cultivate flax and silk, and try eveiy species of experiment ;
and how he had one scientific farmer after another, staying in
his house as a friend ; and how he had numbers of his books
re-bound in plain covers, that he might lend them to every
one on his estate who wished to read them ; and how he had
thrown open his picture-gallery, not only to the inhabitants of
the neighboring town, but what (strange to say) seemed to
strike the party as still more remarkable, to the laborers of his
own village ; and how he was at that moment busy transform-
ing an old unoccupied manor-house into a great associate-farm,
in which all the laborers were to live under one roof, with a
common kitchen and dining-hall, clerks and superintendents,
whom they were to choose, subject only to his approval, and
all of them, from the least to the greatest, have their own in-
terest in the farm, and be paid by per-centage on the profits ;
and how he had one of the first political economists of the day
staying with him, in order to work out for him tables of pro-
portionate remuneration, applicable to such an agricultural
establishment ; and how, too, he was giving the spade-labor
system a fair trial, by laying out small cottage-farms, on rocky
knolls and sides of glens, too steep to be cultivated by the
plow; and was locating on them the most intelligent ar-
tisans whom he could draft from the manufacturing town hard
by
And at that notion, my brain grew giddy with the hope of
seeing myself one day in one of those same cottages, tilling
the earth, under God's sky, and perhaps — and then a whole
cloud-world of love, freedom, fame, simple, graceful country
luxury steamed up across my brain, to end — not, like the
man's in the " Arabian Nights," in my kicking over the tray
of China, which formed the base-point of my inverted pyramid
of hope — but in my finding the contents of my plate deposited
in my lap, while I was gazing fixedly at Lillian.
I must say for myself, though, that such accidents happened
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 2-23
seldom ; whether it was bashfulness, or the tact which gener-
ally, I believe, accompanies a weak and nervous body, and an
active mind ; or whether it was that 1 possessed enough re-
lationship to the monkey-tribe to make me a first-rate mimic,
I used to get tolerably well through on these occasions, by
acting on the golden rule of never doing any thing which I
had not seen some one else do first — a rule which never brought
me into any greater scrape than swallowing something intol-
erably hot, sour, and nasty (whereof I never discovered the
name), because I had seen the dean do so a moment before.
But one thing struck me through the whole of this conver-
sation — the way in which the new-married Lady Ellerton/
was spoken of, as aiding, encouraging, originating — a help/
meet, if not an oracular guide, for her husband — in all thesaj
noble plans. She had already acquainted herself with every"
woman on the estate ; she was the dispenser, not merely of
alms, for those seemed a disagreeable necessity, from which
Lord Ellerton was anxious to escape as soon as possible, but
of advice, comfort, and encouragement. She not only visited
the sick, and taught in the schools — avocations which, thank
God, I have reason to believe are matters of course, not only
in the families of clergymen, but those of most squires and
noblemen, when they reside on their estates — but seemed,
from the hints which I gathered, to be utterly devoted, body
and soul, to the welfare of the dwellers on her husband's land.
" I had no notion," I dared at last to remark, humbly
enough, " that Miss — Lady Ellerton cared so much for the
people."
" Really ! One feels inclined sometimes to wish that she
pared for any thing beside them," said Lillian, half to her
father and half to me.
This gave a fresh shake to my estimate of that remarkable
woman's character. But still, who could be prouder, more
imperious, more abrupt in manner, harsh even to the very
verge of good-breeding ? (for I had learnt what good-breeding
was, from the debating society as well as from the drawing-
room) ; and, above all, had she not tried to keep me from
Lillian ? But these cloudy thoughts melted rapidly away in
that sunny atmosphere of success and happiness, and I went
home as merry as a bird, and wrote all the morning more
gracefully and sportively, as I fancied, than I had ever yet
done.
But my bliss did not end here. In a week or so. behold
one morning a note — written, indeed, by the dean — but di-
224 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
#
rected in Lillian's own hand, inviting me to come there to tea
that I might see a few of the literary characters of the day.
I covered the envelope with kisses, and thrust it next my
fluttering heart. I then proudly showed the note to Mackaye.
He looked pleased, yet pensive, and then broke out with a
fresh adaptation of his favorite song,
" and shovel hats and a' that—
A man's a man for a' that."
" The auld gentleman is a man and a gentleman ; an' has
made a verra courteous, an' well considerit move, gin ye ha'
the sense to profit by it, an' no' turn it to yer ain destruction."
" Destruction ]"
" Ay — that's the word, an' nothing less, laddie !"
And he went into the outer shop, and returned with a vol-
ume of Bulwer's "Ernest Maltravers."
" What ! are you a novel reader, Mr. Mackaye ?"
" How do ye ken what I may ha' thocht gude to read in
my time? Ye'll be pleased the noo to sit down an' begin at
that page — an' read, mark, learn, an' inwardly digest, the
history of Castruccio Cesarini — an' the gude God gie ye grace
to lay the same to heart."
I read that fearful story ; and my heart sunk, and my eyes
were full of tears, long ere I had finished it. Suddenly I
looked up at Mackaye, half angry at the pointed allusiou to
my own case.
The old man was watching me intently, with folded hands,
and a smile of solemn interest and affection worthy of Socrates
himself. He turned his head as I looked up, but his lips
kept moving. 1 fancied, I know not why, that he was pray-
ing for me.
CHAPTER XXVI.
'HIE TRIUMPHANT AUTHOR.
So to the party I went, and had the delight of seeing and
nuaring the men with whose names I had been long ac-
quainted, as the leaders of scientific discovery in this won-
drous age ; and more than one poet, too, over whose works J
had gloated, whom I had worshiped in secret. Intense was
the pleasure of now realizing to myself, as living men, wear-
ing the same flesh and blood as myself, the names which had
been to me mythic ideas. Lillian was there among them,
more exquisite than ever; but even she at first attracted my
eyes and thoughts less than did the truly great men around
her. I hung on every word they spoke, I watched every
gesture, as if they must have some deep significance ; the
very way in which they drank their coffee was a matter of
interest to me. I was almost disappointed to see them eat
and chat like common men. I expected that pearls and
diamonds would drop from their lips, as they did from those
of the girl in the fairy-tale, every time they opened their
mouths; and certainly 'he conversation that evening was a
new world to me — though I could only, of course, be a list-
oner. Indeed, 1 wished to be nothing more. I felt that 1
was taking my place there among the holy guild of authors —
that I too, however humbly, had a thing to say, and had said
it ; and I was content to sit on the lowest step of the literary
temple, without envy for those elder and more practiced
priests of wisdom, who had earned by long labor the freedom
of the inner shrine. I should have been quite happy enough
standing there, looking and listening — but I was at last forced
to come forward. Lillian was busy chatting with grave,
gray-headed men, who seemed as ready lo flirt, and pet and
admire the lovely little fairy, as if they had been as young
and gay as herself. It was enough for me to see her appre-
ciated and admired. I loved them for smiling on her, for
handing her from her seat to the piano with reverent courtesy :
gladly would I have taken their place : I was content, how-
ever, to be only a spectator ; for it was not my rank, but my
youth, I was glad to fancy, which denied me that blissful
honor. But as she sang, I could not help stealing up to the
piano; and, feasting mv greedy eves with every motion oi
K'
226 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
those delicious lips, listen and listen, entranced, and living
only in that melody.
Suddenly, after singing two or three songs, she hegan finger-
ing the keys, and struck into an old air, wild and plaintive,
rising and falling like the swell of an -^Eolian harp upon a
distant breeze.
" Ah ! now," she said, " if I could get words for that !
What an exquisite lament somebody might write to it, if
they could only thoroughly take in the feeling and meaning
of it."
" Perhaps," I said, humbly, " that is the only way to write
songs — to let some air get possession of one's whole soul, and
gradually inspire the words for itself; as the old Hebrew pro-
phets had music played before them."
She looked up, just as if she had been unconscious of my
presence till that moment.
"Ah ! Mr. Locke ! — well, if you understand my meaning
so thoroughly, perhaps you will try and write some words for
me."
"I am afraid that I do not enter sufficiently into the mean-
ing of the air."
" Oh ! then, listen while I play it over again. I am sure
you ought to appreciate any thing so sad and tender."
And she did play it, to my delight, over again, even more
gracefully and carefully than before — making the inarticulate
sounds speak a mysterious train of thoughts and emotions. It
is strange how little real intellect, in women especially, is re-
quired for an exquisite appreciation of the beauties of music
— perhaps, because it appeals to the heart and not the head.
She rose and left the piano, saying archly, " Noav, don't
forget your promise ;" and I, poor fool, my sunlight suddenly
withdrawn, began torturing my brains on the instant to think
of a subject.
As it happened, my attention was caught by hearing two
gentlemen close to me discuss a beautiful sketch by Copley
Fielding, if I recollect rightly, which hung on the wall — a
wild waste of tidal sands, with here and there a line of stake-
nets fluttering in the wind — a gray shroud of rain sweeping
up from the westward, through which low red clifls glowed
dimly in the rays of the setting sun — a train of horses and
cattle splashing slowly through shallow desolate pools and
creeks, their wet, red, and black hides glittering in one long
line of level light.
They seemed thoroughly conversant with art ; and as I
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. 227
/istcned to their criticisms, I learnt more in five minutes,
iibout the characteristics of a really true and good picture,
and about the perfection to which our unrivaled English
landscape-painters have attained, than I ever did from all the
books and criticisms which I had read. One of them had
seen the spot represented, at the mouth of the Dee, and began
telling wild stories of salmon-fishing, and wild-fowl shooting
— and then a tale of a girl, who in bringing her father's cattle
home across the sands, had been caught by a sudden flow of
the tide, and found next day a corpse hanging among the
stake-nets far below. The tragedy, the art of the picture, the
simple, dreary grandeur of the scenery, took possession of me ;
and I stood gazing a long time, and fancying myself pacing
the sands, and wondering whether there were shells upon it
— I had often longed for once only in my life to pick up shells
— when Lady Ellerton, whom I had not before noticed, woke
me from my reverie.
I took the liberty of asking after Lord Ellerton.
" He is not in town — he has staid behind for one day to
attend a great meeting of his tenantry — you will see the ac
count in the papers to-morrow morning — he comes to-mor
row." And as she spoke, her whole face and figure seemed
to glow and heave, in spite of herself, with pride- and afTec
lion.
" And now, come with me, Mr. Locke — the embas-
sador wishes to speak to you."
" The embassador !" I said, startled ; for let us be as
democratic as we will, there is something in the name of great
officers which awes, perhaps rightly, for the moment, and it
requires a strong act of self-possession to recollect that " a man's
a man for a' that." Besides, I knew enough of the great man
in question to stand in awe of him for his own sake, having
lately read a panegyric of him, which perfectly astounded me,
by its description of his piety and virtue, his family affection,
and patriarchal simplicity, the liberality and philanthropy of
all his measures, and the enormous intellectual powers, and
stores of learning, which enabled him, with the affairs of
Europe on his shoulders, to write deeply and originally on the
most abstruse questions of theology, history, and science.
Lady Ellerton seemed to guess my thoughts. " You need
not be afraid of meeting an aristocrat, in the vulgar sense of
the word. You will see one who, once perhaps as unknown
as yourself, has risen by virtue and wisdom to guide the des-
tinies of nations — and shall I tell you how? Not by fawning
228 ALTON LOCXE, TAILOR AND POET.
and yielding to the fancies of the great; not by compromising
his own convictions to suit their prejudices — "
I felt the rebuke, but she went on —
"He owes his greatness to having dared, one evening, to
contradict a crown-prince to his face, and fairly conquer him
in argument, and thereby bind the truly royal heart to him
forever."
" There are few scions of royalty to whose favor that would
be a likely path."
" True ; and therefore the greater honor is due to the young
student who could contradict, and the prince who could be
contradicted."
By this time we had arrived in the great man's presence ;
he was sitting with a little circle round him, in the further
drawing-i'oom, and certainly I never saw a nobler specimen
of humanity. I felt myself at once before a hero — not of war
and bloodshed, but of peace and civilization ; his portly and
ample figure, fair hair and delicate complexion, and, above
all, the benignant calm of his countenance, told of a character
gentle and genial — at peace with himself and all the world ;
while the exquisite proportion of his chiseled and classic feat-
ures, the lofty and ample brain, and the keen, thoughtful
eye, bespoke, at the first glance, refinement and wisdom —
The reason firm, the temperate will —
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill.
I am not ashamed to say, Chartist as I am, that I felt in-
clined to fall upon my knees, and own a master of God's own
making.
He received my beautiful guide with a look of chivalrous
affection, which I observed that she returned with interest ;
and then spoke in a voice peculiarly bland and melodious.
" So, my dear lady, this is the jwotege of whom you have
so often spoken ?"
So she had often spoken of me ! Blind fool that I was, I
only took it in as food for my own self-conceit, that my enemy
(for so I actually fancied her) could not help praising me.
" I have read your little book, sir," he said in the samt»
soft, benignant voice, " with very great pleasure. It is ait
(idier proof, if I required any, of the undercurrent of living and
healthful thought which exists even in the less-known ranks
of your great nation. I shall send it to some young friends
of mine in Germany, to show them that Englishmen can lee]
acutely and speak boldly on the social evils of their country,
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POEt. 223
without indulging in that frantic and bitter revolutionary
spirit, which warps so many young minds among us. You
understand the German language at all ?"
I had not that honor.
" Well, you must learn it. We have much to teach you
in the sphere of abstract thought, as you have much to teach
us in chose of the practical reason and the knowledge of man
hind. I should be glad to see you some day in a German
university. I am anxious to encourage a truly spiritual fra-
ternization between the two great branches of the Teutonic
stock, by welcoming all brave young English spirits to their
ancient fatherland. Perhaps hereafter your kind friends here
will be able to lend you to me. The means are easy, thank
God ! You will find in the Germans true brothers, in ways
even more practical than sympathy and affection."
I could not but thank the great man, with many blushes,
and went home that night utterly "tcte mo?itee," as I believe
the French phrase is — beside myself with gratified vanity and
love ; to lie sleepless under a severe fit of asthma — sent per-
haps as a wholesome chastisement, to cool my excited spirits
down to something like a rational pitch. As I lay castle-build-
ing, Lillian's wild air rang still in my ears, and combined
itself somehow with that picture of the Cheshire Sands, and
the story of the drowned girl, till it shaped itself into a song,
which as it is yet unpublished, and as I have hitherto obtruded
little or nothing of my own composition on my readers, I may
be excused for inserting here.
I.
"0 Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home.
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands o' Dee;"
The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam,
And all alone went she.
II.
The creeping tide came up along the sand,
And o'er and o'er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see ;
The blinding mist came down and hid the land—
And never home came she.
III.
"Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair—
A tress a' golden hair,
0' drowned maiden's hair,
*30 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
Above the nets at sea?
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair,
Among the stakes on Dee."'
IV.
They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel crawling foam,
The cruel hungry foam
To her grave beside the sea :
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
Across the sands o' Dee.
There — let it go ! — it was meant as an offering for one
wviom it never reached.
About mid-day I took my way toward the dean's house, to
thank him for his hospitality — and, I need not say, to present
my offering at my idol's shrine ; and as I went I conned over
a dozen complimentary speeches about Lord Ellerton's wisdom
liberality, eloquence — but behold ! the shutters of the house
were closed. What could be the matter? It was full ten
minutes before the door was opened ; and then, at last, an
old woman, her eyes red with weeping, made her appearance.
My thoughts flew instantly to Lillian — something must have
befallen her. I gasped out her name first, and then recollect-
ing myself, asked for the dean.
" They had all left town that morning."
" Miss — Miss Winnstay — is she ill ?"
"No."
" Thank God !" I breathed freely again. What matter
ivhat happened to all the world beside 1
"Ay, thank God, indeed; but poor Lord Ellerton was
thrown from his horse last night and brought home dead. A
messenger came here by six this morning, and they're all gone
off* to . Her ladyship's raving mad. And no wonder."
And she burst out crying afresh, and shut the door in my
face.
Lord Ellerton dead ! and Lillian gone too ! Something
whispered that I should have cause to remember that day.
I My heart sank within me. When should I see her again ?
That day was the 1st of June, 1815. On the 10th of
April, 1848, I saw Lillian Winnstay again. Dare I write
my history between those two points of time ? Yes, even
that must be done, for the s \ke of the rich who read, and the
poor who suffer.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE PLUSH BREECHES TRAGED,:.
My triumph had received a cruel check enough, .vhen just
at its height, and more were appointed to follow. Behold .
some two days after, another — all the more bitter, because
my conscience whispered that it was not altogether undeserv-
ed. The people's press had been hitherto praising and pet-
ting me lovingly enough. I had been classed (and Heaven
knows that the comparison was dearer to me than all the
applause of the wealthy) with the Corn-Law Rhymer, and
the author of the "Purgatory of Suicides." My class had
claimed my talents as their own — another " voice fresh from
the heart of Nature," another "untutored songster of the wil-
derness," another "prophet arisen among the suffering mill-
ions," — when, one day, behold in Mr. O'Flynn's paper a long
and fierce attack on me, my poems, my early history ! How
he could have got at some of the facts there mentioned, how
he could have dared to inform his readers that I had broken!
my mother's heart by misconduct, I can not conceive ; unless!
my worthy brother-in-law, the Baptist preacher, had been
kind enough to furnish him with the materials. But how-
ever that may be, he showed me no mercy. I was suddenly
discovered to be a time-server, a spy, a concealed aristocrat.
Such paltry talent as I had, I had prostituted for the sake of
fame. I had deserted The People's Cause for filthy lucre —
an allurement which Mr. O'Flynn had always treated with
withering scorn — in print. Nay more, I would write, and
notoriously did write, in any paper, Whig, Tory, or Radical,
where I could earn a shilling by an enormous gooseberry, or
a scrap of private slander. And the working-men were
solemnly warned to beware of me and my writings, till the
editor had further investigated certain ugly facts in my history,
which he would in due time report to his patriotic and enlight-
ened readers.
All this stung me in the most sensitive nerve of my whole
Heart, for I knew that I could not altogether exculpate my-
self; and to that miserable certainty was added the dread ot
some fresh exposure. Had he actually heard of the omissions
in my poems ? — and if he once touched on that subject, what
could I answer ? Oh ! how bitterfy now I felt the force of the
232 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
I critic's careless lash! — the awful responsibility of those writ-
'ten words, which we bandy about so thoughtlessly ! How I
recollected now, with shame and remorse, all the hasty and
cruel utterances to which T, too, had given vent against those
who had dared to differ from me ; the harsh, one-sided judg-
ments, the reckless imputations of motive, the bitter sneers,
" rejoicing in evil rather than in the truth." How I, too,
had longed to prove my victims in the wrong, and turned
away, not only lazily, but angrily, from many an exculpatory
fact ! And here was my Nemesis come at last. As I had
done unto others, so it was done unto me !
It was right that it should be so. However indignant,
mad, almost murderous, I felt at the time, I thank God for it
now. It is good to he punished in kind. It is good to be
made to feel what we have made others feel. It is good —
any thing is good, however hitter, which shows us that there
is such a law as retribution ; that we are not the sport of blind
chance or a triumphant fiend, but that there is a God who
judges the earth — righteous to repay every man according to
his works.
But at the moment I had no such ray of comfort — and,
full of rage and shame, I dashed the paper down before Mac
kaye. " How shall I answer him? What shall I say ?"
The old man read it all through with a grim saturnine
smile.
" Hoolie, hoolie, speech is o' silver — silence is o' gold, saya
Thomas Carlyle, anent this an' ither matters. Wha 'd be
fashed wi' sic blethers ? Ye'll just abide patient, and haud
still in the Lord, until this tyranny be owerpast. Commit
your cause to Him, said the auld Psalmist, an' he'll mak'
your righteousness as clear as the light, an' your just dealing
as the noonday."
"But I must explain; I owe it as a duty to myself; I
must refute these charges ; I must justify myself to our
friends."
" Can ye do that same, laddie ?" asked he, with one of his
quaint, searching looks. Somehow, I blushed, and could not
altogether meet his eye, while he went on, " — An' gin ye
could, whaur Avould ye do 't ? I ken na periodical whar the
editor will gie ye a clear stage an' no favor, to bang him
ower the lugs."
,: Then I will try some other paper."
" Au' what for then 1 They that read him, winna read
the ither ; an' they that read the ither, winna read him,
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 233
Qe has his ain set o' dupes, like every ither editor ; an' yo
mun let him gang his gate, an' feed his ain kye with his ain
hay. He'll no' change it for your bidding."
" What an abominable thing this whole business of the
press is, then, if each editor is to be allowed to humbug his
readers at his pleasure, without a possibility of exposing or
contradicting him !"
"An' ye've just spoken the truth, laddie. There's na mair
accursed inquisition, than this of thae self-elected popes, the
editors. That puir auld Roman ane, ye can bring him forat
whan ye list, bad as he is. ' Fcenum habet in comu ;' his
name's ower his shop-door. But these anonymies — priests o'
the order o' Melchisedec by the deevil's side, without father
or mither, beginning o' years nor end o' days — without a
local habitation or a name — as kittle to hand as a brock in a
cairn — : '
" What do you mean, Mr. Mackaye ?" asked I, for he was
getting altogether unintelligibly Scotch, as was his custom
when excited.
" Ou, I forgot ; ye're a puir Southern body, an' no' sensible to
the gran' metaphoric powers o' the true Dawric. But it's an
accursit state a'thegither, the noo, this o' the anonymous press
— oreeginally devised, ye ken, by Balaam the son o' Beor, for
serving God wi'out the deevil's finding it out — an' noo, after
the way o' human institutions, translated ower to help folks
to serve the deevil without God's finding it out. I'm no'
astonished at the puir expiring religious press for siccan a fa' ;
but for the working-men to be a' as bad — it's yrewsome to
behold. I'll tell ye what, my bairn, there's na salvation for
the workmen, while they detile themselves this fashion, wi'
a' the very idols o' their ain tyrants — wi' salvation by act
o' parliament — irresponsible rights o' property — anonymous
Balaamry — fechtin' that canny auld farrant fiend, Mammon,
wi' his ain weapons — and then a' fleyed, because they get
well beaten for their pains. I'm sair forfaughten this mony a
year wi' watching the puir gowks, trying to do God's wark
wi' the deevil's tools. Tak' tent o' that."
And I did "tak' tent o' it." Still there would have been
as little present consolation as usual in Mackaye's unwelcome
truths, even if the matter had stopped there. But, alas! it
did not stop there. O'Flynn seemed determined tc " run a
muck" at me. Every week some fresh attack appeared.
The very passages about the universities and church property,
which had caused our quarrel, were paraded against me, with|
234 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
free additions and comments; and, at last, to my horror, out
came the very story which 1 had all along dreaded, about the
expurgation of my poems, with the coarsest allusions to pet-
ticoat influence — aristocratic kisses — and the Duchess of
Devonshire canvassing draymen for Fox, &c, &c. How he
got a clew to the scandal I can not conceive. Mackaye and
Crossthwaite, I had thought, were the only souls to whom I
had ever breathed the secret, and they denied indignantly the
having ever betrayed my weakness. How it came out, I say
again, I can not conceive ; except because it is a great ever-
lasting law, and sure to fulfill itself, sooner or later, as we
may see by the histories of every remarkable, and many an
unremarkable man, " There is nothing secret, but it shall be
made manifest ; and whatsoever ye have spoken in the closet,
shall be proclaimed upon the house-tops."
For some time after that last exposure, I was thoroughly
crest-fallen — and not without reason. I had been giving a
few lectures among the working-men, on various literary and
social subjects. I found my audience decrease — and those
who remained seemed more inclined to hiss than to applaud
me. In vain I ranted and quoted poetry, often more violently
than my own opinions justified. My words touched no re-
sponsive chord in my hearers' hearts ; they had lost faith in
me.
At last, in the middle of a lecture on Shelley, I was in-
dulging, and honestly too, in some very glowing and passion-
ate praise of the true nobleness of a man, whom neither birth
nor education could blind to the evils of society ; who, for the
sake of the suffering many could trample under foot his hered-
itary pride, and become an outcast for The People's Cause.
I heard a whisper close to me, from one whose opinion I
valued, and value still — a scholar and a poet, one who had
tasted poverty, and slander, and a prison, for The Good Cause :
" Fine talk ; but it's ' all in his day's work.' Will he dare
to say that to-morrow to the ladies at the West-end ?"
No — I should not. I knew it ; and at that instant I felt
myself a liar, and stopped short — my tongue clove to the roof
of my mouth. I fumbled at my papers — clutched the water
tumbler — tried to go on — stopped short again — caught up my
hat, and rushed from the room, amid peals of astonished
laughter.
It was some months after this that, fancying the storm
blown over, I summoned up courage enough to attend a
political meeting of our party; but even there my Nemesis
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. J I",
met me full face. After some sanguinary speech, I really
forget from whom, and if I recollected, God forbid that I
should tell now, I dared to controvert, mildly enough, Heaven
knows, some especially frantic assertion or other. But before
I could get out three sentences, O'Flynn flew at me with a
coarse invective hounded on, by-the-by, by one who, calling
nimself a gentleman might have been expected to know bet-
ter. But, indeed, he and O'Flynn had the same object in
view, which was simply to sell their paper ; and as a means
to that great end, to pander to the fiercest passions of their
readers, to bully and silence all moderate and rational Chart-
ists, and pet and tar on the physical-force men, till the poor
fellows began to take them at their word. Then, when it
came to deeds and not to talk, and people got frightened, and
the sale of the paper decreased a little, a blessed change came
over them — and they awoke one morning meeker than lambs ;
" ulterior measures'' had vanished back into the barbarous
ages, pikes, vitriol-bottles, and all ; and the public were enter-
tained with nothing but homilies on patience and resignation,
the "triumphs of moral justice," the " omnipotence of public
opinion," and the " gentle conquests of fraternal love" — till
it was safe to talk treason and slaughter again.
But just then treason happened to be at a premium. Sedi-
tion, which had been floundering on in a confused, disconso-
late, under-ground way ever since 1842, was supposed by the
public to be dead ; and for that very reason it was safe to
talk it, or, at least, back up those who chose to do so. And
so I got no quarter — though really, if the truth must be told,
I had said nothing unreasonable.
Home I went disgusted, to toil on at my hack- writing, only
praying that I might be let alone to scribble in peace, and
often thinking, sadly, how little my friends in Harley-street
could guess at the painful experience, the doubts, the strug-
gles, the bitter cares, which went to the making of the poetry
which they admired so much !
I was not, however, left alone to scribble in peace, either
by O'Flynn or by his readers, who formed, alas ! just then, only
too large a portion of the thinking artisans ; every day brought
some fresh slight or annoyance with it, till 1 received one
afternoon, by the Parcels Delivery Company, a large unpaidj
packet containing, to my infinite disgust, an old pair of yellow
plush breeches, with a recommendation to wear them, whose
meaning could not be mistaken.
Furious, T thrust the unoffending garment into the fire, aiM
236 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND J OE1.
held it there with the tongs, regardless of the horrible smell
whieh accompanied its martyrdom, till the lady-lodger on the
first floor rushed down to inquire whether the house was on fire.
I answered her by hurling a book at her head, and brought
down a volley of abuse, under which I sat in sulky patience,
till Mackaye and Crossthwaite came in and found her railing
in the doorway, and me sitting over the fire, still intent on
the frizzling remains of the breeches.
" Was this insult of your invention Mr. Crossthwaite ?"
asked I, in a tone of lofty indignation, holding up the last
scrap of unroasted plush.
Roars of laughter from both of them made me only more
frantic, and I broke out so incoherently, that it was some time
before the pair could make out the cause of my fury.
" Upon my honor, Locke," quoth John, at last, holding his
sides, " I never, sent them ; though, on the whole — you've
made my stomach ache so with laughing, I can't speak. But
you must expect a joke or two, after your late fashionable
connections."
\I stood, still and white with rage.
" Really, my good fellow, how can you wonder if our friends
suspect you"? Can you deny that you've been off' and on late
ly between flunkydom and The Cause, like a donkey between
two bottles of hay ? Have you not neglected our meetings ?
Have you not picked all the spice out of your poems ? And
can you expect to eat your cake and keep it too ? You must
be one thing or the other ; and. though Sandy, here, is too
; kind-hearted to tell you, you have disappointed us both miser-
ably — and there's the long and short of it."
I hid my face in my hands, and sat moodily over the fire ;
my conscience told me that I had nothing to answer.
" Whisht, Johnnie ! Ye're ower sair on the lad. He's a'
right at heart still, an' he'll do good service. But the deevil
a'ways fechts hardest wi' them he's maist 'feard of. What's
this anent agricultural distress ye had to tell me the noo ?"
" There is a rising down in the country, a friend of mine
writes me. The people are starving, not because bread is
dear, but because it's cheap; and, like sensible men, they're
going to have a great meeting, to inquire the rights and wrong
of all that. Now, I want to send a deputation down, to see
how far they are inclined to go, and let them know we up in
London are with them. And then we might get up a cor-
responding association, you know. It's a great opening foi
spreading the principles of the Charter."
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POF.T. C37
"I sair misdoubt, it's just bread they'll be wanting, thae
laborers, mair than liberty. Their God is their belly, I'm
thinking, and a verra poor, empty idol he is -the noo ; sma'
burnt-offerings, and fat o' rams he gets, to propitiate him.
But ye might send down a canny body, just to spy out the
nakedness o' the land."
" I will go !" I said, starting up. " They shall see that I
do care for The Cause. If it's a dangerous mission, so much
the better ; it will prove my sincerity. Where is the place?'
" About ten miles from D ."
" D !" My heart sank — if it had been any other spot
in England ! But it was too late to retract. Sandy saw
what was the matter, and tried to turn the subject ; but I
was peremptory, almost rude with him. I felt I must keep
up my present excitement, or lose my heart, and my caste,
lor ever ; and as the hour for the committee was at hand, I
jumped up and set off thither with them, whether they would
or not. I heard Sandy whisper to Crossthwaite, and turned
quite fiercely on him.
" If you want to speak about me, speak out. If you fancy
that I shall let my connection with that place" (I could not
bring myself to name it) "stand in the way of my duty, you
do not know me."
I announced my intention at the meeting. It was at first
received coldly ; but I spoke energetically — perhaps, as some
told me afterward, actually eloquently. When I got heated,
I alluded to my former stay at D , and said (while my
heart sank at the bravado which I was uttering) that I should
consider it a glory to retrieve my character with them, and
devote myself to the cause of the oppressed, in the very local-
ity whence had first arisen their unjust but pardonable sus-
picions. In short, generous, trusting hearts as they were,
and always are, I talked them round ; they shook me by the
hand one by one, bade me God-speed, told me that I stood
higher than ever in their eyes, and then set to work to vote
money from their funds for my traveling expenses, which I
magnanimously refused, saying that I had a pound or two
left from the sale of my poems, and that I must be allowed,
as an act of repentance and restitution, to devote it to The
Cause. /
My triumph was complete. Even O'Flynn, who, like all /
Irishmen, had plenty of loose good-nature at bottom, and was ;
as sudden and furious in his loves as in his hostilities, scram-
bled over the ben°ies, regardless cf patriots' toes, to shak«
238 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POT,T.
me violently by the hand, and intorm me that I was " a broth
of a boy," and that " any little disagreements between us had
vanished like a passing cloud from the sunshine of our frater-
nity" — when my eye was caught by a face which there was
no mistaking — my cousin's !
Yes, there he sat ; watching me like a basilisk, with his
dark, glittering, mesmeric eyes, out of a remote corner of the
room — not in contempt or anger, but there was a quiet, assur
ed, sardonic smile about his lips, which chilled me to the heart
The meeting was sufficiently public to allow of his presence
but how had he found out its existence ? Had he come ther ..
as a spy on me 1 Had he been in the room when my visi
to D was determined on 1 I trembled at the thought ,
and 1 trembled, too, lest he should be daring enough — and I
knew he could dare any thing — to claim acquaintance with
me there and then. It would have ruined my new restored
reputation forever. But he sat still and steady : and I had
to go through the rest of the evening's business under the
miserable, cramping knowledge that every word and gesture
was being noted down by my most deadly enemy ; trembling
whenever I was addressed, lest some chance word ot an
acquaintance should implicate me still further — though,
indeed, I was deep enough already. The meeting seemed
interminable ; and there I fidgeted, with my face scailet —
always seeing those basilisk eyes upon me — in fancy, lor I
dared not look again toward the corner where I knew they
were.
At last it was over— the audience went out ; and when ]
had courage to look round, my cousin had vanished among
them. A load was taken off my breast, and i breathed freely
again — for five minutes ; for I had not mad<j ten steps up the
street, when an arm was familiarly thrliSi through mine, and
I found myself in the clutches of my i/vii genius.
" How are you, my dear fellow ? Jiixpected to meet you
there. Why, what an orator you are ! P^eally, I haven't
heard more fluent or passionate iuiglish this month of Sun-
days. You must give me a lesson in sermon-preaching. I
can tell you, we parsons want a hint or two in that line. So
you're going down to D , to see after those poor starving
laborers ? Ton my honor, I ve a great mind to go with you."
So, then, he knew all ! However, there was nothing for it
but to brazen it out ; and, besides, I was in his power, and
however hateful to me his fcceminj cordiality might be, I dared
not offend him at tha' - *
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 239
" It would be well if you did. If you parsons would show
yourselves at such places as these a little oftener, you would
do more to make the people believe your mission real, than by
all the tracts and sermons in the world."
" But, my dear cousin" (and he began to snuffle and sink
his voice), " there is so much sanguinary language, so much
unsanctified impatience ; you frighten away all the meek
apostolic men among the priesthood — the very ones who feel
most for the lost sheep of the flock."
" Then the parsons are either great Pharisees or great
cowards, or both."
" Very likely. I was in a precious fright myself, I know,
when I saw you recognized me. If I had not felt strength-
ened, you know, as of course one ought to be in all trials, by
the sense of my holy calling, I think I should have bolted
at once. However, I took the precaution of bringing my
Bowie and revolver with me, in case the worst came to the
worst."
" And a very needless precaution it was," said I, half
laughing at the quaint incongruity of the priestly and the lay
elements in his speech. " You don't seem to know much
of working-men's meetings, or working-men's morals. Why.
that place was open to all the world. The proceedings will
be in the newspaper to-morrow. The whole bench of bishops
might have been there, if they had chosen ; and a great deal
of good it would have done them !"
"I fully agree with you, my dear fellow. No one hates
the bishops more than we true high-churchmen, I can tell
you — that's a great point of sympathy between us and the
people. But I must be off. By-the-by, would you like me
to tell our friends at D , that I met you ? They often
ask after you in their letters, I assure you."
This was a sting of complicated bitterness. I felt all that
it meant at once. So he was in constant correspondence with
them, while I — and that thought actually drove out of my
head the more pressing danger of his utterly ruining me in
their esteem, by telling them, as he had a very good right to
do, that I was going to preach Chartism to discontented mobs.
" Ah ! well ! perhaps you wouldn't wish it mentioned ?
As yon like, you know. Or, rather," and he laid an iron
grasp on my arm, and dropped his voice — this time in earnest
— " as you behave, my wise and loyal cousin ! Good night."
I went home — the excitement of self-applause, which the
meeting had called up, damped by a strange weight of fore-
240 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET.
boding. And yet I could not help laughing, when, just as 1
was turning into bed, Crossthwaite knocked at my door, ami,
on being admitted, handed over to me a bundle wrapped up
in paper.
" There's a pair of breeks for you — not plush ones, this
lime, old fellow — but you ought to look as smart as possible
There's so much in a man's looking dignified, and all that,
when he's speechifying. So I've just brought you down my
best black trowsers to travel in. We're just of a size, you
know ; little and good, like a Welshman's enw. And if you
tear them, why, we're not like poor, miserable, useless aristo-
crats ; tailors and sailors can mend their own rents." And
he vanished, whistling the Marseillaise.
I went to bed and tossed about, fancying to myself fny
journey, my speech, the faces of the meeting, among which
Lillian's would rise, in spite of all the sermons which I
preached to myself on the impossibility of her being there, of
my being known, of any harm happening from the move-
ment ; but I could not shake off the fear. If there were a
riot, arising ! If any harm were to happen to her ! If —
till, mobbed into fatigue by a rabble of such miserable hypo-
thetic ghosts, I fell asleep, to dream that I was going to be
hanged for sedition, and that the mob were all staring and
hooting at me, and Lillian clapping her hands and setting
them on ; and I woke in an agony, to find Sandy Mackaye
standing by my bedside with a light.
" Hoolie, laddie ! ye need na jump up that way. I'm no'
gaun to burke ye the nicht ; but I canna sleep ; I'm sair
misdoubtful o' the thing. It seems a' richt, an' I've been
praying for us, an' that's mickle for me, to be taught our
way ; but I dinna see aught for ye but to gang. If your
heart is richt with God in this matter, then he's o' your side,
an' I fear na what men may do to ye. An' yet, ye're my
Joseph, as it were, the son o' my auld age, wi' a coat o' many
colors, plush breeks included ; an' gin aught take ye, ye' 11
bring down my gray haflets wi' sorrow to the grave !"
The old man gazed at me as he spoke, with a deep, earn-
est affection I had never seen in him before ; and the tears
clistened in his eyes by the flaring candlelight, as he went on.
" I ha' been reading the Bible the nicht. It's strange
how the words o't rise up, and open themselves, whiles, to
puir distractit bodies ; though, maybe, no' always in just the
orthodox way. An' I fell on that, ' Behold, I send ye forth
as lambs in the midst of solves. Be ye therefore wise aa
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. 241
serpents an' harmless as doves ;' an' that gave me comfort,
laddie, for ye. Mind the warning ; dinna gang wud, what-
ever ye may see an' hear ; it's an ill way o' showing pity, to
gang daft anent it. Dinna talk raagniloquently ; that's the
workman's darling sin. An' mind ye dinna go too deep wi'
them. Ye canna trust them to understand ye ; they're puir
foolish sheep that ha' no shepherd — swine that ha' no wash,
rather. So cast na your pearls before swine, laddie, lest they
trample them under their feet, an' turn again an' rend ye."
He went out, and I lay awake tossing till morning, making
a thousand good resolutions — like the rest of mankind.
h
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE MEN WHO ARE EATEN.
With many instructions from our friends, and warnings irom
Mackaye, I started next day on my journey. When I last
caught sight of the old man, he was gazing fixedly after me,
and using Ins pocket-handkerchief in a somewhat suspicious
way. I had remarked how depressed he seemed, and my own
spirits shared the depression. A presentiment of evil hung
over me, which not even the excitement of the journey — to
me a rare enjoyment — could dispel. I had no heart, somehow,
to look at the country scenes around, which in general excited
in me so much interest, and I tried to lose myself in summing
up my stock of information on the question which I expected
to hear discussed by the laborers. I found myself not alto-
gether ignorant. The horrible disclosures of S. G. O., and
the barbarous abominations of the Andover Workhouse, then
fresh in the public mind, had had their due effect on mine ;
and, like most thinking artisans, I had acquainted myself tol-
erably from books and newspapers with the general condition
of the country laborers.
I arrived in the midst of a dreary, treeless country, whose
broad brown and gray fields were only broken by an occasional
line of dark doleful firs, at a knot of thatched hovels, all sink-
ing and leaning every way but the right, the windows patch-
ed with paper, the door-ways stopped with filth, which sur-
rounded a beer-shop. That was my destination — unpromising
enough for any one but an agitator. If discontent and misery
are preparatives for liberty — and they are — so strange and un-
like ours are the ways of God — I was likely enough to find
them there.
I was welcomed by my intended host, a little pert snub-
nosed shoemaker, who greeted me as his cousin from London
— a relationship which it seemed prudent to accept.
He took me into his little cabin, and there, with the assist-
ance of a shrewd, good-natured wife, shared with me the best
he had ; and after supper commenced, mysteriously and in
trembling, as if the very walls might have ears, a rambling
bitter diatribe on the wrongs and sufferings of the laborers ;
which went on till late in the night, and which I shall spare
my readers : for if they have either brains or hearts, they
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR A.\D I'OEI. 24d
ought to know more than I can tell them, from the public
prints, and indeed, from their own eyes — although, as a wise
man says, there is nothing' more difficult than to make people
see first the facts which lie under their own nose.
Upon one point, however, which was new to me, he was
very fierce — the custom of landlords letting the cottages with
their farms, for the mere sake of saving themselves trouble;
thus giving up all power of protecting the poor man, and de-
livering him over, bound hand and loot, even in the matter
of his commonest home comforts, to farmers, too penurious,
too ignorant, and often too poor, to keep the cottages in a
state fit for the habitation of human beings. Thus the poor
man's hovel, as well as his labor, became, he told me, a source
of profit to the farmer, out of which he wrung the last drop
of gain. The necessary repairs were always put off* as long
as possible — the laborers were robbed of their gardens — the
slightest rebellion lost them not only work, but shelter from
the elements ; the slavery under which they groaned penetra-
ted even to the fireside and to the bedroom.
" And who was the landlord of this parish ?"
" Oh ! he believed he was a very good sort of man, and
uncommon kind to the people where he lived, but that was
fifty miles away in another county ; and he liked that estate
better than this, and never came down here, except for the
shooting."
Full of many thoughts, and tired out with my journey, I
went up to bed, in the same loft with the cobbler and his wife,
and fell asleep, and dreamed of Lillian.
About eight o'clock the next morning, I started forth with
my guide, the shoemaker, over as desolate a country as men
can well conceive. Not a house was to be seen for miles, ex-
cept the knot of hovels which we had left, and here and there
a great dreary lump of farm-buildings, with its yard of yellow
stacks. Beneath our feet the earth was iron, and the sky
iron above our heads. Dark curled clouds, " which had built
up every where an undcr-roof of doleful gray," swept on before
the bitter northern wind, which whistled through the low
leafless hedges and rotting wattles, and crisped the dark sod-
den leaves of the scattered hollies, almost the only trees in
sight
We trudged on, over wide stubbles, thick with innumerable
iveeds ; over wide fallows, in which the deserted plows stood
frozen fast ; then over clover and grass, burnt black with frost ,
ZU ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
then over a field of turnips, where we passed a large fold of hur-
dles, within which some hundred sheep stood, with their heads
turned from the cutting blast. All was dreary, idle, silent ;
no sound or sign of human. beings. One wondered where the
people lived, who cultivated so vast a tract of civilized, over-
peopled, nineteenth-century England. As we came up to the
fold, two little boys hailed us from the inside — two little
wretches with blue noses and white cheeks, scarecrows of rags
and patches, their feet peeping through bursten shoes twice
too big for them, who seemed to have shared between them a
ragged pair of worsted gloves, and cowered among the sheep,
under the shelter of a hurdle, crying and inarticulate with
cold.
" What's the matter, boys ?"
" Turmits is froze, and us can't turn the handle of the cut
ter. Do ye gie us a turn, please !"
We scrambled over the hurdles, and gave the miserable
little creatures the benefit of ten minutes' labor. They seem-
ed too small for such exertion; their little hands were purple
with chilblains, and they were so sorefooted they could scarcely
limp. I was surprised to find them at least three years older
than their size and looks denoted, and still more surprised, too,
to find that their salary for all this bitter exposure to the ele-
ments — such as I believe I could not have endured two days
running — was the vast sum of one shilling a week each, Sun-
days included. " They didn't never go to school, nor to church
nether, except just now and then, sometimes — they had to
mind the shep."
I went on, sickened with the contrast between the highly-
bred, over-fed, fat, thick-wooled animals, with their troughs
of turnips and malt-dust, and their racks of rich clover-hay,
and their little pent-house of rock-salt, having nothing to do
but to eat and sleep, and eat again, and the little half-starved
shivering animals who were their slaves. Man the master of
the brutes ? Bah ! As society is now, the brutes are the
masters — the horse, the sheep, the bullock, is the master, and
the laborer is their slave. " Oh ! but the brutes are eaten !"
W T ell ; the horses at least are not eaten — they live like land-
lords, till they die. And those who are eaten, are certainly
not eaten by their human servants. The sheep they fat,
another kills, to parody Shelley; and, after all, is not tho
laborer, as well as the sheep, eaten by you, my dear Society
— devoured body and soul, not the less really because you arc
longer about the m<H, (here being an old prejudice against
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 215
cannibalism, and also against murder — except after the Riot
Act has been read.
" What !" shriek the insulted respectabilities, "have wc not
paid him his wages weekly, and has he not lived upon them?"
Yes ; and have you not given your sheep and horses their
\ daily wages, and have they not lived on them 1 You wanted
\to work them; and they could not work, you know, unless
lthey were alive. But here lies your iniquity : you gave the
/laborer nothing but his daily food — not even his lodgings; the
pigs were not stinted of their wash to pay lor their stye-room,
the rnau was ; and his wages, thanks to your competitive sys-
tem, were beaten down deliberately and conscientiously (lor
was it not according to political economy, and the laws there-
of?) to the minimum on which he could or would work, with
out the hope or the possibility of saving a farthing. You
know how to invest your capital profitably, dear Society, and
to save money over and above your income of daily comforts ;
but what has he saved 1 what is he profited by all those years
of labor ? He has kept body and soul together — perhaps he
could have done that without you or your help. But his
wages are used up every Saturday night. When he stops
working, you have in your pocket the whole real profits of his
nearly fifty years' labor, and he has nothing. And then you say
that you have not eaten him ! You know, in your heart of
hearts, that you have. Else, why in Heaven's name do you
pay him poor's rates ? If, as you say, he has been duly repaid
in wages, what is the meaning of that half-a-crown a week ?
you owe him nothing. Oh, but the man would starve — com-
mon humanity forbids ! What now, Society ? Give him
alms, if you will, on the score of humanity ; but do not tax
people for his support, whether they choose or not — that were
a mere tyranny and robbery. If the landlord's feelings will
not allow him to see the laborer starve, let him give, in God's
name ; but let him not cripple and drain, by compulsory poor-
rates, the farmer who has paid him his "just remuneration"
of wages, and the parson who probably, out of his scanty in-
come, gives away twice as much in alms as the landlord does
yut of his superfluous one. No, no; as long as you retain
compulsory poor-laws, you confess that it is not merely humane
but just, to pay the laborer more than his wages. You con-
fess yourself in debt to him, over and above, an uncertain sum
which it suits you not to define, because such an investigation
would expose ugly gaps and patches in that same snug com-
petitive and property world of yours ; and, therefore, being the
246 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
stronger party, you compel your debtor to give up the claim
which you confess for an annuity of half-a-crown a week — that
being the just-above-starving-point of the economic thermome-
ter ! And yet you say you have not eaten the laborer. You
see, we workmen too have our thoughts about political econ-
omy, differing slightly from yours, truly, just as the man who
is being hanged may take a somewhat different view of the
process from the man who is hanging him ; which view is
likely to be the more practical one 1
VVith some such thoughts I walked across the open down,
toward a circular camp, the earthwork, probably of some old
British town. Inside it, some thousand or so of laboring peo-
ple were swarming restlessly round a single large block of
stone, some relic of Druid times, on which a tall man stood,
his dark figure thrown out in bold relief against the dreary
sky. As we pushed through the crowd, I was struck with
the wan, haggard look of all faces ; their lack-lustre eyes and
drooping lips, stooping shoulders, heavy, dragging steps, gave
them a crushed, dogged air, which was infinitely painful, and
bespoke a grade of misery more habitual and degrading than
that of the excitable and passionate artisan.
There were many women among them, talking shruly, and
looking even more pinched and wan than the men. I remark-
ed, also, that many of the crowd carried heavy sticks, pitch-
forks, and other tools which might be used as fearful weapons
— an ugly sign, which I ought to have heeded betimes.
They glared with sullen curiosity at me and my Londoner's
clothes, as, with no small feeling of self-importance, I pushed
my way to the foot of the stone. The man who stood on it
seemed to have been speaking some time. His words, like
all I heard that day, were utterly devoid of any thing like
eloquence or imagination — a dull string of somewhat incohe-
rent complaints, which derived their force only from the in-
tense earnestness, which attested their truthfulness. As far
as I can recollect, I will give the substance of what I heard.
But, indeed, I heard nothing but what has been bandied
about from newspaper to newspaper for years — confessed by
all parties, deplored by all parties, but never an attempt made
to remedy it.
— " Thae farmers makes slaves on us. I can't hear no
difference between a Christian and a nigger, except they flogs
the nigsrers and starves the Christians ; and I don't know
which I'd choose. I served Farmer seven year, off and
on, and arter harvest he tells me he's no more work for my
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 2 17
nor my boy, neither, acause he's getting too big for him, so he
gets a little 'im instead, and we does nothing ; and my boy
lies about, getting into bad ways, like hundreds more : and
then we goes to board, and they bids us go and look for work ;
and wc goes up next part to London. I couldn't get none ;
they'd enough to do, they said, to employ their own ; and we
begs our way home, and goes into the Union ; and they turns
us out again in two or three days, and promises us work again,
and gives us two days' gravel-pecking, and then says they lias
no more for us ; and we was sore pinched, and laid a-bed all
day ; then next board-day we goes to 'em, and they gives us
one day more — and that threw us off another week, and then
next board-day we goes into the Union again for three days,
and gets sent out again : and so I've been starving one-half
of the time, and they putting us off and on o' purpose like
that ; and I'll bear it no longer, and that's what I says."
He came down, and a tall, powerful, well-fed man, evident-
ly in his Sunday smock-frock and clean yellow leggings, got
up and began :
" I havn't no complaint to make about myself. I've a
good master, and the parson's a right kind 'un, and that's
more than all can say, and the squire's a real gentleman ; and
my master, he don't need to lower his wages. I gets my ten
shillings a week all the year round, and harvesting, and a pig,
and a 'lotment — and that's just why I come here. If I can
get it, why can't you ?"
" 'Cause our masters baint like yourn."
" No, by George, there baint no money round here away
like that, I can tell you."
"And why aint they 1" continued the speaker. " There's
the shame on it. There's my master can grow five quarters
where yourn only grows three ; and so he can live and pay
like a man ; and so he say he don't care for free trade. You
know, as well as I, that there's not half o' the land round
here grows what it ought. They aint no money to make it
grow more, and besides, they won't employ no hands to keep
it clean. I come across more weeds in one field here, than
I've seen for nine year on our farm. Why arn't some o' you
a-getting thae weeds up 1 It 'ud pay 'em to farm better —
and they knows that, but they're too lazy ; if they can just
get a living off the land, they don't care ; and they'd sooner
save money out o' your wages, than save it by growing more
corn — it's easier for 'em, it is. There's the work to be done,
and they won't let you do it. There's you crying out for
243 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET
work, and work crying out for you — and nether of you can
get to the other. I say that's a shame, I do. I say a poor
man's a slave. He daren't leave his parish — nobody won't
employ him, as can employ his own folk. And if he stays in
his parish, it's just a chance whether he gets a good master or
a bad 'un. He can't choose, and that's a shame, it is. Why
should he go starving because his master don't care to do the
best by the land ? If they can't till the land, I say let them
get out of it, and let them work it as can. And I think as
we ought all to sign a petition to government, to tell 'em all
about it ; though I don't see as how they could help us, unless
they'd make a law to force the squires to put in nobody to a
farm as hadn't money to work it fairly."
" I says," said the next speaker, a poor fellow whose sen-
tences were continually broken by a hacking cough, "just
what he said. If they can't till the land, let them do it as
can. But they won't ; they won't let us have a scrap on it,
though "we'd pay 'em more for it nor ever they'd make for
themselves. But they says it 'ud make us too independent,
if we had an acre or so o' land ; and so it 'ud, for they. And
so I says as he did — they want to make slaves on us alto
gether, just to get the flesh and bones off us at their own
price. Look you at this here down. If I had* an acre on it,
to make a garden on, I'd live well with my wages, off and
on. Why, if this here was in garden, it 'ud be worth twenty,
forty times, o' that it be now. And last spring I lays out o'
work from Christmas till barley-sowing, and I goes to the
farmer and axes for a bit a land to dig and plant a few pota-
toes — and he says, ' You be d — d ! If you're minding your
garden after hours, you'll not be fit to do a proper day's work
for me in hours — and I shall want you by-and-by, when the
weather breaks' — for it was frost most bitter, it was. ' ' And
if you gets potatoes you'll be getting a pig — and then you'll
want straw, and meal to fat 'un — and then I'll not trust you
in my barn, I can tell ye ;' and so there it was. And if I'd
had only one half-acre of this here very down as we stands on,
as isn't worth five shillings a year — and I'd a given ten shil-
lings for it — my belly wouldn't a' been empty now. Oh, they
be dogs in the manger, and the Lord'll reward 'em therefor' !
First they says they can't afford to work the land 'emselves,
and then they waint let us work it either. Then they says
prices is so lew they can't keep us on, and so they lowers our
wages; and then when prices goes up ever so much, our wages
don't go up with 'em, So, high prices or low prices, it's all
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 249
the same. With the one we can't buy bread, and with the
other we can't get work. 1 don't mind free trade — not I : to
be sure, if the loaf's cheap, we shall be ruined ; but if the
loaf's dear, we shall be starved — and for that, we is starved,
now. Nobody don't care for us ; for my part I don't much
care for myself. A man must die some time or other. Only
I thinks if we could sometime or other just see the Queen
once, and tell her all about it, she'd take our part, and not see
us put upon like that, I do."
" Gentlemen !" cried my guiile, the shoemaker, in a some-
what conceited and dictatorial tone, as he skipped up by the
speaker's side, and gently shouldered him down, " It an't like
the ancient times as I've read of, when any poor man as had
a petition could come promiscuously to the King's royal pres-
ence, and put it direct into his own hand, and be treated like
a gentleman. Don't you know as how they locks up the
Queen nowadays, and never lets a poor soul come anear her,
lest she should hear the truth of all their iniquities ? Why,
they never lets her stir out without a lot o' dragoons with
drawn swords, riding all around her ; and if you dared to go up
to her to ax mercy, whoot ! they'd chop your head off before you
could say ' Please your Majesty ! And then the hypocrites
say it's to keep her from being frightened — and that's true —
for its frightened she'd be, with a vengeance, if she knowed
all that thae grand folks make poor laborers suffer, to keep
themselves in power and great glory. I tell ye, 'tarnt per-
practicable, at all, to ax the Queen for any thing ; she's afeard
of her life on 'em. You just take my advice, and sign a round-
robin to the squires — you tell 'em as you're willing to till the
land for 'em, if they'll let you. There's draining and digging
enough to be done as 'ud keep ye all in work, arn't there ?"
"Ay, ay; there's lots o' work to be done, if so be we
could get at it. Every body knows that."
" Well, you tell 'em that. Tell 'em here's hundreds and
hundreds of ye starving, and willing to work ; and then tell
'em, if they wont find ye work, they shall find ye meat.
There's lots o' victuals in their larders now; haven't you as
good a right to it as their jackanapes o' footmen ? The squires
is at the bottom of it all. What do you stupid fellows go
grumbling at the farmers for? Don't thae squires tax the
land twenty or thirty shillings an acre ; and what do they du
for that ? The best of 'em', if he gets five thousand a year
out o' the land, don" t give back l\va hundred in charity, or
schools, or poor-rate; — «ind what's that to speak of? And
L*
250 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
the main of em — curse 'em ! — they drains the money out o
the land, and takes it up to London, or into foreign parts, to
spend on fine clothes and fine dinners ; or throws it away at
elections, to make folks beastly drunk, and sell their souls for
money — and we gets no good on it. I'll tell you what it's
come to, my men — that we can't afford no more landlords.
We can't afford 'em, and that's the truth of it !"
The crowd growled a dubious assent.
" O, 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 labor, and one for stock, and
one for rent, and one for themselves ; ain't that about right 1
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 laborer as works, or the landlord as does noth-
ing ? 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 eveiy
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 giving him back two on
it ? He can't stint hisself, he daren't stint his stock, and so
he stints the laborers ; 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 com-
ment of murmurs, that they were getting every moment more
fierce and desperate at the contemplation of their own help-
lessness — a mood which the next speech was not likely to
Eoften.
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 ■
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 2.-;i
"I am an honest woman. I brought up seven children
decently, and never axed the parish for a far den, 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
eould not relieve me for the first week, because I had money
\'et to take. The hypocrites ! they knowing as I couldn't bult
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 ; and so we goes on starving for another week
— lor no one wouldn't trust us; how could they, when wj
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
Uieir 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 J ,
that am an honest woman, go to live with thae offscourings —
thae" — (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
eive 'em. I've got no bread — where should I ? I've got no
fi re — 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 nitch o' wood, they'd put me in
prison, they would, with the worst — what be I to do 1
What be you going to do 1 That's what I came here for.
What be ye going to do for us women — us that starve ami
itint, and wear our hands oft' for you men and your children,
and get hard words, and hard blows from you ? Oh ! if J
2o2 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
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 can not 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 gray, 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 year agonc 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 laboring 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."
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 201
It seemed a not unnatural revulsion, when a tail, fierce
man, with a forbidding squint, sprung jauntily on the stone,
and setting his arras 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, holler-
ing and squeaking, 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 youm ?
The game's no one's, is it now ? you know that. And if
you takes turmits or corn, they're youm — you helped to
grown '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 wile's ready for her trouble, I gets
cotched ; then I lives like a prince in jail, 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 thae stacks over the old
rasaal'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 ? Warnt it he as
turned five on yer off last week ? and aint he more corn there
than 'ud feed you all round this day, and won't sell it, just be-
cause 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 o r the London working-
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
men, made a comment on their own speeches — which the
1 reader ought to be able to make for himself, and told them
\that I had come to entreat their assistance toward obtaining
such a parliamentary representation as would secure them
Itheir rights. I explained the idea of the Charter, and begged
for theii help in carrying it out.
To all which they answered surlily, that they did not know
any thing 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 unre-
presented — how the laws were made by the rich for the poor,
and not by all for all — how the taxes bit deep into the neces-
saries of the laborer, 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 laborer was not fully remunerated. I tried
to make them see that their interests, 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 !"
" GrOj then," I cried, losing my self-possession between dis-
appointment and the maddening desire of influence — and,
indeed, who could near their story, or even look upon their
faces, and not feel some indignation stir in him, unless self-
inter ist had drugged his heart and conscience, " $ro," I cried,
" an; 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, crush 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 oil* 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,
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. 255
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 under-
neath 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 havo
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 aint no com, 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. 1 tried again and again to stop
and harangue them. I shouted myself hoarse about the duty
of honesty ; warned them against pillage and violence ; en-
treated 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 ; 1 had
helped to excite them, and dared not, in honor, desert them ;
and, trembling, I went on, prepared to see the worst ; follow-
ing, as a flag of distress, a mouldy crust, brandished on the
point of a pitchfork.
Bursting through the rotting and half-fallen palim!?, we
entered a wide, ruRSy. 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 open one
showed, as through a black empty eye-socket, the dark unfur-
nished 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
gee an old man on horseback dart out and gallop hatless up
the park, amid the yells of he mob.
" The old rascal's gone ! and he'll call up the yeomanry.
We must be quick, boys !" shouted one ; and the first signs
256 ALTON LOCKL\ TAILOR A.ND POET.
of plur.ler 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 com-
menced 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 im-
mense 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 with a little
boy, who had scrambled up behind him. Then a huge black-
guard 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 thae ricks !" roared another.
:: Get out the threshing-machine !"
" You harness the horses !"
"No! there baint no time. Yeomanry '11 be here. You
rami leave the ricks."
" Darned if we do. Old Woods shan't get nought by they."
" Fire 'em, then, and go on to Slater's Farm !"
" As well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb," hiccupped
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 hear a
crackle — there was no mistaking it ; the windward stack was
in a blaze of fire.
I stood awe-struck — I can not 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
hefore the howling wind, and fastened their fiery talons on the
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 25?
bara-eaves, and swept over the peaked roofs, and hurled them-
selves in fiery flakes into the yard beyond — the food of man,
the labor 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
thinjr which saved the house was the weltering mass of but-
locks, pigs, and human beings drunk and sober, which tram-
pled 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 aiut 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 ruffian-
ly part of the mob — and alas ! there were but too many of
them — hurled the furniture out of the windows, or ran off"
with any thing that they could carry. In vain 1 expostulated
and 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 proclaim-
ed 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 blub-
bering 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 :
" Oh Betsey ! Betsey ! you little awdacious unremorseful
hussey ! a-running away with my best, bonnet and shawl !"
The laughter soon, however, subsided, when a man rushed
breathless into the yard, shouting, " Thu yeomanry!"
•253 ALTJN LOCKE, TAILOR AND l'OET.
At that sound, to ray astonishment, a general panic ensued
The miserable wretches never stopped to inquire how many,
or how far oil] 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 gray 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 lauds 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 fel-
low's money ! Hush ! What a vule I be, hollering like that !"
And ho was going to sneak off, with a face of drunken cun-
ning, when I sprung up and seized him by the throat.
" Rascal ! robber ! lay that down ! Have you not done
mischief enough already 1 ?"
"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 gray
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 1 recovered my consciousness. I was lying on a
truckle-bed — stone walls and a grated window ' A man stood
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. L>59
over me with a large bunch of keys in his hand. He had
been wrapping rny head with wet towels. I knew, instinct-
ively, 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 jail."
"Exactly so!"
• •-•••
CHAPTER, XXIX.
THE TRIAL.
The day was come — quickly, thank Heaven ; and I stood
nt the bar, with four or five miserable, haggaid laborers, to
take my trial for sedition, riot, and arson.
I had passed the intervening weeks half stupefied 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
laborers, 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 forever 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 laborers who have reaped down
vour fields, which is by you kept back by fraud, crieth ; and
tne 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 up 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 verra foolish callant, that lost
his temper, an' cast his pearls before swine — an' very question-
able 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 com-
mon sense. You probably won't be hanged — for nobody be-
lieves that you had a hand in burning the farm ; but, unless
you take care, ycu will be transported. Call yourself John
Nukes; intrust y?ur case to a clever lawyer, and keep in the
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 2C1
background. I warn you as a friend — if you try to speechify,
and play the martyr, and let. out who you are, the respeetablo
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 he 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 every thing 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 noth-
ing 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 im-
postor — probably a detected one — it seemed the most cunning
scheme for ruining me, which my evil genius could have sug-
gested, whether or not it might serve his own selfish ends.
But as for the other hints, they seemed not unreasonable, and
promised to save rne 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 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.
"But where did you get the money ? You have not surely
been spending your own savings on me?"
" I canna say that I wadna ha' so dune, in case o' need.
But the men in town just subscribit ; puir honest fellows."
"What ! is my folly to be the cause of robbing them of
their slender earnings ? Never, Mackaye ! Besides, they
can not have subscribed enough to pay the barrister whom
you just mentioned. Tell me the whole truth, or, pos : tively,
I will plead my cause myself."
" Aweel, then, there was a bit bank-note or twa cam' to
hand — I canna say whaur fra\ But they that sent it direckit
it to be expendit in the defense o' the sax prisoners — whereof
ye make ane."
Af ain a world of fruitless conjecture. It must be the same
unknown friend who had paid my debt to my cousin — Lillian 1
262 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
And so the day was come. I am not going to make a long
picturesque description of my trial — trials have become lately
quite hackneyed subjects, stock properties for the fiction-mon-
gers — neither indeed, could I do so if I would. I recollect
nothing of that day, but fragments — flashes of waking exist-
ence, scattered up and down in what seemed to me a whole
life of heavy, confused, painful dreams, with the glare of all
those faces concentrated on me — those countless eyes which I
could not, could not meet — stony, careless, unsympathizing —
not even angry — only curious. If they had but frowned on
me, insulted me, gnashed their teeth on me, I could have
glared back defiance ; as it was, I stood cowed and stupefied,
a craven by the side of cravens.
Let me see — what can I recollect ? Those faces — faces —
every where faces — a faint, sickly smell of flowers — a perpet-
ual whispering and rustling of dresses — and all through it,
the voice of some one talking, talking — I seldom knew what,
or whether it was counsel, witness, judge, or prisoner, that
was speaking. I was like one asleep at a foolish lecture, who
hears in dreams, and only wakes when the prosing stops. Was
it not prosing? What was it to me what they said 1 They
£ould not understand me — my motives — my excuses ; the
whole pleading, on my side as well as the crown's, seemed
one huge fallacy — beside the matter altogether — never touch-
ing the real point at issue, the eternal moral equity of my
deeds or misdeeds. I had no doubt that it would all be con-
ducted quite properly, and fairly, and according to the forms
of law ; but what was law to me ? I wanted justice. And
so I let them go on their own way, conscious of but one
thought — was Lillian in the court %
I dared not look and see. I dared not lift up my eyes to-
ward the gaudy rows of ladies who had crowded to the " in-
teresting trial of the D rioters." The torture of anxiety
was less than that of certainty might be, and I kept my eyes
down, and wondered how on earth the attorneys had found in
so simple a case enough to stuff" those great blue bags.
When, however, any thing did seem likely to touch on a
reality, I woke up forthwith, in spite of myself. I recollect
well, for instance, a squabble about challenging the jurymen;
and my counsel's voice of pious indignation, as lie asked,
" Do you call these agricultural gentlemen and farmers, how-
ever excellent and respectable — on which point Heaven for-
bid that I, &c, See. — the prisoner's 'pares,' peers, equals, or
likes 1 What single interest, opinion, or motive have they ir.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND PORT. 2G3
common, but the universal one of self-interest, which, in this
case, happens to pull in exactly opposite directions ? Your
lordship has often animadverted fully and boldly on the prac-
tice of allowing a bench of squires to sit in judgment on a
poacher ; surely it is quite as unjust that agricultural rioters
Bhould be tried by a jury of the very class against whom they
arc accused of rebelling."
"Perhaps my learned brother would like a jury of rioters'?"
Euirgested some queen's counsel.
"Upon my word, then, it would be much the fairer plan."
I wondered whether he would have dared to say as much
in the street outside — and relapsed into indifference. I believe
there was some long delay, and wrangling about law-quibbles,
which seemed likely at one time to quash the whole prosecu-
tion ; but I was rather glad than sorry to find that it had
been overruled. It was all a play, a game of bowls — the
bowls happening to be human heads — got up between the
lawyers, for the edification of society ; and it would have been
a pity not to play it out according to the rules and regulations
thereof.
As for the evidence, its tenor may be easily supposed from
my story. There were those who could swear to my language
at the camp. I was seen accompanying the mob to the farm,
and haranguing them. The noise was too great for the wit-
nesses to hear all I said, but they were certain I talked about
the sacred name of liberty. The farmer's wife had seen me
run round to the stacks when they were fired — whether just
before or just after, she never mentioned. She had seen me
running up and down in front of the house, talking loudly, and
gesticulating violently ; she saw me, too, struggling with an-
other rioter for her husband's desk ; — and the rest of the wit-
nesses, some of whom I am certain I had seen busy plun-
dering, though they were ready to swear that they had been
merely accidental passers-by, seemed to think that they proved
their own innocence, and testified their pious indignation by
avoiding carefully any fact which could excuse me. But,
somehow, my counsel thought differently ; and cross-examined,
and bullied, and tormented, and misstated — as he was bound
to do ; and so one witness after another, clumsy and cowardly
enough already, was driven by his engines of torture, as if by
a pitiless spell, to deny half that he had deposed truly, and
confess a great deal that was utterly false — till confusion be-
came worse confounded, and there seemed no truth anywhere,
and no false-hood either, and " naught was every thing, and
'J64 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
every thing was naught ;" till I began to have doubts whether
the riot had ever occurred at all — and, indeed, doubts of my
own identity also, when I had heard the counsel for the crown
impute to me, personally, as in duty bound, every seditious
atrocity which had been committed either in England or Franco
since 1793. To him, certainly, I did listen tolerably; it was
" as good as a play." Atheism, blasphemy, vitriol-throwing, and
community of women were among my lighter offenses — for
had I not actually been engaged in a plot for the destruction
of property ? How did the court know that I had not spent
the night before the riot, as "the doctor" and his friends did
before the riots of 1839, in drawing lots for the estates of the
surrounding gentlemen, wi^h my deluded dupes and victims ?
— for of course 1, and not want of work, had deluded them
into rioting; at least, they never would have known that they
were starving, if I had not stirred up their evil passions by
daring to inform them of that otherwise impalpable fact. I,
the only Chartist there 1 Might there not have been dozens
of them ? — emissaries from London, dressed up as starving
laborers, and rheumatic old women ? There were actually
traces of a plan for seizing all the ladies in the country, and
setting up a seraglio of them in D Cathedral. How did
the court know that there was not one ?
Ay, how indeed? and how did I know either? I really
began to question whether the man might not be right after
all. The whole theory seemed so horribly coherent — possible
— natural. I might have done it, under possession of the
devil, and forgotten it in excitement — I might — perhaps I did.
And if there, why not elsewhere ? Perhaps I had helped
Jourdan Coupe-tete at Lyons, and been king of the Munster
Anabaptists — why not 1 What matter 1 When would this
eternity of wigs, and bonnets, and glaring windows, and ear-
grinding prate and jargon, as of a diabolic universe of street-
organs, end — end — end — and I get quietly hanged, and done
with it all forever ?
Oh, the horrible length of that day ! It seemed to me as
if I had been always on my trial, ever since I was born. 1
wondered at times how many years ago it had all begun. I
felt what a far stronger and more single-hearted patriot than
I, poor Somerville, says of himself under the torture of the
sergeant's cat, in a passage, whose horrible simplicity and un-
conscious pathos have haunted me ever since I read it ; how,
when only fifty out of his hundred lashes had fallen on the
bleeding back, " The time since they began teas like a long
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND I'OLT. 26i
period of life : I felt as if I had lived all the time of my
real life in torture, and tluxt the days ichen existence had a
pleasure i?i it were a dream long, long gone by."
The reader may begin to suspect that I was fast going
mad ; and I believe I was. If he has followed my story with
a human heart, he may excuse me of any extreme weakness,
if I did at moments totter on the verge of that abyss.
What saved me, I believe now, was the keen, bright look
of love and confidence which flashed on me from Crossthwaile's
glittering eyes, when he was called forward as a witness to
my character. He spoke out like a man, I hear, that day.
But the counsel for the crown tried to silence him triumphant-
ly, by calling on him to confess himself a Chartist ; as if a
man must needs be a liar and a villain because he holds cer-
tain opinions about the franchise ! However, that was, I
heard, the general opinion of the court. And then Crossth-
waite lost his temper, and called the queen's counsel a hired
bully, and so went down ; having done, as I was told aftci-
ward, no good to me.
And then there followed a passage of tongue-fence between
Mackaye and some barrister, and great laughter at the barris-
ter's expense : and then I heard the old man's voice rise
thin and clear:
"Let him that is without sin amang ye, cast the first
stane !"
And as he went down he looked at me — a look full of de-
spair. I never had had a ray of hope from the beginning ; but
now I began to think whether men suffered much when they
were hung, and whether one woke at once into the next life,
or had to wait till the body had returned to the dust, and
watch the ugly process of one's own decay. I was not afraid
of death — I never experienced that sensation. I am not
physically brave. I am as thoroughly afraid of pain as any
child can be ; but that next Avorld has never offered any pros-
pect to me, save boundless food for my insatiable curiosity.
But at that moment my attorney thrust into my hand a
little dirty scrap of paper. " Do you know this man?"
I read it.
"Sir — I wull tell all truthc. Mr. Lock is a murdered
man if he be hanged. Lev me spek out, for love of the Lord.
" J. Davis."
No. I never had heard of him ; and I let the paper fall
M
266 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET.
A murdered man ? I had known that all aloi.g. Had
not the queen's counsel heen trying all day to murder me, aa
was their duty, seeing that they got their living thereby 1
A few moments after a laboring man was in the witness-
box ; and, to my astonishment, telling the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth.
I will not trouble the reader with his details, for they were
simply and exactly what I have already stated. He was bad-
gered, bullied, cross-examined, but nothing could shake him.
With that dogged honesty and laconic dignity, which is the
good side of the English peasant's character, he stood manfully
to his assertion — that I had done every thing that words or
tactions could do to prevent violence, even to the danger of my
own personal safety. He swore to the words which I used
when trying to wrest the desk from the man who had stolen
it ; and when the queen's counsel asked him tauntingly, who
had set him on bringing his new story there at the eleventh
hour, he answered, equally to the astonishment of his ques-
tioner and of me.
" Muster Locke hisself."
"What! the prisoner?" almost screamed the counselor,
who fancied, I suppose, that he had stumbled on a confession
of unblushing bribery.
" Yes, he ; he there. As he went up over hill to meeting
he met my two boys a shep-minding ; and, because the cutter
was froze, he stop and turn the handle for 'em for a matter
of ten minutes ; and I was coming up over field, and says I,
I'll hear what that chap's got to say — there can't be no harm
in going up arter the likes of he ; for, says I to myself, a man
can't have got any great wickedness a plotting in he's head,
, when he'll stop a ten minutes to help two boys as he never
sot eyes on afore in his life ; and I think their honors '11 say
the same."
Whether my reader will agree or not with the worthy fel-
low, my counsel, I need not say, did, and made full use of his
hint. All the previous evidence was now discovered to have
corroborated the last witness, except where it had been no-
toriously overthrown. I was extolled as a miracle of calm
benevolence ; and black becajne gray, and gray became spot-
less white, and the whole feeling of the court seemed changed
in my favor ; till the little attorney popped up his head and
whispered to me :
" By George ! that last witness has saved yvur life."
To which I answered "Very wel " — and turned stnpull)
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOLT. 267
back upon that nightmare thought — was Lillian in the
court ? •
At last a voice, the judge's, I believe, for it was grave,
gentle, almost compassionate, asked us one by one whether
we had any tiling to say in our own defense. I recollect an
indistinct murmur from one after another of the poor semi-
brutes on my left ; and then my attorney, looking up to me,
made me aware that I was expected to speak. On the mo-
ment, somehow, my whole courage returned to me. I felt
that I must unburden my heart, now or never. With a sud-
den effort I roused myself, and looking lixedly and proudly at
the reverend, face opposite, began :
" The utmost oflense which has been proved against me is
a few bold words, producing consequences as unexpected as
illogical. If the stupid ferocity with which my words were
misunderstood, as by a horde of savages, rather than English-
men ; if the moral and physical condition of these prisoners
at my side; of those witnesses who have borne testimony
against me, miserable white slaves, miscalled free laborers ;
ay, if a single walk through the farms and cottages on which
this mischief was bred, affords no excuse for one indignant
sentence — "
There she was ! There she had been all the time — righ 1
opposite to me, close to the judge — cold, bright, curious —
smiling ! And as our eyes met, she turned away, and whis-
pered gayly something to a young man who sat beside her.
Every drop of blood in my body rushed into my forehead ;
the court, the windows, and the faces, whirled round and
round, and I fell senseless on the floor of the dock.
1 next recollect some room or other in the jail, Mackaye
with both my hands in his ; and the rough kindly voice of
the jailer congratulating me on having " only got three years."'
"But you didn't show half a good pluck," said some one..
" There's 'two on 'em transported, took it as bold as brass,
and thanked the judge for getting 'em out o' this starving
place 'free gracious for nothing,' says they."
"Ah!" quoth the little attorney, rubbing his hands, "you
should have seen and after the row in '42 ! They
were the boys for the Bull Ring ! Gave a barrister as good
as he brought, eh, Mr. Mackaye 1 My small services, you
remember, were of no use — really no use at all — quite asham-
ed to scud in my little account. Managed the case them-
2fi3 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
selves, like two patriotic parties as they were, with a degree
of forensic acuteaess, inspired by the consciousness of a noble
cause — Ahem ! You remember, friend M. ? Grand tri-
umphs those, eh ?"
" Ay," said Sandy, " I mind them unco weel — they cost
me a' my few savings, mair by token ; an' mony a braw fal-
low paid for ither folks' sins that tide. But my puir laddie
here's no made o' that stuff He's ower thin-skinned for a
patriot."
" Ah, well — this little taste of British justice will thicken,
his hide for him, eh?" and the attorney chuckled and wink-
ed. " He'll come out again as tough as a bull-dog, and aa
surly too. Eh, Mr. Mackaye ? eh ?"
" 'Deed, then, I'm unco sair afeard that your opeenion is
no a'thegither that improbable," answered Sandy, with a
lrawl of unusual solemnity.
CHAPTER XXX.
PRISON THOUGHTa
I was alone in my cell.
Three years' imprisonment ! Thirty-six months! one thou
Band, and ninety-five days — and twenty-four whole hours in
each of them ! Well — I should sleep half the time : one-
third at least. Perhaps I should not be able to sleep ! To
lie awake, and think — there ! The thought was horrible — it
was all horrible. To have three whole years cut out of my
life, instead of having before me, as I had always as yet had,
a mysterious Eldorado of new schemes and hopes, possible
developments, possible triumphs, possible bliss — to have noth-
ing before me but blank and stagnation, dead loss and waste :
and then to go out again, and start once more where I had
left off yesterday !
It should not be ! I would not lose these years ! I would
show myself a man ; they should feel my strength just when
they fancied they had crushed me utterly ! They might bury
me, but I should rise again ! I should rise again more glori-
ous, perhaps to be henceforth immortal, and live upon the
lips of men. I would educate myself; I would read — what
would I not read ? These three years should be a time of
sacred retirement and contemplation, as of Thebaid Anchor-
ite, or Mahomet in his Arabian cave. I would write pam-
phlets that should thunder through the land, and make tyrants
tremble on their thrones ! All England — at least all crushed
and suffering hearts, should break forth at my fiery words into
one roar of indignant sympathy. No — I would write a
poem ; I would concentrate all my experience, my aspirations,
all the hopes and wrongs and sorrows of the poor, into one
garland of thorns — one immortal epic of suffering. What
should I call it? And I set to work deliberately — such a
thing is man — to think of a title.
I looked up, and my eye caught the close bars of the little
window; and then came over me, for the first time, the full
meaning of that word — Prison ; that word which the rich use
so lightly, knowing well that there is no chance, in these days,
of their ever finding themselves in one ; for the higher classes
never break the laws — seeing that they have made them to
fit themselves. Ay, I was in prison. I could not go out or
270 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
come in at will. I was watched, commanded at every turn.
1 was a brute animal, a puppet, a doll, that children put
away in a cupboard, and there it lies. And yet my whole
soul was as wide, fierce, roving-, struggling, as ever. Horrible
contradiction ! The dreadful sense of helplessness, the crush-
ing weight of necessity, seemed to choke me. The smooth
white w r alls, the smooth white ceiling, seemed squeezing in
closer and closer on me, and yet dilating into vast inane in-
finities, just as the merest knot of mould will transform itself,
;is one watches it, and nothing else, into enormous cliffs, long
slopes of moor, and spurs of mountain-range. Oh, those
smooth white walls and ceiling ! If there had but been a
print — a stain of dirt — a cobweb, to fleck their unbroken
ghastliness ! They stared at me, like grim, impassive, feature-
less, formless fiends ; all the more dreadful for their sleek
hypocritic cleanliness — purity as of a saint-inquisitor watch-
ing with spotless conscience the victim on the rack. They
choked me — I gasped for breath, stretched out my arms,
rolled shrieking on the floor — the narrowed checkered glimpse
of free blue sky, seen through the window, seemed to fade
dimmer and dimmer, farther and farther off. I sprang up as
if to follow it — rushed to the bars, shook and wrenched at
them with my thin, puny arms — and stood spell-bound, as I
caught sight of the cathedral towers, standing out in grand
repose against the horizontal fiery bars of sunset, like great
angels at the gates of Paradise, watching in stately sorrow all
the wailing and the wrong below. And beneath, beneath —
the well-known roofs — Lillian's home, and nil its proud and
happy memories ! It was but a corner of a gable, a scrap of
garden, that I could see beyond intervening roofs and trees —
but could I mistake them ? There was the very cedar-tree ;
I knew its dark pyramid but too well ! There I had walked by
her ; there, just behind that envious group of chestnuts, she
was now. The light was fading ; it must be six o'clock ; she
must be in her room now, dressing herself for dinner, looking
so beautiful ! And as I gazed, and gazed, all the intervening
objects became transparent, and vanished before the intens-
ity of my imagination. Were my poems in her rooms still?
Perhaps she had thrown them away — the condemned rioter's
poems ! Was she thinking of me ? Yes — with horror and
contempt. Well, at least she was thinking of me. And she
would understand me at last — she must. Some day she
would know all I had borne for love of her — the depth, the
might, Ihe purity of my adoratic/i. She would see the world
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 27]
honoring me, in the clay of my triumph, when I was appre-
ciated at last ; when I stood before the eyes of admiring men,
a people's singer, a king of human spirits, great with the rank
which genius gives, then she would find out what a man had
loved her ; then she would know the honor, the privilege of a
poet's worship.
— But that trial scene !
Ay — that trial scene. That cold, unmoved smile ! — when
she knew me, must have known me, not to be the wretch
which those hired slanderers had called me. If she had cared
for me — if she had a woman's heart in her at all, any pity,
any justice, would she not have spoken ? Would she not
have called on others to speak, and clear me of the calumny ?
Nonsense ! Impossible ! She — so frail, tender, retiring — how
could she speak 1 How did I know that she had not felt for
me ? It was woman's nature — duty, to conceal her feelings;
perhaps that after all was the true explanation of that smile
Perhaps, too, she might have spoken — might be even now
pleading for me in secret ; not tha.t I wished to be pardoned —
not I — but it would be so delicious to have her, her, pleading
for me ! Perhaps — perhaps I might hear of her — from her !
Surely she could not leave me here so close, without some
token ! And I actually listened, I know not how long, ex-
pecting the door to open, and a message to arrive : till, will)
my eyes riveted on that bit of gable, and my ears listening
behind me like a hare's in her form, to catch every sound in
the ward outside, I fell fast asleep, and forgot all in the
heavy dreamless torpor of utter mental and bodily exhaustion.
I was awakened by the opening of my cell door, and the
appearance of the turnkey.
" Well, young man, all right again ? You've had a long
nap ; and no wonder, you've had a hard time of it lately ;
and a good lesson to you, too."
"How long have I slept ? I do not recollect going to bed.
And how came I to lie down without undressing V
" I found you at lock-up hours, asleep there, kneeling on the
chair, with your head on the window-sill ; and a mercy you
hadn't tumbled off and broke your back. Now, look here.
You seems a civil sort of chap ; and civil gets as civil gives
with me. Only don't you talk no politics. They ain't no
good to nobody, except the big 'uns, wot gets their living
thereby ; and I should think you'd had dose enough on 'cm
to last for a month of Sundays. So just get yourself tidy,
there's a lad, and come along with me to chapel."
272 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
I obeyed him, in that and other things ; and I never receh J
from him, or, indeed, from any one else there, aught but kind-
ness. I have no complaint to make — but prison is prison.
As for talking politics, I never, during those three years, ex-
changed as many sentences with any of my fellow-prisoners.
What had I to say to them ? Poachers and petty thieves —
the scum of misery, ignorance, and rascality throughout the
country. If my heart yearned toward them at times, it was
generally shut close by the exclusive pride of superior intellect
and knowledge. I considered it, as it was, a degradation to
be classed with such ; never asking myself how far I had
brought that degradation on myself: and I loved to show my
sense of injustice by walking, moody and silent, up and down
a lonely corner of the yard ; and at last contrived, under the
plea of ill-health (and, truly, I never was ten minutes without
coughing), to confine myself entirely to my cell, and escape
altogether the company of a class whom I despised, almost
hated, as my betrayers, before whom I had cast away my
pearls — questionable though they were, according to Mackaye.
Oh ! there is, in the intellectual workman's heart, as in all
others, the root of Pharisaism — the lust after self-glorifying
superiority, on the ground of " genius." We too are men ;
frail, selfish, proud as others. The days are past, thank God,
when the " gentlemen button makers" used to insist on a
separate tap-room from the mere "button-makers," on the
ground of earning a few more shillings per week. But we
are not yet thorough democrats, my brothers ; we do not yet
utterly believe our own loud doctrine of equality ; nor shall
we till — But I must not anticipate the stages of my own
experience.
I complain of no one, again I say — neither of judge, jury,
! jailers, or chaplain. True, imprisonment was the worst pos-
sible remedy lor my disease that could have been devised, if,
as the new doctrine is, punishments are inflicted only to
reform the criminal. What could prison do for me, but
embitter and confirm all my prejudices? But I do not see
what else they could have done with me while law is what
it is, and perhaps ever will be ; dealing with the overt acts
of the poor, and never touching the subtler and more spiritual
iniquities of the rich respectable. When shall we see a nation
ruled, not by the law, but by the Gospel ; not in the letter
which kills, but in the spirit which is love, forgiveness; lift' 1
When ? God knows ! And God does know.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND FOEf. 273
But I did work, during those three years, ibr months at a
time, steadily and severely ; and, with little profit, alas ! to
my temper of mind. I gorged my intellect, for I could do
nothing else. The political questions which I longed to solve
in some way or other, were tabooed by the well meaning
chaplain, lie even forbade me a standard English work on
political economy, which I had written to Mackaye to borrow
for me ; he was not so careful, it will be seen hereafter, with
foreign books. He meant, of course, to keep my mind from
what he considered at once useless and polluting; but tht
only effect of his method was, that all the doubts and ques-
tions remained, rankling and fierce, imperiously demanding
my attention, and had to be solved by my own moody and
soured meditations, warped and colored by the strong sense
of universal wrong.
Then he deluged me with tracts, weak and well-meaning,
which informed me that " Christians," being " not of this
world," had nothing to do with politics ; and preached to me
the divine right of kings, passive obedience to the powers — or
impotences — that be, &c., &c, with such success as may
be imagined. I opened them each, read a few sentences, and
laid them by. " They were written by good men, no doubt;
but men who had an interest in keeping up the present
system ;" at all events, by men who knew nothing of my
temptations, my creed, my unbelief; who saw all heaven and
earth from a station antipodal 1o my own : I had simply
nothing to do with them.
And yet, excellent man ! pious, benignant, compassionate !
God forbid that I should, in writing these words, allow myself
a desire so base as that of disparaging thee ! However thy
words failed of their purpose, that bright, gentle, earnest face
never appeared without bringing balm to the wounded spirit.
Hadst thou not recalled me to humanity, those three years
would have made a savage and a madman of me. May God
reward thee hereafter .' Thou hast thy reward on earth in
the gratitude of many a broken heart bound up, of drunkards
sobered, thieves reclaimed, and outcasts taught to look for a
paternal home denied them here on earth ! While such thy
deeds, what matter thine opinions ?
But alas ! (for the truth must be told, as a warning to
those who have to face the educated working-men), his opin-
ions did matter to himself. The good man labored under the
delusion, common enough, of choosing his favorite weapons
from liis weakest faculty ; and the very inferiority of his
274 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET.
intellect prevented him from seeing where his true strength
lay. He would argue ; he would try and convert me from
skepticism hy what seemed to him reasoning, the common fig-
ure of which was, what logicians, I helieve, call hegging the
question ; and the common method what they call ignoratia
elenchi — shooting at pigeons, while crows are the game desired,
lie always started hy demanding my assent to the very ques-
tion which lay at the bottom of my doubts. He would
wrangle and wrestle blindly up and down, with tears of
earnestness in his eyes, till he had lost his temper, as far as
was possible for one so angel-guarded as he seemed to be ;
and then, when he found himself confused, contradicting his
own words, making concessions at which he shuddered, for
the sake of gaining from me assents which he found out the
next moment I understood in quite a different sense from his,
he would suddenly shift his ground, and try to knock me down
authoritatively with a single text of Scripture ; when all the
while I wanted proof that Scripture had any authority at all.
He carefully confined himself, too, throughout, to the dog-
matic phraseology of the pulpit ; while I either did not under-
stand, or required justification for the strange, far-fetched,
technical meanings, which he attached to his expressions. If
he would only have talked English ! if clergymen would only
preach in English ! and then they wonder that their sermons
have no effect! Their notion seems to be, as my good chap-
lain's was, that the teacher is not to condescend to the
scholar, much less to become all things to all men, if by any
means he may save some ; but that he has a right to demand
that the scholar shall ascend to him before he is taught ; that
he shall raise himself up of his own strength into the teacher's
region of thought as well as feeling ; to do for himself, in short
under penalty of being called an unbeliever, just what the
teacher professes to do for him.
At last, he seemed dimly to discover that I could not ac-
quiesce in his conclusions, while I denied his premises ; and so
he lent me, in an ill-starred moment, " Paley's Evidences,"
and some tracts of the last generation against Deism. I read
ihem, and remained, as hundreds more have done, just where
1. was before.
" Was Paley," I asked, <; a really good and pious man V
The really good and pious man hemmed and hawed.
" Because, if he was not, I can't trust a page of his special
pleading, let it look as a ever as the whole Old Bailey in
jfie.''
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 275
Besides, I never denied the existence of Jesus of Nazareth,
»r his apostles. I doubted the myths and doctrines, which I
believed to have been gradually built up round the true story.
The fact was, he was, like most of his class, " attacking ex-
tinct Satans," fighting manfully against Voltaire, Volney, and
Tom Paine ; while I Avas fighting for Strauss, Hcnnell, and
Emerson. And, at last,he gave me up for some weeks as a
hopeless infidel, without ever having touched the points on
which T disbelieved. He had never read Strauss — hardly
even heard of him; and, till clergymen make up their minds
to do that, and to answer Strauss also, they will as he did,
leave the heretic artisan just where they found him.
The bad effect which all this had upon my mind may
easily be conceived. I felt myself his intellectual superior.
I tripped him up, played with him, made him expose his
weaknesses, till I really began to despise him May Heaven
forgive me for it ! But it was not till long afterward that I
began, on looking back, to see how worthless was any superior
cleverness of mine before his superior moral and spiritual
excellence. That was just what he would not let me see
at the time. - I was worshiping intellect, mere intellect ; and
thence arose my doubts ; and he tried to conquer them by
exciting the very faculty which had begotten them. When
will the clergy learn that their strength is in action, and not
in argument 1 If they are to re-convert the masses, it must
be by noble deeds, as Carlyle says; "not by noisy, theoretic
laudation of a Church, but by silent practical demonstration
of the Church."
But, the reader may ask, "Where was your Bible all this
time ?
Yes — there was a - Bible in my cell — and the chaplain reai;
to me, both privately and in chapel, such portions of it as he
thought suited my case, or rather his utterly mistaken view
thereof. But to tell the truth, I cared not to read or listen.
Was it not the book of the aristocrats — of kings and priests, pas-
sive obedience, and the slavery of the intellect] Had I been
.hrown under the influence of the more educated Independents
ii former years, I might have thought differently. They, at
hast, have contrived, with what logical consistence, I know
not, to reconcile orthodox Christianity with unflinching
democratic opinions. But such was not my lot. My
mother, as I said in my first chapter, had become a Baptist ;
because she believed that sect, and as I think rightly, to bo
276 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
the only one which logically and consistently carries out the
Calvinistic theory ; and now I looked back upon her delight
in Gideon and Barak, Samson and Jehu, only as the mystic
application of rare exceptions to the fanaticism of a chosen
few — the elect — the saints, who, as the fifth-monarchy men
held, were one day to rule the world with a rod of iron. Ani
so I fell — willingly, alas ! into the vulgar belief about the
politics of Scripture, common alike — strange unanimity! — to
Infidel and Churchman. The great idea that the Bible is
the history of mankind's deliverance from all tyranny, out-
ward as well as inward ; of the Jews, as the one free con-
stitutional people among a world of slaves and tyrants ; of
their ruin, as the righteous fruit of a voluntary return to
despotism ; of the New Testament, as the good news that
freedom, brotherhood, and equality, once confined only to
Judea and to Greece, and dimly seen even there, was hence-
forth to be the right of all mankind, the law of all society —
who was there to tell me that ? Who is there now to go
forth and tell it to the millions who have suffered, and doubt-
ed, and despaired like me, and turn the hearts of the dis-
obedient to the wisdom of the just, before the great and ter-
rible day of the Lord come ? Again I ask — who will go forth
and preach that Gospel, and save his native land]
But, as I said belbre, I read, and steadily. In the first
place, I, for the first time in my life, studied Shakspeare
throughout ; and found out now the treasure which I had
overlooked. I assure my readers I am not going to give a
lecture on him here, as 1 was minded to have done. Only,
as I am asking questions, who will write us a "People's Com-
mentary on Shakspeare ?"
Then I waded, making copious notes and extracts, through
the whole of Hume, and Hallam's "Middle Ages" and "Con-
stitutional History," and found them barren to my soul. When
(to ask a third and last question) will some man, of the spirit
of Carlyle — one who is not ashamed to acknowledge the in-
tervention of a God, a Providence, even of a devil, in the
affairs of men — arise, and write a "People's History of En-
gland v
Then 1 labored long months at learning French, for the
mere purpose of reading French political economy after my
liberation. But at last in my impatience, I wrote to Sandy
to send me Proudhon and Louis Blanc, on the chance of their
passing the good chaplain's censorship — and behold, they j>ass-
cd ! He had never heard their names ! He was, I suspect
ALTON" LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 27?
utterly ignorant of French, and afraid of exposing his ignorance
by venturing to criticise. As it was, I was allowed peaceable
possession of them till within a few months of my liberation,
with such consequences as may be imagined ; and then, to
his unfeigned terror and horror, he discovered, in some period-
ical, that he had been leaving in my hands books which ad-
vocated " the destruction of property," and therefore, in his
eyes, of all which is moral or sacred in earth and heaven ! I
gave them up without a struggle, so really painful was the
good soul's concern, and the reproaches which he heaped, not
on me — he never reproached me in his life — but on himself,
for having so neglected his duty.
Then I read hard for a few months at physical science — at
Zoology and Botany, and threw it aside again in bitterness of
heart. It was too bitter to be tantalized with the description
of Nature's wondrous forms, and I there a prisoner, between
those four white walls !
Then I set to work to write an autobiography — at least tn
commit to paper in regular order the most striking incidents
and conversations which I could recollect, and which I had
noted down, as they occurred, in my diary. From that source
I have drawn nearly the whole of my history up to this point.
For the rest I must trust to memory — and, indeed, the strange
deeds and sufferings, and yet stranger revelations, of the last
few months, have branded themselves deep enough upon my
brain. I need not hope, or fear, that aught of them should
slip my memory.
So went the weary time. Week after week, month after
month, summer after summer, I scored the days off, like a
lonely schoolboy, on the pages of a calendar ; and day by day
I went to my window, and knelt there, gazing at the gable
and the cedar-tree. That was my only recreation. Some-
times, at first, my eyes used to wander over the wide prospect
of rich lowlands, and farms, and hamlets, and I used to amuse
myself with conjectures about the people who lived in them,
and walked where they liked on God's earth : hut soon I
hated to look at the country ; its perpetual change and pro-
gress mocked the dreary sameness of my dungeon. It was
bitter, maddening, to see the gray boughs grow green with
leaves, and the green fade to autumnal yellow, and the gray
boughs reappear again, and I still there ! The dark, sleeping
fallows bloomed with emerald blades of corn, and then the
corn grew deep and crisp, and blackened before the summer
273 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
breeze, in " waves of shadow," as Mr. Tennyson says in one
of his most exquisite lyrics ; and then the fields grew white to
harvest day by day, and I saw the rows of sheaves rise one
by one, and the carts crawling homeward under their load. I
could almost hear the merry voices of the children round them
— children that could go into the woods, and pick wild flowers,
and I still there ! No — I would look at nothing but the gable,
and the cedar-tree, and the tall cathedral towers ; there was
no change in them — they did not laugh at me.
But she who lived beneath them] Months and seasons
crawled along, and yet no sign or hint of her ! I was forgot-
ten, forsaken ! And yet I gazed, and gazed. I could not
forget her ; I could not forget what she had been to me.
Eden was still there, though I was shut out from it forever :
and so, like a widower over the grave of her he loves, morn-
ing and evening I watched the gable and the cedar-tree.
And my cousin ? Ah, that was the thought, the only
thought, which made my life intolerable ! What might he
not be doing in the mean time] I knew his purpose — 1 knew
his power. True, I had never seen a hint, a glancj, which
could have given him hope ; but he had three whole years to
win her in — three whole years, and I fettered, helpless, absent !
" Fool ! could I have won her if I had been free ] At least,
I would have tried : we would have fought it fairly out, on
even ground ; we would have seen which was the strongest,
respectability and cunning, or the simplicity of genius. But
now !" — And I tore at the bars of the window, and threw
myself on the floor of mv cell, and longed to die.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE NEW CHURCH.
In a poor subm b of the city, which I could see well enough
from my little window, a new Gothic church was building'.
When I first took up my abode in the cell, it was just begun
— the walls had hardly risen above the neighboring sheds and
garden-fences. But month after month I had watched it
growing ; I had seen one window after another filled with
tracery, one buttress after another finished off* with its carved
pinnacle ; then I had watched the skeleton of the roof gradu-
ally clothed in tiling ; and then the glazing of the windows —
some of them painted, I could see, from the iron network
which was placed outside them the same day. Then the
doors were put up — were they going to finish that handsome
tower ? No ; it was left with its wooden cap, I suppose for
further funds. But the nave, and the deep chancel behind
it, were all finished, and surmounted by a cross — and beauti-
ful enough the little sanctuary looked, in the virgin-purity of
its spotless freestone. For eighteen months I watched it
grow before my eyes — and I was still in my cell !
And then there was a grand procession of surplices and
lawn sleeves ; and among them I fancied I distinguished the
old dean's stately figure, and turned my head away, and look-
ed again, and fancied I distinguished another figure — it must
have been mere imagination — the distance was far too great
lor me to identify any one ; but I could not get out of my
head the fancy — say rather, the instinct — that it was my
cousin's; and that it was my cousin whom I saw daily after
that, coming out and going in, when the bell rang to morning
and evening prayers — for there were daily services there, and
saints' day services, and Lent services, and three services on
a Sunday, and six or seven on Good Friday and Easter-day.
The little musical bell above the chancel-arch seemed always
ringing ; and still that figure haunted me like a nightmare,
ever coming in and going out about its priestly calling — and
I still in my cell ! If it should be he ! so close to her ! I
shuddered at the thought; and, just because it was so intoler-
able, it clung to me, and tormented me, and kept me awake
at, nights, till I became utterly nnaVe to study quietly, and
280 ALTON LOCKE, TAiLOR AND POET.
spent hours at the narrow window, watching for the very fig
ure which I loathed to see.
And then a Gothic school-house rose at the church-yard
end, and troops of children poured in and out, and women
came daily for alms : and when the frosts came on, every
morning I saw a crowd, and soup carried away in pitchers,
and clothes and blankets given away ; the giving seemed
endless, boundless ; and I thought of the times of the Roman
Empire and the " sportula," when the poor had got to live
upon the alms of the rich, more and more, year by year — fill
they devoured their own devourers, and the end came ; and
I shuddered. And yet it was a pleasant sight, as every new
church is to the healthy-minded man, let his r - eligious opinions
be what they may. A fresh centre of civilization, mercy,
comfort for weary hearts, relief from frost and hunger; a
fresh centre of instruction, humanizing, disciplining, however
meagre in my eyes, two hundreds of little savage spirits ;
altogether a pleasant sight, even to me there in my cell.
And I used to wonder at the wasted power of the Church —
her almost entire monopoly of the pulpits, the schools, the
alms of England ; and then thank Heaven, somewhat prema-
turely, that she knew and used so little her vast latent power
for the destruction of liberty.
Or for its realization ?
Ay, that is the question ! We shall not see it solved — at
least, I never shall.
But still that figure haunted me ; all through that white.
I saw it, chatting with old women, patting children's heads,
walking to the church with ladies ; sometimes with a tiny,
tripping figure. I did not dare to let myself fancy who that
might be.
December passed, and January came. I had now only two
months more before my deliverance. One day I seemed to
myself to have spent a whole life in that narrow room ; and
the next, the years and mouths seemed short and blank as a
night's sleep on waking ; and there was no salient point in
all my memory, since that last sight of Lillian's smile, and
the faces and the windows whirling round before me as I fell.
At last came a letter from Mackaye. " Ye speired for
news o' your cousin — an' I find he's a neeber o' yours ; ca'd
to a new kirk i' the city o' your captivity — an' na stickit min-
ister he makes, forbye he's ane o' these new Puseyite secta-
rians, to judge by your uncle's report. I met the auld baillit?
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 281
bodie on the street, an' I was gaun to pass him by, but be
was sae fu' o' good news lie could na but stop an' ba' a crack
wi' me on politics ; for we ha' helpit thegither in certain
municipal clanjamfreics o' late. An' he told me your cousin
wins honor fast, an' mun surely die a bishop — puir bairn'
An' besides that, he's gaun be married the spring. I dinna j
mind the leddy's name ; but there's tocber wi' lass o' his, I'll
warrant. He's na laird o' Cockpen, for a penniless lass wi'
a long pedigree."
As I sat meditating over this news — which made the tor-
ment of suspicion and suspense more intolerable than ever —
behold a postscript, added some two days after.
" Oh ! oh ! Sic news ! gran' news ! news to make baith
the ears o' him that heareth it to tingle. God is God, an' no
the deevil after a' ! Louis Philippe is doun ! — doun, doun,
like a dog ! an' the republic's proclaimed, an' the auld villain
here in England, they say, a wanderer an' a beggar. I ha'
sent ye the paper o' the day. PS.— 73, 37, 12. Oh, the
Psalms are lull o't ! Never say the Bible's no true, mair
I've been unco faithless mysel', God forgive me ! I got
grieving to see the wicked in sic prosperity. I did na gang
into the sanctuary eneugh, an' therefore I could na see the
end of these men— how He does take them up suddenly after
all, an' cast them doun : vanish they do, perish, an' come to
a fearful end. Yea, like as a dream when one awaketh, so
shalt thou make their image to vanish out of the city. Oh
but it's a day o' God ! An' yet I'm sair afraid for thae puil
feckless French. I ha' na faith, ye ken, in the Celtic blude
an' its spirit o' lees. The Saxon spirit o' covetize is a grew
some house-fiend, and sae's our Norse speerit o' shifts an
dodges ; but the spirit of lees is warse. Puir lustful Reubeni
that they are ! — unstable as water, they shall not excel
Well, well — after all, there is a God that judgeth the earth
an' when a man kens that, he's learnt eneugh to last him til.
he dies."
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE TOWER OF BABEL.
A glorious people vibrated again
The lightning of the nations; Liberty
From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er France,
Scattering contagious fire into the sky,
Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay;
And in the rapid plumes of song
Clothed itself sublime and strong.
Sublime and strong ? Alas ! not so. An outcast, heart-
less, faithless, and embittered, I went forth from my prison.
But yet Louis Philippe had fallen ! And as I whirled back
to Babylon and want, discontent and discord, my heart was
light, my breath came thick and fierce. The incubus of
France had fallen ; and from land to land, like the beacon-
fire which leapt from peak to peak proclaiming Troy's down-
fall, passed on the glare of burning idols, the crash of falling
anarchies. Was I mad, sinful? Both — and yet neither.
Was I mad and sinful, if on my return to my old haunts,
amid the grasp of loving hands, and the caresses of those who
called me in their honest flattery a martyr and a hero — what
things, as Carlyle says, men will fall down and worship in
their extreme need ! was I mad and sinful, if daring hopes
arose, and desperate words were spoken, and wild eyes read in
wild eyes the thoughts they dare not utter? "Liberty has
risen from the dead, and we too will be free !"
Yes, mad and sinful; therefore are we as we are. Yet
God has forgiven us — perhaps so have those men whose for-
giveness is alone worth having.
Liberty ? And is that word a dream, a lie, the watchword
only of rebellious fiends, as bigots say even now ? Our fore-
fathers spoke not so —
The shadow of her coming fell
On Saxon Alfred's olive-tinctured brow.
Had not freedom, progressive, expanding, descending, been
the glory and the strength of England ? Were Magna
Charta and the Habeas Corpus Act, Hampden's resistance to
ship-money, and the calm, righteous might of 1C88 — were
they all futilities and fallacies ? Ever downward, for seven
\ hundred years, welling from the heaven-watered mountain-
\ peaks of wisdom, had spread the stream of liberty. Tha
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 283
noblo* had gained their charter from John ; the middle classes
from William of Orange : was not the time at hand, when
from •„ Queen, more gentle, charitable, upright, spotless, than
had e rev sat on the throne of England, the working masses in
their turn should gain their Charter?
If it was given, the gift was hers : if it was demanded
to the uttermost, the demand would be made, not on her, but
on those into whose hands her power had passed, the avowed
representatives neither of the Crown nor of the people, but of
the very commercial class which was devouring us.
Such was our dream. Insane and wicked were the passions
which accompanied it ; insane and wicked were the means
we chose; and God in His mercy to us, rather than to Mam-
mon, triumphant in his iniquity, fattening his heart even now
for a spiritual day of slaughter more fearful than any physical
slaughter which we in our folly had prepared for him — God
frustrated them.
We confess our sins. Shall the Chartist alone he excluded
from the promise, i! if we confess our sins, God is faithful and
just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteous-
ness?"
And yet, were there no excuses for us ? I do not say for
myself — an d yet three years of prison might he some excuse for
a soured and harshened spirit — but I will not avail myself of
the excuse; for there were men, stancher Chartists than ever
1 had been — men who had suffered not only imprisonment,
but loss of health and loss of fortune ; men whose influence
with the workmen was far wider than my own, and whose
temptations were therefore all the greater, who manfully and
righteously kept themselves aloof from all those frantic schemes
and now reap their reward, in being acknowledged as (he true
leaders of the artisans, while the mere preachers of .-cation are
scattered to the winds.
But were there no excuses for the mass 1 Was there no
excuse in the spirit with which the English upper classes re-
garded the continental revolutions ] No excuse in the undis-
guised dislike, fear, contempt, which they expressed for that
very sacred name of Liberty, which had been for ages the
pride of England and her laws —
The old laws of England, they
Whose reverend heads with age are gray —
Children of a wiser day —
And whose solemn voice must be
Thine own echo, Liberty !
284 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
for which, according to the latest improvements, is now sub-
stituted a bureaucracy of despotic commissions ? Shame upon
those who sneered at the very name of her to whom they
owed the wealth they idolize ! who cry down Liberty because
God has given it to them in such priceless abundance, bound-
less as the sunshine and the air of heaven, that they are be-
come unconscious of it as of the elements by which they live !
Woe to those who despise the gift of God ! Woe to those
who have turned His grace into a cloak for tyranny; who, like
the Jews of old, have trampled under foot His covenant at the
very moment that they were asserting their exclusive right to
it, and denying His all-embracing love !
And were there no excuses, too, in the very arguments which
nine teen-twentieths of the public press used to deter us from
following the example of the Continent ? If there had been
one word of sympathy with the deep wrongs of France,
Germany, Italy, Hungary — one attempt to discriminate the
righteous and God-inspired desire of freedom, from man's
furious and self-willed perversion of it, we would have listened
to them. But, instead, what was the first, last, cardinal,
crowning argument ? " The cost of sedition !" " B-evolutions
interfered with trade !" and therefore they were damnable !
Interfere with the food and labor of the millions ? The mil-
lions would take the responsibility of that upon themselves.
If the party of order cares so much for the millions, why had
they left them what they are ] No ; it was with the profits of
the few that revolutions interfered ; with the Divine right, not
so much of kings, but of money-making. They hampered
Mammon, the very fiend who is devouring the masses. The
one end and aim of existence was the maintenance of order —
of peace and room to make money in. And therefore Louis's
spies might make France one great inquisition-hell ; German
princelets might sell their country piecemeal to French or
Russian; the Hungarian constitution, almost the counterpart
of our own, might be sacrificed at the will of an idiot or
a villain ; Papal misgovernment might continue to render
Rome a worse den of thieves than even Papal supersti-
tion could have made it without the addition of tyranny ;
but Order must be maintained, for how else could the few
make money out of the labor of the many ? These were their
own arguments. Whether they were likely to conciliate the
workman to the powers that be, by informing him that those
powers were avowedly the priests of the very system which
was crushing him, let the reader judge.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 285
The maintenance of order — of the order of disorder — that f /
was to be the new God before whom the working class'-i
were to bow in spell-bound awe : an idol more despicable)
and empty than even that old divine right of tyrants, newly
applied by some well-meaning but illogical personages, not
merely as of old to hereditary sovereigns, but to Louis Phil-
ippes, usurers, upstarts — why not hereafter to demagogues ?
Blindfold and desperate bigots ! who would actually thus, in
the imbecility of terror, deify that very right of the physically
strongest and cunningest, which, if any thing, is anti-christ
itself. That argument against sedition, the workmen heard ;
and, recollecting 1688, went on their way, such as it was,
unheeding.
One word more, even at the risk of offending many whom I
should be very sorry to offend, and I leave this hateful discussion.
Let it ever be remembered that the working classes considered
themselves deceived, cajoled, by the passers of the Preform
Bill ; that they cherished — whether rightly or wrongly it is
now too late to ask — a deep-rooted grudge against those who
had, as they thought, made their hopes and passions a step-
ping-stone toward their own selfish ends. They were told to
support the Reform Bill, not only on account of its intrinsic
righteousness — which God forbid that I should deny — but
because it was the first of a glorious line of steps toward their
enfranchisement ; and now the very men who told them this,
talked peremptorily of " finality," snowed themselves the most
dogged and careless of conservatives, and pooh-poohed away
every attempt at further enlargement of the sufl'rage. They
were told to support it as the remedy for their own social
miseries; and behold, those miseries were year by year be-
coming deeper, more wide-spread, more hopeless ; their en-
treaties for help and mercy, in 1842, and at other times, had
been lazily laid by unanswered ; and almost the only prac-
tical efforts for their deliverance had been made by a Tory
nobleman, the honored and beloved Lord Ashley. They found
that they had, in helping to pass the Preform Bill, only helped
to give power to the two very classes who crushed them — the
great labor-kings, and the small shopkeepers ; that they had
blindly armed their oppressors with the additional weapon of
an ever-increasing political majority. They had been told,!
too (let that never be forgotten), that in order to carry the
Reform Bill, sedition itself was lawful ; they had seen the
master-manufacturers themselves give the signal for the plug
riots, by stopping their mills. Their vanity, ferocity, sense
236 ALTON LOCKE, TAYLOR AND POET.
of latent and fettered power, pride of numbers, and physical
strength, had been flattered and pampered by those who now
talked only of grape-shot and bayonets. They had heard
the Reform Bill carried by the threats of men of rank and
power, that " Manchester should march upon London." Were
their masters, then, to have a monopoly in sedition, as in every
thing else ? What had been fair in order to compel the Re-
form Bill, must surely be fairer still to compel the fulfillment
of Reform Bill pledges ? And so, imitating the example
of those who they fancied had first used and then deserted
them, they, in their madness, concocted a lebellion, not pri-
marily against the laws and constitution of their land, but
against Mammon — against that accursed system of competi-
tion, slavery of labor, absorption of the small capitalists by
the large ones, and of the workmen by all, which is, and was
and ever will be, their internecine foe. Silly and sanguinary
enough, were their schemes, God knows ! and bootless enough;
had they succeeded ; for nothing flourishes in the revolution-
ary atmosphere but that lowest embodiment of Mammon,
" the black pool of Agio," and its money-gamblers. But the
battle remains still to be fought ; the struggle is internecine ;
only no more with weapons of flesh and blood, but with a
mightier weapon — with that association which is the true
bane of Mammon — the embodiment of brotherhood and love.
We should have known that before the tenth of April 1
Most true, reader — but wrath is blindness. You too, surely,
have read more wisdom than you have practiced yet ; seeing
that you have your Bible, and perhaps, too, Mill's " Political
Economy." Have you perused therein the priceless chapter
"On the probable Futurity of the Laboring Classes'?" If
not, let me give you the reference — vol. ii., p. 315, of the
Second Edition. Read it, thou self-satisfied Mammon, and
perpend ; for it is both a prophecy and a doom !
But, the reader may ask, How did you, with your experi-
ence of the reason, honesty, moderation, to be expected of
mobs, join in a plan which, if it had succeeded, must have
let loose on those "who had" in London, the whole flood of
those " who had not ?"
The reader shall hear. My story may be instructive, as a
type of the feelings of thousands besides me.
It was the night after I had returned from D ; sitting
in. Crossthwaite's little room, I had heard with mingled anx-
iety and delight the plans of my friends. They were about
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 287
to present a monster petition in favor of the Charter ; to ac
company it en ??wsse to the door of the House of Commons ;
and if it was refused admittance — why then, ulterior measures
were the only hope, "And they will refuse it !" said Crossth-
waite ; " they're going, I hear, to revive some old law or
other, that forhids processions within such and such a distance
of the House of Commons. Let them forbid ! To carry arms,
to go in public procession, to present petitions openly, instead
of having them made a humbug of by being laid on the table
unopened, by some careless member — they're our rights, and
we'll have them. There's no use mincing the matter : it's
like the old fable of the fanner and his wheat — if we want it
reaped, we must reap it ourselves. Public opinion, and the
pressure from without, are the only things which have carried
any measure in England for the last twenty years. Neither
Whigs nor Tories deny it ; the governed govern their gov-
ernors — that's the ' ordre du jour' just now — and we'll have
our turn at it ! We'll give those House of Commons oligarchs
— those tools of the squires and the shop-keepers — we'll give
them a taste of pressure from without, that shall make the bar
of the House crack again. And then to be under arms, day
and night, till the Charter's granted !"
" And if it is refused ?"
" Fight ! that's the word, and no other. There's no other
hope. No Charter — No social reforms ! We must give
them ourselves, for no one else will. Look there, and judge
for yourself!"
He pulled a letter out from among his papers, and threw
it across to me.
" What's this V
" That came while you were in jail. There don't want
many words about it. We sent up a memorial to govern-
ment about the army and police clothing. We told 'em
how it was the lowest, most tyrannous, most ill-paid of all
the branches of slop-making ; how men took it only when
they were starved out of every thing else. We entreated
them to have mercy on us — entreated them to interfere
between the merciless contractors, and the poor wretches on
whose flesh and blood contractors, sweaters, and colonels
were all fattening ; and there's the answer we got. Look at
it ; read it ! Again and again I've been minded to placard it
on the walls, that all the world might see the might and the
mercies of the government. Read it ! ' Sorry to say that it
is utterly out of the power of her Majesty's — — 3 to interfere
/
L'88 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
— as the question of wages rests entirely between the contract*
or and the workmen.'"
" He lies!" I said. " If it did, the workmen might put a
pistol to the contractor's head, and say — ' You shall not tempt
the poor, needy, greedy, starving workers to their own destruc-
tion, and the destruction of their class ; you shall not offer
these murderous, poisonous prices. If we saw you offering
our neighbor a glass of laudanum, we would stop you at all risks
— and we will stop you now.' No ! no ! John, the question
don't lie between workmen and contractor, but between
workman and contractor-plus-grape-and-bayonets !"
" Look again. There's worse comes after that. ' If gov-
ernment did interfere, it would not benefit the workman, as
his rate of wages depends entirely on the amount of compe-
tition between the workmen themselves.' Yes, my dear
children, you must eat each other ; we are far too fond
parents to interfere with so delightful an amusement ! Curse
them — sleek, hard-hearted, impotent, do-nothings ! They
confess themselves powerless against competition — powerless
against the very devil that is destroying us, faster and faster
every year ! They can't help us on a single point. They
can't check population ; and if they could, they can't get rid
of the population which exists. They daren't give us a com
prehensive emigration-scheme. They daren't lift a finger to
prevent gluts in the labor-market. They daren't interfere
between slave and slave, between slave and tyrant. They
are cowards, and like cowards they shall fall !"
" Ay — like cowards they shall fall !" I answered ! and
from that moment I was a rebel and a conspirator.
" And will the country join us V
"The cities will; never mind the country. They are too
weak to resist their own tyrants — and they are too weak to
resist us. The country's always driveling in the background.
A country-party's sure to be a party of imbecile bigots. No-
body minds them."
I laughed. "It always was so, John. When Christianity
first spread, it was in the cities — till a pagan, a villager, got
to mean a heathen for ever and ever."
" And so it was in the French revolution ; when Popery
had died out of all the rest of France, the priests and tho
aristocrats still found their dupes in the remote provinces."
" The sign of a dying systsm that, be sure. Woe to Tory-
ism and the Church of England, and every thing else, when
it gets to boasting that its stronghold is still the hearts of the
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND I'OET. 2J*
agricultural poor. It is the cities, John, the cities, where the
light dawns first — where man meets man, and spirit quickens
spirit, and intercourse breeds knowledge, and knowledge sym-
pathy and sympathy enthusiasm, combination, power irresist-
ible ; while the agriculturists remain ignorant, selfish, weak,
because they are isolated from each other. Let the country
go. The towns shall win the Charter for England ! And
then for social reform, sanitary reform, acdile reform, cheap
food, interchange of free labor, liberty, equality, and brother-
hood forever !"
Such was our Babel-tower, whose top should reach to
heaven. To understand the maddening allurement of that
dream, you must have lain, like us, for years in darkness and
the pit. You must have struggled for bread, for lodging, for
cleanliness, for water, for education — for all that makes life\
worth living — and found them becoming, year by year, more
hopelessly impossible, if not to yourself, yet still to the millions
less gifted than yourself ; you must have sat in darkness and
the shadow of death, till you are ready to welcome any ray
of light, even though it should be the glare of a volcano.
N
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A PATRIOT'S REWARD.
I never shall forget one evening's walk, as Crossthwaite
and I strode back together from the Convention. We had
walked on some way arm-in-arm in silence, under the crush-
ing and embittering sense of having something to conceal —
something, which if those who passed us so carelessly in the
street had known — ! It makes a villain and a savage of a
man, that consciousness of a dark, hateful secret. And it
was a hatefnl one ! a dark and desperate necessity, which
Ave tried to call by noble names, that faltered on our lips as
we pronounced them ; for the spirit of God was not in us ;
and instead of bright hope, and the clear fixed lode-star of
duty, weltered in our imaginations a wild possible future of
Umult, and flame, and blood.
" It must be done ! it shall be done ! it will be done !"
burst out John, at last, in that positive, excited tone, which
indicated a half disbelief of his own words. " I've been read-
ing Macerone on street -warfare ; and I see the way as clear
as day."
I ielt nothing but the dogged determination of despair.
"It must be tried, if the worst comes to the worst — but I
have no hope. I read Somerville's answer to that Colonel
Macerone. Ten years ago he showed it was impossible.
We can not stand against artillery ; we have no arms."
"I'll tell you where to buy plenty. There's a man, Pow-
er, or Bower, he's sold hundreds in the last few days ; and ho
understands the matter. He tells us we're certain, sale.
There are hundreds of young men in the government-offices
ready to join, if we do but succeed at first. It all depends on
that. The first hour settles the fate of a revolution."
" If we succeed, yes — the cowardly world will always side
with the conquering party ; and we shall have every pick-
pocket and ruffian in our wake, plundering in the name of
liberty and order."
"Then we'll shoot them like dogs, as the French did!
' Mort au voleurs' shall be the word !"
" Unless they shoot us. The French had a national guard,
who had property to lose, and took care of it. The shop-
keepers here will be all against us; they'll all be sworn in
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 291
special constables, to a man ; and between them and the
soldiers, we shall have three to one upon us."
" Oh ! that Power assures me the soldiers will fraternize.
He says there are three regiments at least have promised sol-
emnly to shoot their officers,' and give up their arms to the
mob."
" Very important, if true — and very scoundrelly, too. I'd
sooner be shot myself by fair fighting, than see officers shot
by cowardly treason."
" Well, it is ugly. I like fair play as well as any man
But it can't be done. There must be a surprise, a coup de
main, as the French say" (poor Crossthwaite was always
quoting French in those days). " Once show our strength —
burst upon the tyrants like a thunderclap ; and then ! —
Men of England, heirs of glory,
Heroes of unwritten story,
Rise, shake off the chains like dew
Which in sleep have fallen on you!
Ye are many, they are few!"
"That's just what I am afraid they are not. Let's go
and find out this man Power, and hear his authority for the
soldier-story. Who knows him ?"
" Why, Mike Kelly and he have been a deal together of
late. Kelly's a true heart, now — a true Irishman — ready
for anything. Those Irish are the boys, after all — though I
don't deny they do bluster and have their way a little too
much in the Convention. But still Ireland's wrongs are
England's. We have the same oppressors. We must make
common cause against the tyrants."
" I wish to Heaven they would just have staid at home,
and ranted on the other side of the water; they had their
own way there, and no Mammonite middle-class to keep
them down ; and yet they never did an atom of good. Their
eloquence is all bombast, and what's more, Crossthwaite,
though there are some fine fellows among them, nine-tenths
are liars — liars in grain, and you know it — "
Crossthwaite turned angrily to me. " Why, you are gel-
ting as reactionary as old Mackaye himself!"
" I am not — and he is not. I am ready to die on a bar-
ricade to-morrow, if it comes to that. I haven't six months'
lease of life — I am going into a consumption; and a bullet
is as easy a death as spitting up my lungs piecemeal. But 1
despise these Irish, because I can't trust them — they can't
trust each other — they can't trust themselves. You know as
292 \LTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
well as I that you can't get common justice done in Ireland,
because you can depend on no man's oath. You know as
well as I, that in Parliament or out, nine out of ten of them
will stick at no lie, even if it has been exposed and refuted
fifty times over, provided it serves the purpose of the moment ;
and I often think, that after all, Mackaye's right, and what's
the matter with Ireland is just that and nothing else — that
from the nobleman in his castle to the beggar on his dunghill,
they are a nation of liars, John Crossthwaite !"
" Sandy's a prejudiced old Scotchman."
" Sandy's a wiser man than you or I, and you know it."
" Oh, I don't deny that ; but he's getting old, and I think
he has been failing in his mind of late."
" I'.m afraid he's failing in his health ; he has never been
the same man since they hooted him down in John-street.
But he hasn't altered in his opinions one jot ; and I'll tell
you what — I believe he's right. I'll die in this matter like
a man, because it's the cause of liberty ; but I've fearful
misgivings about it, just because Irishmen are at the head
of it."
" Of course they are — they have the deepest wrongs ; and
that makes them most earnest in the cause of right. The
sympathy of suffering, as they say themselves, has bound
them to the English working-man against the same oppress-
ors."
" Then let them fight those oppressors at home, and we'll
do the same : that's the true way to show sympathy. Charity
begins at home. They are always crying "Ireland for the
Irish ;" why can't they leave England for the English ?"
" You're envious of O'Connor's power !"
" Say that again, John Crossthwaite, and we part for
.jver!" and I threw off his arm indignantly.
" No — but — don't let's quarrel, my dear old fellow — now,
that perhaps, perhaps we may never meet again — but I can't
bear to hear the Irish abused. They're noble, enthusiastic,
generous fellows. If we English had half as warm hearts,
we shouldn't be as we are now; and O'Connor's a glorious
man, I tell you. Just think of him, the descendant of the
ancient kings, throwing away his rank, his name, all he had
in the world, for the cause of the suffering millions !"
" That's a most aristocratic speech, John," said I, smiling,
in spite of my gloom. " So you keep a leader because he's
descended from ancient kings, do you ? I should prefer him
just because he was not — just because he was a working-
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 293
man, and come of workmen's blood. We shall see ; we shall
see whether he's stanch, after all. To my mind, little
Curly' s worth a great deal more, as far as earnestness goes."
" Oh ! Cuffy's a low-bred, uneducated fellow !"
" Aristocrat again, John !" said I, as we went up-stairs to
Kelly's room ; and Crossthwaite did not answer.
There was so great a hubbub inside Kelly's room, of
English, French, and Irish, all talking at once, that we
knocked at intervals for full five minutes, unheard by the
noisy crew ; and I, in despair, was trying the handle, which
was fast, when, to my astonishment, a heavy blow was struck
on the panel from the inside, and the point of a sharp instru-
ment driven right through, close to my knees, with the ex-
clamation,
" What do you think o' that, now, in a policeman's bread-
basket?"
" I think," answered I, as loud as I dared, and as near the
dangerous door, "if I intended really to use it, I wouldn't
make such a fool's noise about it."
There was a dead silence ; the door was hastily opened,
and Kelly's nose poked out ; while we, in spite of the horrible-
ness of the whole thing, could not help laughing at his face
of terror. Seeing who we were, he welcomed us in at once,
into a miserable apartment, full of pikes and daggers, brand-
ished by some dozen miserable, ragged, half-starved artisans.
Three-fourths, I saw at once, were slop-working tailors. There
was a bloused and bearded Frenchman or two ; but the major-
ity were, as was to have been expected, the oppressed, the
starved, the untaught, the despairing, the insane ; " the danger-
ous classes," which society creates, and then shrinks in horror,
like Frankenstein, from the monster her own clumsy ambition
has created. Thou Frankenstein Mammon ! hast thou not
had warnings enough, either to make thy machines like men,
or stop thy bungling, and let God make them for Himself]
I will not repeat what I heard there. There is many a
frantic ruffian of that night now sitting " in his right mind"
— though not yet " clothed" — waiting for God's deliverance,
rather than his own.
We got Kelly out of the room into the street, and began
inquiring of him the whereabouts of this said Bower, or
Power. "He didn't, know" — the feather-headed Irishman
that he was! — " Faix, by-the-by, he'd forgotten — an' he
went to look for him at the place he tould him, and they
didn't know sich a one there — "
2«4 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
" Oh, oh ! Mr. Power has an alibi, then ? Perhaps an
alias too ?"
'• He didn't know his name rightly. Some said it was
Brown ; but he was a broth of a boy — a thrue people's man.
Bedad, he guv' away arms afthen and afthen to them that
couldn't buy 'em. An' he's as free-spoken — och, but he's put
me into the confidence ! come down the street a bit, and I'll
tellyees. I'll be Lord Lieutenant o' Dublin Castle meself, if
it succades, as shure as there's no snakes in ould Ireland, an'
revenge her wrongs ankle deep in the bhlood o' the Saxon !
Whirroo ! for the marthyred memory o' the three hundred
thousint vargens o' Wexford !"
" Hold your tongue, you ass !" said Crossthwaite, as he
clapped his hand over his mouth, expecting every moment to
find us all three in the Hhadamanthine grasp of a policeman ;
while I stood laughing, as people will, for mere disgust at the
ridiculous which almost always intermingles with the horrible.
At last, out it came —
' : Bedad ! we're going to do it ! London's to be set o' fire
in seventeen places at the same moment, an' I'm to light two
of them to me own self, and make a hollycrust — ay, that's
the word — o' Ireland's scorpions, to sting themselves to death
in circling flame — "
" You would not do such a villainous thing?" cried we, both
at once.
" Bedad ! but I won't harm a hair o' their heads ! Shure,
we'll save the women and childer alive, and run for the fire-
ingins our blessed selves, and then out with the pikes, and
seize the Bank and the Tower —
An' av' I lives, I lives victhorious,
An' av' I dies, my sowl in glory is ;
Love fa — a — are — well !"
I was getting desperate : the whole thing seemed at once
so horrible and so impossible. There must be some villainous
trap at the bottom of it.
" If you don't tell me more about this fellow Power, Mike,''
said I, " I'll blow your brains out on the spot: either you or
he are villains." And I valiantly pulled out my only weapon,
the door-key, and put it to his head.
" Och ! are ye mad, thin ? He's a broth of a boy ; and
I'll tell ye. Shure he knows all about the red-coats, case he's
an arthillery-man himself, and that's the way he's found out
his cran' combustible."
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND l'OET. 29.'j
" Ail artillery-man ?" said John. " He told me he was ;i
writer for the press !"
" Bedad, thin, he's mistaken himself intirely ; for he tould
me with his own mouth. And I'll show ye the thing he sowld
me as is to do it. Shure, it'll set fire to the stones o' the street,
av' ye pour a hit vitriol on it."
"Set fire to stones? I must see that hefore I believe it."
" Shure an' ye shall then. Where'll I buy a bit ? Sorra
a shop is there open this time o' night ; an' troth I forgot the
name o' it intirely ! Toker o' Moses, but here's a bit in my
pocket !"
And out of his tattered coat-tail he lugged a flask of powder
and a lump of some cheap chemical salt, whose name I have,
I am ashamed to say, forgotten.
" You're a pretty fellow to keep such things in the same
pocket with gunpowder !"
" Come along to Mackaye's," said Crossthwaite. " I'll see
to the bottom of this. Be hanged, but I think the fellow's a
cursed mouchard — some government-spy !"
"Spy is he, thin? Och ! the thief o' the world ! I'll stab
him ! I'll murther him ! an' burn the town aftherward, all
the same."
"Unless," said I, "just as you've got your precious com
bustible to blaze off, up he comes from behind the corner and
gives you in charge to a policeman. It's a villainous trap,
you miserable fool, as sure as the moon's in heaven."
" Upon my word, I am afraid it is — and I'm trapped,
too."
" Blood and turf! thin, it's he that I'll trap, thin. There's
two million free and inlightened Irishmen in London, to
uvenge my marthyrdom wi' pikes and baggonets like ravmg
salviges, and blood for blood !"
"Like savages, indeed!" said I to Crossthwaite, "And
pretty savage company we are keeping. Liberty, like poverty,
makes a man acquainted with strange companions !"
" And who's made 'em savages ? Who has left them
savages 1 That the greatest nation of the earth has had Ire-
land in her hands three hundred years — and her people still
t) be savages — if that don't justify a revolution, what does '.'
Why, it's just because these poor brutes are what they are.
that rebellion becomes a sacred duty. It's for them — for such
fools, brutes, as that there, and the millions more like him,
and likely to remain like him, that I've made up my mind to
do or die to-morrow !"
'296 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET
There was a grand half-truth, distorted, misoolored in the
words, that silenced me for the time.
We entered Mackaye's door ; strangely enough at that
time of night, it stood wide open. What could be the
matter ? I heard loud voices in the inner room, and ran
forward calling his name, when, to my astonishment, out
past me rushed a tall man, followed by a steaming kettle,
which, missing him, took full effect on Kelly's chest as he
stood in the entry, filling his shoes with boiling water, and
producing a roar that might have been heard at Temple-bar.
" What's the matter ?"
"Have I hit him ?" said the old man, in a state of unusual
excitement.
" Bedad ! it was the man Power ! the cursed spy ! An'
just as I was going to slate the villain nately, came the
kittle, and kilt me all over!"
" Power ? He's as many names as a pickpocket, and as
many callings, too, I'll warrant. He came sneaking in to
tell me the sogers were a' ready to gie up their arms if I'd
come forward to them to-morrow. So I tauld him, sin' he
was so sure o't, he'd better gang and tak the arms himsei' ;
an' then he let out he'd been a policeman — "
" A policeman !" said both Crossthwaite and Kelly, with
strong expletives.
" A policeman doon in Manchester ; I thought I kenned
his face fra the first. And when the rascal saw he'd let out
too much, he wanted to make out that he'd been a' along a
spy for the Chartists, while he was makin' believe to be a
spy o' the goovernment's. Sae when he came that far, I just
up wi' the het water, and bleezed awa' at him ; an' noo I
maun gang and het some mair, for my drap toddy."
Sandy had a little vitriol in the house, so we took the com-
bustible down into the cellar, and tried it. It blazed up ;
but burnt the stone as much as the reader may expect. We
next tried it on a lump of wood. It just scorched the place
where it lay, and then went out ; leaving poor Kelly perfectly
frantic with rage, terror, and disappointment. He dashed up
stairs, and out into the street, on a wild-goose chase after the
rascal, and we saw no more of him that night.
I relate a simple fact. I am afraid — perhaps, for the pool
workmen's sake, I should say I am glad, that it was not an
unique one. Villains of this kind, both in April and in June,
mixed among the working-men, excited their worst passions
by bloodthirsty declamations and extravagant promises of
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. =297
success, sold them arms ; and then, like the shameless wretch
on whose evidence Cufty and Jones were principally convicted,
hore witness against their own victims, nnblushingly declar-
ing themselves to have been al.' along the tools of the govern-
ment. I entreat all those who disbelieve this apparently
prodigious assertion, to read the evidence given on the trial
of the John-street conspirators, and judge for themselves.
"The petition's filling faster than ever!" said Crossth-
waite, as that evening we returned to Mackaye's little back
room.
" Dirt's plenty," grumbled the old man. who had settled
himself again to his pipe, with his feet on the fender, and his
head half way up the chimney.
"Now or never !" went on Crossthwaite, without minding
him; "Now or never! The manufacturing districts seem
more firm than ever."
"An' words cheap," commented Mackaye, sotto voce.
" Well," I said, " Heaven keep us from the necessity of
ulterior measures ! But what must be, must."
" The government expect it, I can tell you. They're in a
pitiable funk, I hear. One regiment's ordered to Uxbridge
already, because they daren't trust it. They'll find soldiers
are men, I do believe, after all."
" Men they are," said Sandy ; " an' therefore they'll no be
fools eueugh to stan' by an' see ye pu' down a' that is. to build
up ye yourselves dinna yet rightly ken what. Men ? Ay,
and wi' mair common sense in them than some that had
mair opportunities."
" I think I've settled every thing," went on Crossthwaite.
who seemed not to have heard the last speech, "settled every
thing — for poor Katie, I mean. If any thing happens to me,
she has friends at Cork — she thinks so at least — and they'd
get her out to service somewhere — God knows !" And his
face worked fearfully for a minute.
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori !" said I.
" There are twa methods o' fulfilling that saw, I'm think-
in'. Impreemis, to shoot your neebor ; in secundis, to hang
yoursel .
" What do you mean by grumbling at the whole thing in
this way, Mr. Mackaye ? Are you, too, going to shrink back
from The Cause, now that liberty is at the very doors ?"
"Ou, then, I'm stanch eneuch. I ha' laid in my ain stock
o' wepons for the fecht at Armageddon."
r
2D8 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
" You don't mean it? What have you got ?"
" A braw new halter, an' a muckle nail. There's a gran'
tough beam here ayont the ingle, will haud me a' crouse and
cantie, when the time comes."
" What on earth do you mean ?" asked we both together.
"Ha' ye looked into the monster-petition ?"
" Of course we have, and signed it too !"
" Monster ? Ay, ferlie ! Monstrum horrendum, informe,
ingens, cui lumen adeemptum. Desinit in piscem mulier for-
mosa superne. Leeberty, the bonnie lassie, wi' a sealgh's fud
to her! I'll no sign it. I dinna consort wi' shoplifters, an'
idiots, an' suckin' bairns — wi' long nose an' short nose an' pug
nose an seventeen Deuks o' Wellington, let alone a baker's
dizen o' Queens. It's no company, that, for a puir auld patriot !'
"Why, my dear Mackaye," said I, " you know the Reform
Bill petitions were just as bad."
"And the Anti-Corn-law ones too, for that matter," said
Crossthwaite. " You know we can't help accidents ; the
petition will never be looked through."
" It's always been the plan with Whigs and Tories, too !"
" I ken that better than ye, I guess."
" And isn't every thing fair in a good cause ?" said Crossth
waitc. " Desperate men really can't be so dainty."
" Kow lang ha' ye learnit that deil's lee, Johnnie ? Ye
were no o' that mind five year agone, lad. Ha' ye been to
Exeter — a' the while ] A's fair in the cause o' Mammon ;
in the cause o' cheap bread, that means cheap wages ; but in
the cause o' God — wae's me, that ever I suld see this day
ower again ! ower again ! Like the dog to his vomit — just
as it was ten, twenty, fifty years agone ! I'll just ha' a
petition a' alane to mysel' — I, an' a twa or three honest men.
Besides, ye're just eight days ower time wi' it."
" What do you mean V
" Suld ha' sent it in the 1st o' April, an' no the 10th ; a'
fool's-day wud ha' suited wi' it ferlie !"
"Mr. Mackaye," said Crossthwaite, in a passion, "I shall
certainly inform the Convention of your extraordinary lan-
guage !"
■ " Do, laddie ! do, then ! An' tell 'em this, too" — and, as
he rose, his whole face and figure assumed a dignity, an aw-
fulness, which I had never seen before in him — " tell them
lhat ha' driven out and , an' every one that daur
speak a word o' common sense, or common humanity — them
that stone the prophets, an' quench the Spirit o' God, and
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 2M
love a lie, an' them that male' the same — them that think to
bring about the reign o' love an' britherhood wi' pikes an'
vitriol-bottles, murther an' blasphemy — tell 'em than ane o'
fourscore years and mair — ane that has grawn gray in the
people's cause — that sat at the feet o' Cartwright, an' knelt
by the death-bed o' llabbie Burns — ane that cheerit Burdett
as he went to the Tower, an' spent his wee earnings for Hunt
an' Cobbett — ane that beheld the shaking o' the nations in
the ninety-three, and heard the birth-shriek o' a new-born
world — ane that while he Avas yet a callant saw Liberty afar
off, an' seeing her was glad, as for a bonny bride, an' followed
her through the wilderness for threescore weary waeful years
— sends them the last message that e'er he'll send on airth ;
tell' em that they're the slaves o' warse than priests and
kings — the slaves o' their ain lusts an' passions — the slaves o'
every loud-tongued knave an' mountebank that'll pamper
them in their self-conceit ; and that the gude God '11 smite
'em down, and bring 'em to naught, and scatter 'em abroad,
till they repent, an' get clean hearts an' a richt speerit within
them, and learn His lesson that he's been trying to teach 'em
this threescore years — that the cause o' the people is the cause
o' him that made the people ; an' wae to them that talc' the
deevil's tools to do his wark wi' ! Gude guide us ! — What^^
was yon, Alton, laddie ?"
"What?"
" But I saw a spunk o' fire fa' into your bosom ! I've na
faith in siccan heathen omens ; but auld Carlins wud say it's
a sign o' death within the year — save ye from it, my puir
misguidit bairn ! Aiblins a fire-flaught o' my een, it might
be — I've had them unco often the day — "
And he stooped down to the fire, and began to light his
pipe, muttering to himself,
" Saxty years o' madness ! saxty years o' madness ! How
lang, O Lord, before thou bring these puir daft bodies to their
richt mind again ?"
We stood watching him, and interchanging looks — expect
ing something, we knew not what.
Suddenly he sank forward on his knees, with his hands on
the bars of the grate; we rushed forward, and caught him
up. He turned his eyes up to me, speechless, with a ghastly
expression ; one side of his face was all drawn aside — and
helpless as a child, he let us lift him to his bed, and there hei
lay, staring at the ceiling.
Four weary days passed by — it was the night of the ninth
300 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
of April. In the evening of that day his speech returned to
him on a sudden — he seemed uneasy about something, and
several times asked Katie the day of the month.
" Before the tenth — ay, we maun pray for that. I doubt
but I'm ower hearty yet — I canna bide to see the shame o'
that day —
Na — I'll tak' no potions nor pills — gin it were na for scruples
o' conscience, I'd apocartereeze a'thegither, after the manner
o' the ancient philosophers. But it's no' lawful, I misdoubt,
to starve onesel'."
" Here is the doctor," said Katie.
"Doctor? Wha ca'd for doctors? Canst thou adminis-
ter to a mind diseased? Can ye tak' long nose, an' short
nose, an' snub nose, an' seventeen Deuks o' Wellingtons out
o' my puddins 1 Will your castor-oil, an' your calomel, an'
your crolon, do that 1 D'ye ken a medicamentum that'll pit
brains into workmen — ? Non tribus Anticyris ! Tons o'
hellebore — acres o' straitwaistcoats — a hall police-force o'
head-doctors winna do it. Juvat insanire — this their way is
their folly, as auld Benjamin o' Tudela saith of the heathen
Heigho ! ' Forty years lang was he greivit wi' this genera-
tion, an' swore in his wrath that they suldna enter into his
rest.' Pulse ? tongue ? ay, shak' your lugs, an' tak' your fee.
and dinna keep auld folk out o' their graves. Can ye sino- V
The doctor meekly confessed his inability.
" That's pity — or I'd gar ye sing Auld-lang-syne, —
We twa hae paidlit in the burn —
Aweel, aweel, aweel — "
Weary and solemn was that long night, as we sat there,
with the crushing weight of the morrow on our minds, watch-
ing by that death-bed, listening hour after hour to the ram-
bling soliloquies of the old man, as ' he babbled of green
fields ;' yet I verily believe that to all of us, especially to poor
little Katie, the active present interest of tending him, kept
us from going all but mad with anxiety and excitement.
But it was weary work : and yet, too, strangely interesting,
as at times there came scraps of old Scotch love-poetry, con-
trasting sadly with the grim lips that uttered them — hints to
me of some sorrow long since suflered, but never healed. I
had never heard him allude to such an event before but once,
on the first day of our acquaintance.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND l'OET. 301
"I went to the kirk,
My luve sat afore me ;
I trow my twa een
Tauld him a sweet story.
Aye wakin o' —
Wakin aye and weary —
I thocht a' the kirk
Saw me an' my deary.
'Aye wakin o' !' — Do ye think, noo, we sail ha' knowledge in
the next warld o' them we loved on eath 1 I askit that same
o' Rab Burns ance, sitting up a' canty at Tibbie Shiel's in
Meggot Vale, an' he said, puir chiel, he ' didna ken ower well,
we maun bide and see ;' — bide and see — that's the gran' phi-
losophy o' life, after a'. Aiblins folk '11 ken their true freens
there ; an' there '11 be na mair luve coft and sauld for siller —
Gear and tocher is needit nane
F the country whaur my luve is gane.
Gin I had a true freen the noo ! to gang down the wynd, an'
find if it war but an auld Abraham o' a blue-gown, wi' a bit
crowd, or a fizzle-pipe, to play me the Bush aboon Traquair!
Na, na, na ; it's singing the Lord's song in a strange land,
that wad be ; an' I hope the application's no irreverent, for
ane that was rearit amang the hills o' God, an' the trees o'
the forest which He hath planted.
Oh the broom, an' the bonny yellow broom,
The broom o' the Cowden-knowes !
Hech, but she wud lilt that bonnily ! Did ye ever gang
listering saumons by nicht ? Ou, but it's braw sport, wi' the
scars an' the birks a' glowering out blude-red i' the torch-
light, and the bonnie hizzies skelping an' skirling on the
bank There was a gran' leddy, a bonny leddy, cam'
in and talked like an angel o' God to puir auld Sandy, ancnt
the salvation o' his soul. But I tauld her no' to fash hersel'.
It's no my view o' human life, that a man's sent into the
warld just to save his soul, an' creep out again. An' I said
I wad leave the savin' o' my soul to Him that made my soul ;
it was in richt gude keepin' there I'd warrant. An' then she
was unco fleyed when she found I didna baud wi' the Athan-
asian creed An' I tauld her, na' ; if He that died on the cross
was sic a ane as she and I teuk him to be, there was na that
pride nor spite in him, be sure, to send a pure auld sinful,
guideless body to eternal fire, because he didna a'thegither un-
derstand the honor due to His name."
302 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
"Who was this lady?"
He did not seerr. to know ; and Katie had never heard oi
her before — " some district visitor" or other ?
"I sair misdoubt but the auld creeds are in the right anent
Him, after a'. I'd gie muckle to think it — there's na comfort
as it is. Aiblins there might be a wee comfort in that, for a
poor auld worn-out patriot. But it's owcr late to change. I
tauld her that, too, ance. It's ower late to put new wine
into auld bottles. I was unco drawn to the high doctrines
ance, when I was a bit laddie, an' sat in the wee kirk by my
minnie an' my daddie — a richt sterni auld Cameronian sort o'
body he was, too ; but as I grew, and grew, the bed was ower
short for a man to stretch himsel' thereon, an' the plaidie ower
strait for a man to fauld himsel' therein ; and so I had to gang
my gate a' naked in the matter o' formula?, as Maister Tum-
mas has it."
" Ah ! do send for a priest, or a clergyman !" said Katie,
who partly understood his meaning,
" Parson 1 He canna pit new skin on auld scars. Na bit
stickit curate-laddie for me, to gang argumentin' wi' ane that's
auld enough to be his gran'father. When the parsons will
hear me anent God's people, then I'll hear them anent God.
Sae I'm wearing awa, Jean,
To the land o' the leal —
Gin I ever get thither. Katie, here, hauds wi' purgatory, ye
ken ; where souls are burnt clean again — like baccy-pipe —
When Razor-brigg is ower and past,
Every night and alle ;
To Whinny Muir thou comest at last,
And God receive thy sawle.
Gin hosen an' shoon thou gavest nane
Every night and alle ;
The whins shall pike thee intil the banc,
And God receive thy sawle.
Amen. There's mair things aboon, as well as below, than
are dreamt o' in our philosophy. At least, where'er I go, I'll
meet no long-nose, nor short-nose, nor snub-nose patriots there ;
nor puir gowks stealing the deil's tools to do God's wark wi'.
Out among the eternities an' the realities — it's no that dreary
outlook, after a', to find truth an' fact — naught but truth an'
fact — e'en beside the worm that dieth not, and the fire that
is n )t quenched !"
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 303
"God forbid!" said Katie.
"God do whatsoever shall please Him, Katie — an' that's
aye gude, like Himsel'. Shall no the Judge of all the earth
do right — right — right ?"
And murmuring that word of words to himself, over and
over, more and more faintly, he turned slowly over, and seem-
ed to slumber —
Some half-hour passed before we tried to stir him. He
was dead.
And the candles waned gray, and the great light streamed
in through every crack and cranny, and the sun had risen on
the Tenth of April What would be done before that sun
had set ?
What would be done 1 Just what we had the might to
do ; and therefore, according to the formula on which we
were about to act, that mights are rights, just what we had
the right to do — nothing. Futility, absurdity, vanity, and
vexation of spirit. I shall make my next a short chapter.
It is a day to be forgotten — and forgiven.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE TENTH OF APRIL.
And he was gone at last! Kind women, whom his i.n«
known charities had saved from shame, laid him out duly,
and closed his eyes, and bound up that face that never would
beam again with genial humor, those lips that would never
again speak courage and counsel to the sinful, the oppressed-
v the forgotten. And there he lay, the old warrior dead upon
his shield ; worn out by long years of manful toil in The
People's Cause; and, saddest thought of all, by disappoint-
ment in those for whom he spent his soul. True, he was
aged ; no one knew how old. He had said, more than eight v
years ; but we had shortened his life, and we knew it. He
would never see that deliverance for which he had been toil-
ing ever since the days when as a boy he had listened 1o
Tooke and Cartwright, and the patriarchs of the peojile's
freedom. Bitter, bitter, were our thoughts, and bitter were
our tears, as Crossthwaite and 1 stood watching that beloved
face, now in deatli refined to a grandeur, to a youthful sim-
plicity and delicacy, which we had never seen on it before —
calm and strong — the square jaws set firm even in death —
the lower lip still clenched above the upper, as if in a divine
indignation and everlasting protest, even in the grave, against
the devourers of the earth. Yes, he was gone — the old lion,
worn out with many wounds, dead in his cage. Where could
we replace him ? There were gallant men among us, eloquent,
well-read, earnest — men whose names will ring through this
land ere long — men who had been taught wisdom, even as he,
by the sinfulness, the apathy, the ingratitude, as well as by
th<} sufferings of their fellows. But where should we two
find again the learning, the moderation the long experience,
above all the more than woman's tenderness of him whom
we had lost? And at that time, too, of all others! Alas!
we had despised his counsel ; wayward and fierce, we would
have none of his reproof; and now God had withdrawn him
from us ; the righteous was taken away from the evil to come.
For we knew that evil was coming. We felt all along that
we should not succeed. But we were desperate ; and his
death made us more desperate ; still at the moment it drew
us nearer to each otlisr. Yes — we were rudderless upon a
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND 1'OET. 30c
loaiing sea, and all before us blank with lurid blinding mist ;
but still we were together, to live and die ; and as we looked
into each other's eyes, and clasped each other's hands above
the dead man's face, we felt that there was love between us,
as of Jonathan and David, passing the love of woman.
Few words passed. Even our passionate artisan-nature, so
sensitive and voluble in general, in comparison with the cold
reserve of the field-laborer and the gentleman, was hushed in
silent awe between the thought of the past and the thought
of the future. We felt ourselves trembling between two
worlds. We felt that to-morrow must decide our destiny —
and we felt rightly, though little we guessed what that des-
tiny would be !
But it was time to go. We had to prepare for the meet-
ing. We must be at Kennington Common within three
hours at furthest ; and Crossthwaite hurried away, leaving
Katie and me to watch the dead.
And then came across me the thought of another deathbed
— my mother's — How she had lain and lain, while I was
far away — And then I wondered whether she had suffered
much, or faded away at last in a peaceful sleep, as he had —
And then I wondered how her corpse had looked ; and pic-
tured it to myself, lying in the little old room, day after day till
they screwed the coffin down — before I came ! — Cruel ! Did
she look as calm, as grand in death, as he who lay there ?
And as I watched the old man's features, I seemed to trace
in them the strangest likeness to my mother's. The strangest
likeness ! I could not shake it off. It became intense —
miraculous. Was it she, or was it he, who lay there ? I
shook myself and rose. My loins ached, my limbs were heavy,
my brain and eyes swam round. I must be over-fatigued by
excitement and sleeplessness. I would go down-stairs into the
fresh air, and shake it off.
As I came down the passage, a woman, dressed in black,
was standing at the door, speaking to one of the lodgers.
" And he is dead ! Oh, if I had but known sooner that he
was even ill !"
That voice — that figure — surely. I knew them ! — them, at
least, there was no mistaking ! Or was it another phantom
of my disordered brain 1 I pushed forward to the door, and
as I did so she turned, and our eyes met full. It was she —
Lady Ellerton ! sad, worn, transformed by widow's weeds,
but that face was like no other's still. Why did I drop my
eyes and draw back at the first glance like a guilty coward ?
306 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
She beckoned me toward her, went out into the street, and
herself began the conversation, from which I shrank, 1
know not why.
" When did he die ?"
" Just at sunrise this morning. But how came you here
to visit him ? Were you the lady, who. as he said, came to
him a few days since 1"
She did not answer my question. " At sunrise this morn
iug ? A fitting time ibr him to die, before he sees the ruin
and disgrace of those for whom he labored. And you, too, I
hear, are taking your share in this projected madness and
iniquity ?"
"What right have you," I asked, bristling up at a sudden
suspicion that crossed me, " to use such words about me?"
"Recollect," she answered, mildly but firmly, "your con-
duct three years ago at D ."
" What," I said, " was it not proved upon my trial, that I
exerted all my powers, endangered my very life to prevent
outrage in that case V
"It was proved upon your trial," she replied, in a marked
tone ; " but we were informed, and, alas ! from authority only
too good, namely, from that of an ear- witness, of the sanguin-
ary and ferocious language which you were not afraid to use
at the meeting in London, only two nights before the riot."
I turned white with rage and indignation.
"Tell me," I said — "tell me if you have any honor, who
dared forge such an atrocious calumny ! No ! you need not
tell me. I see well enough now. He should have told you
that I exposed myself that night to insult, not by advocating,
but by opposing violence, as I have always done — as I would
now, were not I desperate — hopeless of any other path to
liberty. And as for this coming struggle, have I not written
to my cousin, humiliating as it was to me, to beg him to warn
you all from me, lest — "
I could not finish the sentence.
'• You wrote 1 He has warned us, but he never mentioned
your name. He spoke of his knowledge as having been pick-
ed up by himself at personal risk to his clerical character."
" The risk, I presume, of being known to have actually re-
ceived a letter from a Chartist; but I wrote — on my honor I
wrote — a week ago ; and received no word of answer."
"Is this true?" she asked.
"A man is not likely to deal in useless falsehoods, who
'snows not whether he shall live to see the set of sun !"
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 307
" Then you are implicated in this expected insurrection ?"
" I am implicated," I answered, "with the people; what
they do I shall do. Those who once called themselves tin;
patrons of the tailor-poet, left the mistaken enthusiast, to
languish for three years in prison, without a sign, a hint of
mercy, pity, remembrance. Society has cast me oil'; and, in
casting me oft', it has sent me oft' to my own people, where
I should have staid from the beginning. Now I am at my
post, because I am among my class. If they triumph peace-
fully, I triumph with them. If they need blood to gain theii
rights, be it so. Let the blood be upon the head of those who
refuse, not those who demand. At least, I shall be with my
own people. And if I die, what better thing on earth can
happen to me ?"
" But the law ?" she said.
" Do not talk to me of law ! I know it too well in practice
to be moved by any theories about it. Laws are no law, but
tyranny, when the few make them, in order to oppress the
many by them."
" Oh!" she said, in a voice of passionate earnestness, which
I had never heard from her before, " stop — for God's sake,
stop ! You know not what you are saying — what you are
doiusr. Oh ! that I had met you before — that I had had more
time to speak to poor Mackaye ! Oh ! wait, wait — there is a
deliverance for you! but never in this path — never. And just
while I, and nobler far than I, are longing and struggling to
find the means of telling you your deliverance, you, in the
madness of your haste, are making it impossible !"
There was a wild sincerity in her words — an almost irn
ploring tenderness in her tone.
" So young !" she said ; " so young to be lost thus 1"
I was intensely moved. I felt, I knew that she had a
message for me. I felt that hers was the only intellect in the
world to which I would have submitted mine ; and, for one
moment, all the angel, and all the devil in me wrestled for
the mastery. If I could but have trusted her one mo
rnent No ! all the pride, the spite, the suspicion, the
prejudice of years, rolled back upon me. " An aristocrat !
and she, too, the one who has kept me from Lillian !" And
in my bitterness, not daring to speak the real thought within
me, I answ r ered with a flippant sneer,
" Yes, madam ! like Cordelia, so young, yet so untender !
Thanks to the mercies of the upper classes!"
Did she turn away in indignation ? No, by Heaven '
308 ALTON LOCKL;, TAILOR AND POET.
there was nothing upon her face but the intensest yearning
pity. If she had spoken again, she would have conquered;
but before those perfect lips could open, the thought of
thoughts flashed across me.
" Tell me one thing ! Is my cousin George to be married
to " and I stopped.
" He is."
"And yet," I said, "you wish to turn me back from dying
on a barricade !" And without waiting for a reply, I hurried
down the street in all the fury of despair.
1
I
I have promised to say little about the tenth of April, 101
indeed I have no heart to do so. Every one of Mackaye'a
predictions came true. We had arrayed against us, by oui
own folly, the very physical force to which we had appealed.
The dread of general plunder and outrage by the savages
of London, the national hatred of that French and Irish in-
terference of which we had boasted, armed against us thou-
sands of special constables, who had in the abstract little or
\ no objection to our political opinions. The practical common
sense of England, whatever discontent it might feel with the
existing system, refused to let it be hurled rudely down, on
the mere chance of building up on its ruins something as yet
untried, and even undefined. Above all, the people would
not rise. Whatever sympathy they had with us, they did
not care to show it. And then futility after futility exposed
itself. The meeting which was to have been counted by
hundreds of thousands, numbered hardly its tens of thousands ;
and of them a frightful proportion were of those very rascal-
classes, against whom we ourselves had offered to be sworn
in as special constables. O'Connor's courage failed him after
all. He contrived to be called away, at the critical moment,
by some problematical superintendent of police. Poor Cuffey,
the honestest, if not the wisest, speaker there, leaped off the
wagon, exclaiming that we were all " humbugged and be-
> trayed ;" and the meeting broke up pitiably piecemeal, drench-
ed and cowed, body and soul, by pouring rain on its way
home — for the very heavens mercifully helped to quench our
folly — while the monster-petition crawled ludicrously away in
a hack cab, to be dragged to the floor of the House of Com-
mons amid roars of laughter — " inextinguishable laughter,'"
as of Tennyson's Epicurean Gods.
Careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and their bolts are hurled
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 309
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world.
There they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and liery
sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying
hands.
But they smile, they find a music, centred in a doleful song,
Stearnirig up, a lamentation, and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong ;
Chanted by an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing little yearly dues of wheat, and wine, and oil ;
Till they perish, and they suffer — some, 'tis whispered, down in hell
Suffer endless anguish ! —
Truly — truly, great poets' words are vaster than the singers
themselves suppose !
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE LOWEST DEER
Sullen, disappointed, desperate, I strode along the street!
that evening, careless whither I went. The people's cause
was lost — the Charter a laughing-stock. That the party
which monopolizes wealth, rank, and, as it fancied, educa-
tion and intelligence, should have been driven, degraded, to
appeal to brute force for self-defense — that thought gave mc
a savage joy ; but that it should have conquered by that last,
lowest resource ! That the few should be still stronger than
the many, or the many still too cold-hearted and coward to
face the few — that sickened me. I hated the well-born
young special constables whom I passed, because they would
have fought. I hated the gent and shopkeeper special con
stables, because they would have run away. I hated my
own party, because they had gone too far — because they had
not gone far enough. 1 hated myself, because I had not pro-
duced some marvelous effect — though what that was to
have been I could not tell — and hated myself all the more for
that ignorance.
A group of effeminate shopkeepers passed me, shouting
"God save the Queen!" "Hypocrites!" I cried in my
heart — they mean " God save our shops !" Liars ! They
keep up willingly the useful calumny, that their slaves and
victims are disloyal as well as miserable !
I was utterly abased — no, not utterly ; for my self-contempt
still vented itself — not in forgiveness, but in universal hatred
and defiance. Suddenly I perceived my cousin, laughing and
jesting with a party of fashionable young specials : I shrank
from him ; and yet, I know not why, drew as near him as I
could, unobserved — near enough to catch the words,
" Upon my honor, Locke, I believe you are a Chartist
yourself at heart."
" At least I am no Communist," said he, in a significant
tone. "There is one little bit of real property which I have
no intention of sharing with my neighbors."
" What, the little beauty somewhere near Cavendish-
square ?"
"That's my business."
ALTON LOCKE. TAILOR AND POET. 311
" Whereby you mean that you are on your way to her now ?
Well, I am invited to the wedding, remember."
He pushed on, laughingly, without answering. I followed
him fast — " near Cavendish-square !" — the very part of the
town where Lillian lived ! I had had, as yet, a horror of going
near it ; but now, an intolerable suspicion scourged me for-
ward, and I dogged his steps, hiding behind pillars, and at
the corners of streets, and then running on, till I got sight of
him again. He went through Cavendish-square, up Harley-
street — was it possible 1 I gnashed my teeth at the thought.
But it must be so. He stopped at the dean's house, knocked,
and entered, without parley.
In a minute I was breathless on the door-step, and knocked.
I had no plan, no object, except the wild wish to see my own
despair. I never thought of the chances of being recognized
by the servants, or of any thing else, except of Lillian by my
cousin's side.
The footman came out smiling. " What did I want ?"
« i_l_Mr. Locke."
" Well, you needn't be in such a hurry :" (with a signifi-
cant grin). " Mr. Locke's likely to be busy for a few minutes,
yet, I expect !"
Evidently the man did not know me.
" Tell him that — that a person wishes to speak to him on
particular business." Though I had no more notion what
that business was than the man himself.
" Sit down in the hall."
And I heard the fellow, a moment afterward, gossiping and
laughing with the maids below about "the young couple."
To sit down was impossible ; my only thought was — where
was Lillian ?
Voices in an adjoining room caught my ear. His ! yes —
and hers too — soft and low. What devil prompted me to
turn eavesdropper ; to run headlong into temptation ? I was
close to the dining-room door, but they were wot there — evi-
dently they were in the back room, which, as I knew, opened
into it with folding doors. I — I must confess all. Noiselessly,
with craft like a madman's, I turned the handle, slipped in as
stealthily as a cat — the folding-doors were slightly open. I
had a view of all that passed within. A horrible fascination
seemed to keep my eyes fixed on them, in spite of myself.
Honor, shame, despair, bade me turn away, but in vain.
I saw them. How can I write it ? Yet I will. I saw
them sitting together on the sofa. Their arms were round
611 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
each other. Her head lay upon his hreast ; he hent over hei
with an intense gaze, as of a basilisk, I thought ; how do 1
know that it was not the fierceness of his love ? Who could
have helped loving her ?
Suddenly she raised her head, and looked up in his face —
her eyes brimming with tenderness, her cheeks burning with
mingled delight and modesty — their lips met, and clung togeth-
er It seemed a life — an eternity — before they parted
again. Then the spell was broken, and I rushed from the
room.
Faint, giddy, and blind, I just recollect leaning against the
wall of the staircase. He came hastily out, and started as
he saw me. My face told all.
"What'? Eavesdropping?" he said, in a tone of unuttera-
ble scorn. I answered nothing, but looked stupidly and fixedly
in his face, while he glared at me with that keen, burning,
intolerable eye. I longed to spring at his throat, but that
eye held me as the snake's holds the deer. At last I found
words.
L* "Traitor! every where — in every thing — tricking me —
fl supplanting me — in my friends — in my love!"
" Your love ? Yours 1" And the fixed eye still glared
■''upon me. " Listen, cousin Alton ! The strong and the weak
have been matched for the same prize : and what wonder,
i| if the strong man conquers? Go and ask Lillian !aow she
I likes the thought of being a Communist's love !"
As when, in a nightmare, we try by a desperate effort to
break the spell, I sprang forward, and struck at him ; he put
my hand by carelessly, and felled me bleeding to the ground.
I recollect hardly any thing more, till I found myself thrust
into the street by sneering footmen, and heard them call after
me " Chartist" and " Communist" as I rushed along the pave-
ment, careless where I went.
I strode and staggered on through street after street, run-
ning blindly against passengers, dashing under horses' heads,
heedless of warnings and execrations, till I found myself, I
know not how, on Waterloo Bridge. I had meant to go there
when I left the door. I knew that at least — and now I was
there.
I buried myself in a recess of the bridge, and stared around
and up and down.
I was alone — deserted even by myself. Mother, sister,
friends, love, the idol of my life, were all gone. I could have
borne that. But to be shamed, and know that I deserved
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 313
it ; to be deserted by my own honor, self-respect, strength of
will — who can bear that ?
I could have borne it, had one thing been left. Faith in
my own destiny — the inner hope that God had called me to
do a work for him.
" What drives the Frenchman to suicide ?" I asked my-
self, arguing ever even in the face of death and hell : " His
faith in nothing but his own lusts and pleasures ; and when
they are gone, then comes the pan of charcoal — and all is
ever. What drives the German? His faith in nothing but
his own brain. He has fallen down and worshiped that
miserable ' Ich' of his, and made that, and not God's will,
the centre and root of his philosophy, his poetry, and his self-
idolizing aesthetics ; and when it fails him, then for prussic
acid, and nonentity. Those old Romans, too — why, they are
the very experimentum crucis of suicide ! As long as they
fancied that they had a calling to serve the state, they could
live on and suffer. But when they found no more work left
for them, then they could die — as Portia died — as Cato — as
I ought. What is there left for me to do? outcast, disgraced,
useless, decrepit — "
I looked out over the bridge into the desolate night. Be-
low me the dark moaning river-eddies hurried downward.
The wild west-wind howled past me, and leaped over the
parapet downward. The huge reflection of Saint Paul's, the
great tap-roots of light from lamp and window that shone
upon the lurid stream, pointed down — down — down. A
black wherry shot through the arch beneath me,, still and
smoothly downward. My brain began to whirl madly — I
sprang upon the step. A man rushed past me, clambered on
the parapet, and threw up his arms wildly. A moment
more, and he would have leaped into the stream. The sight
recalled me to my senses — say, rather, it re-awoke in me the
spirit of mankind. I seized him by the arm, tore him down
upon the pavement, and held him, in spite of his frantic
struggles. It was Jemmy Downos ! Gaunt, ragged, sodden,
blear-eyed, driveling, the worn-out gin-drinker stood, his mo-
mentary paroxysm of strength gone, trembling and staggering.
•' Why won't you let a cove die ? Why won't you let a
cove die ? They're all dead — drunk, and poisoned, and
dead! What is there left?" he burst out suddenly in his
old ranting style, " what is there left on earth to live for ?
The prayers of liberty are answerer by the laughter of
tyrants ; her sun is sunk beneath tlr ocean wave, and hei
O
314 ' ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
pipe put out by the raging billows of aristocracy ! Those
starving millions of Kennington Common — where are they ?
Where ? I axes you," he cried fiercely, raising his voice to a
womanish scream, " where are they ?"
" Gone home to bed, like sensible people ; and you had
better go too."
" Bed ? I sold ours a month ago ; but we'll go, Come alon?
and I'll show you my wife and family ; and we'll have a tea
party — Jacob's Island tea. Come along !
Flea, flea, unfortunate flea !
Bereft of his wife and his small family !"
He clutched my arm, and dragging me off toward tht.
Surrey side, turned down Stamford-street.
I followed half perforce ; and the man seemed qwite de-
mented — whether with gin or sorrow I could not tell. As he
strode along the pavement, he kept continually looking back,
with a perplexed terrified air, as if expecting some fearful
object.
" The rats ! the rats ! don't you see 'em coming out of the
gully holes, atween the area railings — dozens and dozens ?"
" No ; I saw none."
" You lie ; I hear their tails whisking ; there's their shiny
hats a glistening, and every one on 'em with peelers' staves !
Quick ! quick ! or they'll have me to the station-house."
" Nonsense !" I said ; " we are free men ! What are the
policemen to us ?"
" You lie !" cried he, with a fearful oath, and a wrench at
my arm which almost threw me down. " Do you call a
sweater's man a free man ?"
"You a sweater's man 1 ?"
" Ay !" with another oath. " My men ran away — folks
said I drank, too ; but here I am ; and 1, that sweated others,
I'm sweated myself — and I'm a slave ! I'm a slave — -a
negro slave, I am, you aristocrat villain !"
*' Mind me, Downes ; if you will go quietly, I will go with
you ; but if you do not let go of my arm, I give you in charge
to the first policeman I meet."
" Oh, don't, don't :" whined the miserable wretch, as he
almost fell on his knees, gin-drinkers' tears running down his
face ; " or I shall be too late. And then the rats '11 get in at
the roof, and up through the floor, and eat 'em all up, and my
work too — the grand new three-pound coat that I've been
stitching at this ten days, for the sum of one hali-crowi>
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 315
sterling — and don't I wish I may see the money % Come on,
quick ; there are the rats, close behind !" And he dashed
across the broad roaring thoroughfare of Bridge-street, and
hurrying almost at a run down Tooley-strcet, plunged into
the wildernesses of Bermondsey.
He stopped at the end of a miserable blind alley, where
a dirty gas-lamp just served to make darkness visible, and
show the patched windows and rickety doorways of the crazy
houses, whose upper stories were lost in a brooding cloud of
fog ; and the pools of stagnant water at our feet ; and the
huge heap of cinders which filled up the waste end of the
alley — a dreary, black, formless mound, on which two or
three spectral dogs prowled up and down after the offal, ap-
pearing and vanishing like dark imps in and out of the black
misty chaos beyond.
The neighborhood was undergoing, as it seemed, ." improve-
ments," of that peculiar metropolitan species which consists
in pulling down the dwellings of the poor, and building up
rich men's houses instead ; and great buildings, within high
temporary palings, had already eaten up half the little
houses ; as the great fish, and the great estates, and the great
shopkeepers, eat up the little ones of their species — by the
law of competition, lately discovered to be the true creator
and preserver of the universe. There they loomed up, the
tall bullies, against the dreary sky, looking down with their
grim, proud, stony visages, on the misery which they were
driving out of one corner, only to accumulate and intensify it
in another.
The house at which we stopped was the last in the row ;
all its companions had been pulled down ; and there it stood,
leaning out with one naked ugly side into the gap, and
stretching out long props, like feeble arms and crutches, to
resist the work of demolition.
A group of slatternly people were in the entry, talking
loudly, and as Downes pushed by them, a woman seized him
by the arm.
" Oh ! you unnatural villain ! — To go away after youi
irink, and leave all them poor dear dead corpses locked up,
without even letting a body go in to stretch them out !"
" And breeding the fever, too, to poison the whole house !"|
growled one.
" The relieving officer's been here, my cove," said another ;
"and he's gone for a peeler and a search warrant to break
open the door. I can tell you !"
31G
ALTON LOCKF.. TAILOR AND POET.
But Downes pushed past unheeding, unlocked a doer at
the end of the passage, thrust me in, locked it again, and
then rushed across the room in chase of two or three rats,
who vanished into cracks and holes.
And what a room ! A low lean-to with wooden walls,
without a single article of furniture ; and through the broad
chinks of the floor shone up as it were ugly glaring eyes,
staring at us. They were the reflections of the rushlight in
\he sewer below. The stench was frightful — the air heavy
with pestilence. The first breath I drew made my heart
sink, and my stomach turn. But I forgot every thing in the
object which lay before me, as Downes tore a half-finished
coat off* three corpses laid side by side on the bare floor.
> There was his little Irish wife ; — dead — and naked — the
r wasted white limbs gleamed in the lurid light ; the unclosed
eyes stared, as if reproachfully, at the husband whose drunk-
enness had brought her there to kill her with the pestilence ;
and on each side of her a little, shriveled, impish, child
corpse — the wretched man had laid their arms round the
dead mother's neck — and there they slept, their hungering
\ and wailing over at last for ever : the rats had been busy al-
ready with them — but what matter to them now ?
I" Look !" he cried ; " I watched 'em dying ! Day aftey
day I saw the devils come up through the cracks, like little
maggots and beetles, and all manner of ugly things, creeping
down their throats ; and I asked 'em, and they said they
were the fever devils."
It was too true ; the poisonous exhalations had killed
them. The wretched man's delirium tremens had given that
horrible substantiality to the poisonous fever gases.
■
•-?/
Suddenly Downes turned on me. almost menacingly.
" Money ! money ! I want some gin !"
I was thoroughly terrified — and there was no shame in
feeling fear, locked up with a madman far rny superior in
size and strength, in so ghastly a place. But the shame, and
the folly too, would have been in giving way to my fear ,
and with a boldness half assumed, half the real fruit of ex-
citement and indignation at the horrors I beheld, I answered —
" If I had money, I would give you none. What do you
want with gin ? Look at the fruits of your accursed tip-
pling. If you had taken my advice, my poor fellow, I went
on, gaining courage as I spoke, " and become a water-drinker,
like me — "
" Curse you and your water-drinkinc; ! If you had had no
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. ju
water to drink or wash with for two years but that — that."
pointing to the ibul ditch below — " If you had emptied the
slops in there with one hand, and filled your kettle with the
other — "
" Do you actually mean that that sewer is your only drink-
ing water ?"
" Where else can we get any ? Every body drinks it ;
and you shall, too — you shall !" he cried, with a fearful oath,
" and then see if you don't run off to the gin-shop, to take
the taste of it out of your mouth. Drink ? and who can
help drinking, with his stomach turned with such hell-broth
as that — or such a hell's blast as this air is here, ready to
vomit from morning till night with the smells? I'll show
you. You shall drink a bucket full of it, as sure as you live,
you shall."
And he ran out of the back door, upon a little balcony,
which hung over the ditch.
I tried the door, but the key was gone, and the handle too.
I beat furiously on it, and called for help. Two grufl
authoritative voices were heard in the passage.
'• Let us in ; I'm the policeman !"
" Let me out, or mischief will happen !"
The policeman made a vigorous thrust at the crazy door ;
and just as it burst open, and the light of his lantern streamed
into the horrible den, a heavy splash was heard outside.
" He has fallen into the ditch !"
"He'll be drowned, then, as sure as he's a born man,"
shouted one of the crowd behind.
We rushed out on the balcony. The light of the police^!
man's lantern glared over the ghastly scene — along the double 1
row of miserable house-backs, which lined the sides of the open
tidal ditch — over strange rambling jetties, and balconies, and
sleeping sheds, which hung on rotting piles over the black
waters, with phosphorescent scraps of rotten fish gleaming
and twinkling out of the dark hollows, like devilish gravelights
— over bubbles of poisonous gas, and bloated carcases of dogs,
and lumps of offal, floating on the stagnant olive-green hell-
broth — over the slow sullen rows of oily ripple which were
dying away into the darkness far beyond, sending up, as they
stirred, hot breaths of miasma — the only sign that a spark ot
humanity, after years of foul life, had quenched itself at lasl^.
in that foul death. I almost fancied that I could see the
haggard face staring up at me through the slimy water ; but
no — it was as opaque as stone.
3\ii ALTON LOCKE. TAILOR AND POET.
I shuddered and went in again, to see slatternly gin-smell-
.ng women stripping off their clothes — true women even there
— to cover the poor naked corpses ; and pointing to the
bruises which told a tale of long tyranny and cruelty ; and
mingling their lamentations with stories of shrieks and beat-
ing, and children locked up for hours to starve ; and the men
looked on sullenly, as if they too were guilty, or rushed out to
relieve themselves by helping to find the drowned body.
Ugh ! it was the very mouth of hell, that room. And in the
midst of all the rout, the relieving officer stood impassive, jot-
ing down scraps of information, and warning us to appear the
next day, to state what we knew before the magistrates.
Needless hypocrisy of law ! Too careless to save the woman
and children from brutal tyranny, nakedness, starvation ! —
Too superstitious to offend its idol of vested interests, by pro-
tecting the poor man against his tyrants, the house-owning
shopkeepers under whose greed the dwellings of the poor be-
come nests of filth and pestilence, drunkenness and degrada-
tion. Careless, superstitious, imbecile law ! — leaving the
victims to die unhelped, and then, when the fever and the
tyranny has done its work, in thy sanctimonious prudishness,
drugging thy repectable conscience by a "searching inquiry"
as to how it all happened — lest, forsooth, there should have
been " foul play !" Is the knife or the bludgeon, then, the
only foul play, and not the cesspool and the curse of Rab-
shakeh ? Go through Bermondsey or Spitalfields, St. Giles's
or Lambeth, and see if there is not foul play enough already —
to be tried hereafter at a more awful coroner's inquest than
thou thinkest of !
CHAPTER XXXVI.
DREAM LAND.
It must have been two o'clock in the the morning before
I reached my lodgings. Too much exhausted to think, I hur-
ried to my bed. I remember now that I reeled strangely as
[ went up-stairs. I lay down, and was asleep in an instant.
How long I had slept I know not, when I awoke with a
strange confusion and whirling in my brain, and an intolera-
ble weight and pain about my back and loins. By the light
of the gas-lamp I saw a figure standing at the foot of my bed.
I could not discern the face, but I knew instinctively that it
was my mother. I called to her again and again, but she
did not answer. She moved slowly away, and passed out
through the wall of the room.
I tried to follow her, but could not. An enormous, unut-
terable weight seemed to lie upon me. The bed-clothes grew |
and grew before me, and upon me, into a vast mountain, mil
lions of miles in height. Then it seemed all glowing red, like
the cone of a volcano. I heard the roaring of the fires with-
in, the rattling of the cinders down the heaving slope. A
river ran from its summit ; and up that river-bed it seemed I
was doomed to climb and climb forever, millions and millions
of miles upwards, against the rushing stream. The thought
was intolerable, and I shrieked aloud. A raging thirst had
seized me. I tried to drink the river-water, but it was boil-
ing hot — sulphureous — reeking of putrefaction. Suddenly I
fancied that I could pass round the foot of the mountain ;
and jumbling, as madmen will, the sublime and the ridiculous,
I sprang up to go round the foot of my bed, which was the
mountain.
I recollect lying on the floor. I recollect the people of the
house, who had been awoke by my shriek and my fall, rush-
ing in and calling to me. I could not rise or answer. I
recollect a doctor ; and talk about brain fever and delirium.
It was true. I was in a raging fever. And my fancy long
pent-up and crushed by circumstances, burst out in uncontroll-
able wildness, and swept my other faculties with it helpless
away, over all heaven and earth, presenting to me, as in a
vast kaleidoscope, fantaslic symbols of all I had ever thought,
or read, or felt.
320 ALTON LOCKE, TAILGR AND POET.
That fancy of the mountain returned ; hut I had climbed
't now. I was wandering along the lower ridge of the Him-
alaya. On my right the line of snow peaks showed like a
rosy saw against the clear blue morning sky. Raspberries
and cyclamens were peeping through the snow around me.
As I looked down the abysses, I could see far below, through
the thin vails of blue mist that wandered in the glens, the
silver spires of giant deodars, and huge rhododendrons that
glowed like trees of flame. The longing of my life to behold
that cradle of mankind was satisfied. My eyes reveled in vast-
ness, as they swept over the broad, flat jungle at the mount-
ain foot, a desolate sheet of dark gigantic grasses, furrowed
with the paths of the buffalo and rhinoceros, with barren
sandy water courses, desolate pools, and here and there a
single tree, stunted with malaria, shattered by mountain
floods ; and far beyond, the vast plains of Hindoostan, enlaced
with myriad silver rivers and canals, tanks and rice-fields,
cities with their mosques and minarets, gleaming among the
stately palm-groves along the boundless horizon. Above me
was a Hindoo temple, cut out of the yellow sandstone. I
climbed up to the higher tier of pillars among monstrous
shapes of gods and fiends, that mouthed and writhed and
mocked at me, struggling to free themselves from their bed
of rock. The bull Nundi rose and tried to gore me ; hundred-
handed gods brandished quoits and sabres round my head ;
and Kali dropped the skull from her gore-dripping jaws, to
clutch me for her prey. Then my mother came, and seizing
the pillars of the portico, bent them like reeds : an earthquake
shook the hills — great sheets of woodland slid roaring and
crashing into the valleys — a tornado swept through the tem-
ple halls, which rocked and tossed like a vessel in a storm :
a crash — a cloud of yellow dust which filled the air — choked
me — blinded me — buried me —
And Eleanor came by, and took my soul in the palm of her
hand, as the angels did Faust's, and carried it to a cavern by
the sea-side, and dropped it in ; and I fell and fell for ages.
And all the velvet mosses, rock flowers, and sparkling spars
and ores, fell with me, round me, in showers of diamonds,
whirlwinds of emerald and ruby, and pattered into the sea
that moaned below, and were quenched ; and the light lessen-
ed above me to one small spark, and vanished; and I was in
darkness, and turned again to my dust
And I was at the lowest point of created life ; a madrepora
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND l'OLl. »2i
rooted to the rock, fathoms below the tide-mark ; and worst
of all, my individuality was gone. I was not one thing, hut
many things — a crowd of innumerable polypi ; and I grew
and grew, and the more I grew the more I divided, and mul-
tiplied thousand and ten thousand-fold. If I could have
thought, I should have gone mad at it ; but I could only
feel.
And I heard Eleanor and Lillian talking, as they floated
past me through the deep, for they were two angels ; and
Lillian said, " When will he be one again ?"
And Eleanor said, " He who falls from the golden ladder
must climb through ages to its top. He who tears himself in
pieces by his lusts, ages only can make him one again. The
madrepore shall become a shell, and the shell a fish, and the
fish a bird, and the bird a beast ; and then he shall become a
man again, and see the glory of the latter days."
And I was a soft crab, under a stone on the sea-shore.
With infinite starvation, and struggling, and kicking, I had
got rid of my armor, shield by shield, and joint by joint, and
cowered, naked and pitiable, in the dark, among dead shells
and ooze. Suddeidy the stone was turned up ; and there was
my cousin's hated face laughing at me, and pointing me out
to Lillian. She laughed too, as I looked up, sneaking,
ashamed, and defenseless, and squared up at him with my
soft, useless claws. Why should she not laugh? Are not
crabs, and toads, and monkeys, and a hundred other strange
forms of animal life, jests of nature — embodiments of a divine
humor, at which men are meant to laugh and be merry ?
But alas ! my cousin, as he turned away, thrust the stone
back with his foot, and squelched me flat
And I was a remora, weak and helpless, till I could attach
myself to some living thing ; and then I had power to stop
the largest ship. And Lillian was a flying-fish, and skimmed
over the crests of the waves on gauzy wings. And my cousin
was a huge shark, rushing after her, greedy and open-mouthed ;
and I saw her danger, and clung to him, and held him back;
and just as I had stopped him, she turned and swam back
into his open jaws
Sand — sand — nothing but sand ! The air was full of sand,
drifting over granite temples, and painted kings and triumphs,
and the skulls of a former world ; and I was an ostrich, flying
madly before the simoon wind, and the giant sand pillars,
which stalked across the plains, hunting me down. And
o*
322 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
Lillian was an Amazon queen, beautiful, and cold, and cruel,
and she rode upon a charmed horse, and carried behind her on
her saddle a spotted ounce, which was my cousin ; and, when
I came near her, she made him leap down and course me.
And we ran for miles and for days through the interminable
sand, till he sprung on me, and dragged me down. And as I
lay quivering and dying, she reined in her horse above me,
and looked down on me with beautiful, pitiless eyes ; and a
wild Arab tore the plumes from my wings, and she took them
and wreathed them in her golden hair. The broad and blood-
red sun sank down beneath the sand, and the horse and the
Amazon and the ostrich plumes shone blood-red in his lurid
rays
1 was a mylodon among South American forests — a vast
sleepy mass, my elephantine limbs and yard-long talons con-
trasting strangely with the little meek rabbit's head, furnished
with a poor dozen of clumsy grinders, and a very small kernel
of brains, whose highest consciousness was the enjoyment of
muscular strength. Where I had picked up the sensation
which my dreams realized for me, I know not : my waking
life, alas! had never given me experience of it. Has the
mind power of creating sensations for itself? Surely it does
so, in 1>hose delicious dreams about flying which haunt us pool
wingless mortals, which would seem to give my namesake's
philosophy the lie. However that may be, intense and new
was the animal delight, to plant my hinder claws at some
tree-foot deep into the black, rotting, vegetable-mould which
steamed rich gases up wherever it was pierced, and clasp my
huge arms round the stem of some palm or tree-fern ; anu
then slowly bring my enormous weight and muscle to bear
upon it, till the stem bent like a withe, and the laced banc
cracked, and the fibres groaned and shrieked, and the roots
sprung up out of the soil ; and then, with a slow circular
wrench, the whole tree was twisted bodily out of the ground,
and the maddening tenison of my muscles suddenly relaxed,
and I sank sleepily down upon the turf, to browse upon the
crisp, tart foliage, and fall asleep in the glare of sunshine
which streamed through the new gap in the green forest roof.
Much as I had envied the strong, I had never before suspect-
ed the delight of mere physical exertion. I now understood
the wild gambols of the dog, and the madness which mah.es
the horse gallop and strain onward till he drops and dxis.
They fulfill their nature, as I was doing, and in that is
always happiness.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. 32'.
But I did more — whether from mere animal destructive-
ness, or from the spark of humanity which was slowly re-
kindling in me, I began to delight in tearing up trees, for its
own sake. I tried my strength daily on thicker and thicker
boles. I crawled up to the high palm-tops, and bowed them
down by my weight. My path through the forest was mark-
ed, like that of a tornado, by snapped and prostrate stems
and withering branches. Had I been a few degrees more
human, I might have expected a retribution for my sin. I
had fractured my own skull three or four times already. I
used often to pass the carcasses of my race, killed, as geolo-
gists now find them, by the fall of the trees they had over-
thrown; but still 1 went on, more and more reckless, a slave,
like many a so-called man, to the mere sense of power.
One day I wandered to the margin of the woods, and
climbing a tree, surveyed a prospect new to me. For miles
and miles, away to the white line of the smoking Cordillera,
stretched a low rolling plain ; one vast thistle bed, the down
of which flew in gray gauzy clouds before a soft fitful breeze ;
innumerable finches fluttered and pecked above it, and bent
the countless flower-heads. Far away, one tall tree rose
above the level thistle-ocean. A strange longing seized me
to go and tear it down. The forest leaves seemed tasteless ;
my stomach sickened at them ; nothing but that tree would
satisfy me : and descending, I slowly brushed my way, with
half-shut eyes, through the tall thistles which buried even my
bulk.
At last, after days of painful crawling, I dragged my un-
wieldiness to the tree-foot Around it the plain was bare,
and scored by burrows and heaps of earth, among which
gold, some in dust, some in great knots and ingots, sparkled
every where in the sun, in fearful contrast to the skulls and
bones which lay bleaching round. Some were human, some
were those of vast and monstrous beasts. I knew (one knows
every thing in dreams) that they had been slain by the wing-
ed ants, as large as panthers, who snuffed and watched
around over the magic treasure. Of them I felt no fear ;
and they seemed not to perceive me, as I crawled, with
greedy, hunger-sharpened eyes, up to the foot of the tree. It
seemed miles in height. Its stem was bare and polished like
a palm's, and above a vast feathery crown of dark green vel-
vet slept in the still sunlight. But, wonder of wonders '
from among the branches hung great sea-green lilies, and,
nestled in the heart of each of them, the bust of a beautiful
3C4 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
girl. Their white bosoms and shoulders gleamed losy-white
against the emerald petals, like conch-shells half-hidden among
sea-weeds, while their delicate waists melted mysteriously into
the central sanctuary of the flower. Their long arms and
golden tresses waved languishingly downward in the breeze ;
their eyes glittered like diamonds ; their breaths perfumed
the air. A blind ecstasy seized me — I awoke again to hu-
manity, and fiercely clasping the tree, shook and tore at it, in
the blind hope of bringing nearer to me the magic beauties
above : for 1 knew that I was in the famous land of Wak-
Wak, from which the Eastern merchants used to pluck those
flower-born beauties, and bring them home to fill the harems
of the Indian kings. Suddenly I heard a rustling in the
thistles behind me, and looking round, saw again that dreaded
face — my cousin !
He was dressed — strange jumble that dreams are ! like an
American backwoodsman. He carried the same revolver and
bowie-knife which he had showed me the fatal night that he
intruded on the Chartist club. I shook with terror, but he,
too, did not see me. He threw himself on his knees, and
began fiercely digging and scraping for the gold.
The winged ants rushed on him, but he looked up, and
" held them with his glittering eye," and they shrank back
abashed into the thistle covert ; while I strained and tugged
on, and the faces of the dryads above grew sadder and older,
and their tears fell on me like a fragrant rain.
Suddenly the tree-bole cracked — it was tottering. I looked
round, and saw that my cousin knelt directly in the path of
its fall. I tried to call to him to move ; but how could a
poor edentate like myself articulate a word 1 T tried to catch
his attention by signs — he would not see. I tried, convul-
sively, to hold the tree up, but it was too late, a sudden gust
of air swept by, and down it rushed, with a roar like a whirl-
wind, and leaving my cousin untouched, struck me full across
the loins, broke my backbone, and pinned me to the ground
in mortal agony. I heard one wild shriek rise from the flower
fairies, as they fell each from the lily cup, no longer of full
human size, but withered, shriveled, diminished a thousand-
fold, and lay on the bare sand, like little rosy humming-birds'
e<T<js, all crushed and dead.
or* *
The great blue heaven above me spoke, and cried, "Selfish
and sense-bound ! thou hast murdered beauty !"
The sighing thistle-ocean answered, and murmured, " Dis
contented ! thou hast murdered beauty !"
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AM) POET. X-:
One flower fairy alone lifted up her tiny cheelc from the
gold-strewn sand, and cried, <; Presumptuous ! thou has mur-
dered beauty !"
It was Lillian's face — Lillian's voice ! My cousin heard it
too, and turned eagerly ; and as my eyes closed in the last death-
shiver, I saw him coolly pick up the little beautiful figure,
which looked like a fragment of some exquisite cameo, and
deliberately put it away in his cigar-case, as he said to him-
self " A charming tit-bit for me, when I return from the dig-
"mjrs !
When I awoke again, I was a baby-ape in Borneon forests,
perched among fragrant trailers and fantastic orchis flowers ;
and as I looked down, beneath the green roof, into the clear
waters paved with unknown water-lilies on which the sun
had never shone, I saw my face reflected in the pool — a mel-
ancholy, thoughtful countenance, with large projecting brow —
it might have been a negro child's. And I felt stirring in me
germs of a new and higher consciousness — yearnings of love
toward the mother ape, who fed me and carried me from tree
to tree. But I grew and grew ; and then the weight of my
destiny fell upon me. I saw year by year my brow recede,
my neck enlarge, my jaw protrude ; my teeth became tusks ;
skinny wattles grew from my cheeks — the animal faculties in
me were swallowing up the intellectual. I watched in my-
self, with stupid self-disgust, the fearful degradation which
goes on from youth to age in all the monkey race, especially
in those which approach nearest to the human form. Long
melancholy mopings, fruitless strugglings to think, were peri-
odically succeeded by wild frenzies, agonies of lust and aim-
less ferocity. I flew upon my brother apes, and was driven
oft' with wounds. I rushed howling down into the village
gardens, destroying every thing I met. I caught the birds
and insects, and tore them to pieces with savage glee. One
day, as I sat among the boughs, I saw Lillian coming along
a flowery path — decked as Eve might have been, the day she
turned from Paradise. The skins of gorgeous birds were
round her waist ; her hair was wreathed with fragrant tropic
flowers. On her bosom lay a baby — it was my cousin's. I
knew her, and hated her. The madness came upon me. I
longed to leap from the bough and tear her limb from limb ;
but brutal terror, the dread of man which is the doom of beasts,
kept me rooted to my place. Then my cousin came — a hunter
missionary ; and I heard him talk to her with pride of tha
new world of civilization and Christianity which he was organ-
326 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
izing in that tropic "wilderness. I listened with a dim jealous
understanding — not of the words, but of the facts. I saw
them instinctively, as in a dream. She pointed up to me in
terror and disgust, as I sat gnashing and gibbering overhead.
He threw up the muzzle of his rifle carelessly, and fired — 1
fell dead, but conscious still. I knew that my carcase was
carried to the settlement ; and I watched while a smirking,
chuckling surgeon, dissected me, bone by bone, and nerve by
nerve. And as he was fingering at my heart, and discoursing
sneeringly about Van Helmont's dreams of the Archaeus, and
the animal spii-it which dwells within the solar plexus, Elea-
nor glided by again, like an angel, and threw my soul out ol
the knot of nerves, with one velvet finger-tip
Child-dreams — more vague and fragmentary than my ani-
mal ones ; and yet more calm and simple, and gradually, as
they led me onward through a new life, ripening into detail,
coherence, and reflection. Dreams of a hut among the valleys
of Thibet — the young of forest animals, wild cats, and dogs,
and fowls, brought home to be my playmates, and grow up
tame around me. Snow-peaks which glittered white against
the nightly sky, barring in the horizon of the narrow valley,
and yet seeming to beckon upward, outward. Strange un-
spoken aspirations — instincts which pointed to unfulfilled pow-
ers, a mighty destiny. A sense, awful and yet cheering, of a
wonder and a majesty, a presence and a voice around, in the
cliff's and the pine forests, and the great blue rainless heaven.
The music of loving voices, the sacred names of child and
father, mother, brother, sister, first of all inspirations. Had
we not an All-Father, whose eyes looked down upon us from
among those stars above ; whose hand upheld the mountain
roots below us ? Did He not love us, too, even as we loved
each other ?
The noise of wheels crushing slowly through meadows of
tall marigolds and asters, orchises and fragrant lilies. I lay,
a child, upon a woman's bosom. Was she my mother, or
Eleanor, or Lillian ? Or was she neither, and yet all — some
ideal of the great Arian tribe, containing in herself all future
types of European women ? So I slept and woke, and slept
again, day after day, week after week, in the lazy bullock-
wagon, among herds of gray-cattle, guarded by huge lop-eared
mastiffs ; among shaggy white horses, heavy-homed sheep, and
silky goats ; among tall bare-limbed men, with stone axes on
their shoulders, and horn bows at their backs. Westward,
through the boundless steppes, whither or why we knew not;
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 327
but that the All-Father had sent us forth. And behind ub,
the rosy snow peaks died into ghastly gray, lower and lower
as every evening came ; and before us the plains spread infi-
nite, with gleaming salt-lakes, and ever fresh tribes of gaudy
flowers. Behind us dark lines of living beings streamed down
the mountain slopes ; around us dark lines crawled along the
plains — all westward, westward ever — the tribes of the Holy
Mountain poured out like water to replenish the earth and
subdue it — lava streams from the crater of that great soul-
volcano — Titan babies, dumb angels of God, bearing with
them in their unconscious pregnancy, the law, the freedom,
the science, the poetry, the Christianity, of Europe and the
world.
Westward ever — who could stand against us ? We met the
wild asses on the steppe, and tamed them, and made them
our slaves. We slew the bison herds, and swam broad rivers
on their skins. The Python snake lay across our path ; the
wolves and the wild dogs snarled at us out of their coverts ;
we slew them and went on. The forest rose in black tangled
barriers; we hewed our way through them and went on.
Strange giant tribes met us, and eagle-visaged hordes, fierce
and foolish ; we smote them hip and thigh, and went on,
westward ever. Days and weeks and months rolled on, and
our wheels rolled on with them. New Alps rose up before us ;
we climbed and climbed them, till, in lonely glens, th«3 mount-
ain walls stood up and barred our path.
Then one arose and said, " Pvocks are strong, but the All-
Father is stronger. Let us pray to him to send the earth-
quakes, and blast the mountains asunder."
So we sat down and prayed, but the earthquake did not
rome.
Then another arose and said, " Rocks are strong, but the
All-Father is stronger. If we are the children of the All-
Father, we, too, are stronger than the rocks. Let us portion
out the valley, to every man an equal plot of ground ; and
bring out the sacred seeds, and sow, and build, and come
up with me and bore the mountain."
And all said, " It is the voice of God. We will go up with
thee, and bore the mountain ; and thou shalt be our king, for
thou art wisest, and the spirit of the All-Father is on thee ;
and whosoever will not go up with thee shall die as a coward
and an idler."
So we went up ; and in the morning we bored the mount
ain, and at night we came down and tilled the ground, and
328 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
sowed wheat and barley, and planted orchards. And in the
upper glens we met the mining dwarfs, and saw their tools
of iron and copper, and their rock-houses and forges, and envied
them. But they would give us none of them : then our king
Baid,
" The All-Father has given all things and all wisdom.
Woe to him who keeps them to himself: Ave will teach you
to sow the sacred seeds ; and do you teach us your smith-work,
or you die."
Then the dwarfs taught us smith- work ; and we loved them,
for they were wise ; and they married our sons and daughters ;
and we went on boring the mountain.
Then some of us arose and said, ,: We are stronger than
our brethren, and can till more ground than they. Give us a
greater portion of land, to each according to his power."
But the king said, " Wherefore ? that ye may eat and drink
more than your brethren ? Have you larger stomachs, as well
as stronger arms ? As much as a man needs for himself,
that he may do for himself. The rest is the gift of the All-
Father, and we must do his work therewith. For the sake
of the women and the children, for the sake of the sick and
the aged, let him that is stronger go up and work the
harder at the mountain." And all men said, "It is well
spoken."
So we were all equal — for none took more than he needed :
and we were all free, because we loved to obey the king by
whom the spirit spoke ; and we were all brothers, because we
had one work, and one hope, and one All-Father.
But I grew up to be a man ; and twenty years were passed,
and the mountain was not bored through; and the king grew
old, and men began to love their flocks and herds better than
quarrying, and they gave up boring through the mountain.
And the strong and the cunning said, " What can we do with
all this might of ours V So. because they had no other way
of employing it, they turned it against each other, and swal-
lowed up the heritage of the weak : and a few grew rich, and
many poor; and the valley was filled with sorrow, for the
land became too narrow for them.
Then I arose and said, " How is this ?" And they said.
"We must make provision for our children."
And I answered, "The All-Father meant neither you nor
your children to devour your brethren. Why do you not
break up more waste ground ? Why do you not try to grow
more corn in your fields ?"
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 329
And they answered, " We till the ground as our forefathers
did • we will keep to the old traditions."
And I answered, " Oh ye hypocrites ! have ye not forgotten
the old traditions, that each man should have his equal share
of ground, and that we should go on working at the mountain,
for the sake of the weak and the children, the fatherless and
the widow?"
And they answered naught for a while.
Then one said, "Are we not hetter off as we are ? We buy
the poor man's ground for a price, and we pay him his wages
for tilling it for us — and we know better how to manage it
than he."
And I said, "Oh ye hypocrites ! See how your lie works!
Those who were free are now slaves. Those who had peace
of mind are now anxious from day to day for their daily bread.
And the multitude gets poorer and poorer, while ye grow fat-
ter and fatter. If ye had gone on boring the mountain, yo
would have had no time to eat up your brethren."
Then they laughed and said, "Thou art a singer of songs,
and a dreamer of dreams. Let those who want to get through
the mountain go up and bore it ; we are well enough here.
Come now, sing us pleasant songs, and talk no more foolish
dreams, and we will reward thee."
Then they brought out a vailed maiden, and said, "Look !
her feet are like ivory, and her hair like threads of gold ; and
she is the sweetest singer in the whole valley. And she shall
be thine, if thou wilt be like other people, and prophesy smooth
things unto us, and torment us no more with talk about lib-
erty, equality, and brotherhood ; for they never were, and never
will be, on this earth. Living is too hard work to give in to
such fancies."
And when the maiden's vail was lifted, it was Lillian.
And she clasped me round the neck, and cried, "Come! I
will be your bride, and you shall be rich and powerful ; and
all men shall speak well of you, and you shall write songs, and
we will sing them together, and feast and play from dawn to
dawn.
And I wept ; and turned me about, and cried, "Wife and
child, song and wealth, are pleasant ; but blessed is the work
which the All-Father has given the people to do. Let the
maimed and the halt and the blind, the needy and the father-
less, come up after me, and we will bore the mountain."
But the rich drove me out, and drove back those who would
have followed me. So I went up by myself, and bored the
S3. ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET.
mcnitahi seven years, weeping ; and every year Lillian came
to me, and said, "Come, and be my husband, for my beauty is
fading, and youth passes fast away." But I set my heart
steadfastly to the work.
And when seven years were over, the poor were so multi-
plied, that the rich had not wherewith to pay their labor.
And there came a famine in the land, and many of the poor
died. Then the rich said, "if we let these men starve, they
will turn on us, and kill us, for hunger has no conscience, and
they are all but like the beasts that perish." So they all
brought, one a bullock, another a sack of meal, each according
to his substance, and fed the poor therewith ; and said to them,
"Behold our love and mercy toward you !" But the more
they gave, the less they had wherewithal to pay their labor-
ers ; and the more they gave, the less the poor liked to work ;
so that at last they had not wherewithal to pay for tilling the
ground, and each man had to go and till his own, and knew
not how ; so the land lay waste, and there was great per-
plexity.
Then I went down to them and said, "if you had heark-
ened to me, and not robbed your brethren of their land, you
would never have come into this strait ; for by this time the
mountain would have been bored through."
Then they cursed the mountain, and me, and Him who
made them, and came down to my cottage at night, and cried,
" One-sided and left-handed ! father of confusion, and disciple
sf dead donkeys, see to what thou hast brought the land, with
thy blasphemous doctrines ! Here we are starving, and not
only we, but the poor misguided victims of thy abominable
notions !"
" You have become wondrous pitiful to the poor," said I,
" since you found that they would not starve that you might
wanton."
Then once more Lillian came to me, thin and pale and
worn. " See, I, too, am starving ! and you have been the cause
of it ; but I will forgive all if you will help us but this once."
"How shall I help you?"
" You are a poet and an orator, and win over all hearts
with your talk and your songs. Go down to the tribes of the
plain, and persuade them to send us up warriors, that we may
put down these riotous and idle wretches ; and you shall be king
of all the land, and I will be your slave, by day and night."
But I went out, and quarried steadfastly at the mountain.
And when I came back the next evening, the poor had
ALTON LOJKE, TAILOR AND POET. 33:
risen against the rich, one and all, crying, "As you have done
to us, so will we do to you ;" and they hunted them down like
wild beasts, and slew many of them, and threw their carcases
on the dunghill, and took possession of their land and houses,
and cried, " We will be all free and equal as our forefathers
were, and live here, and eat and drink, and take our pleasure."
Then 1 ran out, and cried to them, " Fools ! will you do
as these rich did, and neglect the work of God ? If you do
to them as they have done to you, you will sin as they sinned,
and devour each other at the last, as they devoured you.
The old paths are best. Let each man, rich or poor, have
his equal share of the land, as it was at first, and go up and
dig through the mountain, and possess the good land beyond,
where no man need jostle his neighbor, or rob him, when the
land becomes too small for you. Were the rich only in fault ?
Did not you, too, neglect the work which the All-Father had
given you, and run every man after his own comfort ? So
you entered into a lie, and by your own sin raised up the
rich men to be your punishment. For the last time, who
will go up with me to the mountain ?"
Then they all cried with one voice, " We have sinned !
We will go up and pierce the mountain, and fulfill the work
which God set to our forefathers."
We went up, and the first stroke that I struck, a crag fell
ou! ; and behold, the light of day ! aud far below us the good
laud and large, stretching away boundless toward the west-
ern sun
I sat by the cave's mouth at the dawning of the day
Past me the tribe poured down, young and old, with their
wagons, and their cattle, their seeds, and their arms, as of
old — yet not as of old — wiser and stronger, taught by long
labor and sore affliction. Downward they streamed from
the cave's mouth into the glens, following the guidance of
the silver water-courses ; and as they passed me, each kissed
my hands and feet, and cried, " Thou hast saved us — thou
hast given up all for us. Come and be our king !"
" Nay," I said, " I have been your king this many a year ;
for I have been the servant of you all."
I went down with them into the plain, and called them
round me. Many times they besought me to go with them
and lead them.
" No," I said ; ' I am old and gray-headed, and I am not
as I have been Choose out the wisest and most righteous
among you, and let him lead you. But bind him to your-
332 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
selves with an oath, that whenever he shall say to you, ' Stay
here, and let us sit down and build, and dwell here forever,'
you shall cast him out of his office, and make him a hewer
of wood and a drawer of water, and choose one who will lead
you forward in the spirit of God."
The crowd opened, and a woman came forward into the
circle. Her face was vailed, but. we all knew her for a
prophetess. Slowly she stepped into the midst, chanting a
mystic song. Whether it spoke of past, present, or future,
we knew not ; but it sank deep into all our hearts.
"True freedom stands in meekness —
True strength in utter weakness —
Justice in forgiveness lies —
Riches in self-sacrifice —
Own no rank but God's own spirit —
Wisdom rule ! — and worth inherit. !
Work for all, and all employ —
Share with all, and all enjoy —
God alike to all has given.
Heaven as Earth, and Earth as Heaven,
When the land shall find her king again,
And the reign of God is come."
We all listened awe-struck. She turned to us and con-
tinued,
" Hearken to me, children of Japhet, the unresting!
" On the holy mountain of Paradise, in the Asgard of the
Hindoo-Koh, in the cup of the four rivers, in the womb of
the mother of nations, in brotherhood, equality, and freedom,
the sons of men were begotten, at the wedding of the heaven
and the earth. Mighty infants, you did the right you knew
not of, and sinned not, because there was no temptation. By
selfishness you fell, and became beasts of prey. Each man
coveted the universe for his own lusts, and not that he might
fulfill in it God's command to people and subdue it. Long
have you wandered — and long will you wander still. For
here you have no abiding city. You shall build cities, and
they shall crumble ; you shall invent forms of society and
religion, and they shall fail in the hour of need. You shall
call the lands by your own names, and fresh waves of men
shall sweep you forth, westward, westward ever, till you have
traveled round the path of the sun, to the place from whence
you came. For out of Paradise you went, and unto Paradise
you shall return ; you shall become once more as little chil-
dren, and renew your youth like the eagle's. Feature by
feature, and limb by limb ye shall renew it ; age after age
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 333
gradually and painfully, by hunger and pestilence, by super-
stitions and tyrannies, by need and blank despair, shall you
be driven back to the All-Father's home, till you become as
you were before you fell, and left the likeness of your father
lor the likeness of the beasts. Out of Paradise you came,
from liberty, equality, and brotherhood, and unto them you
shall return again. You went forth in unconscious infancy-—
you shall return in thoughtful manhood. You went forth in
ignorance and need — you shall return in science and wealth,
philosophy and art. You went forth with the world a wil-
derness before you — you shall return when it is a garden be-
hind you. You went forth selfish savages — you shall return
as the brothers of the Son of God.
"And for you," she said, looking on me, "your penance is
accomplished. You have learned what it is to be a man.
You have lost your life and saved it. He that gives up
house, or land, or wife, or child, for God's sake, it shall be
repaid him an hundred-fold. Awake !"
Surely I knew that voice ! She lifted her vail. The face
was Lillian's 1 No ! — Eleanor's !
Gently she touched my hand — I sank down into soft
weary, happy sleep.
The spell was snapped. My fever and my dreams faded
away together, and I woke to the twittering of the sparrows,
and the scent of the poplar leaves, and the sights and sounds
of my childhood, and found Eleanor and her uncle sitting by
my bed, and with them Crossthwaite's little wife.
I would have spoken, but Eleanor laid her finger on her
lips ; and taking her uncle's arm, glided from the room. Katie
kept stubbornly a smiling silence, and I was fain to obey my
new-found guardian angels.
What need of many words ? Slowly, and with relapses
into insensibility, I passed, like one who recovers from drown-
ing, through the painful gate of birth into another life. The
fury of passion had been replaced by a delicious weakness.
The thunder-clouds had passed roaring down the wind, and
the calm, bright, holy evening was come. My heart, like a
fretful child, had stamped and wept itself to sleep. I was
past even gratitude ; infinite submission and humility, feel-
ings too long forgotten, absorbed my whole being. Only, I
never dared meet Eleanor's eye. Her voice was like an
angel's when she spoke to me — friend, mother, sister, all in
one. But I had a dim recollection of being unjust to her—
cf sOTrie bar between us.
334 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
Katie and Crossthwaite, as they sat by me, tender and
careful nurses both, told me in time, that to Eleanor I owed
all my comforts. I could not thank her — the debt was
infinite, inexplicable. I felt as if I must speak all my heart
, or none ; and I watched her lavish kindness with a sort of
sleepy, passive wonder, like a new-born babe.
At last, one day, my kind nurses allowed me to speak a
little. I broached to Crossthwaite the subject which filled
my thoughts. " How came I here ? How came you here ?
-.nd Lady Ellerton 1 What is the meaning of it all ?"
" The meaning is, that Lady Ellerton, as they call her, is
an angel out of heaven. Ah, Alton ! she was your true
friend, after all, if you had but known it, and not that other
one at all."
I turned my head away.
" Whisht — howld then, Johnny darlint I and don't go tor
menting the poor dear sow], just when he's comin' round
again."
" No, no ! tell me all. I must — I ought — I deserve to
bear it. How did she come here ?"
" Why then, it's my belief, she had her eye on you ever
since you came out of that Bastile, and before that, too ; and
she found you out at. Mackaye's, and me with you, for I was
there looking after you. If it hadn't been for your illness, I'd
have been in Texas now, with our friends, for all's up with
the Charter, and the country's too hot, at least for me. I'm
sick of the whole thing together, patriots, aristocrats, and
every body else, except this blessed angel. And I've got a
couple of hundred to emigrate with; and what's more, so
have you."
" How's that ?"
" Why, when poor dear old Mackaye"s will was read, and
you raving mad in the next room, he had left all his stock-in-
trade, that was, the books, to some of our friends, to form a
workmen's library with, and £400 he'd saved, to be parted
between you and me, on condition that we'd G.T. T., and
cool down across the Atlantic, for seven years come the tenth
of April."
So then, by the lasting love of my adopted father, I was at
present at least out of the reach of want ! My heart was
ready to overflow at my eyes ; but I could not rest till I had
heard more of Lady Ellerton. What brought her here, to
nurse me as if she had been a sister ?
' Why, then, she lives not far off by. When her husband
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 335
died, his cousin got the estate and title, and so she came, Katie
tells me, and lived for one year down somewhere in the East-
end among the needlewomen; and spent her whole fortune:
on the poor, and never kept a servant, so they say, but made I
her own bed and cooked her own dinner, and got her bread!
with her own needle, to see what it was really like. And!
she learnt a lesson there, I can tell you, and God bless her
lor it. For now she's got a large house hereby, with fifty or
more in it, all at work together, shariinr the earnings amoiif
* ~ COO
themselves, and putting into their own pockets the profits,
which would have gone to their tyrants ; and she keeps the
accounts for them, and gets the goods sold, and manages
every thing, and reads to them while they work, and teaches
them every day."
"And takes her victuals with them," said Katie, "share
and share alike. She that was so grand a lady to demane
herself to the poor unfortunate young things ! She's as blessed
a saint as any a one in the Calendar, if they'll forgive me for
saying so."
" Ay ! demeaning, indeed ! for the best of it is, they're not the
respectable ones only, though she spends hundreds on them — "
" And sure, haven't I seen it with my own eyes, when I've
been there charring V
" Ay, but those she lives with are the fallen and the lost
ones — those that the rich would not set up in business, or help
them to emigrate, or lift them out of the gutter with a pair
of tongs, for fear they should stain their own whitewash in
handling them."
" And sure they're as dacent as meself now, the poor dar
lints ! It was misery druv 'em to it, every one ; perhaps it
might hav' druv me the same way if I'd a lot o' childer, and
Johnny gone to glory — and the blessed saints save him from
that same at all at all !"
" What ! from going to glory ?' said John.
" Och, thin, and wouldn't I just go mad if ever such ill
luck happened to yees as to be taken to heaven in the prime
of your days, asthore V
And she began sobbing, and hugging, and kissing the lit-
tle man ; and then suddenly recollecting herself, scolded him
heartily for making such a " whillybaloo," and thrust him out
of my room, to re-commence kissing him in the next, leaving
me to many meditations.
CHAPTER XXXVIT.
THE TRUE DEMAGOGUE.
I used to try to arrange my thoughts, hut could not ; the
past seemed swept away and buried, like the wreck of some
drowned land after a flood. Plowed by affliction to the core,
my heart lay fallow for every seed that fell. Eleanor un-
derstood me, and gently and gradually, beneath her skillful
hand, the chaos began again to bloom with verdure. She
and Crossthwaite used to sit and read to me — from the Bible,
from poets, from every book which could suggest soothing,
graceful, or hopeful fancies. Now, out of the stillness of the
darkened chamber, one or two priceless sentences of a Kempis,
or a spirit-stirring Hebrew psalm, would fall upon my ear :
and then there was silence again ; and I was left to brood
over the words in vacancy, till they became a fibre of my own
soul's core. Again and again the stories of Lazarus and the
Magdalene alternated with Milton's Penseroso, or with Words
worth's tenderest and most solemn strains. Exquisite prints
from the history of our Lord's life and death were hung one
by one, each for a few days, opposite my bed, where they
mi<*ht catch my eye the moment that I woke, the moment
before I fell asleep. I heard one day the good dean remon-
strating with her on the "sentimentalism" of her mode of
treatment.
"Poor drowned butterfly!" she answered, smiling, "he
must be fed with honey-dew. Have I not surely had practice
enough already ?"
" Yes, angel that you are !" answered the old man, "You
have indeed had practice enough !" and lifting her hand
reverentially to his lips, he turned and left the room.
She sat down by me as I lay, and began to read from
Tennyson's Lotus-Eaters. But it was not reading — it was
rather a soft dreamy chant, which rose and fell like the waves
of sound on an iEolian harp.
" There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass ;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tired eye-lids upon tired eyes;
Music that brins s sweet sleep down from the blissful skk*.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET 337
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
Why arc we weigh d upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness ?
All things have rest : why should we toil alone ?
We only toil who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown :
Nor e^er fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings ;
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm ;
Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings,
' There is no joy but calm !'
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?"
She paused —
" My soul was an enchanted boat
Which, like a sleeping swan, did float
Upon the silver waves of her sweet singing."
Half unconscious, I looked up. Before me hung' a copy oi
Ilafiaelle's cartoon of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. Aa
my eye "wandered over it, it seemed to blend into harmony
with the feelings which the poem had stirred. I seemed to
float upon the glassy lake. I watched the vista of the
■waters and mountains, receding into the dreamy infinite of
the still summer sky. Softly from distant shores came the
hum of eager multitudes ; towers and palaces slept quietly
beneath the eastern sun. In front, fantastic fishes, and the
birds of the mountain and the lake, confessed His power, who
eat there in His calm godlike beauty, His eye ranging over
all that still infinity of His own works, over all that wondrous
line of figures, which seemed to express every gradation of
spiritual consciousness, from the dark self-condemned dislike
of Judas's averted and wily face, through mere animal greedi-
ness to the first dawnings of surprise, and on to the manly awe
and gratitude of Andrew's majestic figure, and the self-abhor-
rent humility of Peter, as he shrank down into the bottom of
the skiff, and with convulsivo palms and bursting brow, seem-
ed to press out from his inmost heart the words, "Depart from
me, for I am a sinful man, O Lor J !" Truly, pictures are
the books of the unlearned, and of the mis-learned too.
Glorious Raflaelle ! Shakspeare of the south ! Mighty preach-
er, to whose blessed intuition it was given to know all humua
338 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOtt AND TORT.
hearts, to embody in form and color all spiritual truths, com
mon alike to Protestant and Papist, to workman and to sage
— Oh that I may meet thee before the throne of God, if it he
but to thank thee for that one picture, in which thou didst
reveal to me, in a single glance, every step of my own spirit-
ual history !
She seemed to follow my eyes, and guess from them the
workings of my heart ; for now, in a low half-abstracted voice,
as Diotima may have talked of old, she began to speak of rest
and labor, of death and life ; of a labor which is perfect rest
— of a daily death, which is but daily birth — of weakness,
which is the strength of God ; and so she wandered on in her
speech to Him who died for us. And gradually she turned
to me. She laid one finger solemnly on my listless palm, as
her words and voice became more intense, more personal.
She talked of Him, as Mary may have talked just risen from
His feet. She spoke of Him as I had never heard Him spoken
of before — with a tender passionate loyalty, kept down and
softened by the deepest awe. The sense of her intense belief,
shining out in every lineament of her face, carried conviction
to my heart more than ten thousand arguments could do. It
must be true ! — Was not the power of it around her like a
glory ? She spoke of Him as near us — watching us — in words
of such vivid eloquence that I turned half-startled to her, as
if I expected to see Him standing by her side.
She spoke of Him as the great Reformer ; and yet as the
true conservative ; the inspirer of all new truths, revealing in
His Bihle to every age abysses of new wisdom, as the times
require ; and yet the vindicator of all which is ancient and
eternal — the justifier of His own dealings with man from the
beginning. She spoke of him as the true demagogue — the
champion of the poor ; and yet as the true King, above and
below all earthly rank ; on whose will alone all real superior-
ity of man to man. all the time-justified and time-honored usages
of the family, the society, the nation, stand and shall stand
(brever.
And then she changed her tone ; and in a voice of infinite
tenderness* she spoke of Him as the Creator, the Word, the
[nspirer, the only perfect Artist, the Fountain of all Genius.
She made me feel — would that his ministers had made me
feel it before, since they say that they believe it — that He had
passed victorious through my vilest temptations, that He sym-
pathized with my every struggle.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND rOET. 339
She told me how He, in the first dawn of manhood, full of
the dim consciousness of His own power, full of strange yearn-
ing presentiments about His own sad and glorious destiny, went
up into the wilderness, as every youth, above all every genius,
must, there to be tempted of the devil. She told how alone
with the wild beasts, and the brute powers of nature, He saw
into the open secret — the mystery of man's twofold life, His
kingship over earth, His sonship under God : and conquered
in the might of His knowledge. How He was tempted, like
every genius, to use His creative powers for selfish ends — to
yield to the lust of display and singularity and break through
t hose laws which He came to reveal and to fulfill — to do one
little act of evil, that He might secure thereby the hirvest of
good which was the object of His life : and how he had con-
quered in the faith that He was the son of God. She told
me how He had borne the sorrows of genius ; how the slight-
est pang that I had ever felt was but a dim faint pattern of
His ; how He, above all men, had felt the agony of calumny,
misconception, misinterpretation ; how He had fought with
bigotry and stupidity, casting His pearls before swine, know-
ing full well what it was to speak to the deaf and the blind;
how He had wept over Jerusalem, in the bitterness of disap-
pointed patriotism, when He had tried in vain to awaken
within a nation of slavish and yet rebellious bigots, the con-
sciousness of their glorious calling
It was too much — I hid my face in the coverlet, and burst
out into a long low, and yet most happy weeping. She rose and
went to the window and beckoned Katie from the room within.
'•I am afraid," she said, "my conversation has been too
much for him."
" Showers sweeten the air," said Katie ; and truly enough,
as my own lightened brain told me.
Eleanor — lor so I must call her now — stood watching me
for a few minutes, and then glided back to the bed-side, and
sat down again.
" You find the room quiet ?"
" Wonderfully quiet. The roar of the city outside is almost
soothing, and the noise of every carriage seems to cease sud-
denly, just as it becomes painfully near."
" We have had straw laid down," she answered, "all along
this part of the street."
This last drop of kindness filled the cup to overflowing : a
vail fell from before my eyes — it was she who had been my
friend, my guardian angel, from the beginning !
310 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
" You — you — idiot that I have heen! I see it all now It
was you who laid that paper to catch my eye on that first
evening at D ! — you paid my debt to my cousin ' — you
visited Mackaye in his last illness !"
She made a sign of assent.
" You saw from the beginning my danger, my weakness ! —
you tried to turn me from my frantic and fruitless passion ! —
you tried to save me from the very gulf into which I forced
myself! — and I — I have hated you in return — cherished sus-
picions too ridiculous to confess, only equaled by the absurdity
of that other dream !"
" Would that other dream have ever given you peace, even
if it had ever become reality ?"
She spoke gently, slowly, seriously ; waiting between each
question for the answer which I dared not give.
" What was it that you adored ? a soul, or a face 1 The
inward reality, or the outward symbol, which is only valuable
as a sacrament of the loveliness within?"'
" Ay !" thought I, " and was that loveliness within 1 What
was that beauty but a hollow mask?" How barren, borrow-
ed, trivial, every thought and word of hers seemed now as I
looked back upon them, in comparison with the rich luxuri-
ance, the startling originality, of thought and deed and sym-
pathy, in her who now sat by me, wan and faded, beautiful
no more, as men call beauty, but with the spirit of an arch-
/ angel gazing from those clear fiery eyes ! And as I looked at
her, an emotion utterly new to me arose ; utter trust, delight,
submission, gratitude, awe — if it was love, it was love as of a
dog toward his master
" Ay," I murmured, half unconscious that I spoke aloud,
" her I loved, and love no longer : but you, you, I worship,
and forever !"
" Worship God !" she answered. "If it shall please you
hereafter to call me friend, T shall refuse neither the name noi
its duties. But remember always, that whatsoever interest I
feel in you, and, indeed, have ielt from the first time I saw
your poems, I can not give or accept friendship upon any
ground so shallow and changeable as personal preference. The
time was, when I thought it a mark of superior intellect and
refinement to be as exclusive in my friendships as in my theo-
ries. Now I have learned that that is most spiritual and noble
which is also most universal. If we are to call each other
friends, it must be for a reason which equally includes tho
outcast and the profligate, the felon and the slave."
ALTON LOCKR, TAILOR AND l'OB . 3-31
" What do you mean?" 1 asked, half disappointed.
" Only for the sake of Him who died lor all alike."
Why did she rise and call Crossthwaite from the next room
where he was writing? Was it from the womanly tact and
delicacy which feared lest my excited feelings might lead me
on to some too daring expression, and give me the pain of a
rebuff, however gentle ; or was it that she wished him as
well as me, to hear the memorable words which followed, to
which she seemed to have been all along alluring me, and
calling up in my mind, one by one, the very questions to
which she had prepared the answers ?
"That name!" 1 answered. "Alas! has it not been in
every age the watchward, not of an all-embracing charity, but
of self-conceit and bigotry, excommunication and persecution ?"
" That is what men have made it ; not God, or he who
bears it, the Son of God. Yes, men have separated from each
other, slandered each other, murdered each other in that name ;
and blasphemed it by that very act. But when did they
unite in any name but that 1 Look all history through — from
the early churches, unconscious and infantile ideas of God's
kingdom, as Eden was of the human race, when love alone
was law, and none said that aught that he possessed was his
own — but they had all things in common — Whose name was
the bond of unity for that brotherhood, such as the earth had
never seen — when the Roman lady and the Negro slave par-
took together at the table of the same bread and wine, and sat
together at the feet of the Syrian tent-maker ? ' One is our
Master, even Christ, who sits at the right hand of God, and in
Him we are all brothers.' Not self-chosen preference for His
precepts, but the overwhelming faith in His presence, His rule,
His love, bound those rich hearts together. Look onward, too,
at the first followers of St. Bennet and St. Francis, at the
Cameronians among their Scottish hills, or the little persecuted
Mock who in a dark and godless time gathered around John
Wesley by pit-mouths and on Cornish cliffs — Look, too, at the
great societies of our own days, which, however imperfectly,
still lovingly and. earnestly do their measure of God's work at
home and abroad ; and say, when was there ever real union
co-operation, philanthropy, equality, brotherhood, among men,
save in loyalty to Him — Jesus, who died upon the cross V
And she bowed her head reverently before that unseen
Majesty ; and then looked up at us again. Those eyes, now
brimming full of earnest tears, would have melted stonier
hearts than ours that da*".
312 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
" Do you not believe me ? Then I must quote against you
one of your own prophets — a ruined angel — even as you might
have been.
'• When Camille Desmoulins, the revolutionary, about to
die, as is the fate of such, by the hands of revolutionaries, was
asked his age, he answered they say, that it was the same as
that of the ' bon sans-culotte Jesus.' I do not blame those
who shrink from that speech as blasphemous. I, too, have
spoken hasty words and hard, and prided myself on breaking
the bruised reed, and quenching the smoking flax. Time was,
when I should have been the loudest in denouncing poor Ca-
mille : but I have long since seemed to see in those words the
distortion of an almighty truth — a truth that shall shake
thrones and principalities and powers, and fill the earth with
its sound as with the trump of God : a prophecy like Ba-
laam's of old — ' I shall see Him, but riot nigh ; I shall be-
hold Him, but not near.' jTake all the heroes,
prophets, poets, philosophers — where M'ill you find the true
demagogue — the speaker to man, simply as man — the friend
of publicans and sinners, the stern foe of the Scribe and the
Pharisee — with whom was no respect of persons — where is
he? Socrates and Plato were noble; Zerdusht and Confut-
zee, for aught we know, were nobler still ; but what were
they but the exclusive mystagogues of an enlightened few,
like our own Emersons and Strausses, to compare great
with small ? What gospel have they, or Strauss, or Emer-
son, for the poor, the suffering, the oppressed? The Peo-
ple's Friend ? Where will you find him, but in Jesus of
k Nazareth V
" We feel that; I assure you we feel that," said Crossth-
waite. " There are thousands of us who delight in His
moral teaching, as the perfection of human excellence."
" And what gospel is there in a moral teaching ? What
good news is it to the savage of St. Giles's, to the artisan
crushed by the competition of others and his own evil habits,
to tell him that he can be free — if he can make himself
free ? That all men are his equals — if he can rise to their
level, or pull them down to his ? All men his brothers — if he
can only stop them from devouring him, or making it neces-
sary for him to devour them ? Liberty, equality, and brother-
hood ? Let the history of every nation, of every revolution
— let your own sad experience, speak — have they been aught
as yet but delusive phantoms — angels that turned to fiends
{he mornenl you seemed about to clasp thorn? R^nvmbei
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 313
the tenth of April, and the plots thereof, and answer your own
hearts !"
Crossthwaite buried his face in his hands.
" What !" I answered passionately, " Will you rob us poor
creatures of our only faith, our only hope on earth ? Let us
be deceived, and deceived again ; yet we will believe ! We
will hope on in spite of hope. We may die but the idea lives
forever. Liberty, equality, and fraternity must come. We
know, we know that they must come ; and woe to those
who seek to rob us of our faith !"
" Keep, keep your faith," she cried ; " for it is not yours,
but God's who gave it ! But do not seek to realize that idea
for yourselves."
" Why, then, in the name of reason and mercy?"
" Because it is realized already for you. You are free ;
God has made you free. You are equals — you are brothers ;
for He is your king, who is no respecter of persons. He is
your king, who has bought for you the rights of sons of God.
He is your king, to whom all power is given in heaven and
earth ; who reigns, and will reign, till He has put all enemies
under His feet. That was Luther's charter — with that alone
he freed half Europe. That is your charter, and mine ; the
everlasting ground of our rights, our mights, our duties, of ever-
gathering storm for the oppressor, of ever-brightening sunshine
for the oppressed. Own no other. Claim your investiture
as free men from none but God. His will, His love, is a
stronger ground, surely, than abstract rights and ethnological
opinions. Abstract rights ? What ground, what root have
they, but the ever-changing opinions of men, born anew and
dying anew with each fresh generation ? — while the word of
God stands sure — ' You are mine, and I am yours, bound to
you in an everlasting covenant.'
" Abstract rights ? They are sure to end, in practice, only
in the tyranny of their father — opinion. In favored England
here, the notions of abstract right among the many are not
so incorrect, thanks to three centuries of Protestant civiliza-
tion ; but only because the right notions suit the many at this
moment. But in America, even now, the same ideas of ab-
tract right do not interfere with the tyranny of the white
man over the black. Why should they ? The white man
is handsomer, stronger, cunninger, worthier than the black.
The black is more like an ape than the white man — he is—
the fact is there ; and no notions of an abstract right will put
that down : nothing but another fact — a mightier, more un:
341 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
versal fact — Jesus of Nazareth died for the negro as well as.
for the white. Looked at apart from Him, each race, each
individual of mankind, stands separate and alone, owing no
more brotherhood to each other than wolf to wolf, or pike to
pike — himself a mightier beast of prey — even as he has proved
himself in every age. Looked at as he is, as joined into one
family in Christ, his archetype and head, even the most fran-
tic declamations of the French democrat, about the majesty
of the people, the divinity of mankind, become rational, rever
ent, and literal. God's grace outrivals all man's boasting —
' I have said, ye are gods, and ye are all the children of the
most highest ;' — ' children of God, members of Christ, of His
body, of His flesh, and of His bones,' — ' kings and priests to
God,' — free inheritors of the spirit of wisdom and understand-
ing, the spirit of prudence and courage, of reverence and love,
the spirit of Him who has said, ' Behold, the days come, when
I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and no one shall
teach his brother, saying, Know the Lord for all shall know
Him, from the least even unto the greatest. Ay, even on
the slaves and on the handmaidens in those days will I pour
out of my spirit, saith the Lord !' "
" And that is really in the Bible V asked Crossthwaite.
" Ay" — she went on, her figure dilating, and her eyes flash-
ing, like an inspired prophetess — " that is in the Bible ! What
would you more than that ? That is your charter ; the only
ground of all charters. You, like all mankind, have had dim
inspirations, confused yearnings after your future destiny, and,
like all the world from the beginning you have tried to realize,
by' self-willed methods of your own, what you can only do by
God's inspiration, by God's method. Like the builders of Babel
in old time, you have said, ' Go to, let us build us a city and
a tower, whose top shall reach to heaven' — And God has con-
founded you as he did them. By mistrust, division, passion, and
folly, you are scattered abroad. Even in these last few days,
the last dregs of your late plot have exploded miserably and
ludicrously — your late companions are in prison, and the name
of Chartist is a laughing-stock as well as an abomination."
" Good Heavens ! Is this true ?" asked I, looking at
Crossthwaite for confirmation.
" Too true, dear boy, too true : and if it had not been for
these two angels here, I should have been in Newgate now !"
" Yes," she went on. " The Charter seems dead, and lib-
erty further off than ever."
"That semes true enough, indeed," said I, bitterly.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. *45
<<
Yes. But it is because Liberty is God's beloved child,
that He will not have her purity sullied by the touch of the
profane. Because He loves the people, lie will allow none
but Himself to lead the people. Because He loves the people,
He will teach the people by afflictions. And even now, while
all this madness has been destroying; itself, He has been hiding
you in His secret place from the strife of tongues, that you
may have to look for a state founded on better things than
acts of parliament, social contracts, and abstract rights — a
city whose foundations are in the eternal promises, whose
builder and maker is God."
She paused. — "Go on, go on," cried Crossthwaite and 1
in the same breath.
" That state, that city, Jesus said, was come — was now
within us, had we eyes to see. And it is come. Call it the
church, the gospel, civilization, freedom, democracy, associa-
tion, what you will — I shall call it by the name by which
my Master spoke of it — the name which includes all these,
and more than these — the kingdom of God. ' Without ob-
servation,' as he promised, secretly, but mightily, it has been
growing, spreading, since that first Whitsuntide; civilizing,
humanizing, uniting this distracted earth. Men have fancied
they found it in this system or in that, and in them only. They
have cursed it in its own name, when they found it too wide
for their own narrow notions. They have cried, 'Lo here !'
and 'Lo there !' ' To this communion !' or ' To that set of
opinions !' But it has gone its way — the way of Him who
made all things, and redeemed all things to Himself. In every
age it has been a gospel to the poor. In every age it has,
sooner or later, claimed the steps of civilization, the discoveries
of science, as God's inspirations, not man's inventions. In
every age, it has taught men to do that by God which they
had i'ailed in doing without Him. It is now ready, if we may
judge by the signs of the times, once again to penetrate, to
convert, to re-organize, the political and social life of England,
perhaps of the world ; to vindicate democracy as the will
and gift of God. Take it for the ground of your rights. If.
henceforth, you claim political enfranchisement, claim it not
as mere men, who may be villains, savages, animals, slaves of \
their own prejudices and passions ; but as members of Christ,
children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, and
therefore bound to realize it on earth. All other rights are
mere mights — mere selfish demands to become Tyrants in your
turn. If you wish to justify your Charter, do it on that ground
r*
346 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
Claim your share in national life, only because the nation is s
spiritual body, whose king is the Son of God ; whose work,
whose national character and powers, are allotted to it by the
Spivit of Christ. Claim universal suffrage, only on the ground
of the universal redemption of mankind — the universal priest-
hood of Christians. That argument will conquer, when all
have failed ; for God will make it conquer. Claim the disen-
franchisement of every man, rich or poor, who breaks the laws
of God and man, not merely because he is an obstacle to you,
but because he is a traitor to your common King in heaven,
and to the spiritual kingdom of which he is a citizen. De-
nounce the effete idol of property qualification, not because it
happens to strengthen class interests against you, but because,
as your mystic dream reminded you, and, therefore, as you
knew long ago, there is no real rank, no real power, but worth ;
and worth "consists not in property, but in the grace of God.
Claim, if you will, annual parliaments, as a means of enforcing
the responsibility of rulers to the Christian community, of
which they are to be, not the lords, but the ministers — the
servants of all. But claim these, and all else for which you
long, not from man, but from God, the King of men. And
therefore, before you attempt to obtain them, make yourselves
worthy of them — perhaps by that process you will find some
of them have become less needful. At all events, do net ask,
do not hope, that He will give them to you, before you are
able to profit by them. Believe that he has kept them from
you hitherto, because they would have been curses, and not.
blessings. Oh ! look back, look back at the history of English
Radicalism for the last half century, and judge by your own
deeds, your own words ; were you fit for those privileges which
you so frantically demanded ? Do not answer me, that those
who had them were equally unfit ; but thank God, if the case
be indeed so, that your incapacity was not added to theirs, to
make confusion worse confounded ! Learn a new lesson.
Believe at last that you arc in Christ, and become new creat-
ures. With those miserable, awful, farce-tragedies of April
and June, let old things pass away, and all things become new.
Believe that your kingdom is not of this world, but of One
whose servants must not fight. He that believeth, as the
prophet says, will not make haste. Beloved suffering broth-
ers ! — are not your times in the hand of One who loved you
to the death, who conquered, as you must do, not by wrath,
but by martyrdom ? Try no more to meet Mammon with
his own weapons, but commit your cause to Him who judge?
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. S-17
righteously, who is even now coming out of his place to judge
the earth, and to help the fatherless and poor unto their right,
that the man of the world may be no more exalted against
them — the poor man of Nazareth, crucified for you !"
She ceased, and there was silence for a few moments, as
if angels were waiting, hushed, to carry our repentance to the
throne of Him we had forgotten.
Crossthwaite had kept his face fast buried in his hands ;
now he looked up with brimming eyes —
" I see it — I see it all now. Oh, my God ! my God ! What
infidels we have been! : '
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
MIRACLES AND SCIENCE.
Sunrise, they say, often at first draws up and deepens tho
very mists which it is about to scatter : and even so, as the
\ excitement of my first conviction cooled, dark doubts arose to
jdim the new-horn light of hope and trust within me. The
) question of miracles had been ever since I had read Strauss_
j' my greatest stumblingblock — perhaps not unwillingly, for my
doubts pampered my sense of intellectual acuteness and scien-
tific knowledge ; and "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
But now that they interfered with nobler, more important,
more immediately practical ideas, I longed to have them re-
moved — I longed even to swallow them down on trust — to
take the miracles "into the bargain" as it were, for the sake
of that mighty gospel of deliverance for the people, which
accompanied them. Mean subterfuge ! which would not, could
not, satisfy me. The thing was too precious, too all-important,
to take one tittle of it on trust. I could not bear the con-
sciousness of one hollow spot — the nether fires of doubt glar-
ing through, even at one little crevice. I took my doubts to
Lady Ellerton — Eleanor, as I must now call her, for she never
allowed herself to be addressed by her title — and she referred
me to her uncle :
" I could say somewhat on that point myself. But since
your doubts are scientific ones, I had rather that you should
discuss them with one whose knowledge of such subjects you,
and all England with you, must revere."
" Ah, but — pardon me ; he is a clergyman."
" And therefore bound to prove, whether he believes in his
own proof or not. Unworthy suspicion !" she cried, with a
touch of her old manner. " If you had known that man's
literary history for the last thirty years, you would not suspect
him, at least, of sacrificing truth and conscience to interest,
or to fear of the world's insults."
I was rebuked; and, not without hope and confidence, I
broached the question to the good dean when he came in — as
he happened to do that very day.
"I hardly like to state my difficulties," I began — "for J
am afraid that I must h'irt myself in your eyes by offending
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. 349
your — prejudices, if you will pardon so plain-spoken an ex-
pression."
" If," he replied, in his bland courtly way, " I am so un-
fortunate as to have any prejudices left, you can not do me a
greater kindness than by offending them — or by any othei
means, however severe — >to make me conscious of the locality
of such a secret canker."
" But I am afraid that your own teaching has created, or
at least corroborated, these doubts of mine."
"How so?"
" You first taught me to revere science. You first taught
me to admire and trust the immutable order, the perfect har-
mony of the laws of Nature."
" Ah ! I comprehend now !" he answered, in a somewhat
mournful tone — " How much we have to answer for ! How
often, in our carelessness, we offend those little ones, whose
souls are precious in the sight of God ! I have thought long
and earnestly on the very subject which now distresses you ;
perhaps every doubt which has passed through your mind,
has exercised my own ; and, strange to say, you first set me
on that new path of thought. A conversation which passed
between us years ago at D on the antithesis of natural
and revealed religion — perhaps you recollect it ?"
Yes, I recollected it better than he fancied, and recollected
too — 1 thrust the thought behind me — it was even yet in-
tolerable.
" That conversation first awoke in me the sense of an hith-
erto unconscious inconsistency — a desire to reconcile two lines
of thought — which I had hitherto considered as parallel, and
impossible to unite. To you, and to my beloved niece here, I
owe gratitude for that evening's talk ; and you are freely wel-
come to all my conclusions, for you have been, indirectly, the
originator of them all."
" Then, I must confess, that miracles seem to me impossible,
iust because they break the laws of Nature. Pardon me — but
there seems something blasphemous in supposing that God
can mar His own order: His power I do not call in question,
but the very thought of His so doing is abhorrent to me."
" It is as abhorrent to me as it can be to you, to Goethe,
or to Strauss ; and yet I believe firmly in our Lord's miracles '
" How so, if they break the laws of Nature?"
" Who told you, my dear young friend, that to break the
customs of Nature, is to break her laws ? ( A phenomenon, an
appearance, wh ?ther it be a miracle or a comet, need not con-
350 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET
tradict tnem because it is rare, because it is as yet not referable
to them. Nature's deepest laws, her only true laws, are her
invisible ones. All analyses (I think you know enough to un-
derstand my terms) whether of appearances, of causes, or of
elements, only lead us down to fresh appearances — we can not
see a law, let the power of our lens be ever so immense. The
true causes remain just as impalpable, as unfathomable as
ever, eluding equally our microscope and our induction — ever
tending toward some great primal law, as Mr. Grove has
well shown lately in his most valuable pamphlet — some great
primal law, I say, manifesting itself, according to circum-
stances, in countless diverse and unexpected forms — till all
that the philosopher as well as the divine can say, is — The
Spirit of Life, impalpable, transcendental, direct from God, is
the only real cause. It 'bloweth where it listeth, and thou
hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh,
or whither it goeth.' What, if miracles should be the orderly
results of some such deep, most orderly, aud yet most spirit-
ual law ?"
" I feel the force of your argument, but — "
"But you will confess, at least, that you, after the fashion
of the crowd, have begun your argument by begging the very
question in dispute, aud may have, after all, created the very
difficulty which torments you."
" I confess it ; but I can not see how the miracles of Jesus
— of our Lord — have any thing of order in them."
" Tell me, then — to try the Socratic method — is disease,
or health, the order, and law of Nature ?"
" Health, surely ; we all confess that by calling diseases
disorders."
" Then, would one who healed diseases be a restorer, or a
breaker of order ?"
" A restorer, doubtless ; but — "
" Like a patient scholar, and a scholarly patient, allow me
to ' exhibit' my own medicines according to my own notion
of the various crises of your distemper. I assure you I will
not play you false, or entrap you by quips and special plead-
ing. You are aware that our Lord's miracles were almost
exclusively miracles of healing — restorations of that order of
health which disease was breaking — that when the Scribes
and Pharisees, superstitious and sense-bound, asked Him for a
sign from heaven, a contra-natural prodigy, he refused them
as peremptorily as he did the fiend's ' Command these stones
that they be made bread.' You will quote against me the
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 3S<
waljr turned into wine, as an exception to this ruk. St.
Augustine answered that ohjection centuries ago, by the same
argument as I am now using. Allow Jesus to have been the
Lord of Creation, and what was he doing then, but what he
does in the maturing of every grape — transformed from ai.
and water even as that wine in Cana ? Goethe himself, un
wittingly, has made Mephistopheles even see as much as that,
Wine is sap, and grapes are wood,
The wooden board yields wine as g )od."
"But the time? so infinitely shorter than that which Na-
ture usually occupies in the process !"
" Time and space are no Gods, as a wise German says ;
and as the electric telegraph ought already to have taught
you. They are customs, but who has proved them to be
laws of Nature ? No ; analyze these miracles one by one,
fairly, carefully, scientifically, and you will find that if you
want prodigies, really blasphemous and absurd, infractions of
the laws of Nature, amputated limbs growing again, and
dead men walking away with their heads under their arms,
you must go to the Popish legends, but not to the miracles of
the Gospels. And now for your ' but' — "
" The raising of the dead to life ? Surely death is the ap-
pointed end of every animal — ay, of every species, and of man
among the rest."
" Who denies it ? But is premature death? the death of
Jarius's daughter, of the widow's son at Nain, the death of
Jesus himself, in the prime of youth and vigor — or rather that
gradual decay of ripe old age, through which I now, thank
God, eo fast am traveling 1 What nobler restoration of order,
what clearer vindication of the laws of Nature from the dis-
order of diseases, than to recall the dead to their natural and
normal period of life ?"
I was silent a few moments, having nothing to answer ;
then.
" After all, these may have been restorations of the law of
Nature. But why was the law broken in order to restore it?
The Tenth of April has taught me, at least, that disorder
can not cast disorder out."
" Again I ask, why do you assume the very point in ques-
tion ? Again I ask, who knows what really are the laws of
Nature ? You have heard Bacon's golden rule — ' Nature u
\sonquered by obeying her ?' "
" I have."
352 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
" Then who more likely, who more certain, to fulfill that
law to hitherto unattained perfection, than He who came to
obey, not outward nature merely, but, as Bacon meant, the
inner ideas, the spirit of Nature, which is the will of God ?
He who came to do utterly, not His own will, but the will of
the Father who sent him 1 Who is so presumptuous as to
limit the future triumphs of science ? Surely no one who
has watched her giant strides during the last century. Shall
Stephenson and Faraday, and the inventors of the calculating
machine, and the electric telegraph, have fulfilled such won-
ders by their weak and partial obedience to the ' Will of God
expressed in things' — and he who obeyed, even unto the death,
have possessed no higher power than theirs?"
"Indeed," I said, "your words stagger me. But there is
another old objection which they have reawakened in my
mind. You will say I am shifting my ground sadly. But
you must pardon me."
" Let us hear. They need not be irrelevant. The un-
conscious logic of association is often deeper and truer than
any syllogism."
" These modern discoveries in medicine seem to show that
Christ's miracles may be attributed to natural causes."
" And thereby justify them. For what else have I been
arguing. The difficulty lies only in the rationalist's shallow
and sensuous view of Nature, and in his ambiguous slip-slop
trick of using the word natural to mean, in one sentence,
' material,' and in the next, as I use it, only ' normal and
orderly.' Every new wonder in medicine which this great
age discovers — what does it prove, but that Christ need have
broken no natural laws to do that of old, which can be done
now without breaking them — if you will but believe that
these gifts of healing are all inspired and revealed by Him
who is the Great Physician, the Life, the Lord of that vital
energy by whom all cures are wrought.
" The surgeons of St. George's make the boy walk who
has been lame from his mother's womb. But have they
given life to a single bone or muscle of his limbs ? They
have only put them into that position — those circumstances,
in which the God-given life in them can have its free and
normal play, and produce the cure which they only assist. I
claim that miracle of science, as I do all future ones, as the
inspiration of Him who made the lame to walk in Judea, not
by producing new organs, but by His creative will — quicken-
ing and liberating those which already existed.
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 353
"The mesmerist, again, says that he can cure a spirit of
infirmity, an hysteric or paralytic natient, by shedding forth
on them his own vital energy ; and, therefore he will have it,
that Christ's miracles were but mesmeric feats. I grant, foi
the sake of argument, that he possesses the power which he
claims ; though I may think his facts too new, too undigested,
often too exaggerated, to claim my certain assent. But, I
say, I take you on your own ground; and, indeed, if man be
the image of God, his vital energy may, for aught I know, be
able, like God's, to communicate some spark of life. But then,
what must have been the vital energy of Him who was the
life itself; who was filled without measure with the spirit,
not only of humanity, but with that of God the Lord and
Giver of life ? Do but let the Bible tell its own story ; grant,
for the sake of argument, the truth of the dogmas which it
asserts throughout, and it becomes a consistent whole. When
a man begins, as Strauss does, by assuming the falsity of its
conclusions, no wonder if he finds its premises a fragmentary
chaos of contradictions."
" And what else," asked Eleanor, passionately, " what else
is the meaning of that highest human honor, the Sacrament
of the Lord's Supper, but a perennial token that the same
life-giving spirit is the free right of all?"
And thereon followed happy, peaceful, hopeful words, which
the reader, if he call himself a Christian, ought to be able to
imagine for himself. I am afraid that, writing from memory,
I should do as little justice to them as I have to the dean's
arguments in this chapter. Of the consequences which they
produced in me, I will speak anon.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
NEME3-S
It was a month or more before I summoned courage to ask
after my cousin.
Eleanor looked solemnly at me.
" Did you not know it? He is dead."
" Dead !" I was almost stunned by the announcement.
" Of typhus fever. He died three weeks ago ; and not only
he, but the servant who brushed his clothes, and the shopman,
who had, a few days before, brought him a n-.vv coat home."
" How did you learn all this ]'■'
" From Mr Crossthwaite. But the strangest part of the
sad story is to come. Crossthwaite's suspicions were aroused
by some incidental circumstance, and knowing of Downes's
death, and the fact that you most probably caught your fever
in that miserable being's house, he made such inquiries as
satisfied him that it was no other than your cousin's coat — "
" Which covered the corpses in that fearful chamber'?"
" It was indeed."
Just, awful God ! And this was the consistent Nemesis
of all poor George's thrift and cunning, of his determination
to carry the buy-cheap-and-sell-dear commercialism, in which
he had been brought up, into every act of life ! Did I rejoice ?
| No; all revenge, all spite had been scourged out of me. I
j mourned for him as for a brother, till the thought flashed
\across me — Lillian was free ! Half unconscious. I stammer-
ed her name inquiringly."
" Judge for yourself," answered Eleanor, mildly, yet with a
deep, severe meaning in her tone.
I was silent.
The tempest in my heart was ready to burst forth again ;
but she, my guardian-angel, soothed it for me.
" She is much changed ; sorrow and sickness — for she, too,
Has had the fever — and, alas ! less resignation or peace within,
than those who love her would have wished to see, have worn
her down. Little remains now of that loveliness."
" Which I idolized in my folly !"
"Thank God, thank God! that you see that at last: I
Knew it all along. I knew that there was nothing there for
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 3&5
your heart to rest upon — nothing to satisfy your intellect —
and, therefore, I tried to turn you from your dream. 1 did /
it harshly, angrily, too sharply, yet not explicitly enough. I
ought to have made allowances for you. I should have known
how enchanting, intoxicating, mere outward perfection must
have been to one of your perceptions, shut out so long as you
had been from the beautiful in art and nature. But I was
cruel. Alas! I bad not then learned to sympathize; and I
have often since felt with terror, that I, too, may have many
of your sins to answer for ; that I, even I, helped to drive you
on to bitterness and despair."
" Oh, do not say so ! You have done to me, meant to me,
nothing but good."
" Be not too sure of that. You little know me. You little
know the pride which 1 have fostered — even the mean anger
against you, for being the protegee of any one but myself.
That exclusiveness, and shyness, and proud reserve, is the
bane of our English character — it has been the bane of mine —
daily I strive to root it out. Come — I will do so now. You
wonder why I am here. You shall hear somewhat of my
story ; and do not fancy that I am showing you a peculiar mark
of honor or confidence. If the history of my life can be of
use to the meanest, they are welcome to the secrets of my
impost heart."
• I was my parents' only child, an heiress, highly born, and
highly educated. Every circumstance of humanity which
could pamper pride was mine, and I battened on the poison
I painted, I sang, I wrote in prose and verse — they told me,
not without success. Men said that I was beautiful — I knew
that myself, and reveled and gloried in the thought. Accus-
tomed to see myself the centre of all my parents' hopes and
fears, to be surrounded by flatterers, to indulge in secret the
still more fatal triumph of contempt for those I thought less
gifted than myself, self became the centre of my thoughts.
Pleasure was all I thought of. But not what the vulgar call
pleasure. That I disdained, while like you, I worshiped all
that was pleasurable to the intellect and the taste. The
beautiful was my God. I lived, in deliberate intoxication, on
poetry, music, painting, and every antitype of then) which 1
could find in the world around. At last I met with — one
whom you once saw. lie first awoke in me the sense of the
vast duties and responsibilities of my station — his example first
taught me to care for the many rather than for the few. It
was 3. blessed lesson : yet even that I turned to poison, by
35G ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
making self, still self, the object of my very benevolence. To
be a philanthropist, a philosopher, a feudal queen, amid the
blessings and the praise of dependent hundreds — that was my
new ideal ; for that I turned the whole force of my intellect
to the study of history, of social and economic questions. From
Bentham and Malthus to Fourrier and Proudhon, I read them
all. I made them all fit into that idol-temple of self which
I was rearing, and fancied that I did my duty, by becoming
one of the great ones of the earth. My ideal was not the
crucified Nazarcne, but some Hairoun Alraschid, in luxurious
splendor, pampering his pride by bestowing as a favor those
mercies which God commands as the right of all. I thought
to serve God, forsooth, by serving Mammon and myself. Fool
that I was ! I could not see God's handwriting on the wall
against me. ' How hardly shall they that have riches enter
into the kingdom of heaven !'
" You gave me, unintentionally, a warning hint. The
capabilities which I saw in you made me suspect that those
below might be more nearly my equals than I had yet fancied.
Your vivid descriptions of the misery among whole classes of
workmen — misery caused and ever increased by the very
system of society itself — gave a momentary shock to my fair}
palace. They drove me back upon the simple old question
which has been asked by every honest heart, age after age
' What right have I to revel in luxury, while thousands are
starving ? Why do I pride myself on doling out to them
small fractions of that wealth, which, if sacrificed utterly and
at once, might help to raise hundreds to a civilization as high
as my own.' I could not face the thought ; and angry with
you ibr having awakened it, however unintentionally, I shrank
back behind the pitiable worn-out fallacy, that luxury was
necessary to give employment. I knew that it Avas a fallacy ;
I knew that the labor spent in producing unnecessary things
for one rich man, may just as well have gone in producing
necessaries for a hundred poor, or employ the architect and
the painter for public bodies as well as private individuals.
That even for the production of luxuries, the monopolizing
demand of the rich Avas not required — that the appliances ol
real civilization, the landscapes, gardens, stately rooms, baths,
books, pictures, works of art, collections of curiosities, which
iioav went to pamper me alone — me, one single human soui
— might be helping, in an associate society, to civilize a hun-
dred families, now debarred from them by isolated poA'erty,
without robbing me of an atoi 1 of the real enjoyment ol
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TCET. 3.*>7
benefit of them. I knew it, I say, to be a fallacy, and yet I
hid behind it from the eye of God. Besides, ' it always had
been so — the few rich, and the many poor. I was but one
more among millions.' "
She paused a moment, as if to gather strength, and then
continued :
" The blow came. My idol — for he, too, was an idol — Tq
please him I had begun — to please myself in pleasing him, I
was trying to become great — and with him went from me
that sphere of labor which was to witness the triumph of
my pride. I saw the estate pass into other hands ; a mighty
change passed over me, as impossible, perhaps, as unfitting,
for me to analyze. I was considered mad. Perhaps I was
so : there is a Divine insanity, a celestial folly, which conquers
worlds. At least, when that period was past, I had done
and suffered so strangely, that nothing henceforth could seem
strange to me. I had broken the yoke of custom and opinion.
My only ground was now the bare realities of human life and
duty. In poverty and loneliness I thought out the problems
of society, and seemed to myself to have found the one solu-
tion — self-sacrifice. Following my first impulse, I had given
largely to every charitable institution I could hear of — God
forbid that I should regret those gifts — yet the money, I soon
found, might have been better spent. One by one, every
institution disappointed me ; they seemed, after all, only
means for keeping the poor in their degradation, by making it
just not intolerable to them — means for enabling Mammon to
draw fresh victims into his den, by taking oil" his hands those
whom he had already worn out into uselessness. Then I
tried association among my own sex — among the most miser-
able and degraded of them. I simply tried to put them into
a position in which they mi^ht work for each other, and not
for a single tyrant ; in which that tyrant's profits might be
divided among the slaves themselves. Experienced men
warned me that I should fail ; that such a plan would be
destroyed by the innate selfishness and rivalry of human
nature ; that it demanded what was impossible to find, good
faith, fraternal love, overruling moral influence. I answered,
that I knew that already ; that nothing but Christianity
alone could supply that want, but that it could and should
supply it ; that I would teach them to live as sisters, by
living with them as their sister myself. To become the
teacher, the minister, the slave of those whom I was trying
to rescue, was now my one idea ; to lead them on, not by
358 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
machinery, but by precept, by example, by the influence of
every gift and talent which God had bestowed upon me ; tc
devote to them my enthusiasm, my eloquence, my poetry, my
art, my science ; to tell them who had bestowed their gifts
on me, and would bestow, to each according to her measure,
the same on them ; to make my work-rooms in one word, not
a machinery, but a family. And I have succeeded — as others
will succeed, long after my name, my small endeavors, arc
forgotten amid the great new world — new Church I should
have said — of enfranchised and fraternal labor."
And this was the suspected aristocrat! Oh, my brothers,"]
my brothers ! little you know how many a noble soul, among
those ranks which you consider only as your foes, is yearning
to love, to help, to live and die for you, did they but know the
way ! Is it their fault, if God has placed them where they
are ? Is it their fault, if they refuse to part with their
wealth, before they are sure that such a sacrifice would really
be a mercy to you ? Show yourselves worthy of association.
Show that you can do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly
with your God, as brothers before one Father, subjects of one
crucified King — and see then whether the spirit of self-sacri-
fice is dead among the rich ! See whether there, are not left
u England yet seven thousand who have not bowed the knee
.o Mammon, who will not fear to "give their substance to the
ree," if they find that the Son has made you free — free from
j our own sins, as well as from the sins of others !
CHAPTER XL.
PRIESTS AND PEOPLE.
"But after all," I said one day, "the great practical objec-
tion still remains unanswered — the clergy ] Are we to throw
ourselves into their hands, after all ] Are we, who have been
declaiming all our lives against priestcraft, voluntarily to forge
again the chains of our slavery to a class whom we neither
trust nor honor ?"
She smiled. " If you will examine the Prayer-Book, you
will not find, as far as I am aware, any thing which binds a
man to become the slave of the priesthood, voluntarily or
otherwise. Whether the people become priest-ridden or not,
hereafter will depend, as it always has done, utterly on them-
selves. As long as the people act upon their spiritual liberty
and live with eyes undimmed by superstitious fear, fixed in
loving boldness on their Father in heaven, and their King,
the first-born among many brethren, the priesthood will re-
main, as God intended them, only the interpreters and wit-
nesses of His will and His kingdom. But let them turn their
eyes from Him to aught in earth or heaven beside, and there
will be no lack of priestcraft, of vails to hide Him from them,
tyrants to keep them from Him, idols to ape His likeness.
A sinful people will be sure to be a priest-ridden people ; in
reality, though not in name ; by journalists and demagogues,
if not by class-leaders and popes : and of the two, I confess I
should prefer a Hildebrand to an O'Flynn."
" But," I replied, " we do not love, we do not trust, we do
not respect the clergy. Has their conduct to the masses, for
the last century, deserved that we should do so ? Will you
ask us to obey the men whom we despise ]"
"God forbid !" she answered. " But you must surely be
aware of the miraculous, ever-increasing improvement in the
clergy."
"In morals," I said, " and in industry, doubtless ; but not
upon those points which are to us just now dearer than their
morals or their industry, because they involve the very exist-
ence of our own industry and our own morals — I mean, social
and political subjects. On them the clergy seem to me as
ignorant, as bigoted, as aristocratic as ever."
360 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
"But, suppose that there were a rapidly-increasing clasii
among the clergy, who were willing to help you to the utter-
most — and you must feel that their help would he worth hav-
ing — toward the attainment of social reform, if you would
waive for a time merely political reform ?"
"What!" I said, "give up the very ideas for which we
have struggled, and sinned, and all hut died ? and will struggle,
and, if need be. die for still, or confess ourselves traitors to the
common weal ?"
" The Charter, like its supporters, must die to itself before
it lives to God. Is it not even now further off than ever 1"
" It seems so indeed — but what do you mean ?"
" You regarded the Charter as an absolute end. You made
a selfish and a self-willed idol of it. And therefore God s
blessing did not rest on it or you."
" We want it as a means as well as an end — as a means
for the highest and widest social reform, as well as a right
dependent on eternal justice."
" Let the working classes prove that, then," she replied,
" in their actions now. If it be true, as I would fain believe
it to be, let them show that they are willing to give up their
will to God's will ; to compass those social reforms by the
means which God puts in their way, and wait for His own
good time to give them, or not to give them, those means
^jwhich they in their own minds prefer. This is what I meant
by saying that Chartism must die to itself before it has a
chance of living to God. You must feel, too, that Chartism
has sinned — has defiled itself in the eyes of the wise, the good,
the gentle. Your only way now to soften the prejudice against
it, is to show that you can live like men, and brothers, and
Christians without it. You can not wonder if the clergy shall
object awhile to help you toward that Charter, which the
majority of you demanded for the express purpose of destroying
the creed which the clergy do believe, however badly they
may have acted upon it."
" It is all true enough — bitterly true. But yet, why do we
need the help of the clergy ?"
" Because you need the help of the whole nation ; because
there are other classes to be considered besides yourselves ; be-
cause the nation is neither the few nor the many, but the all ;
because it is only by the co-operation of all the members of a
body, that any one member can fulfill its calling in health
and freedom ; because, as long as you stand aloof from the
clergy, or from any other class, through pride, self-interest, or
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 561
willful ignorance, you are keeping up those very class distinc-
tions of which you and I too complain, as ' hateful equally to
God and to his enemies ;' and, finally, because the clergy are
the class which God has appointed to unite all others ; which,
in as far as it fulfills its calling, and is indeed a priesthood, is
above and below all rank, and knows no man after the flesh,
but only on the ground of his spiritual worth, and his birth-
right in that kingdom which is the heritage of all."
"Truly," I answered, "the idea is a noble one — but look
at the reality ! Has not priestly pandering to tyrants made
the Church, in every age, a scoff and a by-word among free
men :
" May it ever tlo so," she replied, " whenever such a sin
exists! But yet, look at the other side of the picture. Did
not the priesthood, in the first ages, glory not in the name,
but, what is better, in the office, of democrats 1 Did not the
Roman tyrants hunt them down as wild beasts, because they
were democrats, proclaiming to the slave and to the barbarian
a spiritual freedom and a heavenly citizenship, before which
the Roman well knew his power must vanish into naught 1
Who, during the invasion of the barbarians, protected the
poor against their conquerors ? Who, in the middle age,
stood between the baron and his serfs ? Who, in their mon-
asteries, realized spiritual democracy — the nothingness of rank
and wealth, the practical might of co-operation and self-sacri-
fice 1 Who delivered England from the Pope ? Who spread
throughout every cottage in the land the Bible and Protest-
antism, the book and the religion which declares that a man's
soul is free in the sight of God ? Who, at the martyr's stake
in Oxford, 'lighted the candle in England that shall never be
put out ?' Who, by suffering, and not by rebellion, drove
the last perjured Stuart from his throne, and united every
sect and class in one of the noblest steps in England's progress ?
You will say these are the exceptions ; I say nay ; they are
rather a few great and striking manifestations of an influence
which has been, unseen though not unfelt, at work for ages,
converting, consecrating, organizing every fresh invention of
mankind, and which is now on the eve of christianizing de-
mocracy, as it did Mediaeval Feudalism, Tudor Nationalism,
Whig Constitutionalism ; and which wili succeed in Chris-
tianizing it, and so alone making it rational, human, possible ;
because the priesthood alone, of all human institutions, testifies
of Christ the K»ing of men, the Lord of all things, the inspirer
of a.M discoveries : who reigns, and will reign, till He has put
Q
I
362 ALTON LOUKE, TAILOR AND POET.
all things under his feet, and the kingdoms of the world have
become the kingdoms of God and of his Christ. Be sure, as
it always has been, so will it be now. Without the priest-
hood there is no freedom for the people. Statesmen know it ;
and, therefore, those who would keep the people fettered, find
it necessary to keep the priesthood fettered also. The people
never can be themselves without co-operation with the priest-
hood ; and the priesthood never can be themselves without
co-operation with the people. They may help to make a
sect-church for the rich, as they have been doing, or a sect-
church for paupers (which is also the most subtle form of a
sect-church for the rich), as a party in England are trying
now to do — as I once gladly would have done myself: but if
they would be truly priests of God, and priests of the Uni-
versal Church, they must be priests of the people, priests of
the masses, priests after the likeness of Him who died on the
cross."
"And are there any men," I said, "who believe this? and,
what is more, have courage to act upon it, now in the very
hour of Mammon's triumph ?"
"There are those who are willing, who are determined,
whatever it may cost them, to fraternize with those whom
they take shame to themselves for having neglected ; to preach
and to organize, in concert with them, a Holy War against
the social abuses which are England's shame ; and, first and
foremost, against the fiend of competition. ^Tb e y do not want
to be dictators to the working-men. They know that they
have a message to the artisan, but they know, too, that the
artisan has a message to them ; and they are not afraid to
hear it. They do not wish to make him a puppet for any sys-
tem of their own ; they only are willing, if he will take the
hand they offer him, to devote themselves, body and soul, to
the great end of enabling the artisan to govern himself; to
produce in the capacity of a free man, and not of a slave ; to
eat the food he earns, and wear the clothes he makes. Will
your working brothers co-operate with these men ? Are they,
do you think, such bigots as to let political differences stand
between them and those who fain would treat them as their
brothers ; or will they fight manfully side by side with them
in the battle against Mammon, trusting to God, that if in any
thing they are otherwise minded, He will, in His own good
time, reveal even that unto them ? Do you think, to take
duo instance, the men of your own trade would heartily join
a handful of these men in an experiment of associate labcr
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 303
*
even though there should be a clergyman or two among
them?"
"Join them?" I said. "Can you ask the question? I,
lor one, would devote myself, body and soul, to any enterprise
so noble. Crossthwaite would ask for nothing higher, than
to be a hewer of food and a drawer of water to an establish-
ment of associate workmen. But alas ! his fate is fixed for
the New World ; and mine, I verily believe, for sickness and
the grave. And yet I will answer for it, that, in the hopes
of helping such a project, he would give up Mackaye's bequest,
for the mere sake of remaining in England ; and for me, if I
have but a month of life, it is at the service of such men as
you describe."
"Ah !" she said, musingly, "if poor Mackaye had but had
somewhat more faith in the future, that fatal condition would
perhaps never have been attached to his bequest. And yet,
perhaps, it is better as it is. Crossthwaite's mind may want
quite as much as yours does, a few years of a simpler and
brighter atmosphere to soften and refresh it again. Besides,
your health is too weak, your life, I know, too valuable to
your class, for us 1o trust you on such a voyage alone. He
must go with you."
"With me?" I said. "You must be misinformed; I have
no thought of leaving England."
" You know the opinion of the physicians?"
" I know that my life is not likely to be a long one ; that
immediate removal to a southern, if possible to a tropical,
climate, is considered the only means of preserving it. For the
former, I care little ; non est tanti vivere. And, indeed, the
latter, even if it would succeed, is impossible. Crossthwaite
will live and thrive by the labor of his hands ; while, for such
a helpless invalid as I to travel, would be to dissipate the little
capital which poor Mackaye has left me."
" The day will come, when society will find it profitable,
as well as just, to put the means of preserving life by travel
within the reach of the poorest. But individuals must always
begin by setting the examples, which the state, too slowly,
though surely (for the world is God's world after all), will
learn to copy. All is arranged for you. Crossthwaite, you
know, would have sailed ere now, had it not been lor your
fever. Next week you start with him for Texas. No ;
make no objections. All expenses are defrayed — no matter
by whom."
" By you ' by you ! Who else ?"
3G4 ALTON LOCKL, TAILOR AND POET.
*
" Do you think that I monopolize the generosity of En-
gland ? Do you think warm hearts beat only in the breasts
of working-men ? But, if it were I, would not that be only
another reason for submitting ? You must go. You will
have, for the next three years, such an allowance as will sup-
port you in comfort, whether you choose to remain stationary,
or, as I hope, to travel southward into Mexico. Your pass-
age-money is already paid."
Why should I attempt to describe my feelings? I gasped
for breath, and looked stupidly at her for a minute or two. —
The second darling hope of my life within my reach, just as
the first had been snatched from me ! At last I found words.
" No, no, noble lady ! Do not tempt me ! Who am I, the
slave of impulse, useless, worn out in mind and body, that yon
should waste such generosity upon me ? I do not refuse from
the honest pride of independence ; I have not man enough left
in me even for that. But will you, of all people, ask me to
desert the starving, suffering thousands, to whom my heart,
my honor are engaged ; to give up the purpose of my life, and
pamper my fancy in a luxurious paradise, while they are slav-
ing here ?"
"What? Can not God find champions for them when
you are gone ? Has He not found them already ? Believe
me, that Tenth of April, which you fancied the death-day, of
liberty, has awakened a spirit in high as well as in low life,
which children yet unborn will bless."
"Oh, do not mistake me ! Have I not confessed my own
weakness ? But if I have one healthy nerve left in me, soul
or body, it will retain its strength only as long as it thrills
with devotion to the people's cause. If I live, I must live
among them, for them. If I die, I must die at my post. I
could not rest, except in labor. I dare not fly, like Jonah,
from the call of God. In the deepest shade of the virgin
forests, on the loneliest peak of the Cordilleras, He would find
me out ; and I should hear his still small voice reproving me,
as it reproved the fugitive patriot-seer of old — What doest
thou here, Elijah?"
I was excited, and spoke, I am afraid, after my custom,
somewhat too magniloquently. But she answered only with
a cpiiet smile :
" So you are a Chartist still ?"
" If by a Chartist you mean one who fancies that a change
in mere political circumstances will bring about a millennium,
I am no longer one. That dream is gone — with others. But
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND TOET. 365
if to be a Chartist is to love my brothers with every faculty of
my soul — to wish to live and die struggling tor their rights,
endeavoring to make them, not electors merely, but fit to be
electors, senators, kings and priests to God and to His Christ
— if that be the Chartism of the future, then am I seven-fold
a Chartist, and ready to confess it before men, though I were
thrust forth from every door in England."
She was silent a moment.
"'The stone which the builders rejected is become the
head-stone of the corner.' Surely the old English spirit has
cast its madness, and begins to speak once more as it spoke in
Naseby fights and Smithfield fires !"
" And yet you would quench it in me amid the enervating
climate of the Tropics ?"
" Need it be quenched there 1 Was it quenched in Drake,
in Hawkins, and the conquerors of Hindostan ? Weakness,
like strength, is from within, of the spirit, and not of the sun-
shine. I would send you thither, that you may gain new
strength, new knowledge to carry out your dream and mine.
Do not refuse me the honor of preserving you. Do not forbid
me to employ my wealth in the only way which reconciles
my conscience to the possession of it. I have saved many a
woman already ; and this one thing remained — the highest of
all my hopes and longings — that God would allow me, ere I
died, to save a man. I have longed to find some noble soul,
as Carlyle says, fallen down by the way-side, and lift it up,
and heal its wounds, and teach it the secret of its heavenly
birthright, and consecrate it to its King in heaven. I have
longed to find a man of the people, whom I could train to be
the poet of the people."
" Me at least, you have saved, have taught, have trained '
Oh, that your care had been bestowed on some more worthy
object !"
" Let me at least, then, perfect my own work. You do
not — it is a sign of your humility that you do not — appreciate
the value of this rest. You underrate at once your own
powers, and the shock which they have received."
" If I must go, then, why so far ? Why put you to so
great expense ? If you must be generous, send me to some
place nearer home — to Italy, to the coast of Devon, or the
Isle of Wight, where invalids like me are said to find all the
advantages which are so often, perhaps too hastily, sought in
foreign lands."
"No," she said, smiling; "you are my servant now, bv
366 ALTON LOCKE. TAILOR AND TOET.
the laws of chivalry, and you must fulfill my quest. I have
long hoped for a Tropic poet ; one who should leave the rou-
tine imagery of European civilization, its meagre scenery, and
physically decrepit races, for the grandeur, the luxuriance, the
infinite and strongly-marked variety of Tropic nature, the
paradisaic beauty and simplicity of Tropic humanity. I am
tired of the old images ; of the barren alternation between
Italy and the Highlands. I had once dreamed of going to
the Tropics myself; but my work lay elsewhere. Go for me,
and for the people. See if you can not help to infuse some new
Iblood into the aged veins of English literature; see if you can
lot, by observing man in his mere simple and primeval state,
jring home fresh conceptions of beauty, fresh spiritual and
mysical laws of his existence, that you may realize them here
;at home — (how, I see as yet but dimly ; but He who teaches
the facts will surely teach their application) — in the cottages,
in the play-grounds, the reading-rooms, the churches of work-
ing-men."
"But I know so little — I have seen so little !"
" That very fact, I flatter myself, gives you an especial
vocation for my scheme. Your ignorance of cultivated
English scenery, and of Italian art, will enable you to
approach with a more reverent, simple, and unprejudiced,
eye, the primeval forms of beauty — God's work, not man's.
Sin you will see there, and anarchy, and tyranny : but I do
not send you to look for a society, but for nature. I do not
send you to become a barbarian settler, but to bring home to
the realms of civilization those ideas of physical perfection,
which as yet, alas ! barbarism, rather than civilization, has
preserved. Do not despise your old love for the beautiful.
Do not fancy that because you have let it become an idol
and a tyrant, it was not therefore the gift of God. Cherish
it, develop it to the last ; steep your whole soul in beauty ;
watch it in its most vast and complex harmonies, and not less
in its most faint and fragmentary traces. Only, hitherto you
have blindly worshiped it ; now you must learn to compre-
hend, to master, to embody it ; to show it forth to men as
the sacrament of Heaven, the finger-mark of God !"
Who could resist such pleading from those lips? I at least
could not.
CHAPTER XLI.
FREEDOM, EQUALITY, AND BROTHERHOOD.
Before the same Father, the same King, crucified for all
alike, we had partaken of the same bread and wine, we had
prayed for the same spirit. Side by side, around the chair
on which I lay propped up with pillows, coughing' my span
of life away, had knelt the high-born countess, the cultivated
philosopher, the repentant rebel, the wild Irish girl, her
slavish and exclusive creed exchanged for one more free and
all-embracing ; and that no extremest type of human con-
dition might be wanting, the reclaimed Magdalene was
there — two pale worn girls from Eleanor's asylum, in whom
I recognized the needlewomen to whom Mackaye had taken
me, on a memorable night seven years before. Thus — and
how better 1 — had God rewarded their loving care of that
poor dying fellow-slave.
Yes — we had knelt together : and I had felt that we were
one — that there was a bond between us, real, eternal, inde-
pendent of ourselves, knit not by man, but God ; and the
peace of God, which passes understanding, came over me like
the clear sunshine after weary rain.
One by one they shook me by the hand, and quitted the
room ; and Eleanor and I were left alone.
"See!" she said, "Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood/
are come ; but not as you expected."
Blissful, repentant tears blinded my eyes, as I replied, not
to her, but Him who spoke by her —
" Lord ! not as I will, but as thou wilt !"
"Yes," she continued, "Freedom, Equality, and Brother- //
hood are here. Realize them in thine own self, and so alone /
thou helpest to make them realities for all. Not from with- /
out, from Charters and Republics, but from within, from the/
Spirit working in each; not by wrath and haste, but by/
patience made perfect through suffering, canst thou proclaim
their good news to the groaning masses, and deliver them, as
thy Master did before thee, by the cross, and not the sword.
Divine paradox ! Folly to the rich and mighty — the watch-
word of the weak, in whose weakness is God's strength made
perfect. ' la your patience possess ve your souls, for the
coming of the Lord draweth niixh." Ve? — He came (hen.
368 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
and the Babel-tyranny of Rome fell, even as the more fearful,
more subtle, and more diabolic tyranny of Mammon shall fall
ere long: — suicidal, even now crumbling by its innate decay.
Yes — Babylon the Great — the commercial world of selfish
competition, drunken with the blood of God's people, whose
merchandise is the bodies and souls of men — her doom is
gone forth. And then — then — when they, the tyrants of the
earth, who lived delicately with her, rejoicing in her sins, the
plutocrats and bureaucrats, the money-changers and devour-
ers of labor, are crying to the rocks to hide them, and to tho
hills to cover them, from the wrath of Him that sitteth on
the throne. Then labor shall be free at last, and the pooi
shall eat and be satisfied, with things that eye hath not seen
nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to
conceive, but which God has prepared for those who love
Him. Then the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the
Lord, as the waters cover the sea, and mankind at last shall
own their King — Him in whom they are all redeemed into
the glorious liberty of the Sons of God, and He shall reign in-
deed on earth, and none but His saints shall rule beside Him.
And then shall this sacrament be an everlasting sign to all
the nations of the world, as it has been to you this day, of
freedom, equality, brotherhood, of glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace, good-will toward men. Do you believe ?"
Again I answered, not her, but Him who sent her —
" Lord, I believe ! Help thou mine unbelief!"
" And now, farewell. I shall not see you again before you
start — and ere you return — My health has been fast de-
clining lately."
I started — I had not dared to confess to myself how thin
her features had become of late. I had tried not to hear the
dry and hectic cough, or see the burning spot on either cheek
- -but it was too true ; and with a broken voice, I cried :
"Oh that 1 might die, and join you !"
" Not so — I trust that you have still a work to do. But
if not, promise me that, whatever be the event of your voyage,
you will publish, in good time, an honest history of your life ;
extenuating nothing, exaggerating nothing, ashamed to con-
fess or to proclaim nothing. It may perhaps awaken some
rich man to look down and take pity on the brains and hearts
more noble than his own, which lie struggling in poverty and
misguidance, among these foul sties, which civilization rears
— and calls them cities. Now, once again, farewell !"
She held out her hand — I would have fallen at her feet,
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 36»
but the thought of that eonunoii sacrament withheld me. I
seized her hand, covered it with adoring kisses — Slowly she
withdrew it, and glided from the room —
What need of more words ? I obeyed her — sailed — and
here I am
Yes ! I have seen the land ! Like a purple fringe upon
the golden water, " while the parting day dies like the dol-
phin,'' there it lay upon the far horizon — the great young
tree New World ! — and every tree and flower and insect on
•t new ! — a wonder and a joy — which I shall never see
No — I shall never reach the land. I felt it all along.
Weaker and weaker, day by day, with bleeding lungs and
failing limbs, I have traveled the ocean-paths. The iron has
entered too deeply into my soul
Hark ! Merry voices on deck are welcoming their future
home. Laugh on, happy ones ! — come out of Egypt and the
house of bondage, and the waste and howling wilderness of
slavery and competition, workhouses and prisons, into a good
land and large, a land flowing with milk and honey, where
you Avill sit every one under his own vine and his own fig-tree,
and look into the faces of your rosy children — and see in them
a blessing and not a curse ! Oh, England ! stern mother-
land, when wilt thou renew thy youth ? Thou wilderness
of man's making, not God's ! Is it not written, that
the day shall come when the forest shall break forth into sing-
ing, ;i ud the wilderness shall blossom like the rose 1
Hark ! again, sweet and clear, across the still night sea,
ring out the notes of Crossthwaite's bugle — the first luxury,
poor fellow, he ever allowed himself; and yet not a selfish
one, for music, like mercy, is twice blessed —
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
There is the spirit-stirring marching air of the German work-
men students :
-
Thou, thou, thou, and thou.
Sir Master, fare thee well.
Perhaps a half reproachful hint to the poor old England he
is leaving. What a glorious metre ! warming one's whole
heart into life and energy ! If I could but write in such a
metre one true people's song, that should embody all my sor-
row, indignation, hope — fitting last words for a poet of the
people — for they will be my last words — Well — thank. God .'
Q*
S70 ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET.
at least I shall not be buried in a London church-yard ! It
may be a foolish fancy — but I have made them promise to
lay me up among the virgin woods, where, if the soul ever
visits the place of its body's rest, I may snatch glimpses of
that natural beauty from which I was barred out in life, and
watch the gorgeous flowers that bloom above my dust, and
hear the forest birds sing around the Poet's grave.
Hark to the grand lilt of the "Good Time Coming !" —
pong which has cheered ten thousand hearts, which has
already taken root that it may live and grow forever — fitting
melody to soothe my dying ears ! Ah ! how should there not
be A Good Time Coming 1 Hope, and trust, and infinite
■deliverance ! — a time such as eye hath not seen nor ear heard,
nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive ! — com-
ing surely, soon or late, to those for whom a God did not dis-
dain to die !
Our only remaining duty is to give an extract from a letter
written by John Crossthwaite, and dated
Galveston, Texas, Oct., 1S48.
"I am happy. Katie is happy. There is
peace among us here, like 'the clear downshining after i - ain. :
But 1 thirst and long already for the expiration of my seven
years' exile, wholesome as I believe it to be. My only wish
is to return and assist in the Emancipation of Labor, and give
my small aid in that fraternal union of all classes which I
hear is surely, though slowly, spreading in my mother-land.
" And now for my poor friend, whose papers, according to
my promise to him, I transmit to you. On the very night
on which he seems to have concluded them — an hour after
we had made the land — we found him in his cabin, dead, hia
head resting on the table as peacefully as if he had slumbered.
On a sheet of paper by him were written the following verses ;
the ink was not yet dry :
" ' MY LAST WORDS.
I.
" ' Weep, weep, weep, and weep,
For pauper, dolt, and slave ;
Hark ! from wasted moor and ten,
Feverous alley, workhouse den,
Swells the wail of Englishmen ;
" Work ! or the crave I"
If
ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET. 371
II.
"'Down, down, down, and down,
With idler, knave, and tyrant ;
Why for sluggards stint and moil ?
He that will not live by toil
Has no right on English soil ;
God's word 's our warrant !
III.
" 'Up, up, up, and up,
Face your game, and play it!
The night is past — behold the sun !—
The cup is full, the web is spun,
The Judge is set, the doom begun,
Who shall stay it?'"
THE END
r
o
h
.*
b
305 Vs e ANO^S,^P 9 ORN."900^ 9 88
University of California Library
Los Angeles
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
AA 000 461007