Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet Part 17

"Then ye ought. What do ye ken anent the Pacific? Which is maist to your business?--thae bare-backed hizzies that play the harlot o' the other side o' the warld, or these--these thousands o' bare-backed 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'll be a poet at a', ye maun be a c.o.c.kney poet; and while the c.o.c.kneys be what they be, ye maun write, like Jeremiah of old, o' lamentation and mourning and woe, for the sins o' your people. Gin you want to learn the spirit o' a people's poet, down wi' your Bible and read thae auld Hebrew prophets; gin ye wad learn the style, read your Burns frae morning 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 h.e.l.l beneath them?

and G.o.d frowning, and the deevil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra idea of the cla.s.sic tragedy defined to be, man conquered by circ.u.mstance?

Canna ye see it there? And the verra idea of the modern tragedy, man conquering circ.u.mstance?--and I'll show you that, too--in mony a garret where no eye but the gude G.o.d's enters, to see the patience, and the fort.i.tude, and the self-sacrifice, and the luve stronger than death, that's shining 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 the carved bal.u.s.trades 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, steamed out upon the hot stifling rush of air from every doorway, 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 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 marked, hollow eyed, emaciated, her only bed clothes the skirt of a large handsome new riding-habit, at which two other girls, wan and tawdry, were st.i.tching busily, as they sat right and left of her 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 la.s.sies; 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, disgusting 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 grat.i.tude that I never can forget, 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 G.o.d 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-favoured creature I am. From that time I was burnt when I was a child, and had the small-pox afterwards, oh! how sinful I was, and repined and rebelled against the Lord! And now I see it was all His blessed mercy to keep me out of evil, pure and unspotted for 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, ail 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 coming 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 a.s.sumed; and I remarked in the meantime 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 from 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 didn't go to Heaven at all, Mr. Mackaye."

(And she burst out crying, and between her sobs it came out, as well as I could gather, that her notion was, that her illness was the cause of keeping the girls in "_the bad ivay_," 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 pa.s.sionately, almost fiercely--

"Repent--I have repented--I repent of it every hour--I hate myself, and hate all the world because of it; but I must--I must; I cannot see her starve, and I cannot 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 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 anything?" I ventured to ask.

"They used to allow half-a-crown for a bit; and the doctor ordered Ellen things from the parish, but 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 c.o.c.kered 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'll do that? 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-humour 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 won't 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 workhouse, 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 everything," 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 to 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 G.o.d, wouldn't I slave my fingers to the bone to work for him! Wouldn't I mend my life then! I couldn't help it--it would be like getting into heaven out of h.e.l.l. But now--we must--we must, I tell you. I shall go mad soon, I think, or take to drink. When I pa.s.sed the gin-shop down there just now, I had to run like mad for fear I should go in; and if I once took to that--Now then, to work again. Make up the fire, Mrs. * * * *, please do."

And she sat down, and began st.i.tching 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.

"G.o.d bless you," said Ellen; "come again soon, dear Mr. Mackaye."

"Good-bye," 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--st.i.tch, st.i.tch, st.i.tch. Somebody's wrote a song about that--I'll learn to sing it--it'll 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 la.s.sie, rejoicing in her disfigurement and not her beauty--like the nuns of Peterborough in auld time--is there na poetry there? That puir la.s.sie, 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, prost.i.tuting 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, Sh.e.l.ley's gran'; always gran'; but Fact is grander--G.o.d and Satan are grander. All around ye, in every gin-shop and costermonger's cellar, are G.o.d and Satan at death grips; every garret is a haill Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained; and will ye think it beneath ye to be the 'People's Poet?'"

CHAPTER IX.

POETRY AND POETS.

In the history of individuals, as well as in that of nations, there is often a period of sudden blossoming--a short luxuriant summer, not without its tornadoes 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 quant.i.ty of my productions during that short time. My subjects were intentionally and professedly c.o.c.kney ones. I had taken Mackaye at his word. I had made up my mind, that if I had any poetic powers I must do my duty therewith in that station of life to which it had pleased G.o.d to call me, and look at everything simply and faithfully as a London artizan. 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, I laboured. Not from the atmosphere, indeed,--that was ungenial enough; crime and poverty, all-devouring compet.i.tion, and hopeless struggles against Mammon and Moloch, amid the roar of wheels, the ceaseless stream of pale, hard faces, intent on gain, or brooding 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 cannot rest, casting up mire and dirt; resonant of the clanking 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 colouring, 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 saddened me; it deepened in me that peculiar melancholy of intellectual youth, which Mr. Carlyle has christened for ever by one of his immortal nicknames--"Werterism"; I battened on my own melancholy. I believed, I loved to believe, that every face I pa.s.sed bore the traces of discontent as deep as 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 London poets have always been 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 for a moment with the Eschylean grandeur, the terrible rhythmic lilt of his "Cholera Chant"--

Dense on the stream the vapours 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 footmarks 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 extending 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 better than even all the beauties of nature.

But it was on canvas, and not among realities, that I had to choose my garlands; and therefore the picture galleries became more than ever my favourite--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 blessed those painters! how I thanked Creswick for every transparent shade-chequered pool; Fielding, for every rain-clad down; Cooper, for every knot of quiet cattle beneath the cool grey 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 Revolution." Of the general effect which his works had on me, I shall say nothing: it was the same as they have had, thank G.o.d, on thousands of my cla.s.s and of every other. But that book above all first recalled me to the overwhelming and yet enn.o.bling 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.