Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet Part 19

So with him I went that night.

"Well, Alton! where was the treason and murder? Your nose must have been a sharp one, to smell out any there. Did you hear anything that astonished your weak mind so very exceedingly, after all?"

"The only thing that did astonish me was to hear men of my own cla.s.s--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 G.o.d who knows nothing about ranks. They're the unknown great--the unaccredited heroes, as Master Thomas Carlyle would say--whom the flunkeys aloft have not acknowledged 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, Crossthwaite."

"Does it want so very much wisdom to understand the rights and the wrongs of all that? Are the people represented? 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 interests--we have none. Large capitals--those are just what crush us. Irresponsibility of employers, slavery of the employed, compet.i.tion among masters, compet.i.tion among workmen, 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 are represented!"

We were pa.s.sing 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, from the neighbouring gin palaces and thieves' cellars. A herd of ragged boys, vomiting forth slang, filth, and blasphemy, pushed past us, compelling us to take good care of our pockets.

"Look there! look at the amus.e.m.e.nts, the training, the civilization, which the government permits to the children of the people! These licensed pits of darkness, traps of temptation, profligacy, and ruin, triumphantly yawning night after night--and then tell me that the people who see their children thus kidnapped into h.e.l.l are represented by a government who licenses such things!"

"Would a change in the franchise cure that?"

"Household suffrage mightn't--but 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 prost.i.tution, 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."

"But really, I cannot see how a mere change in representation can cure such things as that."

"Why, didn't they tell us, before the Reform Bill, that extension of the suffrage was to cure everything? And how can you have too much of a good thing? We've only taken them at their word, we Chartists. Haven't all politicians been preaching for years that England's national greatness was all owing to her political inst.i.tutions--to Magna Charta, and the Bill of Rights, and representative parliaments, and all that? It was but the other day I got hold of some Tory paper, that talked about the English const.i.tution, 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 cla.s.ses is such a blessed thing, the sooner we get the balance equal, the better; for it's rather lopsided just now, no one can deny. So, representative inst.i.tutions are the talismanic palladium of the nation, are they? The palladium of the cla.s.ses that have them, I dare say; and that's the very best reason why the cla.s.ses 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 England--at least, I had no reason to be ashamed of my company. Yes; I too, like Crossthwaite, took the upper cla.s.ses at their word; bowed down to the idol of political inst.i.tutions, and pinned my hopes of salvation on "the possession of one ten-thousandth part of a talker in the national palaver." True, I desired the Charter, at first (as I do, indeed, at this moment), as a means to glorious ends--not only because it would 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, sanatory, 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, procrastinations. "If we had but the Charter"--I 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 circ.u.mstances--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 me 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 industry" which, in plain language, signifies "the despotism of capital"; and which, whatever it means, is merely some outward system, circ.u.mstance, or "dodge" _about_ man, and not _in_ him. Another party's nostrum is more churches, more schools, more clergymen--excellent things in their way--better 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 consideration, compared with the quant.i.ty. 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 system," circ.u.mstance, or "dodge." For my part, I seem to 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 G.o.d.

About the supposed omnipotence of the Charter, I have 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 fact which we working men, I really believe, have, under the pressure of wholesome defeat and G.o.d-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 cla.s.s of facts somewhat different from theirs, we differed from them proportionably 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, _de facto_, like Coriola.n.u.s, 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 consumption, 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 singular, 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 a.s.signed. 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 suspiciously strange alacrity. But it was as impossible to prove the offence against him, as to punish him for it. Of that wretched man, too, and his subsequent career, I shall have somewhat to say hereafter. Verily, there is a G.o.d 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 cla.s.s, involving starvation. What was to be done? We applied for work at several "honourable shops"; but at all we received the same answer. Their trade 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 Averni!_ 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 down-hearted at once; but Crossthwaite bore up gaily enough.

"Katie and I can pick a crust together without snarling over it. And, thank G.o.d, I have no children, and never intend 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 trampling 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 l.u.s.t."

"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 G.o.d 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 Emperor to be above begetting slaves and martyrs. A man of the people should keep himself as free from enc.u.mbrances as he can just now. He win 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.

"I 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 Tory 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!"

"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 righteousness, 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.

"Aweel, then, ye'll just mind the shop, and dust the books whiles; I'm getting auld and stiff, and ha' need o' help i' the business."

"No," I said; "you say so out of kindness; but if you can afford no greater comforts than these, you cannot 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 daur, why dinna ye pack up your duds, and yer poems wi' them, and gang till your cousin i' the university? 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 towards reaping the fruits o' yer ain labours. A few punds on a bond for repayment when the addition 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 independence; it's but spoiling the Egyptians, ye ken, and the bit ballants will be their money's worth, I'll warrant, and tell them a wheen facts they're no that weel acquent.i.t wi'. Hech? Johnnie, my Chartist?"

"Why not go to my uncle?"

"Puir sugar-and-spice-selling bailie body! 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 to 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 further afield than Fulham or Battersea Rise. 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.