Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet Part 25

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 expectation. "My uncle!" was he the same old man whom I had seen at the gallery; and if so, was Lillian with him? Delicious hope! And yet, what if she was with him--what to me? But yet I sat silent, dreaming, all the evening, and hurried 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, was Lillian, looking more beautiful than ever. The child of sixteen had blossomed into the woman of twenty. The ivory and vermilion of the complexion had toned down together into still richer hues. The dark hazel eyes shone with a more liquid l.u.s.tre. 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 colour, gay and yet not gaudy, seemed to harmonize. The little plump jewelled hands--the transparent chestnut hair, banded round the beautiful oval masque--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 worshipped--what? I could not tell then, for I cannot tell even now.

The dean smiled recognition, bade me sit down, and disposed my papers, meditatively, on his knee. I obeyed him, trembling, choking--my eyes devouring my idol--forgetting why I had come--seeing nothing but her--listening for nothing but the opening of these 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 cla.s.sic-models, and with the laws of rhyme and melody, than could have been expected from a young man of your cla.s.s--_macte virtute puer_. Have you read any Latin?"

"A little." And I went 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 fiercely 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--especially 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 Sh.e.l.ley has had so much influence on your writing.

He is a guide as irregular in taste, as unorthodox in doctrine; though there are some pretty things in him now and then. And you have caught his melody tolerably here, now--"

"Oh, that is such a sweet thing!" said Lillian. "Do you know, I read it over and over last night, and took it up-stairs with me. How very fond of beautiful things you must be, Mr. Locke, to be able to describe so pa.s.sionately the longing after 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 for--I forget what. I believe I was on the point of running off into some absurd compliment, but I caught the dark lady's warning eye on me.

"Ah, yes! I forgot. I dare say 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?--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 a.s.sisted in that praiseworthy ambition, why, I think he ought to go to some training college; St. Mark's, I should say, on the whole, might, by its strong Church principles, give the best antidote to any little remaining taint of _sansculottism_. 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 Mediterranean 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 everybody, except perhaps the dark lady, seemed to take for granted that I felt myself exceedingly honoured, and must consider it, as a matter of course, the greatest possible stretch of kindness thus to talk me over, and settle everything for me, as if I was not a living soul, but a plant in a pot. Perhaps they were not unsupported by experience. I suppose too many of us would have thought it so; there are flunkeys in all ranks, and to spare. Perhaps the true absurdity was the 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 anywhere 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 corroborates, my dear lord, the a.s.sertion, for which I have been so often ridiculed, that there are many real men, capable of higher things, scattered up and down among the ma.s.ses.

Attend to me, sir!" (a hint which I suspect I very much wanted). "Now, recollect; if it should be hereafter in our power to a.s.sist your prospects in life, you must give up, once and for all, the bitter tone against the higher cla.s.ses, 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 G.o.d. 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 pa.s.sions of the mult.i.tude; and to shut your ears betimes to the extravagant calumnies of demagogues, who make tools of enthusiastic and imaginative minds for their own selfish aggrandis.e.m.e.nt. Avoid politics; the workman has no more to do with them than the clergyman. We are told, on divine authority, to fear G.o.d 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, and fulfilled his mission--not by an old age of wealth, respectability, 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 good deal, I recollect, myself. But that is no reason for publishing. 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 eye-brow, 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 allowed 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 willing to become a pensioner on his bounty--that I was a member 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 I exaggerated my own offences: however that may be, love soon, silenced conscience, and I almost danced into my cousin's rooms on my return.

That week pa.s.sed rapidly and happily. I was half amused with the change in my cousin's demeanour. I had evidently 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 honour the unaccredited hero, having no eye to find him out till properly accredited, and countersigned, and accoutred with full uniform and diploma by that great G.o.d, Public Opinion.

I saw through the motive of his new-fledged respect for me--and yet encouraged it; for it flattered my vanity. The world must forgive me. It was something for the poor tailor to find himself somewhat appreciated at last, even outwardly. And besides, this sad 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 various little toilette refinements, that I might make a respectable appearance at the dean's. I knew that he consulted rather the honour 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 consented, 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 little of the University men; less than I might have done; less, perhaps, than I ought to have done. My cousin did not try to keep me from them; they, whenever I met them, did not shrink from me, and were civil enough: but I shrank from them. My cousin attributed my reserve to modesty, and praised me for it in his coa.r.s.e fashion: but he was mistaken. Pride, rather, and something very like envy, kept me silent. Always afraid (at that period of my career) of young men of my own age, I was doubly afraid of these men; not because they were cleverer than I, for they were not, but because I fancied I had no fair chance with them; they had opportunities which I had not, read and talked of books of which I knew nothing; and when they did touch on matters which I fancied I understood, it was from a point of view so different from mine, that I had to choose, as I thought, between standing up alone to be baited by the whole party, or shielding myself behind a proud and somewhat contemptuous silence. I looked on them as ignorant aristocrats; while they looked on me, I verily believe now, as a very good sort of fellow, who ought to talk well, but would not; and went their way carelessly. The truth is, I did envy those men. I did not envy them their learning; for the majority of men who came into my cousin's room had no learning to envy, being rather brilliant and agreeable men than severe students; but I envied them their opportunities of learning; and envied them just as much their opportunities of play--their boating, their cricket, their foot-ball, their riding, and their gay confident carriage, which proceeds from physical health and strength, and which I mistook for the swagger of insolence; while Parker's Piece, with its games, was a sight which made me grind my teeth, when I thought of the very different chance of physical exercise which falls to the lot of a London artisan.

And still more did I envy them when I found that many of them combined, as my cousin did, this physical exercise with really hard mental work, and found the one help the other. It was bitter to me--whether it ought to have been so or not--to hear of prizemen, wranglers, fellows of colleges, as first rate oars, boxers, foot-ball players; and my eyes once fairly filled with tears, when, after the departure of a little fellow no bigger or heavier than myself, but with the eye and the gait of a game-c.o.c.k, I was informed that he was "bow-oar in the University eight, and as sure to be senior cla.s.sic next year as he has a head on his shoulders." And I thought of my nights of study in the lean-to garret, and of the tailor's workshop, and of Sandy's den, and said to myself bitter words, which I shall not set down. Let gentlemen readers imagine them for themselves; and judge rationally and charitably of an unhealthy working-man like me, if his tongue be betrayed, at moments, to envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.

However, one happiness I had--books. I read in my cousin's room from morning till night. He gave me my meals hospitably enough: but disappeared every day about four to "hall"; after which he did not reappear till eight, the interval being taken up, he said, in "wines" and an hour of billiards.

Then he sat down to work, and read steadily and well till twelve, while I, nothing loth, did the same; and so pa.s.sed, rapidly enough, my week at Cambridge.

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, towards the cathedral town of D * * * *--through a flat fen country, which though I had often heard it described as ugly, struck my imagination much. The vast height and width of the sky-arch, as seen from those flats as from an ocean--the grey haze shrouding the horizon of our narrow land-view, and closing us in, till we seemed to be floating through infinite s.p.a.ce, 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 d.y.k.es, with their gaudy carpets of strange floating water-plants, and their black banks, studded with the remains of buried forests--the innumerable 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 aeolian 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 prurient longing after anything 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 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 round the man's story. It is credibly ascertained that I am the man who broke into his house last year, after having made love to his housemaid, and stole his writing-desk and plate--else, why should a burglar steal family-letters, if he had not some interest in them?... And before 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, receives two or three anonymous letters, condoling with him on the cruel betrayal of his confidence--base ingrat.i.tude for undeserved condescension, &c., &c.; and, perhaps, with an enclosure 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--walked up the sunny slopes, where the old convent had stood, now covered with walled gardens and n.o.ble timber-trees, and crowned by the richly fretted towers of the cathedral, which we had seen, for the last twenty miles, growing gradually 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 I suppose that it will be numbered, at least, among trite remarks, 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 everything 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 G.o.d--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 dest.i.tution, disease, filth, and profligacy--can yet find it in 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 t.i.thes, taken from the pockets of a Roman Catholic population, whom they have been put there to convert to Protestantism 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 dare 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 mult.i.tude" think?

When I speak of wealth, I do not mean that the dean's household would have been considered by his own cla.s.s at all too luxurious. He would have been said, I suppose, to live in a "quiet, comfortable, gentlemanlike way"--"everything 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 unlimited flirtations with the maids; and a coachman, very like other coachmen, whom I saw taking a pair of handsome carriage-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 anything, the footman 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 themselves, 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.

At last we went down to dinner, after my personal adornments had been carefully superintended by my cousin, who gave me, over and above, various warnings and exhortations as to my behaviour; which, of course, took due effect, in making me as nervous, constrained, and affected, as possible.

When I appeared in the drawing-room, I was kindly welcomed 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 att.i.tude, and thinking it looked awkward, and so exchanged 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 Ill.u.s.trated 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 G.o.d has made you."

I could not help fancying that the lesson, whether intentionally or not, was meant for me; and a pa.s.sing impulse made me take up the slip, fold it together, and put it into my bosom. Perhaps it was Lillian's handwriting! 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 G.o.ddess, 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 nay shoulders.

Lillian and my cousin chatted away about church-architecture, and the restorations which were going on at the cathedral; 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 worshipped. 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 for ever after, the pure devotion of the old knights and troubadours of chivalry. I seemed to myself to be their brother--one of the holy guild of poet-lovers. I was a new Petrarch, basking in the light-rays of a new Laura. I gazed, and gazed, and found 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 stammering confession that I did not, by telling me she was delighted to hear that; for she did not understand it either, and it was so pleasant to have a companion in ignorance. Then she asked me, if I was much struck with the buildings in Cambridge?--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, for enjoying from her lips the flippant, sparkling tattle, which had hitherto made young women to me objects of unspeakable dread, to be escaped by crossing the street, hiding behind doors, and rushing blindly into back-yards and coal-holes.