Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet Part 3

"Of course, all this depends on whether we do believe that Christ is in every man, and that G.o.d's spirit is abroad in the earth. Of course, again, it will be very difficult to know who speaks by G.o.d's spirit, and who sees by Christ's light in him; but surely the wiser, the humbler path, is to give men credit for as much wisdom and rightness as possible, and to believe that when one is found fault with, one is probably in the wrong.

For myself, on Looking back, I see clearly with shame and sorrow, that the obloquy which I have brought often on myself and on the good cause, has been almost all of it my own fault--that I have given the devil and bad men a handle, not by caring what people would say, but by _not caring_--by fancying that I was a very grand fellow, who was going to speak what I knew to be true, in spite of all fools (and really did and do intend so to do), while all the while I was deceiving myself, and unaware of a canker at the heart the very opposite to the one against which you warn me. I mean the proud, self-willed, self-conceited spirit which made no allowance for other men's weakness or ignorance; nor again, for their superior experience and wisdom on points which I had never considered--which took a pride in shocking and startling, and defying, and hitting as hard as I could, and fancied, blasphemously, as I think, that the word of G.o.d had come to me only, and went out from me only. G.o.d forgive me for these sins, as well as for my sins in the opposite direction; but for these sins especially, because I see them to be darker and more dangerous than the others.

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

"And then comes a second and worse danger. Crushed into self, and his own conscience and _schema mundi_, he loses the opportunity of correcting his impression of the voice of G.o.d within, by the testimony of the voice of G.o.d without; and so he begins to mistake more and more the voice of that very flesh of his, which he fancies he has conquered, for the voice of G.o.d, and to become, without knowing it, an autotheist. And out of that springs eclecticism, absence of tenderness _for_ men, for want of sympathy _with_ men; as he makes his own conscience his standard for G.o.d, so he makes his own character the standard for men; and so he becomes narrow, hard, and if he be a man of strong will and feelings, often very inhuman and cruel.

This is the history of thousands-of Jeromes, Lauds, Puritans who scourged Quakers, Quakers who cursed Puritans; nonjurors, who though they would die rather than offend their own conscience in owning William, would plot with James to murder William, or to devastate England with Irish Rapparees and Auvergne dragoons. This, in fact, is the spiritual diagnosis of those many pious persecutors, who though neither hypocrites or blackguards themselves, have used both as instruments of their fanaticism.

"Against this I have to guard myself, you little know how much, and to guard my children still more, brought up, as they will be, under a father, who, deeply discontented with the present generation, cannot but express that discontent at times. To make my children '_banausoi_,' insolent and scoffing radicals, believing in n.o.body and nothing but themselves, would be perfectly easy in me if I were to make the watchword of my house, 'Never mind what people say.' On the contrary, I shall teach them that there are plenty of good people in the world; that public opinion has pretty surely an undercurrent of the water of life, below all its froth and garbage; and that in a Christian country like this, where, with all faults, a man (sooner or later) has fair play and a fair hearing, the esteem of good men, and the blessings of the poor, will be a pretty sure sign that they have the blessing of G.o.d also; and I shall tell them, when they grow older, that ere they feel called on to become martyrs, in defending the light within them against all the world, they must first have taken care most patiently, and with all self-distrust and humility, to make full use of the light which is around them, and has been here for ages before them, and would be here still, though they had never been born or thought of. The antinomy between this and their own conscience may be painful enough to them some day. To what thinking man is it not a life-long battle? but I shall not dream that by denying one pole of the antinomy I can solve it, or do anything but make them, by cynicism or fanaticism, bury their talent in the earth, and _not_ do the work which G.o.d has given them to do, because they will act like a parson who, before beginning his sermon, should first kick his congregation out of doors, and turn the key; and not like St. Paul, who became all things to all men, if by any means he might save some.

"Yours ever affectionately, with all Christmas blessings,

"C. KINGSLEY.

"FARLY COURT, _December 26, 1855_.

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

One more letter only I will add, dated about the end of the "Parson Lot"

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

"EVERSLEY, _May, 1856_.

"DEAR TOM,--It's an ill bird that fouls its own nest; and don't cry stinking fish, neither don't hollow till you're out of the wood--which you oughtn't to have called yourself Tom fool, and blasphemed the holy name thereby, till you knowed you was sich, which you wasn't, as appears by particulars. And I have heard from T---- twice to-day, and he is agreeable, which, if he wasn't, he is an a.s.s, and don't know half a loaf is better than no bread, and you musn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but all is as right as a dog-fox down wind and vi. _millia pa.s.suum_, to the next gorse.

But this 25 of his is a grueller, and I learnt with interest that you are inclined to get the fishes nose out of the weed. I have offered to lend him 10--hopes it may be lending--and have written a desperate begging letter to R. Monckton Milnes, Esq., which 'evins prosper. Poor T---- says to-night that he has written to Forster about it--which he must have the small of his back very hard against the ropes so to do, so the sooner we get the ginger-beer bottle out the longer he'll fight, or else he'll throw up the sponge at once; for I know his pride. I think we can raise it somehow. I have a last card in old ----, the judge who tried and condemned him, and is the dearest old soul alive, only he will have it T---- showed dunghill, and don't carry a real game nackle. If I am to tackle he you must send me back those letters to appeal to his piety and 'joys as does abound,' as your incomparable father remarks. When _will_ you give me that canticle? He says Tom Taylor (I believe all the world is called Thomas) has behaved to him like a brother, which, indeed, was to be expexed, and has promised him copying at a shilling an hour, and _will_ give him a chop daily free gracious; but the landlord won't wait, which we musn't neither.

"Now, business afore pleasure. You are an old darling, and who says no, I'd kick him, if it warn't for my cloth; but you are green in cottoning to me about our '48 mess. Because why? I lost nothing--I risked nothing. You fellows worked like bricks, spent money, and got midshipman's half-pay (nothing a-day and find yourself), and monkey's allowance (more kicks than halfpence). I risked no money; 'cause why, I had none; but _made_ money out of the movement, and fame too. I've often thought what a dirty beast I was.

I made 150 by Alton Locke, and never lost a farthing; and I got, not in spite of, but by the rows, a name and a standing with many a one who would never have heard of me otherwise, and I should have been a stercoraceous mendicant if I had hollowed when I got a facer, while I was winning by the cross, though I didn't mean to fight one. No. And if I'd had 100,000, I'd have, and should have, staked and lost it all in 1848-50. I should, Tom, for my heart was and is in it, and you'll see it will beat yet; but we ain't the boys. We don't see but half the bull's eye yet, and don't see _at all_ the policeman which is a going on his beat behind the bull's eye, and no thanks to us. Still, _some_ somedever, it's in the fates, that a.s.sociation is the pure caseine, and must be eaten by the human race if it would save its soul alive, which, indeed, it will; only don't you think me a good fellow for not crying out, when I never had more to do than scratch myself and away went the fleas. But you all were real bricks; and if you were riled, why let him that is without sin cast the first stone, or let me cast it for him, and see if I don't hit him in the eye.

"Now to business; I have had a sorter kinder sample day. Up at 5, to see a dying man; ought to have been up at 2, but Ben King the rat-catcher, who came to call me, was taken nervous!!! and didn't make row enough; was from 5.30 to 6.30 with the most dreadful case of agony--insensible to me, but not to his pain. Came home, got a wash and a pipe, and again to him at 8. Found him insensible to his own pain, with dilated pupils, dying of pressure of the brain--going any moment. Prayed the commendatory prayers over him, and started for the river with West. Fished all the morning in a roaring N.E. gale, with the dreadful agonized face between me and the river, pondering on THE mystery. Killed eight on 'March brown' and 'governor,' by drowning the flies, and taking _'em out gently to see_ if ought was there--which is the only dodge in a north-easter. 'Cause why? The water is warmer than the air--_ergo_, fishes don't like to put their noses out o' doors, and feeds at home down stairs. It is the only wrinkle, Tom.

The captain fished a-top, and caught but three all day. They weren't going to catch a cold in their heads to please him or any man. Clouds burn up at 1 P.M. I put on a minnow, and kill three more; I should have had lots, but for the image of the dirty hickory stick, which would 'walk the waters like a thing of life,' just ahead of my minnow. Mem.--Never fish with the sun in your back; it's bad enough with a fly, but with a minnow it's strichnine and prussic acid. My eleven weighed together four and a-half pounds--three to the pound; not good, considering I had spased many a two-pound fish, I _know_.

"Corollary.--Bra.s.s minnow don't suit the water. Where is your wonderful minnow? Send him me down, or else a _horn_ one, which I believes in desperate; but send me something before Tuesday, and I will send you P.O.O.

Horn minnow looks like a gudgeon, which is the pure caseine. One pounder I caught to-day on the 'March brown' womited his wittles, which was rude, but instructive; and among worms was a gudgeon three inches long and more. Blow minnows--gudgeon is the thing.

"Came off the water at 3. Found my man alive, and, thank G.o.d, quiet. Sat with him, and thought him going once or twice. What a mystery that long, insensible death-struggle is! Why should they be so long about it? Then had to go Hartley Row for an Archdeacon's Sunday-school meeting--three hours useless (I fear) speechifying and 'shop'; but the Archdeacon is a good man, and works like a brick beyond his office. Got back at 10:30, and sit writing to you. So goes one's day. All manner of incongruous things to do--and the very incongruity keeps one beany and jolly. Your letter was delightful. I read part of it to West, who says, you are the best fellow on earth, to which I agree.

"So no more from your sleepy and tired--C. KINGSLEY."

This was almost the last letter I ever received from him in the Parson Lot period of his life, with which alone this notice has to do. It shows, I think, very clearly that it was not that he had deserted his flag (as has been said) or changed his mind about the cause for which he had fought so hard and so well. His heart was in it still as warmly as ever, as he says himself. But the battle had rolled away to another part of the field.

Almost all that Parson Lot had ever striven for was already gained. The working-cla.s.ses had already got statutory protection for their trade a.s.sociations, and their unions, though still outside the law, had become strong enough to fight their own battles. And so he laid aside his fighting name and his fighting pen, and had leisure to look calmly on the great struggle more as a spectator than an actor.

A few months later, in the summer of 1856, when he and I were talking over and preparing for a week's fishing in the streams and lakes of his favourite Snowdonia, he spoke long and earnestly in the same key. I well remember how he wound it all up with, "the long and short of it is, I am becoming an optimist. All men, worth anything, old men especially, have strong fits of optimism--even Carlyle has--because they can't help hoping, and sometimes feeling, that the world is going right, and will go right, not your way, or my way, but its own way. Yes; we've all tried our Holloway's Pills, Tom, to cure all the ills of all the world--and we've all found out I hope by this time that the tough old world has more in its inside than any Holloway's Pills will clear out." A few weeks later I received the following invitation to Snowdon, and to Snowdon we went in the autumn of 1856.

THE INVITATION.

Come away with me, Tom, Term and talk is done; My poor lads are reaping, Busy every one.

Curates mind the parish, Sweepers mind the Court, We'll away to Snowdon For our ten days' sport, Fish the August evening Till the eve is past, Whoop like boys at pounders Fairly played and gra.s.sed.

When they cease to dimple, Lunge, and swerve, and leap, Then up over Siabod Choose our nest, and sleep.

Up a thousand feet, Tom, Round the lion's head, Find soft stones to leeward And make up our bed.

Bat our bread and bacon, Smoke the pipe of peace, And, ere we be drowsy, Give our boots a grease.

Homer's heroes did so, Why not such as we?

What are sheets and servants?

Superfluity.

Pray for wives and children Safe in slumber curled, Then to chat till midnight O'er this babbling world.

Of the workmen's college, Of the price of grain, Of the tree of knowledge, Of the chance of rain; If Sir A. goes Romeward, If Miss B. sings true, If the fleet comes homeward, If the mare will do,-- Anything and everything-- Up there in the sky Angels understand us, And no "_saints_" are by.

Down, and bathe at day-dawn, Tramp from lake to lake, Washing brain and heart clean Every step we take.

Leave to Robert Browning Beggars, fleas, and vines; Leave to mournful Ruskin Popish Apennines, Dirty Stones of Venice And his Gas-lamps Seven; We've the stones of Snowdon And the lamps of heaven.

Where's the mighty credit In admiring Alps?

Any goose sees "glory"

In their "snowy scalps."

Leave such signs and wonders For the dullard brain, As aesthetic brandy, Opium, and cayenne; Give me Bramshill common (St. John's harriers by), Or the vale of Windsor, England's golden eye.

Show me life and progress, Beauty, health, and man; Houses fair, trim gardens, Turn where'er I can.

Or, if bored with "High Art,"

And such popish stuff, One's poor ears need airing, Snowdon's high enough.

While we find G.o.d's signet Fresh on English ground, Why go gallivanting With the nations round?

Though we try no ventures Desperate or strange; Feed on common-places In a narrow range; Never sought for Franklin Round the frozen Capes; Even, with Macdougall, Bagged our brace of apes; Never had our chance, Tom, In that black Redan; Can't avenge poor Brereton Out in Sakarran; Tho' we earn our bread, Tom, By the dirty pen, What we can we will be, Honest Englishmen.

Do the work that's nearest, Though it's dull at whiles; Helping, when we meet them Lame dogs over stiles; See in every hedgerow Marks of angels' feet, Epics in each pebble Underneath our feet; Once a-year, like schoolboys, Robin-Hooding go.

Leaving fops and fogies A thousand feet below.

T. H.

CHEAP CLOTHES AND NASTY.

King Ryence, says the legend of Prince Arthur, wore a paletot trimmed with kings' beards. In the first French Revolution (so Carlyle a.s.sures us) there were at Meudon tanneries of human skins. Mammon, at once tyrant and revolutionary, follows both these n.o.ble examples--in a more respectable way, doubtless, for Mammon hates cruelty; bodily pain is his devil--the worst evil of which he, in his effeminacy, can conceive. So he shrieks benevolently when a drunken soldier is flogged; but he trims his paletots, and adorns his legs, with the flesh of men and the skins of women, with degradation, pestilence, heathendom, and despair; and then chuckles self-complacently over the smallness of his tailors' bills.

Hypocrite!--straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel! What is flogging, or hanging, King Ryence's paletot, or the tanneries of Meudon, to the slavery, starvation, waste of life, year-long imprisonment in dungeons narrower and fouler than those of the Inquisition, which goes on among thousands of free English clothes-makers at this day?

"The man is mad," says Mammon, smiling supercilious pity. Yes, Mammon; mad as Paul before Festus; and for much the same reason, too. Much learning has made us mad. From two articles in the "Morning Chronicle" of Friday, Dec.

14th, and Tuesday, Dec. 18th, on the Condition of the Working Tailors, we learnt too much to leave us altogether masters of ourselves. But there is method in our madness; we can give reasons for it--satisfactory to ourselves, perhaps also to Him who made us, and you, and all tailors likewise. Will you, freshly bedizened, you and your footmen, from Nebuchadnezzar and Co.'s "Emporium of Fashion," hear a little about how your finery is made? You are always calling out for facts, and have a firm belief in salvation by statistics. Listen to a few.

The Metropolitan Commissioner of the "Morning Chronicle" called two meetings of the Working Tailors, one in Shad well, and the other at the Hanover Square Rooms, in order to ascertain their condition from their own lips. Both meetings were crowded. At the Hanover Square Rooms there were more than one thousand men; they were altogether unanimous in their descriptions of the misery and slavery which they endured. It appears that there are two distinct tailor trades--the "honourable" trade, now almost confined to the West End, and rapidly dying out there, and the "dishonourable" trade of the show-shops and slop-shops--the plate-gla.s.s palaces, where gents--and, alas! those who would be indignant at that name--buy their cheap-and-nasty clothes. The two names are the tailors'

own slang; slang is true and expressive enough, though, now and then. The honourable shops in the West End number only sixty; the dishonourable, four hundred and more; while at the East End the dishonourable trade has it all its own way. The honourable part of the trade is declining at the rate of one hundred and fifty journeymen per year; the dishonourable increasing at such a rate that, in twenty years it will have absorbed the whole tailoring trade, which employs upwards of twenty-one thousand journeymen. At the honourable shops the work is done, as it was universally thirty years ago, on the premises and at good wages. In the dishonourable trade, the work is taken home by the men, to be done at the very lowest possible prices, which decrease year by year, almost month by month. At the honourable shops, from 36s. to 24s. is paid for a piece of work for which the dishonourable shop pays from 22s. to 9s. But not to the workmen; happy is he if he really gets two-thirds, or half of that. For at the honourable shops, the master deals directly with his workmen; while at the dishonourable ones, the greater part of the work, if not the whole, is let out to contractors, or middle-men--"_sweaters_," as their victims significantly call them--who, in their turn, let it out again, sometimes to the workmen, sometimes to fresh middlemen; so that out of the price paid for labour on each article, not only the workmen, but the sweater, and perhaps the sweater's sweater, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, have to draw their profit. And when the labour price has been already beaten down to the lowest possible, how much remains for the workmen after all these deductions, let the poor fellows themselves say!

One working tailor (at the Hanover Square Rooms Meeting) "mentioned a number of shops, both at the east and west ends, whose work was all taken by sweaters; and several of these shops were under royal and n.o.ble patronage. There was one notorious sweater who kept his carriage. He was a Jew, and, of course, he gave a preference to his own sect. Thus, another Jew received it from him second hand and at a lower rate; then it went to a third-till it came to the unfortunate Christian at perhaps the eighth rate, and he performed the work at barely living prices; this same Jew required a deposit of 5_l_. in money before he would give out a single garment to be made. He need not describe the misery which this system entailed upon the workmen. It was well known, but it was almost impossible, except for those who had been at the two, to form an idea of the difference between the present meeting and one at the East-end, where all who attended worked for slop-shops and sweaters. The present was a highly respectable a.s.sembly; the other presented no other appearance but those of misery and degradation."

Another says--"We have all worked in the honourable trade, so we know the regular prices from our own personal experience. Taking the bad work with the good work we might earn 11s. a week upon an average. Sometimes we do earn as much as 15s.; but, to do this, we are obliged to take part of our work home to our wives and daughters. We are not always fully employed. We are nearly half our time idle. Hence, our earnings are, upon an average throughout the year, not more than 5s. 6d. a week." "Very often I have made only 3s. 4d. in the week," said one. "That's common enough with us all, I can a.s.sure you," said another. "Last week my wages was 7s. 6d.," declared one. "I earned 6s. 4d.," exclaimed the second. "My wages came to 9s. 2d.

The week before I got 6s. 3d." "I made 7s. 9d.," and "I 7s. or 8s., I can't exactly remember which." "This is what we term the best part of our winter season. The reason why we are so long idle is because more hands than are wanted are kept on the premises, so that in case of a press of work coming in, our employers can have it done immediately. Under the day work system no master tailor had more men on the premises than he could keep continually going; but since the change to the piecework system, masters made a practice of engaging double the quant.i.ty of hands that they have any need for, so that an order may be executed 'at the shortest possible notice,' if requisite. A man must not leave the premises when, unemployed,--if he does, he loses his chance of work coming in. I have been there four days together, and had not a st.i.tch of work to do." "Yes; that is common enough." "Ay, and then you're told, if you complain, you can go, if you don't like it. I am sure twelve hands would do all they have done at home, and yet they keep forty of us. It's generally remarked that, however strong and healthy a man may be when he goes to work at that shop, in a month's time he'll be a complete shadow, and have almost all his clothes in p.a.w.n. By Sunday morning, he has no money at all left, and he has to subsist till the following Sat.u.r.day upon about a pint of weak tea, and four slices of bread and b.u.t.ter per day!!!"

"Another of the reasons for the sweaters keeping more hands than they want is, the men generally have their meals with them. The more men they have with them the more breakfasts and teas they supply, and the more profit they make. The men usually have to pay 4d., and very often, 5d. for their breakfast, and the same for their tea. The tea or breakfast is mostly a pint of tea or coffee, and three to four slices of bread and b.u.t.ter. _I worked for one sweater who almost starved the men; the smallest eater there would not have had enough if he had got three times as much. They had only three thin slices of bread and b.u.t.ter, not sufficient for a child, and the tea was both weak and bad. The whole meal could not have stood him in 2d.

a head, and what made it worse was, that the men who worked there couldn't afford to have dinners, so that they were starved to the bone._ The sweater's men generally lodge where they work. A sweater usually keeps about six men. These occupy two small garrets; one room is called the kitchen, and the other the workshop; and here the whole of the six men, and the sweater, his wife, and family, live and sleep. One sweater _I worked with had four children and six men, and they, together with his wife, sister-in-law, and himself, all lived in two rooms, the largest of which was about eight feet by ten. We worked in the smallest room and slept there as well--all six of us. There were two turnup beds in it, and we slept three in a bed. There was no chimney, and, indeed, no ventilation whatever.

I was near losing my life there--the foul air of so many people working all day in the place, and sleeping there at night, was quite suffocating.

Almost all the men were consumptive, and I myself attended the dispensary for disease of the lungs. The room in which we all slept was not more than six feet square. We were all sick and weak, and both to work._ Each of the six of us paid 2s. 6d. a week for our lodging, or 15s. altogether, and I am sure such a room as we slept and worked in might be had for 1s. a week; you can get a room with a fire-place for 1s. 6d. a week. The usual sum that the men working for sweaters pay for their tea, breakfasts, and lodging is 6s. 6d. to 7s. a week, and they seldom earn more money in the week.

Occasionally at the week's end they are in debt to the sweater. This is seldom for more than 6d., for the sweater will not give them victuals if he has no work for them to do. Many who live and work at the sweater's are married men, and are obliged to keep their wives and children in lodgings by themselves. Some send them to the workhouse, others to their friends in the country. Besides the profit of the board and lodging, the sweater takes 6d. out of the price paid for every garment under 10s.; some take 1s., and I do know of one who takes as much as 2s. This man works for a large show-shop at the West End. The usual profit of the sweater, over and above the board and lodging, is 2s. out of every pound. Those who work for sweaters soon lose their clothes, and are unable to seek for other work, because they have not a coat to their back to go and seek it in.

_Last week, I worked with another man at a coat for one of her Majesty's ministers, and my partner never broke his fast while he was making his half of it._ The minister dealt at a cheap West End show-shop. All the workman had the whole day-and-a-half he was making the coat was a little tea. But sweaters' work is not so bad as government work after all. At that, we cannot make more than 4s. or 5s. a week altogether--that is, counting the time we are running after it, of course. _Government contract work is the worst of all, and the starved-out and sweated-out tailor's last resource._ But still, government does not do the regular trade so much harm as the cheap show and slop shops. These houses have ruined thousands. They have cut down the prices, so that men cannot live at the work; and the masters who did and would pay better wages, are reducing the workmen's pay every day. They say they must either compete with the large show shops or go into the 'Gazette.'"

Sweet compet.i.tion! Heavenly maid!--Now-a-days hymned alike by penny-a-liners and philosophers as the ground of all society--the only real preserver of the earth! Why not of Heaven, too? Perhaps there is compet.i.tion among the angels, and Gabriel and Raphael have won their rank by doing the maximum of worship on the minimum of grace? We shall know some day. In the meanwhile, "these are thy works, thou parent of all good!"