Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet Part 37

I.

"O 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 o' golden hair, O' drowned maiden's hair, 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 whom it never reached.

About mid-day I took my way towards 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, recollecting myself, asked for the dean.

"They had all left town that morning,"

"Miss--Miss Winnstay--is she ill?"

"No."

"Thank G.o.d!" I breathed freely again. What matter what happened to all the world beside?

"Ay, thank G.o.d, 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. My heart sunk within me. When should I see her again?

That day was the 1st of June, 1845. 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 sake of the rich who read, and the poor who suffer.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE PLUSH BREECHES TRAGEDY.

My triumph had received a cruel check enough when 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 undeserved. The people's press had been hitherto praising and petting me lovingly enough. I had been cla.s.sed (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 cla.s.s had claimed my talents as their own--another "voice fresh from the heart of nature,"

another "untutored songster of the wilderness," another "prophet arisen among the suffering millions,"--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 my misconduct, I cannot conceive; unless my worthy brother-in-law, the Baptist preacher, had been kind enough to furnish him with the materials. But however 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 prost.i.tuted 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 sc.r.a.p 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 enlightened readers.

All this stung me in the most sensitive nerve of my whole heart, for I knew that I could not altogether exculpate myself; and to that miserable certainty was added the dread of 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 bitterly now I felt the force of the critic's careless lash! The awful responsibility of those written words, which we bandy about so thoughtlessly! How I recollected now, with shame and remorse, all the hasty and cruel utterances to which I, too, had given vent against those who had dared to differ from me; the harsh, one-sided judgments, 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 G.o.d for it now. It is good to be punished in kind. It is good to be made to feel what we have made others feel. It is good--anything is good, however bitter, 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 G.o.d 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 Mackaye. "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 says 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 would ye do 't? I ken na periodical whar the editor will gie ye a clear stage an' no favour to bang him ower the lugs."

"Then I will try some other paper."

"An' what for then? They that read him, winna read the ither; an' they that read the ither, winna read him. He has his ain set o' dupes like every ither editor; an' ye 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 when ye list, bad as he is. 'Faenum habet in cornu;' his name's ower his shop-door. But these anonymies--priests o' the order of 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 baud 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 G.o.d wi'out the deevil's finding it out--an' noo, after the way o' human inst.i.tutions, translated ower to help folks to serve the deevil without G.o.d'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' that's bad--it's grewsome to behold. I'll tell ye what, my bairn, there's na salvation for the workmen, while they defile 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 G.o.d'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 to "run a muck" at me. Every week some fresh attack appeared. The very pa.s.sages about the universities and church property, which had caused our quarrel, were paraded against me, with free additions and comments; and, at last, to my horror, out came the very story which I had all along dreaded, about the expurgation of my poems, with the coa.r.s.est allusions to petticoat influence--aristocratic kisses--and the d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire canva.s.sing draymen for Fox, &c., &c. How he got a clue to the scandal I cannot 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 cannot conceive; except because it is a great everlasting law, and sure to fulfil 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 responsive chord in my hearers' hearts; they had lost faith in me.

At last, in the middle of a lecture on Sh.e.l.ley, I was indulging, and honestly too, in some very glowing and pa.s.sionate praise of the true n.o.bleness 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 hereditary 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 met full face. After some sanguinary speech, I really forgot from whom, and, if I recollected, G.o.d forbid that I should tell now, I dared to controvert, mildly enough, Heaven knows, some especially frantic a.s.sertion or other. But before I could get out three sentences, O'Flynn flew at me with a coa.r.s.e invective, hounded on, by-the-by, by one who, calling himself a gentleman, might have been expected to know better.

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 pa.s.sions of their readers, to bully and silence all moderate and rational Chartists, 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 entertained 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. Sedition, which had been floundering on in a confused, disconsolate, underground 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 struggles, 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 artizans; every day brought some fresh slight or annoyance with it, till I received one afternoon, by the Parcels Delivery Company, a large unpaid 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.