LADY LUFTON’S AMBASSADOR.
And then, in the days which followed, that friend of Mr. Crawley’s,
whose name, by-the-by, is yet to be mentioned, received quick and great
promotion. Mr. Arabin by name he was then;—Dr. Arabin afterwards, when
that quick and great promotion reached its climax. He had been simply
a Fellow of Lazarus in those former years. Then he became Vicar of St.
Ewold’s, in East Barsetshire, and had not yet got himself settled there
when he married the Widow Bold, a widow with belongings in land and
funded money, and with but one small baby as an encumbrance. Nor had he
even yet married her,—had only engaged himself so to do, when they made
him Dean of Barchester—all which may be read in the diocesan and county
chronicles.
And now that he was wealthy, the new dean did contrive to pay the debts
of his poor friend, some lawyer of Camelford assisting him. It was but
a paltry schedule after all, amounting in the total to something not
much above a hundred pounds. And then, in the course of eighteen months,
this poor piece of preferment fell in the dean’s way, this incumbency
of Hogglestock with its stipend reaching one hundred and thirty pounds
a year. Even that was worth double the Cornish curacy, and there was,
moreover, a house attached to it. Poor Mrs. Crawley, when she heard of
it, thought that their struggles of poverty were now well nigh over. What
might not be done with a hundred and thirty pounds by people who had
lived for ten years on seventy?
And so they moved away out of that cold, bleak country, carrying with
them their humble household gods, and settled themselves in another
country, cold and bleak also, but less terribly so than the former.
They settled themselves, and again began their struggles against man’s
hardness and the devil’s zeal. I have said that Mr. Crawley was a stern,
unpleasant man; and it certainly was so. The man must be made of very
sterling stuff, whom continued and undeserved misfortune does not make
unpleasant. This man had so far succumbed to grief, that it had left
upon him its marks, palpable and not to be effaced. He cared little for
society, judging men to be doing evil who did care for it. He knew as a
fact, and believed with all his heart, that these sorrows had come to him
from the hand of God, and that they would work for his weal in the long
run; but not the less did they make him morose, silent, and dogged. He
had always at his heart a feeling that he and his had been ill-used, and
too often solaced himself, at the devil’s bidding, with the conviction
that eternity would make equal that which life in this world had made so
unequal;—the last bait that with which the devil angles after those who
are struggling to elude his rod and line.
The Framley property did not run into the parish of Hogglestock; but,
nevertheless, Lady Lufton did what she could in the way of kindness to
these new comers. Providence had not supplied Hogglestock with a Lady
Lufton, or with any substitute in the shape of lord or lady, squire or
squiress. The Hogglestock farmers, male and female, were a rude, rough
set, not bordering in their social rank on the farmer gentle; and Lady
Lufton, knowing this, and hearing something of these Crawleys from Mrs.
Arabin, the dean’s wife, trimmed her lamps, so that they should shed
a wider light, and pour forth some of their influence on that forlorn
household.
And as regards Mrs. Crawley, Lady Lufton by no means found that her
work and good-will were thrown away. Mrs. Crawley accepted her kindness
with thankfulness, and returned to some of the softnesses of life under
her hand. As for dining at Framley Court, that was out of the question.
Mr. Crawley, she knew, would not hear of it, even if other things were
fitting and appliances were at command. Indeed Mrs. Crawley at once said
that she felt herself unfit to go through such a ceremony with anything
like comfort. The dean, she said, would talk of their going to stay at
the deanery; but she thought it quite impossible that either of them
should endure even that. But, all the same, Lady Lufton was a comfort to
her; and the poor woman felt that it was well to have a lady near her in
case of need.
The task was much harder with Mr. Crawley, but even with him it was not
altogether unsuccessful. Lady Lufton talked to him of his parish and
of her own; made Mark Robarts go to him, and by degrees did something
towards civilizing him. Between him and Robarts too there grew up an
intimacy rather than a friendship. Robarts would submit to his opinion
on matters of ecclesiastical and even theological law, would listen to
him with patience, would agree with him where he could, and differ from
him mildly when he could not. For Robarts was a man who made himself
pleasant to all men. And thus, under Lady Lufton’s wing, there grew up a
connection between Framley and Hogglestock, in which Mrs. Robarts also
assisted.
And now that Lady Lufton was looking about her, to see how she might best
bring proper clerical influence to bear upon her own recreant fox-hunting
parson, it occurred to her that she might use Mr. Crawley in the matter.
Mr. Crawley would certainly be on her side as far as opinion went, and
would have no fear as to expressing his opinion to his brother clergyman.
So she sent for Mr. Crawley.
In appearance he was the very opposite to Mark Robarts. He was a lean,
slim, meagre man, with shoulders slightly curved, and pale, lank, long
locks of ragged hair; his forehead was high, but his face was narrow;
his small grey eyes were deeply sunken in his head, his nose was
well-formed, his lips thin and his mouth expressive. Nobody could look
at him without seeing that there was a purpose and a meaning in his
countenance. He always wore, in summer and winter, a long dusky gray
coat, which buttoned close up to his neck and descended almost to his
heels. He was full six feet high, but being so slight in build, he looked
as though he were taller.
He came at once at Lady Lufton’s bidding, putting himself into the gig
beside the servant, to whom he spoke no single word during the journey.
And the man, looking into his face, was struck with taciturnity. Now Mark
Robarts would have talked with him the whole way from Hogglestock to
Framley Court; discoursing partly as to horses and land, but partly also
as to higher things.
And then Lady Lufton opened her mind and told her griefs to Mr. Crawley,
urging, however, through the whole length of her narrative, that Mr.
Robarts was an excellent parish clergyman,—“just such a clergyman in
his church, as I would wish him to be,” she explained, with the view of
saving herself from an expression of any of Mr. Crawley’s special ideas
as to church teaching, and of confining him to the one subject-matter in
hand; “but he got this living so young, Mr. Crawley, that he is hardly
quite as steady as I could wish him to be. It has been as much my fault
as his own in placing him in such a position so early in life.”
“I think it has,” said Mr. Crawley, who might perhaps be a little sore on
such a subject.
“Quite so, quite so,” continued her ladyship, swallowing down with a gulp
a certain sense of anger. “But that is done now, and is past cure. That
Mr. Robarts will become a credit to his profession, I do not doubt, for
his heart is in the right place and his sentiments are good; but I fear
that at present he is succumbing to temptation.”
“I am told that he hunts two or three times a week. Everybody round us is
talking about it.”
“No, Mr. Crawley; not two or three times a week; very seldom above once,
I think. And then I do believe he does it more with the view of being
with Lord Lufton than anything else.”
“I cannot see that that would make the matter better,” said Mr. Crawley.
“It would show that he was not strongly imbued with a taste which I
cannot but regard as vicious in a clergyman.”
“It must be vicious in all men,” said Mr. Crawley. “It is in itself
cruel, and leads to idleness and profligacy.”
Again Lady Lufton made a gulp. She had called Mr. Crawley thither to her
aid, and felt that it would be inexpedient to quarrel with him. But she
did not like to be told that her son’s amusement was idle and profligate.
She had always regarded hunting as a proper pursuit for a country
gentleman. It was, indeed, in her eyes one of the peculiar institutions
of country life in England, and it may be almost said that she looked
upon the Barsetshire hunt as something sacred. She could not endure to
hear that a fox was trapped, and allowed her turkeys to be purloined
without a groan. Such being the case, she did not like being told that it
was vicious, and had by no means wished to consult Mr. Crawley on that
matter. But nevertheless she swallowed down her wrath.
“It is at any rate unbecoming in a clergyman,” she said; “and as I know
that Mr. Robarts places a high value on your opinion, perhaps you will
not object to advise him to discontinue it. He might possibly feel
aggrieved were I to interfere personally on such a question.”
“I have no doubt he would,” said Mr. Crawley. “It is not within a woman’s
province to give counsel to a clergyman on such a subject, unless she be
very near and very dear to him—his wife, or mother, or sister.”
“As living in the same parish, you know, and being, perhaps——” the
leading person in it, and the one who naturally rules the others. Those
would have been the fitting words for the expression of her ladyship’s
ideas; but she remembered herself, and did not use them. She had made up
her mind that, great as her influence ought to be, she was not the proper
person to speak to Mr. Robarts as to his pernicious, unclerical habits,
and she would not now depart from her resolve by attempting to prove that
she was the proper person.
“Yes,” said Mr. Crawley, “just so. All that would entitle him to offer
you his counsel if he thought that your mode of life was such as to
require it, but could by no means justify you in addressing yourself to
him.”
This was very hard upon Lady Lufton. She was endeavouring with all her
woman’s strength to do her best, and endeavouring so to do it that the
feelings of the sinner might be spared; and yet the ghostly comforter
whom she had evoked to her aid, treated her as though she were arrogant
and overbearing. She acknowledged the weakness of her own position with
reference to her parish clergyman by calling in the aid of Mr. Crawley;
and under such circumstances, he might, at any rate, have abstained from
throwing that weakness in her teeth.
“Well, sir; I hope my mode of life may not require it; but that is not
exactly to the point: what I wish to know is, whether you will speak to
Mr. Robarts?”
“Certainly I will,” said he.
“Then I shall be much obliged to you. But, Mr. Crawley, pray—pray,
remember this: I would not on any account wish that you should be harsh
with him. He is an excellent young man, and——”
“Lady Lufton, if I do this, I can only do it in my own way, as best I
may, using such words as God may give me at the time. I hope that I am
harsh to no man; but it is worse than useless, in all cases, to speak
anything but the truth.”
“Of course—of course.”
“If the ears be too delicate to bear the truth, the mind will be too
perverse to profit by it.” And then Mr. Crawley got up to take his leave.
But Lady Lufton insisted that he should go with her to luncheon. He
hummed and ha’d and would fain have refused, but on this subject she
was peremptory. It might be that she was unfit to advise a clergyman as
to his duties, but in a matter of hospitality she did know what she was
about. Mr. Crawley should not leave the house without refreshment. As to
this, she carried her point; and Mr. Crawley—when the matter before him
was cold roast-beef and hot potatoes, instead of the relative position of
a parish priest and his parishioner—became humble, submissive, and almost
timid. Lady Lufton recommended Madeira instead of Sherry, and Mr. Crawley
obeyed at once, and was, indeed, perfectly unconscious of the difference.
Then there was a basket of seakale in the gig for Mrs. Crawley; that he
would have left behind had he dared, but he did not dare. Not a word was
said to him as to the marmalade for the children which was hidden under
the seakale, Lady Lufton feeling well aware that that would find its way
to its proper destination without any necessity for his co-operation. And
then Mr. Crawley returned home in the Framley Court gig.
Three or four days after this he walked over to Framley Parsonage. This
he did on a Saturday, having learned that the hounds never hunted on that
day; and he started early, so that he might be sure to catch Mr. Robarts
before he went out on his parish business. He was quite early enough
to attain this object, for when he reached the Parsonage door at about
half-past nine, the vicar, with his wife and sister, were just sitting
down to breakfast.
“Oh, Crawley,” said Robarts, before the other had well spoken, “you are a
capital fellow;” and then he got him into a chair, and Mrs. Robarts had
poured him out tea, and Lucy had surrendered to him a knife and plate,
before he knew under what guise to excuse his coming among them.
“I hope you will excuse this intrusion,” at last he muttered; “but I have
a few words of business to which I will request your attention presently.”
“Certainly,” said Robarts, conveying a broiled kidney on to the plate
before Mr. Crawley; “but there is no preparation for business like a
good breakfast. Lucy, hand Mr. Crawley the buttered toast. Eggs, Fanny;
where are the eggs?” And then John, in livery, brought in the fresh eggs.
“Now we shall do. I always eat my eggs while they’re hot, Crawley, and I
advise you to do the same.”
To all this Mr. Crawley said very little, and he was not at all at home
under the circumstances. Perhaps a thought did pass across his brain, as
to the difference between the meal which he had left on his own table,
and that which he now saw before him; and as to any cause which might
exist for such difference. But, if so, it was a very fleeting thought,
for he had far other matter now fully occupying his mind. And then
the breakfast was over, and in a few minutes the two clergymen found
themselves together in the Parsonage study.
“Mr. Robarts,” began the senior, when he had seated himself uncomfortably
on one of the ordinary chairs at the further side of the well-stored
library table, while Mark was sitting at his ease in his own arm-chair by
the fire, “I have called upon you on an unpleasant business.”
Mark’s mind immediately flew off to Mr. Sowerby’s bill, but he could not
think it possible that Mr. Crawley could have had anything to do with
that.
“But as a brother clergyman, and as one who esteems you much and wishes
you well, I have thought myself bound to take this matter in hand.”
“What matter is it, Crawley?”
“Mr. Robarts, men say that your present mode of life is one that is not
befitting a soldier in Christ’s army.”
“Men say so! what men?”
“The men around you, of your own neighbourhood; those who watch your
life, and know all your doings; those who look to see you walking as a
lamp to guide their feet, but find you consorting with horse jockeys and
hunters, galloping after hounds, and taking your place among the vainest
of worldly pleasure-seekers. Those who have a right to expect an example
of good living, and who think that they do not see it.”
Mr. Crawley had gone at once to the root of the matter, and in doing so,
had certainly made his own task so much the easier. There is nothing
like going to the root of the matter at once when one has on hand an
unpleasant piece of business.
“And have such men deputed you to come here?”
“No one has or could depute me. I have come to speak my own mind, not
that of any other. But I refer to what those around you think and say,
because it is to them that your duties are due. You owe it to those
around you to live a godly, cleanly life;—as you owe it also, in a much
higher way, to your Father who is in heaven. I now make bold to ask you
whether you are doing your best to lead such a life as that?” And then he
remained silent, waiting for an answer.
He was a singular man; so humble and meek, so unutterably inefficient
and awkward in the ordinary intercourse of life, but so bold and
enterprising, almost eloquent on the one subject which was the work of
his mind! As he sat there, he looked into his companion’s face from out
his sunken grey eyes with a gaze which made his victim quail. And then
repeated his words: “I now make bold to ask you, Mr. Robarts, whether you
are doing your best to lead such a life as may become a parish clergyman
among his parishioners?” And again he paused for an answer.
“There are but few of us,” said Mark in a low tone, “who could safely
answer that question in the affirmative.”
“But are there many, think you, among us who would find the question so
unanswerable as yourself? And even, were there many, would you, young,
enterprising, and talented as you are, be content to be numbered among
them? Are you satisfied to be a castaway after you have taken upon
yourself Christ’s armour? If you will say so, I am mistaken in you, and
will go my way.” There was again a pause, and then he went on. “Speak
to me, my brother, and open your heart if it be possible.” And rising
from his chair, he walked across the room, and laid his hand tenderly on
Mark’s shoulder.
Mark had been sitting lounging in his chair, and had at first, for a
moment only, thought to brazen it out. But all idea of brazening had
now left him. He had raised himself from his comfortable ease, and was
leaning forward with his elbow on the table; but now, when he heard these
words, he allowed his head to sink upon his arms, and he buried his face
between his hands.
“It is a terrible falling off,” continued Crawley: “terrible in the
fall, but doubly terrible through that difficulty of returning. But it
cannot be that it should content you to place yourself as one among those
thoughtless sinners, for the crushing of whose sin you have been placed
here among them. You become a hunting parson, and ride with a happy mind
among blasphemers and mocking devils—you, whose aspirations were so
high, who have spoken so often and so well of the duties of a minister
of Christ; you, who can argue in your pride as to the petty details
of your church, as though the broad teachings of its great and simple
lessons were not enough for your energies! It cannot be that I have had a
hypocrite beside me in all those eager controversies!”
“Not a hypocrite—not a hypocrite,” said Mark, in a tone which was almost
reduced to sobbing.
“But a castaway! Is it so that I must call you? No, Mr. Robarts, not a
castaway; neither a hypocrite, nor a castaway; but one who in walking has
stumbled in the dark and bruised his feet among the stones. Henceforth
let him take a lantern in his hand, and look warily to his path, and
walk cautiously among the thorns and rocks,—cautiously, but yet boldly,
with manly courage, but Christian meekness, as all men should walk on
their pilgrimage through this vale of tears.” And then without giving
his companion time to stop him be hurried out of the room, and from the
house, and without again seeing any others of the family, stalked back on
his road to Hogglestock, thus tramping fourteen miles through the deep
mud in performance of the mission on which he had been sent.
It was some hours before Mr. Robarts left his room. As soon as he found
that Crawley was really gone, and that he should see him no more, he
turned the lock of his door, and sat himself down to think over his
present life. At about eleven his wife knocked, not knowing whether
that other strange clergyman were there or no, for none had seen his
departure. But Mark, answering cheerily, desired that he might be left to
his studies.
Let us hope that his thoughts and mental resolves were then of service to
him.
Campaigning in China.
At a time when military operations in China are about to be undertaken
upon a more extended scale than have hitherto been attempted in the
Celestial Empire, some account of the longest march into the interior
of the country ever yet performed by British troops may not be
uninteresting. To judge from the recent accounts which we have received
from India, the prospect of Chinese campaigning, so far from exciting
that enthusiasm which the novelty and interest of the undertaking might
have been expected to awaken, has produced the very opposite effect. The
military departmental mind is filled with doubts and vague misgivings.
The Quartermaster-General’s staff shake their heads with a mysterious
despondency, already oppressed with the weight of prospective cares, the
nature of which can only be appreciated by those who have shared in the
duties and responsibilities of their office. The Commissariat is no less
overwhelmed with a sense of its probable inefficiency, modestly diffident
of its capacity to perform its functions in the unknown regions of the
far East; while the parallel which has been drawn by those who have
visited both countries, between the plains of Chih-li and the steppes of
the Crimea, are by no means reassuring to the Land Transport Corps, who
are reminded by the comparison of experience not altogether encouraging.
So we have croaking articles in the Indian journals, and gloomy
forebodings on the part of officers experienced in Indian warfare, who
have never been in China, but who “know the East,” and are, therefore,
qualified to speak with confidence and authority upon all affairs,
military or diplomatic, which may be undertaken anywhere between Cairo
and the Sandwich Islands.
It is as well that we should remember, at this early period of our
operations, that whatever may be their result, there will be a large
class of persons who “always told us so,” and who some years hence, on
the occasion of the next Chinese war, will also inform us triumphantly
that they “always said that sooner or later there would be another
row.” These gentlemen now talk learnedly about blocking up the Grand
Canal, which no longer exists; and occupying Nankin, which is no longer
Imperial; and operating up the Yang-tse-kiang, though we are left in
doubt as to the nature of the operations they propose. They foresee the
most formidable obstacles to a march of thirty miles across the plains of
Chih-li, but it remains to be seen whether this foresight will be made
available to provide against these difficulties, or whether the greatest
impediment may not arise from the entire misapplication of the very
quality assumed. Some remarkable cases of this description of forethought
occurred during the Crimean war, to which it is not necessary now to
allude, more especially as more recent instances exist in connection with
the Chinese operations contemplated in 1857. We would suggest that those
ponderous iron grates, for example, which now ornament the dockyard at
Hong Kong, where they are stacked in tiers, and which had considerately
been supplied to the army in the event of a campaign, be left where they
are, as it will probably be found that a Whitworth’s gun weighing 200
pounds will be more useful and less troublesome on the march than a grate
of twice that weight: temporary fireplaces may be constructed with three
bricks, and the plains of Chih-li abound in kilns. Doubtless, if the army
is detained in the north until a late period of the year, fires will be
an immense comfort; but if those sepoys who are destined to encounter
the severity of the winter are not provided with flannel waistcoats, the
tiers of iron grates will fail to supply them with a sufficient amount of
caloric.
It is not improbable, that if the army reaches Tien-tsin, and its
occupation of that city is protracted over any space of time, telegraphic
communication with the coast may be deemed a desirable object. Should
any such project be entertained, we trust it will not be considered
impertinent if we express a hope that batteries be sent out as well as
wire. Upon the last occasion, when a similar attempt was made in China,
it was not until after the wire was laid down from the landing-place to
head-quarters that the discovery was made that the most essential item
had been forgotten, and that a wire, however well laid, if it had nothing
but a general at one end and an admiral at the other, could not possibly
convey a message.
Meantime, the observations made during a march of five days with a
thousand men, in the province of Quang-tung, just a year ago, may be of
interest to those who do not “know the East.” And here we would remind
the reader, who may make any use of this information he pleases, that
there are men in China who have an intimate knowledge of the country, who
have already had a military experience of some years there, and whose
hints will probably be more useful before the operations commence, than
after our ignorance has led us into serious difficulty.
The expedition about to be described was undertaken in the early spring
of last year. Its destination was Fayune, a town situated between thirty
and forty miles north of Canton, or about the same distance as Tien-tsin
is from the mouth of the Peiho. Its object was to strike terror into the
Braves of the ninety-six villages—a confederation which had, during the
preceding year, combined to furnish a force of local militia, or rather
blackguards, for the purpose of harassing our garrison at Canton. During
the summer their attacks had been constant and most annoying. The climate
at that time of year rendered any attempt at retaliation on the part of
our troops most dangerous; and it was, therefore, deemed more advisable
to submit to a nightly discharge of rockets and gingals, than to expose
the men to the risk of sunstrokes.
We were the more anxious to inflict a summary chastisement upon these
so-called “Braves,” so soon as the season should admit of it, as
diplomatic pressure had been exerted in vain at Tien-tsin to effect
the same object; the Court of Pekin repudiating any complicity in the
hostilities in the south, though documents subsequently came into the
possession of the authorities, clearly proving, not only the cognizance
of the government, but the fact that the military organization of the
south was being actually carried on under Imperial auspices, and the
leaders of it honoured with buttons and promotion. These leaders were
formed into committees and sub-committees, and styled “managers of
barbarian affairs.” In consequence, however, of the representations
of the British authorities, their functions in this capacity were no
longer recognized, and they had latterly for some time past appeared in
proclamations as “Commissioners for the enlistment of militia.” The most
notorious of these committees was that known as the “Gang-leang,” which
was divided into four sub-committees.
The most active members were three mandarins in mourning, by name Lung,
Soo, and Lo. These men were of considerable standing in the government
service, but the fact of their being in mourning deprived them of the
power of accepting any official position for a term of years. It did
not, however, debar them from serving their country in a promiscuous
manner, and they chose their present occupation of organizing Braves
against barbarians, as the one most acceptable to the government, and
most likely to lead to honour and distinction. In the prosecution of
their functions, they levied heavy taxes upon the unfortunate country
people, who thus found themselves between two fires;—in danger, on the
one hand, of being mistaken for Braves by our troops, and on the other,
obliged to contribute to a body of ruffians, who, when not engaged in
attacking us, amused themselves in plundering the unhappy peasantry.
These Committees formed, in fact, the rallying points for the miscreants
of all the surrounding districts; rebels who found rebellion did not pay,
robbers who had made their own neighbourhood too hot to hold them, scamps
who loved plunder better than toil,—all flocked to the standards of Lung,
Soo and Lo, who received them with open arms, and gave them a _carte
blanche_ to bully the country people, and squeeze their own living out of
unprotected rustics.
One of the most important of the sub-committees of the Gang-leang was at
a village called Shek-tsing, distant about eight miles from Canton. Here
a notorious Brave leader, by name Leang-paou-heun, held his court, and
from here he issued one fine morning and attacked a party of our troops
exercising in the neighbourhood of Canton. It was resolved to commence
the operations of the winter by honouring Leang with a morning call, of
a character to which he was not accustomed. In pursuance of this design,
the necessary preparations were made, and rumours thereof reaching the
ears of the Fayune Commissioners, they issued a proclamation calling
upon the people to arm, which was found among their papers after the
capture of Shek-tsing, an extract from which, as a curious specimen of
Chinese military tactics, is worthy of insertion. The various villages
are directed “to provide themselves with a number of gongs and horns, and
thus simulate the presence of an imposing force. At daylight on the 8th,
ranges of cooking places will be constructed in the Shek-tsing hills,
in which food may be prepared for the people who collect there, and
permission to do so is given to all classes, whether old or young, strong
or infirm. All the expenses will be defrayed by this committee; and it
has been already resolved that every person coming to the assembly shall
receive a daily ration of four candareens (about six cents), but this
money will have in the first instance to be advanced by the committee of
each village. Every person who comes armed and prepared to fight will, in
addition, receive one mace of silver (about fourteen cents) as his daily
pay: each committee is also requested to provide cooking utensils.”
A well-contrived attack upon the Brave position at Shek-tsing resulted in
the utter discomfiture of the nondescript army, collected in obedience
to the foregoing mandate, the casualties on our side amounting only to
four wounded. The house of the notorious Leang-paou-heun was gutted and
burned, to the great satisfaction of the country people, whom he had been
squeezing for some months past, at the rate of twelve catties of grain
per mow, which was, in fact, a tax of from twelve to twenty per cent. No
wonder they exclaimed, as they clustered joyfully round the smouldering
embers, and waited till they should cool sufficiently for purposes of
closer investigation: “Oh! Amidha Buddha! blessed be Heaven for having
willed its destruction, and the barbarians for having effected it.”
Pihquei afterwards accused Leang of having appropriated the pay of one
thousand Braves who had never been enrolled.
The affair of Shek-tsing was productive of so salutary an effect upon
both the peasantry and the Braves, that it was deemed desirable to
confirm the impression by military promenades in the neighbourhood
of Canton, whereby we should give indisputable evidence of our
power—hitherto always denied by the Chinese—to operate by land as well as
by water.
The three chief Commissioners were still holding court in fancied
security in the mountain village of Fayune; and although their efforts
to re-enlist Braves were by no means so successful as formerly, still it
was thought expedient to run these gentry to earth, if possible, and thus
extinguish the vital principle of an organization which had been a source
of considerable annoyance to us during our occupancy of Canton.
The force destined for this operation consisted of only a thousand men,
of whom one hundred and fifty were French blue-jackets. We marched out of
the north-west gate of Canton upon a sharp, clear February morning. The
chances of a skirmish, though somewhat remote, were sufficient to produce
an exhilarating effect upon the men, who stepped briskly out as they
filed in a thin irregular line along the narrow ridges which divided the
now dry rice-fields. In three hours we reached the village of Shek-tsing,
with its clear winding river, spanned by a charmingly picturesque bridge
of seven quaint arches, its groves of bamboo, its fir-clothed knolls,
shattered yamun and field of conflict. Here the country people approached
reverentially, and we once more wandered amid the ruins caused by our own
artillery, and gazed from the hill in rear over the peaceful landscape,
across which the progress of the troops was indicated by a winding
black thread. About five miles beyond Shek-tsing we reached Kong-soong,
a village situated upon a river, which it was necessary to ferry. As
this was an operation which involved some delay, considering the limited
number of ferry-boats, and the large quantity of camp-followers, it was
decided to camp here for the night, and those among us who were mounted,
and did not mind a wetting, scrambled across to the opposite shore, where
a fair was going on, and the dirty little streets of the village were
crowded with unctuous Chinamen. We rode among this noisy, chattering
rabble without provoking the slightest expression of animosity. Curiosity
and avarice were the predominating sentiments here, as they always will
be wherever a European army presents itself in China. The first impulse
of a peasant under these circumstances is to stare at you, the next to
sell something to you. Even when alone and unarmed, it does not enter
into his head to insult you, unless incited thereto by the authorities.
The population at large consider an invading army hostile to the troops
of their government, but by no means hostile to themselves: hence
they stand and look on as impartial spectators upon the occasion of a
conflict, and even before it is over come actually under fire to see if
anything in the way of trade may be managed. Under these circumstances
an invading force need never be under apprehension on the score of
commissariat.
[Illustration]
For months past the efforts of the Commissioners had been directed
towards prejudicing the mind of the country people against us; the most
absurd stories of our cruel and barbarous nature had become current among
them; the government at Pekin had lent itself to the fabrication of
these, and had even issued a secret edict on the subject, the nature of
which will be gathered from the following extract:—
“As to the Province of Kwang-tung, which has hitherto been
famed for its loyalty and patriotism, and on a former occasion
received from his late Majesty the monumental inscription—‘A
Sovereign’s reward for a people’s devotion,’ and a special
edict expressing his marked approval of their conduct, and the
gratification it afforded him,—we look to those high ministers,
Lo and others (the Fayune Commissioners), to give effect to
our wishes. On them the duty rests of making in secret all the
necessary arrangements, of marshalling the rural population
without attracting observation, and of everywhere establishing
train-bands; and by seeming among them combination, as well as
by rousing them to exertion, and keeping their communications
everywhere complete, they may present to the outer barbarians
such a display of the power of China, as shall cause them to
retire from the position they have assumed.
“In order to secure secrecy in their proceedings, and to
prevent any notice of the scheme escaping, the authorities
must no longer appear to act a hostile part (towards the
foreigners), but must only direct the people to oppose them.
Nor need any communication whatever be held with the local
functionaries, nor even with the governor-general and the
governor of the province. Thus, if victory attend us, we may be
assured that we are fulfilling the demands of heaven; but if
defeat, we shall still avoid being involved in war. And it is
not impossible that we may see, as the result of this scheme,
peace gradually taking the place of those foreign troubles, and
assaults upon our nation, which we have experienced during some
years past. We may see a stop put to barbarian encroachments,
and glory again descending upon the civilization of China.
“Let the efforts of you, my Ministers (the Fayune
Commissioners), be directed to this end, and do not disappoint
the hopes of your sovereign. When you shall have received
this secret edict, hasten to draw up a minute statement of
the measures which you think necessary for the execution of
these objects, and forward to us by flying courier. Let there
be no delay; and let this important edict, which is for the
information of the Commissioners, be forwarded to them by an
express of 600 li per day.”
Considering that this singular manifesto of the Imperial policy, which
came into our hands in the course of our operations, reached Fayune in
November, or about three months prior to our arrival there, and that
during this interval no effort had been spared to incite the population
against us, we had no reason to anticipate an actually friendly demeanour
on the part of the people. So far, however, from the machinations of
the Commissioners against us having operated to our prejudice, we found
the rural population on all occasions overwhelmingly polite; and their
disposition in this respect is worthy of note, as corresponding precisely
to that manifested by the villagers on the banks of the Peiho; on the
occasion of the ascent of the allied forces up that river after the
first attack upon the forts at Taku, and entitles us to expect a similar
reception again, in the event of a march across the plains of Chih-li
upon Tien-tsin becoming necessary.
Our day’s march had led us through a country pleasantly diversified,
although at this time of year it was dry, and the crops few and far
between. Numerous undulations, and conical mounds of tumulus form, richly
wooded, relieved the landscape of all monotony, and often furnished
agreeable scenic effects. Clear broad streams, navigated by flat-bottomed
boats, flowed between fertile banks and past flourishing villages,
seaward; and picturesquely situated upon one of these was a quaint old
joss-house, which was converted into General Straubenzee’s head-quarters
for the night. As viewed from the edge of the river bank, the scene
was eminently picturesque. Ferry-boats, crowded with men, were plying
actively from shore to shore; horsemen were fording, coolies shouting,
and villagers were rushing in excited groups to wonder at the strange
proceedings of the barbarian horde. Meantime a canvas village is rapidly
springing up all round the joss-house; arms are piled, sentries posted,
camp-fires blaze, kettles bubble, corks pop, and the contents of hampers
are strewn upon the ground; a Babel of tongues rises above the clatter
of dinner preparations, as Hindustani and French, Chinese and English,
mingle in discordant tumult. Here a group of our Gallican allies are
clustered eagerly over a salad; in close proximity a party of sepoys are
scouring brass cooking vessels, carefully guarding them from the defiling
touch of the infidel. There some of the Coolie Corps, composed of sleek
Chinamen, who have grown juicy on British pay, are returning laden with
the offal of some domestic animal, or other culinary delicacy, from the
village. John Bull is making a very coarse brew of coffee, and doing his
best to spoil the materials with which he has been furnished for his
evening meal. Then the band strikes up, and the wondering villagers, who
have been sufficiently confused by strange sights, now listen to strange
sounds, and only disperse reluctantly at last as evening closes in; and
the men get tired of singing choruses, and crowd into the tents; and the
full moon rises above the flaming waters of the river, as they rush over
a pebbly bed, and throws dark shadows into the bamboo grove, upon the
edge of which the flash of a sentry’s bayonet is here and there visible.
Day had not dawned before our camp was astir on the following morning,
and, quitting the relics of our festivities of the previous evening, we
were once more filing along the dividing ridges of paddy-fields. The
narrowness of the paths and bridges caused considerable embarrassment to
our artillery, although the force was only accompanied by light 3-pounder
field-pieces. A log bridge is an obstacle even to this portable arm, and
it is satisfactory to know that, in the country about to be traversed in
the north, no difficulties of this description present themselves: the
roads are broad enough for wheeled vehicles, unknown in the south, and
Indian corn, and other cereals requiring dry cultivation, do not render
the whole country a swamp at certain seasons of the year; but if we have
every reason to congratulate ourselves upon the character of the country
being totally different in Chih-li from that of Quang-tung, we may esteem
ourselves no less fortunate that our experience of the disposition of the
inhabitants is equally favourable in both. It will be remembered that
on the occasion of the advance of the gunboats up the Peiho in 1858,
after the capture of the forts at Taku, the country people on the banks
welcomed us as the precursors of a new dynasty, seeking to ingratiate
themselves into favour by offering us provisions, and even, according
to the statement of Sir Michael Seymour, assisting us in extricating
our gunboats from difficulties, in the course of their passage up that
little-known stream. So, throughout our march to Fayune, we met with
nothing but civility from the peasantry, although our progress was to
all intents and purposes that of an invading army, hostile to their
government, and avowedly undertaken for the purpose of encountering
and defeating the troops raised by the Imperial government to resist
us. At every village the elders came forth and stood by the roadside,
presiding over tables, upon which cups of tea for the refreshment of the
troops were ranged in tempting array, and presented us with slips of
pink paper, the tokens of amity and good-will. In return for these, we
distributed proclamations of a reassuring character, and had every reason
to believe that our presence, so for from inspiring mistrust or alarm,
was productive of the most wholesome effect, as tending to disabuse the
minds of the people of the prejudices which had been excited against us.
A practical evidence of the confidence established was furnished by the
readiness with which we obtained coolies from the villages through which
we passed, to assist in the conveyance of baggage; so that, in addition
to the Land Transport Corps, composed entirely of Chinamen, some hundreds
of the peasantry might have been seen jogging merrily in long single file
under the burdens imposed upon their shoulders by the enemy, who had
become converted into friends by the transfer of a few dollars.
Although we should be far from recommending the authorities to rely
absolutely upon the co-operation of the country people in the north of
China, the possibility of their being rendered available should not be
lost sight of, whilst it is impossible to over-estimate the value of
a corps which was raised at the commencement of the operations in the
south, and which proved of the utmost service throughout the hostilities
at Canton. The men composing this corps are recruited from Canton and its
neighbourhood: hardy, patient, and enduring, their patriotic scruples,
if they ever existed, vanish before the pay and comfort with which they
are now provided. The English officers in charge have always spoken in
the highest terms of the obedience and efficiency of these men, and it
is most desirable that their numbers should be augmented in the event
of a campaign being undertaken in the north. Hitherto they have always
behaved admirably under the fire of their own countrymen, and delight in
contrasting their favoured condition with that of their less fortunate
relatives or friends who have not shaken off their allegiance. For
dragging guns, carrying sick or wounded, and doing all the heavy work of
an army on the march, they answer all the purposes of beasts of burden,
and, with a little previous drilling and discipline, are much more
useful. Their uniform consists of a conical straw hat and cross-belt,
with the name and number of the corps marked upon it.
The day’s march led us through a more arid and Indian-looking country
than that of yesterday. At this time of year, almost the only grain
cultivated is wheat. After two crops of rice have been taken off the
ground, they are followed by an edition of wheat, so sparse and sickly
as to give a somewhat sterile aspect to the country. Towards midday we
halted at a pretty little village, in a fir wood, for luncheon. Here
the whole population turned out, as usual, to inspect us: women, on
small feet, hobbled impetuously across the rough fields, to the peril of
the infants swung at their backs or carried in their arms; but female
curiosity is as strong in Quang-tung as elsewhere, and doubtless was
succeeded by those sentiments of admiration which a red coat always
excites in the feminine breast. The chief magistrate of Fayune met us
here, and endeavoured to propitiate us with sweetmeats. The Fayune
Commissioners, he said, had vanished, and were nowhere to be heard of.
His own heart was filled with pleasure at the prospect of a visit from
so charming a company in his secluded house. Any arrangements necessary
for the comfort of the troops should be promptly attended to. In fact,
if this old gentleman had been the Pope, and we had been an army of
Austrians, he could not have appeared more delighted to receive us.
Gaiety and merrymaking being the order of the day, the band was ordered
to play, and while the elders were crowding around it, we effected a
diversion in their favour by giving scrambles for cash to the juvenile
portion of the community. Altogether, we had every reason to believe
that, after spending two hours in this little village with a long and
unpronounceable name, we left it universally beloved and regretted.
We halted for the night at a village called Ping-shan, situated upon a
dry paddy-field expanse, out of which isolated wooded hills rose like
islands. Here we found a magnificent ancestral hall, highly decorated,
dedicated to the memory of sundry eminent men who had sprung from
the surrounding villages, and whose fame and virtues were recorded
upon elaborate tablets. These buildings are common throughout China,
being used by the descendants of the persons in whose honour they
have been erected, as a sort of club. As they are generally of great
extent, containing numerous suites of apartments, and affording shelter
for a large party of men and beasts, they are most convenient for
officers’ quarters; and it was with no little satisfaction that we took
possession of the rooms usually occupied by the Fayune Commissioners,
and established ourselves luxuriously for the night. It is worthy of
note that in respect of accommodation of this description, the numerous
temples, yamuns, and ancestral and Confucian halls, &c., with which all
districts of the empire abound, offer great advantages to an invading
army.
On the following day we reached Fayune. Our first view of the town,
from the summit of a hill, to which we clambered for the purpose of a
general survey, was charming. Nestling snugly at the base of a range
of hills from 1,500 feet to 2,000 feet in height, the little walled
village looked like the stronghold of some mountain robber who had
established himself on the edge of the rich country stretching away to
the south. Groves of magnificent trees dotted the landscape, and seemed
to bestow their especial patronage upon the town itself, a part of which
was buried in rich foliage. To its left was a remarkable conical hill,
surmounted by a pagoda. After feasting our eyes upon the scene at our
feet, we descended into the valley, and forming in more regular order,
filed between the rows of people who had come out to meet us, and passed
through the massive gateway into the town, the band leading the way, and
the Chinese guard turning out to salute us. So, then, we found ourselves
in the lions’ den without having encountered the slightest opposition,
or, apparently, excited any alarm. Although but a few weeks had elapsed
since the most violent manifestoes had been issued against us from
this very spot, and it had been for months the focus from whence had
radiated the hostility of both the Imperial authorities and gentry, yet
we found ourselves the objects of universal attention and civility, and
explored at pleasure the town and neighbourhood, alone and unarmed. The
town itself was mean and insignificant, but was surrounded by a wall in
perfect order; the embrasures, however, had been denuded of their guns
prior to our arrival. The wall was not above a mile in circumference,
so that the place presented almost the appearance of a fort. It had a
wild, cut-throat look—as different from an ordinary Chinese town as a
pirate schooner from an old East Indiaman. We appropriated the yamun,
which had been for some months past occupied by the Commissioners, who
had considerately evacuated the premises in our favour. The most profound
ignorance was assumed as to the present hiding-place of these gentry,
so we were obliged to content ourselves with using their bedrooms and
exploring their establishment. Most of the troops were comfortably lodged
in the temples and public buildings of the town, others were camped on a
hill in rear.
The proximity of the mountain range tempted some of us to explore its
unknown beauties. Nor were we disappointed with the result of our
exertions. After a hard scramble without guides, we reached the summit,
Kow-pak-chang, or the thousand-chang-hill, and gazed from it over
beautiful broken country, stretching northward, with secluded valleys,
highly cultivated, winding between rugged mountain ranges, where villages
in a setting of rich verdure hugged the banks of brawling streams,
spanned by quaint high-arched bridges, and square feudal towers rose
above the tree-clumps. It was singular to think that two Europeans should
find themselves in a position of perfect safety, five or six miles away
from assistance, looking down upon scenes, in all probability, never
before witnessed by the eye of a foreigner, in the midst of a population
with whom we were supposed to be in an attitude of open hostility. The
top of a hill two thousand feet high, in the month of February, is a very
cold place, even in the south of China, and we were glad to turn our
backs upon its bleak summit, and taking one last look at the lovely scene
beyond us, to hurry down into the sunny plain. We observed on our way
numerous granite quarries, indicating the formation of the range.
Our exertions enabled us to do ample justice to an elaborate Chinese
repast, which the chief magistrate, in the plenitude of his civility,
sent over to us on our return. Before leaving Fayune, the general and a
number of officers were entertained at dinner by this high functionary,
and the head of the gentry of the district. The latter personage had been
very active in the enlistment of Braves against us, and like the rest of
his class, had hoped by the manifestation of zeal in his hostility to
barbarians, to curry favour with the government: he now professed the
utmost friendship for us, and expressed sincere regret for what had
occurred, in opposition, as he declared, to his urgent remonstrances.
After the usual interchange of pretty speeches, and consumption of greasy
viands, we took leave of our smooth-tongued hosts, and once more striking
camp, marched out of Fayune, having thoroughly accomplished the object of
our visits. The troops re-entered Canton on the evening of the following
day, having marched between sixty and seventy miles in five days, without
encountering any of those difficulties which are predicted in the
coming operations, and having achieved the very satisfactory result of
instilling confidence into the country people, and inspiring the Braves
with a due respect for our arms. Since then the neighbourhood of Canton
has been tranquil, and foreigners have been enabled to extend their
explorations to greater distances than formerly, with perfect security.
The same effect will be produced in the north of China if the same means
are resorted to. It was not until the local militia at Canton received
a lesson which taught them our power of inflicting chastisement, that
they subsided into respectful quiescence. So, in 1858, the Court of
Pekin changed its tone of arrogance for one of subserviency the moment
we arrived at Tien-tsin: a feat supposed impracticable by the Chinese
government.
The effect of our unexpected appearance there may be best appreciated
by the following paragraph, extracted from the secret edict already
quoted. The Emperor, apologizing for the concessions made to us upon that
occasion, asks, “Why is it then that we have succumbed to circumstances,
and permitted the acceptance of terms of peace from the said barbarians?
It was indeed for no other reason than that war had reached the portals
of our Imperial domains; the enemy was at the gates of our capital, and
in the train of war follow alarm and disorder; the people are scattered
and rendered homeless. How could we endure that our people should suffer?
Our rest was disturbed, and we could not eat in peace. No other course,
therefore, was open to us but to concede what they requested, in order to
put an end to the present distress.”
The distress here alluded to was in reality not felt by the people, not
one of whom was turned out of his home by our presence at Tien-tsin, but
by the Emperor himself. The impression at Pekin at present is, that the
river having been staked, our reappearance at Tien-tsin is impossible.
Hence the stubborn attitude of the Chinese government, encouraged by
their confidence in the Tartar general, Sang-ko-lin-sin, who commanded at
the last Peiho affair, and who has declared his intention, on all fixture
occasions, of dealing with us in the same summary manner. His defeat, and
the march of our troops to Tien-tsin, will produce the same result as our
march to Fayune, or as our former operations on Tien-tsin. The difficulty
of our diplomatists in China consists not so much in the process of
extracting a treaty from the Chinese government, as in obliging them
to keep it in the spirit in which it is made. This can only be done by
exerting a continuous pressure upon the Cabinet at Pekin. The moment the
pressure is removed, the government interprets obnoxious stipulations in
its own manner; its functionaries at distant ports take their cue from
the disposition at head-quarters, and complications arise with local
officials, out of which ultimately spring new wars.
By dealing directly with the highest functionaries at the capital, these
may invariably be prevented; but the isolation of a foreign minister at
Pekin might possibly expose him to inconveniences, and even insults,
which, in the absence of any force, it would be impossible to resent.
Under these circumstances the most desirable compromise which could be
made, would be in the selection of Tien-tsin, as a summer abode for the
British plenipotentiary, with the right reserved to him of visiting
the capital at pleasure. Here, at a distance of only fifty miles from
Pekin, communication with the high functionaries there could be rapidly
and easily maintained, while the occasional visits of members of the
foreign missions would tend to familiarize the people, as well as the
authorities, with the contact of Europeans, and go far to remove those
prejudices which must ever, otherwise, subsist against us, and develop
themselves through the means of local authorities at distant ports.
Concurrently with the establishment of a mission at Tien-tsin, that city
might be opened as a port to trade, and the reassuring influence of
commerce be thus brought to second the efforts of a skilful and judicious
diplomacy. During the winter months, when the Peiho would be frozen, and
the port closed, the Minister would remove his establishment to Shanghai,
not a little pleased to return to a higher state of civilization;
while the terrible heats of summer, at this latter place, would be
agreeably exchanged for the dry, healthy climate of Tien-tsin. Two or
three gunboats, necessary, under any circumstances, for the protection
of our commerce in the gulf and river, would also serve as an adequate
and efficient support to our diplomacy. We might thus hope to achieve
all the advantages to be derived from a residence at Pekin, without any
of its inconveniences; and while leaving the prestige of the Imperial
government comparatively uninjured, pave the way for the assimilation of
our diplomatic relations with China to those of other countries.
Whether this be the course ultimately adopted or not, one thing is
certain,—that Tien-tsin is the key of the position. All military and
diplomatic action must, for the present, be alike centred upon it; and
if a campaign in this quarter becomes necessary, we have little doubt
that it will terminate within two months, in a treaty embracing larger
concessions, based upon broader principles, and ensuring a more durable
peace than that signed by Sir Henry Pottinger in 1842, after a bloody and
expensive war, which extended along the whole southern seaboard of China,
and was protracted over a period of two years.
Little Scholars.
Yesterday morning, as I was walking up a street in Pimlico, I came upon a
crowd of little persons issuing from a narrow alley. Ever so many little
people there were streaming through a wicket; running children, shouting
children, loitering children, chattering children, and children spinning
tops by the way, so that the whole street was awakened by the pleasant
childish clatter. As I stand for an instant to see the procession go
by, one little girl pops me an impromptu curtsey, at which another from
a distant quarter, not behindhand in politeness, pops me another; and
presently quite an irregular little volley of curtseyings goes off in
every direction. Then I blandly inquire if school is over? and if there
is anybody left in the house? A little brown-eyes nods her head, and
says, “There’s a great many people left in the house.” And so there are,
sure enough, as I find when I get in.
Down a narrow yard, with the workshops on one side and the schools on the
other, in at a little door which leads into a big room where there are
rafters, maps hanging on the walls, and remarks in immense letters, such
as, “COFFEE IS GOOD FOR MY BREAKFAST,” and pictures of useful things,
with the well-thumbed story underneath; a stove in the middle of the
room; a paper hanging up on the door with the names of the teachers; and
everywhere wooden benches and tables, made low and small for little legs
and arms.
Well, the schoolroom is quite empty and silent now, and the little
turmoil has poured eagerly out at the door. It is twelve o’clock, the sun
is shining in the court, and something better than schooling is going on
in the kitchen yonder. Who cares now where coffee comes from? or which
are the chief cities in Europe? or in what year Stephen came to the
throne? For is not twelve o’clock dinner-time with all sensible people?
and what periods of history, what future aspirations, what distant events
are as important to us—grown-up folks, and children, too—as this pleasant
daily recurring one?
The kind, motherly schoolmistress who brought me in, tells me, that
for a shilling, half-a-dozen little boys and girls can be treated to
a wholesome meal. I wonder if it smells as good to them as it does to
me, when I pull my shilling out of my pocket. The food costs more than
twopence, but there is a fund to which people subscribe, and, with its
help, the kitchen cooks all through the winter months.
All the children seem very fond of the good Mrs. K——. As we leave the
schoolroom, one little thing comes up crying, and clinging to her, “A boy
has been and ’it me!” But when the mistress says, “Well, never mind, you
shall have your dinner,” the child is instantly consoled; “and you, and
you, and you,” she continues; but this selection is too heartrending; and
with the help of another lucky shilling, nobody present is left out. I
remember particularly a lank child, with great black eyes and fuzzy hair,
and a pinched grey face, who stood leaning against a wall in the sun:
once, in the Pontine Marshes, years ago, I remember seeing such another
figure. “That poor thing is seventeen,” says Mrs. K——. “She sometimes
loiters here all day long; she has no mother: and she often comes and
tells me her father is so drunk she dare not go home. I always give her a
dinner when I can. This is the kitchen.”
The kitchen is a delightful little clean-scrubbed place, with rice
pudding baking in the oven, and a young mistress, and a big girl, busy
bringing in great caldrons full of the mutton broth I have been scenting
all this time. It is a fresh, honest, hungry smell, quite different from
that unwholesome compound of fry and sauce, and hot, pungent spice, and
stew and mess, which comes steaming up, some seven hours later, into
our dining-rooms, from the reeking kitchens below. Here a poor woman
is waiting, with a jug, and a round-eyed baby. The mistress tells me
the people in the neighbourhood are too glad to buy what is left of the
children’s dinner. “Look what good stuff it is,” says Mrs. K——, and she
shows me a bowl full of the jelly, to which it turns when cold. As the
two girls come stepping through the sunny doorway, with the smoking jar
between them, I think Mr. Millais might make a pretty picture of the
little scene; but my attention is suddenly distracted by the round-eyed
baby, who is peering down into the great soup-jug with such wide wide
open eyes, and little hands outstretched—such an eager, happy face,
that it almost made one laugh, and cry too, to see. The baby must be a
favourite, for he is served, and goes off in his mother’s arms, keeping
vigilant watch over the jug, while four or five other jugs and women are
waiting still in the next room. Then into rows of little yellow basins
our mistress pours the broth, and we now go in to see the company in the
dining-hall, waiting for its banquet. Ah me! but it is a pleasanter sight
to see than any company in all the land. Somehow, as the children say
grace, I feel as if there was indeed a blessing on the food: a blessing
which brings colour into these wan cheeks, and strength and warmth into
these wasted little limbs. Meanwhile, the expectant company is growing
rather impatient, and is battering the benches with its spoons, and
tapping neighbouring heads as well. There goes a little guest, scrambling
from his place across the room and back again. So many are here to-day,
that they have not all got seats. I see the wan girl still standing
against the wall, and there is her brother—a sociable little fellow, all
dressed in corduroys—who is making funny faces at me across the room,
at which some other little boys burst out laughing. But the infants
on the dolls’-benches, at the other end, are the best fun. There they
are—three, four, five years old—whispering and chattering, and tumbling
over one another. Sometimes one infant falls suddenly forward, with its
nose upon the table, and stops there quite contentedly; sometimes another
disappears entirely under the legs, and is tugged up by its neighbours. A
certain number of the infants have their dinner every day, the mistress
tells me. Mrs. —— has said so, and hers is the kind hand which has
provided for all these young ones; while a same kind heart has schemed
how to shelter, to feed, to clothe, to teach, the greatest number of
these hungry, and cold, and neglected little children.
As I am replying to the advances of my young friend in the corduroys, I
suddenly hear a cry “Ooo! ooo! ooo!—noo spoons—noo spoons—ooo! ooo! ooo!”
and all the little hands stretch out eagerly as one of the big girls goes
by with a paper of shining metal spoons. By this time the basins of soup
are travelling round, with hunches of home-made bread. “The infants are
to have pudding first,” says the mistress, coming forward; and, in a few
minutes more, all the little birds are busy pecking at their bread and
pudding, of which they take up very small mouthfuls, in very big spoons,
and let a good deal slobber down over their pinafores.
One little curly-haired boy, with a very grave face, was eating pudding
very slowly and solemnly—so I said to him:
“Do you like pudding best?”
_Little Boy._ “Isss.”
“And can you read?”
_Little Boy._ “Isss.”
“And write?”
_Little Boy._ “Isss.”
“And have you got a sister?”
_Little Boy._ “Isss.”
“And does she wash your face so nicely?”
_Little Boy, extra solemn._ “No, see is wite a little girl; see is on’y
four year old.”
“And how old are you?”
_Little Boy, with great dignity._ “_I_ am fi’ year old.”
Then he told me Mrs. Willis “wassed” his face, and he brought his sister
to school.
“Where _is_ your sister?” says the mistress, going by.
But four-years was not forthcoming.
“I s’pose see has walt home,” says the child, and goes on with his
pudding.
This little pair are orphans out of the workhouse, Mrs. K—— told me. But
somebody pays Mrs. Willis for their keep.
There was another funny little thing, very small, sitting between two
bigger boys, to whom I said—
“Are you a little boy or a little girl?”
“Little dirl,” says this baby, quite confidently.
“No, you ain’t,” cries the left-hand neighbour, very much excited.
“Yes, she is,” says right-hand neighbour.
And then three or four more join in, each taking a different view of the
question. All this time corduroys is still grinning and making faces in
his corner. I admire his brass buttons, upon which three or four more
children instantly crowd round to look at them. One is a poor little
deformed fellow, to whom buttons would be of very little use. He is in
quite worn and ragged clothes: he looks as pale and thin almost as that
poor girl I first noticed. He has no mother; he and his brother live
alone with their father, who is out all day, and the children have to
do everything for themselves. The young ones here who have no mothers
seem by far the worst off. This little deformed boy, poor as he is,
finds something to give away. Presently I see him scrambling over the
backs of the others, and feeding them with small shreds of meat, which
he takes out of his soup with his grubby little fingers, and which one
little boy, called Thompson, is eating with immense relish. Mrs. K——
here comes up, and says that those who are hungry are to have some more.
Thompson has some more, and so does another rosy little fellow; but the
others have hardly finished what was first given them, and the very
little ones send off their pudding half eaten, and ask for soup. The
mistresses here are quite touchingly kind and thoughtful. I did not hear
a sharp tone. All the children seemed at home, and happy, and gently
dealt with. However cruelly want, and care, and harshness haunt their
own homes, here at least there are only kind words and comfort for these
poor little pilgrims whose toil has begun so early. Mrs. —— told me
once, that often in winter time these children come barefooted through
the snow, and so cold and hungry that they have fallen off their seats
half fainting. We may be sure that such little sufferers—thanks to these
Good Samaritans—will be tenderly picked up and cared for. But, I wonder,
must there always be children in the world hungry and deserted? and will
there never, out of all the abundance of the earth, be enough to spare to
content those who want so little to make them happy?
Mrs. —— came in while I was still at the school, and took me over the
workshops where the elder boys learn to carpenter and carve. Scores
of drawing-rooms in Belgravia are bristling with the pretty little
tables and ornaments these young artificers design. A young man with
a scriptural name superintends the work; the boys are paid for their
labour, and send out red velvet and twisted legs, and wood ornamented
in a hundred devices. There is an industrial class for girls, too. The
best and oldest are taken in, and taught housework, and kitchen-work,
and sewing. Even the fathers and mothers come in for a share of the good
things, and are invited to tea sometimes, and amused in the evening with
magic lanterns, and conjurors, and lecturings. I do not dwell at greater
length upon the industrial part of these schools, because I want to speak
of another very similar institution I went to see another day.
On my way thither I had occasion to go through an old churchyard, full of
graves and sunshine: a quaint old suburban place, with tree-tops and old
brick houses all round about, and ancient windows looking down upon the
quiet tombstones. Some children were playing among the graves, and two
rosy little girls in big bonnets were sitting demurely on a stone, and
grasping two babies that were placidly basking in the sun. The little
girls look up and grin as I go by. I would ask them the way, only I
know they won’t answer, and so I go on, out at an old iron gate, with
a swinging lamp, up “Church Walk” (so it is written), and along a trim
little terrace, to where a maid-of-all-work is scrubbing at her steps.
When I ask the damsel my way to B—— Street, she says she “do-ant know B——
Street, but there’s Little Davis Street round the corner;” and when I
say I’m afraid Little Davis Street is no good to me, she says, “’Tain’t
Gunter’s Row, is it?” So I go off in despair, and after some minutes of
brisk walking, find myself turning up the trim little terrace again,
where the maid-of-all-work is still busy at her steps. This time, as we
have a sort of acquaintance, I tell her that I am looking for a house
where girls are taken in, and educated, and taught to be housemaids.
At which confidence she brightens up, and says, “There’s a ’ouse round
the-ar with somethink wrote on the door, jest where the little boy’s
a-trundlin’ of his ’oop.”
And so, sure enough, following the hoop, I come to an old-fashioned house
in a courtyard, and ring at a wooden door on which “Girls’ Industrial
Schools” is painted up in white letters.
A little industrious girl, in a lilac pinafore, let me in, with a curtsey.
“May I come in and see the place?” say I.
“Please, yes,” says she (another curtsey). “Please, what name?—please,
walk this way.”
“This way” leads through the court, where clothes are hanging on lines,
into a little office-room, where my guide leaves me, with yet another
little curtsey. In a minute the mistress comes out from the inner room.
She is a kind smiling young woman, with a fresh face and a pleasant
manner. She takes me in, and I see a dozen more girls in lilac pinafores
reading round a deal table. They look mostly about thirteen or fourteen
years old. I ask if this is all the school.
“No, not all,” the mistress says, counting, “some are in the laundry,
and some are not at home. When they are old enough, they go out into
the neighbourhood to help to wash, or cook, or what not. Go on, girls!”
and the girls instantly begin to read again, and the mistress, opening
a door, brings us out into the passage. “We have room for twenty-two,”
says the little mistress; “and we dress them, and feed them, and teach
them as well as we can. On week-days they wear anything we can find for
them, but they have very nice frocks on Sundays. I never leave them; I
sit with them, and sleep among them, and walk with them; they are always
friendly and affectionate to me and among themselves, and are very good
companions.”
In answer to my questions, she said that most of the children were put in
by friends who paid half-a-crown a week for them, sometimes the parents
themselves, but they could rarely afford it. That besides this, and what
the girls could earn, 200_l._ a year is required for the rent of the
house and expenses. “It has always been made up,” says the mistress, “but
we can’t help being very anxious at times, as we have nothing certain,
nor any regular subscriptions. Won’t you see the laundry?” she adds,
opening a door.
In the laundry is a steam, and a clatter, and irons, and linen, and a
little mangle, turned by two little girls, while two or three more are
busy ironing under the superintendence of a washerwoman with tucked-up
sleeves; piles of shirt-collars and handkerchiefs and linen are lying on
the shelves, shirts and clothes are hanging on lines across the room. The
little girls don’t stop, but go on busily.
“Where is Mary Anne?” says the mistress, with a little conscious pride.
“There she is, mum,” says the washerwoman, and Mary Anne steps out
blushing from behind the mangle, with a hot iron in her hand and a
hanging head.
“Mary Anne is our chief laundry-maid,” says the mistress, as we come out
into the hall again. “For the first year I could make nothing of her; she
was miserable in the kitchen, she couldn’t bear housework, she wouldn’t
learn her lessons. In fact, I was quite unhappy about her, till one day I
set her to ironing; she took to it instantly, and has been quite cheerful
and busy ever since.”
So leaving Mary Anne to her vocation in life, we went up-stairs to the
dormitories. The first floor is let to a lady, and one of the girls is
chosen to wait upon her; the second floor is where they sleep, in fresh
light rooms with open windows and sweet spring breezes blowing in across
gardens and courtyards. The place was delightfully trim, and fresh, and
peaceful; the little gray-coated beds stood in rows, with a basket at the
foot of each, and texts were hanging up on the wall. In the next room
stood a wardrobe full of the girls’ Sunday clothes, of which one of them
keeps the key; after this came the mistress’s own room, as fresh and
light and well kept as the rest.
These little maidens scrub, and cook, and wash, and sew. They make broth
for the poor, and puddings. They are taught to read and write and count,
and they learn geography and history as well. Many of them come from
dark unwholesome alleys in the neighbourhood—from a dreary country of
dirt and crime and foul talk. In this little convent all is fresh and
pure, and the sunshine pours in at every window. I don’t know that the
life is very exciting there, or that the days spent at the mangle, or
round the deal table, can be very stirring ones. But surely they are well
spent, learning useful arts, and order, and modesty, and cleanliness.
Think of the cellars and slums from which these children come, and of
the quiet little haven where they are fitted for the struggle of life,
and are taught to be good, and industrious, and sober, and honest. It is
only for a year or two, and then they will go out into the world again;
into a world indeed of which we know but little—a world of cooks and
kitchen-maids and general servants. I daresay these little industrious
girls, sitting round that table and spelling out the Gospel of St. John
this sunny afternoon, are longing and wistfully thinking about that
wondrous coming time. Meanwhile the quiet hour goes by. I say farewell
to the kind, smiling mistress; Mary Anne is still busy among her irons; I
hear the mangle click as I pass, and the wooden door opens to let me out.
In another old house, standing in a deserted old square near the City,
there is a school which interested me as much as any of those I have come
across—a school for little Jewish boys and girls. We find a tranquil
roomy old house with light windows, looking out into the quiet square
with its ancient garden; a carved staircase; a little hall paved with
black and white mosaic, whence two doors lead respectively to the Boys’
and Girls’ schools. Presently a little girl unlocks one of these doors,
and runs up before us into the schoolroom—a long well-lighted room full
of other little girls busy at their desks: little Hebrew maidens with
Oriental faces, who look up at us as we come in. This is always rather
an alarming moment; but Dr. ——, who knows the children, comes kindly to
our help, and begins to tell us about the school. “It is an experiment,”
he says, “and one which has answered admirably well. Any children are
admitted, Christians as well as Jews; and none come without paying
something every week, twopence or threepence, as they can afford, for
many of them belong to the very poorest of the Jewish community. They
receive a very high class of education.” (When I presently see what they
are doing, and hear the questions they can answer, I begin to feel a
very great respect for these little bits of girls in pinafores, and for
the people who are experimenting on them.) “But the chief aim of the
school is to teach them to help themselves, and to inculcate an honest
self-dependence and independence.” And indeed, as I look at them, I
cannot but be struck with a certain air of respectability and uprightness
among these little creatures, as they sit there, so self-possessed,
keen-eyed, well-mannered. “Could you give them a parsing lesson?” the
doctor asks the schoolmistress, who shakes her head, and says it is their
day for arithmetic, and she may not interrupt the order of their studies;
but that they may answer any questions the doctor likes to put to them.
Quite little things, with their hair in curls, can tell you about tons
and hundredweights, and how many horses it would take to draw a ton, and
how many little girls to draw two-thirds of a ton, if so many little
girls went to a horse; and if a horse were added, or a horse taken away,
or two-eighths of the little girls, or three-fourths of the horse, or
one-sixth of the ton,—until the room begins to spin breathlessly round
and round, and I am left ever so far behindhand.
“Is _avoirdupois_ an English word?” Up goes a little hand, with fingers
working eagerly, and a pretty little creature, with long black hair and a
necklace, cries out that it is French, and means, _have weight_.
Then the doctor asks about early English history, and the hands still go
up, and they know all about it; and so they do about civilization, and
despotism, and charters, and Picts and Scots, and dynasties, and early
lawgivers, and colonization, and reformation.
“Who was Martin Luther? Why did he leave the Catholic Church? What were
indulgences?”
“You gave the Pope lots of money, sir, and he gave you dispensations.”
This was from our little portress.
There was another little shrimp of a thing, with wonderful, long-slit,
flashing eyes, who could answer anything almost, and whom the other
little girls accordingly brought forward in triumph from a back row.
“Give me an instance of a free country?” asks the tired questioner.
“England, sir!” cry the little girls in a shout.
“And now of a country which is not free.”
“America,” cry two little voices; and then one adds, “Because there are
slaves, sir.” “And France,” says a third; “and we have seen the emperor
in the picture-shops.”
As I listen to them, I cannot help wishing that many of our little
Christians were taught to be as independent and self-respecting in their
dealings with the grown-up people who come to look at them. One would
fancy that servility was a sacred institution, we cling to it so fondly.
We seem to expect an absurd amount of respect from our inferiors; we are
ready to pay back just as much to those above us in station: and hence
I think, notwithstanding all the kindness of heart, all the well-meant
and well-spent exertion we see in the world, there is often too great an
inequality between those who teach and those who would learn, those who
give and those whose harder part it is to receive.
We were quite sorry at last when the doctor made a little bow, and said,
“Good morning, young ladies,” quite politely, to his pupils. It was too
late to stop and talk to the little boys down below, but we went for a
minute into an inner room out of the large boys’ schoolroom, and there we
found half-a-dozen little men, with their hats on their heads, sitting on
their benches, reading the _Psalms_ in Hebrew; and so we stood, for this
minute before we came away, listening to David’s words spoken in David’s
tongue, and ringing rather sadly in the boys’ touching childish voice.
But this is not by any means the principal school which the Jews
have established in London. Deep in the heart of the City—beyond St.
Paul’s—beyond the Cattle Market, with its countless pens—beyond Finsbury
Square, and the narrow Barbican, travelling on through a dirty, close,
thickly peopled region, you come to Bell Lane, in Spitalfields. And here
you may step in at a door and suddenly find yourself in a wonderful
country, in the midst of an unknown people, in a great hall sounding with
the voices of hundreds of Jewish children. I know not if it is always so,
or if this great assemblage is only temporary, during the preparation for
the Passover, but all along the sides of this great room were curtained
divisions, and classes sitting divided, busy at their tasks, and children
upon children as far as you could see; and somehow as you look you almost
see, not these children only, but their forefathers, the Children of
Israel, camping in their tents, as they camped at Succoth, when they
fled out of the land of Egypt and the house of bondage. Some of these
here present to-day are still flying from the house of bondage; many of
them are the children of Poles, and Russians, and Hungarians, who have
escaped over here to avoid conscription, and who arrive destitute and in
great misery. But to be friendless, and in want, and poverty-stricken, is
the best recommendation for admission to this noble charity. And here, as
elsewhere, any one who comes to the door is taken in, Christian as well
as Jew.
I have before me now the Report for the year 5619 (1858), during which
1,800 children have come to these schools daily. 10,000 in all have
been admitted since the foundation of the school. The working alone of
the establishment—salaries, repairs, books, laundresses, &c.—amounts to
more than 2,000_l._ a year. Of this a very considerable portion goes in
salaries to its officers, of whom I count more than fifty in the first
page of the pamphlet. “12_l._ to a man for washing boys,” is surely
well-spent money; “3_l._ to a beadle; 14_l._ for brooms and brushes;
1_l._ 19_s._ 6_d._ for repair of clocks,” are among the items. The annual
subscriptions are under 500_l._, and the very existence of the place (so
says the Report) depends on voluntary offerings at the anniversary. That
some of these gifts come in with splendid generosity, I need scarcely
say. Clothing for the whole school arrives at Easter once a year, and I
saw great bales of boots for the boys waiting to be unpacked in their
schoolroom. Tailors and shoemakers come and take measurings beforehand,
so that everybody gets his own. To-day these artists having retired,
carpenters and bricklayers are at work all about the place, and the great
boys’ school, which is larger still than the girls’, is necessarily
empty,—except that a group of teachers and monitors are standing in one
corner talking and whispering together. The head master, with a black
beard, comes down from a high desk in an inner room, and tells us about
the place—about the cleverness of the children, and the scholarship
lately founded; how well many of the boys turn out in after life, and for
what good positions they are fitted by the education they are able to
receive here;—“though Jews,” he said, “are debarred by their religious
requirements from two-thirds of the employments which Christians are able
to fill. Masters cannot afford to employ workmen who can only give their
time from Monday to Friday afternoon. There are, therefore, only a very
limited number of occupations open to us. Some of our boys rise to be
ministers, and many become teachers here, in which case Government allows
them a certain portion of their salary.”
The head mistress in the girls’ school was not less kind and ready to
answer our questions. During the winter mornings, hot bread-and-milk are
given out to any girl who chooses to ask for it, but only about a hundred
come forward, of the very hungriest and poorest. When we came away from
—— Square a day before, we had begun to think that all poor Jews were
well and warmly clad, and had time to curl their hair and to look clean,
and prosperous, and respectable, but here, alas! comes the old story of
want, and sorrow, and neglect. What are these brown, lean, wan little
figures, in loose gowns falling from their shoulders—black eyes, fuzzy,
unkempt hair, strange bead necklaces round their throats, and ear-rings
in their ears? I fancied these must be the Poles and Russians, but when
I spoke to one of them she smiled and answered very nicely, in perfectly
good English, and told me she liked writing best of all, and showed me a
copy very neat, even, and legible.
Whole classes seemed busy sewing at lilac pinafores, which are, I
suppose, a great national institution; others were ciphering and calling
out the figures as the mistress chalked the sum upon a slate. Hebrew
alphabets and sentences were hanging up upon the walls. All these little
Hebrew maidens learn the language of their nation.
In the infant-school, a very fat little pouting baby, with dark eyes,
and a little hook-nose and curly locks, and a blue necklace and funny
ear-rings in her little rosy ears, came forward, grasping one of the
mistresses’ fingers.
“This is a good little girl,” said that lady, “who knows her alphabet in
Hebrew and in English.”
And the little girl looks up very solemn, as children do, to whom
everything is of vast importance, and each little incident a great new
fact. The infant-schools do not make part of the Bell Lane Establishment,
though they are connected with it, and the children, as they grow up, and
are infants no longer, draft off into the great free-school.
The infant-school is a light new building close by, with arcaded
playgrounds, and plenty of light, and air, and freshness, though it
stands in this dreary, grimy region. As we come into the schoolrooms
we find, piled up on steps at either end, great living heaps of little
infants, swaying, kicking, shouting for their dinner, beating aimlessly
about with little legs and arms. Little Jew babies are uncommonly like
little Christians; just as funny, as hungry, as helpless, and happy now
that the bowls of food come steaming in. One, two, three, four, five
little cook-boys, in white jackets, and caps, and aprons, appear in
a line, with trays upon their heads, like the processions out of the
Arabian Nights; and as each cook-boy appears, the children cheer, and the
potatoes steam hotter and hotter, and the mistresses begin to ladle them
out.
Rice and browned potatoes is the manna given twice a week to these hungry
little Israelites. I rather wish for the soup and pudding certain small
Christians are gobbling up just about this time in another corner of
London; but this is but a halfpenny-worth, while the other meal costs a
penny. You may count by hundreds here instead of by tens; and I don’t
think there would be so much shouting at the little cook-boys if these
hungry little beaks were not eager for their food. I was introduced to
one little boy here, who seemed to be very much looked up to by his
companions because he had one long curl right along the top of his head.
As we were busy talking to him, a number of little things sitting on the
floor were busy stroking and feeling with little gentle fingers the soft
edges of a coat one of us had on, and the silk dress of a lady who was
present.
The lady who takes chief charge of these 400 babies told us how the
mothers as well as the children got assistance here in many ways,
sometimes coming for advice, sometimes for small loans of money, which
they always faithfully repay. She also showed us letters from some of
the boys who have left and prospered in life. One from a youth who has
lately been elected alderman in some distant colony. She took us into a
classroom and gave a lesson to some twenty little creatures, while, as it
seemed to me, all the 380 others were tapping at the door, and begging
to be let in. It was an object-, and then a scripture-lesson, and given
with the help of old familiar pictures. There was Abraham with his beard,
and Isaac and the ram, hanging up against the wall; there was Moses,
and the Egyptians, and Joseph, and the sack and the brethren, somewhat
out of drawing. All these old friends gave one quite a homely feeling,
and seemed to hold out friendly hands to us strangers and Philistines,
standing within the gates of the chosen people.
Before we came away the mistress opened a door and showed us one of
the prettiest and most touching sights I have ever seen. It was the
arcaded playground full of happy, shouting, tumbling, scrambling little
creatures: little tumbled-down ones kicking and shouting on the ground,
absurd toddling races going on, whole files of little things wandering
up and down with their arms round one another’s necks: a happy, friendly
little multitude indeed: a sight good for sore eyes.
And so I suppose people of all nations and religions love and tend their
little ones, and watch and yearn over them. I have seen little Catholics
cared for by kind nuns with wistful tenderness, as the young ones came
clinging to their black veils and playing with their chaplets;—little
high-church maidens growing up rosy and happy amid crosses and mediæval
texts, and chants, and dinners of fish, and kind and melancholy ladies
in close caps and loose-cut dresses;—little low-church children smiling
and dropping curtseys as they see the Rev. Mr. Faith-in-grace coming up
the lane with tracts in his big pockets about pious negroes, and broken
vessels, and devouring worms, and I daresay pennies and sugar-plums as
well.
Who has not seen and noted these things, and blessed with a thankful,
humble heart that fatherly Providence which has sent this pure and tender
religion of little children to all creeds and to all the world?
The Carver’s Lesson.
Trust me, no mere skill of subtle tracery,
No mere practice of a dexterous hand,
Will suffice, without a hidden spirit,
That we may, or may not, understand.
And those quaint old fragments that are left us
Have their power in this,—the Carver brought
Earnest care, and reverent patience, only
Worthily to clothe some noble thought.
Shut, then, in the petals of the flowers,
Round the stems of all the lilies twine,
Hide beneath each bird’s or angel’s pinion,
Some wise meaning or some thought divine.
Place in stony hands that pray for ever
Tender words of peace, and strive to wind
Round the leafy scrolls and fretted niches
Some true, loving message to your kind.
Some will praise, some blame, and, soon forgetting,
Come and go, nor even pause to gaze;
Only now and then a passing stranger
Just may loiter with a word of praise.
But, I think, when years have floated onward,
And the stone is gray, and dim, and old,
And the hand forgotten that has carved it,
And the heart that dreamt it still and cold:
There may come some weary soul, o’erladen
With perplexed struggle in his brain,
Or, it may be, fretted with life’s turmoil,
Or made sore with some perpetual pain.
Then, I think, those stony hands will open,
And the gentle lilies overflow,
With the blessing and the loving token
That you hid there many years ago.
And the tendrils will unroll, and teach him
How to solve the problem of his pain;
And the birds’ and angels’ wings shake downward
On his heart a sweet and tender rain.
While he marvels at his fancy, reading
Meaning in that quaint and ancient scroll,
Little guessing that the loving Carver
Left a message for his weary soul.
A. A. P.
William Hogarth:
PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER.
_Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time._
IV.—THE PAINTER’S PROGRESS.
About the year of grace 1727 the world began to hear of William Hogarth,
not only as a designer and engraver of pasquinades and book-plates,
but as a painter in oils. He had even begun to know what patronage
was; and it was, doubtless, not without a reason that his _Hudibras_
series was dedicated to “William Ward, Esquire, of Great Houghton,
Northamptonshire.” In his early heraldic days, I find that he was once
called upon to engrave an “Apollo in all his glory, azure.” He probably
copied the figure from some French print; but in 1724 he was hard at work
copying Apollo, and Marsyas to boot, at Thornhill’s Academy. Although he
was sensible enough not to neglect the cultivation of the main chance,
and with all convenient speed betook himself to the profitable vocation
of portraiture or “face painting;” obtaining almost immediately, from
his connection with the king’s sergeant painter, some aristocratic
commissions—it is curious to observe that the young man’s bent lay in
the direction of the historico-allegorical, then running neck-and-neck
with the upholstery style of adornment. He had the epic-fever. Who
among us has not suffered from that _fièvre brulante_—that generous
malady of youth? How many contented sub-editors and quiet booksellers’
readers do we not know, who, in their hot adolescence, came to town,
their portmanteaus bursting with the “Somethingiad,” in twenty-four
cantos, or with blank-verse tragedies running to the orthodox five acts?
Stipple, the charming domestic painter; Jonquil, who limns flowers
and fruits so exquisitely, commenced with their enormous cartoons
and show-clock oil-pictures: “Orestes pursued by the Eumenides,”
“Departure of Regulus,”—_la vieille patraque_, in short—the old, heroic,
impossible undertakings. And did not Liston imagine that he was born
to play _Macbeth_? and did not Douglas Jerrold project a treatise on
Natural Philosophy? and where is the little boarding-school miss that
has not dreamt of riding in a carriage with a coronet on the panels,
and being called her ladyship? Amina thinks the grandiloquent music of
_Norma_ would suit her; the maiden speech of young Quintus Briscus is
a tremendous outburst against ministers. Quintus is going to shake the
country, and cut the Gordian knot of red-tape. The session after next he
will be a junior Lord of the Treasury, the demurest and most complacent
of placemen. Peers, politicians, pamphleteers, and players: we all find
our level. Rolling about the board is not to be tolerated for any length
of time: we _must_ peg in somewhere, and happy the man who finds himself
in the right hole, and is satisfied with that state of life into which it
has pleased heaven to call him!
Hogarth has his _fièvre brulante_; and, although he painted portraits,
“conversations,” and “assemblies,” to eke out that livelihood of which
the chief source was the employment given him by Philip Overton,
Black-Horse Bowles, and the booksellers, he continued to hanker after
torsos, and flying trumpets, and wide-waving wings, and flaunting
drapery, and the other paraphernalia that went to furnish forth the
apotheoses of monarchs and warriors in full-bottomed wigs. This
preposterous school of art has long been in hopeless decay. You see the
phantom caricature of it, only, in hair-dressers’ “toilette saloons” and
provincial music-halls. Timon’s villa—the futile, costly caprice—has
vanished. Old Montagu House is no more. Doctor Misaubin’s house, in St.
Martin’s Lane, the staircase painted by Clermont (the Frenchman asked
a thousand, and actually received five hundred guineas for his work),
is not within my ken. Examples of this florid, truculent style, are
becoming rarer and rarer every day. Painted ceilings and staircases
yet linger in some grand old half-deserted country mansions, and in a
few erst gorgeous merchants’ houses in Fenchurch and Leadenhall, now
let out in flats as offices and chambers. If you have no objection to
hazard a crick in your neck, you may crane it, and stare upwards at the
ceil-paintings at Marlborough House, in Greenwich Hall, and on Hampton
Court Palace staircase. The rest has ceded before stucco and stencilled
paper-hangings; and even the French, who never neglect an opportunity
or an excuse for ornamentation, and who still occasionally paint the
ceilings of their palaces, seem to have quite lost the old Lebrun and
Coypel traditions of perspective and foreshortening—overcharged and
unnatural as they were (P. P. Rubens, in the Banqueting House, Whitehall,
inventor)—and merely give you a picture stuck upon a rooftree, in which
the figures are attenuated vertically, instead of sprawling down upon
you, isometrically upside down.
Hogarth became useful to Sir James Thornhill. This last, a worthy,
somewhat pompous, but industrious magnifico of the moment, a Covent
Garden Caravaggio and cross between Raphael Mengs and the Groom-porter,
had wit enough to discern the young designer and graver’s capacity,
and condescended to patronize him. There is reason to believe that he
employed William to assist in the production of his roomy works. When
ceilings and domes were to be painted at two guineas the Flemish ell, it
is not likely that Royal Sergeant painters and knights of the shire for
Melcombe Regis could afford or would vouchsafe to cover with pigments and
with their own courtly hands the whole of the required area. The vulgar,
of course, imagined that the painter did all; that Thornhill lay for
ever stretched on a mattress, swinging in a basket three hundred feet
high in the empyrean of Wren’s dome, daubing away at his immense Peters
and Pauls, or else stepping backwards to the edge of a crazy platform to
contemplate the work he had done, and being within an ace of toppling
over to inevitable crash of death beneath, when an astute colour-grinder
saved his beloved master by flinging a brush at Paul’s great toe—cruel to
be kind, and so causing the artist, in indignant apprehension of injury
to his beloved saint, to rush forward, saving his own life and the toe
likewise. A pretty parallel to this story is in that of the little boy
in the Greek epigram who has crawled to the very edge of a precipice,
and is attracted from his danger by the sight of his mother’s breast. A
neat little anecdote, but—it is somewhat musty. It is a myth, I fear. The
vulgar love such terse traditions. Zeuxis refusing to sell his pictures,
because no sum of money was sufficient to buy them, and imitating fruit
so nicely that the birds came and pecked at it; Parrhasius cozening
Zeuxis into the belief that his simulated curtain was real, and
crucifying a bondman (the wretch!) that he might transfer his contortions
to canvas; Apelles inducing a horse to neigh in recognition of the steed
he had drawn; Amurath teaching a French painter how properly to design
the contracted muscles of the neck when the head is severed from the
body by causing a slave to be decapitated in his presence: Correggio
receiving the price of his master-work in farthings, or some vile copper
Italian coinage, and dying under the weight of the sack in which he was
carrying the sordid wage home; Cimabue ruddling the fleeces of his lambs
with saintly triptichs, and the late Mr. Fuseli eating raw pork-chops for
supper in order to design the “Nightmare,” more to the life: all these
are _ben trovati_,—_ma non son veri_, I suspect.
Thornhill had not all his domes and ceilings and staircases to himself.
When Augustus found Rome of brick and left it of marble, he did not
execute all the quarrying and chiselling with his own imperial hands.
In 1727, the painter M.P. for Melcombe Regis was at the high tide of
celebrity. Many of the Flemish ells were covered by assistants. Here, I
fancy, Van Shackaback of Little Britain, and sometime of Ghent in the Low
Countries, was dexterous at war and art trophies, lyres, kettle-drums,
laurel wreaths, bass-viols, and S. P. Q. R.’s, charmingly heaped up on a
solid basis of cloud. Then little Vanderscamp, who had even been employed
about the great king’s alcoves at Versailles, was wondrous cunning at the
confection of those same purple and cream-coloured vapours. Lean Monsieur
Carogne from Paris excelled in drapery; Gianbattista Ravioli, ex-history
painter to the Seigniory of Venice, but vehemently suspected of having
been a galley-slave in the Venetian arsenal, was unrivalled in flying
Cupids. All these foreign aides-de-camp sprawled on their mattresses and
made their fancy’s children to sprawl; goodman Thornhill superintending,
touching up now and then, blaming, praising, pooh-poohing, talking of the
gusto, taking snuff, then putting on his majestic wig and his grand laced
hat, and departing in a serene manner in his coach to St. James’s or the
House, thinking perhaps of one Rafaelle who painted the _loggie_ and
_stanze_ of the Vatican, and of what a clever fellow he, James Thornhill,
was.
To him presently entered young Hogarth. The indulgence of William’s
own caustic whim had served an end he may not have recked of. He had
contrived to pay Thornhill the most acceptable compliment that can be
paid to a vain, shallow, pompous man. He had lampooned and degraded his
rival. He had pilloried Kent in the parody of the wretched St. Clement
Danes’ altar-piece, and had had a fling at him, besides, in _Burlington
Gate_, where in sly ridicule of the earl’s infatuation for this Figaro of
art, Kent’s effigy is placed on a pinnacle above the statues of Rafaelle
and Michael Angelo. It is a capital thing to have a friend in court with
a sharp tongue, or better still, with a sharp pen or pencil, who will
defend you, and satirize your enemies. The watch-dog Tearem at home, to
defend the treasure-chest, is all very well in his way; but the wealthy
worldling should also entertain Snarler, the bull-terrier, to bite and
snap at people’s heels. Not that for one moment I would insinuate that
Hogarth strove at all unworthily to toady or to curry favour with Sir
James Thornhill. The sturdiness and independence of the former are
visible in his very first etching. The acorn does not grow up to be
a parasite. But Hogarth’s poignant humour happened to tally with the
knight’s little malices. Hogarth, there is reason to assume, believed in
Thornhill more than he believed in Kent. The first, at least, could work,
was a fair draughtsman, and a not contemptible painter, albeit his colour
was garish, his conception preposterous, his execution loaded and heavy.
He showed at all events a genuine interest in, and love for that art, in
which he might not himself have excelled. Kent was a sheer meretricious
impostor and art-manufacturing quack, and Hogarth was aware of him at
once, and so scarified him. Moreover, a young man can scarcely—till
his wisdom-teeth be cut—avoid drifting temporarily into some clique or
another. Cibber must have had his admirers, who mauled Pope prettily
among themselves; and moreover, Sir James Thornhill, knight, sergeant
painter, and M.P., had a DAUGHTER—one mistress Jane—but I am forestalling
matters again.
Although it is difficult to imagine anything more confused,
misunderstood, and hampered with rags and tatters of ignorance, or—worse
than ignorance-false taste, than was English Art in 1727, Cimmerian
darkness did not wholly reign. There were men alive who had heard their
fathers tell of the glories of Charles the First’s gallery at Whitehall;
there were some princely English nobles, then as now patrons and
collectors; there were treasures of art in England, although no Waagen,
no Jameson, had arisen to describe them, and there were amateurs to
appreciate those treasures. The young peer who went the grand tour took
something else abroad with him besides a negro-boy, a tipsy chaplain,
and a pug-dog. He brought other things home beyond a broken-nosed busto,
a rusted medal, a receipt for cooking _risotto_ and the portrait of
a Roman beggar and a Venetian _corteggiana_. He frequently acquired
exquisite gems of painting and statuary abroad, and on his return formed
a noble gallery of art. It is unfortunately true that his lordship
sometimes played deep at “White’s” or the “Young Man’s,” and, losing
all, was compelled to send his pictures to the auction room; but even
then his treasures were disseminated, and wise and tasteful men were the
purchasers. To their credit, the few celebrated artists then possessed by
our country were assiduous gatherers in this field. Sir Godfrey Kneller
collected Vandykes. Richardson the elder, a pleasing painter, whose
daughter married Hudson, Sir Joshua Reynolds’s master, left Rafaelle
and Andrea del Sarto drawings, worth a large sum.[1] Jervas, Pope’s
friend, and by that polished, partial man artistically much overrated,
being at the best but a weak, diaphanous, grimacing enlarger of fans
and firescreens, became rich enough to form a handsome cabinet of
paintings, drawings, and engravings. We are apt to bear much too hardly
on the patron-lords and gentlemen of the eighteenth century. Many were
munificent, enlightened, and accomplished; but we devour the piquant
satires on Timon and Curio and Bubo, and have patron and insolence,
patron and ignorance, patron and neglect, patron and gaol, too glibly
at our tongue’s end. Is it not to be wished that thinking people should
bear _this_ in mind: that not only were there strong men who lived
_before_ Agamemnon, but that there were strong men who lived _besides_
Agamemnon—his contemporaries, in fine, to whom posterity has not been
generous, not even just, and whose strength has been forgotten?
The earliest known picture of William Hogarth is one called the
_Wanstead Assembly_, long, and by a ridiculous blunder, corrupted
into “Wandsworth.” The term “Assembly” was a little bit of art-slang.
A portrait being a portrait, and a “conversation” a group of persons
generally belonging to one family; by an “assembly” was understood a kind
of pictorial rent-roll, or domestic “achievement,” representing the
lord, or the squire, the ladies and children, the secretaries, chaplains,
pensioned poets, led-captains, body-flatterers, hangers-on, needy
clients, lick-trenchers, and scrape-plates, the governesses and tutors,
the tenants, the lacqueys, the black-boys, the monkeys, and the lapdogs:
_tutta la baracca_, in fact. In the _Wanstead Assembly_ was a portrait
of the first Earl Tylney, and many of his vassals and dependants; and
shortly after the completion of the picture, Mitchell, for whose opera of
_The Highland Clans_ Hogarth designed a frontispiece, complimented the
artist on his performance in smooth couplets:—
“Large families obey your hand,
Assemblies rise at your command.”
It was William’s frequent fortune during life to be much celebrated
in verse. Swift, you know, apostrophized him as “hum’rous Hogart;”
Mitchell, as we have seen, lauds his “families” and “assemblies.” Shortly
afterwards, the tender and graceful Vincent Bourne, who wrote the
_Jackdaw_, and whose innocent memory as “Vinny Bourne” is yet cherished
in Westminster School, where he was junior master, addressed the painter
in Latin “hendecasyllables.” Hoadley, chancellor and bishop, spurred a
clumsy Pegasus to paraphrase his pictures in verse. Churchill, when he
was old, tried to stab him with an epistle; David Garrick and Samuel
Johnson competed for the honour of writing his epitaph.
Between 1727 and 1730, Hogarth appears to have painted dozens of single
portraits, “conversations,” and “assemblies.” In the list he himself
scheduled are to be noticed “four figures for Mr. Wood” (1728); “six
figures for Mr. Cock” (1728); “an assembly of twenty-five figures for my
Lord Castlemaine” (1729); “five for the Duke of Montagu;” nine for Mr.
Vernon, four for Mr. Wood, and so forth. The prices paid for “Assemblies”
appear to have fluctuated between ten and thirty guineas. The oddest, and
nearly the earliest commission he received for a portrait was in 1726,
when several of the eminent surgeons of the day subscribed their guinea
a-piece for him to compose a burlesque “conversation” of Mary Tofts, the
infamous rabbit-breeding impostor of Godalming; and St. André, chirurgeon
to the King’s household, a highly successful and most impudent quack,
who had made himself very busy in the scandalous hoax, and pretended
to believe in Tofts. For the story that Hogarth made a drawing of Jack
Sheppard in Newgate (1724), at the time when Sir James painted the
robber’s half-length in oils—the imaginary scene is admirably etched by
George Cruikshank in one of his illustrations to Mr. Ainsworth’s strange
novel—there does not seem any foundation. W. H. certainly painted Sarah
Malcolm, the murderess, in her cell, in 1733; and from that well-known
and authenticated fact some persons may have jumped at the conclusion
that he was limner in ordinary to the Old Bailey.