THE PARISH CHURCH.—REMBRANDT.—THE SNOW SCENE.—MASTER SWIFT’S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
IN most respects, Jan’s conduct and progress were very satisfactory. He
quickly learned to read, and his copy-books were models.
The good clerk developed another talent in him. Jan learned to sing, and
to sing very well; and he was put into the choir-seats in the old church,
where he sang with enthusiasm hymns which he had learned by heart from
the schoolmaster.
No wild weather that ever blustered over the downs could keep Jan now
from the services. The old church came to have a fascination for him,
from the low, square tower without, round which the rooks wheeled, to the
springing pillars, the solemn gray tints of the stone, and the round
arches that so gratified the eye within. And did he not sit opposite to
the one stained window the soldiers of the Commonwealth had spared to the
parish! It was the only colored picture Jan knew, and he knew every
line, every tint of it, and the separate expression on each of the wan,
quaint faces of the figures. When the sun shone, they seemed to smile at
him, and their ruby dresses glowed like garments dyed in blood. When the
colors fell upon Abel’s white head, Jan wished with all his heart that he
could have gathered them as he gathered leaves, to make pictures with.
Sometimes he day-dreamed that one of the figures came down out of the
window, and brought the colors with him, and that he and Jan painted
pictures in the other windows, filling them with gorgeous hues, and pale,
devout faces. The fancy, empty as it was, pleased him, and he planned
how every window should be done, and told Abel, to whom the ingenious
fancy seemed as marvellous as if the work had been accomplished.
Abel was in the choir too, not so much because of his voice as of his
great wish for it, and of the example of his good behavior. It was he
who persuaded Mrs. Lake to come to church, and having once begun she came
often. She tried to persuade her husband to go, and told him how sweetly
the boys’ voices sounded, led by Master Swift’s fine bass, which he
pitched from a key which he knocked upon his desk. But Master Lake had a
proverb to excuse him. “The nearer the church, the further from GOD.”
Not that he pretended to maintain the converse of the proposition.
Jan learned plenty of poetry; hymns, which Abel learned again from him,
some of Herbert’s poems, and bits of Keats. But his favorites were
martial poems by Mrs. Hemans, which he found in an old volume of
collected verses, till the day he came upon “Marmion,” and gave himself
up to Sir Walter Scott. He spouted poetry to Abel in imitation of Master
Swift, and they enjoyed all, and understood about half.
And yet Jan’s progress was not altogether satisfactory to his teacher.
To learn long pieces of poetry was easy pastime to him, but he was dull
or inattentive when the schoolmaster gave him some elementary lessons in
mechanics. He wrote beautifully, but was no prodigy in arithmetic. He
drew trees, windmills, and pigs on the desks, and admirable portraits of
the schoolmaster, Rufus, and other local worthies, on the margins of the
tables of weights and measures.
Much of his leisure was spent at Master Swift’s cottage, and in reading
his books. The schoolmaster had marked an old biographical dictionary at
pages containing lives of “self-made” men, who had risen as inventors or
improvers in mechanics or as discoverers of important facts of natural
science. Jan had not hitherto studied their careers with the avidity
Master Swift would have liked to see, but one day he found him reading
the fat volume with deep interest.
“And whose life are ye at now, laddie?” he asked, with a smile.
Jan lifted his face, which was glowing. “’Tis Rembrandt the painter I be
reading about. Eh, Master Swift, he lived in a windmill, and he was a
miller’s son!”
“Maybe he’d a miller’s thumb,” Jan added, stretching out his own, and
smiling at the droll idea. “Do ’ee know what _etchings_ be, then, Master
Swift?”
“A kind of picture that’s scratched on a piece of copper with needles,
and costs a lot of money to print,” said Master Swift, dryly; and he
turned his broad back and went out.
It was one day in the second winter of Jan’s learning under Master Swift
that matters came to a climax. The schoolmaster loved punctuality, but
Jan was not always punctual. He was generally better in this respect in
winter than in summer, as there was less to distract his attention on the
road to school. But one winter’s day he loitered to make a sketch on his
slate, and made matters worse by putting finishing touches to it after he
was seated at the desk.
It was not a day to suggest sketching, but, turning round when he was
about half way to the village, the view seemed to Jan to be exactly
suitable for a slate sketch. The long slopes of the downs were white
with snow; but it was a dull grayish white, for there was no sunshine,
and the gray-white of the slate-pencil did it justice enough. In the
middle distance rose the windmill, and a thatched cattle shed and some
palings made an admirable foreground. On the top and edges of these lay
the snow, outlining them in white, which again the slate-pencil could
imitate effectively. There only wanted something darker than the slate
itself to do those parts of the foreground and the mill which looked
darker than the sky, and for this Jan trusted to pen and ink when he
reached his desk. The drawing was very successful, and Jan was so
absorbed in admiring it that he did not notice the schoolmaster’s
approach, but feeling some one behind him, he fancied it was one of the
boys, and held up the slate triumphantly, whispering, “Look ’ee here!”
It was Master Swift who looked, and snatching the slate he brought it
down on the sharp corner of the desk, and broke it to pieces. Then he
went back to his place, and spoke neither bad nor good to Jan for the
rest of the school-time. Jan would much rather have been beaten. Once
or twice he made essay to go up to Master Swift’s desk, but the old man’s
stern countenance discouraged him, and he finally shrank into a corner
and sat weeping bitterly. He sat there till every scholar but himself
had gone, and still the schoolmaster did not speak. Jan slunk out, and
when Master Swift turned homewards Jan followed silently in his footsteps
through the snow. At the door of the cottage, the old man looked round
with a relenting face.
“I suppose Rufus’ll insist on your coming in,” said he; and Jan rushing
in hid his face in Rufus’s curls, and sobbed heavily.
“Tut, tut!” said the schoolmaster. “No more of that, child. There’s
bitters enough in life, without being so prodigal of your tears.”
“Come and sit down with ye,” he went on. “You’re very young, lad, and
maybe I’m foolish to be angry with ye that you’re not wise. But yet
ye’ve more sense than your years in some respects, and I’m thinking I’ll
try and make ye see things as I see ’em. I’m going to tell ye something
about myself, if ye’d care to hear it.”
“I’d be main pleased, Master Swift,” said Jan, earnestly.
“I’d none of your advantages, lad,” said the old man. “When I was your
age, I knew more mischief than you need ever know, and uncommon little
else. I’m a self-educated man,—I used to hope I should live to hear folk
say a self-made Great Man. It’s a bitter thing to have the ambition
without the genius, to smoulder in the fire that great men shine by!
However, it’s something to have just the saving sense to know that ye’ve
not got it, though it’s taken a wasted lifetime to convince me, and I
sometimes think the deceiving serpent is more scotched than killed yet.
However, ye seem to me to be likelier to lack the ambition than the
genius, so we may let that bide. But there’s a snare of mine, Jan, that
I mean your feet to be free of, and that’s a mischosen vocation. I’m not
a native of these parts, ye must know. I come from the north, and in
those mining and manufacturing districts I’ve seen many a man that’s got
an education, and could keep himself sober, rise to own his house and his
works, and have men under him, and bring up his children like the gentry.
For mark ye, my lad. In such matters the experiences of the early part
of an artisan’s life are all so much to the good for him, for they’re in
the working of the trade, and the finest young gentleman has got it all
to learn, if he wants to make money in that line. I got my education,
and I was sober enough, but—Heaven help me—I must be a poet, and in
_that_ line a gentleman’s son knows almost from the nursery many a thing
that I had to teach myself with hard labor as a man. It was just a
madness. But I read all the poetry I could lay my hands on, and I wrote
as well.”
“Did you write poetry, Master Swift?” said Jan.
“Ay, Jan, of a sort. At one time I worshipped Burns. And then I wrote
verses in the dialect of my native place, which, ye must know, I can
speak with any man when I’ve a mind,” said Master Swift, unconscious that
he spoke it always. “And then it was Wordsworth, for the love of nature
is just a passion with me, and it’s that that made the poet Keats a new
world to me. Well, well, now I’m telling you how I came here. It was
after my wife. She was lady’s-maid to Squire Ammaby’s mother, and the
old Squire got me the school. Ah, those were happy days! I was a
godless, rough sort of a fellow when she married me, but I became a
converted man. And let me tell ye, lad, when a man and wife love GOD and
each other, and live in the country, a bit of ground like this becomes a
very garden of Eden.”
“Did your wife like your poetry, sir?” said Jan, on whom the idea that
the schoolmaster was a poet made a strong impression.
“Ay, ay, Jan. She was a good scholar. I wrote a bit about that time
called Love and Ambition, in the style of the poet Wordsworth. It was as
much as to say that Love had killed Ambition, ye understand? But it
wasn’t dead. It had only shifted to another object.
“We had a child. I remember the first day his blue eyes looked at me
with what I may call sense in ’em. He was in his cradle, and there was
no one but me with him. I went on like a fool. ‘See thee, my son,’ I
said, ‘thy father’s been a bad ’un, but he’ll keep thee as pure as thy
mother. Thy father’s a poor scholar, but he’s not _that_ dull but what
he’ll make _thee_ as learned as the parson. Thy father’s a needy man, a
man in a small way, but he and thy mother’ll stick here in this dull bit
of a village, content, ay, my lad, right happy, so thou’rt a rich man,
and can see the world!’ I give ye my word, Jan, the child looked at me
as if he understood it all. You’re wondering, maybe, what made me hope
he’d do different to what I’d done. But, ye see, his mother was just an
angel, and I reckoned he’d be half like her. Then she’d lived with
gentlefolks from a child, and knew manners and such like that I never
learned. And for as little as I’d taught myself, he’d at any rate begin
where his father left off. He was all we had. There seemed no fault in
him. His mother dressed him like a little prince, and his manners were
the same. Ah, we _were_ happy! Then”—
“Well, Master Swift?” said Jan, for the schoolmaster had paused.
“Can’t ye see the place is empty?” he answered sharply. “Who takes bite
or sup with me but Rufus? _She died_.
“I’d have gone mad but for the boy. All my thought was to make up her
loss to him. A child learns a man to be unselfish, Jan. I used to
think, ‘GOD may well be the very fount of unselfish charity, when He has
so many children, so helpless without Him!’ I think He taught me how to
do for that boy. I dressed him, I darned his socks: what work I couldn’t
do I put out, but I had no one in. When I came in from school, I cleaned
myself, and changed my boots, to give him his meals. Rufus and I eat off
the table now, but I give ye my word when he was alive we’d three clean
cloths a week, and he’d a pinny every day; and there’s a silver fork and
spoon in yon drawer I saved up to buy him, and had his name put on. I
taught him too. He loved poetry as well as his father. He could say
most of Milton’s ‘Lycidas.’ It was an unlucky thing to have learned him
too! Eh, Jan! we’re poor fools. I lay awake night after night
reconciling my mind to troubles that were never to come, and never
dreaming of what _was_ before me. I thought to myself, ‘John Swift, my
lad, you’re making yourself a bed of thorns. As sure as you make your
son a gentleman, so sure he’ll look down on his old father when he gets
up. Can ye bear that, John Swift, and _her_ dead, and him all that ye
have?’ I didn’t ask myself twice, Jan. Of course I could bear it.
Would any parent stop his child from being better than himself because
he’d be looked down on? I never heard of one. ‘I want him to think me
rough and ignorant,’ says I, ‘for I want him to know what’s better. And
I shan’t expect him to think on how I’ve slaved for him, till he’s
children of his own, and their mother a lady. But when I’m dead,’ I
says, ‘and he stands by my grave, and I can’t shame him no more with my
common ways, he’ll say, “The old man did his best for me,” for he has his
mother’s feelings.’ I tell ye, Jan, I cried like a child to think of him
standing at my burying in a good black coat and a silk scarf like a
gentleman, and I no more thought of standing at his than if he was bound
to live for ever. And, mind ye, I did all I could to improve myself. I
learned while I was teaching, and read all I could lay my hands on.
Books of travels made me wild. I was young still, and I’d have given a
deal to see the world. But I was saving every penny for him. ‘He’ll see
it all,’ says I, ‘and that’s enough,—Italy and Greece, and Egypt, and the
Holy Land. And he’ll see the sea (which I never saw but once, and that
was at Cleethorpes), and he’ll go to the tropics, and see flowers that
’ud just turn his old father’s head, and he’ll write and tell me of ’em,
for he’s got his mother’s feelings.’ . . . My GOD! He never passed the
parish bounds, and he’s lain alongside of her in yon churchyard for five
and thirty years!”
Master Swift’s head sank upon his breast, and he was silent, as if in a
trance, but Jan dared not speak. The silence was broken by Rufus, who
got up and stuffed his nose into the schoolmaster’s hand.
“Poor lad!” said his master, patting him. “Thou’rt a good soul, too!
Well, Jan, I’m here, ye see. It didn’t kill me. I was off my head a
bit, I believe, but they kept the school for me, and I got to work again.
I’m rough pottery, lad, and take a deal of breaking. I’ve took up with
dumb animals, too, a good deal. At least, they’ve took up with me. Most
of ’em’s come, like Rufus, of themselves. Mangy puppies no one would
own, cats with kettles to their tails, and so on. I’ve always had a bit
of company to my meals, and that’s the main thing. Folks has said to me,
‘Master Swift, I don’t know how you can keep on schooling. I reckon you
can hardly abide the sight of boys now you’ve lost your own.’ But
they’re wrong, Jan: it seemed to give me a kind of love for every lad I
lit upon.
“Are ye thinking ambition was dead in the old man at last? It came to
life again, Jan. After a bit, I says to myself, ‘In a dull place like
this there’s doubtless many a boy that might rise that never has the
chance that I’d have given to mine. For what says the poet Gray?—
“But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of Time, did ne’er unroll.”’
“I think, Jan, sometimes, I’m like Rachel, who’d rather have taken to her
servant’s children than have had none. I thought, ‘If there’s a genius
in obscurity here, I’ll come across the boy, being schoolmaster, and I’ll
do for him as I’d have done for my own.’ Jan, I’ve seen nigh on seven
generations of lads pass through this school, but _he’s never come_!
Society’s quit of that blame. There’s been no ’mute, inglorious Miltons’
here since I come to this place. There’s been many a nice-tempered lad
I’ve loved, for I’m fond of children, but never one that yearned to see
places he’d never seen, or to know things he’d never heard of. There’s
no fool like an old one, and I think I’ve been more disappointed as time
went on. I submitted myself to the Lord’s will years ago; but I _have_
prayed Him, on my knees, since He didn’t see fit to raise me and mine, to
let me have that satisfaction to help some other man’s son to knowledge
and to fame.
“Jan Lake,” said Master Swift, “when I found you in yon wood, I found
what I’ve looked for in vain for thirty-five years. Have I been
schoolmaster so long, d’ye think, and don’t know one boy’s face from
another? Lad? is it possible ye don’t _care_ to be a great man?”
Jan cared very much, but he was afraid of Master Swift; and it was by an
effort that he summoned up courage to say,—
“Couldn’t I be a great painter, Master Swift, don’t ’ee think?”
The old man frowned impatiently. “What have I been telling ye? The Fine
Arts are not the road to fame for working-men. Jan, Jan, be guided by
me. Learn what I bid ye. And when ye’ve made name and fortune the way I
show ye, ye can buy paints and paintings at your will, and paint away to
please your leisure hours.”
It did not need the gentle Abel’s after-counsel to persuade Jan to submit
himself to the schoolmaster’s direction.
“I’ll do as ye bid me, Master Swift; indeed, I will, sir,” said he.
But, when the pleased old man rambled on of fame and fortune, it must be
confessed that Jan but thought of them as the steps to those hours of
wealthy leisure in which he could buy paints and indulge the
irrepressible bent of his genius without blame.