The Way of the World
A short time after the piece of good fortune which befell Colonel
Altamont at Epsom, that gentleman put into execution his projected
foreign tour, and the chronicler of the polite world who goes down to
London Bridge for the purpose of taking leave of the people of fashion
who quit this country, announced that among the company on board the
Soho to Antwerp last Saturday, were “Sir Robert, Lady, and the Misses
Hodge; Mr. Serjeant Kewsy, and Mrs. and Miss Kewsy; Colonel Altamont,
Major Coddy, etc.” The Colonel travelled in state, and as became a
gentleman: he appeared in a rich travelling costume; he drank
brandy-and-water freely during the passage, and was not sick, as some
of the other passengers were; and he was attended by his body-servant;
the faithful Irish legionary who had been for some time in waiting upon
himself and Captain Strong in their chambers of Shepherd’s Inn.
The Chevalier partook of a copious dinner at Blackwall with his
departing friend the Colonel, and one or two others, who drank many
healths to Altamont at that liberal gentleman’s expense. “Strong, old
boy,” the Chevalier’s worthy chum said, “if you want a little money,
now’s your time. I’m your man. You’re a good feller, and have been a
good feller to me, and a twenty-pound note, more or less, will make no
odds to me,” But Strong said, No, he didn’t want any money; he was
flush, quite flush—“that is, not flush enough to pay you back your last
loan, Altamont, but quite able to carry on for some time to come,” and
so, with a not uncordial greeting between them, the two parted. Had the
possession of money really made Altamont more honest and amiable than
he had hitherto been, or only caused him to seem more amiable in
Strong’s eyes? Perhaps he really was better, and money improved him.
Perhaps it was the beauty of wealth Strong saw and respected. But he
argued within himself, “This poor devil, this unlucky outcast of a
returned convict, is ten times as good a fellow as my friend Sir
Francis Clavering, Bart. He has pluck and honesty in his way. He will
stick to a friend, and face an enemy. The other never had courage to do
either. And what is it that has put the poor devil under a cloud? He
was only a little wild, and signed his father-in-law’s name. Many a man
has done worse, and come to no wrong, and holds his head up. Clavering
does. No, he don’t hold his head up: he never did in his best days.”
And Strong, perhaps, repented him of the falsehood which he had told to
the free-handed Colonel, that he was not in want of money; but it was a
falsehood on the side of honesty, and the Chevalier could not bring
down his stomach to borrow a second time from his outlawed friend.
Besides, he could get on. Clavering had promised him some: not that
Clavering’s promises were much to be believed, but the Chevalier was of
a hopeful turn, and trusted in many chances of catching his patron, and
waylaying some of those stray remittances and supplies, in the
procuring of which for his principal lay Mr. Strong’s chief business.
He had grumbled about Altamont’s companionship in the Shepherd’s Inn
chambers; but he found those lodgings more glum now without his partner
than with him. The solitary life was not agreeable to his social soul;
and he had got into extravagant and luxurious habits, too, having a
servant at his command to run his errands, to arrange his toilets, and
to cook his meal. It was rather a grand and touching sight now to see
the portly and handsome gentleman painting his own boots, and broiling
his own mutton chop. It has been before stated that the Chevalier had a
wife, a Spanish lady of Vittoria, who had gone back to her friends,
after a few months’ union with the Captain, whose head she broke with a
dish. He began to think whether he should not go back and see his
Juanita. The Chevalier was growing melancholy after the departure of
his friend the Colonel; or, to use his own picturesque expression, was
“down on his luck.” These moments of depression and intervals of ill
fortune occur constantly in the lives of heroes; Marius at Minturme,
Charles Edward in the Highlands, Napoleon before Elba. What great man
has not been called upon to face evil fortune?
From Clavering no supplies were to be had for some time, the
five-and-twenty pounds or the “pony,” which the exemplary Baronet had
received from Mr. Altamont, had fled out of Clavering’s keeping as
swiftly as many previous ponies. He had been down the river with a
choice party of sporting gents, who dodged the police and landed in
Essex, where they put up Billy Bluck to fight Dick the cabman whom the
Baronet backed, and who had it all his own way for thirteen rounds,
when, by an unlucky blow in the windpipe, Billy killed him. “It’s
always my luck, Strong,” Sir Francis said; “the betting was three to
one on the cabman, and I thought myself as sure of thirty pound, as if
I had it in my pocket. And dammy, I owe my man Lightfoot fourteen pound
now which he’s lent and paid for me: and he duns me—the confounded
impudent blackguard: and I wish to Heaven I knew any way of getting a
bill done, or of screwing a little out of my lady! I’ll give you half,
Ned, upon my soul and honour, I’ll give you half if you can get anybody
to do us a little fifty.”
But Ned said sternly that he had given his word of honour, as a
gentleman, that he would be no party to any future bill transactions in
which her husband might engage (who had given his word of honour too),
and the Chevalier said that he, at least, would keep his word, and
would black his own boots all his life rather than break his promise.
And what is more, he vowed he would advise Lady Clavering that Sir
Francis was about to break his faith towards her upon the very first
hint which he could get that such was Clavering’s intention.
Upon this information Sir Francis Clavering, according to his custom,
cried and cursed very volubly. He spoke of death as his only resource.
He besought and implored his dear Strong, his best friend, his dear old
Ned, not to throw him over: and when he quitted his dearest Ned, as he
went down the stairs of Shepherd’s Inn, swore and blasphemed at Ned as
the most infernal villain, and traitor, and blackguard, and coward
under the sun, and wished Ned was in his grave, and in a worse place,
only he would like the confounded ruffian to live, until Frank
Clavering had had his revenge out of him.
In Strong’s chambers the Baronet met a gentleman whose visits were now,
as it has been shown, very frequent in Shepherd’s Inn, Mr. Samuel
Huxter, of Clavering. That young fellow, who had poached the walnuts in
Clavering Park in his youth, and had seen the Baronet drive through the
street at home with four horses, and prance up to church with powdered
footmen, had an immense respect for his Member, and a prodigious
delight in making his acquaintance. He introduced himself with much
blushing and trepidation, as a Clavering man—son of Mr. Huxter, of the
market-place—father attended Sir Francis’s keeper, Coxwood, when his
gun burst and took off three fingers—proud to make Sir Francis’s
acquaintance. All of which introduction Sir Francis received affably.
And honest Huxter talked about Sir Francis to the chaps at
Bartholomew’s: and told Fanny, in the lodge, that, after all, there was
nothing like a thoroughbred un, a regular good old English gentleman,
one of the olden time! To which Fanny replied, that she thought Sir
Francis was an ojous creature—she didn’t know why—but she couldn’t
abear him—she was sure he was wicked, and low, and mean—she knew he
was; and when Sam to this replied that Sir Francis was very affable,
and had borrowed half a sov’ of him quite kindly, Fanny burst into a
laugh, pulled Sam’s long hair (which was not yet of irreproachable
cleanliness), patted his chin, and called him a stoopid, stoopid, old
foolish stoopid, and said that Sir Francis was always borrering money
of everybody, and that Mar had actially refused him twice, and had had
to wait three months to get seven shillings which he had borrowed of
’er.
“Don’t say ’er but her, borrer but borrow, actially but actually,
Fanny,” Mr. Huxter replied—not to a fault in her argument, but to
grammatical errors in her statement.
“Well then, her, and borrow, and hactually—there then, you stoopid,”
said the other; and the scholar made such a pretty face that the
grammar master was quickly appeased, and would have willingly given her
a hundred more lessons on the spot at the price which he took for that
one.
Of course Mrs. Bolton was by, and I suppose that Fanny and Dr. Sam were
on exceedingly familiar and confidential terms by this time, and that
time had brought to the former certain consolations, and soothed
certain regrets, which are deucedly bitter when they occur, but which
are, no more than tooth-pulling, or any other pang, eternal.
As you sit, surrounded by respect and affection; happy, honoured, and
flattered in your old age; your foibles gently indulged; your least
words kindly cherished; your garrulous old stories received for the
hundredth time with dutiful forbearance, and never-failing hypocritical
smiles; the women of your house constant in their flatteries; the young
men hushed and attentive when you begin to speak; the servants
awestricken; the tenants cap in hand, and ready to act in the place of
your worship’s horses when your honour takes a drive—it has often
struck you, O thoughtful Dives! that this respect, and these glories,
are for the main part transferred, with your fee simple, to your
successor—that the servants will bow, and the tenants shout, for your
son as for you; that the butler will fetch him the wine (improved by a
little keeping) that’s now in your cellar; and that, when your night is
come, and the light of your life is gone down, as sure as the morning
rises after you and without you, the sun of prosperity and flattery
shines on your heir. Men come and bask in the halo of consols and acres
that beams round about him: the reverence is transferred with the
estate; of which, with all its advantages, pleasures, respect, and
good-will, he in turn becomes the life-tenant. How long do you wish or
expect that your people will regret you? How much time does a man
devote to grief before he begins to enjoy? A great man must keep his
heir at his feast like a living memento mori. If he holds very much by
life, the presence of the other must be a constant sting and warning.
“Make ready to go,” says the successor to your honour; “I am waiting:
and I could hold it as well as you.”
What has this reference to the possible reader, to do with any of the
characters of this history? Do we wish to apologise for Pen because he
has got a white hat, and because his mourning for his mother is
fainter? All the lapse of years, all the career of fortune, all the
events of life, however strongly they may move or eagerly excite him,
never can remove that sainted image from his heart, or banish that
blessed love from its sanctuary. If he yields to wrong, the dear eyes
will look sadly upon him when he dares to meet them; if he does well,
endures pain, or conquers temptation, the ever present love will greet
him, he knows, with approval and pity; if he falls, plead for him; if
he suffers, cheer him;—be with him and accompany him always until death
is past; and sorrow and sin are no more. Is this mere dreaming, or, on
the part of an idle story-teller, useless moralising? May not the man
of the world take his moment, too, to be grave and thoughtful? Ask of
your own hearts and memories, brother and sister, if we do not live in
the dead; and (to speak reverently) prove God by love?
Of these matters Pen and Warrington often spoke in many a solemn and
friendly converse in after days; and Pendennis’s mother was worshipped
in his memory, and canonised there, as such a saint ought to be. Lucky
he in life who knows a few such women! A kind provision of Heaven it
was, that sent us such; and gave us to admire that touching and
wonderful spectacle of innocence, and love, and beauty.
But as it is certain that if, in the course of these sentimental
conversations, any outer stranger, Major Pendennis for instance, had
walked into Pen’s chambers, Arthur and Warrington would have stopped
their talk, and chosen another subject, and discoursed about the Opera,
or the last debate in Parliament, or Miss Jones’s marriage with Captain
Smith, or what not,—so, let us imagine that the public steps in at this
juncture, and stops the confidential talk between author and reader,
and begs us to resume our remarks about this world, with which both are
certainly better acquainted than with that other one into which we have
just been peeping.
On coming into his property, Arthur Pendennis at first comported
himself with a modesty and equanimity which obtained his friend
Warrington’s praises, though Arthur’s uncle was a little inclined to
quarrel with his nephew’s meanness of spirit, for not assuming greater
state and pretensions now that he had entered on the enjoyment of his
kingdom. He would have had Arthur installed in handsome quarters, and
riding on showy park hacks, or in well-built cabriolets, every day. “I
am too absent,” Arthur said, with a laugh, “to drive a cab in London;
the omnibus would cut me in two, or I should send my horse’s head into
the ladies’ carriage-windows; and you wouldn’t have me driven about by
my servant like an apothecary, uncle?” No, Major Pendennis would on no
account have his nephew appear like an apothecary; the august
representative of the house of Pendennis must not so demean himself.
And when Arthur, pursuing his banter, said, “And yet, I dare say, sir,
my father was proud enough when he first set up his gig,” the old Major
hemmed and ha’d, and his wrinkled face reddened with a blush as he
answered, “You know what Buonaparte said, sir, ‘Il faut laver son linge
sale en famille.’ There is no need, sir, for you to brag that your
father was a—a medical man. He came of a most ancient but fallen house,
and was obliged to reconstruct the family fortunes as many a man of
good family has done before him. You are like the fellow in Sterne,
sir—the Marquis who came to demand his sword again. Your father got
back yours for you. You are a man of landed estate, by Gad, sir, and a
gentleman—never forget you are a gentleman.”
Then Arthur slily turned on his uncle the argument which he had heard
the old gentleman often use regarding himself. “In the society which I
have the honour of frequenting through your introduction, who cares to
ask about my paltry means or my humble gentility, uncle?” he asked. “It
would be absurd of me to attempt to compete with the great folks; and
all that they can ask from us is, that we should have a decent address
and good manners.”
“But for all that, sir, I should belong to a better Club or two,” the
uncle answered: “I should give an occasional dinner, and select my
society well; and I should come out of that horrible garret in the
Temple, sir.” And so Arthur compromised by descending to the second
floor in Lamb Court: Warrington still occupying his old quarters, and
the two friends being determined not to part one from the other.
Cultivate kindly, reader, those friendships of your youth: it is only
in that generous time that they are formed. How different the
intimacies of after days are, and how much weaker the grasp of your own
hand after it has been shaken about in twenty years’ commerce with the
world, and has squeezed and dropped a thousand equally careless palms!
As you can seldom fashion your tongue to speak a new language after
twenty, the heart refuses to receive friendship pretty soon: it gets
too hard to yield to the impression.
So Pen had many acquaintances, and being of a jovial and easy turn, got
more daily: but no friend like Warrington; and the two men continued to
live almost as much in common as the Knights of the Temple, riding upon
one horse (for Pen’s was at Warrington’s service), and having their
chambers and their servitor in common.
Mr. Warrington had made the acquaintance of Pen’s friends of Grosvenor
Place during their last unlucky season in London, and had expressed
himself no better satisfied with Sir Francis and Lady Clavering and her
ladyship’s daughter than was the public in general. “The world is
right,” George said, “about those people. The young men laugh and talk
freely before those ladies, and about them. The girl sees people whom
she has no right to know, and talks to men with whom no girl should
have an intimacy. Did you see those two reprobates leaning over Lady
Clavering’s carriage in the Park the other day, and leering under Miss
Blanche’s bonnet? No good mother would let her daughter know those men,
or admit them within her doors.”
“The Begum is the most innocent and good-natured soul alive,”
interposed Pen. “She never heard any harm of Captain Blackball, or read
that trial in which Charley Lovelace figures. Do you suppose that
honest ladies read and remember the Chronique Scandaleuse as well as
you, you old grumbler?”
“Would you like Laura Bell to know those fellows?” Warrington asked,
his face turning rather red. “Would you let any woman you loved be
contaminated by their company? I have no doubt that the poor Begum is
ignorant of their histories. It seems to me she is ignorant of a great
number of better things. It seems to me that your honest Begum is not a
lady, Pen. It is not her fault, doubtless, that she has not had the
education, or learned the refinements of a lady.”
“She is as moral as Lady Portsea, who has all the world at her balls,
and as refined as Mrs. Bull, who breaks the King’s English, and has
half a dozen dukes at her table,” Pen answered, rather sulkily. “Why
should you and I be more squeamish than the rest of the world? Why are
we to visit the sins of her father on this harmless kind creature? She
never did anything but kindness to you or any mortal soul. As far as
she knows she does her best. She does not set up to be more than she
is. She gives you the best dinners she can buy, and the best company
she can get. She pays the debts of that scamp of a husband of hers. She
spoils her boy like the most virtuous mother in England. Her opinion
about literary matters, to be sure, is not much; and I daresay she
never read a line of Wordsworth, or heard of Tennyson in her life.”
“No more has Mrs. Flanagan the laundress,” growled out Pen’s Mentor;
“no more has Betty the housemaid; and I have no word of blame against
them. But a high-souled man doesn’t make friends of these. A gentleman
doesn’t choose these for his companions, or bitterly rues it afterwards
if he do. Are you, who are setting up to be a man of the world and a
philosopher, to tell me that the aim of life is to guttle three courses
and dine off silver? Do you dare to own to yourself that your ambition
in life is good claret, and that you’ll dine with any, provided you get
a stalled ox to feed on? You call me a Cynic—why, what a monstrous
Cynicism it is, which you and the rest of you men of the world admit!
I’d rather live upon raw turnips and sleep in a hollow tree, or turn
backwoodsman or savage, than degrade myself to this civilisation, and
own that a French cook was the thing in life best worth living for.”
“Because you like a raw beefsteak and a pipe afterwards,” broke out
Pen, “you give yourself airs of superiority over people whose tastes
are more dainty, and are not ashamed of the world they live in. Who
goes about professing particular admiration, or esteem, or friendship,
or gratitude even, for the people one meets every day? If A. asks me to
his house, and gives me his best, I take his good things for what they
are worth and no more. I do not profess to pay him back in friendship,
but in the conventional money of society. When we part, we part without
any grief. When we meet, we are tolerably glad to see one another. If I
were only to live with my friends, your black muzzle, old George, is
the only face I should see.”
“You are your uncle’s pupil,” said Warrington, rather sadly; “and you
speak like a worldling.”
“And why not?” asked Pendennis; “why not acknowledge the world I stand
upon, and submit to the conditions of the society which we live in and
live by? I am older than you, George, in spite of your grizzled
whiskers, and have seen much more of the world than you have in your
garret here, shut up with your books and your reveries and your ideas
of one-and-twenty. I say, I take the world as it is, and being of it,
will not be ashamed of it. If the time is out of joint, have I any
calling or strength to set it right?”
“Indeed, I don’t think you have much of either,” growled Pen’s
interlocutor.
“If I doubt whether I am better than my neighbour,” Arthur continued,
“if I concede that I am no better,—I also doubt whether he is better
than I. I see men who begin with ideas of universal reform, and who,
before their beards are grown, propound their loud plans for the
regeneration of mankind, give up their schemes after a few years of
bootless talking and vainglorious attempts to lead their fellows; and
after they have found that men will no longer bear them, as indeed they
never were in the least worthy to be heard, sink quietly into the
ranks-and-file,—acknowledging their aims impracticable, or thankful
that they were never put into practice. The fiercest reformers grow
calm, and are faire to put up with things as they are: the loudest
Radical orators become dumb, quiescent placemen: the most fervent
Liberals when out of power, become humdrum Conservatives or downright
tyrants or despots in office. Look at the Thiers, look at Guizot, in
opposition and in place! Look at the Whigs appealing to the country,
and the Whigs in power! Would you say that the conduct of these men is
an act of treason, as the Radicals bawl,—who would give way in their
turn, were their turn ever to come? No, only that they submit to
circumstances which are stronger than they,—march as the world marches
towards reform, but at the world’s pace (and the movements of the vast
body of mankind must needs be slow), forgo this scheme as
impracticable, on account of opposition,—that as immature, because
against the sense of the majority,—are forced to calculate drawbacks
and difficulties, as well as to think of reforms and advances,—and
compelled finally to submit, and to wait, and to compromise.”
“The Right Honourable Arthur Pendennis could not speak better, or be
more satisfied with himself, if he was First Lord of the Treasury and
Chancellor of the Exchequer,” Warrington said.
“Self-satisfied? Why self-satisfied?” continued Pen. “It seems to me
that my scepticism is more respectful and more modest than the
revolutionary ardour of other folks. Many a patriot of eighteen, many a
Spouting-Club orator, would turn the Bishops out of the House of Lords
to-morrow, and throw the Lords out after the Bishops, and throw the
Throne into the Thames after the Peers and the Bench. Is that man more
modest than I, who takes these institutions as I find them, and waits
for time and truth to develop, or fortify, or (if you like) destroy
them? A college tutor, or a nobleman’s toady, who appears one fine day
as my right reverend lord, in a silk apron and a shovel-hat, and
assumes benedictory airs over me, is still the same man we remember at
Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor
undergraduates in the lecture-room. An hereditary legislator, who
passes his time with jockeys and black-legs and ballet-girls, and who
is called to rule over me and his other betters because his grandfather
made a lucky speculation in the funds, or found a coal or tin mine on
his property, or because his stupid ancestor happened to be in command
of ten thousand men as brave as himself, who overcame twelve thousand
Frenchmen, or fifty thousand Indians—such a man, I say, inspires me
with no more respect than the bitterest democrat can feel towards him.
But, such as he is, he is a part of the old society to which we belong
and I submit to his lordship with acquiescence; and he takes his place
above the best of us at all dinner-parties, and there bides his time. I
don’t want to chop his head off with a guillotine, or to fling mud at
him in the streets. When they call such a man a disgrace to his order;
and such another, who is good and gentle, refined and generous, who
employs his great means in promoting every kindness and charity, and
art and grace of life, in the kindest and most gracious manner, an
ornament to his rank—the question as to the use and propriety of the
order is not in the least affected one way or other. There it is,
extant among us, a part of our habits, the creed of many of us, the
growth of centuries, the symbol of a most complicated tradition—there
stand my lord the bishop and my lord the hereditary legislator—what the
French call transactions both of them,—representing in their present
shape mail-clad barons and double-sworded chiefs (from whom their
lordships the hereditaries, for the most part, don’t descend), and
priests, professing to hold an absolute truth and a divinely inherited
power, the which truth absolute our ancestors burned at the stake, and
denied there; the which divine transmissible power still exists in
print—to be believed, or not, pretty much at choice; and of these, I
say, I acquiesce that they exist, and no more. If you say that these
schemes, devised before printing was known, or steam was born; when
thought was an infant, scared and whipped; and truth under its
guardians was gagged, and swathed, and blindfolded, and not allowed to
lift its voice, or to look out or to walk under the sun; before men
were permitted to meet, or to trade, or to speak with each other—if any
one says (as some faithful souls do) that these schemes are for ever,
and having been changed and modified constantly are to be subject to no
further development or decay, I laugh, and let the man speak. But I
would have toleration for these, as I would ask it for my own opinions;
and if they are to die, I would rather they had a decent and natural
than an abrupt and violent death.”
“You would have sacrificed to Jove,” Warrington said, “had you lived in
the time of the Christian persecutions.”
“Perhaps I would,” said Pen, with some sadness. “Perhaps I am a
coward,—perhaps my faith is unsteady; but this is my own reserve. What
I argue here is that I will not persecute. Make a faith or a dogma
absolute, and persecution becomes a logical consequence; and Dominic
burns a Jew, or Calvin an Arian, or Nero a Christian, or Elizabeth or
Mary a Papist or Protestant; or their father both or either, according
to his humour; and acting without any pangs of remorse,—but, on the
contrary, notions of duty fulfilled. Make dogma absolute, and to
inflict or to suffer death becomes easy and necessary; and Mahomet’s
soldiers shouting, ‘Paradise! Paradise!’ and dying on the Christian
spears, are not more or less praiseworthy than the same men
slaughtering a townful of Jews, or cutting off the heads of all
prisoners who would not acknowledge that there was but one Prophet of
God.”
“A little while since, young one,” Warrington said, who had been
listening to his friend’s confessions neither without sympathy nor
scorn, for his mood led him to indulge in both, “you asked me why I
remained out of the strife of the world, and looked on at the great
labour of my neighbour without taking any part in the struggle? Why,
what a mere dilettante you own yourself to be, in this confession of
general scepticism, and what a listless spectator yourself! You are
six-and-twenty years old; and as blase as a rake of sixty. You neither
hope much nor care much, nor believe much. You doubt about other men as
much as about yourself. Were it made of such pococuranti as you, the
world would be intolerable; and I had rather live in a wilderness of
monkeys, and listen to their chatter, than in a company of men who
denied everything.”
“Were the world composed of Saint Bernards or Saint Dominies, it would
be equally odious,” said Pen, “and at the end of a few scores of years
would cease to exist altogether. Would you have every man with his head
shaved, and every woman in a cloister,—carrying out to the full the
ascetic principle? Would you have conventicle hymns twanging from every
lane in every city in the world? Would you have all the birds of the
forest sing one note and fly with one feather? You call me a sceptic
because I acknowledge what is; and in acknowledging that, be it linnet
or lark, or priest or parson, be it, I mean, any single one of the
infinite varieties of the creatures of God (whose very name I would be
understood to pronounce with reverence, and never to approach but with
distant awe), I say that the study and acknowledgment of that variety
amongst men especially increases our respect and wonder for the
Creator, Commander, and Ordainer of all these minds, so different and
yet so united,—meeting in a common adoration, and offering up, each
according to his degree and means of approaching the Divine centre, his
acknowledgment of praise and worship, each singing (to recur to the
bird simile) his natural song.”
“And so, Arthur, the hymn of a saint, or the ode of a poet, or the
chant of a Newgate thief, are all pretty much the same in your
philosophy,” said George.
“Even that sneer could be answered were it to the point,” Pendennis
replied; “but it is not; and it could be replied to you, that even to
the wretched outcry of the thief on the tree, the wisest and the best
of all teachers we know of, the untiring Comforter and Consoler,
promised a pitiful hearing and a certain hope. Hymns of saints! odes of
poets! who are we to measure the chances and opportunities, the means
of doing, or even judging, right and wrong, awarded to men; and to
establish the rule for meting out their punishments and rewards? We are
as insolent and unthinking in judging of men’s morals as of their
intellects. We admire this man as being a great philosopher, and set
down the other as a dullard, not knowing either, or the amount of truth
in either, or being certain of the truth anywhere. We sing Te Deum for
this hero who has won a battle, and De Profundis for that other one who
has broken out of prison, and has been caught afterwards by the
policeman. Our measure of rewards and punishments is most partial and
incomplete, absurdly inadequate, utterly worldly, and we wish to
continue it into the next world. Into that next and awful world we
strive to pursue men, and send after them our impotent party verdicts
of condemnation or acquittal. We set up our paltry little rods to
measure Heaven immeasurable, as if, in comparison to that, Newton’s
mind or Pascal’s or Shakspeare’s was any loftier than mine; as if the
ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who
blacks my boots. Measured by that altitude, the tallest and the
smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, that I
say we should take no count of the calculation, and it is a meanness to
reckon the difference.”
“Your figure fails there, Arthur,” said the other, better pleased; “if
even by common arithmetic we can multiply as we can reduce almost
infinitely, the Great Reckoner must take count of all; and the small is
not small, or the great great, to his infinity.”
“I don’t call those calculations in question,” Arthur said; “I only say
that yours are incomplete and premature; false in consequence, and, by
every operation, multiplying into wider error. I do not condemn the men
who murdered Socrates and damned Galileo. I say that they damned
Galileo and murdered Socrates.”
“And yet but a moment since you admitted the propriety of acquiescence
in the present, and, I suppose, all other tyrannies?”
“No: but that if an opponent menaces me, of whom and without cost of
blood and violence I can get rid, I would rather wait him out, and
starve him out, than fight him out. Fabius fought Hannibal sceptically.
Who was his Roman coadjutor, whom we read of in Plutarch when we were
boys, who scoffed at the other’s procrastination and doubted his
courage, and engaged the enemy and was beaten for his pains?”
In these speculations and confessions of Arthur, the reader may perhaps
see allusions to questions which, no doubt, have occupied and
discomposed himself, and which he has answered by very different
solutions to those come to by our friend. We are not pledging ourselves
for the correctness of his opinions, which readers will please to
consider are delivered dramatically, the writer being no more
answerable for them, than for the sentiments uttered by any other
character of the story: our endeavour is merely to follow out, in its
progress, the development of the mind of a worldly and selfish, but not
ungenerous or unkind or truth-avoiding man. And it will be seen that
the lamentable stage to which his logic at present has brought him, is
one of general scepticism and sneering acquiescence in the world as it
is; or if you like so to call it, a belief qualified with scorn in all
things extant. The tastes and habits of such a man prevent him from
being a boisterous demagogue, and his love of truth and dislike of cant
keep him from advancing crude propositions, such as many loud reformers
are constantly ready with; much more of uttering downright falsehoods
in arguing questions or abusing opponents, which he would die or starve
rather than use. It was not in our friend’s nature to be able to utter
certain lies; nor was he strong enough to protest against others,
except with a polite sneer; his maxim being, that he owed obedience to
all Acts of Parliament, as long as they were not repealed.
And to what does this easy and sceptical life lead a man? Friend Arthur
was a Sadducee, and the Baptist might be in the Wilderness shouting to
the poor, who were listening with all their might and faith to the
preacher’s awful accents and denunciations of wrath or woe or
salvation; and our friend the Sadducee would turn his sleek mule with a
shrug and a smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his
terrace, and muse over preacher and audience, and turn to his roll of
Plato, or his pleasant Greek songbook babbling of honey and Hybla, and
nymphs and fountains and love. To what, we say, does this scepticism
lead? It leads a man to a shameful loneliness and selfishness, so to
speak—the more shameful, because it is so good-humoured and
conscienceless and serene. Conscience! What is conscience? Why accept
remorse? What is public or private faith? Mythuses alike enveloped in
enormous tradition. If seeing and acknowledging the lies of the world,
Arthur, as see them you can with only too fatal a clearness, you submit
to them without any protest further than a laugh: if, plunged yourself
in easy sensuality, you allow the whole wretched world to pass groaning
by you unmoved: if the fight for the truth is taking place, and all men
of honour are on the ground armed on the one side or the other, and you
alone are to lie on your balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise
and the danger, you had better have died, or never have been at all,
than such a sensual coward.
“The truth, friend!” Arthur said, imperturbably; “where is the truth?
Show it me. That is the question between us. I see it on both sides. I
see it on the Conservative side of the house, and amongst the Radicals,
and even on the ministerial benches. I see it in this man, who worships
by Act of Parliament, and is rewarded with a silk apron and five
thousand a year; in that man, who, driven fatally by the remorseless
logic of his creed, gives up everything, friends, fame, dearest ties,
closest vanities, the respect of an army of churchmen, the recognised
position of a leader, and passes over, truth-impelled, to the enemy, in
whose ranks he will serve henceforth as a nameless private soldier:—I
see the truth in that man, as I do in his brother, whose logic drives
him to quite a different conclusion, and who, after having passed a
life in vain endeavours to reconcile an irreconcilable book, flings it
at last down in despair, and declares, with tearful eyes, and hands up
to heaven, his revolt and recantation. If the truth is with all these,
why should I take side with any one of them? Some are called upon to
preach: let them preach. Of these preachers there are somewhat too
many, methinks, who fancy they have the gift. But we cannot all be
parsons in church, that is clear. Some must sit silent and listen, or
go to sleep mayhap. Have we not all our duties? The head charity-boy
blows the bellows; the master canes the other boys in the organ-loft;
the clerk sings out Amen from the desk; and the beadle with the staff
opens the door for his Reverence, who rustles in silk up to the
cushion. I won’t cane the boys, nay, or say Amen always, or act as the
church’s champion and warrior, in the shape of the beadle with the
staff; but I will take off my hat in the place, and say my prayers
there too, and shake hands with the clergyman as he steps on the grass
outside. Don’t I know that his being there is a compromise, and that he
stands before me an Act of Parliament? That the church he occupies was
built for other worship? That the Methodist chapel is next door; and
that Bunyan the tinker is bawling out the tidings of damnation on the
common hard by? Yes, I am a Sadducee; and I take things as I find them,
and the world, and the Acts of Parliament of the world, as they are;
and as I intend to take a wife, if I find one—not to be madly in love
and prostrate at her feet like a fool—not to worship her as an angel,
or to expect to find her as such—but to be good-natured to her, and
courteous, expecting good-nature and pleasant society from her in turn.
And so, George, if ever you hear of my marrying, depend on it, it won’t
be a romantic attachment on my side: and if you hear of any good place
under Government, I have no particular scruples that I know of, which
would prevent me from accepting your offer.”
“O Pen, you scoundrel! I know what you mean,” here Warrington broke
out. “This is the meaning of your scepticism, of your quietism, of your
atheism, my poor fellow. You’re going to sell yourself, and Heaven help
you! You are going to make a bargain which will degrade you and make
you miserable for life, and there’s no use talking of it. If you are
once bent on it, the devil won’t prevent you.”
“On the contrary, he’s on my side, isn’t he, George?” said Pen with a
laugh. “What good cigars these are! Come down and have a little dinner
at the Club; the chef’s in town, and he’ll cook a good one for me. No,
you won’t? Don’t be sulky, old boy, I’m going down to—to the country
to-morrow.”