"In such a cause who would not give? What heart
But leaps at such a name?"
People of rank and position are apt to complain of begging-letters.
Surely England must be a happy country since its rich people complain
mostly of begging-letters; for they are so easily dropped into the
waste-paper basket. A country squire--any man with a handle to his
name and place for a permanent address--is the natural prey and victim
of the beggars. The lithographed letter comes with every post, trying
in vain to look like a written letter. And though in fervid sentences
it shows the danger to your immortal soul if you refuse the pleading,
most men have the courage to resist. The fact is that the letter is
not a nuisance at all, because it is never read. On the other hand, a
new and very tangible nuisance is springing up. It is that of the
people who go round and call. Sir Roger de Coverly in his secluded
village is free from the women who give you the alternative of a day
with Moody and Sankey or an eternity of repentance; he never sees the
pair of Sisters got up like Roman Catholic nuns, who stand meekly
before you, arms crossed, mutely refusing to go without five shillings
at least for their Ritualist hot-house. But he who lives in chambers,
he who puts up at a great hotel and becomes known, he who has a house
in any address from Chester Square to Notting Hill, understands this
trouble.
In some mysterious way Gilead Beck had become known. Perhaps this was
partly in consequence of his habit of going to institutions,
charities, and the like, and wanting to find out everything. In some
vague and misty way it became known that there was at the Langham
Hotel an American named Gilead P. Beck, who was asking questions
philanthropically. Then all the people who live on philanthropists,
with all those who work for their pleasure among philanthropists,
began to tackle Gilead P. Beck. Letters came in the morning, which he
read but did not answer. Circulars were sent to him, of which he
perhaps made a note. Telegrams were even delivered to him--people
somehow _must_ read telegrams--asking him for money. Those wonderful
people who address the Affluent in the _Times_ and ask for £300 on the
security of an honest man's word; those unhappy ladies whose father
was a gentleman and an officer, on the strength of which fact they ask
the Benevolent to help them in their undeserved distress, poor things;
those disinterested advertisers who want a few hundreds, and who will
give fifteen per cent. on the security of a splendid piano, a small
gallery of undoubted pictures, and some unique china; those tradesmen
who try to stave off bankruptcy by asking the world generally for a
loan on the strength of a simple reference to the clergyman of St.
Tinpot, Hammersmith; those artful dodgers, Mr. Ally Sloper and his
friends, when they have devised a new and ingenious method of screwing
money out of the rich,--all these people got hold of our Gilead, and
pelted him with letters. Did they know, the ingenious and the needy,
how the business is overdone, they would change their tactics and go
round calling.
It requires a front of brass, entire absence of self-respect, and an
epidermis like that of the rhinoceros for toughness, to undertake this
work. Yet ladies do it. You want a temperament off which insults,
gibes, sneers, and blank refusals fall like water off a
nasturtium-leaf to go the begging-round. Yet women do it. They do it
not only for themselves, but also for their cause. From Ritualism down
to Atheism, from the fashionable enthusiasm to the nihilism which the
British workman is being taught to regard as the hidden knowledge,
there are women who will brave anything, dare anything, say anything,
and endure anything. They love to be martyred, so long especially as
it does not hurt; they are angry with the lukewarm zeal of their male
supporters, forgetting that a man sees the two sides of a question,
while a woman never sees more than one; they mistake notoriety for
fame, and contempt for jealous admiration.
And here, in the very heart of London, was a man who seemed simply
born for the Polite Beggar. A man restless because he could not part
with his money. Not seeking profitable investments, not asking for ten
and twenty per cent.; but anxious to use his money for the best
purposes; a man who was a philanthropist in the abstract, who
considered himself the trustee of a gigantic gift to the human race,
and was desirous of exercising that trust to the best advantage.
In London; and at the same time, in the same city, thousands of people
not only representing their individual distresses or their society's
wants, but also plans, schemes, and ideas for the promotion of
civilisation in the abstract. Do we not all know the projectors? I
myself know at this moment six men who want each to establish a daily
paper; at least a dozen who would like a weekly; fifty who see a way,
by the formation of a new society, to check immorality, kill
infidelity once for all, make men sober and women clean, prevent
strikes and destroy Republicanism. There is one man who would "save"
the Church of England by establishing the preaching order; one who
knows how to restore England to her place among the nations without a
single additional soldier; one who burns to abolish bishops' aprons,
and would make it penal to preach in a black gown. The land teems with
idea'd men. They yearn, pray, and sigh daily for the capitalist who
will reduce their idea to practice.
And besides the projectors, there are the inventors. I once knew a man
who claimed to have invented a means for embarking and setting down
passengers and goods on a railway without stopping the trains. Think
of the convenience. Why no railways have taken up the invention, I
cannot explain. Then there are men who have inventions which will
reform the whole system of domestic appliances; there are others who
are prepared on encouragement to reform the whole conduct of life by
new inventions. There are men by thousands brooding over experiments
which they have no money to carry out; there are men longing to carry
on experiments whose previous failure they can now account for. All
these men are looking for a capitalist as for a Messiah. Had they
known--had they but dimly suspected--that such a capitalist was in
June of last year staying at the Langham Hotel, they would have sought
that hotel with one consent, and besieged its portals. The world in
general did not know Mr. Beck's resources. But they were beginning to
find him out. The voice of rumour was spreading abroad his reputation.
And the people wrote letters, sent circulars, and called.
"Twenty-three of them came yesterday morning," Gilead Beck complained
to Jack Dunquerque. "Three-and-twenty, and all with a tale to tell.
No, sir,"--his voice rose in indignation--"I did not give one of them
so much as a quarter-dollar. The Luck of the Golden Butterfly is not
to be squandered among the well-dressed beggars of Great Britain.
Three-and-twenty, counting one little boy, who came by himself. His
mother was a widow, he said, and he sat on the chair and sniffed. And
they all wanted money. There was one man in a white choker who had
found out a new channel for doing good--and one man who wished to
recommend a list of orphans. The rest were women. And talk? There's no
name for it. With little books, and pencils, and bundles of tracts."
While he spoke there was a gentle tap at the door.
"There's another of them," he groaned. "Stand by me, Mr. Dunquerque.
See me through with it. Come in, come in! Good Lord!" he whispered, "a
brace this time. Will you tackle the young one, Mr. Dunquerque?"
A pair of ladies. One of them a lady tall and thin, stern of aspect,
sharp of feature, eager of expression. She wore spectacles: she was
apparently careless of her dress, which was of black silk a little
rusty. With her was a girl of about eighteen, perhaps her daughter,
perhaps her niece; a girl of rather sharp but pretty features, marked
by a look of determination, as if she meant to see the bottom of this
business, or know the reason why.
"You are Mr. Beck, sir?" the elder lady began.
"I am Gilead P. Beck, madam," he replied.
He was standing before the fireplace, with his long hands thrust into
his pocket, one foot on an adjacent chair, and his head thrown a
little back--defiantly.
"You have received two letters from me, Mr. Beck, written by my own
hand, and--how many circulars, child?'
"Twenty," said the girl.
"And I have had no answer. I am come for your answer, Mr. Beck. We
will sit down, if you please, while you consider your answer."
Mr. Beck took up a waste paper basket which stood at his feet, and
tossed out the whole contents upon the table.
"Those are the letters of yesterday and to-day," he said. "What was
yours, madam? Was it a letter asking for money?"
"It was."
"Yesterday there were seventy-four letters asking for money. To-day
there are only fifty-two. May I ask, madam, if you air the widow who
wants money to run a mangle?"
"Sir, I am unmarried. A mangle!"
He dug his hand into the pile, and took out one at random.
"You air, perhaps, the young lady who writes to know if I want a
housekeeper, and encloses her carte-de-visite? No; that won't do. Is
it possible you are the daughter of the Confederate general who lost
his life in the cause?"
"Really, sir!"
"Then, madam, we come to the lady who"--here he read from another
letter--"who was once a governess, and now is reduced to sell her last
remaining garments."
"Sir!"
There was a withering scorn on the lady's lips.
"I represent a Cause, Mr. Beck. I am not a beggar for myself. My cause
is the sacred one of Womanhood. You, sir, in your free and happy
Republic----"
Mr. Beck bowed.
"Have seen woman partially restored to her proper place--on a level
with man."
"A higher level," murmured the girl, who had far-off eyes and a sweet
voice. "The higher level reached by the purer heart."
"Only partially restored at present. But the good work goes on. Here
we are only beginning. Mr. Beck, the Cause wants help--your help."
He said nothing and she went on.
"We want our rights; we want suffrage; we want to be elected for the
Houses of Parliament; we insist on equality in following the
professions and in enjoying the endowments of Education. We shall
prove that we are no whit inferior to men. We want no privileges. Let
us stand by ourselves."
"Wal, madam, their air helpers who shove up, and I guess there air
helpers who shove down."
She did not understand him, and went on with increasing volubility.
"The subjection of the Sex is the most monstrous injustice of all
those which blot the fair fame of manhood. What is there in man's
physical strength that he should use it to lord over the weaker half
of humanity? Why has not our sex produced a Shakespeare?"
"It has, madam," said Mr. Beck gravely. "It has produced all our
greatest men."
She was staggered.
"Your answer, if you please, Mr. Beck."
"I have no answer, madam."
"I have written you two letters, and sent you twenty circulars, urging
upon you the claims of the Woman's Rights Association. I have the
right to ask for a reply. I expect one. You will be kind enough sir,
to give categorically your answer to the several heads. This you will
do of your courtesy to a lady. We can wait here while you write it. I
shall probably, I ought to tell you, publish it."
"We can wait," said the young lady.
They sat with folded hands in silence.
Mr. Beck shifted his foot from the chair to the carpet. Then he took
his hands out of his pockets and stroked his chin. Then he gazed at
the ladies steadily.
Jack Dunquerque sat in the background, and rendered no help whatever.
"Did you ever, ladies," asked Mr. Beck, after a few moments of
reflection, "hear of Paul Deroon of Memphis? He was the wickedest man
in that city. Which was allowed. He kept a bar where the whisky was
straight and the language was free, and where Paul would tell stories,
once you set him on, calculated to raise on end the hair of your best
sofa. When the Crusade began--I mean the Whisky Crusade--the ladies
naturally began with Paul Deroon's saloon."
"This is very tedious, my dear," said the elder lady in a loud
whisper.
"How did Paul Deroon behave? Some barkeepers came out and cursed while
the Whisky War went on; some gave in and poured away the Bourbon: some
shut up shop and took to preachin.' Paul just did nothing. You
couldn't tell from Paul's face that he even knew of the forty women
around him prayin' all together. If he stepped outside he walked
through as if they weren't there, and they made a lane for him. If
he'd been blind and deaf and dumb, Paul Deroon couldn't have taken
less notice."
"We shall not keep our appointment, I fear," the younger lady
remarked.
"They prayed, preached, and sang hymns for a whole week. On Sunday
they sang eighty strong. And on the seventh day Paul took no more
notice than on the first. Once they asked him if he heard the singin.'
He said he did: and it was very soothin' and pleasant. Said, too, that
he liked music to his drink. Then they asked him if he heard the
prayers. He said he did; said, too, that it was cool work sittin' in
the shade and listenin'; also that it kinder seemed as if it was bound
to do somebody or other good some day. Then they told him that the
ladies were waitin' to see him converted. He said it was very kind of
them, and, for his own part, he didn't mind meetin' their wishes half
way, and would wait as long as they did."
The ladies rose. Said the elder lady viciously: "You are unworthy,
sir, to represent your great country. You are a common scoffer."
"General Schenck represents my country, madam."
"You are unworthy of being associated with a great Cause. We have
wasted our time upon you."
Their departure was less dignified than their entry.
As they left the room another visitor arrived. It was a tall and
handsome man, with a full flowing beard and a genial presence.
He had a loud voice and a commanding manner.
"Mr. Beck? I thought so. I wrote to you yesterday, Mr. Beck. And I am
come in person--in person, sir--for your reply."
"You air the gentleman, sir, interested in the orphan children of a
colonial bishop?"
"No, sir, I am not. Nothing of the kind."
"Then you air perhaps the gentleman who wrote to say that unless I
sent him a ten-pound note by return of post he would blow out his
brains?"
"I am Major Borington. I wrote to you, sir, on behalf of the Grand
National Movement for erecting International Statues."
"What is that movement, sir?"
"A series of monuments to all our great men, Mr. Beck. America and
England, have ancestors in common. We have our Shakespeare, sir, our
Milton."
"Yes, sir, so I have heard. I did not know those ancestors myself,
having been born too late, and therefore I do not take that interest
in their stone figures you do."
"Positively, Mr. Beck, you must join us."
"It is your idea, Colonel, is it?"
"Mine, Mr. Beck. I am proud to say it is my own."
"I knew a man once, Colonel, in my country, who wanted to be a great
man. He had that ambition, sir. He wasn't particular how he got his
greatness. But he scorned to die and be forgotten, and he yearned to
go down to posterity. His name, sir, was Hiram Turtle. First of all,
he ambitioned military greatness. We went into Bull's Run together.
And we came out of it together. We came away from that field side by
side. We left our guns there, too. If we had had shields, we should
have left them as well. Hiram concluded, sir, after that experience,
to leave military greatness to others."
Major Borington interposed a gesture.
"One moment, Brigadier. The connection is coming. Hiram Turtle thought
the ministry opened up a field. So he became a preacher. Yes; he
preached once. But he forgot that a preacher must have something to
say, and so the elders concluded not to ask Hiram Turtle any more.
Then he became clerk in a store while he looked about him. For a year
or two he wrote poetry. But the papers in America, he found, were in a
league against genius. So he gave up that lay. Politics was his next
move; and he went for stump-orating with the Presidency in his eye.
Stumpin' offers amusement as well as gentle exercise, but it doesn't
pay unless you get more than one brace of niggers and a bubbly-jock to
listen. Wal, sir, how do you think Hiram Turtle made his greatness? He
figured around, sir, with a List, and his own name a-top, for a Grand
National Monument to the memory of the great men who fell in the Civil
War. They air still subscribing, and Hiram Turtle is the great
Patriot. Now, General, you see the connection."
"If you mean, sir," cried Major Borington, "to imply that my motives
are interested----"
"Not at all, sir," said Mr. Beck; "I have told you a little story.
Hiram Turtle's was a remarkable case. Perhaps you might ponder on it."
"Your language is insulting, sir!"
"Colonel, this is not a country where men have to take care what they
say. But if you should ever pay a visit out West, and if you should
happen to be about where tar and feathers are cheap, you would really
be astonished at the consideration you would receive. No, sir, I shall
not subscribe to your Grand National Association. But go on, Captain,
go on. This is a charitable country, and the people haven't all heard
the story of Hiram Turtle. And what'll you take, Major?"
But Major Borington, clapping on his hat, stalked out of the room.
The visits of the strong-minded female and Major Borington which were
typical, took place on the day which was the first and only occasion
on which Phillis went to the theatre. Gilead Beck took the box, and
they went--Jack Dunquerque being himself the fourth, as they say in
Greek exercise-books--to the Lyceum, and saw Henry Irving play Hamlet.
Phillis brought to the play none of the reverence with which English
people habitually approach Shakespeare, insomuch that while we make
superhuman efforts to understand him we have lost the power of
criticism. To her, George III.'s remark that there was a great deal of
rubbish in Shakspeare would have seemed a perfectly legitimate
conclusion. But she knew nothing about the great dramatist.
The house, with its decorations, lights, and crowd, pleased her. She
liked the overture, and she waited with patience for the first scene.
She was going to see a representation of life done in show. So much
she understood. Instead of telling a story the players would act the
story.
The Ghost--perhaps because the Lyceum Ghost was so palpably flesh and
blood--inspired her with no terror at all. But gradually the story
grew into her, and she watched the unfortunate Prince of Denmark torn
by his conflicting emotions, distraught with the horror of the deed
that had been done and the deed that was to do, with a beating heart
and trembling lip. When Hamlet with that wild cry threw himself upon
his uncle's throne, she gasped and caught Agatha by the hand. When the
play upon the stage showed the King how much of the truth was known,
she trembled, and looked to see him immediately confess his crime and
go out to be hanged. She was indignant with Hamlet for the slaughter
of Polonius; she was contemptuous of Ophelia, whom she did not
understand; and she was impatient when the two Gravediggers came to
the front, resolute to spare the audience none of their somewhat musty
old jokes and to abate nothing of the stage-business.
When they left the theatre Phillis moved and spoke as in a dream. War,
battle, conspiracy, murder, crime--all these things, of which her
guardian had told her, she saw presented before her on the stage. She
had too much to think of; she had to fit all these new surroundings in
her mind with the stories of the past. As for the actors, she had no
power whatever of distinguishing between them and the parts they
played. Irving was Hamlet; Miss Bateman was Ophelia; and they were all
like the figures of a dream, because she did not understand how they
could be anything but Hamlet, Ophelia, and the Court of Denmark.
And this, too, was part of her education.