The conversation just recorded is not, I am aware, remarkably refined or
witty; but if it had been, it could hardly have taken place in Milby when
Mr. Dempster flourished there, and old Mr. Crewe, the curate, was yet
alive.
More than a quarter of a century has slipped by since then, and in the
interval Milby has advanced at as rapid a pace as other market-towns in
her Majesty’s dominions. By this time it has a handsome railway station,
where the drowsy London traveller may look out by the brilliant gas-light
and see perfectly sober papas and husbands alighting with their
leatherbags after transacting their day’s business at the county town.
There is a resident rector, who appeals to the consciences of his hearers
with all the immense advantages of a divine who keeps his own carriage;
the church is enlarged by at least five hundred sittings; and the grammar
school, conducted on reformed principles, has its upper forms crowded
with the genteel youth of Milby. The gentlemen there fall into no other
excess at dinner-parties than the perfectly well-bred and virtuous excess
of stupidity; and though the ladies are still said sometimes to take too
much upon themselves, they are never known to take too much in any other
way. The conversation is sometimes quite literary, for there is a
flourishing book-club, and many of the younger ladies have carried their
studies so far as to have forgotten a little German. In short, Milby is
now a refined, moral, and enlightened town; no more resembling the Milby
of former days than the huge, long-skirted, drab greatcoat that
embarrassed the ankles of our grandfathers resembled the light paletot in
which we tread jauntily through the muddiest streets, or than the
bottle-nosed Britons, rejoicing over a tankard, in the old sign of the
Two Travellers at Milby, resembled the severe-looking gentleman in straps
and high collars whom a modern artist has represented as sipping the
imaginary port of that well-known commercial house.
But pray, reader, dismiss from your mind all the refined and fashionable
ideas associated with this advanced state of things, and transport your
imagination to a time when Milby had no gas-lights; when the mail drove
up dusty or bespattered to the door of the Red Lion; when old Mr. Crewe,
the curate, in a brown Brutus wig, delivered inaudible sermons on a
Sunday, and on a week-day imparted the education of a gentleman--that is
to say, an arduous inacquaintance with Latin through the medium of the
Eton Grammar--to three pupils in the upper grammar-school.
If you had passed through Milby on the coach at that time, you would have
had no idea what important people lived there, and how very high a sense
of rank was prevalent among them. It was a dingy-looking town, with a
strong smell of tanning up one street and a great shaking of hand-looms
up another; and even in that focus of aristocracy, Friar’s Gate, the
houses would not have seemed very imposing to the hasty and superficial
glance of a passenger. You might still less have suspected that the
figure in light fustian and large grey whiskers, leaning against the
grocer’s door-post in High Street, was no less a person than Mr. Lowme,
one of the most aristocratic men in Milby, said to have been ‘brought up
a gentleman’, and to have had the gay habits accordant with that station,
keeping his harriers and other expensive animals. He was now quite an
elderly Lothario, reduced to the most economical sins; the prominent form
of his gaiety being this of lounging at Mr. Gruby’s door, embarrassing
the servant-maids who came for grocery, and talking scandal with the rare
passers-by. Still, it was generally understood that Mr. Lowme belonged to
the highest circle of Milby society; his sons and daughters held up their
heads very high indeed; and in spite of his condescending way of chatting
and drinking with inferior people, he would himself have scorned any
closer identification with them. It must be admitted that he was of some
service to the town in this station at Mr. Gruby’s door, for he and Mr.
Landor’s Newfoundland dog, who stretched himself and gaped on the
opposite causeway, took something from the lifeless air that belonged to
the High Street on every day except Saturday.
Certainly, in spite of three assemblies and a charity ball in the winter,
the occasional advent of a ventriloquist, or a company of itinerant
players, some of whom were very highly thought of in London, and the
annual three-days’ fair in June, Milby might be considered dull by people
of a hypochondriacal temperament; and perhaps this was one reason why
many of the middle-aged inhabitants, male and female, often found it
impossible to keep up their spirits without a very abundant supply of
stimulants. It is true there were several substantial men who had a
reputation for exceptional sobriety, so that Milby habits were really not
as bad as possible; and no one is warranted in saying that old Mr.
Crewe’s flock could not have been worse without any clergyman at all.
The well-dressed parishioners generally were very regular church-goers,
and to the younger ladies and gentlemen I am inclined to think that the
Sunday morning service was the most exciting event of the week; for few
places could present a more brilliant show of out-door toilettes than
might be seen issuing from Milby church at one o’clock. There were the
four tall Miss Pittmans, old lawyer Pittman’s daughters, with cannon
curls surmounted by large hats, and long, drooping ostrich feathers of
parrot green. There was Miss Phipps, with a crimson bonnet, very much
tilted up behind, and a cockade of stiff feathers on the summit. There
was Miss Landor, the belle of Milby, clad regally in purple and ermine,
with a plume of feathers neither drooping nor erect, but maintaining a
discreet medium. There were the three Miss Tomlinsons, who imitated Miss
Landor, and also wore ermine and feathers; but their beauty was
considered of a coarse order, and their square forms were quite unsuited
to the round tippet which fell with such remarkable grace on Miss
Landor’s sloping shoulders. Looking at this plumed procession of ladies,
you would have formed rather a high idea of Milby wealth; yet there was
only one close carriage in the place, and that was old Mr. Landor’s, the
banker, who, I think, never drove more than one horse. These
sumptuously-attired ladies flashed past the vulgar eye in one-horse
chaises, by no means of a superior build.
The young gentlemen, too, were not without their little Sunday displays
of costume, of a limited masculine kind. Mr. Eustace Landor, being nearly
of age, had recently acquired a diamond ring, together with the habit of
rubbing his hand through his hair. He was tall and dark, and thus had an
advantage which Mr. Alfred Phipps, who, like his sister, was blond and
stumpy, found it difficult to overtake, even by the severest attention to
shirt-studs, and the particular shade of brown that was best relieved by
gilt buttons.
The respect for the Sabbath, manifested in this attention to costume, was
unhappily counterbalanced by considerable levity of behaviour during the
prayers and sermon; for the young ladies and gentlemen of Milby were of a
very satirical turn, Miss Landor especially being considered remarkably
clever, and a terrible quiz; and the large congregation necessarily
containing many persons inferior in dress and demeanour to the
distinguished aristocratic minority, divine service offered irresistible
temptations to joking, through the medium of telegraphic communications
from the galleries to the aisles and back again. I remember blushing very
much, and thinking Miss Landor was laughing at me, because I was
appearing in coat-tails for the first time, when I saw her look down
slyly towards where I sat, and then turn with a titter to handsome Mr.
Bob Lowme, who had such beautiful whiskers meeting under his chin. But
perhaps she was not thinking of me, after all; for our pew was near the
pulpit, and there was almost always something funny about old Mr. Crewe.
His brown wig was hardly ever put on quite right, and he had a way of
raising his voice for three or four words, and lowering it again to a
mumble, so that we could scarcely make out a word he said; though, as my
mother observed, that was of no consequence in the prayers, since every
one had a prayer-book; and as for the sermon, she continued with some
causticity, we all of us heard more of it than we could remember when we
got home.
This youthful generation was not particularly literary. The young ladies
who frizzed their hair, and gathered it all into large barricades in
front of their heads, leaving their occipital region exposed without
ornament, as if that, being a back view, was of no consequence, dreamed
as little that their daughters would read a selection of German poetry,
and be able to express an admiration for Schiller, as that they would
turn all their hair the other way--that instead of threatening us with
barricades in front, they would be most killing in retreat,
‘And, like the Parthian, wound us as they fly.’
Those charming well-frizzed ladies spoke French indeed with considerable
facility, unshackled by any timid regard to idiom, and were in the habit
of conducting conversations in that language in the presence of their
less instructed elders; for according to the standard of those backward
days, their education had been very lavish, such young ladies as Miss
Landor, Miss Phipps, and the Miss Pittmans, having been ‘finished’ at
distant and expensive schools.
Old lawyer Pittman had once been a very important person indeed, having
in his earlier days managed the affairs of several gentlemen in those
parts, who had subsequently been obliged to sell everything and leave the
country, in which crisis Mr. Pittman accommodatingly stepped in as a
purchaser of their estates, taking on himself the risk and trouble of a
more leisurely sale; which, however, happened to turn out very much to
his advantage. Such opportunities occur quite unexpectedly in the way of
business. But I think Mr. Pittman must have been unlucky in his later
speculations, for now, in his old age, he had not the reputation of being
very rich; and though he rode slowly to his office in Milby every morning
on an old white hackney, he had to resign the chief profits, as well as
the active business of the firm, to his younger partner, Dempster. No one
in Milby considered old Pittman a virtuous man, and the elder townspeople
were not at all backward in narrating the least advantageous portions of
his biography in a very round unvarnished manner. Yet I could never
observe that they trusted him any the less, or liked him any the worse.
Indeed, Pittman and Dempster were the popular lawyers of Milby and its
neighbourhood, and Mr. Benjamin Landor, whom no one had anything
particular to say against, had a very meagre business in comparison.
Hardly a landholder, hardly a farmer, hardly a parish within ten miles of
Milby, whose affairs were not under the legal guardianship of Pittman and
Dempster; and I think the clients were proud of their lawyers’
unscrupulousness, as the patrons of the fancy’s are proud of their
champion’s ‘condition’. It was not, to be sure, the thing for ordinary
life, but it was the thing to be bet on in a lawyer. Dempster’s talent in
‘bringing through’ a client was a very common topic of conversation with
the farmers, over an incidental glass of grog at the Red Lion. ‘He’s a
long-headed feller, Dempster; why, it shows yer what a headpiece Dempster
has, as he can drink a bottle o’ brandy at a sittin’, an’ yit see further
through a stone wall when he’s done, than other folks ’ll see through a
glass winder.’ Even Mr. Jerome, chief member of the congregation at Salem
Chapel, an elderly man of very strict life, was one of Dempster’s
clients, and had quite an exceptional indulgence for his attorney’s
foibles, perhaps attributing them to the inevitable incompatibility of
law and gospel.
The standard of morality at Milby, you perceive, was not inconveniently
high in those good old times, and an ingenuous vice or two was what every
man expected of his neighbour. Old Mr. Crewe, the curate, for example,
was allowed to enjoy his avarice in comfort, without fear of sarcastic
parish demagogues; and his flock liked him all the better for having
scraped together a large fortune out of his school and curacy, and the
proceeds of the three thousand pounds he had with his little deaf wife.
It was clear he must be a learned man, for he had once had a large
private school in connection with the grammar school, and had even
numbered a young nobleman or two among his pupils. The fact that he read
nothing at all now, and that his mind seemed absorbed in the commonest
matters, was doubtless due to his having exhausted the resources of
erudition earlier in life. It is true he was not spoken of in terms of
high respect, and old Crewe’s stingy housekeeping was a frequent subject
of jesting; but this was a good old-fashioned characteristic in a parson
who had been part of Milby life for half a century: it was like the dents
and disfigurements in an old family tankard, which no one would like to
part with for a smart new piece of plate fresh from Birmingham. The
parishioners saw no reason at all why it should be desirable to venerate
the parson or any one else; they were much more comfortable to look down
a little on their fellow-creatures.
Even the Dissent in Milby was then of a lax and indifferent kind. The
doctrine of adult baptism, struggling under a heavy load of debt, had let
off half its chapel area as a ribbon-shop; and Methodism was only to be
detected, as you detect curious larvae, by diligent search in dirty
corners. The Independents were the only Dissenters of whose existence
Milby gentility was at all conscious, and it had a vague idea that the
salient points of their creed were prayer without book, red brick, and
hypocrisy. The Independent chapel, known as Salem, stood red and
conspicuous in a broad street; more than one pew-holder kept a
brass-bound gig; and Mr. Jerome, a retired corn-factor, and the most
eminent member of the congregation, was one of the richest men in the
parish. But in spite of this apparent prosperity, together with the usual
amount of extemporaneous preaching mitigated by furtive notes, Salem
belied its name, and was not always the abode of peace. For some reason
or other, it was unfortunate in the choice of its ministers. The Rev. Mr.
Horner, elected with brilliant hopes, was discovered to be given to
tippling and quarrelling with his wife; the Rev. Mr. Rose’s doctrine was
a little too ‘high’, verging on antinomianism; the Rev. Mr. Stickney’s
gift as a preacher was found to be less striking on a more extended
acquaintance; and the Rev. Mr. Smith, a distinguished minister much
sought after in the iron districts, with a talent for poetry, became
objectionable from an inclination to exchange verses with the young
ladies of his congregation. It was reasonably argued that such verses as
Mr. Smith’s must take a long time for their composition, and the habit
alluded to might intrench seriously on his pastoral duties. These
reverend gentlemen, one and all, gave it as their opinion that the Salem
church members were among the least enlightened of the Lord’s people, and
that Milby was a low place, where they would have found it a severe lot
to have their lines fall for any long period; though to see the smart and
crowded congregation assembled on occasion of the annual charity sermon,
any one might have supposed that the minister of Salem had rather a
brilliant position in the ranks of Dissent. Several Church families used
to attend on that occasion, for Milby, in those uninstructed days, had
not yet heard that the schismatic ministers of Salem were obviously
typified by Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; and many Church people there were
of opinion that Dissent might be a weakness, but, after all, had no great
harm in it. These lax Episcopalians were, I believe, chiefly
tradespeople, who held that, inasmuch as Congregationalism consumed
candles, it ought to be supported, and accordingly made a point of
presenting themselves at Salem for the afternoon charity sermon, with the
expectation of being asked to hold a plate. Mr. Pilgrim, too, was always
there with his half-sovereign; for as there was no Dissenting doctor in
Milby, Mr. Pilgrim looked with great tolerance on all shades of religious
opinion that did not include a belief in cures by miracle.
On this point he had the concurrence of Mr. Pratt, the only other medical
man of the same standing in Milby. Otherwise, it was remarkable how
strongly these two clever men were contrasted. Pratt was middle-sized,
insinuating, and silvery-voiced; Pilgrim was tall, heavy, rough-mannered,
and spluttering. Both were considered to have great powers of
conversation, but Pratt’s anecdotes were of the fine old crusted quality
to be procured only of Joe Miller; Pilgrim’s had the full fruity flavour
of the most recent scandal. Pratt elegantly referred all diseases to
debility, and, with a proper contempt for symptomatic treatment, went to
the root of the matter with port wine and bark; Pilgrim was persuaded
that the evil principle in the human system was plethora, and he made war
against it with cupping, blistering, and cathartics. They had both been
long established in Milby, and as each had a sufficient practice, there
was no very malignant rivalry between them; on the contrary, they had
that sort of friendly contempt for each other which is always conducive
to a good understanding between professional men; and when any new
surgeon attempted, in an ill-advised hour, to settle himself in the town,
it was strikingly demonstrated how slight and trivial are theoretic
differences compared with the broad basis of common human feeling. There
was the most perfect unanimity between Pratt and Pilgrim in the
determination to drive away the obnoxious and too probably unqualified
intruder as soon as possible. Whether the first wonderful cure he
effected was on a patient of Pratt’s or of Pilgrim’s, one was as ready as
the other to pull the interloper by the nose, and both alike directed
their remarkable powers of conversation towards making the town too hot
for him. But by their respective patients these two distinguished men
were pitted against each other with great virulence. Mrs. Lowme could not
conceal her amazement that Mrs. Phipps should trust her life in the hands
of Pratt, who let her feed herself up to that degree, it was really
shocking to hear how short her breath was; and Mrs. Phipps had no
patience with Mrs. Lowme, living, as she did, on tea and broth, and
looking as yellow as any crow-flower, and yet letting Pilgrim bleed and
blister her and give her lowering medicine till her clothes hung on her
like a scarecrow’s. On the whole, perhaps, Mr. Pilgrim’s reputation was
at the higher pitch, and when any lady under Mr. Pratt’s care was doing
ill, she was half disposed to think that a little more ‘active treatment’
might suit her better. But without very definite provocation no one would
take so serious a step as to part with the family doctor, for in those
remote days there were few varieties of human hatred more formidable than
the medical. The doctor’s estimate, even of a confiding patient, was apt
to rise and fall with the entries in the day-book; and I have known Mr.
Pilgrim discover the most unexpected virtues in a patient seized with a
promising illness. At such times you might have been glad to perceive
that there were some of Mr. Pilgrim’s fellow-creatures of whom he
entertained a high opinion, and that he was liable to the amiable
weakness of a too admiring estimate. A good inflammation fired his
enthusiasm, and a lingering dropsy dissolved him into charity. Doubtless
this _crescendo_ of benevolence was partly due to feelings not at all
represented by the entries in the day-book; for in Mr. Pilgrim’s heart,
too, there was a latent store of tenderness and pity which flowed forth
at the sight of suffering. Gradually, however, as his patients became
convalescent, his view of their characters became more dispassionate;
when they could relish mutton-chops, he began to admit that they had
foibles, and by the time they had swallowed their last dose of tonic, he
was alive to their most inexcusable faults. After this, the thermometer
of his regard rested at the moderate point of friendly backbiting, which
sufficed to make him agreeable in his morning visits to the amiable and
worthy persons who were yet far from convalescent.
Pratt’s patients were profoundly uninteresting to Pilgrim: their very
diseases were despicable, and he would hardly have thought their bodies
worth dissecting. But of all Pratt’s patients, Mr. Jerome was the one on
whom Mr. Pilgrim heaped the most unmitigated contempt. In spite of the
surgeon’s wise tolerance, Dissent became odious to him in the person of
Mr. Jerome. Perhaps it was because that old gentleman, being rich, and
having very large yearly bills for medical attendance on himself and his
wife, nevertheless employed Pratt--neglected all the advantages of
‘active treatment’, and paid away his money without getting his system
lowered. On any other ground it is hard to explain a feeling of hostility
to Mr. Jerome, who was an excellent old gentleman, expressing a great
deal of goodwill towards his neighbours, not only in imperfect English,
but in loans of money to the ostensibly rich, and in sacks of potatoes to
the obviously poor.
Assuredly Milby had that salt of goodness which keeps the world together,
in greater abundance than was visible on the surface: innocent babes were
born there, sweetening their parents’ hearts with simple joys; men and
women withering in disappointed worldliness, or bloated with sensual
ease, had better moments in which they pressed the hand of suffering with
sympathy, and were moved to deeds of neighbourly kindness. In church and
in chapel there were honest-hearted worshippers who strove to keep a
conscience void of offence; and even up the dimmest alleys you might have
found here and there a Wesleyan to whom Methodism was the vehicle of
peace on earth and goodwill to men. To a superficial glance, Milby was
nothing but dreary prose: a dingy town, surrounded by flat fields, lopped
elms, and sprawling manufacturing villages, which crept on and on with
their weaving-shops, till they threatened to graft themselves on the
town. But the sweet spring came to Milby notwithstanding: the elm-tops
were red with buds; the churchyard was starred with daisies; the lark
showered his love-music on the flat fields; the rainbows hung over the
dingy town, clothing the very roofs and chimneys in a strange
transfiguring beauty. And so it was with the human life there, which at
first seemed a dismal mixture of griping worldliness, vanity, ostrich
feathers, and the fumes of brandy: looking closer, you found some purity,
gentleness, and unselfishness, as you may have observed a scented
geranium giving forth its wholesome odours amidst blasphemy and gin in a
noisy pot-house. Little deaf Mrs. Crewe would often carry half her own
spare dinner to the sick and hungry; Miss Phipps, with her cockade of red
feathers, had a filial heart, and lighted her father’s pipe with a
pleasant smile; and there were grey-haired men in drab gaiters, not at
all noticeable as you passed them in the street, whose integrity had been
the basis of their rich neighbour’s wealth.
Such as the place was, the people there were entirely contented with it.
They fancied life must be but a dull affair for that large portion of
mankind who were necessarily shut out from an acquaintance with Milby
families, and that it must be an advantage to London and Liverpool that
Milby gentlemen occasionally visited those places on business. But the
inhabitants became more intensely conscious of the value they set upon
all their advantages, when innovation made its appearance in the person
of the Rev. Mr. Tryan, the new curate, at the chapel-of-ease on Paddiford
Common. It was soon notorious in Milby that Mr. Tryan held peculiar
opinions; that he preached extempore; that he was founding a religious
lending library in his remote corner of the parish; that he expounded the
Scriptures in cottages; and that his preaching was attracting the
Dissenters, and filling the very aisles of his church. The rumour sprang
up that Evangelicalism had invaded Milby parish--a murrain or blight all
the more terrible, because its nature was but dimly conjectured. Perhaps
Milby was one of the last spots to be reached by the wave of a new
movement and it was only now, when the tide was just on the turn, that
the limpets there got a sprinkling. Mr. Tryan was the first Evangelical
clergyman who had risen above the Milby horizon: hitherto that obnoxious
adjective had been unknown to the townspeople of any gentility; and there
were even many Dissenters who considered ‘evangelical’ simply a sort of
baptismal name to the magazine which circulated among the congregation of
Salem Chapel. But now, at length, the disease had been imported, when the
parishioners were expecting it as little as the innocent Red Indians
expected smallpox. As long as Mr. Tryan’s hearers were confined to
Paddiford Common--which, by the by, was hardly recognizable as a common
at all, but was a dismal district where you heard the rattle of the
handloom, and breathed the smoke of coal-pits--the ‘canting parson’ could
be treated as a joke. Not so when a number of single ladies in the town
appeared to be infected, and even one or two men of substantial property,
with old Mr. Landor, the banker, at their head, seemed to be ‘giving in’
to the new movement--when Mr. Tryan was known to be well received in
several good houses, where he was in the habit of finishing the evening
with exhortation and prayer. Evangelicalism was no longer a nuisance
existing merely in by-corners, which any well-clad person could avoid; it
was invading the very drawing-rooms, mingling itself with the comfortable
fumes of port-wine and brandy, threatening to deaden with its murky
breath all the splendour of the ostrich feathers, and to stifle Milby
ingenuousness, not pretending to be better than its neighbours, with a
cloud of cant and lugubrious hypocrisy. The alarm reached its climax when
it was reported that Mr. Tryan was endeavouring to obtain authority from
Mr. Prendergast, the non-resident rector, to establish a Sunday evening
lecture in the parish church, on the ground that old Mr. Crewe did not
preach the Gospel.
It now first appeared how surprisingly high a value Milby in general set
on the ministrations of Mr. Crewe; how convinced it was that Mr. Crewe
was the model of a parish priest, and his sermons the soundest and most
edifying that had ever remained unheard by a church-going population. All
allusions to his brown wig were suppressed, and by a rhetorical figure
his name was associated with venerable grey hairs; the attempted
intrusion of Mr. Tryan was an insult to a man deep in years and learning;
moreover, it was an insolent effort to thrust himself forward in a parish
where he was clearly distasteful to the superior portion of its
inhabitants. The town was divided into two zealous parties, the Tryanites
and anti-Tryanites; and by the exertions of the eloquent Dempster, the
anti-Tryanite virulence was soon developed into an organized opposition.
A protest against the meditated evening lecture was framed by that
orthodox attorney, and, after being numerously signed, was to be carried
to Mr. Prendergast by three delegates representing the intellect,
morality, and wealth of Milby. The intellect, you perceive, was to be
personified in Mr. Dempster, the morality in Mr. Budd, and the wealth in
Mr. Tomlinson; and the distinguished triad was to set out on its great
mission, as we have seen, on the third day from that warm Saturday
evening when the conversation recorded in the previous chapter took place
in the bar of the Red Lion.