MR. JAMES WELSH.
Mrs. Saltren had informed Arminell that she had a brother who was a
gentleman. The term “gentleman” is derived from the Latin _gens_, and
signifies a member of a patrician family. But this is not the
signification now given it in the vernacular. On the tongue of the
people, a gentleman and a lady are those who do no manual labour. A man
informs you that he will be a gentleman on a bank-holiday, because he
will lounge about with his hands in his pockets, and an old woman who
has weeded turnips at ninepence a day becomes a lady when rheumatism
invades her limbs, and sends her to the union.
Mr. James Welsh, the brother of Mrs. Saltren, was a gentleman in this,
that he belonged to a _gens_, a class not ancient or aristocratic, but
modern, and one that has obtained considerable influence, wields much
power and is likely to become dominant—we mean that of the professional
journalist and politician. He was a gentleman also in this, that he did
no hard manual labour, but few men worked harder than he, but then he
dirtied his hands with ink only.
Along the coasts of Scotland and Sweden are terraces raised high above
the sea-level, which are pronounced by geologists to be ancient beaches.
At one time the waves washed where now sheep graze, and deposited
sea-weed and shells where now grow heather and harebells. There are
these raised sea-beaches in man, to which conscience at one time
reached, where it formed a barrier, and whence it has retreated. But we
are wrong in speaking of the retreat of the sea, for actually the level
of the ocean is permanent, it is the land which rises, and as it rises
leaves the sea below. And so perhaps it is with us. We lift ourselves
above old convictions, scruples, principles, and the sometimes sleeping,
sometimes tossing sea of conscience no longer touches those points they
once fretted. Do we congratulate ourselves on this elevation? Perhaps
so, and yet few of us can contemplate the raised beaches left in our
hearts by the retiring waves of conscience without a sigh, and a doubt.
Mr. James Welsh said and wrote and did many things as a public
journalist and a professional politician which as a boy or young man he
would have looked upon as dishonest, false, and mischievous. His
conscience no longer troubled him in his business, but in home relations
he was blameless.
Perhaps one reason why the sea-level alters with us, is that we are
always endeavouring to reclaim land from it, thrusting our sea-walls of
self-interest further out, to take in more field from being overwashed.
We make our line of conscience co-terminous with our line of
self-interest. Outside this line the waves may toss and roar, within
they may not cast a flake of foam, or waft a breath of ozone. How much
thunder and buffet we permit outside our sea-wall of self-interest
against any rock or sand-bank that stands unenclosed! but we only suffer
the water of self-reproach to sweep with a shallow swash and soothing
murmur the outside of the bank we have cast up.
What excellent words those are to conjure with and wherewith blind our
own eyes as well as those of others—Political Party and The Public Weal!
We regard ourselves as devoted to the _respublica_, when, in reality, we
care only for our private interests; and our zeal for the public good is
hot or cold according as our dividends are affected.
If we can show that the welfare of our party can be advanced by making
out our neighbour to be a thief and assassin, with what pious energy do
we set to work to invent lies to defame him. How we suppress and
disguise facts which make against our pet doctrines! To what subterfuges
and tricks do we have recourse to colour those facts which cannot be
suppressed, to make them look the opposite to what we know them to be!
It is really deserving of note how every dirty and dishonourable act is
wrapped about with a moral sanction, as a comfit with a motto in a
cracker.
We always profess to be actuated by noble and disinterested motives, and
yet they are generally mean and personal. Our ancestors regarded the
planets only so far as they by their conjunctions and interferences with
each other’s houses affected the constitutions and careers of these
ancestors of ours. Jupiter is 1250 times larger than the earth, and has
seven moons, and this planet with its moons revolves and illumines the
sky to affect the spleen of Master Jack Sparrow and disturb the
courtship of Mistress Jenny Wren. Jupiter is distant five-hundred
millions of miles from Jack and Jenny—but what of that? According to
Euclid a straight line can be drawn between any two given points,
accordingly between the planet at one end and these little nobodies at
the other, lines exist. Now all people actually do draw invisible lines
between themselves and every other object in heaven and earth, and
contemplate these objects along these lines, and value and despise them
according as these objects affect them along these lines.
The author was travelling in a second-class railway-carriage on that
memorable Monday morning after the Phœnix-Park tragedy that thrilled all
England with horror and rage. Facing him, sat a gentleman reading his
paper, who ever and anon slapped his knee, and exclaimed, “Famous!
Splendid! Nothing better could have happened!” Presently, unable to
understand these exclamations, the author asked, “Sir! do you mean to
say that you approve of the crime?”
“Oh, no!” was his answer. “Certainly not, but, consider how it will make
the papers sell! I have shares in one or two.”
The writer was talking the other day to a timber merchant on the
condition of Ireland. “I trust,” said he, “that the Plan of Campaign
will not be suppressed as yet. We can buy Irish oak at fourpence a foot
just now.”
The writer was discussing the annexation of Alsace with a native farmer.
“Well,” said he, “when we belonged to France I sold for a franc what I
now sell for a mark, _therefore_, God save Kaiser Wilhelm.” “But,” was
objected, “probably you now have to pay a mark for what formerly cost
you a franc.” He considered for a moment, and then said, “That is true,
vive la France!” Twopence turned his patriotism this way to Berlin, or
that way to Paris. He was a German when selling, a Frenchman when
buying, all for twopence.
The professional politician is a man who lives by politics as the
professional chess-player lives by chess. He acquires a professional
conscience. His profession has to fill his pockets and find bread for
his children, and politics must be kept going to do so. The chess-player
sacrifices pawns to gain his end. The stoker shovels on coals into the
furnace to make his engine gallop; and the electrician pours vitriol
into the battery to produce a current in his wires. They have none of
them the slightest scruple in doing these things—they belong to the
business, and the professional politician has no scruple in playing with
facts, and throwing them away as pawns in his game, or of exciting the
passions and prejudices of men, or of using the most biting and
corroding acid in his endeavours to evoke a current of feeling. When an
organist desires to produce a noise, he pulls out stop diapason, and
dances on the pedals. The professional politician deals with the public
in the same way; that is his instrument. What in the organ are the
pedals for but to be kicked, and the keys but to be struck, and the
stops but to be drawn out, and what are the social classes but the
manuals, and the individuals composing them, but the keys, and the
grudges, greed, ambition, envy, and prejudices but the stops, which a
clever player understands to manipulate?
Mr. Welsh was a worthy man, eminently respectable, a good husband, and a
kind friend. He was truthful, honest, reliable in his family and social
relations, but professionally unscrupulous. The sea-line stood in its
old place on one side of his character, but on another a wide tract,
that tract on which he grew his harvest, had been reclaimed from the
waves of conscience. It is so with a good many others besides Mr. Welsh,
and in a good many other trades and professions than journalism and
politics. We are conscientious in every department except that of
money-making, and in that we allow of tricks and meannesses, which we
excuse to ourselves as forced on us by the exigencies of competition.
Recently Mr. Welsh had been slightly indisposed, so he came from town
into the country, on a holiday, to spend the Sunday with his sister, and
then run on to see a congenial friend in a town in the same county.
In the afternoon he took a stroll by himself in the woods, smoking his
pipe, and, always with an eye to business, looking about him for
material for an article.
“Halloo!” said Mr. Welsh, halting in front of the ruinous cottage of
Patience Kite. “What have we here? Does any one inhabit this tumble-down
concern?”
He went to the door and looked in.
Patience faced him.
“What do you want? Who are you? This is my house, and I will not be
turned out of it.”
She took him for a sanitary officer, or a lawyer, come to enforce her
expulsion.
“This is a queer hole for a lady to occupy as her boudoir,” said Mr.
Welsh, taking his pipe out of his mouth. “I wouldn’t care for this style
of thing myself except as a drawing copy. Not to become a hero of
romance, or to give my experience in a magazine article would I sleep
under that chimney on a stormy night.”
“Nobody has invited you,” said Patience, blocking her door.
“And pray, madam, whose house is this? Is this the sort of cottage my
lord provides for his tenants?”
“The house is mine.”
“Copyhold or freehold?”
“I pay a ground rent for it of two shillings; it is mine for life, and
then it falls to his lordship.”
“I should expect it would fall altogether to you shortly. Why don’t you
do it up?”
“How can I? I am poor.”
“I suppose that you are bound by the terms of the lease to maintain the
house in repair?”
“I dare say. The agent, Mr. Macduff, has threatened me; but no one can
make me do it when I haven’t a shilling. You can’t make one dance who is
born without legs.”
“Then, properly this house belongs to his lordship. Why does not he do
it up? I can make something out of this! A Day in the Country, something
to fill a column and a-half in a Monday morning paper. Contrast his
lordship’s princely residence with the ruins in which he pigs his
tenants. Compare Saltren’s place, Chillacot, which is his own, all in
spic-and-span order, with this, and then a word about the incubus of the
great holders on the land, and the advantage of the enfranchisement of
the soil. It will do. And so, madam, they have tried to evict you?”
“Yes; the sanitary officer ordered me to leave, the Board of Guardians
went to the magistrates, and issued a summons to me to quit, and my lord
has sent Mr. Macduff to me, to threaten proceedings against me if I will
not put the house in repair or quit it. But what can they do when I
won’t budge, and could prosecute ’em if they laid fingers on me? The
police daren’t touch me. They’ve come and looked at me and argued, but
they can’t force me to leave.”
“So his lordship wants to evict you, eh?”
“Mr. Macduff has declared he’ll send masons and strip the roof, and pull
down the chimney, and rebuild the walls, but they can’t do it without
driving me out first, and that is more than they can with me having the
house as my own for life.”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Welsh, “it’s a case—a poor widow, I suppose you are
a widow; it doesn’t matter if you are not; it sounds best—a widow, a
victim to his lordship’s tyranny—tearing down the roof that shelters her
grey head, casting down her chimney, desecrating her hearthstone, the
sacred penates, with the foot of violence—or hoof, which shall it be? By
George! I’ll make something out of it, harrowing to the feelings, and as
rousing as tartaric acid and soda! Who cares for a contradiction or a
correction? We can always break the lines and make nonsense of it, and
lay the blame on the printer, if called to task. I’m glad I came here
for a Sunday. You will let me inside, I suppose, ma’am, to cast an eye
round; particulars are so useful in a description, lend such a
_vraisemblance_ to an account.”
But Mrs. Kite’s tumble-down cottage was not the only material Mr. Welsh
collected for use on that Sunday. He heard from Saltren about the
stoppage of the manganese.
“Something can be made out of that,” said Welsh. “We are in want of a
grievance. Tell me the particulars, I’ll sift out for myself what will
serve my purpose.”
When he had heard all, “It will do,” said he, “there has been nothing to
interest the public or stir them up since the last divorce suit in high
life. High life!—so high that some folks had to hold their noses. We
want a bit of a change now. After that bit of strong venison, some
capsicum to restore the palate. Saltren, you must convene a public
meeting, make a demonstration, a torchlight procession of the
out-of-work, issue a remonstrance. I’ll come and help you. I know how to
work those kind of things. A little grievance and some dissatisfaction
well-stirred together is like chlorate of potash and sulphur in a
mortar, only stir away, and in the end you get an explosion.”
“It is of no use,” said the captain, in a tone of discouragement.
“Of no use! I tell you it is of the utmost use; we’ll make a public
matter of it. Get a question asked in the House about it. There are so
many journalists in there now that we can get anything asked when we
want the question as a text for a leader. Why, we will fill the papers
with your grievance, only we must have some meeting to report, and I’ll
help you with that. Bless you, I’ve half a dozen ways of poking this
matter into notoriety; and we will show up the British aristocracy as
the oppressors of the poor, those who are driving business out of the
country, who are the true cause of the prevailing depression. Thanks to
that recent divorce case we’ve made them out to be the moral cancer in
the body of old England, and now we shall show that they are the drag on
commercial progress. When folks are grumbling because the times are bad,
it makes them mighty content to be shown a cause for it all, on which
they may vent their ill-humour. Did you ever read ‘The Curiosity Shop,’
Saltren? Quilp had a figure-head to batter whenever things went wrong
with him, and the public are much like Quilp; give ’em an admiral or a
peer, or an archbishop, some figure-head, and whack, bang, hammer, and
smash they go at it.”
“As for the aristocracy,” said Mrs. Saltren, “I ought to know them. I
combed their hair, and hooked their dresses, and unpacked their
portmanteaus; and them as do that are best qualified to know them, I
should think.”
“I don’t mind telling you,” said the captain, addressing his
brother-in-law, “that their doom is sealed in heaven. I’ve had it
revealed to me.”
“You have, have you?” asked Welsh in a tone of irony, which, however,
Saltren did not perceive.
“Yes, I have—you shall hear. I would not tell every one, but I tell you.
I was in the spirit this very morning, and I heard a voice from heaven,
saying unto me, Saltren, Saltren! Then I looked, and behold there came
flying down to me, a book from heaven, written within and without. I
held up my hands to receive it; but it fell past me into the water, and
I stooped and looked thereon, and saw written ‘The Gilded Clique,’ and
again the voice cried, ‘It is fallen, it is fallen!’”
“You don’t expect me to gulp that——” Welsh checked himself, and added,
shaking his head—“I can’t, I’m afraid, make copy of that.”
“It is true,” said Saltren earnestly. His vehemence, his kindled eyes,
his deepened colour, showed his sincerity. “Would I dare in such matters
to utter lies? I am but a poor mean instrument, but what of that?
Prophets have been found among shepherds, and apostles taken from their
fishing nets. I was engaged in heartfelt prayer when this took place.”
“You didn’t happen to fall asleep, whilst occupied in devotion, of
course?” said Welsh, with a contemptuous jerk of the chin. “Such a
weakness is not likely to befall you.”
“I was not asleep,” answered Saltren sternly. “How could I be asleep,
when my eyes were open, and I saw the book; and my ears, and they heard
the voice?”
“You didn’t happen to get hold of the book, and see the name of the
publisher?”
“No—I was unable. It was unnecessary. I read the title plainly. I saw
what was on the cover of the book.”
“I can do nothing with this,” said Welsh, leaning back in his chair,
stretching, and closing his hands behind the back of his head.
“This belongs to another department altogether. You had better relate
your experiences at the next revival-meeting among the horse-marines,
there is no knowing what effect it may have upon that intelligent and
excitable body of men.”
“It is true,” urged Saltren again, frowning.
He was incapable of seeing that his brother-in-law was bantering him.
The man was absolutely without sense of humour; but he saw that Welsh
did not believe in his story, and this irritated and offended him. That
his tale, as he told it, grew in its proportions and became more and
more unreal, was also what he did not know. His mind worked on the small
materials it had, and spun out of them a fable in which he himself
implicitly believed.
“I don’t dispute what you have narrated,” said Welsh composedly. “I know
you are a total abstainer, so it is not to be accounted for in the way
which comes naturally uppermost. Still, I’ve heard of wonderful
elevation of spirits and general head-over-heeledness after an over-dose
of non-alcoholic effervescing liquors.”
“I had touched nothing,” said Saltren, with his temper chafed. “If you
doubt me——”
“But I do not doubt you,” interrupted Welsh. “I tell you that this does
not interest me, because it is outside my department, like Bulgaria, and
the Opera Comique, and Inoculations for Hydrophobia, and Primitive
Marriage. I don’t meddle with the Eastern Question, or review historical
works, or sermons, or novels. I leave all that to other fellows; you
must pass this on to the chap who does religion, not that I think he
would make copy out of it for a magazine article, except under the head
of Hallucinations.”