IN BOHEMIA.
‘What a donkey I am!’ was the exclamation of a tall, well-made young man,
rather shabbily dressed—four or five years after the events recorded in
the preceding chapter—as he stood clinging to a lamppost in Fleet Street
very late one bright summer night. ‘I have been to Fairlop Fair, with
instructions to do a gushing article, and I’m blessed if I can recollect
anything about it, nor where my notes are. I was to be back by ten, and
it is now midnight. Thank Heaven,’ continued the speaker, as he groped
into his coat pocket, ‘my notes are there. I thought I’d left them
behind in that bar-room where I was waiting, where everyone was so tight
and so talkative. Steady, boy—steady, boy!’ continued the speaker,
reluctantly depriving himself of the support of the lamp-post. ‘We shall
be all right, and in time, after all.’
Thus summoning his energies, the individual in question appeared to
revive, and moved on with a gait ofttimes deviating from the straight
line, but not so much as to call for special interference on the part of
the police, and with that intense expression which always accompanies a
certain state of alcoholic inspiration.
Diving down a side-street, he entered a door which seemed to be open all
night long, and which led to the very innermost recesses of the _Daily
Journal_. Giving a familiar nod to the porter as he passed by, and
steering for a room on an upper floor, he took off his hat, sat himself
down at a writing-desk, lit his cigar, spread out a sheet of paper before
him, and took a pen in his hand. The furniture of the room was of the
barest description, and mostly aimed at usefulness, rather than show or
comfort or luxury. There were two other men in the room, but they took
no notice of the new-comer, except to ask him to be quiet, and not to
kick up such a row. One was gorgeously got up in evening dress. He had
come from a dinner at Willis’s Rooms, with a Royal Duke in the chair.
The other was putting the final touch to a thrilling description of a
fire in the Seven Dials, accompanied by great destruction of property and
loss of life.
Thoroughly settling down to his work, the individual to whom I have
already drawn the attention of the reader took out his note-book, and
began studying its contents. At length, unable to find what he wanted,
he exclaimed somewhat pettishly:
‘Where the dickens are my notes?’
‘Why, in your hat, to be sure, you old fool!’ said one of the men, who,
having finished his report, was preparing to go home. ‘I saw you put
them into your hat directly you came in.’
‘Well, you’re right,’ said the now sober pressman, looking into the
last-named receptacle. ‘The fact is, I’ve been lushing,’ said he, ‘a
little too much. Indeed, it was only as I went into the pub, and saw the
people, I could get up anything worth writing about.’
‘Oh, there is no reason to explain, my dear fellow,’ replied the
gentleman thus addressed.
‘No, but I wish you to understand I am the victim of circumstances over
which I had no control. It was business, not love of liquor, which
reduced me to this state.’
‘Of course. We all know you’re as virtuous as Father Mathew.’
But here the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of a small
boy, sent by the sub-editor, to know if Mr. Wentworth was in, as he was
waiting for copy.
‘Tell that respected gentleman,’ said the individual thus alluded to,
‘Mr. Wentworth is in, and in a few minutes will let him have as much copy
as he requires,’ at the same time handing the boy a few slips for the
printers to go on with.
The boy retired, and the speaker set to work, describing with great
felicity the revelry of the night, and deploring the drunkenness which
interfered with the pleasures of the day, and which marred the beauties
of the sylvan spot. By turns he was humorous and moral, classical or
romantic, and so effective was the article that it was reprinted next day
for gratuitous circulation, and with a view to prevent the repetition of
such excesses on another occasion, by an ‘Old Teetotaler’ who lived in
the neighbourhood of the revelry thus condemned.
‘I think that will fetch the public,’ said the worthy proprietor of the
_Daily Journal_, as he lingered over the breakfast-table of his
well-furnished mansion in an aristocratic square next morning. ‘That, my
dear,’ said he to his better-half, ‘is just what the British public
likes—something light and airy, with a moral tag at the end. We are a
very high-souled people, and mere flippancy soon palls. I never had any
fellow for the right kind of article like poor MacAndrew. What a pity it
is that he drank himself to death! One would have thought he was good
for another ten years. As soon as he died we had quite a drop in our
sale; but since we have got the new hand the sale has been steadily
rising. Most of my writers are getting too high and mighty, and think a
great deal more of themselves than the public do. But this new hand is
more useful. I fancy he is rather hard up. I know he drinks a good
deal, and as long as that is the case he will be glad to be on the staff
of the _Daily Journal_.’
‘Well,’ said the lady of the house, ‘ask him to our next soirée.’
‘I would, but I don’t think he’d care to come. The Cave of Harmony, or
the Cider Cellars, is more in his line, and, then, there are the girls.
I’ll not have these fellows come here and make love to them.’
‘No danger of that,’ said the proprietor’s lady. ‘My daughters have been
far too well brought up to fall in love with newspaper writers. It might
do in Paris, but not in London.’
‘Dear old girl,’ said the fond husband, ‘you’ve not got over the
prejudices of early education and the traditions of Minerva House. We’ve
changed all that in these days, when illiterate young noblemen make a
living by scribbling scandals for the weekly journals, or are found to
appear as amateur performers, or, what is worse still, on the real stage,
jostling better men off, while the tuft-hunters applaud and wise men
swear.’
‘Perhaps I am a little faulty,’ replied the wife. Her father was an
old-fashioned City merchant, whose one standard of merit was wealth, and
who thought his daughter had quite forgotten herself when she fell in
love with a man who had anything to do with newspapers. ‘At any rate, I
am sure I shall be glad to do what is civil to the poor fellow, should
you wish it.’
The poor fellow referred to was our old acquaintance—the pious youth, the
village preacher, the brief occupant of the pulpit in Sloville.
Tottering home to his chambers at early morn, he met a shabbily-dressed
man whom he remembered as a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge—a grand
scholar, and one of his old professors.
‘I suppose you’re not got such a thing as a half-crown to lend a fellow,’
said the ex-professor, looking, unshorn and unwashed, particularly shady.
‘I’m drying of hunger.’
‘No, I’ve not; but if you come to my chambers in Clifford’s Inn we’ll
have a jolly good breakfast.’
It is needless to say that the invitation was accepted. The bachelor’s
kettle was brought into play, and some good coffee was made. Soon the
room was fragrant with the scent of Yarmouth bloaters, as they were being
toasted, and after that came a smoke and some chat. The feast, if not
stately, was satisfying, and the ex-professor, finding no more was to be
had, departed with lingering steps, leaving Wentworth to moralize, ere he
dropped into the arms of Morpheus, upon the strange fate that had reduced
a man of such talent and standing to so low a condition; and then he went
off to sleep, to dream of his early peaceful and happy home. That is
what one never forgets, no matter what may be his after-life. To the
last each of us may exclaim with Wordsworth:
‘My eyes are filled with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
And the same sounds are in my ears
Which in my youthful days I heard.’
It was well on towards noon when Wentworth woke up, exclaiming:
‘Ah, if life were a dream, and if dreams were life, what happiness there
would be for poor devils like myself! What an infernal fool that old
professor of mine has been! He must have played his cards very badly.’
Suddenly, reflecting that he was not much better himself, he looked at
the glass, and was astonished at his seedy appearance.
‘By Jove,’ said he, ‘this will never do,’ and hastily dressing himself,
he rushed off to Hampstead Heath for a mouthful of fresh air.
Fleet Street saw no more of him that day. Goldsmith tells us that, in
all his foreign travel, he saw no finer view than that he enjoyed from
the top of Hampstead Heath, and the view there is still fine, in spite of
the damage done by the smoke of London rising in the distance, and the
hostile attacks of that foe to the picturesque, the speculative builder.
On the Heath Wentworth met a fellow-reporter, looking as gay and
respectable as a rising barrister or successful physician. He had his
wife and children with him. They nodded to each other, and the lady
asked:
‘Who is that shabby, seedy-looking fellow?’
‘Oh, it is Wentworth, of the _Daily Journal_.’
‘He looks very sad and miserable.’
‘Of course. He is quite a man about town. I fancy he drinks more than
is good for him, and leads too fast a life.’
‘What a pity! Has he no friends to look after him?’
‘I believe not. It is said he was brought up to be a parson of some kind
or other, but he gave it up. He has plenty of ability, and would do well
if he would settle down quietly. But he will never do that. They tell
me he is quite a vagabond.’
‘Ask him to lunch, and let us see what we can do to reform him,’ said the
lady, with the instinctive tender-heartedness of her sex.
‘My dear, he would not come if we did,’ and they passed on.
‘Ah, there goes Tomlinson,’ said Wentworth to himself. ‘How happy and
respectable he looks! They tell me he has saved quite a lot of money,
and has quite a nice little property about here. Such is destiny. He
was born under a lucky star, I under an unfortunate one. Ah, if I had
turned up trumps in matrimony, how different it would have been!’
Thus talking to himself, our hero found himself in the neighbourhood of a
well-known inn, and a smile from the barmaid—a showy specimen of her
class—was quite sufficient to induce him to enter. The fair creature, as
she said, ‘was a little low, and wanted a fellow to talk to.’ Wentworth
soon rose to the occasion, and when he left the hostelry, it was with a
flushed cheek and a jaunty air. Indeed, he was quite mirthful till he
reached a little cottage where he had spent many a riotous hour. To his
consternation, the blinds were down, and there was an unspeakable air of
desolation about the place, as if had come there the grim unbidden
visitor whose name is Death. He summoned enough courage to enter, and
came out, after a very short stay, looking pale and sad. Death had
indeed been there, and taken away the breadwinner of the family, leaving
wife and children desolate.
It was late when he reached the rendezvous of his companions, seedy
fellows, but very happy, nevertheless, unshaven, with rather big beards
and long hair, much given to smoking, and not over-clean in person or
linen.
‘You’re late, young man,’ said the eldest of the party, as Wentworth
entered, ‘and will have to stand glasses all round.’
‘Certainly; but hear my excuse. I promised to be here at eight; it is
now ten. I want an S. and B. I have not a rap in my pocket—absolutely
cleared out.’
‘Too bad! and yesterday was pay-day,’ said the chairman. ‘Wentworth, you
profligate, I am ashamed of you. What an example you set these young
people!’
‘Shocking, shocking!’ was the cry all round.
‘Strike, but hear,’ said Wentworth. ‘You know poor Canning?’ naming a
comedian popular at the music-halls.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he’s dead; and there’s a wife and five children, and an invalid
aunt, without a halfpenny. I happened to come by the cottage as I was
coming here, and I never saw a sadder sight. In one room the poor dead
body; in another, women in hysterics, children weeping, and a vile harpy
of a landlady standing at the door wanting her money. I paid her
something to keep her quiet. That’s why I’m cleaned out, knowing that
you generous youths would give me something for the poor man’s wife and
family.’
Immediately every hand was put into its owner’s pocket, and Wentworth was
content with the result, and he prepared to enjoy himself after the
fashion of the room, which was well patronized by gentlemen of the press,
including the dreariest of shorthand writers and the most elegant of
penny-a-liners. As one went out to deliver his copy another came in who
had done so. The climax was reached when there came a gang of
Parliamentary reporters from the Gallery with the news of a great
division, a Ministerial defeat and a Parliamentary crisis, who seemed
inclined to sit up late talking shop. Most of them had a cheerful glass,
and when that is indulged in, it is astonishing how witty a man becomes,
and what a cause of wit in other men. A good deal of profane language
was used, and now and then a little Latin or a scrap of Greek. The
atmosphere was as critical as it was clouded with tobacco. Wentworth
took part in many a war of words, and
‘Drank delight of battle with his peers.’
The sleepy waiter, reinforced by the sleepy landlord, had hard work to
clear the room, which, however, was not done till the milkman might be
heard going his early rounds, and the great world of London was preparing
for the business of the day.
No wonder Wentworth rather liked that sort of life. It had for him the
charm of novelty. At any rate, he breathed a freer air than he had ever
done before. He could say what he meant. He had lived where that was
impossible. There was little free speech or thought in pious circles,
either Dissenting or Church, fifty years ago. Happily, the present
generation lives and moves in a freer day, when a man is not sent to
Coventry on account of honest doubt. The one drawback he felt was that
he was rushing to the other extreme.
When Johnson was about to write the life of Akenside, he asked Hannah
More, as a friend of Sir James Stonehouse, Akenside’s contemporary at the
now far-famed borough of Northampton, if she could supply him with any
information concerning him. On which she tells us she made an effort to
recollect some sayings she had heard reported. This did not suit the
Doctor, who impatiently exclaimed:
‘Incident, child—incident is what a biographer wants. Did he break his
leg?’
The great Doctor was but a superficial critic, after all. As a rule,
writers nowadays care little about incident, and in this respect the
public resembles them. Given a life of average duration and condition,
and we know its inseparable incidents—incidents which are the general
property and experience of the human family. In our day we like better
to learn what is the hidden life—to see the springs and sources of action
in the individual or the community at large—what are the seeds sown in
the human heart, and what the fruit they bear. Nature works slowly and
in order, and miracles are, if not impossible, at any rate rare. One can
quite realize the feeling of the celebrated Rammohun Roy, when he
contended that miracles were not the part of the Christian dispensation
best adapted to the conversion of sceptics. Be that as it may, there was
nothing of the miraculous in finding the ardent preacher of the Gospel
now in the camp of the scorner. That was the result of causes long
working unsuspected. He had been disgusted with the narrowness of the
Church and people with whom he had come in contact. The God of his youth
seemed to him hard, despotic, unmerciful, and unlovely. He had been
bowed down to the earth with a great sorrow. Apparently the change was
not for good. Once he was a preacher; now he never darkened church
doors. Once he associated with the godly; now he did nothing of the
kind. In the language of the sects, now he was a son of perdition.
Of course a woman was at the bottom of it all. It was in Hamburg they
met. There was a fashionable English boarding-school in that ancient
city, and in the course of his travels Wentworth had spent a winter
there. Indeed, it was on account of the beauty of one in particular that
he had stopped there wasting his time and getting over head and ears in
debt. It was all an accident; going up the old Steinweg, he had seen
some of the young ladies of the English school coming down. One of them
was Adèle, blue-eyed, fresh and fair as the stars on a summer night.
Their eyes met, and Wentworth was over head and ears in love.
In a little while he managed to make the acquaintance of the lady at an
evening party, where everyone was ravished with her musical genius. He
was introduced to her, and found her English charming. It was evident
that immense pains had been taken with her education. He had never met
so brilliant a linguist before, French, German, Italian, English—in all
she was equally at home. Again, he had met her at a fête without the
gates, and had the honour of escorting her home. In a little while he
had sent her a letter of which it is needless to describe the contents.
That letter was placed in her guardian’s hands, and the result was an
interview and a betrothal.
Had our hero been equal to the situation, had he had a proper amount of
backbone, had he not been trained to lead an emotional life, had he
attained to the true dignity of manhood, he either would have never
thought of love of one in every way so much superior, or he would have
returned to England at once to fight the battle of life for himself and
to fit him for her. Alas! he was weak and intoxicated with love, hardly
master of himself. He fell into bad society with men richer than
himself, where he learned to drink and live recklessly. Away from her,
loving her with the intensest and wildest passion, he was utterly
miserable. He returned to London, and got a little work to do in the way
of reviewing.
In London he was worse off than in Hamburg. His mode of life lent itself
easily to the wildest excesses. Had he brought back the lady with him as
his wife it would have been otherwise. His was a nature that could not
stand alone.
Some of his wealthy friends had married, and at their evening soirées he
met men and women—authors, artists, statesmen, men of progress, men and
women whose names the world yet gratefully remembers; and then away he
would rush off to the lodgings of other friends—dissipated medical
students as they were in those far-off days, types of the Bob Sawyer
class, and with gin-and-water would pass the night, unless, as was too
frequently the case, they plunged into the debaucheries of London by
night, when respectability had gone to bed.
Lower and lower did Wentworth fall, and then came the end. The lady
discovered how romantic had been her dream, and the dismissed lover
staggered under the blow. It is hard to realise what a moral wreck that
pitiable wretch had become—how with no real excuse for his drink and
dissipation, now almost a necessity of his life, all hope had vanished
from his horizon, all faith in God or man.
For a time he led, as many do, a dual life—decent by day, the reverse by
night. London is full of such men now. Fathers and mothers living far
away in the quiet country home have no idea what London is by night, or
was, for I write of a wild scene of dissipation which no longer exists.
A young man in business is sheltered more or less from the lowest abysses
of London life. A young man in a decent home is also guarded to a
certain extent. It is the stranger within the gates who, as a rule,
falls the more easily to the allurements of vice. He is alone; he needs
society. It is not good for man to be alone. If a man cannot have good
society, the chances are he will have bad.
The Church at one time made no effort to bring back such lost ones. They
drew a hard and fast line. They only admitted the hypocrite or the
saint. Wentworth belonged to neither class. In reality he had little
altered. He left religious society because he could not with an honest
conscience conform to its ideas, or speak its language, or adopt its
conventionalisms. At one time he believed in it because he had been
brought up in it. He had been taught phrases, and he used them without
ever thinking of their meaning, and when the meaning did not come he went
on using them, believing it would come. ‘Preach faith till you have it,’
said an old divine to a young brother, ‘and then you will preach it
because you have it.’ In Wentworth’s case the remedy did not answer. He
preached because he thought it his duty. He did not preach because he
felt it dishonesty to use terms of doubtful meaning utilized in the
pulpit in one sense, understood in the pew in another. He had not found
light in Little Bethel or Cave Adullam. Was it to be found elsewhere, in
the gaiety and dissipation of the world? Well, that was what he wanted
to find out for himself. Like most of us, Wentworth was too impatient,
and could not wait for the happy surrounding which comes to all true men
soon or late. Religious people and he had parted. It seemed to him as
if he could do no good, and as if the attempt to do so were harm. He had
aimed high and fallen low. To save himself from starvation he did a
little literary work, but that was a poor staff on which to lean. He
had, as most of us have, daily wants, and, to meet them, required daily
cash.
Turning one night into a tavern, he found two or three seedy-looking men
manufacturing what they called ‘flimsy’ for one of the dailies. They
took pity on him, and taught him how to do the same. For a time he was
their assistant, and they gave him a share of the pay; but evil
communications corrupt good manners, and, to drown all thought, he did as
they did: sat up late in public-houses—these latter places kept open
nearly all night then—and the excitement of the new life came to him as a
pleasurable relief from the darkness which had cast a gloom on the
morning of his days.
It became in time a habit with him to spend his nights in the
music-halls, such as the Cider Cellars and Evans’s, which now have long
ceased to exist, where he could forget what he once was, and did not
think of what he once hoped to be. At such places all classes met in
boon companionship—the lord and the lout, the drunken clergyman, the
greenhorn from the country, the man of business, or county magistrate, or
attorney up in town for a day or two and anxious to see life, the wild
sawbones, who was supposed by his anxious parents far away to be walking
the hospitals and fitting himself for a useful career, reporters,
students, barristers, reckless men of all kinds, over whom tailors and
landlords alike grieved. Then there were haunts still more infamous,
frequented by women as reckless and abandoned as the men. Some had seen
better days; some had loved, and been betrayed and abandoned; some had
never known virtue in any shape; all on their way down to be trodden
underfoot.
‘I was gay myself once,’ says many a man of the world, as he hears of the
excesses of dissipation. Alas! so much the worse for him. It is true
all experience makes a man, in one sense, wiser, if he be a wise man.
Yet it is a solemn truth that no tears, no penitence, no prayers, no
exertions of an after-life, can restore to the sensualist or the
profligate the bloom, the freshness and purity of early youth. None of
us can blot out the past. The joyous aspect of innocence and grace can
never be recalled, though, for all who seek it, there is a Divine mercy,
lasting as eternity, broad as heaven itself.
At one time the idea of being in such company would have been shocking to
Wentworth. There are thousands who, however, thus do fall away. But
they do so little by little. No one suddenly becomes base, said the
Latin moralist, and he is right. A real friend or two might have saved
Wentworth many a bitter hour. But at that time the thing was
impracticable. The line of demarcation between the Church and the world
was too strictly drawn. In the parable of the Great Teacher, the tares
and the wheat grew side by side. In its superior wisdom, the Church
undertook to pull up and get rid of the tares, but in doing so a good
deal of mischief was done. There was no halting between two opinions.
You were either converted or not. A man was either the child of God or
of the devil. The Church held up an impossible and an unlovely
Christianity, into the belief of which men and women were terrified.. To
produce that effect there was no end of excitement, and then, when the
excitement was over, in too many cases came the inevitable relapse. One
result of this was that the victim had to look elsewhere for the
excitement which had become part and parcel of his being—to the flowing
bowl, to what is called jolly companionship, to the siren voice of
worldly pleasure—and the novice falls too easily a prey. Abelard is a
more common character than Simeon Stylites. The songs of Circe are
pleasant to listen to, and there are roses and raptures for the sinner as
well as the saint, and the roses and raptures are now—not in a world to
come. The world has a great fascination for a lad brought up in a pious
home, to whom it has been represented as a waste howling wilderness,
peopled with devils fearful to gaze on. When he steps into it, and finds
how unfairly it has been drawn to him by the Church, the chance is that
he runs to the other extreme. We have hardly yet emancipated ourselves
from the morbid and monkish theology of the Romish Church. There come to
the writer sad recollections of a dismal theology to which he was
expected to give his assent. Never did men then talk of man being made
in the image of his Maker—of his being vicegerent of the earth, only a
little lower than the angels, covered with glory and honour. All was
devilish man could say or do. In vain was education, or science, or art.
The cleverer, the more useful, the more decent you were, the more
mischievous, the further from God.
Such was the doctrine preached from a thousand pulpits, at any rate, not
many years since. And thus it was that the churches were chiefly filled
with ignorant women and old men, or with young people—who died early of
consumption—who accepted everything they heard in the pulpit, who knew
nothing of the world they denounced, to whom the language of passion and
temptation was unknown. It is easy to be religious when all that is
irreligious has worked itself out of the man—to lead a dull, decent,
formal life, when the capacity for excess is gone, or the spendthrift has
been turned into a miser; when old age has taken from woman her power to
tempt, and robbed the wine-cup of its fascination; when all a man wants
is an easy-chair by a good fire. When we cry with Tennyson:
‘Ruined trunks on withered forks,
Empty scarecrows, I and you.’
But it is not everyone who cares for such companionship.
‘Where are my dead forefathers?’ asked the pagan Frisian of Bishop
Wolfran, as he stood with one of his royal leg’s in the baptismal font.
‘In hell with all the other unbelievers,’ was the reply.
‘Mighty well!’ exclaimed Radbrod, removing his leg. ‘Then I will rather
feast with my ancestors in the halls of Woden, than dwell with your
little starveling band of Christians in heaven.’
To return to Wentworth. He was disappointed, not only as regards the
ministry, but as regards love, and that is a yet more awful thing.
Plotinus taught that God made women beautiful that by means of them men
might be drawn to love a beauty that is divine. To one capable of strong
affection no blow can be more terrible than that of a disappointed love.
It is vain to doubt on the subject. To all human appearances Wentworth
was lost, but God never leaves a man to fall away for ever. ‘A gracious
hand,’ writes the pious Wilberforce, ‘leads us in ways we know not, not
only with, but against our plans and inclinations.’ Happily, this was so
in Wentworth’s case. There came to him strength to reform, to conquer
himself, to rise out of his dead self to something higher and better,
partly from the memory of a pious home, partly by the natural working of
his soul, partly by the needs of daily life, partly and chiefly by
contact with an actress, who reproached him with his idleness and want of
energy and aimlessness. Both were Bohemians, but the woman supported
herself and her widowed mother. Both had loved and lost, both had found
the ways of transgressors hard, that pleasure is not happiness, that
there is no way to escape from God’s universal law, that wrongdoing, in
thought or word or deed, is never without its inseparable penalty, and
that is, the worm that dieth not, the fire that is not quenched. You may
forget much, but you can never forget, if you live till the age of
Methuselah, what you have done inconsistent with the native nobility of
man; if you have brought dishonour on your name, betrayed the right,
trifled with a woman’s heart, brought the gray hairs of father or mother
to the grave with sorrow. The memory of such acts will continue, and
sting and torture as long as life and though and being last. For such a
one there are no waters of Lethe, cry for them as he will. A man cannot
hide himself from himself. He may deceive the world; he may lead a life
of pleasure; but he cannot deceive himself, however he may try to do so.
Alone in the stillness of the night, in the quiet of the sick-room, in
the awful presence of death, conscience will speak, and he cannot stifle
its voice. ‘Be sure your sin will find you out’ is the teaching of all
daily life. To be happy even in this world, as old Franklin found out,
you must be virtuous. It is a false creed, that which makes us believe
that man is better without God than with Him—better as a vicious than a
virtuous man—better as a mild Agnostic or a gay infidel than a decent,
sober Christian.
The home training in evangelical circles fifty years ago had many serious
defects. It was conducted too much with reference to the future world
rather than the present one. Had Wentworth been taught the beauty of
work—that life was a battlefield in which the victory was to the
strong—that man was here to do the best he could for himself, to enjoy
the world which the good God had made beautiful—that he was to aim high,
to cherish noble expectations, to do manly deeds, to be true and honest
and courageous, how different would have been his life! Only the
emotional part of him had been developed, and he fell an easy prey when
temptation came to him and the voice of passion thundered in his ear and
he fell. Why should he not, as he grew tired of sinning and repenting,
he asked himself, ignore the past and find peace where peace could never
be found? He would eat of the grapes of Sodom and the clusters of
Gomorrah. He would sit in the seat of the scorner. There, at any rate,
conscience would cease to sting. It was the old story over again.
_Facilis descensus Averni_.
Wentworth was beginning to find this out. He had eaten of the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, as all must do—though some more
than others—and he had found it fairer to the eye than pleasant to the
palate. He was getting sick of worldly men and worldly things. There is
a cant of the world as well as of the Church, and he had found it out.
The cloud passed away, and then came to him a clearer spiritual insight
than he had ever possessed before. He had lost the childish faith of his
early home, and there came in its stead the grander and fuller one of a
man who had put away childish things, who had fought his fears and
gathered strength, who had fought his fears and gathered strength, who
had found peace and safety, not in the pleasant places, gay with flowers
and musical with the song of birds, where we never dream of danger, but
in the storm and tempest of the raging sea. Old ideas, modified by hard
experience, asserted themselves; old inspirations were revived; old hopes
and purposes were brought to life. He would be a preacher—but from the
press, rather than from the more cramped and circumscribed pulpit.
Temporal things also went better with him. Some of his writings had been
republished, and had brought him fame and fortune. In the accomplished
actress of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, known as Miss Howard, he had
met a sympathetic friend. It was she who had originally raised him from
the Slough of Despond, and had recalled him to his better self.
It is told of an Indian Prince who in prosperity was too much elevated
and in adversity too much depressed, that he gave notice that on his
forthcoming birthday the most acceptable present that any of his
courtiers could make him would be a sentence short enough to be engraved
on a ring, and suggesting a remedy for the grievance of which he
complained. Many phrases were accordingly proposed, but not one was
deemed satisfactory, till his daughter came forward and offered an
emerald on which were engraved two Arabic words, the literal translation
of which was, ‘This, too, will pass.’ Warren Hastings, who told the
story, adds how the sentence cheered him when on his trial in Westminster
Hall. It was thus Wentworth was upheld, and ‘This, too, will pass’ was
the thought that urged him on.