My earliest recollections are of a suburban street; of his jumble of
little shops and little terraces.
My mother was a widow. My father, whom I cannot recollect, was a small
retail tradesman in the city. He was unfortunate, and when he died, as
many small tradesmen do, of bad debts and a broken heart, he left us
beggars, and my mother came down and lived penuriously enough in that
suburban street.
My mother moved by rule and method; by God's law, as she considered, and
that only. She seldom smiled. She never commanded twice without
punishing. And yet she kept the strictest watch over our morality.
Sometimes on a Sunday evening the ministers of the Baptist chapel would
come in to supper after the meeting. The elder was a silver-haired old
man, who loved me; and I loved him, too, for there were always lollipops
in his pocket for me and for my only sister Susan. The other was a
younger man, tall and dark. He preached a harsher doctrine than his
gentler colleague, and was much the greater favourite at the chapel. I
hated him; and years later he married my sister.
When I had turned thirteen, my father's brother, who had risen in
wealth, and now was the owner of a first-rate grocery business in the
City and a pleasant villa at Herne Hill, and had a son preparing for
Cambridge, came to visit us. When he had gone my mother told me, very
solemnly and slowly, that I was to be sent to a tailor's workrooms the
next day.
What could my uncle make me but a tailor--or a shoemaker? A pale,
consumptive boy, all forehead and no muscle.
With a beating heart I shambled along by my mother's side to Mr. Smith's
shop, in a street off Piccadilly, and here Mr. Smith handed me over to
Mr. Jones, the foreman, with instructions to "take the young man
upstairs to the workroom."
I stumbled after Mr. Jones up a dark, narrow, iron staircase till we
emerged through a trap-door into a garret at the top of the house. I
recoiled with disgust at the scene before me; and here I was to
work--perhaps through life! A low room, stifling me with the combined
odours of human breath and perspiration, stale beer, the sweet sickly
smell of gin, and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new cloth.
On the floor, thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends of
thread, sat some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, with a mingled
look of care and recklessness that made me shudder. The windows were
tight-closed to keep out the cold winter air, and the condensed breath
ran in streams down the panes.
The foreman turned to one of the men, and said, "Here, Crossthwaite,
take this younker and make a tailor of him. Keep him next you, and prick
him with your needle if he shirks."
Mechanically, as if in a dream, I sat down, and as the foreman vanished
a burst of chatter rose. A tall, sharp-nosed young man bawled in my ear,
"I say, young 'un, do you know why we're nearer heaven here than our
neighbours?"
"Why?" I asked.
"Acause we're the top of the house in the first place, and next place
yer'll die here six months sooner nor if yer worked in the room below.
Concentrated essence of man's flesh is this here as you're a-breathing.
Cellar workroom we calls Rheumatic Ward, acause of the damp. Ground
floor's Fever Ward--your nose'd tell yer why if you opened the back
windy. First floor's Ashmy Ward--don't you hear 'um now through the
cracks in the boards, apuffing away like a nest of young locomotives?
And this here most august and uppercrust cock-loft is the Consumptive
Hospital. First you begins to cough, then you proceeds to expectorate,
and then when you've sufficiently covered the poor dear shivering backs
of the hairystocracy--
Die, die, die,
Away you fly,
Your soul is in the sky!
as the hinspired Shakespeare wittily remarks."
And the ribald lay down on his back, stretched himself out, and
pretended to die in a fit of coughing, which last was, alas! no
counterfeit, while poor I, shocked and bewildered, let my tears fall
fast upon my knees.
I never told my mother into what pandemonium I had fallen, but from that
time my great desire was to get knowledge. I fancied that getting
knowledge I should surely get wisdom, and books, I thought, would tell
me all I needed.
That was how it was I came to know Sandy Mackaye, whose old book-shop I
used to pass on my walk homeward. One evening, as I was reading one of
the books on his stall, the old man called me in and asked me abruptly
my name, and trade, and family.
I told him all, and confessed my love of books. And Mackaye encouraged
me, and taught me Latin, and soon had me to lodge in his old shop, for
my mother in her stern religion would not have me at home because I
could not believe in the Christianity which I heard preached in the
Baptist chapel.
_II.--I Move Among the Gentlefolks_
The death of our employer threw many of us out of work, for the son who
succeeded to the business determined to go ahead with the times, and to
that end decided to go in for the "show-trade"; which meant an
alteration in the premises, the demolition of the work-rooms, and the
giving out of the work to be made up at the men's own homes.
Mackaye would have me stay with him.
"Ye'll just mind the shop, and dust the books whiles," he said.
But this I would not do, for I thought the old man could not afford to
keep me in addition to himself. Then he suggested that I should go to
Cambridge and see my cousin, with a view to getting the poems published
which I had been writing ever since I started tailoring.
"He's bound to it by blude," said Sandy; "and I'm thinking ye'd better
try to get a list o' subscribers."
So to Cambridge I went.
It was some time since I had seen my cousin George, and at our last
meeting he had taken me to the Dulwich Gallery. It was there that two
young ladies, one so beautiful that I was dazzled, and an elderly
clergyman, whom my cousin told me was a dean, had spoken to me about the
pictures, and that interview marked a turning point in my life. When I
got to Cambridge, and had found my cousin's rooms, I was received kindly
enough.
"You couldn't have got on at tailoring--much too sharp a fellow for
that," he said, on hearing my story. "You ought to be at college, if one
could only get you there. Those poems of yours--you must let me have
them and look over them, and I dare say I shall be able to persuade the
governor to do something with them."
Lord Lynedale came to my cousin's rooms next day--George told me plainly
that he made friends with those who would advance him when he was a
clergyman--and taking an interest in a self-educated author, bade me
bring my poems to the Eagle and ask for Dean Winnstay. Lord Lynedale was
to marry Dean Winnstay's niece. When I arrived at the Eagle, the first
person I saw was Lillian--for so her father, the dean, called her--the
younger lady, my heroine of the Dulwich Gallery, looking more beautiful
than ever. I could have fallen down--fool that I was!--and worshipped--
what? I could not tell you, for I cannot tell even now.
The dean smiled recognition, bade me sit down, and disposed my papers on
his knee. I obeyed him, trembling, my eyes devouring my idol, forgetting
why I had come, seeing nothing but her, listening for nothing but the
opening of those lips.
"I think I may tell you at once that I am very much surprised and
gratified with your poems," said the old gentleman.
"How very fond of beautiful things you must be, Mr. Locke," said
Lillian, "to be able to describe so passionately the longing after
them!"
I stammered out something about working-men having very few
opportunities of indulging the taste for--I forget what.
"Ah, yes! I dare say it must be a very stupid life. So little
opportunity, as he says. What a pity he is a tailor, papa! Such an
unimaginative employment! How delightful it would be to send him to
college and make him a clergyman!"
Fool that I was! I fancied--what did I not fancy?--never seeing how that
very "_he_" bespoke the indifference--the gulf between us. I was not a
man, an equal, but a thing--a subject, who was to be talked over and
examined, and made into something like themselves, of their supreme and
undeserved benevolence.
"Gently! Gently, fair lady!" said the dean. "We must not be as headlong
as some people would kindly wish to be. If this young man really has a
proper desire to rise to a higher station, and I find him a fit object
to be assisted in that praiseworthy ambition, why, I think he ought to
go to some training college. Now attend to me, sir! Recollect, if it
should be in our power to assist your prospects in life, you must give
up, once and for all, the bitter tone against the higher classes which I
am sorry to see in your MSS. Next, I think of showing these MSS. to my
publisher, to get opinion as to whether they are worth printing just
now. Not that it is necessary that you should be a poet. Most active
minds write poetry at a certain age. I wrote a good deal, I recollect,
myself. But that is no reason for publishing."
At this point Lillian fled the room, to my extreme disgust. But still
the old man prosed.
"I think, therefore, that you had better stay with your cousin for the
next week. I hear from Lord Lynedale that he is a very studious, moral,
rising young man, and I only hope that you will follow his good example.
At the end of the week I shall return home, and then I shall be glad to
see more of you at my house at D----. Good-morning!"
My cousin and I stayed at D---- long enough for the dean to get a reply
from the publishers concerning my poems. They thought that the sale of
the book might be greatly facilitated if certain passages of a strong
political tendency were omitted; they were somewhat too strong for the
present state of the public taste.
On the dean's advice, I weakly consented to have the book emasculated.
Next day I returned to town, for Sandy Mackaye had written me a
characteristic note telling me that he could deposit any trash I had
written in a paper called the "Weekly Warwhoop."
Before I went from D----, my cousin George warned me not to pay so much
attention to Miss Lillian if I wished to stand well with Eleanor, the
dean's niece, who was to marry Lord Lynedale. He left me suspecting that
he had remarked Eleanor's wish to cool my admiration for Lillian, and
was willing, for his own purposes, to further it.
_III.--Riot and Imprisonment_
At last my poems were printed and published, and I enjoyed the sensation
of being a real live author. What was more, my book "took" and sold, and
was reviewed favourably in journals and newspapers.
It struck me that it would be right to call upon the dean, and so I went
to his house off Harley Street. The good old man congratulated me on my
success, and I saw Lillian, and sat in a delirium of silent joy. Lord
Lynedale had become Lord Ellerton, and I listened to the praises that
were sung of the newly married couple--for Eleanor had become Lady
Ellerton, and had entered fully into all her husband's magnificent
philanthropic schemes--a helpmeet, if not an oracular guide.
After this, I had an invitation to tea in Lillian's own hand, and then
came terrible news that Lord Ellerton had been killed by a fall from his
horse, and that the dean and Miss Winnstay had left London; and for
three years I saw them no more.
What happened in those three years?
Mackaye had warned me not to follow after vanity. He was a Chartist, and
with him and Crossthwaite, my old fellow-workman, I was vowed to the
Good Cause of the Charter. Now I found that I had fallen under
suspicion.
"Can you wonder if our friends suspect you?" said Crossthwaite. "Can you
deny that you've been off and on lately between flunkeydom and the
Cause, like a donkey between two bundles of hay? Have you not neglected
our meetings? Have you not picked all the spice out of your poems?
Though Sandy is too kind-hearted to tell you, you have disappointed us
both miserably, and there's the long and short of it."
I hid my face in my hands. My conscience told me that I had nothing to
answer.
Mackaye, to spare me, went on to talk of the agricultural distress, and
Crossthwaite explained that he wanted to send a deputation down to the
country to spread the principles of the Charter.
"I will go," I said, starting up. "They shall see I do care for the
Cause. Where is the place?"
"About ten miles from D----."
"D----!" My heart sank. If it had been any other spot! But it was too
late to retract.
With many instructions from our friends and warnings from Mackaye, I
started next day on my journey. I arrived in the midst of a dreary,
treeless country, and a little pert, snub-nosed shoemaker met me, and we
walked together across the open down towards a circular camp, the
earthwork, probably, of some old British town.
Inside it, some thousand or so of labouring people, all wan and haggard,
with many women among them, were swarming restlessly round a single
large block of stone.
I made my way to the stone, and listened as speaker after speaker poured
out a string of incoherent complaints. Only the intense earnestness gave
any force to the speeches.
I noticed that many of the crowd carried heavy sticks, and pitchforks,
and other tools which might be used as fearful weapons; and when a
fierce man with a squint asked who would be willing to come "and pull
the farm about the folks' ears," I felt that now or never was the time
for me to speak. If once the spirit of mad, aimless riot broke loose, I
had not only no chance of a hearing, but every likelihood of being
implicated in deeds which I abhorred.
I sprang on the stone, assured them of the sympathy of the London
working-men, and explained the idea of the Charter.
To all which they answered surlily that they did not know anything about
politics--that what they wanted was bread.
In vain I went on, more vehement than ever; the only answer was that
they wanted bread. "And bread we will have!"
"Go, then!" I cried, losing my self-possession. "Go, and get bread!
After all, you have a right to it. There are rights above all laws, and
the right to live is one."
I had no time to finish. The murmur swelled into a roar for "Bread!
Bread!" And amid yells and execrations, the whole mass poured down the
hill, sweeping me away with them. I was shocked and terrified at their
threats. I shouted myself hoarse about the duty of honesty; warned them
against pillage and violence; but my voice was drowned in the uproar. I
felt I had helped to excite them, and dare not, in honour, desert them;
and trembling, I went on, prepared to see the worst.
A large mass of farm buildings lay before us, and the mob rushed
tumultuously into the yard--just in time to see an old man on horseback
gallop hatless away.
"The old rascal's gone! And he'll call up the yeomanry! We must be
quick, boys!" shouted one.
The invaders entered the house, and returned, cramming their mouths with
bread, and chopping asunder flitches of bacon. The granary doors were
broken open, and the contents were scrambled for, amid immense waste, by
the starving wretches.
Soon the yard was a pandemonium, as the more ruffianly part of the mob
hurled furniture out of windows, or ran off with anything they could
carry. The ricks had been fired, and the food of man, the labour of
years, devoured in aimless ruin, when some one shouted: "The yeomanry!"
And at that sound a general panic ensued.
I did not care to run. I was utterly disgusted, disappointed, with
myself--the people. I just recollect the tramp of the yeomanry horses,
and a clear blade gleaming in the air, and after that I recollect
nothing--till I awoke and found myself lying on a truckle-bed in D----
gaol, and a warder wrapping my head with wet towels.
Mackaye engaged an old compatriot as attorney at the trial, and I was
congratulated on "only getting three years."
The weary time went by. Week after week, month after month, summer after
summer, I scored the days off, like a lonely schoolboy, on the pages of
a calendar.
Not till I was released did I learn from Sandy Mackaye that my cousin
George was the vicar of his church, and that he was about to marry
Lillian Winnstay.
_IV.--In Exile_
Brave old Sandy Mackaye died on the morning of the tenth of April, 1848,
the day of the great Chartist demonstration at Kennington Common.
Mackaye had predicted failure, and every one of his predictions came
true. The people did not rise. Whatever sympathy they had with us, they
did not care to show it. The meeting broke up pitiably piecemeal,
drenched and cowed, body and soul, by pouring rain.
That same night, after wandering dispiritedly in the streets by the
river, I was sick with typhus fever.
I know not for how long my dreams and delirium lasted, but I know that
at last I sank into a soft, weary, happy sleep.
Then the spell was snapped. My fever and my dreams faded away together,
and I woke to the twittering of the sparrows and the scent of the
poplars, and found Eleanor, Lady Ellerton, and her uncle sitting by my
bed, and with them Crossthwaite's little wife.
I would have spoken, but Eleanor laid her finger on her lips, and taking
her uncle's arm, glided from the room.
Slowly, and with relapses into insensibility, I passed, like one who
recovers from drowning, through the painful gate of birth into another
life.
Crossthwaite and his wife, as they sat by me, tender and careful nurses
both, told me in time that to Eleanor I owed all my comforts. "She's an
angel out of heaven," he said. "Ah, Alton, she was your true friend all
the time, and not that other one, if you had but known it."