OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS
There is only one way to give life to the dead or the moribund, the way
of the Hebrew prophet,--to give it one's own. Theophilus Londonderry
instinctively knew this, and he began at once to breathe mightily
upon New Zion.
The goldsmith blows merrily all day through his little blowpipe, but it
is gold he is working on. The poet breathes upon the dictionary, and lo!
it flushes and breaks into flower. But then he is breathing on words.
The material of such artists is a joy in itself. They are workers in the
precious metals. Theophilus Londonderry had very different material to
mould,--an old chapel and some very dull humanity. Humanity is not a
precious metal, but if you know how to use it, it is excellent clay,--a
clay not without streaks of gold.
What was Theophilus Londonderry's purpose with his material, his will
towards the uncreated world over which his young vitalising spirit was
moving? To save it? Yes, incidentally; but primarily to express himself
by means of it, to set it vibrating to the rhythm of his nature, to set
it dancing to a tune of his piping. Already he was being stamped in gold
on Jenny's face. The coarser face of the world was to wear his smile
too. For the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. Who knows to
what coasts of fame the imperious ripples of his personality would
circle on before they touched the shores of death?
We may be polite as we please to humanity in the mass, and humanity in
occasional rarely encountered individuals is--well, divine; and to such
we gladly and humbly and rapturously pay divine honours. But in any
given thousand human beings, poor or rich, what would be your
calculation for the average of such divine,--how many faces would you
fall down and worship, how many hands would you care to take, how many
hearts would you dare to trust?
Alas, the rather good eyes must go so often with the disastrous chin,
the mouth succeed where the nose fails, the expansive impulse be checked
by the narrow habit, the little gleam of gold be lost in the clay.
Preponderant charm does not crowd into chapels or anywhere else to be
minted, it is busy on some vantage height of its own, impressing its own
image; and it is with minds maimed by the cruel machinery of life,
natures stunted and starved by adverse and innutritive condition, that
the artist in man must be satisfied. With what pathetic little flashes
of faculty, what fleeting and illusory glimpses of insight, what waifs
and strays of attractiveness, must he work and be happy, and with what
a thankfulness that the tenth rate is not twentieth or thirtieth!
Then, too, how often must the intractible material be impressed again
and again and again before it begins to wear the first trace of your
image. Once a poet has impressed himself with mastery upon words, the
impression remains for ever, the words do not disperse in idle crowds
when he has done speaking to them, never again to reassemble in a like
combination; whereas the greatest oratorical mover of men is doomed,
even after his most electrical self-impression, to see his image, as
soon as taken, fade away, with a shuffle of escaping feet and a scramble
for hats and cloaks. It was a masterpiece; but with the last touch, see,
the colours are flying in a hundred directions, and the very canvas
itself is off in a thousand threads of hurried disintegration!
But all this, of course, has to do entirely with the poetry of the
ministerial life; prosaic even as preaching and praying to the New
Zioners may sound, there was yet a drearier prose. For these artistic
materials had not only to be preached and prayed to,--they had to be in
a measure lived with, listened to, personally studied, and individually
considered. Each was an atom to be set in vibration, and each needed to
be set or kept going in his own way. All this prose had to be made help
in the poetry. How skilful you had to be to rouse the interest you
needed and escape the many interests you did not need, to awaken the
single gift without bringing upon you all the rest, to suffer the fool
wisely,--that is, to the extent of his tiny wisdom, and no more. To
encourage say Miss Annie Smith in her district-visiting--what a talent
she has for that!--but firmly to forget her at concerts; to welcome Mr.
Jones's services at collections, but gently to discourage him at prayer
meetings; in short, to meet all at the point where their natures were
really and usefully alive, but at no other point of their
circumferences.
However, nature had made this as easy as breathing to the Reverend
Theophilus, for, apart from his humour and good nature, he was a lover
of character for its own sake, and to the student of character there is
no such person as a bore. Brother Saunderson was no doubt as wearisome
an old man as the world holds, but his manner of neighing to the Lord in
prayer was worth it all. And it is rather a pity if the reader imagines
that to laugh at his neigh is to forget respect for his venerable faith.
Thus mightily, gently, cunningly, coaxingly, Theophilus Londonderry
breathed upon New Zion, and Eli Moggridge was a noble second, according
to his word. At every service of every kind, and at all times, he was
there, swelling out from a pewful of ruddy daughters, and endlessly
beaming round at his fellow-worshippers, as much as to say, "Didn't I
say he was the man for New Zion?"
The old channels were beginning to fill with the new spirit, the old
disused machinery was once more in motion. In two months' time every
possible form of meeting was in a healthy condition of attendance,
prayer-meeting, church-meeting, mothers' meeting, Bible class, Dorcas
society, Band of Hope, Sunday-school, all briskly in motion; and the
ladies, led by Jenny, were all as busy as bees over a bazaar. New Zion
had indeed become a veritable merry-go-round of religious and social
activities. Yes, it was beginning to move, indeed, it was almost
beginning to hum--another few months and it would fairly whizz, as Eli
Moggridge had foreseen; and the sound of the humming and the speed of
the whizzing would grow louder and louder and faster and faster, till
not merely Zion Place and Zion Alley and Zion Passage and Zion Street
heard it and were caught up in the infectious dance, but the very High
Street itself should hum and whizz.
The High Street! what are High Streets to the soul of Theophilus
Londonderry? What is Coalchester itself?--though that shall soon be
humming and whizzing too. This is but the whirling centre of the
ever-spreading wheel of force that has begun to turn at New Zion.
Coalchester will spin soon, and then the disappointed fields around it,
then the neighbouring towns would join the reel, and so on and on,
faster and faster, madder and madder, till even London itself moves, and
the world that changes its axis at the will of any strong spirit will
whirl its immeasurable velocities around the vortex pulpit of Theophilus
Londonderry.
Yes, the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion.