Since I came home from dining with Mr. Morier, I have been writing a
letter to Mr. T. Carlyle and thinking about other things as well as the
letter all the time; and I have read over a letter I received to-day
which apologizes for everything and whereof the tremulous author
ceaselessly doubts and misgives. Who knows whether she is not converted
by Joseph Bullar by this time. She is a sister of mine, and her name is
God bless her.
_Wednesday_.--I was at work until seven o'clock; not to very much
purpose, but executing with great labour and hardship the day's work.
Then I went to dine with Dr. Hall, the crack doctor here, a literate
man, a traveller, and otherwise a kind bigwig. After dinner we went to
hear Mr. Sortain lecture, of whom you may perhaps have heard me speak,
as a great, remarkable orator and preacher of the Lady Huntingdon
Connexion. (The paper is so greasy that I am forced to try several pens
and manners of handwriting, but none will do.) We had a fine lecture,
with brilliant Irish metaphors and outbursts of rhetoric, addressed to
an assembly of mechanics, shopboys, and young women, who could not, and
perhaps had best not, understand that flashy speaker. It was about the
origin of nations he spoke, one of those big themes on which a man may
talk eternally and with a never-ending outpouring of words; and he
talked magnificently, about the Arabs for the most part, and tried to
prove that because the Arabs acknowledged their descent from Ishmael, or
Esau, therefore the Old Testament history was true. But the Arabs may
have had Esau for a father and yet the bears may not have eaten up the
little children for quizzing Elisha's bald head. As I was writing to
Carlyle last night (I haven't sent the letter as usual, and shall not
most likely), Saint Stephen was pelted to death by Old Testaments, and
our Lord was killed like a felon by the law, which He came to repeal. I
was thinking about Joseph Bullar's doctrine after I went to bed, founded
on what I cannot but think a blasphemous asceticism, which has obtained
in the world ever so long, and which is disposed to curse, hate, and
undervalue the world altogether. Why should we? What we see here of this
world is but an expression of God's will, so to speak--a beautiful earth
and sky and sea--beautiful affections and sorrows, wonderful changes and
developments of creations, suns rising, stars shining, birds singing,
clouds and shadows changing and fading, people loving each other,
smiling and crying, the multiplied phenomena of Nature, multiplied in
fact and fancy, in Art and Science, in every way that a man's intellect
or education or imagination can be brought to bear.--And who is to say
that we are to ignore all this, or not value them and love them,
because there is another unknown world yet to come? Why, that unknown
future world is but a manifestation of God Almighty's Will, and a
development of Nature, neither more nor less than this in which we are,
and an angel glorified or a sparrow on a gutter are equally parts of His
creation. The light upon all the saints in heaven is just as much and no
more God's work, as the sun which shall shine to-morrow upon this
infinitesimal speck of creation, and under which I shall read, please
God, a letter from my kindest Lady and friend. About my future state I
don't know; I leave it in the disposal of the awful Father--but for
to-day I thank God that I can love you, and that you yonder and others
besides are thinking of me with a tender regard. Hallelujah may be
greater in degree than this, but not in kind, and countless ages of
stars may be blazing infinitely, but you and I have a right to rejoice
and believe in our little part and to trust in to-day as in to-morrow.
God bless my dear lady and her husband. I hope you are asleep now, and I
must go too, for the candles are just winking out.
_Thursday_.--I am glad to see among the new inspectors, in the Gazette
in this morning's papers, my old acquaintance Longueville Jones, an
excellent, worthy, lively, accomplished fellow, whom I like the better
because he flung up his fellow and tutorship at Cambridge in order to
marry on nothing a year. He worked in Galignani's newspaper for ten
francs a day, very cheerfully, ten years ago, since when he has been a
schoolmaster, taken pupils, or bid for them, and battled manfully with
fortune. William will be sure to like him, I think, he is so honest and
cheerful. I have sent off my letters to Lady Ashburton this morning,
ending with some pretty phrases about poor old C.B., whose fate affects
me very much, so much that I feel as if I were making my will and
getting ready to march too. Well, ma'am, I have as good a right to
presentiments as you have, and to sickly fancies and despondencies; but
I should like to see before I die, and think of it daily more and more,
the commencement of Jesus Christ's Christianism in the world, where I am
sure people may be made a hundred times happier than by its present
forms, Judaism, asceticism, Bullarism. I wonder will He come again and
tell it us? We are taught to be ashamed of our best feelings all our
life. I don't want to blubber upon everybody's shoulders; but to have a
good will for all, and a strong, very strong regard for a few, which I
shall not be ashamed to own to them.... It is near upon three o'clock,
and I am getting rather anxious about the post from Southampton via
London. Why, if it doesn't come in, you won't get any letter to-morrow,
no, nothing--and I made so sure. Well, I will try and go to work, it is
only one more little drop. God bless you, dear lady.
_Friday_.--I have had a good morning's work, and at two o'clock comes
your letter; dear friend, thank you. What a coward I was! I will go and
walk and be happy for an hour, it is a grand frosty sunshine. To-morrow
morning early back to London.
* * * * *
Madam's letter made a very agreeable appearance upon the breakfast-table
this morning when I entered that apartment at eleven o'clock. I don't
know how I managed to sleep so much, but such was the fact--after a fine
broiling hot day's utter idleness, part of which was spent on a sofa, a
little in the Tuillery gardens, where I made a sketch that's not a
masterpiece, but p'raps Madam will like to see it: and the evening very
merrily with the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Journal des Débats_, and
Jules Janin at a jolly little restaurateur's at the Champs Elysées at
the sign of the Petit Moulin Rouge. We had a private room and drank
small wine very gaily, looking out into a garden full of green arbours,
in almost every one of which were gentlemen and ladies in couples come
to dine _au frais_, and afterwards to go and dance at the neighbouring
dancing garden of Mabille. Fiddlers and singers came and performed for
us: and who knows I should have gone to Mabille too, but there came down
a tremendous thunderstorm, with flashes of lightning to illuminate it,
which sent the little couples out of the arbours, and put out all the
lights of Mabille. The day before I passed with my aunt and cousins, who
are not so pretty as some members of the family, but are dear good
people, with a fine sense of fun, and we were very happy until the
arrival of two newly married snobs, whose happiness disgusted me and
drove me home early to find three acquaintances smoking in the moonlight
at the hotel door, who came up and passed the night in my rooms. No, I
forgot, I went to the play first; but only for an hour--I couldn't stand
more than an hour of the farce, which made me laugh while it lasted, but
left a profound black melancholy behind it. Janin said last night that
life was the greatest of pleasures to him; that every morning, when he
woke, he was thankful to be alive; that he was always entirely happy,
and had never known any such thing as blue devils, or repentance, or
satiety. I had great fun giving him authentic accounts of London. I told
him that to see the people boxing in the streets was a constant source
of amusement to us; that in November you saw every lamp-post on London
Bridge with a man hanging from it who had committed suicide--and he
believed everything. Did you ever read any of the works of Janin?--No?
well, he has been for twenty years famous in France, and he on his side
has never heard of the works of Titmarsh, nor has anybody else here, and
that's a comfort. I have got very nice rooms, but they cost ten francs a
day: and I began in a dignified manner with a _domestique de place_, but
sent him away after two days: for the idea that he was in the anteroom
ceaselessly with nothing to do made my life in my own room intolerable,
and now I actually take my own letters to the post. I went to the
exhibition: it was full of portraits of the most hideous women, with
inconceivable spots on their faces, of which I think I've told you my
horror, and scarcely six decent pictures in the whole enormous
collection; but I had never been in the Tuilleries before, and it was
curious to go through the vast dingy rooms by which such a number of
dynasties have come in and gone out--Louis XVI., Napoleon, Charles X.,
Louis Philippe, have all marched in state up the staircase with the gilt
balustrades, and come tumbling down again presently.--Well, I won't give
you an historical disquisition in the Titmarsh manner upon this, but
reserve it for _Punch_--for whom on Thursday an article that I think is
quite unexampled for dullness even in that journal, and that beats the
dullest Jerrold. What a jaunty, off-hand, satiric rogue I am to be
sure--and a gay young dog! I took a very great liking and admiration for
Clough. He is a real poet, and a simple, affectionate creature. Last
year we went to Blenheim--from Oxford (it was after a stay at
Cl----ved----n C----rt, the seat of Sir C---- E----n B----t), and I
liked him for sitting down in the inn yard and beginning to teach a
child to read off a bit of _Punch_, which was lying on the ground.
Subsequently he sent me his poems, which were rough but contain the
real, genuine, sacred flame I think. He is very learned: he has
evidently been crossed in love: he gave up his fellowship and
university prospects on religious scruples. He is one of those thinking
men who, I dare say, will begin to speak out before many years are over,
and protest against Gothic Christianity--that is, I think he is. Did you
read in F. Newman's book? There speaks a very pious, loving, humble soul
I think, with an ascetical continence too--and a beautiful love and
reverence. I'm a publican and sinner, but I believe those men are on the
true track.
* * * * *
And is W. Bullar going to work upon you with his "simple mysticism"? I
don't know about the unseen world; the use of the seen world is the
right thing I'm sure!--it is just as much God's world and creation as
the Kingdom of Heaven with all the angels. How will you make yourself
most happy in it? How secure at least the greatest amount of happiness
compatible with your condition? by despising to-day, and looking up
cloudward? Pish. Let us turn God's to-day to its best use, as well as
any other part of the time He gives us. When I am on a cloud a-singing,
or a pot boiling--I will do my best, and, if you are ill, you can have
consolations; if you have disappointments, you can invent fresh sources
of hope and pleasure. I'm glad you saw the Crowes, and that they gave
you pleasure;--and that noble poetry of Alfred's gives you pleasure (I'm
happy to say, ma'am, I've said the very same thing in prose that you
like--the very same words almost). The bounties of the Father I believe
to be countless and inexhaustible for most of us here in life; Love the
greatest. Art (which is an exquisite and admiring sense of nature) the
next.--- By Jove! I'll admire, if I can, the wing of a cock-sparrow as
much as the pinion of an archangel; and adore God, the Father of the
earth, first; waiting for the completion of my senses, and the
fulfilment of His intentions towards me afterwards, when this scene
closes over us. So, when Bullar turns up his eye to the ceiling, I'll
look straight at your dear, kind face and thank God for knowing that, my
dear; and, though my nose is a broken pitcher, yet, Lo and behold,
there's a well gushing over with kindness in my heart where my dear lady
may come and drink. God bless you,--and William and little Magdalene.
ODOURS AND MOUSTACHES
[Sidenote: _Montaigne_]
The simplest and merely natural smells are most pleasing unto me; which
care ought chiefly to concerne women. In the verie heart of Barbarie,
the Scithian women, after they have washed themselves, did sprinkle,
dawbe, and powder all their bodies and faces over with a certain
odoriferous drug that groweth in their countrie: which dust and dawbing
being taken away, when they come neere men, or their husbands, they
remaine verie cleane, and with a verie sweet savouring perfume. What
odour soever it be, it is strange to see what hold it will take on me,
and how apt my skin is to receive it. He that complaineth against
nature, that she hath not created man with a fit instrument, to carrie
sweet smells fast-tied to his nose, is much to blame; for they carrie
themselves. As for me in particular, my mostachoes, which are verie
thick, serve me for that purpose. Let me but approach my gloves or my
hand kercher to them, their smell will sticke upon them a whole day.
They manifest the place I come from. The close-smacking,
sweetnesse-moving, love-alluring, and greedi-smirking kisses of youth,
were heretofore wont to sticke on them many houres after; yet I am
little subject to those popular diseases that are taken by conversation
and bred by the contagion of the ayre: And I have escaped those of my
time of which there hath beene many and severall kinds, both in the
Townes, about me, and in our Armie: We read of Socrates that during the
time of many plagues and relapses of the pestilence, which so often
infested the Citie of Athens, he never forsooke or went out of the
Towne: yet was he the only man that was never infected, or that felt any
sickness.
FROM THE BALLAD À-LA-MODE
[Sidenote: _Austin Dobson_]
"Ah, Phillis! cruel Phillis!
(I heard a shepherd say)
You hold me with your eyes, and yet
You bid me--Go my way!"
"Ah, Colin! foolish Colin!
(The maiden answered so)
If that be all, the ill is small,
I close them--You may go!"
But when her eyes she opened
(Although the sun it shone),
She found the shepherd had not stirred--
"Because the light was gone!"
Ah, Cupid! wanton Cupid!
'Twas ever thus your way:
When maids would bid you ply your wings,
You find excuse to stay!
DREAMTHORP
[Sidenote: _Alexander Smith_]
I do not think that Mr. Buckle could have written his "History of
Civilisation" in Dreamthorp, because in it books, conversation, and the
other appurtenances of intellectual life are not to be procured. I am
acquainted with birds, and the building of nests--with wildflowers, and
the seasons in which they blow,--but with the big world far away, with
what men and women are thinking, and doing, and saying, I am acquainted
only through the _Times_, and the occasional magazine or review, sent by
friends whom I have not looked upon for years, but by whom, it seems, I
am not yet forgotten. The village has but few intellectual wants, and
the intellectual supply is strictly measured by the demand. Still, there
is something. Down in the village, and opposite the curiously carved
fountain, is a schoolroom which can accommodate a couple of hundred
people on a pinch. There are our public meetings held. Musical
entertainments have been given there by a single performer. In that
schoolroom last winter an American biologist terrified the villagers,
and, to their simple understandings, mingled up the next world with
this. Now and again some rare bird of an itinerant lecturer covers dead
walls with posters, yellow and blue, and to that schoolroom we flock to
hear him. His rounded periods the eloquent gentleman devolves amidst a
respectful silence. His audience do not understand him, but they see
that the clergyman does, and the doctor does; and so they are content,
and look as attentive and wise as possible. Then, in connection with the
schoolroom, there is a public library, where books are exchanged once a
month. This library is a kind of Greenwich Hospital for disabled novels
and romances. Each of these books has been in the wars; some are
unquestionably antiques. The tears of three generations have fallen upon
their dusky pages. The heroes and the heroines are of another age than
ours. Sir Charles Grandison is standing with his hat under his arm. Tom
Jones plops from the tree into the water, to the infinite distress of
Sophia. Moses comes home from market with his stock of shagreen
spectacles. Lovers, warriors, and villains,--as dead to the present
generation of readers as Cambyses,--are weeping, fighting, and
intriguing. These books, tattered and torn as they are, are read with
delight to-day. The viands are celestial, if set forth on a dingy
table-cloth. The gaps and chasms which occur in pathetic or perilous
chapters are felt to be personal calamities. It is with a certain
feeling of tenderness that I look upon these books; I think of the dead
fingers that have turned over the leaves, of the dead eyes that have
travelled along the lines. An old novel has a history of its own. When
fresh and new, and before it had breathed its secret, it lay on my
lady's table. She killed the weary day with it, and when night came it
was placed beneath her pillow. At the sea-side a couple of foolish
heads have bent over it, hands have touched and tingled, and it has
heard vows and protestations as passionate as any its pages contained.
Coming down in the world, Cinderella in the kitchen has blubbered over
it by the light of a surreptitious candle, conceiving herself the while
the magnificent Georgiana, and Lord Mordaunt, Georgiana's lover, the
pot-boy round the corner. Tied up with many a dingy brother, the
auctioneer knocks the bundle down to the bidder of a few pence, and it
finds its way to the quiet cove of some village library, where with some
difficulty--as if from want of teeth--and with numerous
interruptions--as if from lack of memory--it tells its old stories, and
wakes tears, and blushes, and laughter as of yore. Thus it spends its
age, and in a few years it will become unintelligible, and then, in the
dust-bin, like poor human mortals in the grave, it will rest from all
its labours. It is impossible to estimate the benefit which such books
have conferred. How often have they loosed the chain of circumstances!
What unfamiliar tears--what unfamiliar laughter they have caused! What
chivalry and tenderness they have infused into rustic lovers! Of what
weary hours they have cheated and beguiled their readers! The big,
solemn history-books are in excellent preservation; the story-books are
defaced and frayed, and their out-of-elbows condition is their pride,
and the best justification of their existence.
In this pleasant summer weather I hold my audience in my garden rather
than in my house. In all my interviews the sun is a third party. Every
village has its Fool, and of course Dreamthorp is not without one. Him I
get to run my messages for me, and he occasionally turns my garden
borders with a neat hand enough. He and I hold frequent converse, and
people here, I have been told, think we have certain points of sympathy.
Although this is not meant for a compliment, I take it for one. The
poor, faithful creature's brain has strange visitors: now 'tis fun, now
wisdom, and now something which seems in the queerest way a compound of
both. He lives in a kind of twilight which observes objects, and his
remarks seem to come from another world than that in which ordinary
people live. He is the only original person of my acquaintance; his
views of life are his own, and form a singular commentary on those
generally accepted. He is dull enough at times, poor fellow; but anon he
startles you with something, and you think he must have wandered out of
Shakespeare's plays into this out-of-the-way place. Up from the village
now and then comes to visit me the tall, gaunt, atrabilious
confectioner, who has a hankering after Red-republicanism, and the
destruction of Queen, Lords, and Commons. Guy Fawkes is, I believe, the
only martyr in his calendar. The sourest-tempered man, I think, that
ever engaged in the manufacture of sweetmeats. I wonder that the oddity
of the thing never strikes himself. To be at all consistent, he should
put poison in his lozenges, and become the Herod of the village
innocents. One of his many eccentricities is a love for flowers, and he
visits me often to have a look at my greenhouse and my borders. I listen
to his truculent and revolutionary speeches, and take my revenge by
sending the gloomy egotist away with a nosegay in his hand, and a
gay-coloured flower stuck in a button-hole. He goes quite unconscious of
my floral satire.
The village clergyman and the village doctor are great friends of mine;
they come to visit me often, and smoke a pipe with me in my garden. The
twain love and respect each other, but they regard the world from
different points of view, and I am now and again made witness of a
good-humoured passage of arms. The clergyman is old, unmarried, and a
humorist. His sallies and his gentle eccentricities seldom provoke
laughter, but they are continually awakening the pleasantest smiles.
Perhaps what he has seen of the world, its sins, its sorrows, its
death-beds, its widows and orphans, has tamed his spirit, and put a
tenderness into his wit. I do not think I have ever encountered a man
who so adorns his sacred profession. His pious, devout nature produces
sermons just as naturally as my apple-trees produce apples. He is a tree
that flowers every Sunday. Very beautiful is his reverence for the Book,
his trust in it; through long acquaintance, its ideas have come to
colour his entire thought, and you come upon its phrases in his
ordinary speech. He is more himself in the pulpit than anywhere else,
and you get nearer him in his sermons than you do sitting with him at
his tea-table, or walking with him on the country roads. He does not
feel confined in his orthodoxy; in it he is free as a bird in the air.
The doctor is, I conceive, as good a Christian as the clergyman, but he
is impatient of pale or limit; he never comes to a fence without feeling
a desire to get over it. He is a great hunter of insects, and he thinks
that the wings of his butterflies might yield very excellent texts; he
is fond of geology, and cannot, especially when he is in the company of
the clergyman, resist the temptation of hurling a fossil at Moses. He
wears his scepticism as a coquette wears her ribbons--to annoy if he
cannot subdue--and, when his purpose is served, he puts his scepticism
aside--as the coquette puts her ribbons. Great arguments arise between
them, and the doctor loses his field through his loss of temper, which,
however, he regains before any harm is done. For the worthy man is
irascible withal, and opposition draws fire from him.
TWO OLD GENTLEMEN
[Sidenote: _H.B._]
Old Joe, who has been a pirate, a buffalo-hunter, a soldier, a
pastrycook, and a seller of bootlaces, collar-studs, and tie-clips in
the London gutters, sits paralysed in his grandfather chair, which has a
thin pad strung to the back and a flattened cushion on the seat, and
declares, vainly trying to keep his tongue inside his mouth, and with
his whole body shaken by paralysis, that he is happy and jolly.
"Happy and jolly," roars Joe, struggling with his frightful stammer. "It
'tain't no good bein' nuffin kelse. Why, I've been dead and pretty near
buried. In Charing-crost 'orspital; yerse! I heard 'em say, 'He's a
gonner,' and I couldn't give 'em the lie. I come to, wrapped up like a
mummy, and hollered so as they pretty near 'opped out of their skins!
Ho, I've had a terrible life! Run over by a horse and van. Knocked all
to pieces. Been to the bottom of the sea! Many a time. But here I am,
happy and jolly. What's the odds?" He goes off into such a fit of
laughter that the chair is shaken and he himself nearly suffocated by a
cough like an earthquake.
He looks extremely like one of those lay figures employed by
ventriloquists. He is a thin, flat, pasteboard-looking old fellow; his
trousers hang over the edge of his chair apparently empty of legs, and
his shirt and open waistcoat (he never wears a coat) are pressed flat
against the high back of the chair, apparently empty of trunk. His body
and his features are for ever on the jerk. His shoulders twitch. He is
for ever laughing and gurgling. He is for ever struggling to say
something important, ending in a great spluttering stammer and a roar of
tremendous laughter.
For all he is eighty-two years of age, his hair is yet thick, and the
blackness of it is of too stubborn an order ever to go more than
iron-grey. He has glassy eyes, puffed and bagged with flesh; heavy black
eyebrows half-way up his sloping forehead; a heavy black moustache under
his strong nose; a tongue several sizes too large for his mouth; and
under the mouth a chin which recedes so sharply that it becomes neck
before you are really aware that it is chin. He reminds us a little, as
he sits there laughing and chuckling, of early caricatures of Sir
Redvers Buller.
Opposite Old Joe sits Mr. Wells, a little old white-haired gentleman,
very spruce and tidy, with neatly clipped moustache and neatly pointed
beard, and peering little cloudy eyes which are sightless.
* * * * *
The two old gentlemen, as they are called, live together in a tiny
two-roomed house in a narrow flagged court which is generally strung
with washing. The low-roofed kitchen is their sitting-room, and its
smoky-panelled walls are decorated only with church almanacs and a few
faded photographs.
The room is beautifully clean, and so is the bedroom above, where the
two pensioners sleep in neat little beds. Out of the money allowed them
by a neighbouring church--some nine shillings a week between the
two--they pay a woman five shillings a week "to do for them." As for
themselves, they smoke their pipes in front of the fire, and laugh to
find themselves, after much rough work on the high seas, so happy and
jolly at the end of their days.
"It wasn't always as clean as this, you must understand," says Mr. Wells
confidentially, his sightless eyes blinking with amusement. "When we
first come here the place was simply swarming; swarming it was--you
know, _gentlemen in the overcoats_ we call 'em down here. And the
amusing thing was--there, I did laugh!--Joe could see 'em but couldn't
catch 'em, and I, who might have caught 'em, couldn't see 'em." He leans
over to Joe and shouts, "I was telling the genneman about the bugs when
we first came here!" And Joe lifts his eyebrows, rubs his shoulder
against his chair, and laughs, and says with his pipe in his mouth,
"Ess, sir!" making a pantomimic gesture supposed to represent the
slaughter of vermin.
Little Mr. Wells has a great and fundamental pride in the fact that he
is "eight year younger nor what Joe is." He tells you this interesting
fact more than once, speaking in his wonted low tone of voice, reaching
out with his pipe between his fingers to touch you lightly with his
elbow, and always concluding with the appeal, "You wouldn't think so,
would you?" And then, as the pipe goes back to his mouth, "Well, it is
so," he says, and nods his head at the fire. And Old Joe, who doesn't
care a brass farden, or a bone button for that matter, whether he is
eighty-two or one hundred and eighty-two, has his point of pride in the
certain conviction that if only he had the use of his legs he would be
as strong now as ever he was.
* * * * *
Now, old Joe, for all he is paralysed, has the use of his eyes, whereas
Mr. Wells, who can and does shuffle about pretty freely on his feet, has
not got the use of his.
Joe's sight is a great blessing to him; he can read. He has a sturdy
taste in literature, and will stand none of your milk-and-water stuff.
He likes fighting, plenty of that: and Red Indians, and duels, and
murders, and shipwrecks, and fires, and sudden deaths. He requires of
his author that he keep his mind steeped perpetually in blood and
thunder. You will always find that Old Joe is sitting on a penny
novelette, open at the place, and but little crumpled or creased from
the impress of his skeleton of a body. He is a great reader, one of the
greatest readers in London; and, perhaps, to no man in all the world
more than to Joe has literature brought so complete an escape from the
pressing demands of self-consciousness and the inconvenient emphasis of
personality.
It is at this point that we reach, by the reader's leave, the
psychological interest of this our simple story. For the problem
presents itself to Mr. Wells, as well as to me, whether all this violent
reading has not created in Joe's mind the impression of a Joe who never
was on sea or land. In other words: in the tale which Joe tells of his
own life, is any part of it fact, or is it not all a figment of his
brain, the creation of his bloody-minded authors? Joe himself believes
every word of it; Joe believes he was the Joe he tells you about, and
his face grows purple, and his glassy eyes dart fire out of their baggy
flesh, if you insinuate never so delicately that one of his stories is
in the very smallest detail just a little difficult of belief.
Mr. Wells never contradicts Joe; but every now and then (forgetting that
Joe can see) he shakes a sceptic head, and, leaning towards you,
whispers (forgetting that Joe can only hear when you shout at him) that
you must be pleased to remember that "_that's_ what he thinks he done;
and no doubt he _thinks_ that it was so; and it may be it was, and I
should never think of contradicting, not no man; but I has my own
opinion in the matter. _I don't_ think it was so. I think he's half
dreaming and half telling a tale. That's what _I_ think."
"But," you inquire, "is it not true that Joe was once a pirate?"
"Oh, yes," he cries at once, smiling proudly; "Oh, yes. Joe was a
pirate right enough. What, haven't you heard him tell how they boarded a
Spanish ship, and cut the throats and broke the heads of the swarthy
crew? Oh, you ought to hear him tell that. It's as good as a play." And
here he leans forward, and calls across to chuckling and gurgling Joe.
"Joe! Tell the genneman how you boarded that Spanish ship, and cut the
throats of them there swarthy Spaniards."
* * * * *
At this Old Joe seems to be smitten with a sudden frenzy. I have never
seen anything like it. After a preliminary canter in the laughing line
he suddenly makes taut his body; his eyes bulge from his head; his face
becomes crimson and his nose blue; then, with his mouth open, while he
hisses like a steam-saw and roars like a bull and sends the most
extraordinary imitation of throat-cutting spluttering wetly from his
distended lips, he waves his right arm madly and frantically in the air,
makes imaginary stabs in front of him, draws imaginary knives across his
throat, and brings down the butt ends of imaginary carbines on the
supposititious heads of the swarthy crew unkindly resurrected to be
slain again.
It is plain that the poor old paralysed fellow is lost to the Present.
He is back in the Past--or in one of his novelettes; and in front of
him, begging for mercy, as he slits their throats, or cracks open their
skulls, are, indeed, hundreds of real and living men. His acting is
superb. It is only made comical by the hanging legs, the fixture of the
body to the seat of the chair, and the furious spluttering of his
frenzied mouth.
When he has quite finished, thoroughly exhausted, he leans back in his
chair, sticks his pipe into his face, strikes a match with his shaking
hands, and covers his laughing face in a wreath of tobacco-smoke.
"Arst him," whispers Mr. Wells, "how many he killed? Go on; you arst
him."
* * * * *
So you lean across to Old Joe, who shoots forward to meet your lips
half-way with his left ear, and you calmly, and without dread or horror,
ask the gurgling and chuckling veteran how many men he has killed.
As soon as he has caught your question he bursts out laughing, flings
himself suddenly back, and exclaims, with a splutter: "How many ha' I
killed? How many? I couldn't say. Too many on 'em. Hundreds! Hundreds!
Hundreds of 'em!" Back goes the pipe, and, wreathed in proud smiles, his
shoulders twitching, his hands never still for a moment, he sits square
back in his chair and looks at you proudly, as much as to say:
"Ain't I a devil of a feller? Ain't I a monster? Ho, I've had a terrible
life. You just arst me another!"
Well, I know not how true is the story told by Old Joe of his own
wickedness.
But, however this may be--and it is not the province of Old Joe's
humble historian to speculate--let us be content with the picture of
these two old pensioners from the high seas, living together in the
evening of their days in a narrow court in a London slum, the one
paralysed and the other blind; the one a most brilliant and imaginative
story-teller, the other a most cautious, modest, tentative, and genial
critic. And let us sit between their two chairs for a moment and listen
to the moving story of Old Joe, believing it with all the simplicity, if
not with all the stupefied, admiration of the little slum children who
gaze at the pirate when his chair is moved out into the court that he
may warm his old bones in the sun.
[In brackets, let me say that I have come upon Old Joe literally posing
in the court as a most ferocious pirate before an audience of toddling
infants not more than four years of age.]
Eighty-two years ago Old Joe, surnamed Ridley, was born in the
neighbourhood of the Barbican. He remembers how murderers and highwaymen
used to come and hide in the court where he was born, "because, don't
you see, the police daren't come where we was living." He went to a
school in Charterhouse-square. "Charterhouse School," he says. But Mr.
Wells nudges us with his pipe hand. "That's a mistake," he says. "There
wasn't never no _school_ in Charterhouse Square, in those days. But
never mind; let him go on. Only you must make allowance, you know."
His father was a carman who could drink porter by the two-gallon, and
had an arm like a leg of mutton. But this great, lusty carman found
himself ruled with a rod of iron by the little spitfire he took for his
second wife. She managed the carman, and she managed his brats of
children. She particularly managed Joe because he particularly disliked
being managed.
* * * * *
So it came about that Joe found the streets pleasanter than his home,
and took to slouching about with his hands in his pockets, feeling
hungry and sometimes a little concerned, perhaps, as to what was to
become of him. One day, as he was wasting time at a street-corner in
Aldersgate, there came up to him a broad-shouldered, sandy-haired man in
a blue reefer suit, who showed all his teeth when he smiled and whose
voice had a sharp rattle in it like a bag full of gold coins. This
noticeable man hailed Joe as a fine fellow, and asked the fine fellow
whether he wouldn't step with him into a convenient tavern and wet his
whistle with a glass of the best brandy.
The broad-shouldered, easy-smiling gentleman in the reefer suit told
Joe, over a glass of brandy in the sanded-floor parlour of a neat
tavern, that he was a rich man, with a hobby on which he spent a great
deal of money. "It's a hobby of mine," he said, laughing, "to put down
the slave-trade. I don't like it, and so I put it down. Now, a fine
young likely fellow, such as you, is just the man I want for my ship.
How would you like to go sailing the lovely seas catching
slave-dealers, and giving them what-for with the best steel and
gunpowder that money can buy?"
Joe said he could put up with it if the money was all right. And, being
assured that the money was more than all right, he agreed to go down to
Plymouth with a party of the gentleman's friends and try his hand for a
year or two at laying pirates by the heel.
But when our Joe got out to sea and awoke from a terrible bout of
intoxication on the schooner sailed by the gentleman with a hobby, he
discovered that, instead of being on the ocean to catch pirates, he was
there as a pirate himself. The boy had run away from home to make a
fortune catching wicked men; he now found that his bread and butter
depended upon his ability in cracking the heads of perfectly honest men.
Some of the new hands wanted to be put back when the situation was
explained to them, but Joe was among those who felt respect for the
villainous seamen on board (the ship carried 130 men, he says,) who
declared that they had as lief be pirates as catch pirates, and it was
no odds to them what flag they sailed under or for what purpose.
"On board," splutters Joe, striking another match, "there was a turr'ble
fellow--Jack Armstrong--six foot five in socks, strong's a lion, brave's
a tiger. He and me use to fight--every day, pretty near. Bang! crack!
g-r-r-r-r-r! I used to beat him--easy! I was turr'bly strong. Make's
nose bleed--bung's eyes up--split's lips. Ess! And there was a mulatto
aboard. Metsi-metsi-metsi-can, he was."
"He means Mexican," whispers Mr. Wells behind his hand. "That's what Joe
means. A Mexican." And then he gets up from his chair and shouts into
Joe's ear, "You mean a Mex-i-can, Joe."
"Ess; a Metsican," splutters Joe, getting purple in the face under the
impression of a contradiction. "That's what I said--Metsican. Used to
call him Black Peter. I've seen him eat rattlesnake. Swallow him clean
down. Like this, he would--_Gollop!_" Here Mr. Wells goes off into a
quiet chuckle of scepticism, one finger crooked over his pipe-stem, his
sightless eyes blinking at the coals. "Great big bull of a feller.
'Normous chest. Legs o' granite. Used ter fight wi' bar o' iron. Ho! Ho!
Weighed half a hunded. Tremenjus weapon! If he hit you, you
know--_dash_!--out go your brains. Ho! ho! He was fond o' me. If I saw
him sulky, or anythin', up I'd go, an' 'What's matter?' I'd say. Peter'd
say, 'So-a-so.' 'Oh blow,' I'd say, and walk off. He looked up to me.
R'spected me. Peter was always behind me in action. Always. Never let me
be killed. Never! _Bang! Crack!_ Brain any man who come near me. Fond o'
me."
Joe, we gather, was fourteen years at sea without ever coming home. He
was a pirate in the China seas for years. He was in the Baltic during
the Crimea. He has been to the bottom of the sea two or three times. He
has fought hand-to-hand with many a shark. He has been shipwrecked a
score of times. The experience of St. Paul in a good cause hardly
exceeds for suffering the experience of Old Joe in a bad one. For six
days and seven nights he and seven others were tossed about the sea
without food in a row-boat. Two of the men died, and were eaten by the
rest, with the exception of Joe, who could not stomach cannibalism for
all he was such a terrible fellow. Then they were picked up by the
famous _Alabama_, and Joe fought in the great American War of North
_versus_ South.
"I was put in prison," he says, with a roar of laughter. "Two years. In
Allybammer. Two years in dungeon. In the Harbour there. Allybammer
Harbour."
"Alabama, he means," whispers Mr. Wells. "You've heard of Alabama, I
dare say? Somewhere in Ameriky, isn't it? Ah! Well, that's what Joe
means--Alabama."
"Two years!" laughed Joe; and then, with a great roar of delight, he
adds, "Went off my nut! In dungeon. Clean off my nut!"
"What Joe means," whispers Mr. Wells, slowly and dogmatically, "is that,
while he was in prison in Alabama Harbour, he lost his reason: 'Off his
nut' is slang for losing his reason. Now, I dare say that that is true.
I shouldn't be surprised if it was."
"Then I went Canada," bellows Joe, striking a fresh match. "Buff'lo
hunter! Ho! Ho! Fought the Injuns. Red Injuns. Killed hundreds. _Slish!
C-r-r-r-r! Bang! Dash! Gurrrr!_ Hundreds. Red Injuns! I killed hundreds
myself. Ho! Ho! I dashed their brains out. Ho! Ho! Injuns. Red Injuns!"
It is some time before he grows really calm after illustrating with
tremendous energy his ferocity against the poor Red Indians. Even Mr.
Wells grows enthusiastic, and, sucking his pipe-stem, chuckles proudly
over Joe's enormous valour.
But what a fall it is when Joe resumes his life. From being a pirate, a
fighter, and a buffalo-hunter, he becomes--think of it!--a pastrycook.
He leaves the magnificent society of Jack Armstrong, and Black Peter,
and Red Indians, to mix with the commonplace citizens of London--as a
pastrycook! He makes buns. He makes sponge cakes. Think of it--he makes
jam-puffs!
* * * * *
But romance could not leave Joe, even while he toiled before a London
oven.
There was a fire on the premises, and Joe did astonishing things. After
being rescued he walked calmly back, through sheets of fire, to fetch
the cash-box from the parlour. "Never afraid of anythin'--fire, water,
gunpowder, sword, arrows--nothin'! No fear. Always brave. Ho! Ho!
Brave's lion."
"Tell the genneman," shouted Mr. Wells, "what became of the shop."
"Ho, business failed," roars Joe. "Pastry-cook I was. Came
down--_smash_! Lost everythin'. Every penny! Ho! Ho! But what's odds?
Happy and jolly! Nothin' wrong. I'm a'right. What's odds?"
"Your old missus is dead, ain't she, Joe?" shouts Mr. Wells.
"Ess," answers Joe cheerfully. "Gone. Dead." He points towards the floor
with a twitching finger, and stabs downward. "Dead. Years ago. Gone."
"And what about your boy?" asks Mr. Wells.
"No good," roars Joe, in half a rage. "He's no good. No good 't all.
Brought him up like genneman. No good." He laughs again, shakes himself
in his chair, and strikes another match.
"He was selling things in the street when the clergyman found him," says
Mr. Wells behind his pipe. "Had a little tray strapped on to his
shoulders, and two sticks to keep him standing. Collar-studs, tie-clips,
bootlaces, matches--you know. You've often seen trays like that, I dare
say. Well, that was what Joe was doing when the clergyman found him. Not
this clergyman, you understand. The one before, Father Vivian. He's now
a bishop. Out somewhere in Africa. That's his photograph on the wall
over there. He sent us a picture-postcard the other day. Little black
woolly-headed baby with no clothes on! I haven't seen it myself, because
my eyes are bad; but they all laugh at it, and I dare say it's funny
enough. A nice man Father Vivian was. A genneman. He's a bishop now, but
he don't forget his old friends, do he?"
* * * * *
And as we listen to the blind man we wonder what his story is, and we
learn that he was born in Trinity Lane, Upper Thames Street, in the days
when poor people did live on that side of the water, and that he was
engaged at an early age in tide work. "Coal trade," he says, quietly.
"Seaham to London. The _Isabella_ brig. Four or five years I had of
that. Then I was off to Russia in the _Prince George_. Then I did the
trade between England and America. Then I was on a brig working the west
coast of Africa. After that I came home and married. My wife lived in
Fivefoot Lane. Her father was a carpenter. She was a good woman. She's
dead now. We buried a sight of little 'uns. I can't tell you how many.
There was a son, Harry: we buried him; a girl, 'Liza: we buried her; and
a boy, Frank: we buried him; but I can't tell you how many little 'uns.
Buried a lot, we did. Three children living now. Doing fair, they are;
pretty fair. As times go, you know. I dare say they're happy enough."
After all these years of seafaring Mr. Wells worked on Brewer's Quay
for eleven years, and after that took a spell of work in City
warehouses. He "entered the Fur Trade." He did good work and earned good
money; but after a bit he got what he describes as "a bit of a blight"
in the eyes. He went to Moorfields hospital and underwent an operation.
The darkness didn't lift. The twilight in which he lived deepened. He
had to give up respectable work, and took to selling toys in the street.
Then, one day, he was knocked down by a cab, and was carried to
hospital, where by good fortune he fell in with Father Vivian. Father
Vivian--whose name is blessed to this day in I know not how many slum
homes--happened to want a companion for Joe, and Mr. Wells was pressed
into the service. The blind man came to take care of the paralytic, and
here they now are in the little two-roomed slum cottage, smoking their
pipes in the blackened kitchen, and declaring that they have never been
so well off in their lives before.
His Majesty the King has no more loyal and affectionate subjects. A
friend of mine carried the two old gentlemen off to a Coronation dinner.
They had a hundred things to complain of concerning the way in which the
plates were whisked off before they had even got the savour of the dish
in their nostrils; but when it came to singing "God save the King" they
roared and cheered and shouted and cheered again, and cried till the
tears ran down their faces. And now, among their possessions, there is
nothing of which they are more proud than the gorgeous card telling how
the King and Queen of England requested the favour of their society to a
banquet. It is splendid to see these two old sea-dogs in their kitchen
fingering that card and smiling over it with a pride not to be matched
in all the world outside.
* * * * *
I have never heard them complain. They are old friends of mine. I have
smoked many a pipe in their kitchen; but never yet did I hear murmur or
complaint from their lips. Never once. They are most beautifully happy.
They are radiant in their happiness. I do not believe there is a room in
the world in which laughter is more constant and more spontaneous than
in the little low-roofed black kitchen where the paralytic old pirate
and the blind old seaman smoke their pipes and chuckle over the things
they have done, the sights they have seen, and the storms they have
weathered.
Opposite to the two old gentlemen lives a great friend of theirs, a
maker of rag-dolls--a grey-headed, bent-back old veteran named Mr.
Kight. I happened to be calling on the two old gentlemen on the Fifth of
November last year, and, entering the kitchen, and while shaking hands
with Joe (who always roars with laughter when he clutches your hand, and
shakes it backwards and forwards as if he meant never to let it go)
little Mr. Wells came fumbling to my side, laughing and chuckling,
evidently with important news.
"You know it's the Fifth of November," he said, nudging me with the
elbow of the hand which held his pipe. "You know that, don't you?
Everybody knows that. Well, I've been telling Old Joe that he ought to
let me and Mr. Kight shove a couple o' broom-sticks under his Grandfer
Chair and carry him out into the streets. He'd make a lovely Guy,
wouldn't he?"
Mr. Wells joined a treble of laughter to the continuous bass of Joe's
gurgle, and then, stooping forward: "Joe," he shouted, "I'm telling the
genneman you ought to let me and Kight take you out in your chair for a
Guy Fawkes."
At this Old Joe's mouth opened wider than ever, his face became purple,
and he pretended very hard indeed to laugh with a relish. But the jest
hurt him. I saw, what Mr. Wells could not see, the hurt look in his old
eyes, and, leaning to his ear, I shouted, "You'd have all the girls
running after you, Joe! You're too handsome for a Guy. They'd run you
off to church and marry you as sure as a gun."
"Ess!" he cried, delighted. "Ess! 'Zactly." And then, after a frightful
effort to master his stammer, his face the colour of claret, his eyes
buried in their flesh, his old body twitching violently, he burst out
with the boast: "I was d----d handsome feller. Once. Ess! Handsome's
paint. Ho! Ho! Girls mad about me!"
Happiness was restored. We drew our chairs nearer to the fire, filled
our pipes, and laughed away the winter afternoon in the best of good
spirits.
"We've got nothing to complain of," says Mr. Wells. "Everybody is kind
to us. We've got our health, thank God! We've got a roof over our heads.
We've got food in the locker. We've generally got a bit of terbaccer
somewhere about the place. And we've done with the sea." After a pause,
he adds, "When the Call comes, we shall be here to answer it. Early or
late, we shall be ready; me and Old Joe."
Once more he leans across to the pirate. "I'm telling the genneman," he
shouted; "that we've nothing to complain about, that when the Call comes
we shall be ready."
"Ess!" shouts Old Joe cheerfully, with his pipe in the air. "Always
ready! That's me. Always ready. But, don't want to die. Not yet. No! No
fear. Why should I! Happy and jolly I am. Happy and jolly!" And once
more he throws himself back with twitching shoulders, the chin fallen,
the eyes scarcely visible in their bags of flesh, and laughs till the
tears come.
"He's wunnerful hearty for eighty-two," says Mr. Wells quietly.
HITS AND MISSES
[Sidenote: _Anon._]
Shop-windows shivered in the frames
Do advertise the women's aims.
THE BROKEN WINDOW
[Sidenote: _Anon._]
Till Venus saw a Suffragette
Cried she, "But women should regret
A broken glass!" But then, next minute,
"Poor thing! she saw her image in it!"