No more letters, at present, reaching me, from clergymen, I use the
breathing-time permitted me, to express more clearly the meaning of my
charge,—left in its brevity obscure,—that, as a body, they “teach a
false gospel for hire.”
It is obscure, because associating two charges quite distinct. The
first, that, whether for hire or not, they preach a false gospel. The
second, that, whether they preach truth or falsehood, they preach as
hirelings.
It will be observed that the three clergymen who have successively
corresponded with me—Mr. Tipple, Mr. Lyttel, and Mr. Headlam—have every
one, for their own part, eagerly repudiated the doctrine of the
Eleventh Article of the Church of England. Nevertheless, the substance
of that article assuredly defines the method of salvation commonly
announced at this day from British pulpits; and the effect of this
supremely pleasant and supremely false gospel, on the British mind, may
be best illustrated by the reply, made only the other day, by a
dishonest, but sincerely religious, commercial gentleman, to an
acquaintance of mine, who had expressed surprise that he should come to
church after doing the things he was well known to do: “Ah, my friend,
my standard is just the publican’s.”
In the second place, while it is unquestionably true that many
clergymen are doing what Mr. Headlam complacently points out their
ability to do,—sacrificing, to wit, themselves, their souls, and
bodies, (not that I clearly understand what a clergyman means by
sacrificing his soul,) without any thought of temporal reward; this
preaching of Christ has, nevertheless, become an acknowledged
Profession, and means of livelihood for gentlemen: and the Simony of
to-day differs only from that of apostolic times, in that, while the
elder Simon thought the gift of the Holy Ghost worth a considerable
offer in ready money, the modern Simon would on the whole refuse to
accept the same gift of the Third Person of the Trinity, without a nice
little attached income, a pretty church, with a steeple restored by Mr.
Scott, and an eligible neighbourhood.
These are the two main branches of the charge I meant to gather into my
short sentence; and to these I now further add, that in defence of this
Profession, with its pride, privilege, and more or less roseate repose
of domestic felicity, extremely beautiful and enviable in country
parishes, the clergy, as a body, have, with what energy and power was
in them, repelled the advance both of science and scholarship, so far
as either interfered with what they had been accustomed to teach; and
connived at every abuse in public and private conduct, with which they
felt it would be considered uncivil, and feared it might ultimately
prove unsafe, to interfere.
And that, therefore, seeing that they were put in charge to preach the
Gospel of Christ, and have preached a false gospel instead of it; and
seeing that they were put in charge to enforce the Law of Christ, and
have permitted license instead of it, they are answerable, as no other
men are answerable, for the existing “state of things” in this British
nation,—a state now recorded in its courts of justice as productive of
crimes respecting which the Birmingham Defender of the Faith himself
declares that “in the records of no age or nation will any tales be
found surpassing these in savagery of mind and body, and in foulness of
heart and soul.”
Answerable, as no other men are, I repeat; and entirely disdain my
correspondent Mr. Headlam’s attempt to involve me, or any other layman,
in his responsibility. He has taken on himself the office of teacher.
Mine is a painter’s; and I am plagued to death by having to teach
instead of him, and his brethren,—silent, they, for fear of their
congregations! Which of them, from least to greatest, dares, for
instance, so much as to tell the truth to women about their dress?
Which of them has forbidden his feminine audience to wear fine bonnets
in church? Do they think the dainty garlands are wreathed round the
studiously dressed hair, because a woman “should have power on her head
because of the angels”? Which of them understands that text?—which of
them enforces it? Dares the boldest ritualist order his
women-congregation to come all with white napkins over their heads,
rich and poor alike, and have done with their bonnets? What, ‘You
cannot order’? You could say you wouldn’t preach if you saw one bonnet
in the church, couldn’t you? ‘But everybody would say you were mad.’ Of
course they would—and that the devil was in you. “If they have called
the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of His
household?” but now that ‘all men speak well of you,’ think you the Son
of Man will speak the same?
And you, and especially your wives, (as is likely!) are very angry with
me, I hear, on all hands;—and think me hostile to you. As well might a
carter asleep on his shafts accuse me of being his enemy for trying to
wake him; or his master’s enemy, because I would fain not see the cart
in the ditch. Nay, this notable paragraph which has given Mr. Hansard’s
friends so much offence, was credited and printed by me, because I
thought it one of the noblest instances I had ever heard of energy and
unselfishness; and though, of all the sects of ecclesiastics, for my
own share, I most dislike and distrust the so-called Evangelical, I
took the picture of Swiss life, which was meant to stand for a perfect
and true one, from the lips of an honest vicar of that persuasion.
Which story, seeing that it has both been too long interrupted, and
that its entire lesson bears on what I have to say respecting the
ministrations of Felix Neff, I will interrupt my too garrulous personal
reminiscences by concluding, in this letter, from that of March, 1874.
“The old cart went again as well as ever; and ‘he could never have
believed,’ said Hansli, ‘that a cart could have taken itself up so, and
become so extremely changed for the better. That might be an example to
many living creatures.’
More than one young girl, however, in her own secret heart reproached
Hansli for his choice—saying to herself that she would have done for
him quite as well. ‘If she had thought he had been in such a hurry, she
could have gone well enough, too, to put herself on his road, and
prevented him from looking at that rubbishy rag of a girl. She never
could have thought Hansli was such a goose,—he, who might easily have
married quite differently, if he had had the sense to choose. As sure
as the carnival was coming, he would repent before he got to it. All
the worse for him—it’s his own fault: as one makes one’s bed, one lies
in it.’
But Hansli had not been a goose at all, and never found anything to
repent of. He had a little wife who was just the very thing he
wanted,—a little, modest, busy wife, who made him as happy as if he had
married Heaven itself in person.
It is true that she didn’t long help Hansli to pull the cart: he soon
found himself obliged to go in the shafts alone again; but, aussi, once
he saw he had a mustard, [44] he consoled himself. ‘What a fellow!’
said he, examining him. ‘In a wink, he’ll be big enough to help me
himself.’ And, thereupon, away he went with his cart, all alone,
without finding any difference.
It is true that in a very little while his wife wanted to come again to
help him. ‘If only we make a little haste to get back,’ said she, ‘the
little one can wait well enough—besides that the grandmother can give
him something to drink while we are away.’ But the mustard himself was
not of their mind, and soon made them walk in his own fashion. They
made all the haste they could to get home—but before they were within
half a league of their door, the wife cried out, ‘Mercy! what’s that?’
‘That’ was a shrill crying like a little pig’s when it is being killed.
‘Mercy on us, what is it,—what’s the matter!’ cried she; and left the
cart, and ran off at full speed: and there, sure enough, was the
grandmother, whom the little thing’s cries had put into a dreadful
fright lest it should have convulsions, and who could think of nothing
better than to bring it to meet mamma. The heavy boy, the fright, and
the run, had put the old woman so out of breath that it was really high
time for somebody to take the child. She was almost beside herself; and
it was ever so long before she could say, ‘No—I won’t have him alone
any more: in my life I never saw such a little wretch: I had rather
come and draw the cart.’
These worthy people thus learned what it is to have a tyrant in one’s
house, little one though he be. But all that didn’t interrupt their
household ways. The little wife found plenty to do staying at home;
gardening, and helping to make the brooms. Without ever hurrying
anything, she worked without ceasing, and was never tired,—so easily
things ran under her hand. Hansli was all surprise to find he got along
so well with a wife; and to find his purse growing fatter so fast. He
leased a little field; and the grandmother saw a goat in it; presently
two. He would not hear of a donkey, but arranged with the miller, when
he went to the town, to carry some of his brooms for him; which, it is
true, skimmed off a little of the profit, and that vexed Hansli, who
could not bear the smallest kreutzer to escape him. But his life soon
became quite simple and continuous. The days followed each other like
the waves of a river, without much difference between one and another.
Every year grew new twigs to make brooms with. Every year, also,
without putting herself much about, his wife gave him a new baby. She
brought it, and planted it there. Every day it cried a little,—every
day it grew a little; and, in a turn of the hand, it was of use for
something. The grandmother said that, old as she was, she had never
seen anything like it. It was, for all the world, she said, like the
little cats, which at six weeks old, catch mice. And all these children
were really like so many blessings—the more there came, the more money
one made. Very soon—only think of it—the grandmother saw a cow arrive.
If she had not with her own eyes seen Hansli pay for it, it would have
been almost impossible to make her believe that he had not stolen it.
If the poor old woman had lived two years more, [45] she would even
have seen Hansli become himself the owner of the little cottage in
which she had lived so long, with forest right which gave him more wood
than he wanted; and ground enough to keep a cow and two sheep, which
are convenient things enough, when one has children who wear worsted
stockings.
(Upon all that, [46] Hansli certainly owed a good deal, but it was
well-placed money, and no one would ask him for it, as long as he paid
the interest to the day; for the rest, ‘if God lent him life, these
debts did not trouble him,’ said he.) He might then learn that the
first kreutzers are the most difficult to save. There’s always a hole
they are running out at, or a mouth to swallow them. But when once one
has got to the point of having no more debts, and is completely set on
one’s legs, then things begin to go!—the very ground seems to grow
under your feet,—everything profits more and more,—the rivulet becomes
a river, and the gains become always easier and larger: on one
condition, nevertheless, that one shall change nothing in one’s way of
life. For it is just then that new needs spring out of the ground like
mushrooms on a dunghill, if not for the husband, at least for the
wife,—if not for the parents, at least for the children. A thousand
things seem to become necessary of which we had never thought; and we
are ashamed of ever so many others, which till then had not given us
the smallest concern; and we exaggerate the value of what we have,
because once we had nothing; and our own value, because we attribute
our success to ourselves,—and,—one changes one’s way of life, and
expenses increase, and labour lessens, and the haughty spirit goes
before the fall.
It was not so with Hansli. He continued to live and work just the same;
and hardly ever spent anything at the inn; aussi, he rejoiced all the
more to find something hot ready for him when he came home; and did
honour to it. Nothing was changed in him, unless that his strength for
work became always greater, little by little; and his wife had the
difficult art of making the children serve themselves, each, according
to its age,—not with many words neither; and she herself scarcely knew
how.
A pedagogue would never have been able to get the least explanation of
it from her. Those children took care of each other, helped their
father to make his brooms, and their mother in her work about the
house; none of them had the least idea of the pleasures of doing
nothing, nor of dreaming or lounging about; and yet not one was
overworked, or neglected. They shot up like willows by a brookside,
full of vigour and gaiety. The parents had no time for idling with
them, but the children none the less knew their love, and saw how
pleased they were when their little ones did their work well. Their
parents prayed with them: on Sundays the father read them a chapter
which he explained afterwards as well as he could, and on account of
that also the children were full of respect for him, considering him as
the father of the family who talks with God Himself (and who will tell
Him when children disobey [47]). The degree of respect felt by children
for their parents depends always on the manner in which the parents
bear themselves to God. Why do not all parents reflect more on this?
[48]
Nor was our Hansli held in small esteem by other people, any more than
by his children. He was so decided and so sure; words full of good
sense were plenty with him; honourable in everything, he never set
himself up for rich, nor complained of being poor; so that many a
pretty lady would come expressly into the kitchen, when she heard that
the broom-merchant was there, to inform herself how things went in the
country, and how such and such a matter was turning out. Nay, in many
of the houses he was trusted to lay in their winter provisions, a
business which brought him many a bright bätz. The Syndic’s wife at
Thun, herself, often had a chat with him; it had become, so to speak,
really a pressing need with her to see him at Thun every Saturday; and
when she was talking to him, it had happened, not once nor twice, that
M. the Syndic himself had been obliged to wait for an answer to
something he had asked his wife. After all, a Syndic’s wife may surely
give herself leave to talk a little according to her own fancy, once a
week.
One fine day, however, it was the Saturday at Thun, and there was not
in all the town a shadow of the broom-merchant. Thence, aussi, great
emotion, and grave faces. More than one maid was on the doorsteps, with
her arms akimbo, leaving quietly upstairs in the kitchen the soup and
the meat to agree with each other as best they might.
‘You haven’t seen him then?—have you heard nothing of him?’—asked they,
one of the other. More than one lady ran into her kitchen, prepared to
dress [49] her servant well, from head to foot, because she hadn’t been
told when the broom-merchant was there. But she found no servant there,
and only the broth boiling over. Madame the Syndic herself got
disturbed; and interrogated, first her husband, and then the gendarme.
And as they knew nothing, neither the one nor the other, down she went
into the low town herself, in person, to inquire after her
broom-merchant. She was quite out of brooms—and the year’s
house-cleaning was to be done next week—and now no broom-merchant—je
vous demande! [50] And truly enough, no broom-merchant appeared; and
during all the week there was a feeling of want in the town, and an
enormous disquietude the next Saturday. Will he come? Won’t he come? He
came, in effect; and if he had tried to answer all the questions put to
him, would not have got away again till the next week. He contented
himself with saying to everybody that ‘he had been obliged to go to the
funeral.’
‘Whose funeral?’ asked Madame the Syndic, from whom he could not escape
so easily.
‘My sister’s,’ answered the broom-merchant.
‘Who was she? and when did they bury her?’ Madame continued to ask.
The broom-merchant answered briefly, but frankly: aussi Madame the
Syndic cried out all at once,
‘Mercy on us!—are you the brother of that servant-girl there’s been
such a noise about, who turned out at her master’s death to have been
his wife,—and had all his fortune left to her, and died herself soon
afterwards?’
‘It is precisely so,’ answered Hansli, dryly. [51]
‘But—goodness of Heaven!’ cried Madame the Syndic, ‘you inherit fifty
thousand crowns at least,—and behold you still running over the country
with your brooms!’
‘Why not?’ said Hansli; ‘I haven’t got that money, yet; and I’m not
going to let go my sparrow in the hand for a pigeon on the tiles.’
‘Pigeon on the tiles, indeed!’ said Madame,—‘why, we were speaking of
it only this morning—I and M. the Syndic; and he said the thing was
perfectly sure, and the money came all to the brother.’
‘Ah, well, my faith, so much the better,’ said Hansli; ‘but about what
I called to ask,—must you have the brooms in eight days, or fifteen?’
‘Ah, bah—you and your brooms!’ cried Madame the Syndic; ‘come in, will
you?—I want to see how wide Monsieur will open his eyes!’
‘But, Madame, I am a little hurried to-day; it’s a long way home from
here, and the days are short.’
‘Long or short, come in, always,’ said Madame imperatively,—and Hansli
had nothing for it but to obey.
She did not take him into the kitchen, but into the dining-room; sent
her maid to tell Monsieur that Hansli was there,—ordered up a bottle of
wine,—and forced Hansli to sit down, in spite of his continued
protesting that he had no time, and that the days were short. But in a
wink the Monsieur was there, sat down at the table also, and drank to
Hansli’s health and happiness; requiring him at the same time to
explain how that had all happened.
‘Ah, well, I’ll tell you in two words,—it is not long. As soon as she
had been confirmed, my sister went into the world to look for work. She
got on from place to place, and was much valued, it seems. As for us at
home, she occupied herself little about us: only came to see us twice,
in all the time; and, since my mother died, not at all. I have met her
at Berne, it is true; but she never asked me to come and see where she
lived,—only bid me salute the wife and children, and said she would
soon come, but she never did. It is true she was not long at Berne, but
was much out at service in the neighbouring chateaux, and in French
Switzerland, from what I hear. She had busy blood, and a fanciful head,
which never could stay long in the same place: but, with that,
well-conducted and proof-faithful; [52] and one might trust her
fearlessly with anything. At last there came a report that she had
married a rich old gentleman, who did that to punish his relations,
with whom he was very angry; but I didn’t much believe it, nor much
think about it. And then, all of a sudden, I got word that I must go
directly to my sister if I wanted to see her alive, and that she lived
in the country by Morat. So I set out, and got there in time to see her
die; but was not able to say much to her. As soon as she was buried, I
came back as fast as I could. I was in a hurry to get home, for since I
first set up house I had never lost so much time about the world.’
‘What’s that?—lost so much time, indeed!’ cried Madame the Syndic. ‘Ah,
nonsense;—with your fifty thousand crowns, are you going to keep
carrying brooms about the country?’
‘But very certainly, Madame the Syndic,’ said Hansli, ‘I only half
trust the thing; it seems to me impossible I should have so much. After
all, they say it can’t fail; but be it as it will, I shall go on living
my own life: so that if there comes any hitch in the business, people
shan’t be able to say of me, “Ah, he thought himself already a
gentleman, did he? Now he’s glad to go back to his cart!” But if the
money really comes to me, I shall leave my brooms, though not without
regret; but it would all the same, then, make the world talk and laugh
if I went on; and I will not have that.’
‘But that fortune is in safe hands,—it runs no danger?’ asked M. the
Syndic.
‘I think so,’ said Hansli. ‘I promised some money to the man, if the
heritage really came to me; then he got angry, and said, “If it’s
yours, you’ll have it; and if it isn’t, money won’t get it: for the
expenses and taxes, you’ll have the account in proper time and place.”
Then I saw the thing was well placed; and I can wait well enough, till
the time’s up.’
‘But, in truth,’ said Madame the Syndic, ‘I can’t understand such a
sangfroid! One has never seen the like of that in Israel. That would
make me leap out of my skin, if I was your wife.’
‘You had better not,’ said Hansli, ‘at least until you have found
somebody able to put you into it again.’
This sangfroid, and his carrying on his business, reconciled many
people to Hansli; who were not the less very envious of him: some
indeed thought him a fool, and wanted to buy the succession of him,
declaring he would get nothing out of it but lawsuits.
‘What would you have?’ said Hansli. ‘In this world, one is sure of
nothing. It will be time to think of it if the affair gets into a
mess.’
But the affair got into nothing of the sort. Legal time expired, he got
invitation to Berne, when all difficulties were cleared away.
When his wife saw him come back so rich, she began, first, to cry; and
then, to scream.
So that Hansli had to ask her, again and again, what was the matter
with her, and whether anything had gone wrong.
‘Ah, now,’ said his wife, at last,—(for she cried so seldom, that she
had all the more trouble to stop, when once she began),—‘Ah, now, you
will despise me, because you are so rich, and think that you would like
to have another sort of wife than me. I’ve done what I could, to this
day; but now I’m nothing but an old rag. [53] If only I was already six
feet under ground!’
Thereupon Hansli sat himself down in his arm-chair, and said:
‘Wife, listen. Here are now nearly thirty years that we have kept
house; and thou knowest, what one would have, the other would have,
too. I’ve never once beaten thee, and the bad words we may have said to
each other would be easily counted. Well, wife, I tell thee, do not
begin to be ill-tempered now, or do anything else than you have always
done. Everything must remain between us as in the past. This
inheritance does not come from me; nor from thee: but from the good
God, for us two, and for our children. And now, I advise thee, and hold
it for as sure a thing as if it were written in the Bible, if you speak
again of this to me but once, be it with crying, or without, I will
give thee a beating with a new rope, such as that they may hear thee
cry from here to the Lake of Constance. Behold what is said: now do as
thou wilt.’
It was resolute speaking; much more resolute than the diplomatic notes
between Prussia and Austria. The wife knew where she was, and did not
recommence her song. Things remained between them as they had been.
Before abandoning his brooms, Hansli gave a turn of his hand to them,
and made a present of a dozen to all his customers, carrying them to
each in his own person. He has repeated many a time since, and nearly
always with tears in his eyes, that it was a day he could never forget,
and that he never would have believed people loved him so.
Farming his own land, he kept his activity and simplicity, prayed and
worked as he had always done, but he knew the difference between a
farmer and a broom-seller, and did honour to his new position as he had
to his old one. He knew well, already, what was befitting in a farmer’s
house, and did now for others as he had been thankful to have had done
for himself.
The good God spared both of them to see their sons-in-law happy in
their wives, and their daughters-in-law full of respect and tenderness
for their husbands; and were they yet alive this day, they would see
what deep roots their family had struck in their native land, because
it has remained faithful to the vital germs of domestic life; the love
of work; and religion: foundation that cannot be overthrown, unmoved by
mocking chance, or wavering winds.”
I have no time, this month, to debate any of the debateable matters in
this story, though I have translated it that we may together think of
them as occasion serves. In the meantime, note that the heads of
question are these:—
I. (Already suggested in p. 59 of my letter for March, 1874.) What are
the relative dignities and felicities of affection, in simple and
gentle loves? How far do you think the regard existing between Hansli
and his wife may be compared, for nobleness and delight, to Sir Philip
Sidney’s regard for—his neighbour’s wife; or the relations between
Hansli and his sister, terminating in the brief ‘was not able to say
much to her,’ comparable to those between Sidney and his sister,
terminating in the completion of the brother’s Psalter by the sister’s
indistinguishably perfect song?
II. If there be any difference, and you think the gentle hearts have in
anywise the better,—how far do you think this separation between gentle
and simple inevitable? Suppose Sir Philip, for instance—among his many
accomplishments—had been also taught the art of making brooms,—(as
indeed I doubt not but his sister knew how to use them,)—and time had
thus been left to the broom-makers of his day for the fashioning of
sonnets? or the reading of more literature than a ‘chapitre’ on the
Sunday afternoons? Might such—not ‘division’ but ‘collation’—of labour
have bettered both their lives?
III. Or shall we rather be content with the apparent law of nature that
there shall be divine Astrophels in the intellectual heaven, and
peaceful earthly glowworms on the banks below; or even—on the
Evangelical theory of human nature—worms without any glow? And shall we
be content to see our broom-makers’ children, at the best, growing up
as willows by the brook—or in the simplest and innumerablest crowd, as
rushes in a marsh;—so long as they have wholesome pith and sufficing
strength to be securely sat upon in rush-bottomed chairs; while their
masters’ and lords’ children grow as roses on the mount of Sharon, and
untoiling lilies in the vales of Lebanon?
IV. And even if we admit that the lives at Penshurst, and by the woods
of Muri, though thus to be kept separate, are yet, each in their
manner, good, how far is the good of either of them dependent merely,
as our reverend Novelist tells us, on “work” (with lance or willow
wand) and “religion,” or how far on the particular circumstances and
landscape of Kent and Canton Berne,—while, in other parts of England
and Switzerland, less favourably conditioned, the ministration of Mr.
Septimus Hansard and Mr. Felix Neff will be always required, for the
mitigation of the deeper human misery,—meditation on which is to make
our sweet English ladies comfortable in nursing their cats?
Leaving the first two of these questions to the reader’s thoughts, I
will answer the last two for him;—The extremities of human degradation
are not owing to natural causes; but to the habitual preying upon the
labour of the poor by the luxury of the rich; and they are only
encouraged and increased by the local efforts of religious charity. The
clergy can neither absolve the rich from their sins, for money—nor
release them from their duties, for love. Their business is not to
soothe, by their saintly and distant example, the soft moments of
cat-nursing; but sternly to forbid cat-nursing, till no child is left
unnursed. And if this true discipline of the Church were carried out,
and the larger body of less saintly clerical gentlemen, and Infelix
Neffs, who now dine with the rich and preach to the poor, were
accustomed, on the contrary, to dine with the poor and preach to the
rich; though still the various passions and powers of the several
orders would remain where the providence of Heaven placed them—and the
useful reed and useless rose would still bind the wintry waters with
their border, and brighten the May sunshine with their bloom,—for each,
their happy being would be fulfilled in peace in the garden of the
world; and the glow, if not of immortal, at least of sacredly
bequeathed, life, and endlessly cherished memory, abide even within its
chambers of the tomb.