father, and in his writing two letters of introduction for him, one to
the editor of the _International_, a weekly gazette of mixed literature,
and the other to Messrs. Brook and Boothby, publishers in St. James’s
Street. Mr. Webb, though he gave the letters open to Fred, read them to
him with the view of explaining to him how little and how much they
meant. “I do not know that they can do you the slightest service,” said
he; “but I give them to you because you ask me. I strongly advise you to
go back to your father; but if you are still in town next spring, come
and see me again.” Then the interview was over, and Fred returned to his
wife, glad to have the letters; but still with a sense of bitterness
against Mr. Webb. When one word of encouragement would have made him so
happy, might not Mr. Webb have spoken it? Mr. Webb had thought that he
had better not speak any such word. And Fred, when he read the letters
of introduction over to his wife, found them to be very cold.
“I don’t think I’ll take them,” he said.
But he did take them, of course, on the very next day, and saw Mr.
Boothby, the publisher, after waiting for half-an-hour in the shop. He
swore to himself that the time was an hour and a half, and became
sternly angry at being so treated. It did not occur to him that Mr.
Boothby was obliged to attend to his own business, and that he could not
put his other visitors under the counter, or into the cupboards, in
order to make way for Mr. Pickering. The consequence was that poor Fred
was seen at his worst, and that the Boothbyan heart was not much
softened towards him. “There are so many men of this kind who want
work,” said Mr. Boothby, “and so very little work to give them!”
“It seems to me,” said Pickering, “that the demand for the work is
almost unlimited.” As he spoke, he looked at a hole in his boot, and
tried to speak in a tone that should show that he was above his boots.
“It may be so,” said Boothby; “but if so, the demands do not run in my
way. I will, however, keep Mr. Webb’s note by me, and if I find I can do
anything for you, I will. Good-morning.”
Then Mr. Boothby got up from his chair, and Fred Pickering understood
that he was told to go away. He was furious in his abuse of Boothby as
he described the interview to his wife that evening.
The editor of the _International_ he could not get to see; but he got a
note from him. The editor sent his compliments, and would be glad to
read the article to which Mr. W. W---- had alluded. As Mr. W. W---- had
alluded to no article, Fred saw that the editor was not inclined to take
much trouble on his behalf. Nevertheless, an article should be sent. An
article was written to which Fred gave six weeks of hard work, and which
contained an elaborate criticism on the Samson Agonistes. Fred’s object
was to prove that Milton had felt himself to be a superior
Samson--blind, indeed, in the flesh, as Samson was blind, but not blind
in the spirit, as was Samson when he crushed the Philistines. The poet
had crushed his Philistines with all his intellectual eyes about him.
Then there was a good deal said about the Philistines of those days as
compared with the other Philistines, in all of which Fred thought that
he took much higher ground than certain other writers in magazines on
the same subject. The editor sent back his compliments, and said that
the _International_ never admitted reviews of old books.
“Insensate idiot!” said Fred, tearing the note asunder, and then
tearing his own hair, on both sides of his head. “And these are the men
who make the world of letters! Idiot!--thick-headed idiot!”
“I suppose he has not read it,” said Mary.
“Then why hasn’t he read it? Why doesn’t he do the work for which he is
paid? If he has not read it, he is a thief as well as an idiot.”
Poor Fred had not thought much of his chance from the _International_
when he first got the editor’s note; but as he had worked at his Samson
he had become very fond of it, and golden dreams had fallen on him, and
he had dared to whisper to himself words of wondrous praise which might
be forthcoming, and to tell himself of enquiries after the unknown
author of the great article about the Philistines. As he had thought of
this, and as the dreams and the whispers had come to him, he had
rewritten his essay from the beginning, making it grander, bigger, more
eloquent than before. He became very eloquent about the Philistines, and
mixed with his eloquence some sarcasm which could not, he thought, be
without effect even in dull-brained, heavy-livered London. Yes; he had
dared to hope. And then his essay--such an essay as this--was sent back
to him with a notice that the _International_ did not insert reviews of
old books. Hideous, brainless, meaningless idiot! Fred in his fury tore
his article into a hundred fragments; and poor Mary was employed, during
the whole of the next week, in making another copy of it from the
original blotted sheets, which had luckily been preserved.
“Pearls before swine!” Fred said to himself, as he slowly made his way
up to the library of the Museum on the last day of that week.
That was in the end of October. He had not then earned a single shilling
for many months, and the nearer prospect of that starvation of which he
had once spoken so cheerily was becoming awfully frightful to him. He
had said that there were worse fates than to starve. Now, as he looked
at his wife, and thought of the baby that was to be added to them, and
counted the waning heap of sovereigns, he began to doubt whether there
was in truth anything worse than to starve. And now, too, idleness made
his life more wretched to him than it had ever been. He could not bring
himself to work when it seemed to him that his work was to have no
result; literally none.
“Had you not better write to your father?” said Mary.
He made no reply, but went out and walked up and down Museum Street.
He had been much disgusted by the treatment he had received from Mr.
Boothby, the publisher; but in November he brought himself to write to
Mr. Boothby, and ask him whether some employment could not be found.
“You will perhaps remember Mr. Wickham Webb’s letter,” wrote Fred, “and
the interview which I had with you last July.”
His wife had wished him to speak more civilly, and to refer to the
pleasure of the interview. But Fred had declined to condescend so far.
There were still left to them some thirty pounds.
A fortnight afterwards, when December had come, he got a reply from Mr.
Boothby, in which he was asked to call at a certain hour at the shop in
St. James’s Street. This he did, and saw the great man again. The great
man asked him whether he could make an index to an historical work. Fred
of course replied that he could do that--that or anything else. He could
make the index; or, if need was, write the historical work itself. That,
no doubt, was his feeling. Ten pounds would be paid for the index if it
was approved. Fred was made to understand that payment was to depend
altogether on approval of the work. Fred took away the sheets confided
to him without any doubt as to the ultimate approval. It would be odd
indeed if he could not make an index.
“That young man will never do any good,” said Mr Boothby to his foreman,
as Fred took his departure. “He thinks he can do everything, and I
doubt very much whether he can do anything as it should be done.”
Fred worked very hard at the index, and the baby was born to him as he
was doing it. A fortnight, however, finished the index, and if he could
earn money at the rate of ten pounds a fortnight he might still live. So
he took his index to St. James’s Street, and left it for approval. He
was told by the foreman that if he would call again in a week’s time he
should hear the result. Of course he called on that day week. The work
had not yet been examined, and he must call again after three days. He
did call again; and Mr. Boothby told him that his index was utterly
useless,--that, in fact, it was not an index at all.
“You couldn’t have looked at any other index, I think,” said Mr.
Boothby.
“Of course you need not take it,” said Fred; “but I believe it to be as
good an index as was ever made.”
Mr. Boothby, getting up from his chair, declared that there was nothing
more to be said. The gentleman for whom the work had been done begged
that Mr. Pickering should receive five pounds for his labour,--which
unfortunately had been thus thrown away. And in saying this Mr. Boothby
tendered a five-pound note to Fred. Fred pushed the note away from him,
and left the room with a tear in his eye. Mr. Boothby saw the tear, and
ten pounds was sent to Fred on the next day, with the gentleman’s
compliments. Fred sent the ten pounds back. There was still a shot in
the locker, and he could not as yet take money for work that he had not
done.
By the end of January Fred had retreated with his wife and child to the
shelter of a single small bed-room. Hitherto there had been a
sitting-room and a bed-room; but now there were but five pounds between
him and that starvation which he had once almost coveted, and every
shilling must be strained to the utmost. His wife’s confinement had cost
him much of his money, and she was still ill. Things were going very
badly with him, and among all the things that were bad with him, his own
idleness was probably the worst. When starvation was so near to him, he
could not seat himself in the Museum library and read to any good
purpose. And, indeed, he had no purpose. Milton was nothing to him now,
as his lingering shillings became few, and still fewer. He could only
sit brooding over his misfortunes, and cursing his fate. And every day,
as he sat eating his scraps of food over the morsel of fire in his
wife’s bed-room, she would implore him to pocket his pride and write to
his father.
“He would do something for us, so that baby should not die,” Mary said
to him. Then he went into Museum Street, and bethought himself whether
it would not be a manly thing for him to cut his throat. At any rate
there would be much relief in such a proceeding.
One day as he was sitting over the fire while his wife still lay in bed,
the servant of the house brought up word that a gentleman wanted to see
him. “A gentleman! what gentleman?” The girl could not say who was the
gentleman, so Fred went down to receive his visitor at the door of the
house. He met an old man of perhaps seventy years of age, dressed in
black, who with much politeness asked him whether he was Mr. Frederick
Pickering. Fred declared himself to be that unfortunate man, and
explained that he had no apartment in which to be seen. “My wife is in
bed up stairs, ill; and there is not a room in the house to which I can
ask you.” So the old gentleman and Fred walked up Museum Street and had
their conversation on the pavement. “I am Mr. Burnaby, for whose book
you made an index,” said the old man.
Mr. Burnaby was an author well-known in those days, and Fred, in the
midst of his misfortunes, felt that he was honoured by the visit.
“I was sorry that my index did not suit you,” said Fred.
“It did not suit at all,” said Mr. Burnaby. “Indeed it was no index. An
index should comprise no more than words and figures. Your index
conveyed opinions, and almost criticism.”
“If you suffered inconvenience, I regret it much,” said Fred. “I was
punished at any rate by my lost labour.”
“I do not wish you to be punished at all,” said Mr. Burnaby, “and
therefore I have come to you with the price in my hand. I am quite sure
that you worked hard to do your best.” Then Mr. Burnaby’s fingers went
into his waistcoat pocket, and returned with a crumpled note.
“Certainly not, Mr. Burnaby,” said Fred. “I can take nothing that I have
not earned.”
“Now my dear young friend, listen to me. I know that you are poor.”
“I am very poor.”
“And I am rich.”
“That has nothing to do with it. Can you put me in the way of earning
anything by literature? I will accept any such kindness as that at your
hand; but nothing else.”
“I cannot. I have no means of doing so.”
“You know so many authors and so many publishers.”
“Though I knew all the authors and all the publishers, what can I do?
Excuse me if I say that you have not served the apprenticeship that is
necessary.”
“And do all authors serve apprenticeships?”
“Certainly not. And it may be that you will rise to wealth and fame
without apprenticeship;--but if so you must do it without help.”
After that they walked silently together half the length of the street
before Fred spoke again. “You mean,” said he, “that a man must be either
a genius or a journeyman.”
“Yes, Mr. Pickering; that, or something like it, is what I mean.”
Fred told Mr. Burnaby his whole story, walking up and down Museum
Street,--even to that early assurance given to his young bride that
there were worse things in the world than starvation. And then Mr.
Burnaby asked him what were his present intentions. “I suppose we shall
try it,” said Pickering with a forced laugh.
“Try what?” said Mr. Burnaby.
“Starvation,” said Fred.
“What! with your baby,--with your wife and baby? Come; you must take my
ten-pound note at any rate. And while you are spending it write home to
your father. Heaven and earth! is a man to be ashamed to tell his
father that he has been wrong?” When Fred said that his father was a
stern man, and one whose heart would not be melted into softness at the
tale of a baby’s sufferings, Mr. Burnaby went on to say that the attempt
should at any rate be made. “There can be no doubt what duty requires of
you, Mr. Pickering. And, upon my word, I do not see what other step you
can take. You are not, I suppose, prepared to send your wife and child
to the poor-house.” Then Fred Pickering burst into tears, and Mr.
Burnaby left him at the corner of Great Russell Street, after cramming
the ten-pound note into his hand.
To send his wife and child to the poor-house! In all his misery that
idea had never before presented itself to Fred Pickering. He had thought
of starvation, or rather of some high-toned extremity of destitution,
which might be borne with an admirable and perhaps sublime magnanimity.
But how was a man to bear with magnanimity a poor-house jacket, and the
union mode of hair-cutting? It is not easy for a man with a wife and
baby to starve in this country, unless he be one to whom starvation has
come very gradually. Fred saw it all now. The police would come to him,
and take his wife and baby away into the workhouse, and he would follow
them. It might be that this was worse than starvation, but it lacked
all that melodramatic grandeur to which he had looked forward almost
with satisfaction.
“Well,” said Mary to him, when he returned to her bedside, “who was it?
Has he told you of anything? Has he brought you anything to do?”
“He has given me that,” said Fred, throwing the bank-note on to the bed,
“--out of charity! I may as well go out into the streets and beg now.
All the pride has gone out of me.” Then he sat over the fire crying, and
there he sat for hours.
“Fred,” said his wife to him, “if you do not write to your father
to-morrow I will write.”
He went again to every person connected in the slightest degree with
literature of whom he had the smallest knowledge; to Mr. Roderick
Billings, to the teacher who had instructed him in shorthand-writing, to
all those whom he had ever seen among the newspapers, to the editor of
the _International_, and to Mr. Boothby. Four different visits he made
to Mr. Boothby, in spite of his previous anger, but it was all to no
purpose. No one could find him employment for which he was suited. He
wrote to Mr. Wickham Webb, and Mr. Wickham Webb sent him a five-pound
note. His heart was, I think, more broken by his inability to refuse
charity than by anything else that had occurred to him.
His wife had threatened to write to his father, but she had not carried
her threat into execution. It is not by such means that a young wife
overcomes her husband. He had looked sternly at her when she had so
spoken, and she had known that she could not bring herself to do such a
thing without his permission. But when she fell ill, wanting the means
of nourishment for her child, and in her illness begged of him to
implore succour from his father for her baby when she should be gone,
then his pride gave way, and he sat down and wrote his letter. When he
went to his ink-bottle it was dry. It was nearly two months since he had
made any attempt at working in that profession to which he had intended
to devote himself.
He wrote to his father, drinking to the dregs the bitter cup of broken
pride. It always seems to me that the prodigal son who returned to his
father after feeding with the swine suffered but little mortification in
his repentant submission. He does, indeed, own his unworthiness, but the
calf is killed so speedily that the pathos of the young man’s position
is lost in the hilarity of the festival. Had he been compelled to
announce his coming by post; had he been driven to beg permission to
return, and been forced to wait for a reply, his punishment, I think,
would have been more severe. To Fred Pickering the punishment was very
severe, and indeed for him no fatted calf was killed at last. He
received without delay a very cold letter from his father, in which he
was told that his father would consider the matter. In the meanwhile
thirty shillings a week should be allowed him. At the end of a fortnight
he received a further letter, in which he was informed that if he would
return to Manchester he would be taken in at the attorney’s office which
he had left. He must not, however, hope to become himself an attorney;
he must look forward to be a paid attorney’s clerk, and in the meantime
his father would continue to allow him thirty shillings a week. “In the
present position of affairs,” said his father, “I do not feel that
anything would be gained by our seeing each other.” The calf which was
thus killed for poor Fred Pickering was certainly by no means a fatted
calf.
Of course he had to do as he was directed. He took his wife and baby
back to Manchester, and returned with sad eyes and weary feet to the old
office which he had in former days not only hated but despised. Then he
had been gallant and gay among the other young men, thinking himself to
be too good for the society of those around him; now he was the lowest
of the low, if not the humblest of the humble.
He told his whole story by letters to Mr. Burnaby, and received some
comfort from the kindness of that gentleman’s replies. “I still mean,”
he said, in one of those letters, “to return some day to my old
aspirations; but I will endeavour first to learn my trade as a
journeyman of literature.”
[Illustration: text decoration]
THE TWO GENERALS.
[Illustration: text decoration]
THE TWO GENERALS.
Christmas of 1860 is now three years past, and the civil war which was
then being commenced in America is still raging without any apparent
sign of an end.[A] The prophets of that time who prophesied the worst
never foretold anything so black as this. On that Christmas-day, Major
Anderson, who then held the command of the forts in Charleston harbour
on the part of the United States Government, removed his men and stores
from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, thinking that he might hold the one,
though not both, against any attack from the people of Charleston, whose
state, that of South Carolina, had seceded five days previously. That
was in truth the beginning of the war, though at that time Mr. Lincoln
was not yet president. He became so on the 4th of March, 1861, and on
the 15th April following Fort Sumter was evacuated by Major Anderson, on
the part of the United States Government, under fire from the people of
Charleston. So little bloody however, was that affair, that no one was
killed in the assault; though one poor fellow perished in the saluting
fire with which the retreating officer was complimented as he retired
with the so called honours of war. During the three years that have
since passed, the combatants have better learned the use of their
weapons of war. No one can now laugh at them for their bloodless
battles. Never have the shores of any stream been so bathed in blood, as
have the shores of those Virginian rivers whose names have lately become
familiar to us. None of those old death-doomed generals of Europe, whom
we have learned to hate for the cold-blooded energy of their
trade,--Tilly, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederic, or Napoleon,--none of these
ever left so many carcasses to the kites as have the Johnsons, Jacksons,
and Hookers of the American armies, who come and go so fast that they
are almost forgotten before the armies they have led have melted into
clay.
[A] This story was first published in December, 1863.
Of all the states of the old Union, Virginia has probably suffered the
most, but Kentucky has least deserved the suffering which has fallen to
her lot. In Kentucky the war has raged hither and thither, every town
having been subject to inroads from either army. But she would have been
loyal to the Union if she could;--nay, on the whole she has been loyal.
She would have thrown off the plague chain of slavery if the prurient
virtue of New England would have allowed her to do so by her own means;
but virtuous New England was too proud of her own virtue to be content
that the work of abolition should thus pass from her hands. Kentucky,
when the war was beginning, desired nothing but to go on in her own
course. She wished for no sudden change. She grew no cotton. She
produced corn and meat, and was a land flowing with milk and honey. Her
slaves were not as the slaves of the Southern States. They were few in
number; tolerated for a time because their manumission was understood to
be of all questions the most difficult,--rarely or never sold from the
estates to which they belonged. When the war broke out Kentucky said
that she would be neutral. Neutral, and she lying on the front lines of
the contest! Such neutrality was impossible to her,--impossible to any
of her children!
Near to the little state capital of Frankfort, there lived at that
Christmas time of 1860 an old man, Major Reckenthorpe by name, whose
life had been marked by many circumstances which had made him
well-known throughout Kentucky. He had sat for nearly thirty years in
the congress of the United States at Washington, representing his own
state sometimes as senator and sometimes in the Lower House. Though
called a major he was by profession a lawyer, and as such had lived
successfully. Time had been when friends had thought it possible that he
might fill the president’s chair; but his name had been too much and too
long in men’s mouths for that. Who had heard of Lincoln, Pierce, or
Polk, two years before they were named as candidates for the presidency?
But Major Reckenthorpe had been known and talked of in Washington longer
perhaps than any other living politician.
Upon the whole he had been a good man, serving his country as best he
knew how, and adhering honestly to his own political convictions. He had
been, and now was, a slave-owner, but had voted in the congress of his
own state for the abolition of slavery in Kentucky. He had been a
passionate man, and had lived not without the stain of blood on his
hands; for duels had been familiar to him. But he had lived in a time
and in a country in which it had been hardly possible for a leading
public man not to be familiar with a pistol. He had been known as one
whom no man could attack with impunity; but he had also been known as
one who would not willingly attack any one. Now, at the time of which I
am writing, he was old,--almost on the shelf,--past his duellings and
his strong short invectives on the floors of congress; but he was a man
whom no age could tame, and still he was ever talking, thinking, and
planning for the political well-being of his state.
In person he was tall, still upright, stiff, and almost ungainly in his
gait, with eager gray eyes that the waters of age could not dim, with
short, thick, grizzled hair which age had hardly thinned, but which ever
looked rough and uncombed, with large hands, which he stretched out with
extended fingers when he spoke vehemently;--and of the major it may be
said that he always spoke with vehemence. But now he was slow in his
steps, and infirm on his legs. He suffered from rheumatism, sciatica,
and other maladies of the old, which no energy of his own could repress.
In these days he was a stern, unhappy, all but broken-hearted old man;
for he saw that the work of his life had been wasted.