BARUCH went neither to Barnes’s shop nor to the Marshalls for nearly a
month. One Sunday morning he was poring over the _Moreh Nevochim_, for
it had proved too powerful a temptation for him, and he fell upon the
theorem that without God the Universe could not continue to exist, for
God is its Form. It was one of those sayings which may be nothing or
much to the reader. Whether it be nothing or much depends upon the
quality of his mind.
There was certainly nothing in it particularly adapted to Baruch’s
condition at that moment, but an antidote may be none the less
efficacious because it is not direct. It removed him to another region.
It was like the sight and sound of the sea to the man who has been in
trouble in an inland city. His self-confidence was restored, for he to
whom an idea is revealed becomes the idea, and is no longer personal and
consequently poor.
His room seemed too small for him; he shut his book and went to Great
Ormond Street. He found there Marshall, Mrs Caffyn, Clara and a friend
of Marshall’s named Dennis.
‘Where is your wife?’ said Baruch to Marshall.
‘Gone with Miss Madge to the Catholic chapel to hear a mass of Mozart’s.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Caffyn. ‘I tell them they’ll turn Papists if they do not
mind. They are always going to that place, and there’s no knowing, so
I’ve hear’d, what them priests can do. They aren’t like our parsons.
Catch that man at Great Oakhurst a-turnin’ anybody.’
‘I suppose,’ said Baruch to Clara, ‘it is the music takes your sister
there?’
‘Mainly, I believe, but perhaps not entirely.’
‘What other attraction can there be?’
‘I am not in the least disposed to become a convert. Once for all,
Catholicism is incredible and that is sufficient, but there is much in
its ritual which suits me. There is no such intrusion of the person of
the minister as there is in the Church of England, and still worse
amongst dissenters. In the Catholic service the priest is nothing; it is
his office which is everything; he is a mere means of communication. The
mass, in so far as it proclaims that miracle is not dead, is also very
impressive to me.’
‘I do not quite understand you,’ said Marshall, ‘but if you once chuck
your reason overboard, you may just as well be Catholic as Protestant.
Nothing can be more ridiculous than the Protestant objection, on the
ground of absurdity, to the story of the saint walking about with his
head under his arm.’
The tea things had been cleared away, and Marshall was smoking. Both he
and Dennis were Chartists, and Baruch had interrupted a debate upon a
speech delivered at a Chartist meeting that morning by Henry Vincent.
Frederick Dennis was about thirty, tall and rather loose-limbed. He wore
loose clothes, his neck-cloth was tied in a big, loose knot, his feet
were large and his boots were heavy. His face was quite smooth, and his
hair, which was very thick and light brown, fell across his forehead in a
heavy wave with just two complete undulations in it from the parting at
the side to the opposite ear. It had a trick of tumbling over his eyes,
so that his fingers were continually passed through it to brush it away.
He was a wood engraver, or, as he preferred to call himself, an artist,
but he also wrote for the newspapers, and had been a contributor to the
_Northern Star_. He was well brought up and was intended for the
University, but he did not stick to his Latin and Greek, and as he showed
some talent for drawing he was permitted to follow his bent. His work,
however, was not of first-rate quality, and consequently orders were not
abundant. This was the reason why he had turned to literature. When he
had any books to illustrate he lived upon what they brought him, and when
there were no books he renewed his acquaintance with politics. If books
and newspapers both failed, he subsisted on a little money which had been
left him, stayed with friends as long as he could, and amused himself by
writing verses which showed much command over rhyme.
‘I cannot stand Vincent,’ said Marshall, ‘he is too flowery for me, and
he does not belong to the people. He is middle-class to the backbone.’
‘He is deficient in ideas,’ said Dennis.
‘It is odd,’ continued Marshall, turning to Cohen, ‘that your race never
takes any interest in politics.’
‘My race is not a nation, or, if a nation, has no national home. It took
an interest in politics when it was in its own country, and produced some
rather remarkable political writing.’
‘But why do you care so little for what is going on now?’
‘I do care, but all people are not born to be agitators, and,
furthermore, I have doubts if the Charter will accomplish all you
expect.’
‘I know what is coming’—Marshall took the pipe out of his mouth and spoke
with perceptible sarcasm—‘the inefficiency of merely external remedies,
the folly of any attempt at improvement which does not begin with the
improvement of individual character, and that those to whom we intend to
give power are no better than those from whom we intend to take it away.
All very well, Mr Cohen. My answer is that at the present moment the
stockingers in Leicester are earning four shillings and sixpence a week.
It is not a question whether they are better or worse than their rulers.
They want something to eat, they have nothing, and their masters have
more than they can eat.’
‘Apart altogether from purely material reasons,’ said Dennis, ‘we have
rights; we are born into this planet without our consent, and, therefore,
we may make certain demands.’
‘Do you not think,’ said Clara, ‘that the repeal of the corn laws will
help you?’
Dennis smiled and was about to reply, but Marshall broke out savagely,—
‘Repeal of the corn laws is a contemptible device of manufacturing
selfishness. It means low wages. Do you suppose the great Manchester
cotton lords care one straw for their hands? Not they! They will face a
revolution for repeal because it will enable them to grind an extra
profit out of us.’
‘I agree with you entirely,’ said Dennis, turning to Clara, ‘that a tax
upon food is wrong; it is wrong in the abstract. The notion of taxing
bread, the fruit of the earth, is most repulsive; but the point is—what
is our policy to be? If a certain end is to be achieved, we must neglect
subordinate ends, and, at times, even contradict what our own principles
would appear to dictate. That is the secret of successful leadership.’
He took up the poker and stirred the fire.
‘That will do, Dennis,’ said Marshall, who was evidently fidgety. ‘The
room is rather warm. There’s nothing in Vincent which irritates me more
than those bits of poetry with which he winds up.
“God made the man—man made the slave,”
and all that stuff. If God made the man, God made the slave. I know
what Vincent’s little game is, and it is the same game with all his set.
They want to keep Chartism religious, but we shall see. Let us once get
the six points, and the Established Church will go, and we shall have
secular education, and in a generation there will not be one superstition
left.’
‘Theological superstition, you mean?’ said Clara.
‘Yes, of course, what others are there worth notice?’
‘A few. The superstition of the ordinary newspaper reader is just as
profound, and the tyranny of the majority may be just as injurious as the
superstition of a Spanish peasant, or the tyranny of the Inquisition.’
‘Newspapers will not burn people as the priests did and would do again if
they had the power, and they do not insult us with fables and a hell and
a heaven.’
‘I maintain,’ said Clara with emphasis, ‘that if a man declines to
examine, and takes for granted what a party leader or a newspaper tells
him, he has no case against the man who declines to examine, or takes for
granted what the priest tells him. Besides, although, as you know, I am
not a convert myself, I do lose a little patience when I hear it preached
as a gospel to every poor conceited creature who goes to your Sunday
evening atheist lecture, that he is to believe nothing on one particular
subject which his own precious intellect cannot verify, and the next
morning he finds it to be his duty to swallow wholesale anything you
please to put into his mouth. As to the tyranny, the day may come, and I
believe is approaching, when the majority will be found to be more
dangerous than any ecclesiastical establishment which ever existed.’
Baruch’s lips moved, but he was silent. He was not strong in argument.
He was thinking about Marshall’s triumphant inquiry whether God is not
responsible for slavery. He would have liked to say something on that
subject, but he had nothing ready.
‘Practical people,’ said Dennis, who had not quite recovered from the
rebuke as to the warmth of the room, ‘are often most unpractical and
injudicious. Nothing can be more unwise than to mix up politics and
religion. If you _do_,’ Dennis waved his hand, ‘you will have all the
religious people against you. My friend Marshall, Miss Hopgood, is under
the illusion that the Church in this country is tottering to its fall.
Now, although I myself belong to no sect, I do not share his illusion;
nay, more, I am not sure’—Mr Dennis spoke slowly, rubbed his chin and
looked up at the ceiling—‘I am not sure that there is not something to be
said in favour of State endowment—at least, in a country like Ireland.’
‘Come along, Dennis, we shall be late,’ said Marshall, and the two
forthwith took their departure in order to attend another meeting.
‘Much either of ’em knows about it,’ said Mrs Caffyn when they had gone.
‘There’s Marshall getting two pounds a week reg’lar, and goes on talking
about people at Leicester, and he has never been in Leicester in his
life; and, as for that Dennis, he knows less than Marshall, for he does
nothing but write for newspapers and draw for picture-books, never
nothing what you may call work, and he does worrit me so whenever he
begins about poor people that I can’t sit still. _I_ do know what the
poor is, having lived at Great Oakhurst all these years.’
‘You are not a Chartist, then?’ said Baruch.
‘Me—me a Chartist? No, I ain’t, and yet, maybe, I’m something worse.
What would be the use of giving them poor creatures votes? Why, there
isn’t one of them as wouldn’t hold up his hand for anybody as would give
him a shilling. Quite right of ’em, too, for the one thing they have to
think about from morning to night is how to get a bit of something to
fill their bellies, and they won’t fill them by voting.’
‘But what would you do for them?’
‘Ah! that beats me! Hang somebody, but I don’t know who it ought to be.
There’s a family by the name of Longwood, they live just on the slope of
the hill nigh the Dower Farm, and there’s nine of them, and the youngest
when I left was a baby six months old, and their living-room faces the
road so that the north wind blows in right under the door, and I’ve seen
the snow lie in heaps inside. As reg’lar as winter comes Longwood is
knocked off—no work. I’ve knowed them not have a bit of meat for weeks
together, and him a-loungin’ about at the corner of the street. Wasn’t
that enough to make him feel as if somebody ought to be killed? And
Marshall and Dennis say as the proper thing to do is to give him a vote,
and prove to him there was never no Abraham nor Isaac, and that Jonah
never was in a whale’s belly, and that nobody had no business to have
more children than he could feed. And what goes on, and what must go on,
inside such a place as Longwood’s, with him and his wife, and with them
boys and gals all huddled together—But I’d better hold my tongue. We’ll
let the smoke out of this room, I think, and air it a little.’
She opened the window, and Baruch rose and went home.
Whenever Mrs Caffyn talked about the labourers at Great Oakhurst, whom
she knew so well, Clara always felt as if all her reading had been a
farce, and, indeed, if we come into close contact with actual life, art,
poetry and philosophy seem little better than trifling. When the mist
hangs over the heavy clay land in January, and men and women shiver in
the bitter cold and eat raw turnips, to indulge in fireside ecstasies
over the divine Plato or Shakespeare is surely not such a virtue as we
imagine it to be.