felt indeed the isolation of the country—gulfed as I was among a
perfectly illiterate unprogressive country population (much more so than
at Bradway), with my friend and his family, who though good and true
people were also quite limited to material interests. There was no one
to whom I could talk, who could give me any help. My Sheffield friends
were far away, only to be seen once a week or so, and (in the early
years at any rate) visitors at Millthorpe were rare. It was too much,
and my health suffered a little; and yet (as I have said) I was driven
to it. It is strange how unaccounted impulses and instincts underlie the
evolution of one’s life. Certainly during those years I (in some ways
the most unlikely person to do so) bottomed out the whole of the
material and mechanical ways of life—from the details of household life
to the processes of agriculture and of a great number of other trades
and industries. It was a training such as no university could give. And
if my health suffered now and then from the strain, _on the whole_ it
improved immensely during this period; so that after five or six years I
threw off completely my nerve troubles, and became stronger than I had
ever been before in my life.
Two other things happened in 1883 besides my migration to Millthorpe,
and publication of _Towards Democracy_—namely, my first acquaintance
with the Socialist movement, and my reading of Thoreau’s _Walden_.
Of course, in a vague form, my ideas had been taking a socialistic shape
for many years; but they were lacking in definite outline—that
definition which is so necessary for all action. That outline as regards
the industrial situation was given me by reading Hyndman’s _England for
All_. However open to criticism the Marxian theory of surplus-value may
be (and _every_ theory must ultimately succumb to criticism), it
certainly fulfilled a want for the time by giving a definite text for
the social argument. The instant I read that chapter in _England for
All_—the mass of floating impressions, sentiments, ideals, etc., in my
mind fell into shape—and I had a clear line of social reconstruction
before me.
I gave my first semi-socialistic lecture (though I think this was before
reading the above book)—on “Co-operative Production”—in that year; and
later on in the same year I one evening looked in at a committee meeting
of the Social Democratic Federation in Westminster Bridge Road. It was
in the basement of one of those big buildings facing the Houses of
Parliament that I found a group of conspirators sitting. There was
Hyndman, occupying the chair, and with him round the table, William
Morris, John Burns, H. H. Champion, J. L. Joynes, Herbert Burrows (I
think) and others. After that, though I did not actually join the
S.D.F., I kept in touch with them, and was able at a later time to
render material help in the establishment of _Justice_ as their organ.
From that time forward I worked definitely along the Socialist line:
with a drift, as was natural, towards Anarchism. I do not know that at
any time I looked upon the Socialist programme or doctrines as final,
and it is certain that I never anticipated a cast-iron regulation of
industry, but I saw that the current Socialism afforded an excellent
text for an attack upon the existing competitive system, and a good
means of rousing the slumbering consciences—especially of the rich; and
in that view I have worked for it and the Anarchist ideal consistently.
The other thing that happened in 1883 was my reading of Thoreau’s
_Walden_. Just about the very day that I got into my new house and onto
my plot of land—the realization of the plotting and scheming of some
years—that book fell into my hands, which took the bottom completely out
of my little bucket! Having just committed myself to all the
exasperations of carrying on a house and market-garden and the petty but
innumerable bothers of ‘trade,’ the charming ideal of a simplification
of life below the level of all such things was opened out before me—and
for the time I felt almost paralyzed.
Whatever the practical value of the Walden experiment may be, there is
no question that the book is one of the most vital and pithy ever
written. Its ideal of life spent with Nature on the very ground-plane of
simplicity (though probably only permanently realizable by a highly
cultured humanity, having access to all the results of art and science,
as Thoreau had at Concord) has yet shattered the conventional views of
thousands of people. It helped, I must confess, to make me uncomfortable
for some years. I felt that I had aimed at a natural life and completely
failed—that I might somehow have escaped from this blessed civilization
altogether—and now I was tied up worse than ever, on its commercial
side.
What sort of line my life would have taken if Thoreau had come to me a
year earlier, I cannot tell. It is certain that there would have been a
considerable difference. Perhaps it is lucky I was not drifted away by
him and stranded, too far from the currents of ordinary life. At any
rate I do not regret now that things happened as they did. Instead of
escaping into solitude and the wilds of nature—which would have
satisfied one side—but perhaps not the most persistent—of my character,
I was tied to the traffic of ordinary life, and thrown inevitably into
touch with all sorts of people.
Early in 1883, as I have said, I gave my first lecture on social
questions, and from that time forward I spoke on these subjects. In the
summer of ’84 I went again to the United States, my chief object again
being to see Whitman—though I had also friends to visit. I crossed the
Atlantic as a steerage passenger—in a big Inman boat, the _City of
Berlin_—with seven or eight hundred other steerage passengers. It was a
great experience. I have described it in my poem “On an Atlantic
Steamship.” The fact of my venturing it shows the determination with
which I was working down into a knowledge of the life of the people.
Besides, I had crossed as a _saloon_ passenger before, and I felt that
_that_ was intolerable! The experience was not nearly so rude as I had
expected. We had good weather, which of course is everything, and were
on deck all day; the nationalities, Swedes, German, Irish, English,
etc., were kept apart from each other below; I secured a cabin with a
very decent set of young English fellows, and we got on first-rate. The
food was quite clean and good. So well satisfied was I that I actually
_returned_ (from Quebec) in the steerage section!
I spent three or four days in Philadelphia and saw Whitman each day (of
which I have given an account elsewhere[13]); and then went on to
Massachusetts. The visit to Whitman did not help me so much as the first
time. He was very friendly; he gave me introductions to Dr. Bucke in
Canada, and to W. Sloane Kennedy, and was generally kind; but his
self-centredness (arising no doubt largely from physical causes) had
increased, and seemed difficult to overcome.
In Massachusetts I stayed with my friends the Rileys, who had at one
time been on St. George’s farm (Ruskin’s) near Sheffield. They were now
on a farm near Townsend Centre, and I remained with them about three
weeks, joining in the life, doing a bit on the farm with them, and
seeing something of the neighbours. George Riley, the son, and I were
chums, and spent some of the time walking together—on one occasion a two
days ‘out’ to Wachusett, mountain and lake, a charming neighborhood.
During the time I also visited Sloane Kennedy, at Belmont, and together
we went to Walden pond, bathed in it, and added a stone to Thoreau’s
cairn. Thence to Pennsylvania, beyond Pittsburg, to stay with Mrs. Hardy
and her three daughters—also people I had known in Sheffield—who
together were ‘running’ a big farm and making it pay well, an excellent
example of female management. Thence, after a pleasant stay of four or
five days, across Lake Erie to Toronto and so to London, to see Dr.
Bucke. Dr. Bucke was acting as head and superintendent of a large Asylum
for Insane folk—over a thousand patients—which he managed excellently. I
found him very interesting. We had long talks about Whitman; he showed
me his Whitman books, pictures, etc., and then after another four or
five days I got the steamer at Toronto, and went down the St. Lawrence
to Quebec. The Lake itself, the passages of the thousand islands and of
the successive rapids, were a great delight. I had only an hour or two
at Quebec, unfortunately—not time to see much of the town; and then I
embarked on the _Parisian_ for home. Here again the lower reaches of
this magnificent river, the coast of Gaspé, and of Labrador, the
hundreds of icebergs we saw that day, becalmed in a glassy blue sea, and
in blazing sunlight, were most interesting. We slipped through the
straits of Belle-Isle and had an enjoyable passage to Liverpool.
It was, I think, some little time before the events recorded in the
first part of this chapter—though I cannot be quite sure about the
date—that I had the signal experience of meeting with Edward J.
Trelawny, the devoted friend of Shelley and the companion of Byron. For
years and years—until indeed the star of Whitman rose in the
West—Shelley had been my own ideal. To grasp Trelawny’s hand was to gain
an unexpected link with a far remote past.
Trelawny’s life had been one of extraordinary adventure. To understand
even a part of it one must read his _Adventures of a Younger Son_
(largely his own story), and his book _Records of Shelley, Byron, and
the Author_ (1858 and 1878). Born in 1792 of a well-known Cornish family
he joined the Navy as a mere boy, and then at an early age _deserted_
and took up, according to his own account, with a pirate gang among the
seas of Java and Borneo. After some amazing adventures, he returned in
about 1813 to Europe; and soon after married an English lady. Of this
period however, between 1813 and 1820, very little seems to be known,
except that he himself says: “I became a shackled, careworn and
spirit-broken married man of the civilized West!” It was in 1820 at
Lausanne that a German bookseller chanced to show him _Queen Mab_; and a
little later, at Geneva, that he met Thomas Medwin, Shelley’s cousin.
The reading of the book and the conversations with Medwin convinced
Trelawny that here was a man worth knowing; and he did not rest till a
year or two later he went to Pisa and actually made Shelley’s
acquaintance (early in 1822). The two were about the same age; and it
shows something of what manner of man Trelawny was, that he so quickly
recognized the quality of Shelley; and something of what Shelley was
that he so soon commanded the admiration of this buccaneer and man of
adventure. After Shelley’s death Trelawny was with Byron a great deal,
both as Captain of Byron’s yacht and companion in his expedition to
Greece; but he never expressed a great regard for Byron—perhaps indeed
he hardly did the latter justice. Byron died at Missolonghi in 1824; but
Trelawny stayed on in Greece, joined the Greek cause against the Turks,
took to wife the sister of Ulysses, or Odysseus, a Greek chieftain,
lived for some time with him and his guerilla band in a cave on Mount
Parnassus, and was nearly killed there by a bullet from a spy. These and
many other things are written in the _Records_ above mentioned.
Later, after his return to England, and somewhere about 1840, Trelawny
fell in love with a certain Lady Goring, and finally induced her to
leave her husband and live with him. And it was this, curiously enough,
which at a later period led to my acquaintance with him. Lady Goring’s
son, by the old Sir Harry, married a cousin of mine, and when a boy of
sixteen or seventeen I used occasionally to go and stay with the young
pair at Highden near Worthing where they lived, and where I was
initiated in the mysteries of coursing, ferreting, etc., which were very
much in the order of the day there. Charles Goring, my cousin’s husband,
was the very type of the “bold bad baronet” of the shilling novels—a
type fairly common then, though almost extinct now—a rather handsome man
with fierce twirlable moustache, and thoroughly bearish manners, given
to swearing and drinking, and devoted to his dogs and guns. Whatever
induced my cousin—who was the sweetest and gentlest of girls—to marry
him I do not know. But that is always the way: the mild and forgiving
women marry the wicked men, and of course make the latter all the
wickeder by doing so! In course of time he grew a little tired of his
wife (there were no children) and behaved badly towards her. Then his
mother died—whom he had not seen since she ran away with Trelawny, some
twenty-five or more years before; and so, seized with some sort of
compunction after all this time, Charles Goring went on a pilgrimage to
his mother’s adopted home; found there Trelawny _and_ his mother’s
daughter by Trelawny—his own stepsister, by that time a rather beautiful
girl or young woman.
From all this complications arose, which I need not go into, but which
ultimately in an indirect way led to a somewhat celebrated affair in the
Divorce Courts—the Goring Case of the year 1878. Suffice it to say that
soon after these unfortunate squabbles were over, Charles Goring had the
grace to die, and my cousin (who had obtained a separation order) was
left quite free. It was then that I asked her one day to give me an
introduction to Edward Trelawny, which she willingly did.
I found him at the house which he was then occupying in Pelham Crescent,
S.W.—No. 7 I think—a quite old man of about eighty-seven or
eighty-eight, rugged to a degree, with sunken eyes and projecting
cheek-bones, but with a strange gleam of fire about him even at that
age—not unlike some semi-extinct volcano—and the appearance of what had
once been a rather massive and powerful frame. He was sitting in a high
chair near the fire with a pile of books on the floor beside him. “You
are interested in Shelley,” he said. And then without waiting for a
reply: “He was our greatest poet since Shakespeare.” And then: “He
couldn’t have been the poet he was if he had not been an Atheist.” That
was a pretty good beginning; he rolled out the “Atheist” with evident
satisfaction. He went on to express his contempt for the contemporary
poets, like Tennyson and Browning; then returned to Shelley: “I am not
sure he wasn’t the greatest man we have ever had: all these others just
tinker with the surface; Shelley goes down to the roots.” We talked a
little about individual poems, but I forget what. Then he took up one of
the books beside him—a Godwin’s _Political Justice_, and read extracts
from it—always with a choice which showed his hatred of modern
Civilization. (And this was interesting from one who had seen so much of
the world outside the bounds of our civilization.) Indeed there was
something astonishing in this old man’s intensity of rebelliousness,
which extreme age had apparently done nothing to reduce. He directed my
attention to an oil-portrait over the mantelpiece: “Do you know who that
is?” I guessed. It was a portrait—apparently not a very good one—of
Mary, Percy Shelley’s wife[14]: the face rather milk-and-watery in
expression. “She did him no good,” he said—“was always a drag on
him—shackling him with jealousies and the conventions of social life.”
[Trelawny was never quite fair to any one he did not like, and it was
evident he did not like Mary—though in the earlier days of their
acquaintance he had certainly been fond of her.] “Poets,” he continued,
“ought never to marry. It’s the greatest mistake. A poet ought to be
free as air—free to say and do what he pleases—and he cannot be free if
he is married.” This was pretty good from a man who had been so very
_much_ married as Trelawny!
He had had four wives at least—no one knew how many more. His first wife
(as appears also from _The Younger Son_) was a girl of Borneo. The
second was the lady who filled somehow the gap between 1813 and 1820.
The third, as we have seen, was a Greek, the sister of Odysseus; the
fourth was the former Lady Goring. There were many stories about him in
the family, mostly no doubt somewhat embellished. His second wife, it
was said, was only a small woman, and when she was “naughty” he would
dangle her by the scruff of her neck _out of the window_, until she was
good again. He had various dried heads, of pirates and others, among his
treasures; and swords and daggers stained with the blood of enemies! Our
conversation rambled on, but at this distance of time I forget details.
As I say, it gave me a strange thrill on leaving (and he died soon
after) to grasp the hand of one who had been so near to Shelley, and
whose character undoubtedly had a great fascination for the poet. In
Shelley’s _Fragments of an Unfinished Drama_ (in which the Pirate on the
Enchanted Isle is generally supposed to represent Trelawny), the poet
says—
He was as is the sun in his fierce youth,
As terrible and lovely as a tempest.
On the other hand Trelawny in the Preface to his _Records_ says of
Shelley: “After glancing one day at an old Italian romance, in which a
knight of Malta throws down the gauntlet defying all infidels, Shelley
remarked: ‘_I_ should have picked it up. All our knowledge is derived
from infidels.’” These two quotations give a good idea of the relation
between the two men.
VII
SHEFFIELD AND SOCIALISM
During my absence in the United States, my friend Harold Cox, who had
just left Cambridge, came down to Millthorpe and spent a good part of
the summer there—remaining a bit after my return home. He wanted to get
manual and farm and garden experience, and that same autumn he plunged
into farming—took a farm at Tilford in Surrey, and inducted a little
colony into it. But the land was mere sand, and the experience of one
winter and spring was enough! In less than a year he gave the place up,
and went out, by way of a change, to India, to the Anglo-Mohammedan
College at Futtehgur. While in India he went in ’85 or ’86 for a tour in
Cashmere, and from Cashmere he sent me a pair of Indian sandals. I had
asked him, before he went out, to send some likely pattern of sandals,
as I felt anxious to try some myself. I soon found the joy of wearing
them. And after a little time I set about making them. I got two or
three lessons from W. Lill, a bootmaker friend in Sheffield, and soon
succeeded in making a good many pairs for myself and various friends.
Since then the trade has grown into quite a substantial one. G. Adams
took it up at Millthorpe in 1889; making, I suppose, about a hundred or
more pairs a year; and since his death it has been carried on at the
Garden City, Letchworth.
In 1885 I published the second edition of _Towards Democracy_—still
through John Heywood; and early in ’86 quite an important local event
occurred in the establishment of our Sheffield Socialist Society. One or
two of us beat round the town and got together a few Socialists and
advanced Radicals; we persuaded William Morris to come down (early in
March)—and the result of that was the formation of the Society.
At that time, William Morris, having with a few others parted from
Hyndman and the S.D.F., had founded the Socialist League—branches of
which were springing up merrily all over the country. And it was William
Morris’s great hope, often expressed in the _Commonweal_ and elsewhere,
that these branches growing and spreading, would before long “reach
hands” to each other and form a network over the land—would constitute
in fact “the New Society” within the framework of the old, and destined
ere long to replace the old. No doubt the forces of reaction—the immense
apathy of the masses, the immense resistance of the official and
privileged classes, entrenched behind the Law and the State, and the
immense and growing power of Money—were things not then fully realized
and understood. There seemed a good hope for the realization of Morris’
dream—and we most of us shared in it. But History is a difficult horse
to drive. In this matter of the Socialist movement, as in other matters,
it has always been liable to take the most unexpected turns; and the
little League societies after flourishing gaily for a few years—suddenly
began to wane and die out; I believe indeed that at this moment there is
not one of them left. Morris saw with some sadness that his hope was not
going to be fulfilled—and though I do not think that he altogether lost
heart he was fain in his last years to bury his disappointment in a
return to his art work, and even to favour as a forlorn hope the
Parliamentary side in revolutionary politics! It is curious indeed in
this matter to see how, of all the innumerable little societies—of the
S.D.F., the League, the Fabians, the Christian Socialists, the
Anarchists, the Freedom groups, the I.L.P., the Clarion societies, and
local groups of various names—all supporting one side or another of the
general Socialist movement—not one of them has grown to any great
volume, or to commanding and permanent influence; and how yet, and at
the same time, the general teaching and ideals of the movement have
permeated society in the most remarkable way, and have deeply infected
the views of all classes, as well as general literature and even
municipal and imperial politics. Perhaps it is a matter for much
congratulation that things have turned out so. If the movement had been
pocketed by any one man or section it would have been inevitably
narrowed down. As it is, it has taken on something of an oceanic
character; and if by its very lack of narrowness it has lost a little in
immediate results, its ultimate success we may think is all the more
assured.
The real value of the modern Socialist movement—it has always seemed to
me—has not lain so much in its actual constructive programme as (1) in
the fact that it has provided a text for a searching criticism of the
old society and of the lives of the rich, and (2) the fact that it has
enshrined a most glowing and vital enthusiasm towards the realization of
a new society. It is these two points which have always drawn and
attached me to it. The constructive details of the future are things
about which there may and indeed must be different opinions. The
necessity of organization in society, and of united action, the
avoidance of officialism and bureaucracy, the handling of the land so as
to afford the most general access to it, the barring of monopolies and
of all industrial parasitism, the liberation of labour to dignity and
self-reliance, the conduct of public ownership, the questions of
taxation, representation, education, etc.—these are all most complex
affairs whose united and detailed solution can only proceed step by
step, by slow trial and experience. We must expect mistakes and
differences of opinion here. Nevertheless I think we may say that in the
broad lines of its constructive policy Socialism has taken the right
course and the one which time will justify. It has laid down in fact
once for all the principles that parasitism and monopoly must cease, and
it has set before itself the ideal of a society which while it accords
to every individual as full scope as possible for the exercise of his
faculties and enjoyment of the fruits of his own labour, will in return
expect from the individual his hearty contribution to the general
well-being, and at least to claim nothing for his own which (or the
value of which) he has not by his own effort produced. Towards the
fulfilment of these aims Socialism has proposed a guarded public
ownership of land and of some of the more important industries (guarded,
that is, against the dangers of officialism), and it seems likely that
this general programme is the one along which western society will work
in the near future; that is, till such time as the State, quâ State, and
all efficient Government, are superseded by the voluntary and
instinctive consent and mutual helpfulness of the people—when of course
the more especially Anarchist ideal would be realized.
As I say, while there is practically no dissent about the future form of
society as one which shall embody to the fullest extent the two opposite
poles of Communism and Individualism in one vital unity, there may and
naturally must be differences on the question of the detailed working
out of the problem, and indeed it may well be that the solution will
take somewhat different forms in different places and among different
peoples.
It has not been, I repeat, the belief in special constructive details as
panaceas which has led me into the Socialist camp, so much as the fact
that the movement has been a distinct challenge to the old order and a
call to the rich and those in power to remodel society and their own
lives; and that other fact that within the Socialist camp has burned
that wonderful enthusiasm and belief in a new ideal of fraternity—which
however crude and inexperienced it may at times appear is surely
destined to conquer and rule the world at last.