Just as my first year in London was drawing to a close I received the
gratifying news from Mr. Westonshaugh that I might take a holiday of a
week’s duration. Naturally, my first idea was to go out of town, and
Aunt Augusta reminded me that Doctor Dunston had said he would like to
entertain me as a guest at Merivale when the opportunity offered.
But, strangely enough, I did not feel drawn to Merivale, because it so
happened that I had seen the Doctor during the previous spring, when he
came to London to buy prizes and attend one or two of the May meetings,
which were his solitary annual relaxation. In fact, he had asked me to
dine with him at his hotel, “The Bishop’s Keys,” not far from Exeter
Hall, and I had gone, and found the Doctor changed. I couldn’t tell how
he had changed exactly, for he was still the same man, of course, and
still took the same majestic view of life; but somehow he had shrunk,
and seeing him at “The Bishop’s Keys” was quite different from seeing
him in his study at Merivale, surrounded by all the implements of the
scholastic profession. His voice was the same, and his rich vocabulary,
and his way of examining a question in all its bearings; but still, he
had shrunk, and, a good deal to my surprise and uneasiness, I found
myself actually disagreeing with him! He did not thoroughly realise what
I had become; but that was my own fault to some extent, because the old
fascination under the Doctor’s spell had not entirely perished, and I
found myself feeling before him just as I used to feel. Of course I
ought to have talked freely to him and described the life I led and the
various things of interest that had happened to me in London; but I did
not. Instead, I listened to him wandering on about Merivale, and the new
boys, and the leak in the swimming-bath, and the scholarship his
daughter had got for Girton, and his wife’s neuralgia, and his detection
of the gardener’s boy in a series of thefts from the boot-room, and so
on. He didn’t like London, and had to take lozenges for his throat every
half-hour. He was, in fact, not to put too fine a point upon it, a bore,
and though my conscience stung me for ingratitude, I could not throw
myself into the leak in the swimming-bath, or feel that the gardener’s
boy or the scholarship at Girton really mattered an atom. It was base on
my part, but I could not help it, and, curiously enough, my conversation
had the same effect on the Doctor that his had on me. The only
difference was that he very soon stopped me when I began saying things
he didn’t like, whereas I could not, of course, stop him. Without saying
it unkindly, I found that the Doctor had become rather piffling in his
interests. He gave me a bottle of ginger beer with my dinner, while he
drank a half-bottle of burgundy, and he showed in a good many little
ways that he still regarded me merely as Corkey Major, and expected me
to regard him as Dr. Dunston. But one must give and take in these
matters, and when he began talking about what his old pupils had done in
the world, and left me entirely out of the list of those who had made
their mark, I began to feel fairly full up with the Doctor, as they say,
and knew only too well that in future I should manage to struggle on
without seeing any more of him. Because living in London readjusts your
perspective, so to speak, and it was rather sad in a way to see such a
grand old scholar and large-minded man filling up his fine brain with
such gew-gaws and fribbles as the affairs of Merivale. He was, moreover,
more Conservative than ever, and I felt really ashamed to find anybody
with such wrong ideas on demand and supply and the rights of man. But to
have corrected his opinions on these subjects would have been an
impossible task; because, as Mr. Blades once neatly said on another
subject, you can’t bring a back-number up to date, and the Doctor, while
he might have appeared to the old advantage in the scholastic and
venerable atmosphere of Merivale, was distinctly of the ancient and
honourable order of back-numbers as he appeared at “The Bishop’s Keys”
in London.
There was great unrest among the working classes at this time, and Dr.
Dunston was very angry with the proletariat. “The sons of labour,” he
said, “will soon be the sons of perdition, for, at the rate they are
going, they will inevitably dislocate forever the relations between
Capital and Labour—with disastrous results to themselves, Corkey; with
disastrous results to themselves!”
Of course, to one saturated in the sayings of Mr. Bright and Mr. Walter,
these views appeared erroneous; but it would not have done to tell the
Doctor that I was now a Radical. He must have felt it as a personal
slight in his scheme of education. Still, I had to assert myself to some
extent and didn’t hesitate to smoke a cigarette with my coffee. It may
be added that the Doctor didn’t hesitate to resent it.
“A stupid habit, even in the adult, Corkey,” he said; “and I regret that
you have allowed yourself to acquire it at your tender age. To suck into
the system a deadening smoke from the conflagration of a poisonous
vegetable has always seemed to me unworthy of a gentleman and a
Christian. No doubt your companions have seduced you, but I am sorry the
armour of Merivale was not proof against their temptation.”
After this I hid my secret flights toward literature and the boards. His
view of the theatre appeared to be that the Greek drama was worthy of
all praise, but that the English drama was not. I asked him if he was
going to see _Hamlet_, as performed by Mr. Irving and Miss Ellen Terry,
and he said, “No, Corkey. The modern theatre is no place for a preceptor
of the young. Shakespeare, in fact, is far too sacred a subject for the
modern stage. The spirit evaporates, the poet takes wing, and what is
left is not worth going to see. I read my Shakespeare in the privacy of
my own chamber, Corkey; and I do not expect that the modern generation
of actors can teach me anything I do not already know of the Swan of
Avon, either from a poetic or philosophical standpoint.”
To argue with this sort of thing was, of course, no work for me. I
listened in silence, and concealed the pity combined with annoyance that
was surging in my breast. I hated hiding from this religious-minded but
parochial man that I was going on the stage, for it seemed mean to do
so; but I also felt it was no good putting him to needless pain and very
likely spoiling the effect of the May Meetings and doing him harm. So I
changed the subject and asked him about the prizes. He had been to the
Army and Navy Stores for these, and had bought _Longfellow’s Poems_, and
_Robinson Crusoe_, and _St. Winifred’s_, and _Masterman Ready_, and
_Hours with a Microscope_ and _Hours with a Telescope_, and _Eyes and no
Eyes_, and many another fine, old, crusted work, familiar enough to me
in the past. In fact, I realised with interest that the Doctor’s mind
was standing still, and though there was something grand in a small way
to see this steadfast attitude, like a light-house, to use a poetical
simile, casting its unchanging beam over the tumultuous seas of
Merivale, yet, somehow, in the atmosphere of the Strand, London (for
“The Bishop’s Keys” were merely round a corner from the main
thoroughfare), the beam of the Doctor was reduced to a mere night-light.
By good luck he was going to an evening May Meeting at nine o’clock, and
he invited me to accompany him to hear an eminent Colonial Bishop on the
Spread of Christianity in the Frigid Zone; but with unexpected courage I
withstood him, pleaded an engagement, which was true, as it was a
Dramatic School night, and left him at the threshold of Exeter Hall. Our
parting was marked by a cordiality that both of us were far from
feeling; for I knew that I had disappointed the Doctor; and though, of
course, he little knew that he had disappointed me, he had; and I felt
an overpowering wish not to see him again. I had, in fact, now broken
definitely with my past, and when, therefore, Aunt Augusta suggested
that my week’s holiday should be spent at Merivale, I negatived the idea
without a division, as they say.
Aunt Augusta then rose to the occasion, with her usual kindness and
generosity, and proposed a few days at a place familiar to her in
Brittany.
“It is wild and lonely,” she said, “but it is very beautiful, and I can
do some sketching if the weather permits, and you can practise elocution
among the sand dunes and shout yourself hoarse.”
This offer of seeing a foreign country was far too good to refuse, and
though financially such a thing was beyond my private resources, I had
now made an arrangement with Aunt Augusta by which it was definitely
understood that any advances which she might be good enough to make for
the moment should be amply recognised at a later period in my career,
when money ceased to be the vital object it was at present.
She had not much, but still, far more than I, having made a niche for
herself on the pinnacle of fame, and often selling a work of creative
art for eight or even ten pounds. She promised, therefore, that when the
time came for me to earn money on the boards and draw a salary in
keeping with the dignity of a London actor, she would let me take the
financial lead, so to speak, and richly reward her for her generosity of
the past. In fact, it was understood that if Aunt Augusta cast her bread
upon the waters, in scriptural language, it would return to her after
many days—not like the talent hidden in the napkin, but more like the
widow’s cruse of oil, that increased a thousand-fold. I knew of course
that this must happen, and I think she felt there was more than an
off-chance of it. At any rate, she went on hopefully casting.
So we visited Brittany, and I enjoyed the interesting experience of a
foreign land and a foreign language in my ears, together with foreign
food and foreign money. A volume, of course, might be written about
Brittany, and, as a matter of fact, many volumes have been; but it is
not my intention to say anything on the subject here; because, upon my
return to London, much happened of a very abnormal character, and my
recollection of the peaceful days, when I practised elocution in the
sand dunes and Aunt Augusta painted pictures of the rather tame scenery,
was speedily swept away to limbo.
Moreover, I had now reached within a week of my eighteenth birthday and,
by a rather curious coincidence, the dreadful events now convulsing the
metropolis culminated on that anniversary. But I must not anticipate.
Though the proletariat was getting a good deal out of hand when I came
back from France, no actual collision had taken place with Law and
Order; but, to use a well-known figure of speech, the lion was aroused
and roaring, though he had not yet emerged from his den. To drop
metaphor, I may say that Labour was up in arms against Capital, and
Political Economy was at the last gasp.
At this grave crisis I found myself summoned once again to assist our
West-End Branch, and then discovered, to my astonishment, that the
proletariat had selected Trafalgar Square as a sort of rallying-ground
for their forces. Indeed, scenes of great unrest were daily enacted in
that famous centre of civilisation.
Needless to say, the staff at our West-End Branch was deeply excited at
the turn of affairs, and Mr. Bright seemed to think the problem the most
serious that had arisen in politics for fifty years. He was not,
however, entirely on the side of the masses, but felt rather doubtful of
their leaders were guiding them aright. Mr. Walter never found much time
to devote to politics, though a sound Liberal at heart; but what
interested him was the artistic and dramatic aspect of Trafalgar Square
when the horny-handed masses swept through it. As for Mr. Bewes, he went
on eating his daily chop as though we were not on the edge of a volcano.
Of course, as a stern Roman Catholic he was bound to believe that all
that happens is for the best. This enabled him to keep his nerve in a
way that was a lesson to us.
Mr. Harrison, our esteemed chief, was a Conservative, and he by no means
believed that everything that happens is for the best. He heartily
disliked the crowds in the Square and was always glad when the time came
to close the office and pull down the iron shutters. The directors also,
who dropped in as of yore to sign policies, took a very unfavourable
view of the situation and spoke harshly of the proletariat. They had a
theory that the leaders of the people ought to be hung for sedition,
privy conspiracy, and other crimes; and the newly made lord, known as
Corrievairacktown, said he would like to see the Guards called out to
send the vermin back to their holes at the point of the bayonet. He was
a very unbending man in the matter of Capital versus Labour, and seemed
to think that soldiers was really the last word on every subject.
Then, after a period of undoubted danger, there came the terrible day
when Mr. John Burns felt it his duty to climb up between the Trafalgar
Square lions and wave the republican flag of blood red above a sea of
upturned faces. The air was dark and murky; Nature wept, so to speak,
and heavy clouds hung low above the unnumbered thousands who listened
with panting bosoms to the impassioned utterances of their leader. Like
trumpet notes his fiery syllables rent the welkin, and there was a
movement in the masses of the assembled hosts, like billows driven by
the wind over the sea. Their white faces were as foam on the darkness of
dirty waves.
Fired to the fiercest enthusiasm by Mr. Burns, the proletariat now began
to shout and yell with the accumulated hunger and frenzy of centuries of
repression, and it was evident to the unprejudiced eye that they meant
to make themselves respected and get back a little of their own, as the
saying is. A hoarse and savage growl rent the air, and like hail the
speaker, whose glittering eyes and black beard were distinctly visible
from the windows of the Apollo, lashed his audience into a seething
whirlpool of anarchical fury. Here and there the populace seemed to
start forward on predatory thoughts intent; then they stood their ground
again; and there were momentary intervals of silence in the riot, like
the moments of silence in a thunderstorm. During one of these we
distinctly heard a harsh and grating sound three doors down the street.
It was a jeweler putting up his shutters. In that sound you might say
was an allegory, for it typified the idea of Capital funking Labour. A
few moments afterwards, Mr. Harrison himself stepped from his private
chamber, walked to the outer door, and gravely and fearlessly surveyed
the ominous scene. The masses were now out of hand, and their leaders,
probably much to their own surprise and regret, had awakened a storm of
unreasoning ferocity which threatened to plunge the West End into the
horrors of civil war. At any rate Mr. Harrison appeared to think so, for
after studying the temper of the crowd, he returned to us and uttered
these memorable words:
“Gentlemen,” he said, “this is revolution! Pull down the shutters!”
Messengers hastened to obey his orders, and when iron curtains had
crashed down between us and the stage of this stupendous spectacle, we
took it in turn to look out through the letter-box.
Mr. Harrison, with all the courageous instinct of a British sea-captain,
decided not to leave the Apollo that night unless a great change should
come over the spirit of the scene, but for my own part I was panting to
rush out and join the revolution—not with a view to assist it in any
nefarious project, but to study it from the artistic standpoint. Before
I could start, however, the ferocious crowds had split up and swept in
different directions. They went towards the west chiefly, and bursting
in upon defenseless streets, that had not heard what was going on,
surprised them painfully and helped themselves from the shops before
their proprietors could arrest their onslaught. I came upon the people
presently—to find them very far removed from what you might call a
conciliatory attitude.