THE PLUSH BREECHES TRAGEDY.
My triumph had received a cruel check enough when just at its height, and
more were appointed to follow. Behold! some two days after, another--all
the more bitter, because my conscience whispered that it was not altogether
undeserved. The people's press had been hitherto praising and petting me
lovingly enough. I had been classed (and heaven knows that the comparison
was dearer to me than all the applause of the wealthy) with the Corn-Law
Rhymer, and the author of the "Purgatory of Suicides." My class had claimed
my talents as their own--another "voice fresh from the heart of nature,"
another "untutored songster of the wilderness," another "prophet arisen
among the suffering millions,"--when, one day, behold in Mr. O'Flynn's
paper a long and fierce attack on me, my poems, my early history! How he
could have got at some of the facts there mentioned, how he could have
dared to inform his readers that I had broken my mother's heart by my
misconduct, I cannot conceive; unless my worthy brother-in-law, the Baptist
preacher, had been kind enough to furnish him with the materials. But
however that may be, he showed me no mercy. I was suddenly discovered to be
a time-server, a spy, a concealed aristocrat. Such paltry talent as I had,
I had prostituted for the sake of fame. I had deserted The People's Cause
for filthy lucre--an allurement which Mr. O'Flynn had always treated with
withering scorn--_in print_. Nay, more, I would write, and notoriously did
write, in any paper, Whig, Tory, or Radical, where I could earn a shilling
by an enormous gooseberry, or a scrap of private slander. And the working
men were solemnly warned to beware of me and my writings, till the editor
had further investigated certain ugly facts in my history, which he would
in due time report to his patriotic and enlightened readers.
All this stung me in the most sensitive nerve of my whole heart, for I
knew that I could not altogether exculpate myself; and to that miserable
certainty was added the dread of some fresh exposure. Had he actually heard
of the omissions in my poems?--and if he once touched on that subject,
what could I answer? Oh! how bitterly now I felt the force of the critic's
careless lash! The awful responsibility of those written words, which
we bandy about so thoughtlessly! How I recollected now, with shame and
remorse, all the hasty and cruel utterances to which I, too, had given
vent against those who had dared to differ from me; the harsh, one-sided
judgments, the reckless imputations of motive, the bitter sneers,
"rejoicing in evil rather than in the truth." How I, too, had longed to
prove my victims in the wrong, and turned away, not only lazily, but
angrily, from many an exculpatory fact! And here was my Nemesis come at
last. As I had done unto others, so it was done unto me!
It was right that it should be so. However indignant, mad, almost
murderous, I felt at the time, I thank God for it now. It is good to be
punished in kind. It is good to be made to feel what we have made others
feel. It is good--anything is good, however bitter, which shows us that
there is such a law as retribution; that we are not the sport of blind
chance or a triumphant fiend, but that there is a God who judges the
earth--righteous to repay every man according to his works.
But at the moment I had no such ray of comfort--and, full of rage and
shame, I dashed the paper down before Mackaye. "How shall I answer him?
What shall I say?"
The old man read it all through, with a grim saturnine smile.
"Hoolie, hoolie, speech, is o' silver--silence is o' gold says Thomas
Carlyle, anent this an' ither matters. Wha'd be fashed wi' sic blethers?
Ye'll just abide patient, and haud still in the Lord, until this tyranny be
owerpast. Commit your cause to him, said the auld Psalmist, an' he'll mak
your righteousness as clear as the light, an' your just dealing as the
noonday."
"But I must explain; I owe it as a duty to myself; I must refute these
charges; I must justify myself to our friends."
"Can ye do that same, laddie?" asked he, with one of his quaint, searching
looks. Somehow I blushed, and could not altogether meet his eye, while he
went on, "--An' gin ye could, whaur would ye do 't? I ken na periodical
whar the editor will gie ye a clear stage an' no favour to bang him ower
the lugs."
"Then I will try some other paper."
"An' what for then? They that read him, winna read the ither; an' they that
read the ither, winna read him. He has his ain set o' dupes like every
ither editor; an' ye mun let him gang his gate, an' feed his ain kye with
his ain hay. He'll no change it for your bidding."
"What an abominable thing this whole business of the press is then, if each
editor is to be allowed to humbug his readers at his pleasure, without a
possibility of exposing or contradicting him!"
"An' ye've just spoken the truth, laddie. There's na mair accursed
inquisition, than this of thae self-elected popes, the editors. That
puir auld Roman ane, ye can bring him forat when ye list, bad as he
is. 'Fænum habet in cornu;' his name's ower his shop-door. But these
anonymies--priests o' the order of Melchisedec by the deevil's side,
without father or mither, beginning o' years nor end o' days--without a
local habitation or a name-as kittle to baud as a brock in a cairn--"
"What do you mean, Mr. Mackaye?" asked I, for he was getting altogether
unintelligibly Scotch, as was his custom when excited.
"Ou, I forgot; ye're a puir Southern body, an' no sensible to the
gran' metaphoric powers o' the true Dawric. But it's an accursit state
a'thegither, the noo, this, o' the anonymous press--oreeginally devised, ye
ken, by Balaam the son o' Beor, for serving God wi'out the deevil's finding
it out--an' noo, after the way o' human institutions, translated ower
to help folks to serve the deevil without God's finding it out. I'm no'
astonished at the puir expiring religious press for siccan a fa'; but for
the working men to be a' that's bad--it's grewsome to behold. I'll tell ye
what, my bairn, there's na salvation for the workmen, while they defile
themselves this fashion, wi' a' the very idols o' their ain tyrants--wi'
salvation by act o' parliament--irresponsible rights o' property--anonymous
Balaamry--fechtin' that canny auld farrant fiend, Mammon, wi' his ain
weapons--and then a' fleyed, because they get well beaten for their pains.
I'm sair forfaughten this mony a year wi' watching the puir gowks, trying
to do God's wark wi' the deevil's tools. Tak tent o' that."
And I did "tak tent o' it." Still there would have been as little present
consolation as usual in Mackaye's unwelcome truths, even if the matter had
stopped there. But, alas! it did not stop there. O'Flynn seemed determined
to "run a muck" at me. Every week some fresh attack appeared. The very
passages about the universities and church property, which had caused our
quarrel, were paraded against me, with free additions and comments; and, at
last, to my horror, out came the very story which I had all along dreaded,
about the expurgation of my poems, with the coarsest allusions to petticoat
influence--aristocratic kisses--and the Duchess of Devonshire canvassing
draymen for Fox, &c., &c. How he got a clue to the scandal I cannot
conceive. Mackaye and Crossthwaite, I had thought, were the only souls to
whom I had ever breathed the secret, and they denied indignantly the having
ever betrayed my weakness. How it came out, I say again, I cannot conceive;
except because it is a great everlasting law, and sure to fulfil itself
sooner or later, as we may see by the histories of every remarkable, and
many an unremarkable, man--"There is nothing secret, but it shall be made
manifest; and whatsoever ye have spoken in the closet, shall be proclaimed
upon the house-tops."
For some time after that last exposure, I was thoroughly crest-fallen--and
not without reason. I had been giving a few lectures among the working men,
on various literary and social subjects. I found my audience decrease--and
those who remained seemed more inclined to hiss than to applaud me. In
vain I ranted and quoted poetry, often more violently than my own opinions
justified. My words touched no responsive chord in my hearers' hearts; they
had lost faith in me.
At last, in the middle of a lecture on Shelley, I was indulging, and
honestly too, in some very glowing and passionate praise of the true
nobleness of a man, whom neither birth nor education could blind to the
evils of society; who, for the sake of the suffering many, could trample
under foot his hereditary pride, and become an outcast for the People's
Cause.
I heard a whisper close to me, from one whose opinion I valued, and value
still--a scholar and a poet, one who had tasted poverty, and slander, and a
prison, for The Good Cause:
"Fine talk: but it's 'all in his day's work.' Will he dare to say that
to-morrow to the ladies at the West-end?"
No--I should not. I knew it; and at that instant I felt myself a liar,
and stopped short--my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. I fumbled
at my papers--clutched the water-tumbler--tried to go on--stopped short
again--caught up my hat, and rushed from the room, amid peals of astonished
laughter.
It was some months after this that, fancying the storm blown over, I
summoned up courage enough to attend a political meeting of our party; but
even there my Nemesis met full face. After some sanguinary speech, I really
forgot from whom, and, if I recollected, God forbid that I should tell now,
I dared to controvert, mildly enough, Heaven knows, some especially frantic
assertion or other. But before I could get out three sentences, O'Flynn
flew at me with a coarse invective, hounded on, by-the-by, by one who,
calling himself a gentleman, might have been expected to know better.
But, indeed, he and O'Flynn had the same object in view, which was simply
to sell their paper; and as a means to that great end, to pander to the
fiercest passions of their readers, to bully and silence all moderate and
rational Chartists, and pet and tar on the physical-force men, till the
poor fellows began to take them at their word. Then, when it came to deeds
and not to talk, and people got frightened, and the sale of the paper
decreased a little, a blessed change came over them--and they awoke one
morning meeker than lambs; "ulterior measures" had vanished back into
the barbarous ages, pikes, vitriol-bottles, and all; and the public were
entertained with nothing but homilies on patience and resignation, the
"triumphs of moral justice," the "omnipotence of public opinion," and the
"gentle conquests of fraternal love"--till it was safe to talk treason and
slaughter again.
But just then treason happened to be at a premium. Sedition, which had been
floundering on in a confused, disconsolate, underground way ever since
1842, was supposed by the public to be dead; and for that very reason it
was safe to talk it, or, at least, back up those who chose to do so. And
so I got no quarter--though really, if the truth must be told, I had said
nothing unreasonable.
Home I went disgusted, to toil on at my hack-writing, only praying that I
might be let alone to scribble in peace, and often thinking, sadly, how
little my friends in Harley-street could guess at the painful experience,
the doubts, the struggles, the bitter cares, which went to the making of
the poetry which they admired so much!
I was not, however, left alone to scribble in peace, either by O'Flynn or
by his readers, who formed, alas! just then, only too large a portion of
the thinking artizans; every day brought some fresh slight or annoyance
with it, till I received one afternoon, by the Parcels Delivery Company,
a large unpaid packet, containing, to my infinite disgust, an old pair of
yellow plush breeches, with a recommendation to wear them, whose meaning
could not be mistaken.
Furious, I thrust the unoffending garment into the lire, and held it there
with the tongs, regardless of the horrible smell which accompanied its
martyrdom, till the lady-lodger on the first floor rushed down to inquire
whether the house was on fire.
I answered by hurling a book at her head, and brought down a volley of
abuse, under which I sat in sulky patience, till Mackaye and Crossthwaite
came in, and found her railing in the doorway, and me sitting over the
fire, still intent on the frizzling remains of the breeches.
"Was this insult of your invention, Mr. Crossthwaite?" asked I, in a tone
of lofty indignation, holding up the last scrap of unroasted plush.
Roars of laughter from both of them made me only more frantic, and I broke
out so incoherently, that it was some time before the pair could make out
the cause of my fury.
"Upon my honour, Locke," quoth John, at last, holding his sides, "I
never sent them; though, on the whole--you've made my stomach ache with
laughing. I can't speak. But you must expect a joke or two, after your late
fashionable connexions."
I stood, still and white with rage.
"Really, my good fellow, how can you wonder if our friends suspect you?
Can you deny that you've been off and on lately between flunkeydom and The
Cause, like a donkey between two bundles of hay? Have you not neglected
our meetings? Have you not picked all the spice out of your poems? And can
you expect to eat your cake and keep it too? You must be one thing or the
other; and, though Sandy, here, is too kind-hearted to tell you, you have
disappointed us both miserably--and there's the long and short of it."
I hid my face in my hands, and sat moodily over the fire; my conscience
told me that I had nothing to answer.
"Whisht, Johnnie! Ye're ower sair on the lad. He's a' right at heart still,
an he'll do good service. But the deevil a'ways fechts hardest wi' them
he's maist 'feard of. What's this anent agricultural distress ye had to
tell me the noo?"
"There is a rising down in the country, a friend of mine writes me. The
people are starving, not because bread is dear, but because it's cheap;
and, like sensible men, they're going to have a great meeting, to inquire
the rights and wrong of all that. Now, I want to send a deputation down, to
see how far they are inclined to go, and let them know we up in London are
with them. And then we might get up a corresponding association, you know.
It's a great opening for spreading the principles of the Charter."
"I sair misdoubt, it's just bread they'll be wanting, they labourers, mair
than liberty. Their God is their belly, I'm thinking, and a verra poor
empty idol he is the noo; sma' burnt offerings and fat o' rams he gets to
propitiate him. But ye might send down a canny body, just to spy out the
nakedness o' the land."
"I will go," I said, starting up. "They shall see that I do care for The
Cause. If it's a dangerous mission, so much the better. It will prove my
sincerity. Where is the place?"
"About ten miles from D * * * *."
"D * * * *!" My heart sank. If it had been any other spot in England! But
it was too late to retract. Sandy saw what was the matter, and tried to
turn the subject; but I was peremptory, almost rude with him. I felt I must
keep up my present excitement, or lose my heart, and my caste, for ever;
and as the hour for the committee was at hand, I jumped up and set off
thither with them, whether they would or not. I heard Sandy whisper to
Crossthwaite, and turned quite fiercely on him.
"If you want to speak about me, speak out. If you fancy that I shall let my
connexion with that place" (I could not bring myself to name it) "stand in
the way of my duty, you do not know me."
I announced my intention at the meeting. It was at first received coldly;
but I spoke energetically--perhaps, as some told me afterwards, actually
eloquently. When I got heated, I alluded to my former stay at D * * * *,
and said (while my heart sunk at the bravado which I was uttering) that I
should consider it a glory to retrieve my character with them, and devote
myself to the cause of the oppressed, in the very locality whence had first
arisen their unjust and pardonable suspicions. In short, generous, trusting
hearts as they were, and always are, I talked them round; they shook me by
the hand one by one, bade me God speed, told me that I stood higher than
ever in their eyes, and then set to work to vote money from their funds for
my travelling expenses, which I magnanimously refused, saying that I had a
pound or two left from the sale of my poems, and that I must be allowed, as
an act of repentance and restitution, to devote it to The Cause.
My triumph was complete. Even O'Flynn, who, like all Irishmen, had plenty
of loose good-nature at bottom, and was as sudden and furious in his loves
as in his hostilities, scrambled over the benches, regardless of patriots'
toes, to shake me violently by the hand, and inform me that I was "a broth
of a boy," and that "any little disagreements between us had vanished like
a passing cloud from the sunshine of our fraternity"--when my eye was
caught by a face which there was no mistaking--my cousin's!
Yes, there he sat, watching me like a basilisk, with his dark, glittering,
mesmeric eyes, out of a remote corner of the room--not in contempt or
anger, but there was a quiet, assured, sardonic smile about his lips, which
chilled me to the heart.
The meeting was sufficiently public to allow of his presence, but how had
he found out its existence? Had he come there as a spy on me? Had he been
in the room when my visit to D * * * * was determined on? I trembled at the
thought; and I trembled, too, lest he should be daring enough--and I knew
he could dare anything--to claim acquaintance with me there and then. It
would have ruined my new-restored reputation for ever. But he sat still and
steady: and I had to go through the rest of the evening's business under
the miserable, cramping knowledge that every word and gesture was being
noted down by my most deadly enemy; trembling whenever I was addressed,
lest some chance word of an acquaintance would implicate me still
further--though, indeed, I was deep enough already. The meeting seemed
interminable; and there I fidgeted, with my face scarlet--always seeing
those basilisk eyes upon me--in fancy--for I dared not look again towards
the corner where I knew they were.
At last it was over--the audience went out; and when I had courage to look
round, my cousin had vanished among them. A load was taken off my breast,
and I breathed freely again--for five minutes;--for I had not made ten
steps up the street, when an arm was familiarly thrust through mine, and I
found myself in the clutches of my evil genius.
"How are you, my dear fellow? Expected to meet you there. Why, what an
orator you are! Really, I haven't heard more fluent or passionate English
this month of Sundays. You must give me a lesson in sermon-preaching. I can
tell you, we parsons want a hint or two in that line. So you're going down
to D * * * *, to see after those poor starving labourers? 'Pon my honour,
I've a great mind to go with you."
So, then, he knew all! However, there was nothing for it but to brazen
it out; and, besides, I was in his power, and however hateful to me his
seeming cordiality might be, I dared not offend him at that moment.
"It would be well if you did. If you parsons would show yourselves at such
places as these a little oftener, you would do more to make the people
believe your mission real, than by all the tracts and sermons in the
world."
"But, my dear cousin" (and he began to snuffle and sink his voice), "there
is so much sanguinary language, so much unsanctified impatience, you
frighten away all the meek apostolic men among the priesthood--the very
ones who feel most for the lost sheep of the flock.
"Then the parsons are either great Pharisees or great cowards, or both."
"Very likely. I was in a precious fright myself, I know, when I saw you
recognized me. If I had not felt strengthened, you know, as of course one
ought to be in all trials, by the sense of my holy calling, I think I
should have bolted at once. However, I took the precaution of bringing my
Bowie and revolver with me, in case the worst came to the worst."
"And a very needless precaution it was," said I, half laughing at the
quaint incongruity of the priestly and the lay elements in his speech. "You
don't seem to know much of working men's meetings, or working men's morals.
Why, that place was open to all the world. The proceedings will be in the
newspaper to-morrow. The whole bench of bishops might have been there, if
they had chosen; and a great deal of good it would have done them!"
"I fully agree with you, my dear fellow. No one hates the bishops more than
we true high-churchmen, I can tell you--that's a great point of sympathy
between us and the people. But I must be off. By-the-by, would you like me
to tell our friends at D * * * * that I met you? They often ask after you
in their letters, I assure you."
This was a sting of complicated bitterness. I felt all that it meant at
once. So he was in constant correspondence with them, while I--and that
thought actually drove out of my head the more pressing danger of his
utterly ruining me in their esteem, by telling them, as he had a very good
right to do, that I was going to preach Chartism to discontented mobs.
"Ah! well! perhaps you wouldn't wish it mentioned? As you like, you
know. Or, rather," and he laid an iron grasp on my arm, and dropped his
voice--this time in earnest--"as you behave, my wise and loyal cousin! Good
night."
I went home--the excitement of self-applause, which the meeting had called
up, damped by a strange weight of foreboding. And yet I could not help
laughing, when, just as I was turning into bed, Crossthwaite knocked at
my door, and, on being admitted, handed over to me a bundle wrapped up in
paper.
"There's a pair of breeks for you--not plush ones, this time, old
fellow--but you ought to look as smart as possible. There's so much in a
man's looking dignified, and all that, when he's speechifying. So I've
just brought you down my best black trousers to travel in. We're just of
a size, you know; little and good, like a Welshman's cow. And if you tear
them, why, we're not like poor, miserable, useless aristocrats; tailors
and sailors can mend their own rents." And he vanished, whistling the
"Marseillaise."
I went to bed and tossed about, fancying to myself my journey, my speech,
the faces of the meeting, among which Lillian's would rise, in spite of all
the sermons which I preached to myself on the impossibility of her being
there, of my being known, of any harm happening from the movement; but I
could not shake off the fear. If there were a riot, a rising!--If any harm
were to happen to her! If--Till, mobbed into fatigue by a rabble of such
miserable hypothetic ghosts, I fell asleep, to dream that I was going to be
hanged for sedition, and that the mob were all staring and hooting at me,
and Lillian clapping her hands and setting them on; and I woke in an agony,
to find Sandy Mackaye standing by my bedside with a light.
"Hoolie, laddie! ye need na jump up that way. I'm no' gaun to burke ye the
nicht; but I canna sleep; I'm sair misdoubtful o' the thing. It seems a'
richt, an' I've been praying for us, an' that's mickle for me, to be taught
our way; but I dinna see aught for ye but to gang. If your heart is richt
with God in this matter, then he's o' your side, an' I fear na what men may
do to ye. An' yet, ye're my Joseph, as it were, the son o' my auld age, wi'
a coat o' many colours, plush breeks included; an' gin aught take ye, ye'll
bring down my grey haffets wi' sorrow to the grave!"
The old man gazed at me as be spoke, with a deep, earnest affection I
had never seen in him before; and the tears glistened in his eyes by the
flaring candlelight, as he went on:
"I ha' been reading the Bible the nicht. It's strange how the words o't
rise up, and open themselves whiles, to puir distractit bodies; though,
maybe, no' always in just the orthodox way. An' I fell on that, 'Behold
I send ye forth as lambs in the midst o' wolves. Be ye therefore wise as
serpents an' harmless as doves;' an' that gave me comfort, laddie, for ye.
Mind the warning, dinna gang wud, whatever ye may see an' hear; it's an
ill way o' showing pity, to gang daft anent it. Dinna talk magniloquently;
that's the workman's darling sin. An' mind ye dinna go too deep wi' them.
Ye canna trust them to understand ye; they're puir foolish sheep that ha'
no shepherd--swine that ha' no wash, rather. So cast na your pearls before
swine, laddie, lest they trample them under their feet, an' turn again an'
rend ye."
He went out, and I lay awake tossing till morning, making a thousand good
resolutions--like the rest of mankind.