Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet

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Then one said, "Are we not better off as we are? We buy the poor man's
ground for a price, and we pay him his wages for tilling it for us--and we
know better how to manage it than he."

And I said, "Oh ye hypocrites! See how your lie works! Those who were free
are now slaves. Those who had peace of mind are now anxious from day to day
for their daily bread. And the multitude gets poorer and poorer, while ye
grow fatter and fatter. If ye had gone on boring the mountain, ye would
have had no time to eat up your brethren."

Then they laughed and said, "Thou art a singer of songs, and a dreamer of
dreams. Let those who want to get through the mountain go up and bore it;
we are well enough here. Come now, sing us pleasant songs, and talk no more
foolish dreams, and we will reward thee."

Then they brought out a veiled maiden, and said, "Look! her feet are like
ivory, and her hair like threads of gold; and she is the sweetest singer
in the whole valley. And she shall be thine, if thou wilt be like other
people, and prophesy smooth things unto us, and torment us no more with
talk about liberty, equality, and brotherhood; for they never were, and
never will be, on this earth. Living is too hard work to give in to such
fancies."

And when the maiden's veil was lifted, it was Lillian. And she clasped me
round the neck, and cried, "Come! I will be your bride, and you shall be
rich and powerful; and all men shall speak well of you, and you shall write
songs; and we will sing them together, and feast and play from dawn to
dawn."

And I wept; and turned me about, and cried, "Wife and child, song and
wealth, are pleasant; but blessed is the work which the All-Father has
given the people to do. Let the maimed and the halt and the blind, the
needy and the fatherless, come up after me, and we will bore the mountain."

But the rich drove me out, and drove back those who would have followed me.
So I went up by myself, and bored the mountain seven years, weeping; and
every year Lillian came to me, and said, "Come, and be my husband, for
my beauty is fading, and youth passes fast away." But I set my heart
steadfastly to the work.

And when seven years were over, the poor were so multiplied, that the rich
had not wherewith to pay their labour. And there came a famine in the land,
and many of the poor died. Then the rich said, "If we let these men starve,
they will turn on us, and kill us, for hunger has no conscience, and they
are all but like the beasts that perish." So they all brought, one a
bullock, another a sack of meal, each according to his substance, and fed
the poor therewith; and said to them, "Behold our love and mercy towards
you!" But the more they gave, the less they had wherewithal to pay their
labourers; and the more they gave, the less the poor liked to work; so that
at last they had not wherewithal to pay for tilling the ground, and each
man had to go and till his own, and knew not how; so the land lay waste,
and there was great perplexity.

Then I went down to them and said, "If you had hearkened to me, and not
robbed your brethren of their land, you would never have come into this
strait; for by this time the mountain would have been bored through."

Then they cursed the mountain, and me, and Him who made them, and came down
to my cottage at night, and cried, "One-sided and left-handed! father of
confusion, and disciple of dead donkeys, see to what thou hast brought the
land, with thy blasphemous doctrines! Here we are starving, and not only
we, but the poor misguided victims of thy abominable notions!"

"You have become wondrous pitiful to the poor," said I, "since you found
that they would not starve that you might wanton."

Then once more Lillian came to me, thin and pale, and worn. "See, I, too,
am starving! and you have been the cause of it; but I will forgive all if
you will help us but this once."

"How shall I help you?"

"You are a poet and an orator, and win over all hearts with your talk and
your songs. Go down to the tribes of the plain, and persuade them to send
us up warriors, that we may put down these riotous and idle wretches; and
you shall be king of all the land, and I will be your slave, by day and
night."

But I went out, and quarried steadfastly at the mountain.

And when I came back the next evening, the poor had risen against the rich,
one and all, crying, "As you have done to us, so will we do to you;" and
they hunted them down like wild beasts, and slew many of them, and threw
their carcases on the dunghill, and took possession of their land and
houses, and cried, "We will be all free and equal as our forefathers were,
and live here, and eat and drink, and take our pleasure."

Then I ran out, and cried to them, "Fools I will you do as these rich did,
and neglect the work of God? If you do to them as they have done to you,
you will sin as they sinned, and devour each other at the last, as they
devoured you. The old paths are best. Let each man, rich or poor, have his
equal share of the land, as it was at first, and go up and dig through the
mountain, and possess the good land beyond, where no man need jostle his
neighbour, or rob him, when the land becomes too small for you. Were the
rich only in fault? Did not you, too, neglect the work which the All-Father
had given you, and run every man after his own comfort? So you entered into
a lie, and by your own sin raised up the rich man to be your punishment.
For the last time, who will go up with me to the mountain?"

Then they all cried with one voice, "We have sinned! We will go up and
pierce the mountain, and fulfil the work which God set to our forefathers."

We went up, and the first stroke that I struck a crag fell out; and behold,
the light of day! and far below us the good land and large, stretching away
boundless towards the western sun.

* * * * *

I sat by the cave's mouth at the dawning of the day. Past me the tribe
poured down, young and old, with their waggons, and their cattle, their
seeds, and their arms, as of old--yet not as of old--wiser and stronger,
taught by long labour and sore affliction. Downward they streamed from
the cave's mouth into the glens, following the guidance of the silver
water-courses; and as they passed me, each kissed my hands and feet, and
cried, "Thou hast saved us--thou hast given up all for us. Come and be our
king!"

"Nay," I said, "I have been your king this many a year; for I have been the
servant of you all."

I went down with them into the plain, and called them round me. Many times
they besought me to go with them and lead them.

"No," I said, "I am old and grey-headed, and I am not as I have been.
Choose out the wisest and most righteous among you, and let him lead you.
But bind him to yourselves with an oath, that whenever he shall say to you,
'Stay here, and let us sit down and build, and dwell here for ever,' you
shall cast him out of his office, and make him a hewer of wood and a drawer
of water, and choose one who will lead you forwards in the spirit of God."

The crowd opened, and a woman came forward into the circle. Her face was
veiled, but we all knew her for a prophetess. Slowly she stepped into
the midst, chanting a mystic song. Whether it spoke of past, present, or
future, we knew not; but it sank deep into all our hearts.

"True freedom stands in meekness--
True strength in utter weakness--
Justice in forgiveness lies--
Riches in self-sacrifice--
Own no rank but God's own spirit--
Wisdom rule!--and worth inherit!
Work for all, and all employ--
Share with all, and all enjoy--
God alike to all has given,
Heaven as Earth, and Earth as Heaven,
When the laud shall find her king again,
And the reign of God is come."

We all listened, awe-struck. She turned to us and continued:

"Hearken to me, children of Japhet, the unresting!

"On the holy mountain of Paradise, in the Asgard of the Hindoo-Koh, in
the cup of the four rivers, in the womb of the mother of nations, in
brotherhood, equality, and freedom, the sons of men were begotten, at the
wedding of the heaven and the earth. Mighty infants, you did the right
you knew not of, and sinned not, because there was no temptation. By
selfishness you fell, and became beasts of prey. Each man coveted the
universe for his own lusts, and not that he might fulfil in it God's
command to people and subdue it. Long have you wandered--and long will you
wander still. For here you have no abiding city. You shall build cities,
and they shall crumble; you shall invent forms of society and religion, and
they shall fail in the hour of need. You shall call the lands by your own
names, and fresh waves of men shall sweep you forth, westward, westward
ever, till you have travelled round the path of the sun, to the place from
whence you came. For out of Paradise you went, and unto Paradise you shall
return; you shall become once more as little children, and renew your youth
like the eagle's. Feature by feature, and limb by limb, ye shall renew
it; age after age, gradually and painfully, by hunger and pestilence, by
superstitions and tyrannies, by need and blank despair, shall you be driven
back to the All-Father's home, till you become as you were before you fell,
and left the likeness of your father for the likeness of the beasts. Out of
Paradise you came, from liberty, equality, and brotherhood, and unto them
you shall return again. You went forth in unconscious infancy--you shall
return in thoughtful manhood.--You went forth in ignorance and need--you
shall return in science and wealth, philosophy and art. You went forth with
the world a wilderness before you--you shall return when it is a garden
behind you. You went forth selfish-savages--you shall return as the
brothers of the Son of God.

"And for you," she said, looking on me, "your penance is accomplished. You
have learned what it is to be a man. You have lost your life and saved it.
He that gives up house, or land, or wife, or child, for God's sake, it
shall be repaid him an hundred-fold. Awake!"

Surely I knew that voice. She lifted her veil. The face was Lillian's?
No!--Eleanor's!

Gently she touched my hand--I sank down into soft, weary happy sleep.

The spell was snapped. My fever and my dreams faded away together, and I
woke to the twittering of the sparrows, and the scent of the poplar leaves,
and the sights and sounds of childhood, and found Eleanor and her uncle
sitting by my bed, and with them Crossthwaite's little wife.

I would have spoken, but Eleanor laid her finger on her lips, and taking
her uncle's arm, glided from the room. Katie kept stubbornly a smiling
silence, and I was fain to obey my new-found guardian angels.

What need of many words? Slowly, and with relapses into insensibility,
I passed, like one who recovers from drowning, through the painful gate
of birth into another life. The fury of passion had been replaced by a
delicious weakness. The thunder-clouds had passed roaring down the wind,
and the calm bright holy evening was come. My heart, like a fretful child,
had stamped and wept itself to sleep. I was past even gratitude; infinite
submission and humility, feelings too long forgotten, absorbed my whole
being. Only I never dared meet Eleanor's eye. Her voice was like an angel's
when she spoke to me--friend, mother, sister, all in one. But I had a dim
recollection of being unjust to her--of some bar between us.

Katie and Crossthwaite, as they sat by me, tender and careful nurses both,
told me, in time, that to Eleanor I owed all my comforts. I could not thank
her--the debt was infinite, inexplicable. I felt as if I must speak all my
heart or none; and I watched her lavish kindness with a sort of sleepy,
passive wonder, like a new-born babe.

At last, one day, my kind nurses allowed me to speak a little. I broached
to Crossthwaite the subject which filled my thoughts. "How came I here? How
came you here? and Lady Ellerton? What is the meaning of it all?"

"The meaning is, that Lady Ellerton, as they call her, is an angel out of
heaven. Ah, Alton! she was your true friend, after all, if you had but
known it, and not that other one at all."

I turned my head away.

"Whisht--howld then, Johnny darlint! and don't go tormenting the poor dear
sowl, just when he's comin' round again."

"No, no! tell me all. I must--I ought--I deserve to bear it. How did she
come here?"

"Why then, it's my belief, she had her eye on you ever since you came out
of that Bastille, and before that, too; and she found you out at Mackaye's,
and me with you, for I was there looking after you. If it hadn't been for
your illness, I'd have been in Texas now, with our friends, for all's up
with the Charter, and the country's too hot, at least for me. I'm sick of
the whole thing together, patriots, aristocrats, and everybody else, except
this blessed angel. And I've got a couple of hundred to emigrate with; and
what's more, so have you."

"How's that?"

"Why, when poor dear old Mackaye's will was read, and you raving mad in the
next room, he had left all his stock-in-trade, that was, the books, to some
of our friends, to form a workmen's library with, and L400 he'd saved, to
be parted between you and me, on condition that we'd G.T.T., and cool down
across the Atlantic, for seven years come the tenth of April."

So, then, by the lasting love of my adopted father, I was at present at
least out of the reach of want! My heart was ready to overflow at my eyes;
but I could not rest till I had heard more of Lady Ellerton. What brought
her here, to nurse me as if she had been a sister?

"Why, then, she lives not far off by. When her husband died, his cousin got
the estate and title, and so she came, Katie tells me, and lived for one
year down somewhere in the East-end among the needlewomen; and spent her
whole fortune on the poor, and never kept a servant, so they say, but made
her own bed and cooked her own dinner, and got her bread with her own
needle, to see what it was really like. And she learnt a lesson there, I
can tell you, and God bless her for it. For now she's got a large house
here by, with fifty or more in it, all at work together, sharing the
earnings among themselves, and putting into their own pockets the profits
which would have gone to their tyrants; and she keeps the accounts for
them, and gets the goods sold, and manages everything, and reads to them
while they work, and teaches them every day."

"And takes her victuals with them," said Katie, "share and share alike. She
that was so grand a lady, to demane herself to the poor unfortunate young
things! She's as blessed a saint as any a one in the Calendar, if they'll
forgive me for saying so."

"Ay! demeaning, indeed! for the best of it is, they're not the respectable
ones only, though she spends hundreds on them--"

"And sure, haven't I seen it with my own eyes, when I've been there
charing?"

"Ay, but those she lives with are the fallen and the lost ones--those that
the rich would not set up in business, or help them to emigrate, or lift
them out of the gutter with a pair of tongs, for fear they should stain
their own whitewash in handling them."

"And sure they're as dacent as meself now, the poor darlints! It was misery
druv 'em to it, every one; perhaps it might hav' druv me the same way, if
I'd a lot o' childer, and Johnny gone to glory--and the blessed saints save
him from that same at all at all!"

"What! from going to glory?" said John.

"Och, thin, and wouldn't I just go mad if ever such ill luck happened to
yees as to be taken to heaven in the prime of your days, asthore?"

And she began sobbing and hugging and kissing the little man; and then
suddenly recollecting herself, scolded him heartily for making such a
"whillybaloo," and thrust him out of my room, to recommence kissing him in
the next, leaving me to many meditations.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE TRUE DEMAGOGUE.

I used to try to arrange my thoughts, but could not; the past seemed
swept away and buried, like the wreck of some drowned land after a flood.
Ploughed by affliction to the core, my heart lay fallow for every seed that
fell. Eleanor understood me, and gently and gradually, beneath her skilful
hand, the chaos began again to bloom with verdure. She and Crossthwaite
used to sit and read to me--from the Bible, from poets, from every book
which could suggest soothing, graceful, or hopeful fancies. Now out of the
stillness of the darkened chamber, one or two priceless sentences of a
Kempis, or a spirit-stirring Hebrew psalm, would fall upon my ear: and then
there was silence again; and I was left to brood over the words in vacancy,
till they became a fibre of my own soul's core. Again and again the stories
of Lazarus and the Magdalene alternated with Milton's Penseroso, or with
Wordsworth's tenderest and most solemn strains. Exquisite prints from the
history of our Lord's life and death were hung one by one, each for a
few days, opposite my bed, where they might catch my eye the moment that
I woke, the moment before I fell asleep. I heard one day the good dean
remonstrating with her on the "sentimentalism" of her mode of treatment.

"Poor drowned butterfly!" she answered, smiling, "he must be fed with
honey-dew. Have I not surely had practice enough already?"

"Yes, angel that you are!" answered the old man. "You have indeed had
practice enough!" And lifting her hand reverentially to his lips, he turned
and left the room.

She sat down by me as I lay, and began to read from Tennyson's
Lotus-Eaters. But it was not reading--it was rather a soft dreamy chant,
which rose and fell like the waves of sound on an AEolian harp.

"There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night dews on still waters between wails
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentler on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

"Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone?
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings.
And cease from wanderings;
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm,
Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings,
'There is no joy but calm!'
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?"

She paused--

My soul was an enchanted boat
Which, like a sleeping swan, did float
Upon the silver waves of her sweet singing.

Half-unconscious, I looked up. Before me hung a copy of Raffaelle's cartoon
of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. As my eye wandered over it, it seemed
to blend into harmony with the feelings which the poem had stirred. I
seemed to float upon the glassy lake. I watched the vista of the waters
and mountains, receding into the dreamy infinite of the still summer sky.
Softly from distant shores came the hum of eager multitudes; towers and
palaces slept quietly beneath the eastern sun. In front, fantastic fishes,
and the birds of the mountain and the lake, confessed His power, who sat
there in His calm godlike beauty, His eye ranging over all that still
infinity of His own works, over all that wondrous line of figures, which
seemed to express every gradation of spiritual consciousness, from the
dark self-condemned dislike of Judas's averted and wily face, through mere
animal greediness to the first dawnings of surprise, and on to the manly
awe and gratitude of Andrew's majestic figure, and the self-abhorrent
humility of Peter, as he shrank down into the bottom of the skiff, and with
convulsive palms and bursting brow seemed to press out from his inmost
heart the words, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" Truly,
pictures are the books of the unlearned, and of the mis-learned too.
Glorious Raffaelle! Shakspeare of the South! Mighty preacher, to whose
blessed intuition it was given to know all human hearts, to embody in form
and colour all spiritual truths, common alike to Protestant and Papist, to
workman and to sage--oh that I may meet thee before the throne of God, if
it be but to thank thee for that one picture, in which thou didst reveal to
me, in a single glance, every step of my own spiritual history!

She seemed to follow my eyes, and guess from them the workings of my heart;
for now, in a low, half-abstracted voice, as Diotima may have talked of
old, she began to speak of rest and labour, of death and life; of a labour
which is perfect rest--of a daily death, which is but daily birth--of
weakness, which is the strength of God; and so she wandered on in her
speech to Him who died for us. And gradually she turned to me. She laid one
finger solemnly on my listless palm, as her words and voice became more
intense, more personal. She talked of Him, as Mary may have talked just
risen from His feet. She spoke of Him as I had never heard Him spoken
of before--with a tender passionate loyalty, kept down and softened by
the deepest awe. The sense of her intense belief, shining out in every
lineament of her face, carried conviction to my heart more than ten
thousand arguments could do. It must be true!--Was not the power of it
around her like a glory? She spoke of Him as near us--watching us--in
words of such vivid eloquence that I turned half-startled to her, as if I
expected to see Him standing by her side.

She spoke of Him as the great Reformer; and yet as the true conservative;
the inspirer of all new truths, revealing in His Bible to every age abysses
of new wisdom, as the times require; and yet the vindicator of all which
is ancient and eternal--the justifier of His own dealings with man from
the beginning. She spoke of Him as the true demagogue--the champion of the
poor; and yet as the true King, above and below all earthly rank; on whose
will alone all real superiority of man to man, all the time-justified and
time-honoured usages of the family, the society, the nation, stand and
shall stand for ever.

* * * * *

And then she changed her tone; and in a voice of infinite tenderness she
spoke of Him as the Creator, the Word, the Inspirer, the only perfect
Artist, the Fountain of all Genius.

She made me feel--would that His ministers had made me feel it before,
since they say that they believe it--that He had passed victorious through
my vilest temptations, that He sympathized with my every struggle.

She told me how He, in the first dawn of manhood, full of the dim
consciousness of His own power, full of strange yearning presentiments
about His own sad and glorious destiny, went up into the wilderness, as
every youth, above all every genius, must, there to be tempted of the
devil. She told how alone with the wild beasts, and the brute powers of
nature, He saw into the open secret--the mystery of man's twofold life, His
kingship over earth, His sonship under God: and conquered in the might of
His knowledge. How He was tempted, like every genius, to use His creative
powers for selfish ends--to yield to the lust of display and singularity,
and break through those laws which He came to reveal and to fulfil--to do
one little act of evil, that He might secure thereby the harvest of good
which was the object of His life: and how He had conquered in the faith
that He was the Son of God. She told me how He had borne the sorrows of
genius; how the slightest pang that I had ever felt was but a dim faint
pattern of His; how He, above all men, had felt the agony of calumny,
misconception, misinterpretation; how He had fought with bigotry and
stupidity, casting His pearls before swine, knowing full well what it was
to speak to the deaf and the blind; how He had wept over Jerusalem, in the
bitterness of disappointed patriotism, when He had tried in vain to awaken
within a nation of slavish and yet rebellious bigots the consciousness of
their glorious calling....

It was too much--I hid my face in the coverlet, and burst out into long,
low, and yet most happy weeping. She rose and went to the window, and
beckoned Katie from the room within.

"I am afraid," she said, "my conversation has been too much for him."

"Showers sweeten the air," said Katie; and truly enough, as my own
lightened brain told me.

Eleanor--for so I must call her now--stood watching me for a few minutes,
and then glided back to the bedside, and sat down again.

"You find the room quiet?"

"Wonderfully quiet. The roar of the city outside is almost soothing, and
the noise of every carriage seems to cease suddenly just as it becomes
painfully near."

"We have had straw laid down," she answered, "all along this part of the
street."

This last drop of kindness filled the cup to overflowing: a veil fell from
before my eyes--it was she who had been my friend, my guardian angel, from
the beginning!