There & Back. George MacDonald
and so advanced to small portfolios and pocket-books, of which he would make presents to his companions, and sometimes, when more ambitiously successful, to a master. In their construction he used bits of coloured paper and scraps of leather, chiefly morocco, which his father willingly made over to him, watching his progress with an interest quite paternal, and showing a workman’s wisdom in this, that only when he saw him in a real difficulty would he come to his aid—as, for instance, when first he struggled with a piece of leather too thick for the bonds of paste, and must be taught how to pare it to the necessary flexibility and compliance.
To become able to make something is, I think, necessary to thorough development. I would rather have son of mine a carpenter, a watchmaker, a wood-carver, a shoemaker, a jeweller, a blacksmith, a bookbinder, than I would have him earn his bread as a clerk in a counting-house. Not merely is the cultivation of operant faculty a better education in faculty, but it brings the man nearer to every thing operant; humanity unfolds itself to him the readier; its ways and thoughts and modes of being grow the clearer to both intellect and heart. The poetry of life, the inner side of that nature which comes from him who, on the Sabbath-days even, “worketh hitherto,” rises nearer the surface to meet the eyes of the man who makes. What advantage the carpenter of Nazareth gathered from his bench, is the inheritance of every workman, in proportion as he does divine, that is, honest work.
Perceiving the faculty of the boy, his father—so let us call John Tuke for the present—naturally thought it well to make him a gift of his trade: it would always be a possession! “Whatever turn things may take,” he would remark to his wife, “the boy will have his bread in his hands. And say what they will, the man who can gather his food off his own bench, or screw it out of his own press, must be a freer man than he who but for his inheritance would have to beg, steal, or die of hunger. And who knows how long the world may permit idlers to fare of its best!”
For, after a fashion of his own, Tuke was a philosopher and a politician. But his politics were those of the philosopher, not of the politician.
Richard, with his great love of reading, and therefore of books, was delighted to learn the craft which is their attendant and servitor. When too young yet to wield the hammer without danger both to himself and the book under it, he began to sew, and in a few weeks was able to bring the sheets together entirely to the satisfaction of his father. From the first he set him to do that essential part of the work in the best way, that is, to sew every sheet round every cord: it is only when one can perfectly work after the perfect rule, that he may be trusted with variations and exceptions.
He went on teaching him until the boy could, he confessed, do almost everything better than himself—went on until he had taught him every delicacy, every secret of the craft. Richard developed a positive genius for the work, seeming almost to learn it by intuition. A pocket-book, with which he presented his father on his fiftieth birthday, brought out his unqualified praise.
In the process he gradually revealed a predilection for a rarer use of his faculty—a use more nice, while less distinguished, and not much favoured by his father. It had its prime source deeper than the art of book-binding—in the love of books themselves, not as leaves to be bound, but as utterances to be heard. Certain dealers in old books have loved some of them so as to refuse to part with them on any terms; Richard, unable to possess more than a very few, manifested his veneration for them in another and nearer fashion, running, as was natural and healthy, in the lines of his calling.
For many months in diligent attendance at certain of the evening-classes at King’s College, he had developed a true insight into and sympathy with what is best in our literature—chiefly in that of the sixteenth century: from this grew an almost peculiar regard for old books. With three or four shillings weekly at his disposal, he laid himself out to discover and buy such volumes as, in themselves of value, were in so bad a condition as to be of little worth from the mere bookseller’s point of view: with these for his first patients he opened a hospital, or angel-asylum, for the lodging, restorative treatment, and systematic invigoration of decayed volumes. Love and power combined made him look on the dilapidated, slow-wasting abodes of human thought and delight with a healing compassion—almost with a passion of healing. The worse gnawed of the tooth of insect-time, the farther down any choice book in the steep decline of years, the more intent was Richard on having it. More and more skillful he grew, not only in rebinding such whose clothing was past repair, but in restoring the tone of their very constitution; and in so mending the ancient and beggarly garments of others that they reassumed a venerable respectability. Through love, he passed from an artisan to an artist. His reverence for the inner reality, the book itself, in itself beyond time and decay, had roused in him a child-like regard for its body, for its broken inclosure and default of manifestation. He would espy the beauty of an old binding through any amount of abrasion and laceration. To his eyes almost any old binding was better for its book than any new one.
His father came to regard with wonder and admiration the redeeming faculty of his son, whereby he would reinstate in strength and ripe dignity a volume which he would have taken to pieces, and redressed like an age-worn woman in a fashionable gown. So far did his son’s superior taste work upon his, that at length, if he opened a new binding, however sombre, and saw a time-browned paper and old type within, the sight would give him the shock of a discord.
But Tuke was in many things no other than a man of this world, and sorely he doubted if such labour would ever have its counterpoise in money. It paid better, because it was much easier, to reclothe than to restore! to destroy and replace than to renew! When he had watched many times for minutes together his son’s delicate manipulation—in which he patched without pauperizing, and subaided without humiliating—and at last contemplating the finished result, he concluded him possessed of a quite original faculty for book-healing.—“But alas,” he thought, “genius seldom gets beyond board-wages!” It did not occur to him that genius least requires more than board-wages. He encouraged him, nevertheless, though mildly, in the pursuit of this neglected branch of the binding-art.
As the days went on, and their love for their nephew grew with his deserts, the uncle and aunt shrank more and more from the thought, which every year compelled them to think the oftener, that the day was drawing nigh when they must volunteer the confession that he was not their child.
When he was about seventeen, Richard settled down to work with his father, occasionally assisting him, but in general occupied with his own special branch, in which Tuke, through his long connection with book-lovers possessing small cherished libraries, was able to bring him almost as many jobs as he could undertake. The fact that a volume could be so repaired, stimulated the purchase of shabby books; and part of what was saved on the price of a good copy was laid out on the amendment of the poor one. But however much the youth delighted in it, he could not but find the work fidgety and tiring; whence ensued the advantage that he left it the oftener for a ramble, or a solitary hour on the river. He had but few companions, his guardians, wisely or not, being more fastidious about his associates than if he had been their very son. His uncle, of strong socialistic opinions, and wont to dilate on human equality—as if the thing that ought to be, and must one day come, could be furthered by the assertion of its present existence—was, like the holders of even higher theories, not a little apt to forget the practice necessarily involved: this son of a baronet, seeing that he was the son also of his wife’s sister, was not to be brought up like one of the many!
Ugliness in infancy is a promise, though perhaps a doubtful one, of beauty in manhood; and in Richard’s case the promise was fulfilled: hardly a hint was left of the baby-face which had repelled his father. He was now a handsome well-grown youth, with dark-brown hair, dark-green eyes, broad shoulders, and a little stoop which made his aunt uneasy: she would have had him join a volunteer corps, but he declared he had not the time. He accepted her encouragement, however, to forsake his work as often as he felt inclined. He had good health; what was better, a good temper; and what was better still, a willing heart toward his neighbour. A certain over-hanging of his brows was—especially when he contracted them, as, in perplexity or endeavour, he not infrequently did—called a scowl by such as did not love him; but it was of shallow insignificance, and probably the trick of some ancestor.
Before long, his thinking began to take form in verse-making. It matters little to my narrative whether he produced anything of original