Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography. Charles Kingsley
help. In short, I know nothing, and begin to fancy that you, like some others, think me a lukewarm and timeserving aristocrat, after I have ventured more than many, because I had more to venture."
The same feeling comes out in the following letter, which illustrates too, very well, both his deepest conviction as to the work, the mixture of playfulness and earnestness with which he handled it, and his humble estimate of himself. It refers to the question of the admission of a new association to the Union. It was necessary, of course, to see that the rules of a society, applying for admission to the Union, were in proper form, and that sufficient capital was forthcoming, and the decision lay with the Central Board, controlled in some measure by the Council of Promoters.
An association of clay-pipe makers had applied for admission, and had been refused by the vote of the central board. The Council, however, thought there were grounds for reconsidering the decision, and to strengthen the case for admission, Kingsley's opinion was asked. He replied:—
"EVERSLEY, May 31, 1850.
"The sight of your handwriting comforted me—for nobody takes any notice of me, not even the printers; so I revenge myself by being as idle as a dog, and fishing, and gardening, and basking in this glorious sun. But your letter set me thanking God that he has raised up men to do the work of which I am not worthy. As for the pipe-makers, give my compliments to the autocrats, and tell them it is a shame. The Vegetarians would have quite as much right to refuse the Butchers, because, forsooth, theirs is now discovered not to be a necessary trade. Bosh! The question is this—If association be a great Divine law and duty, the realization of the Church idea, no man has a right to refuse any body of men, into whose heart God has put it to come and associate. It may be answered that these men's motives are self-interested. I say, 'Judge no man.' You dare not refuse a heathen baptism because you choose to think that his only motive for turning Christian is the selfish one of saving his own rascally soul. No more have you a right to refuse to men an entrance into the social Church. They must come in, and they will, because association is not men's dodge and invention but God's law for mankind and society, which He has made, and we must not limit. I don't know whether I am intelligible, but what's more important, I know I am right. Just read this to the autocrats, and tell them, with my compliments, they are Popes, Tyrants, Manichees, Ascetics, Sectarians, and everything else that is abominable; and if they used as many pipes as I do, they would know the blessing of getting them cheap, and start an associate baccy factory besides. Shall we try? But, this one little mistake excepted (though, if they repeat it, it will become a great mistake, and a wrong, and a ruinous wrong), they are much better fellows than poor I, and doing a great deal more good, and at every fresh news of their deeds I feel like Job's horse, when he scents the battle afar off."
No small part of the work of the Council consisted in mediating and arbitrating in the disputes between the associates and their managers; indeed, such work kept the legal members of the board (none of whom were then overburdened with regular practice) pretty fully occupied. Some such dispute had arisen in one of the most turbulent of these associations, and had been referred to me for settlement. I had satisfied myself as to the facts, and considered my award, and had just begun to write out the draft, when I was called away from my chambers, and left the opening lines lying on my desk. They ran as follows:—"The Trustees of the Mile End Association of Engineers, seeing that the quarrels between the associates have not ceased"—at which word I broke off. On returning to my chambers a quarter of an hour later, I found a continuation in the following words:—
"And that every man is too much inclined to behave himself like a beast,
In spite of our glorious humanity, which requires neither God nor priest,
Yet is daily praised and plastered by ten thousand fools at least—
Request Mr. Hughes' presence at their jawshop in the East,
Which don't they wish they may get it, for he goes out to-night to feast
At the Rev. C. Kingsley's rectory, Chelsea, where he'll get his gullet
greased
With the best of Barto Valle's port, and will have his joys increased
By meeting his old college chum, McDougal the Borneo priest—
So come you thief, and drop your brief,
At six o'clock without relief;
And if you won't may you come to grief,
Says Parson Lot the Socialist Chief,
Who signs his mark at the foot of the leaf—thus"
and, at the end, a clenched fist was sketched in a few bold lines, and under it, "Parson Lot, his mark" written.
I don't know that I can do better than give the history of the rest of the day. Knowing his town habits well, I called at Parker, the publisher's, after chambers, and found him there, sitting on a table and holding forth on politics to our excellent little friend, John Wm. Parker, the junior partner.
We started to walk down to Chelsea, and a dense fog came on before we had reached Hyde Park Corner. Both of us knew the way well; but we lost it half a dozen times, and his spirit seemed to rise as the fog thickened. "Isn't this like life," he said, after one of our blunders: "a deep yellow fog all round, with a dim light here and there shining through. You grope your way on from one lamp to another, and you go up wrong streets and back again; but you get home at last—there's always light enough for that." After a short pause he said, quite abruptly, "Tom, do you want to live to be old?" I said I had never thought on the subject; and he went on, "I dread it more than I can say. To feel one's powers going, and to end in snuff and stink. Look at the last days of Scott and Wordsworth, and Southey." I suggested St. John. "Yes," he said, "that's the right thing, and will do for Bunsen, and great, tranquil men like him. The longer they live the better for all. But for an eager, fiery nature like mine, with fierce passions eating one's life out, it won't do. If I live twenty years I know what will happen to me. The back of my brain will soften, and I shall most likely go blind."
The Bishop got down somehow by six. The dinner did not last long, for the family were away, and afterwards we adjourned to the study, and Parson Lot rose to his best. He stood before the fire, while the Bishop and I took the two fireside arm chairs, and poured himself out, on subject after subject, sometimes when much moved taking a tramp up and down the room, a long clay pipe in his right hand (at which he gave an occasional suck; it was generally out, but he scarcely noticed it), and his left hand passed behind his back, clasping the right elbow. It was a favourite attitude with him, when he was at ease with his company.
We were both bent on drawing him out; and the first topic, I think, raised by the Bishop was, Fronde's history, then recently published. He took up the cudgels for Henry VIII., whom we accused of arbitrariness. Henry was not arbitrary; arbitrary men are the most obstinate of men? Why? Because they are weak. The strongest men are always ready to hear reason and change their opinions, because the strong man knows that if he loses an opinion to-day he can get just as good a one to-morrow in its place. But the weak man holds on to his opinion, because he can't get another, and he knows it.
Soon afterwards he got upon trout fishing, which was a strong bond of union between him and me, and discoursed on the proper methods of fishing chalk streams. "Your flies can't be too big, but they must be on small gut, not on base viol fiddle strings, like those you brought down to Farnham last year. I tell you gut is the thing that does it. Trout know that flies don't go about with a ring and a hand pole through their noses, like so many prize bulls of Lord Ducie's."
Then he got on the possible effect of association on the future of England, and from that to the first International Exhibition, and the building which was going up in Hyde Park.
"I mean to run a muck soon," he said, "against all this talk about genius and high art, and the rest of it. It will be the ruin of us, as it has been of Germany. They have been for fifty years finding out, and showing people how to do everything in heaven and earth, and have done nothing. They are dead even yet, and will be till they get out of the high art fit. We were dead, and the French were dead till their revolution; but that brought us to life. Why didn't the Germans come to life too? Because they set to work with their arts,