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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Vol. 16
THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
SWANSTON EDITION
VOLUME XVI
_Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five
Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
Copies are for sale._
_This Is No._ ...........
[Illustration: R. L. S. IN APEMAMA ISLAND: A DEVIL-PRIEST MAKING
INCANTATIONS]
THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
VOLUME SIXTEEN
LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND
WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM
HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN
AND COMPANY MDCCCCXII
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION: THE SURNAME OF STEVENSON 3
I. DOMESTIC ANNALS 12
II. THE SERVICE OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 34
III. THE BUILDING OF THE BELL ROCK 62
ADDITIONAL MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS
I. RANDOM MEMORIES:
I. THE COAST OF FIFE 155
II. RANDOM MEMORIES:
II. THE EDUCATION OF AN ENGINEER 167
III. A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 177
IV. BEGGARS 190
V. THE LANTERN-BEARERS 200
LATER ESSAYS
I. FONTAINEBLEAU: VILLAGE COMMUNITIES OF PAINTERS 215
II. A NOTE ON REALISM 234
III. ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE 241
IV. THE MORALITY OF THE PROFESSION OF LETTERS 260
V. BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME 272
VI. THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW 279
VII. LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO PROPOSES TO EMBRACE
THE CAREER OF ART 290
VIII. PULVIS ET UMBRA 299
IX. A CHRISTMAS SERMON 306
X. FATHER DAMIEN: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE REVEREND DR.
HYDE OF HONOLULU 315
XI. MY FIRST BOOK--"TREASURE ISLAND" 331
XII. THE GENESIS OF "THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE" 341
XIII. RANDOM MEMORIES: _Rosa Quo Locorum_ 345
XIV. REFLECTIONS AND REMARKS ON HUMAN LIFE 354
XV. THE IDEAL HOUSE 370
LAY MORALS 379
PRAYERS WRITTEN FOR FAMILY USE AT VAILIMA 431
RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS
RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS
INTRODUCTION
THE SURNAME OF STEVENSON
From the thirteenth century onwards, the name, under the various
disguises of Stevinstoun, Stevensoun, Stevensonne, Stenesone, and
Stewinsoune, spread across Scotland from the mouth of the Firth of Forth
to the mouth of the Firth of Clyde. Four times at least it occurs as a
place-name. There is a parish of Stevenston in Cunningham; a second
place of the name in the Barony of Bothwell in Lanark; a third on Lyne,
above Drochil Castle; the fourth on the Tyne, near Traprain Law.
Stevenson of Stevenson (co. Lanark) swore fealty to Edward I. in 1296,
and the last of that family died after the Restoration. Stevensons of
Hirdmanshiels, in Midlothian, rode in the Bishops' Raid of Aberlady,
served as jurors, stood bail for neighbours--Hunter of Polwood, for
instance--and became extinct about the same period, or possibly earlier.
A Stevenson of Luthrie and another of Pitroddie make their bows, give
their names, and vanish. And by the year 1700 it does not appear that
any acre of Scots land was vested in any Stevenson.[1]
Here is, so far, a melancholy picture of backward progress, and a
family posting towards extinction. But the law (however administered,
and I am bound to aver that, in Scotland "it couldna weel be waur") acts
as a kind of dredge, and with dispassionate impartiality brings up into
the light of day, and shows us for a moment, in the jury-box or on the
gallows, the creeping things of the past. By these broken glimpses we
are able to trace the existence of many other and more inglorious
Stevensons, picking a private way through the brawl that makes Scots
history. They were members of Parliament for Peebles, Stirling,
Pittenweem, Kilrenny, and Inverurie. We find them burgesses of
Edinburgh; indwellers in Biggar, Perth, and Dalkeith. Thomas was the
forester of Newbattle Park, Gavin was a baker, John a maltman, Francis a
chirurgeon, and "Schir William" a priest. In the feuds of Humes and
Heatleys, Cunninghams, Montgomeries, Mures, Ogilvies, and Turnbulls, we
find them inconspicuously involved, and apparently getting rather better
than they gave. Schir William (reverend gentleman) was cruellie
slaughtered on the Links of Kincraig in 1532; James ("in the mill-town
of Roberton"), murdered in 1590; Archibald ("in Gallowfarren"), killed
with shots of pistols and hagbuts in 1608. Three violent deaths in about
seventy years, against which we can only put the case of Thomas, servant
to Hume of Cowden Knowes, who was arraigned with his two young masters
for the death of the Bastard of Mellerstanes in 1569. John ("in
Dalkeith") stood sentry without Holyrood while the banded lords were
despatching Rizzio within. William, at the ringing of Perth bell, ran
before Cowrie House "with ane sword, and, entering to the yearde, saw
George Craiggingilt with ane twa-handit sword and utheris nychtbouris;
at quilk time James Boig cryit ower ane wynds, 'Awa hame! ye will all be
hangit'"--a piece of advice which William took, and immediately
"depairtit." John got a maid with child to him in Biggar, and seemingly
deserted her; she was hanged on the Castle Hill for infanticide, June
1614; and Martin, elder in Dalkeith, eternally disgraced the name by
signing witness in a witch trial, 1661. These are two of our black
sheep.[2] Under the Restoration, one Stevenson was a bailie in
Edinburgh, and another the lessee of the Canonmills. There were at the
same period two physicians of the name in Edinburgh, one of whom, Dr.
Archibald, appears to have been a famous man in his day and generation.
The Court had continual need of him; it was he who reported, for
instance, on the state of Rumbold; and he was for some time in the
enjoyment of a pension of a thousand pounds Scots (about eighty pounds
sterling) at a time when five hundred pounds is described as "an opulent
future." I do not know if I should be glad or sorry that he failed to
keep favour; but on 6th January 1682 (rather a cheerless New Year's
present) his pension was expunged.[3] There need be no doubt, at least,
of my exultation at the fact that he was knighted and recorded arms. Not
quite so genteel, but still in public life, Hugh was Under-Clerk to the
Privy Council, and liked being so extremely. I gather this from his
conduct in September 1681, when, with all the lords and their servants,
he took the woful and soul-destroying Test, swearing it "word by word
upon his knees." And, behold! it was in vain, for Hugh was turned out of
his small post in 1684.[4] Sir Archibald and Hugh were both plainly
inclined to be trimmers; but there was one witness of the name of
Stevenson who held high the banner of the Covenant--John,
"Land-Labourer,[5] in the parish of Daily, in Carrick," that "eminently
pious man." He seems to have been a poor sickly soul, and shows himself
disabled with scrofula, and prostrate and groaning aloud with fever; but
the enthusiasm of the martyr burned high within him.
"I was made to take joyfully the spoiling of my goods, and with pleasure
for His name's sake wandered in deserts and in mountains, in dens and
caves of the earth. I lay four months in the coldest season of the year
in a haystack in my father's garden, and a whole February in the open
fields not far from Camragen, and this I did without the least prejudice
from the night air; one night, when lying in the fields near to the
Carrick-Miln, I was all covered with snow in the morning. Many nights
have I lain with pleasure in the churchyard of Old Daily, and made a
grave my pillow; frequently have I resorted to the old walls about the
glen, near to Camragen, and there sweetly rested." The visible hand of
God protected and directed him. Dragoons were turned aside from the
bramble-bush where he lay hidden. Miracles were performed for his
behoof. "I got a horse and a woman to carry the child, and came to the
same mountain, where I wandered by the mist before; it is commonly known
by the name of Kellsrhins: when we came to go up the mountain, there
came on a great rain, which we thought was the occasion of the child's
weeping, and she wept so bitterly, that all we could do could not divert
her from it, so that she was ready to burst. When we got to the top of
the mountain, where the Lord had been formerly kind to my soul in
prayer, I looked round me for a stone, and espying one, I went and
brought it. When the woman with me saw me set down the stone, she
smiled, and asked what I was going to do with it. I told her I was going
to set it up as my Ebenezer, because hitherto, and in that place, the
Lord had formerly helped, and I hoped would yet help. The rain still
continuing, the child weeping bitterly, I went to prayer, and no sooner
did I cry to God, but the child gave over weeping, and when we got up
from prayer, the rain was pouring down on every side, but in the way
where we were to go there fell not one drop; the place not rained on was
as big as an ordinary avenue." And so great a saint was the natural butt
of Satan's persecutions. "I retired to the fields for secret prayer
about midnight. When I went to pray I was much straitened, and could not
get one request, but 'Lord pity,' 'Lord help'; this I came over
frequently; at length the terror of Satan fell on me in a high degree,
and all I could say even then was--'Lord help.' I continued in the duty
for some time, notwithstanding of this terror. At length I got up to my
feet, and the terror still increased; then the enemy took me by the
arm-pits, and seemed to lift me up by my arms. I saw a loch just before
me, and I concluded he designed to throw me there by force; and had he
got leave to do so, it might have brought a great reproach upon
religion."[6] But it was otherwise ordered, and the cause of piety
escaped that danger.[7]
On the whole, the Stevensons may be described as decent, reputable folk,
following honest trades--millers, maltsters, and doctors, playing the
character parts in the Waverley Novels with propriety, if without
distinction; and to an orphan looking about him in the world for a
potential ancestry, offering a plain and quite unadorned refuge, equally
free from shame and glory. John, the land-labourer, is the one living
and memorable figure, and he, alas! cannot possibly be more near than a
collateral. It was on August 12, 1678, that he heard Mr. John Welsh on
the Craigdowhill, and "took the heavens, earth, and sun in the firmament
that was shining on us, as also the ambassador who made the offer, and
_the clerk who raised the psalms_, to witness that I did give myself
away to the Lord in a personal and perpetual covenant never to be
forgotten"; and already, in 1675, the birth of my direct ascendant was
registered in Glasgow. So that I have been pursuing ancestors too far
down; and John the land-labourer is debarred me, and I must relinquish
from the trophies of my house his _rare soul-strengthening and
comforting cordial_. It is the same case with the Edinburgh bailie and
the miller of the Canonmills, worthy man! and with that public
character, Hugh the Under-Clerk, and more than all, with Sir Archibald,
the physician, who recorded arms. And I am reduced to a family of
inconspicuous maltsters in what was then the clean and handsome little
city on the Clyde.
The name has a certain air of being Norse. But the story of Scottish
nomenclature is confounded by a continual process of translation and
half-translation from the Gaelic which in olden days may have been
sometimes reversed. Roy becomes Reid; Gow, Smith. A great Highland clan
uses the name of Robertson; a sept in Appin that of Livingstone; Maclean
in Glencoe answers to Johnstone at Lockerby. And we find such hybrids as
Macalexander for Macallister. There is but one rule to be deduced: that
however uncompromisingly Saxon a name may appear, you can never be sure
it does not designate a Celt. My great-grandfather wrote the name
_Stevenson_ but pronounced it _Steenson_, after the fashion of the
immortal minstrel in "Redgauntlet"; and this elision of a medial
consonant appears a Gaelic process; and, curiously enough, I have come
across no less than two Gaelic forms: _John Macstophane cordinerius in
Crossraguel_, 1573, and _William M'Steen_ in Dunskeith (co. Ross), 1605.
Stevenson, Steenson, Macstophane, M'Steen: which is the original? which
the translation? Or were these separate creations of the patronymic,
some English, some Gaelic? The curiously compact territory in which we
find them seated--Ayr, Lanark, Peebles, Stirling, Perth, Fife, and the
Lothians--would seem to forbid the supposition.[8]
"STEVENSON--or according to tradition of one of the proscribed of the
clan MacGregor, who was born among the willows or in a hill-side
sheep-pen--'Son of my love,' a heraldic bar sinister, but history
reveals a reason for the birth among the willows far other than the
sinister aspect of the name": these are the dark words of Mr. Cosmo
Innes; but history or tradition, being interrogated, tells a somewhat
tangled tale. The heir of Macgregor of Glenorchy, murdered about 1353 by
the Argyll Campbells, appears to have been the original "Son of my
love"; and his more loyal clansmen took the name to fight under. It may
be supposed the story of their resistance became popular, and the name
in some sort identified with the idea of opposition to the Campbells.
Twice afterwards, on some renewed aggression, in 1502 and 1552, we find
the Macgregors again banding themselves into a sept of "Sons of my
love"; and when the great disaster fell on them in 1603, the whole
original legend re-appears, and we have the heir of Alaster of Glenstrae
born "among the willows" of a fugitive mother, and the more loyal
clansmen again rallying under the name of Stevenson. A story would not
be told so often unless it had some base in fact; nor (if there were no
bond at all between the Red Macgregors and the Stevensons) would that
extraneous and somewhat uncouth name be so much repeated in the legends
of the Children of the Mist.
But I am enabled, by my very lively and obliging correspondent, Mr.
George A. Macgregor Stevenson of New York, to give an actual instance.
His grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and
great-great-great-grandfather, all used the names of Macgregor and
Stevenson as occasion served; being perhaps Macgregor by night and
Stevenson by day. The great-great-great-grandfather was a mighty man of
his hands, marched with the clan in the 'Forty-five, and returned with
_spolia opima_ in the shape of a sword, which he had wrested from an
officer in the retreat, and which is in the possession of my
correspondent to this day. His great-grandson (the grandfather of my
correspondent), being converted to Methodism by some wayside preacher,
discarded in a moment his name, his old nature, and his political
principles, and with the zeal of a proselyte sealed his adherence to the
Protestant Succession by baptising his next son George. This George
became the publisher and editor of the _Wesleyan Times_. His children
were brought up in ignorance of their Highland pedigree; and my
correspondent was puzzled to overhear his father speak of him as a true
Macgregor, and amazed to find, in rummaging about that peaceful and
pious house, the sword of the Hanoverian officer. After he was grown up
and was better informed of his descent, "I frequently asked my father,"
he writes, "why he did not use the name of Macgregor; his replies were
significant, and give a picture of the man: 'It isn't a good _Methodist_
name. You can use it, but it will do you no _good_.' Yet the old
gentleman, by way of pleasantry, used to announce himself to friends as
'Colonel Macgregor.'"
Here, then, are certain Macgregors habitually using the name of
Stevenson, and at last, under the influence of Methodism, adopting it
entirely. Doubtless a proscribed clan could not be particular; they took
a name as a man takes an umbrella against a shower; as Rob Roy took
Campbell, and his son took Drummond. But this case is different;
Stevenson was not taken and left--it was consistently adhered to. It
does not in the least follow that all Stevensons are of the clan Alpin;
but it does follow that some may be. And I cannot conceal from myself
the possibility that James Stevenson in Glasgow, my first authentic
ancestor, may have had a Highland _alias_ upon his conscience and a
claymore in his back parlour.
To one more tradition I may allude, that we are somehow descended from a
French barber-surgeon who came to St. Andrews in the service of one of
the Cardinal Beatons. No details were added. But the very name of
France was so detested in my family for three generations, that I am
tempted to suppose there may be something in it.[9]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] An error: Stevensons owned at this date the barony of
Dolphingston in Haddingtonshire, Montgrennan in Ayrshire, and
several other lesser places.
[2] Pitcairn's "Criminal Trials," at large.--[R. L. S.]
[3] Fountainhall's "Decisions," vol. i. pp. 56, 132, 186, 204,
368.--[R. L. S.]
[4] _Ibid._ pp. 158, 299.--[R. L. S.]
[5] Working farmer: Fr. _laboureur_.
[6] This John Stevenson was not the only "witness" of the name;
other Stevensons were actually killed during the persecutions, in
the Glen of Trool, on Pentland, etc.; and it is very possible that
the author's own ancestor was one of the mounted party embodied by
Muir of Caldwell, only a day too late for Pentland.
[7] Wodrow Society's "Select Biographies," vol. ii.--[R. L. S.]
[8] Though the districts here named are those in which the name of
Stevenson is most common, it is in point of fact far more
wide-spread than the text indicates, and occurs from Dumfries and
Berwickshire to Aberdeen and Orkney.
[9] Mr. J.H. Stevenson is satisfied that these speculations as to a
possible Norse, Highland, or French origin are vain. All we know
about the engineer family is that it was sprung from a stock of
Westland Whigs settled in the latter part of the seventeenth century
in the parish of Neilston, as mentioned at the beginning of the next
chapter. It may be noted that the Ayrshire parish of Stevenson, the
lands of which are said to have received the name in the twelfth
century, lies within thirteen miles south-west of this place. The
lands of Stevenson in Lanarkshire first mentioned in the next
century, in the Ragman Roll, lie within twenty miles east.
CHAPTER I
DOMESTIC ANNALS
It is believed that in 1665, James Stevenson in Nether Carsewell, parish
of Neilston, county of Renfrew, and presumably a tenant farmer, married
one Jean Keir; and in 1675, without doubt, there was born to these two a
son Robert, possibly a maltster in Glasgow. In 1710, Robert married, for
a second time, Elizabeth Cumming, and there was born to them, in 1720,
another Robert, certainly a maltster in Glasgow. In 1742, Robert the
second married Margaret Fulton (Margret, she called herself), by whom he
had ten children, among whom were Hugh, born February 1749, and Alan,
born June 1752.
With these two brothers my story begins. Their deaths were simultaneous;
their lives unusually brief and full. Tradition whispered me in
childhood they were the owners of an islet near St. Kitts; and it is
certain they had risen to be at the head of considerable interests in
the West Indies, which Hugh managed abroad and Alan at home, at an age
when others are still curveting a clerk's stool. My kinsman, Mr.
Stevenson of Stirling, has heard his father mention that there had been
"something romantic" about Alan's marriage: and, alas! he has forgotten
what. It was early at least. His wife was Jean, daughter of David
Lillie, a builder in Glasgow, and several times "Deacon of the Wrights":
the date of the marriage has not reached me: but on 8th June 1772, when
Robert, the only child of the union, was born, the husband and father
had scarce passed, or had not yet attained, his twentieth year. Here was
a youth making haste to give hostages to fortune. But this early scene
of prosperity in love and business was on the point of closing.
There hung in the house of this young family, and successively in those
of my grandfather and father, an oil painting of a ship of many tons
burthen. Doubtless the brothers had an interest in the vessel; I was
told she had belonged to them outright; and the picture was preserved
through years of hardship, and remains to this day in the possession of
the family, the only memorial of my great-grandsire Alan. It was on this
ship that he sailed on his last adventure, summoned to the West Indies
by Hugh. An agent had proved unfaithful on a serious scale; and it used
to be told me in my childhood how the brothers pursued him from one
island to another in an open boat, were exposed to the pernicious dews
of the tropics, and simultaneously struck down. The dates and places of
their deaths (now before me) would seem to indicate a more scattered and
prolonged pursuit: Hugh, on the 16th April 1774, in Tobago, within sight
of Trinidad; Alan, so late as May 26th, and so far away as "Santt
Kittes," in the Leeward Islands--both, says the family Bible, "of a
fiver" (!). The death of Hugh was probably announced by Alan in a
letter, to which we may refer the details of the open boat and the dew.
Thus, at least, in something like the course of post, both were called
away, the one twenty-five, the other twenty-two; their brief generation
became extinct, their short-lived house fell with them; and "in these
lawless parts and lawless times"--the words are my grandfather's--their
property was stolen or became involved. Many years later, I understand
some small recovery to have been made; but at the moment almost the
whole means of the family seem to have perished with the young
merchants. On the 27th April, eleven days after Hugh Stevenson,
twenty-nine before Alan, died David Lillie, the Deacon of the Wrights;
so that mother and son were orphaned in one month. Thus, from a few
scraps of paper bearing little beyond dates, we construct the outlines
of the tragedy that shadowed the cradle of Robert Stevenson.
Jean Lillie was a young woman of strong sense, well fitted to contend
with poverty, and of a pious disposition, which it is like that these
misfortunes heated. Like so many other widowed Scotswomen, she vowed her
son should wag his head in a pulpit; but her means were inadequate to
her ambition. A charity school, and some time under a Mr. M'Intyre, "a
famous linguist," were all she could afford in the way of education to
the would-be minister. He learned no Greek; in one place he mentions
that the Orations of Cicero were his highest book in Latin; in another
that he had "delighted" in Virgil and Horace; but his delight could
never have been scholarly. This appears to have been the whole of his
training previous to an event which changed his own destiny and moulded
that of his descendants--the second marriage of his mother.
There was a Merchant-Burgess of Edinburgh of the name of Thomas Smith.
The Smith pedigree has been traced a little more particularly than the
Stevensons', with a similar dearth of illustrious names. One character
seems to have appeared, indeed, for a moment at the wings of history: a
skipper of Dundee who smuggled over some Jacobite big-wig at the time of
the 'Fifteen, and was afterwards drowned in Dundee harbour while going
on board his ship. With this exception, the generations of the Smiths
present no conceivable interest even to a descendant; and Thomas, of
Edinburgh, was the first to issue from respectable obscurity. His
father, a skipper out of Broughty Ferry, was drowned at sea while Thomas
was still young. He seems to have owned a ship or two--whalers, I
suppose, or coasters--and to have been a member of the Dundee Trinity
House, whatever that implies. On his death the widow remained in
Broughty, and the son came to push his future in Edinburgh. There is a
story told of him in the family which I repeat here because I shall
have to tell later on a similar, but more perfectly authenticated,
experience of his stepson, Robert Stevenson. Word reached Thomas that
his mother was unwell, and he prepared to leave for Broughty on the
morrow. It was between two and three in the morning, and the early
northern daylight was already clear, when he awoke and beheld the
curtains at the bed-foot drawn aside and his mother appear in the
interval, smile upon him for a moment, and then vanish. The sequel is
stereotype: he took the time by his watch, and arrived at Broughty to
learn it was the very moment of her death. The incident is at least
curious in having happened to such a person--as the tale is being told
of him. In all else, he appears as a man, ardent, passionate, practical,
designed for affairs and prospering in them far beyond the average. He
founded a solid business in lamps and oils, and was the sole proprietor
of a concern called the Greenside Company's Works--"a multifarious
concern it was," writes my cousin, Professor Swan, "of tinsmiths,
coppersmiths, brassfounders, blacksmiths, and japanners." He was also,
it seems, a shipowner and underwriter. He built himself "a land"--Nos.
1 and 2 Baxter's Place, then no such unfashionable neighbourhood--and
died, leaving his only son in easy circumstances, and giving to his
three surviving daughters portions of five thousand pounds and upwards.
There is no standard of success in life; but in one of its meanings,
this is to succeed.
In what we know of his opinions, he makes a figure highly characteristic
of the time. A high Tory and patriot, a captain--so I find it in my
notes--of Edinburgh Spearmen, and on duty in the Castle during the Muir
and Palmer troubles, he bequeathed to his descendants a bloodless sword
and a somewhat violent tradition, both long preserved. The judge who sat
on Muir and Palmer, the famous Braxfield, let fall from the bench the
_obiter dictum_--"I never liked the French all my days, but now I hate
them." If Thomas Smith, the Edinburgh Spearman, were in court, he must
have been tempted to applaud. The people of that land were his
abhorrence; he loathed Buonaparte like Antichrist. Towards the end he
fell into a kind of dotage; his family must entertain him with games of
tin soldiers, which he took a childish pleasure to array and overset;
but those who played with him must be upon their guard, for if his side,
which was always that of the English against the French, should chance
to be defeated, there would be trouble in Baxter's Place. For these
opinions he may almost be said to have suffered. Baptised and brought up
in the Church of Scotland, he had, upon some conscientious scruple,
joined the communion of the Baptists. Like other Nonconformists, these
were inclined to the Liberal side in politics, and, at least in the
beginning, regarded Buonaparte as a deliverer. From the time of his
joining the Spearmen, Thomas Smith became in consequence a bugbear to
his brethren in the faith. "They that take the sword shall perish with
the sword," they told him; they gave him "no rest"; "his position became
intolerable"; it was plain he must choose between his political and his
religious tenets; and in the last years of his life, about 1812, he
returned to the Church of his fathers.
August 1786 was the date of his chief advancement, when, having designed
a system of oil lights to take the place of the primitive coal fires
before in use, he was dubbed engineer to the newly-formed Board of
Northern Lighthouses. Not only were his fortunes bettered by the
appointment, but he was introduced to a new and wider field for the
exercise of his abilities, and a new way of life highly agreeable to his
active constitution. He seems to have rejoiced in the long journeys, and
to have combined them with the practice of field sports. "A tall, stout
man coming ashore with his gun over his arm"--so he was described to my
father--the only description that has come down to me--by a light-keeper
old in the service. Nor did this change come alone. On the 9th July of
the same year, Thomas Smith had been left for the second time a
widower. As he was still but thirty-three years old, prospering in his
affairs, newly advanced in the world, and encumbered at the time with a
family of children, five in number, it was natural that he should
entertain the notion of another wife. Expeditious in business, he was no
less so in his choice; and it was not later than June 1787--for my
grandfather is described as still in his fifteenth year--that he married
the widow of Alan Stevenson.
The perilous experiment of bringing together two families for once
succeeded. Mr. Smith's two eldest daughters, Jean and Janet, fervent in
piety, unwearied in kind deeds, were well qualified both to appreciate
and to attract the stepmother; and her son, on the other hand, seems to
have found immediate favour in the eyes of Mr. Smith. It is, perhaps,
easy to exaggerate the ready-made resemblances; the tired woman must
have done much to fashion girls who were under ten; the man, lusty and
opinionated, must have stamped a strong impression on the boy of
fifteen. But the cleavage of the family was too marked, the identity of
character and interest produced between the two men on the one hand, and
the three women on the other, was too complete to have been the result
of influence alone. Particular bonds of union must have pre-existed on
each side. And there is no doubt that the man and the boy met with
common ambitions, and a common bent, to the practice of that which had
not so long before acquired the name of civil engineering.
For the profession which is now so thronged, famous, and influential,
was then a thing of yesterday. My grandfather had an anecdote of
Smeaton, probably learned from John Clerk of Eldin, their common friend.
Smeaton was asked by the Duke of Argyll to visit the West Highland coast
for a professional purpose. He refused, appalled, it seems, by the rough
travelling. "You can recommend some other fit person?" asked the Duke.
"No," said Smeaton, "I'm sorry I can't." "What!" cried the Duke, "a
profession with only one man in it! Pray, who taught you?" "Why," said
Smeaton, "I believe I may say I was self-taught, an't please your
grace." Smeaton, at the date of Thomas Smith's third marriage, was yet
living; and as the one had grown to the new profession from his place at
the instrument-maker's, the other was beginning to enter it by the way
of his trade. The engineer of to-day is confronted with a library of
acquired results; tables and formulæ to the value of folios full have
been calculated and recorded; and the student finds everywhere in front
of him the footprints of the pioneers. In the eighteenth century the
field was largely unexplored; the engineer must read with his own eyes
the face of nature; he arose a volunteer, from the workshop or the mill,
to undertake works which were at once inventions and adventures. It was
not a science then--it was a living art; and it visibly grew under the
eyes and between the hands of its practitioners.
The charm of such an occupation was strongly felt by stepfather and
stepson. It chanced that Thomas Smith was a reformer; the superiority of
his proposed lamp and reflectors over open fires of coal secured his
appointment; and no sooner had he set his hand to the task than the
interest of that employment mastered him. The vacant stage on which he
was to act, and where all had yet to be created--the greatness of the
difficulties, the smallness of the means intrusted him--would rouse a
man of his disposition like a call to battle. The lad introduced by
marriage under his roof was of a character to sympathise; the public
usefulness of the service would appeal to his judgment, the perpetual
need for fresh expedients stimulate his ingenuity. And there was another
attraction which, in the younger man at least, appealed to, and perhaps
first aroused a profound and enduring sentiment of romance: I mean the
attraction of the life. The seas into which his labours carried the new
engineer were still scarce charted, the coasts still dark; his way on
shore was often far beyond the convenience of any road; the isles in
which he must sojourn were still partly savage. He must toss much in
boats; he must often adventure on horseback by the dubious bridle-track
through unfrequented wildernesses; he must sometimes plant his
lighthouse in the very camp of wreckers; and he was continually enforced
to the vicissitudes of outdoor life. The joy of my grandfather in this
career was strong as the love of woman. It lasted him through youth and
manhood, it burned strong in age, and at the approach of death his last
yearning was to renew these loved experiences. What he felt himself he
continued to attribute to all around him. And to this supposed sentiment
in others I find him continually, almost pathetically, appealing: often
in vain.
Snared by these interests, the boy seems to have become almost at once
the eager confidant and adviser of his new connection; the Church, if he
had ever entertained the prospect very warmly, faded from his view; and
at the age of nineteen I find him already in a post of some authority,
superintending the construction of the lighthouse on the isle of Little
Cumbrae, in the Firth of Clyde. The change of aim seems to have caused
or been accompanied by a change of character. It sounds absurd to couple
the name of my grandfather with the word indolence; but the lad who had
been destined from the cradle to the Church, and who had attained the
age of fifteen without acquiring more than a moderate knowledge of
Latin, was at least no unusual student. And from the day of his charge
at Little Cumbrae he steps before us what he remained until the end, a
man of the most zealous industry, greedy of occupation, greedy of
knowledge, a stern husband of time, a reader, a writer, unflagging in
his task of self-improvement. Thenceforward his summers were spent
directing works and ruling workmen, now in uninhabited, now in
half-savage islands; his winters were set apart, first at the
Andersonian Institution, then at the University of Edinburgh to improve
himself in mathematics, chemistry, natural history, agriculture, moral
philosophy, and logic; a bearded student--although no doubt scrupulously
shaved. I find one reference to his years in class which will have a
meaning for all who have studied in Scottish Universities. He mentions a
recommendation made by the professor of logic. "The high-school men," he
writes, "and _bearded men like myself_, were all attention." If my
grandfather were throughout life a thought too studious of the art of
getting on, much must be forgiven to the bearded and belated student who
looked across, with a sense of difference, at "the high-school men."
Here was a gulf to be crossed; but already he could feel that he had
made a beginning, and that must have been a proud hour when he devoted
his earliest earnings to the repayment of the charitable foundation in
which he had received the rudiments of knowledge.
In yet another way he followed the example of his father-in-law, and
from 1794 to 1807, when the affairs of the Bell Rock made it necessary
for him to resign, he served in different corps of volunteers. In the
last of these he rose to a position of distinction, no less than captain
of the Grenadier Company, and his colonel, in accepting his resignation,
entreated he would do them "the favour of continuing as an honorary
member of a corps which has been so much indebted for your zeal and
exertions."
To very pious women the men of the house are apt to appear worldly. The
wife, as she puts on her new bonnet before church, is apt to sigh over
that assiduity which enabled her husband to pay the milliner's bill. And
in the household of the Smiths and Stevensons the women were not only
extremely pious, but the men were in reality a trifle worldly. Religious
they both were; conscious, like all Scots, of the fragility and
unreality of that scene in which we play our uncomprehended parts; like
all Scots, realising daily and hourly the sense of another will than
ours and a perpetual direction in the affairs of life. But the current
of their endeavours flowed in a more obvious channel. They had got on so
far; to get on further was their next ambition--to gather wealth, to
rise in society, to leave their descendants higher than themselves, to
be (in some sense) among the founders of families. Scott was in the same
town nourishing similar dreams. But in the eyes of the women these
dreams would be foolish and idolatrous.
I have before me some volumes of old letters addressed to Mrs. Smith and
the two girls, her favourites, which depict in a strong light their
characters and the society in which they moved.
"My very dear and much esteemed Friend," writes one correspondent,
"this day being the anniversary of our acquaintance, I feel inclined
to address you; but where shall I find words to express the fealings
of a graitful _Heart_, first to the Lord who graiciously inclined you
on this day last year to notice an afflicted Strainger providentially
cast in your way far from any Earthly friend?... Methinks I shall
hear him say unto you, 'Inasmuch as ye shewed kindness to my
afflicted handmaiden, ye did it unto me.'"
This is to Jean; but the same afflicted lady wrote indifferently to
Jean, to Janet, and to Mrs. Smith, whom she calls "my Edinburgh mother."
It is plain the three were as one person, moving to acts of kindness,
like the Graces, inarmed. Too much stress must not be laid on the style
of this correspondence; Clarinda survived, not far away, and may have
met the ladies on the Calton Hill; and many of the writers appear,
underneath the conventions of the period, to be genuinely moved. But
what unpleasantly strikes a reader is that these devout unfortunates
found a revenue in their devotion. It is everywhere the same tale: on
the side of the soft-hearted ladies, substantial acts of help; on the
side of the correspondents, affection, italics, texts, ecstasies, and
imperfect spelling. When a midwife is recommended, not at all for
proficiency in her important art, but because she has "a sister whom I
[the correspondent] esteem and respect, and [who] is a spiritual
daughter of my Hon^d Father in the Gosple," the mask seems to be torn
off, and the wages of godliness appear too openly. Capacity is a
secondary matter in a midwife, temper in a servant, affection in a
daughter, and the repetition of a shibboleth fulfils the law. Common
decency is at times forgot in the same page with the most sanctified
advice and aspiration. Thus I am introduced to a correspondent who
appears to have been at the time the housekeeper at Invermay, and who
writes to condole with my grandmother in a season of distress. For
nearly half a sheet she keeps to the point with an excellent discretion
in language; then suddenly breaks out:
"It was fully my intention to have left this at Martinmass, but the
Lord fixes the bounds of our habitation. I have had more need of
patience in my situation here than in any other, partly from the very
violent, unsteady, deceitful temper of the Mistress of the Family,
and also from the state of the house. It was in a train of repair
when I came here two years ago, and is still in Confusion. There is
above six Thousand Pounds' worth of Furniture come from London to be
put up when the rooms are completely finished; and then, woe be to
the Person who is Housekeeper at Invermay!"
And by the tail of the document, which is torn, I see she goes on to ask
the bereaved family to seek her a new place. It is extraordinary that
people should have been so deceived in so careless an impostor; that a
few sprinkled "God willings" should have blinded them to the essence of
this venomous letter; and that they should have been at the pains to
bind it in with others (many of them highly touching) in their memorial
of harrowing days. But the good ladies were without guile and without
suspicion; they were victims marked for the axe, and the religious
impostors snuffed up the wind as they drew near.
I have referred above to my grandmother; it was no slip of the pen: for
by an extraordinary arrangement, in which it is hard not to suspect the
managing hand of a mother, Jean Smith became the wife of Robert
Stevenson. Mrs. Smith had failed in her design to make her son a
minister, and she saw him daily more immersed in business and worldly
ambition. One thing remained that she might do: she might secure for him
a godly wife, that great means of sanctification; and she had two under
her hand, trained by herself, her dear friends and daughters both in law
and love--Jean and Janet. Jean's complexion was extremely pale, Janet's
was florid; my grandmother's nose was straight, my great-aunt's
aquiline; but by the sound of the voice, not even a son was able to
distinguish one from other. The marriage of a man of twenty-seven and a
girl of twenty who have lived for twelve years as brother and sister, is
difficult to conceive. It took place, however, and thus in 1799 the
family was still further cemented by the union of a representative of
the male or worldly element with one of the female and devout.
This essential difference remained unbridged, yet never diminished the
strength of their relation. My grandfather pursued his design of
advancing in the world with some measure of success; rose to distinction
in his calling, grew to be the familiar of members of Parliament, judges
of the Court of Session, and "landed gentlemen"; learned a ready
address, had a flow of interesting conversation, and when he was
referred to as "a highly respectable _bourgeois_," resented the
description. My grandmother remained to the end devout and unambitious,
occupied with her Bible, her children, and her house; easily shocked,
and associating largely with a clique of godly parasites. I do not know
if she called in the midwife already referred to; but the principle on
which that lady was recommended, she accepted fully. The cook was a
godly woman, the butcher a Christian man, and the table suffered. The
scene has been often described to me of my grandfather sawing with
darkened countenance at some indissoluble joint--"Preserve me, my dear,
what kind of a reedy, stringy beast is this?"--of the joint removed, the
pudding substituted and uncovered; and of my grandmother's anxious
glance and hasty, deprecatory comment, "Just mismanaged!" Yet with the
invincible obstinacy of soft natures, she would adhere to the godly
woman and the Christian man, or find others of the same kidney to
replace them. One of her confidants had once a narrow escape; an
unwieldy old woman, she had fallen from an outside stair in a close of
the Old Town; and my grandmother rejoiced to communicate the
providential circumstance that a baker had been passing underneath with
his bread upon his head. "I would like to know what kind of providence
the baker thought it!" cried my grandfather.
But the sally must have been unique. In all else that I have heard or
read of him, so far from criticising, he was doing his utmost to honour
and even to emulate his wife's pronounced opinions. In the only letter
which has come to my hand of Thomas Smith's, I find him informing his
wife that he was "in time for afternoon church "; similar assurances or
cognate excuses abound in the correspondence of Robert Stevenson; and it
is comical and pretty to see the two generations paying the same court
to a female piety more highly strung: Thomas Smith to the mother of
Robert Stevenson--Robert Stevenson to the daughter of Thomas Smith. And
if for once my grandfather suffered himself to be hurried, by his sense
of humour and justice, into that remark about the case of Providence and
the Baker, I should be sorry for any of his children who should have
stumbled into the same attitude of criticism. In the apocalyptic style
of the housekeeper of Invermay, woe be to that person! But there was no
fear; husband and sons all entertained for the pious, tender soul the
same chivalrous and moved affection. I have spoken with one who
remembered her, and who had been the intimate and equal of her sons, and
I found this witness had been struck, as I had been, with a sense of
disproportion between the warmth of the adoration felt and the nature of
the woman, whether as described or observed. She diligently read and
marked her Bible; she was a tender nurse; she had a sense of humour
under strong control; she talked and found some amusement at her (or
rather at her husband's) dinner-parties. It is conceivable that even my
grandmother was amenable to the seductions of dress; at least I find her
husband inquiring anxiously about "the gowns from Glasgow," and very
careful to describe the toilet of the Princess Charlotte, whom he had
seen in church "in a Pelisse and Bonnet of the same colour of cloth as
the Boys' Dress jackets, trimmed with blue satin ribbons; the hat or
Bonnet, Mr. Spittal said, was a Parisian slouch, and had a plume of
three white feathers." But all this leaves a blank impression, and it is
rather by reading backward in these old musty letters, which have moved
me now to laughter and now to impatience, that I glean occasional
glimpses of how she seemed to her contemporaries, and trace (at work in
her queer world of godly and grateful parasites) a mobile and responsive
nature. Fashion moulds us, and particularly women, deeper than we
sometimes think; but a little while ago, and, in some circles, women
stood or fell by the degree of their appreciation of old pictures; in
the early years of the century (and surely with more reason) a character
like that of my grandmother warmed, charmed, and subdued, like a strain
of music, the hearts of the men of her own household. And there is
little doubt that Mrs. Smith, as she looked on at the domestic life of
her son and her step-daughter, and numbered the heads in their
increasing nursery, must have breathed fervent thanks to her Creator.
Yet this was to be a family unusually tried; it was not for nothing that
one of the godly women saluted Miss Janet Smith as "a veteran in
affliction"; and they were all before middle life experienced in that
form of service. By the 1st of January 1808, besides a pair of
still-born twins, five children had been born and still survived to the
young couple. By the 11th two were gone; by the 28th a third had
followed, and the two others were still in danger. In the letters of a
former nurserymaid--I give her name, Jean Mitchell, _honoris causa_--we
are enabled to feel, even at this distance of time, some of the
bitterness of that month of bereavement.
"I have this day received," she writes to Miss Janet, "the melancholy
news of my dear babys' deaths. My heart is like to break for my dear
Mrs. Stevenson. O may she be supported on this trying occasion! I
hope her other three babys will be spared to her. O, Miss Smith, did
I think when I parted from my sweet babys that I never was to see
them more?" "I received," she begins her next, "the mournful news of
my dear Jessie's death. I also received the hair of my three sweet
babys, which I will preserve as dear to their memorys and as a token
of Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson's friendship and esteem. At my leisure
hours, when the children are in bed, they occupy all my thoughts, I
dream of them. About two weeks ago, I dreamed that my sweet little
Jessie came running to me in her usual way, and I took her in my
arms. O my dear babys, were mortal eyes permitted to see them in
heaven, we would not repine nor grieve for their loss."
By the 29th of February, the Reverend John Campbell, a man of obvious
sense and human value, but hateful to the present biographer, because he
wrote so many letters and conveyed so little information, summed up this
first period of affliction in a letter to Miss Smith: "Your dear sister
but a little while ago had a full nursery, and the dear blooming
creatures sitting around her table filled her breast with hope that one
day they should fill active stations in society and become an ornament
in the Church below. But ah!"
Near a hundred years ago these little creatures ceased to be, and for
not much less a period the tears have been dried. And to this day,
looking in these stitched sheaves of letters, we hear the sound of many
soft-hearted women sobbing for the lost. Never was such a massacre of
the innocents; teething and chincough and scarlet fever and small-pox
ran the round; and little Lillies, and Smiths, and Stevensons fell like
moths about a candle; and nearly all the sympathetic correspondents
deplore and recall the little losses of their own. "It is impossible to
describe the Heavnly looks of the Dear Babe the three last days of his
life," writes Mrs. Laurie to Mrs. Smith. "Never--never, my dear aunt,
could I wish to eface the rememberance of this Dear Child. Never, never,
my dear aunt!" And so soon the memory of the dead and the dust of the
survivors are buried in one grave.
There was another death in 1812; it passes almost unremarked; a single
funeral seemed but a small event to these "veterans in affliction"; and
by 1816 the nursery was full again. Seven little hopefuls enlivened the
house; some were growing up; to the elder girl my grandfather already
wrote notes in current hand at the tail of his letters to his wife: and
to the elder boys he had begun to print, with laborious care, sheets of
childish gossip and pedantic applications. Here, for instance, under
date of May 26th, 1816, is part of a mythological account of London,
with a moral for the three gentlemen, "Messieurs Alan, Robert, and James
Stevenson," to whom the document is addressed:
"There are many prisons here like Bridewell, for, like other large
towns, there are many bad men here as well as many good men. The
natives of London are in general not so tall and strong as the people
of Edinburgh, because they have not so much pure air, and instead of
taking porridge they eat cakes made with sugar and plums. Here you
have thousands of carts to draw timber, thousands of coaches to take
you to all parts of the town, and thousands of boats to sail on the
river Thames. But you must have money to pay, otherwise you can get
nothing. Now the way to get money is, become clever men and men of
education, by being good scholars."
From the same absence, he writes to his wife on a Sunday:
"It is now about eight o'clock with me, and I imagine you to be busy
with the young folks, hearing the questions [_Anglicé_, catechism],
and indulging the boys with a chapter from the large Bible, with
their interrogations and your answers in the soundest doctrine. I
hope James is getting his verse as usual, and that Mary is not
forgetting her little _hymn_. While Jeannie will be reading
Wotherspoon, or some other suitable and instructive book, I presume
our friend, Aunt Mary, will have just arrived with the news of a
_throng kirk_ [a crowded church] and a great sermon. You may mention,
with my compliments to my mother, that I was at St. Paul's to-day,
and attended a very excellent service with Mr. James Lawrie. The text
was 'Examine and see that ye be in the faith.'"
A twinkle of humour lights up this evocation of the distant scene--the
humour of happy men and happy homes. Yet it is penned upon the threshold
of fresh sorrow. James and Mary--he of the verse and she of the
hymn--did not much more than survive to welcome their returning father.
On the 25th, one of the godly women writes to Janet:
"My dearest beloved madam, when I last parted from you, you was so
affected with your affliction [you? or I?] could think of nothing
else. But on Saturday, when I went to inquire after your health, how
was I startled to hear that dear James was gone! Ah, what is this? My
dear benefactors, doing so much good to many, to the Lord, suddenly
to be deprived of their most valued comforts? I was thrown into great
perplexity, could do nothing but murmur, why these things were done
to such a family. I could not rest, but at midnight, whether spoken
[or not] it was presented to my mind--'Those whom ye deplore are
walking with me in white.' I conclude from this the Lord saying to
sweet Mrs. Stevenson: 'I gave them to be brought up for me: well
done, good and faithful! they are fully prepared, and now I must
present them to my father and your father, to my God and your God.'"
It would be hard to lay on flattery with a more sure and daring hand. I
quote it as a model of a letter of condolence; be sure it would console.
Very different, perhaps quite as welcome, is this from a lighthouse
inspector to my grandfather:
"In reading your letter the trickling tear ran down my cheeks in
silent sorrow for your departed dear ones, my sweet little friends.
Well do I remember, and you will call to mind, their little innocent
and interesting stories. Often have they come round me and taken me
by the hand, but alas! I am no more destined to behold them."
The child who is taken becomes canonised, and the looks of the homeliest
babe seem in the retrospect "heavenly the three last days of his life."
But it appears that James and Mary had indeed been children more than
usually engaging; a record was preserved a long while in the family of
their remarks and "little innocent and interesting stories," and the
blow and the blank were the more sensible.
Early the next month Robert Stevenson must proceed upon his voyage of
inspection, part by land, part by sea. He left his wife plunged in low
spirits; the thought of his loss, and still more of her concern, was
continually present in his mind, and he draws in his letters home an
interesting picture of his family relations:--
"_Windygates Inn, Monday (Postmark July 16th)._
"MY DEAREST JEANNIE,--While the people of the inn are getting me a
little bit of something to eat, I sit down to tell you that I had a
most excellent passage across the water, and got to Wemyss at
mid-day. I hope the children will be very good, and that Robert will
take a course with you to learn his Latin lessons daily; he may,
however, read English in company. Let them have strawberries on
Saturdays."
"_Westhaven, 17th July._
"I have been occupied to-day at the harbour of Newport, opposite
Dundee, and am this far on my way to Arbroath. You may tell the boys
that I slept last night in Mr. Steadman's tent. I found my bed rather
hard, but the lodgings were otherwise extremely comfortable. The
encampment is on the Fife side of the Tay, immediately opposite to
Dundee. From the door of the tent you command the most beautiful view
of the Firth, both up and down, to a great extent. At night all was
serene and still, the sky presented the most beautiful appearance of
bright stars, and the morning was ushered in with the song of many
little birds."
"_Aberdeen, July 19th._
"I hope, my dear, that you are going out of doors regularly and
taking much exercise. I would have you to _make the markets
daily_--and by all means to take a seat in the coach once or twice in
the week and see what is going on in town. [The family were at the
sea-side.] It will be good not to be too great a stranger to the
house. It will be rather painful at first, but as it is to be done, I
would have you not to be too strange to the house in town.
"Tell the boys that I fell in with a soldier--his name is
Henderson--who was twelve years with Lord Wellington and other
commanders. He returned very lately with only eightpence-halfpenny in
his pocket, and found his father and mother both in life, though they
had never heard from him, nor he from them. He carried my great-coat
and umbrella a few miles."
"_Fraserburgh, July 20th._
"Fraserburgh is the same dull place which [Auntie] Mary and Jeannie
found it. As I am travelling along the coast which they are
acquainted with, you had better cause Robert bring down the map from
Edinburgh: and it will be a good exercise in geography for the young
folks to trace my course. I hope they have entered upon the writing.
The library will afford abundance of excellent books, which I wish
you would employ a little. I hope you are doing me the favour to go
much out with the boys, which will do you much good and prevent them
from getting so very much over-heated."
[_To the Boys--Printed._]
"When I had last the pleasure of writing to you, your dear little
brother James and your sweet little sister Mary were still with us.
But it has pleased God to remove them to another and a better world,
and we must submit to the will of Providence. I must, however,
request of you to think sometimes upon them, and to be very careful
not to do anything that will displease or vex your mother. It is
therefore proper that you do not roamp [Scottish indeed] too much
about, and that you learn your lessons.
"I went to Fraserburgh and visited Kinnaird Head Lighthouse, which I
found in good order. All this time I travelled upon good roads, and
paid many a toll-man by the way; but from Fraserburgh to Banff there
is no toll-bars, and the road is so bad that I had to walk up and
down many a hill, and for want of bridges the horses had to drag the
chaise up to the middle of the wheels in water. At Banff I saw a
large ship of 300 tons lying on the sands upon her beam-ends, and a
wreck for want of a good harbour. Captain Wilson--to whom I beg my
compliments---will show you a ship of 300 tons. At the towns of
Macduff, Banff, and Portsoy, many of the houses are built of marble,
and the rocks on this part of the coast or sea-side are marble. But,
my dear Boys, unless marble be polished and dressed, it is a very
coarse-looking stone, and has no more beauty than common rock. As a
proof of this, ask the favour of your mother to take you to Thomson's
Marble Works in South Leith, and you will see marble in all its
stages, and perhaps you may there find Portsoy marble! The use I wish
to make of this is to tell you that, without education, a man is just
like a block of rough, unpolished marble. Notice, in proof of this,
how much Mr. Neill and Mr. M'Gregor [the tutor] know, and observe how
little a man knows who is not a good scholar. On my way to Fochabers
I passed through many thousand acres of Fir timber, and saw many deer
running in these woods."
[_To Mrs. Stevenson._]
"_Inverness, July 21st._
"I propose going to church in the afternoon, and as I have
breakfasted late, I shall afterwards take a walk, and dine about six
o'clock. I do not know who is the clergyman here, but I shall think
of you all. I travelled in the mail-coach [from Banff] almost alone.
While it was daylight I kept the top, and the passing along a country
I had never before seen was a considerable amusement. But, my dear,
you are all much in my thoughts, and many are the objects which
recall the recollection of our tender and engaging children we have
so recently lost. We must not, however, repine. I could not for a
moment wish any change of circumstances in their case; and in every
comparative view of their state, I see the Lord's goodness in
removing them from an evil world to an abode of bliss; and I must
earnestly hope that you may be enabled to take such a view of this
affliction as to live in the happy prospect of our all meeting again
to part no more--and that under such considerations you are getting
up your spirits. I wish you would walk about, and by all means go to
town, and do not sit much at home."
"_Inverness, July 23rd._
"I am duly favoured with your much-valued letter, and I am happy to
find that you are so much with my mother, because that sort of
variety has a tendency to occupy the mind, and to keep it from
brooding too much upon one subject. Sensibility and tenderness are
certainly two of the most interesting and pleasing qualities of the
mind. These qualities are also none of the least of the many
endearingments of the female character. But if that kind of sympathy
and pleasing melancholy, which is familiar to us under distress, be
much indulged, it becomes habitual, and takes such a hold of the mind
as to absorb all the other affections, and unfit us for the duties
and proper enjoyments of life. Resignation sinks into a kind of
peevish discontent. I am far, however, from thinking there is the
least danger of this in your case, my dear; for you have been on all
occasions enabled to look upon the fortunes of this life as under the
direction of a higher power, and have always preserved that propriety
and consistency of conduct in all circumstances which endears your
example to your family in particular, and to your friends. I am
therefore, my dear, for you to go out much, and to go to the house
up-stairs [he means to go up-stairs in the house, to visit the place
of the dead children], and to put yourself in the way of the visits
of your friends. I wish you would call on the Miss Grays, and it
would be a good thing upon a Saturday to dine with my mother, and
take Meggy and all the family with you, and let them have their
strawberries in town. The tickets of one of the _old-fashioned
coaches_ would take you all up, and if the evening were good, they
could all walk down, excepting Meggy and little David."
"_Inverness, July 25th, 11 p.m._
"Captain Wemyss, of Wemyss, has come to Inverness to go the voyage
with me, and as we are sleeping in a double-bedded room, I must no
longer transgress. You must remember me the best way you can to the
children."
"_On board of the Lighthouse Yacht, July 29th._
"I got to Cromarty yesterday about mid-day, and went to church. It
happened to be the sacrament there, and I heard a Mr. Smith at that
place conclude the service with a very suitable exhortation. There
seemed a great concourse of people, but they had rather an
unfortunate day for them at the tent, as it rained a good deal. After
drinking tea at the inn, Captain Wemyss accompanied me on board, and
we sailed about eight last night. The wind at present being rather a
beating one, I think I shall have an opportunity of standing into the
bay of Wick, and leaving this letter to let you know my progress and
that I am well."
"_Lighthouse Yacht, Stornoway, August 4th_
"To-day we had prayers on deck as usual when at sea. I read the 14th
chapter, I think, of Job. Captain Wemyss has been in the habit of
doing this on board his own ship, agreeably to the Articles of War.
Our passage round the Cape [Cape Wrath] was rather a cross one, and
as the wind was northerly, we had a pretty heavy sea, but upon the
whole have made a good passage, leaving many vessels behind us in
Orkney. I am quite well, my dear; and Captain Wemyss, who has much
spirit, and who is much given to observation, and a perfect
enthusiast in his profession, enlivens the voyage greatly. Let me
entreat you to move about much, and take a walk with the boys to
Leith. I think they have still many places to see there, and I wish
you would indulge them in this respect. Mr. Scales is the best person
I know for showing them the sailcloth-weaving, etc., and he would
have great pleasure in undertaking this. My dear, I trust soon to be
with you, and that through the goodness of God we shall meet all
well.
"There are two vessels lying here with emigrants for America, each
with eighty people on board, at all ages, from a few days to upwards
of sixty! Their prospects must be very forlorn to go with a slender
purse for distant and unknown countries."
"_Lighthouse Yacht, off Greenock, Aug. 18th._
"It was after _church-time_ before we got here, but we had prayers
upon deck on the way up the Clyde. This has, upon the whole, been a
very good voyage, and Captain Wemyss, who enjoys it much, has been an
excellent companion; we met with pleasure, and shall part with
regret."
Strange that, after his long experience, my grandfather should have
learned so little of the attitude and even the dialect of the
spiritually-minded; that after forty-four years in a most religious
circle, he could drop without sense of incongruity from a period of
accepted phrases to "trust his wife was _getting up her spirits_," or
think to reassure her as to the character of Captain Wemyss by
mentioning that he had read prayers on the deck of his frigate
"_agreeably to the Articles of War"_! Yet there is no doubt--and it is
one of the most agreeable features of the kindly series--that he was
doing his best to please, and there is little doubt that he succeeded.
Almost all my grandfather's private letters have been destroyed. This
correspondence has not only been preserved entire, but stitched up in
the same covers with the works of the godly women, the Reverend John
Campbell, and the painful Mrs. Ogle. I did not think to mention the good
dame, but she comes in usefully as an example. Amongst the treasures of
the ladies of my family, her letters have been honoured with a volume to
themselves. I read about a half of them myself; then handed over the
task to one of stauncher resolution, with orders to communicate any fact
that should be found to illuminate these pages. Not one was found; it
was her only art to communicate by post second-rate sermons at
second-hand; and such, I take it, was the correspondence in which my
grandmother delighted. If I am right, that of Robert Stevenson, with his
quaint smack of the contemporary "Sandford and Merton," his interest in
the whole page of experience, his perpetual quest, and fine scent of all
that seems romantic to a boy, his needless pomp of language, his
excellent good sense, his unfeigned, unstained, unwearied human
kindliness, would seem to her, in a comparison, dry and trivial and
worldly. And if these letters were by an exception cherished and
preserved, it would be for one or both of two reasons--because they
dealt with and were bitter-sweet reminders of a time of sorrow; or
because she was pleased, perhaps touched, by the writer's guileless
efforts to seem spiritually-minded.
After this date there were two more births and two more deaths, so that
the number of the family remained unchanged; in all five children
survived to reach maturity and to outlive their parents.
CHAPTER II
THE SERVICE OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS
I
It were hard to imagine a contrast more sharply defined than that
between the lives of the men and women of this family: the one so
chambered, so centred in the affections and the sensibilities; the other
so active, healthy, and expeditious. From May to November, Thomas Smith
and Robert Stevenson were on the mail, in the saddle, or at sea; and my
grandfather, in particular, seems to have been possessed with a demon of
activity in travel. In 1802, by direction of the Northern Lighthouse
Board, he had visited the coast of England from St. Bees, in Cumberland,
and round by the Scilly Islands to some place undecipherable by me; in
all a distance of 2500 miles. In 1806 I find him starting "on a tour
round the south coast of England, from the Humber to the Severn." Peace
was not long declared ere he found means to visit Holland, where he was
in time to see, in the navy-yard at Helvoetsluys, "about twenty of
Bonaparte's _English flotilla_ lying in a state of decay, the object of
curiosity to Englishmen." By 1834 he seems to have been acquainted with
the coast of France from Dieppe to Bordeaux; and a main part of his duty
as Engineer to the Board of Northern Lights was one round of dangerous
and laborious travel.
In 1786, when Thomas Smith first received the appointment, the extended
and formidable coast of Scotland was lighted at a single point--the Isle
of May, in the jaws of the Firth of Forth, where, on a tower already a
hundred and fifty years old, an open coal-fire blazed in an iron
chauffer. The whole archipelago, thus nightly plunged in darkness, was
shunned by sea-going vessels, and the favourite courses were north about
Shetland and west about St. Kilda. When the Board met, four new lights
formed the extent of their intentions--Kinnaird Head, in Aberdeenshire,
at the eastern elbow of the coast; North Ronaldsay, in Orkney, to keep
the north and guide ships passing to the south'ard of Shetland; Island
Glass, on Harris, to mark the inner shore of the Hebrides and illuminate
the navigation of the Minch; and the Mull of Kintyre. These works were
to be attempted against obstacles, material and financial, that might
have staggered the most bold. Smith had no ship at his command till
1791; the roads in those outlandish quarters where his business lay were
scarce passable when they existed, and the tower on the Mull of Kintyre
stood eleven months unlighted while the apparatus toiled and foundered
by the way among rocks and mosses. Not only had towers to be built and
apparatus transplanted, the supply of oil must be maintained, and the
men fed, in the same inaccessible and distant scenes; a whole service,
with its routine and hierarchy, had to be called out of nothing; and a
new trade (that of lightkeeper) to be taught, recruited, and organised.
The funds of the Board were at the first laughably inadequate. They
embarked on their career on a loan of twelve hundred pounds, and their
income in 1789, after relief by a fresh Act of Parliament, amounted to
less than three hundred. It must be supposed that the thoughts of Thomas
Smith, in these early years, were sometimes coloured with despair; and
since he built and lighted one tower after another, and created and
bequeathed to his successors the elements of an excellent
administration, it may be conceded that he was not after all an
unfortunate choice for a first engineer.
War added fresh complications. In 1794 Smith came "very near to be
taken" by a French squadron. In 1813 Robert Stevenson was cruising about
the neighbourhood of Cape Wrath in the immediate fear of Commodore
Rogers. The men, and especially the sailors, of the lighthouse service
must be protected by a medal and ticket from the brutal activity of the
press-gang. And the zeal of volunteer patriots was at times
embarrassing.
"I set off on foot," writes my grandfather, "for Marazion, a town at
the head of Mount's Bay, where I was in hopes of getting a boat to
freight. I had just got that length, and was making the necessary
inquiry, when a young man, accompanied by several idle-looking
fellows, came up to me, and in a hasty tone said, 'Sir, in the king's
name I seize your person and papers.' To which I replied that I
should be glad to see his authority, and know the reason of an
address so abrupt. He told me the want of time prevented his taking
regular steps, but that it would be necessary for me to return to
Penzance, as I was suspected of being a French spy. I proposed to
submit my papers to the nearest Justice of Peace, who was immediately
applied to, and came to the inn where I was. He seemed to be greatly
agitated, and quite at a loss how to proceed. The complaint preferred
against me was 'that I had examined the Longships Lighthouse with the
most minute attention, and was no less particular in my inquiries at
the keepers of the lighthouse regarding the sunk rocks lying off the
Land's End, with the sets of the currents and tides along the coast:
that I seemed particularly to regret the situation of the rocks
called the Seven Stones, and the loss of a beacon which the Trinity
Board had caused to be fixed on the Wolf Rock; that I had taken notes
of the bearings of several sunk rocks, and a drawing of the
lighthouse, and of Cape Cornwall. Further, that I had refused the
honour of Lord Edgecombe's invitation to dinner, offering as an
apology that I had some particular business on hand.'"
My grandfather produced in answer his credentials and letter of credit;
but the justice, after perusing them, "very gravely observed that they
were 'musty bits of paper,'" and proposed to maintain the arrest. Some
more enlightened magistrates at Penzance relieved him of suspicion and
left him at liberty to pursue his journey,--"which I did with so much
eagerness," he adds, "that I gave the two coal lights on the Lizard only
a very transient look."
Lighthouse operations in Scotland differed essentially in character from
those in England. The English coast is in comparison a habitable, homely
place, well supplied with towns; the Scottish presents hundreds of
miles of savage islands and desolate moors. The Parliamentary committee
of 1834, profoundly ignorant of this distinction, insisted with my
grandfather that the work at the various stations should be let out on
contract "in the neighbourhood," where sheep and deer, and gulls and
cormorants, and a few ragged gillies, perhaps crouching in a bee-hive
house, made up the only neighbours. In such situations repairs and
improvements could only be overtaken by collecting (as my grandfather
expressed it) a few "lads," placing them under charge of a foreman, and
despatching them about the coast as occasion served. The particular
danger of these seas increased the difficulty. The course of the
lighthouse tender lies amid iron-bound coasts, among tide-races, the
whirlpools of the Pentland Firth, flocks of islands, flocks of reefs,
many of them uncharted. The aid of steam was not yet. At first in random
coasting sloop, and afterwards in the cutter belonging to the service,
the engineer must ply and run amongst these multiplied dangers, and
sometimes late into the stormy autumn. For pages together my
grandfather's diary preserves a record of these rude experiences; of
hard winds and rough seas; and of "the try-sail and storm-jib, those old
friends which I never like to see." They do not tempt to quotation, but
it was the man's element, in which he lived, and delighted to live, and
some specimen must be presented. On Friday, September 10th, 1830, the
_Regent_ lying in Lerwick Bay, we have this entry: "The gale increases,
with continued rain." On the morrow, Saturday, 11th, the weather
appeared to moderate, and they put to sea, only to be driven by evening
into Levenswick. There they lay, "rolling much," with both anchors ahead
and the square yard on deck, till the morning of Saturday, 18th.
Saturday and Sunday they were plying to the southward with a "strong
breeze and a heavy sea," and on Sunday evening anchored in Otterswick.
"Monday, 20th, it blows so fresh that we have no communication with the
shore. We see Mr. Rome on the beach, but we cannot communicate with
him. It blows 'mere fire,' as the sailors express it." And for three
days more the diary goes on with tales of davits unshipped, high seas,
strong gales from the southward, and the ship driven to refuge in
Kirkwall or Deer Sound. I have many a passage before me to transcribe,
in which my grandfather draws himself as a man of minute and anxious
exactitude about details. It must not be forgotten that these voyages in
the tender were the particular pleasure and reward of his existence;
that he had in him a reserve of romance which carried him delightedly
over these hardships and perils; that to him it was "great gain" to be
eight nights and seven days in the savage bay of Levenswick--to read a
book in the much agitated cabin--to go on deck and hear the gale scream
in his ears, and see the landscape dark with rain, and the ship plunge
at her two anchors--and to turn in at night and wake again at morning,
in his narrow berth, to the clamorous and continued voices of the gale.
His perils and escapes were beyond counting. I shall only refer to two:
the first, because of the impression made upon himself; the second, from
the incidental picture it presents of the north islanders. On the 9th
October 1794 he took passage from Orkney in the sloop _Elizabeth_ of
Stromness. She made a fair passage till within view of Kinnaird Head,
where, as she was becalmed some three miles in the offing, and wind
seemed to threaten from the south-east, the captain landed him, to
continue his journey more expeditiously ashore. A gale immediately
followed, and the _Elizabeth_ was driven back to Orkney and lost with
all hands. The second escape I have been in the habit of hearing related
by an eye-witness, my own father, from the earliest days of childhood.
On a September night, the _Regent_ lay in the Pentland Firth in a fog
and a violent and windless swell. It was still dark, when they were
alarmed by the sound of breakers, and an anchor was immediately let go.
The peep of dawn discovered them swinging in desperate proximity to the
Isle of Swona[10] and the surf bursting close under their stern. There
was in this place a hamlet of the inhabitants, fisher-folk and wreckers;
their huts stood close about the head of the beach. All slept; the doors
were closed, and there was no smoke, and the anxious watchers on board
ship seemed to contemplate a village of the dead. It was thought
possible to launch a boat and tow the _Regent_ from her place of danger;
and with this view a signal of distress was made and a gun fired with a
red-hot poker from the galley. Its detonation awoke the sleepers. Door
after door was opened, and in the grey light of the morning fisher after
fisher was seen to come forth, yawning and stretching himself, nightcap
on head. Fisher after fisher, I wrote, and my pen tripped; for it should
rather stand wrecker after wrecker. There was no emotion, no animation,
it scarce seemed any interest; not a hand was raised; but all callously
awaited the harvest of the sea, and their children stood by their side
and waited also. To the end of his life, my father remembered that
amphitheatre of placid spectators on the beach, and with a special and
natural animosity, the boys of his own age. But presently a light air
sprang up, and filled the sails, and fainted, and filled them again; and
little by little the _Regent_ fetched way against the swell, and clawed
off shore into the turbulent firth.
The purpose of these voyages was to effect a landing on open beaches or
among shelving rocks, not for persons only, but for coals and food, and
the fragile furniture of light-rooms. It was often impossible. In 1831 I
find my grandfather "hovering for a week" about the Pentland Skerries
for a chance to land; and it was almost always difficult. Much knack and
enterprise were early developed among the seamen of the service; their
management of boats is to this day a matter of admiration; and I find my
grandfather in his diary depicting the nature of their excellence in
one happily descriptive phrase, when he remarks that Captain Soutar had
landed "the small stores and nine casks of oil _with all the activity of
a smuggler_." And it was one thing to land, another to get on board
again. I have here a passage from the diary, where it seems to have been
touch-and-go. "I landed at Tarbetness, on the eastern side of the point,
in _a mere gale or blast of wind_ from west-south-west, at 2 p.m. It
blew so fresh that the captain, in a kind of despair, went off to the
ship, leaving myself and the steward ashore. While I was in the
lightroom, I felt it shaking and waving, not with the tremor of the Bell
Rock, but with the _waving of a tree_! This the lightkeepers seemed to
be quite familiar to, the principal keeper remarking that 'it was very
pleasant,' perhaps meaning interesting or curious. The captain worked
the vessel into smooth water with admirable dexterity, and I got on
board again about 6 p.m. from the other side of the point." But not even
the dexterity of Soutar could prevail always; and my grandfather must at
times have been left in strange berths and with but rude provision. I
may instance the case of my father, who was storm-bound three days upon
an islet, sleeping in the uncemented and unchimneyed houses of the
islanders, and subsisting on a diet of nettlesoup and lobsters.
The name of Soutar has twice escaped my pen, and I feel I owe him a
vignette. Soutar first attracted notice as mate of a praam at the Bell
Rock, and rose gradually to be captain of the _Regent_. He was active,
admirably skilled in his trade, and a man incapable of fear. Once, in
London, he fell among a gang of confidence-men, naturally deceived by
his rusticity and his prodigious accent. They plied him with drink--a
hopeless enterprise, for Soutar could not be made drunk; they proposed
cards, and Soutar would not play. At last, one of them, regarding him
with a formidable countenance, inquired if he were not frightened? "I'm
no' very easy fleyed," replied the captain. And the rooks withdrew
after some easier pigeon. So many perils shared, and the partial
familiarity of so many voyages, had given this man a stronghold in my
grandfather's estimation; and there is no doubt but he had the art to
court and please him with much hypocritical skill. He usually dined on
Sundays in the cabin. He used to come down daily after dinner for a
glass of port or whisky, often in his full rig of sou'-wester, oilskins,
and long boots; and I have often heard it described how insinuatingly he
carried himself on these appearances, artfully combining the extreme of
deference with a blunt and seamanlike demeanour. My father and uncles,
with the devilish penetration of the boy, were far from being deceived;
and my father, indeed, was favoured with an object-lesson not to be
mistaken. He had crept one rainy night into an apple-barrel on deck, and
from this place of ambush overheard Soutar and a comrade conversing in
their oilskins. The smooth sycophant of the cabin had wholly
disappeared, and the boy listened with wonder to a vulgar and truculent
ruffian. Of Soutar, I may say _tantum vidi_, having met him in the Leith
docks now more than thirty years ago, when he abounded in the praises of
my grandfather, encouraged me (in the most admirable manner) to pursue
his footprints, and left impressed for ever on my memory the image of
his own Bardolphian nose. He died not long after.
The engineer was not only exposed to the hazards of the sea; he must
often ford his way by land to remote and scarce accessible places,
beyond reach of the mail or the post-chaise, beyond even the tracery of
the bridle-path, and guided by natives across bog and heather. Up to
1807 my grandfather seems to have travelled much on horseback; but he
then gave up the idea--"such," he writes with characteristic emphasis
and capital letters, "is the Plague of Baiting." He was a good
pedestrian; at the age of fifty-eight I find him covering seventeen
miles over the moors of the Mackay country in less than seven hours, and
that is not bad travelling for a scramble. The piece of country
traversed was already a familiar track, being that between Loch Eriboll
and Cape Wrath; and I think I can scarce do better than reproduce from
the diary some traits of his first visit. The tender lay in Loch
Eriboll; by five in the morning they sat down to breakfast on board; by
six they were ashore--my grandfather, Mr. Slight an assistant, and
Soutar of the jolly nose, and had been taken in charge by two young
gentlemen of the neighbourhood and a pair of gillies. About noon they
reached the Kyle of Durness and passed the ferry. By half-past three
they were at Cape Wrath--not yet known by the emphatic abbreviation of
"The Cape"--and beheld upon all sides of them unfrequented shores, an
expanse of desert moor, and the high-piled Western Ocean. The site of
the tower was chosen. Perhaps it is by inheritance of blood, but I know
few things more inspiriting than this location of a lighthouse in a
designated space of heather and air, through which the sea-birds are
still flying. By 9 p.m. the return journey had brought them again to the
shores of the Kyle. The night was dirty, and as the sea was high and the
ferry-boat small, Soutar and Mr. Stevenson were left on the far side,
while the rest of the party embarked and were received into the
darkness. They made, in fact, a safe though an alarming passage; but the
ferryman refused to repeat the adventure; and my grandfather and the
captain long paced the beach, impatient for their turn to pass, and
tormented with rising anxiety as to the fate of their companions. At
length they sought the shelter of a shepherd's house. "We had miserable
up-putting," the diary continues, "and on both sides of the ferry much
anxiety of mind. Our beds were clean straw, and but for the circumstance
of the boat, I should have slept as soundly as ever I did after a walk
through moss and mire of sixteen hours."
To go round the lights, even to-day, is to visit past centuries. The
tide of tourists that flows yearly in Scotland, vulgarising all where it
approaches, is still defined by certain barriers. It will be long ere
there is a hotel at Sumburgh or a hydropathic at Cape Wrath; it will be
long ere any _char-à-banc_, laden with tourists, shall drive up to Barra
Head or Monach, the Island of the Monks. They are farther from London
than St. Petersburg, and except for the towers, sounding and shining all
night with fog-bells and the radiance of the light-room, glittering by
day with the trivial brightness of white paint, these island and
moorland stations seem inaccessible to the civilisation of to-day, and
even to the end of my grandfather's career the isolation was far
greater. There ran no post at all in the Long Island; from the
lighthouse on Barra Head a boat must be sent for letters as far as
Tobermory, between sixty and seventy miles of open sea; and the posts of
Shetland, which had surprised Sir Walter Scott in 1814, were still
unimproved in 1833, when my grandfather reported on the subject. The
group contained at the time a population of 30,000 souls, and enjoyed a
trade which had increased in twenty years sevenfold, to between three
and four thousand tons. Yet the mails were despatched and received by
chance coasting vessels at the rate of a penny a letter; six and eight
weeks often elapsed between opportunities, and when a mail was to be
made up, sometimes at a moment's notice, the bellman was sent hastily
through the streets of Lerwick. Between Shetland and Orkney, only
seventy miles apart, there was "no trade communication whatever."
Such was the state of affairs, only sixty years ago, with the three
largest clusters of the Scottish Archipelago; and forty-seven years
earlier, when Thomas Smith began his rounds, or forty-two, when Robert
Stevenson became conjoined with him in these excursions, the barbarism
was deep, the people sunk in superstition, the circumstances of their
life perhaps unique in history. Lerwick and Kirkwall, like Guam or the
Bay of Islands, were but barbarous ports where whalers called to take up
and to return experienced seamen. On the outlying islands the clergy
lived isolated, thinking other thoughts, dwelling in a different
country from their parishioners, like missionaries in the South Seas.
My grandfather's unrivalled treasury of anecdote was never written down;
it embellished his talk while he yet was, and died with him when he
died; and such as have been preserved relate principally to the islands
of Ronaldsay and Sanday, two of the Orkney group. These bordered on one
of the water-highways of civilisation; a great fleet passed annually in
their view, and of the shipwrecks of the world they were the scene and
cause of a proportion wholly incommensurable to their size. In one year,
1798, my grandfather found the remains of no fewer than five vessels on
the isle of Sanday, which is scarcely twelve miles long.
"Hardly a year passed," he writes, "without instances of this kind;
for, owing to the projecting points of this strangely formed island,
the lowness and whiteness of its eastern shores, and the wonderful
manner in which the scanty patches of land are intersected with lakes
and pools of water, it becomes, even in daylight, a deception, and
has often been fatally mistaken for an open sea. It had even become
proverbial with some of the inhabitants to observe that 'if wrecks
were to happen, they might as well be sent to the poor isle of Sanday
as anywhere else.' On this and the neighbouring islands the
inhabitants had certainly had their share of wrecked goods, for the
eye is presented with these melancholy remains in almost every form.
For example, although quarries are to be met with generally in these
islands, and the stones are very suitable for building dykes
(_Anglicé_, walls), yet instances occur of the land being enclosed,
even to a considerable extent, with ship-timbers. The author has
actually seen a park (_Anglicé_, meadow) paled round chiefly with
cedar-wood and mahogany from the wreck of a Honduras-built ship; and
in one island, after the wreck of a ship laden with wine, the
inhabitants have been known to take claret to their barley-meal
porridge. On complaining to one of the pilots of the badness of his
boat's sails, he replied to the author with some degree of
pleasantry, 'Had it been His will that you camena' here wi' your
lights, we might a' had better sails to our boats, and more o' other
things.' It may further be mentioned that when some of Lord Dundas's
farms are to be let in these islands a competition takes place for
the lease, and it is _bona fide_ understood that a much higher rent
is paid than the lands would otherwise give were it not for the
chance of making considerably by the agency and advantages attending
shipwrecks on the shores of the respective farms."
The people of North Ronaldsay still spoke Norse, or, rather, mixed it
with their English. The walls of their huts were built to a great
thickness of rounded stones from the sea-beach; the roof flagged, loaded
with earth, and perforated by a single hole for the escape of smoke. The
grass grew beautifully green on the flat house-top, where the family
would assemble with their dogs and cats, as on a pastoral lawn; there
were no windows, and in my grandfather's expression, "there was really
no demonstration of a house unless it were the diminutive door." He once
landed on Ronaldsay with two friends. "The inhabitants crowded and
pressed so much upon the strangers that the bailiff, or resident factor
of the island, blew with his ox-horn, calling out to the natives to
stand off and let the gentlemen come forward to the laird; upon which
one of the islanders, as spokesman, called out, 'God ha'e us, man! thou
needsna mak' sic a noise. It's no' every day we ha'e _three hatted men_
on our isle.'" When the Surveyor of Taxes came (for the first time,
perhaps) to Sanday, and began in the King's name to complain of the
unconscionable swarms of dogs, and to menace the inhabitants with
taxation, it chanced that my grandfather and his friend, Dr. Patrick
Neill, were received by an old lady in a Ronaldsay hut. Her hut, which
was similar to the model described, stood on a Ness, or point of land
jutting into the sea. They were made welcome in the firelit cellar,
placed "in _casey_ or straw-worked chairs, after the Norwegian fashion,
with arms, and a canopy overhead," and given milk in a wooden dish.
These hospitalities attended to, the old lady turned at once to Dr.
Neill, whom she took for the Surveyor of Taxes. "Sir," said she, "gin
ye'll tell the King that I canna keep the Ness free o' the Bangers
(sheep) without twa hun's, and twa guid hun's too, he'll pass me threa
the tax on dugs."
This familiar confidence, these traits of engaging simplicity, are
characters of a secluded people. Mankind--and, above all,
islanders--come very swiftly to a bearing, and find very readily, upon
one convention or another, a tolerable corporate life. The danger is to
those from without, who have not grown up from childhood in the
islands, but appear suddenly in that narrow horizon, life-sized
apparitions. For these no bond of humanity exists, no feeling of kinship
is awakened by their peril; they will assist at a shipwreck, like the
fisher-folk of Lunga, as spectators, and when the fatal scene is over,
and the beach strewn with dead bodies, they will fence their fields with
mahogany, and, after a decent grace, sup claret to their porridge. It is
not wickedness: it is scarce evil; it is only, in its highest power, the
sense of isolation and the wise disinterestedness of feeble and poor
races. Think how many viking ships had sailed by these islands in the
past, how many vikings had landed, and raised turmoil, and broken up the
barrows of the dead, and carried off the wines of the living; and blame
them, if you are able, for that belief (which may be called one of the
parables of the devil's gospel) that a man rescued from the sea will
prove the bane of his deliverer. It might be thought that my
grandfather, coming there unknown, and upon an employment so hateful to
the inhabitants, must have run the hazard of his life. But this were to
misunderstand. He came franked by the laird and the clergyman; he was
the King's officer; the work was "opened with prayer by the Rev. Walter
Trail, minister of the parish"; God and the King had decided it, and the
people of these pious islands bowed their heads. There landed, indeed,
in North Ronaldsay, during the last decade of the eighteenth century, a
traveller whose life seems really to have been imperilled. A very little
man of a swarthy complexion, he came ashore, exhausted and unshaved,
from a long boat passage, and lay down to sleep in the home of the
parish schoolmaster. But he had been seen landing. The inhabitants had
identified him for a Pict, as, by some singular confusion of name, they
called the dark and dwarfish aboriginal people of the land. Immediately
the obscure ferment of a race-hatred, grown into a superstition, began
to work in their bosoms, and they crowded about the house and the
room-door with fearful whisperings. For some time the schoolmaster held
them at bay, and at last despatched a messenger to call my grandfather.
He came: he found the islanders beside themselves at this unwelcome
resurrection of the dead and the detested; he was shown, as adminicular
of testimony, the traveller's uncouth and thick-soled boots; he argued,
and finding argument unavailing, consented to enter the room and examine
with his own eyes the sleeping Pict. One glance was sufficient: the man
was now a missionary, but he had been before that an Edinburgh
shopkeeper with whom my grandfather had dealt. He came forth again with
this report, and the folk of the island, wholly relieved, dispersed to
their own houses. They were timid as sheep and ignorant as limpets; that
was all. But the Lord deliver us from the tender mercies of a frightened
flock!
I will give two more instances of their superstition. When Sir Walter
Scott visited the Stones of Stennis, my grandfather put in his pocket a
hundred-foot line, which he unfortunately lost.
"Some years afterwards," he writes, "one of my assistants on a visit
to the Stones of Stennis took shelter from a storm in a cottage close
by the lake; and seeing a box-measuring-line in the bole or sole of
the cottage window, he asked the woman where she got this well-known
professional appendage. She said: 'O sir, ane of the bairns fand it
lang syne at the Stanes; and when drawing it out we took fright, and
thinking it had belanged to the fairies, we threw it into the bole,
and it has layen there ever since.'"
This is for the one; the last shall be a sketch by the master hand of
Scott himself:--
"At the village of Stromness, on the Orkney main island, called
Pomona, lived, in 1814, an aged dame called Bessie Millie, who helped
out her subsistence by selling favourable winds to mariners. He was a
venturous master of a vessel who left the roadstead of Stromness
without paying his offering to propitiate Bessie Millie! Her fee was
extremely moderate, being exactly sixpence, for which she boiled her
kettle and gave the bark the advantage of her prayers, for she
disclaimed all unlawful acts. The wind thus petitioned for was sure,
she said, to arrive, though occasionally the mariners had to wait
some time for it. The woman's dwelling and appearance were not
unbecoming her pretensions. Her house, which was on the brow of the
steep hill on which Stromness is founded, was only accessible by a
series of dirty and precipitous lanes, and for exposure might have
been the abode of Eolus himself, in whose commodities the inhabitant
dealt. She herself was, as she told us, nearly one hundred years old,
withered and dried up like a mummy. A clay-coloured kerchief, folded
round her neck, corresponded in colour to her corpse-like complexion.
Two light blue eyes that gleamed with a lustre like that of insanity,
an utterance of astonishing rapidity, a nose and chin that almost met
together, and a ghastly expression of cunning, gave her the effect of
Hecate. Such was Bessie Millie, to whom the mariners paid a sort of
tribute with a feeling between jest and earnest."
II
From about the beginning of the century up to 1807 Robert Stevenson was
in partnership with Thomas Smith. In the last-named year the partnership
was dissolved; Thomas Smith returning to his business, and my
grandfather becoming sole engineer to the Board of Northern Lights.
I must try, by excerpts from his diary and correspondence, to convey to
the reader some idea of the ardency and thoroughness with which he threw
himself into the largest and least of his multifarious engagements in
this service. But first I must say a word or two upon the life of
lightkeepers, and the temptations to which they are more particularly
exposed. The lightkeeper occupies a position apart among men. In
sea-towers the complement has always been three since the deplorable
business in the Eddystone, when one keeper died, and the survivor,
signalling in vain for relief, was compelled to live for days with the
dead body. These usually pass their time by the pleasant human expedient
of quarrelling; and sometimes, I am assured, not one of the three is on
speaking terms with any other. On shore stations, which on the Scottish
coast are sometimes hardly less isolated, the usual number is two, a
principal and an assistant. The principal is dissatisfied with the
assistant, or perhaps the assistant keeps pigeons, and the principal
wants the water from the roof. Their wives and families are with them,
living cheek by jowl. The children quarrel; Jockie hits Jimsie in the
eye, and the mothers make haste to mingle in the dissension. Perhaps
there is trouble about a broken dish; perhaps Mrs. Assistant is more
highly born than Mrs. Principal and gives herself airs; and the men are
drawn in and the servants presently follow. "Church privileges have been
denied the keeper's and the assistant's servants," I read in one case,
and the eminently Scots periphrasis means neither more nor less than
excommunication, "on account of the discordant and quarrelsome state of
the families. The cause, when inquired into, proves to be
_tittle-tattle_ on both sides." The tender comes round; the foremen and
artificers go from station to station; the gossip flies through the
whole system of the service, and the stories, disfigured and
exaggerated, return to their own birthplace with the returning tender.
The English Board was apparently shocked by the picture of these
dissensions. "When the Trinity House can," I find my grandfather writing
at Beachy Head, in 1834, "they do not appoint two keepers, they disagree
so ill. A man who has a family is assisted by his family; and in this
way, to my experience and present observation, the business is very much
neglected. One keeper is, in my view, a bad system. This day's visit to
an English lighthouse convinces me of this, as the lightkeeper was
walking on a staff with the gout, and the business performed by one of
his daughters, a girl of thirteen or fourteen years of age." This man
received a hundred a year! It shows a different reading of human nature,
perhaps typical of Scotland and England, that I find in my grandfather's
diary the following pregnant entry: _"The lightkeepers, agreeing ill,
keep one another to their duty."_ But the Scottish system was not alone
founded on this cynical opinion. The dignity and the comfort of the
northern lightkeeper were both attended to. He had a uniform to "raise
him in his own estimation, and in that of his neighbour, which is of
consequence to a person of trust. The keepers," my grandfather goes on,
in another place, "are attended to in all the detail of accommodation in
the best style as shipmasters; and this is believed to have a sensible
effect upon their conduct, and to regulate their general habits as
members of society." He notes, with the same dip of ink, that "the
brasses were not clean, and the persons of the keepers not _trig_"; and
thus we find him writing to a culprit: "I have to complain that you are
not cleanly in your person, and that your manner of speech is ungentle,
and rather inclines to rudeness. You must therefore take a different
view of your duties as a lightkeeper." A high ideal for the service
appears in these expressions, and will be more amply illustrated further
on. But even the Scottish lightkeeper was frail. During the unbroken
solitude of the winter months, when inspection is scarce possible, it
must seem a vain toil to polish the brass hand-rail of the stair, or to
keep an unrewarded vigil in the lightroom; and the keepers are
habitually tempted to the beginnings of sloth, and must unremittingly
resist. He who temporises with his conscience is already lost. I must
tell here an anecdote that illustrates the difficulties of inspection.
In the days of my uncle David and my father there was a station which
they regarded with jealousy. The two engineers compared notes and were
agreed. The tower was always clean, but seemed always to bear traces of
a hasty cleansing, as though the keepers had been suddenly forewarned.
On inquiry, it proved that such was the case, and that a wandering
fiddler was the unfailing harbinger of the engineer. At last my father
was storm-stayed one Sunday in a port at the other side of the island.
The visit was quite overdue, and as he walked across upon the Monday
morning he promised himself that he should at last take the keepers
unprepared. They were both waiting for him in uniform at the gate; the
fiddler had been there on Saturday!
My grandfather, as will appear from the following extracts, was much a
martinet, and had a habit of expressing himself on paper with an almost
startling emphasis. Personally, with his powerful voice, sanguine
countenance, and eccentric and original locutions, he was well qualified
to inspire a salutary terror in the service.
"I find that the keepers have, by some means or another, got into the
way of cleaning too much with rotten-stone and oil. I take the
principal keeper to _task_ on this subject, and make him bring a
clean towel and clean one of the brazen frames, which leaves the
towel in an odious state. This towel I put up in a sheet of paper,
seal, and take with me to confront Mr. Murdoch, who has just left the
station." "This letter"--a stern enumeration of complaints--"to lie a
week on the lightroom book-place, and to be put in the Inspector's
hands when he comes round." "It is the most painful thing that can
occur for me to have a correspondence of this kind with any of the
keepers; and when I come to the Lighthouse, instead of having the
satisfaction to meet them with approbation, it is distressing when
one is obliged to put on a most angry countenance and demeanour; but
from such culpable negligence as you have shown there is no avoiding
it. I hold it as a fixed maxim that, when a man or a family put on a
slovenly appearance in their houses, stairs, and lanterns, I always
find their reflectors, burners, windows, and light in general, ill
attended to; and, therefore, I must insist on cleanliness
throughout." "I find you very deficient in the duty of the high
tower. You thus place your appointment as Principal Keeper in
jeopardy; and I think it necessary, as an old servant of the Board,
to put you upon your guard once for all at this time. I call upon you
to recollect what was formerly and is now said to you. The state of
the backs of the reflectors at the high tower was disgraceful, as I
pointed out to you on the spot. They were as if spitten upon, and
greasy finger-marks upon the back straps. I demand an explanation of
this state of things." "The cause of the Commissioners dismissing you
is expressed in the minute; and it must be a matter of regret to you
that you have been so much engaged in smuggling, and also that the
Reports relative to the cleanliness of the Lighthouse, upon being
referred to, rather added to their unfavourable opinion." "I do not
go into the dwelling-house, but severely chide the lightkeepers for
the disagreement that seems to subsist among them." "The families of
the two lightkeepers here agree very ill. I have effected a
reconciliation for the present." "Things are in a very _humdrum_
state here. There is no painting, and in and out of doors no taste or
tidiness displayed. Robert's wife _greets_ and M'Gregor's scolds; and
Robert is so down-hearted that he says he is unfit for duty. I told
him that if he was to mind wives' quarrels, and to take them up, the
only way was for him and M'Gregor to go down to the point like Sir G.
Grant and Lord Somerset." "I cannot say that I have experienced a
more unpleasant meeting than that of the lighthouse folks this
morning, or ever saw a stronger example of unfeeling barbarity than
the conduct which the ----s exhibited. These two cold-hearted
persons, not contented with having driven the daughter of the poor
nervous woman from her father's house, _both_ kept _pouncing_ at her,
lest she should forget her great misfortune. Write me of their
conduct. Do not make any communication of the state of these families
at Kinnaird Head, as this would be like _Tale-bearing_."
There is the great word out. Tales and Tale-bearing, always with the
emphatic capitals, run continually in his correspondence. I will give
but two instances:--
"Write to David [one of the lightkeepers] and caution him to be more
prudent how he expresses himself. Let him attend his duty to the
Lighthouse and his family concerns, and give less heed to
Tale-bearers." "I have not your last letter at hand to quote its
date; but, if I recollect, it contains some kind of tales, which
nonsense I wish you would lay aside, and notice only the concerns of
your family and the important charge committed to you."
Apparently, however, my grandfather was not himself inaccessible to the
Tale-bearer, as the following indicates:--
"In-walking along with Mr. ----, I explain to him that I should be
under the necessity of looking more closely into the business here
from his conduct at Buddonness, which had given an instance of
weakness in the Moral principle which had staggered my opinion of
him. His answer was, 'That will be with regard to the lass?' I told
him I was to enter no farther with him upon the subject." "Mr. Miller
appears to be master and man. I am sorry about this foolish fellow.
Had I known his train, I should not, as I did, have rather forced him
into the service. Upon finding the windows in the state they were, I
turned upon Mr. Watt, and especially upon Mr. Stewart. The latter did
not appear for a length of time to have visited the lightroom. On
asking the cause--did Mr. Watt and him (_sic_) disagree; he said no;
but he had got very bad usage from the assistant, 'who was a very
obstreperous man.' I could not bring Mr. Watt to put in language his
objections to Miller; all I could get was that, he being your friend,
and saying he was unwell, he did not like to complain or to push the
man; that the man seemed to have no liking to anything like work;
that he was unruly; that, being an educated man, he despised them. I
was, however, determined to have out of these _unwilling_ witnesses
the language alluded to. I fixed upon Mr. Stewart as chief; he
hedged. My curiosity increased, and I urged. Then he said, 'What
would I think, just exactly, of Mr. Watt being called an Old B----?'
You may judge of my surprise. There was not another word uttered.
This was quite enough, as coming from a person I should have
calculated upon quite different behaviour from. It spoke a volume of
the man's mind and want of principle." "Object to the keeper keeping
a Bull-Terrier dog of ferocious appearance. It is dangerous, as we
land at all times of the night." "Have only to complain of the
storehouse floor being spotted with oil. Give orders for this being
instantly rectified, so that on my return to-morrow I may see things
in good order." "The furniture of both houses wants much rubbing.
Mrs. ----'s carpets are absurd beyond anything I have seen. I want
her to turn the fenders up with the bottom to the fireplace: the
carpets, when not likely to be in use, folded up and laid as a
hearthrug partly under the fender."
My grandfather was king in the service to his fingertips. All should go
in his way, from the principal lightkeeper's coat to the assistant's
fender, from the gravel in the garden-walks to the bad smell in the
kitchen, or the oil-spots on the store-room floor. It might be thought
there was nothing more calculated to awake men's resentment, and yet his
rule was not more thorough than it was beneficent. His thought for the
keepers was continual, and it did not end with their lives. He tried to
manage their successions; he thought no pains too great to arrange
between a widow and a son who had succeeded his father; he was often
harassed and perplexed by tales of hardship; and I find him writing,
almost in despair, of their improvident habits and the destitution that
awaited their families upon a death. "The house being completely
furnished, they come into possession without necessaries, and they go
out NAKED. The insurance seems to have failed, and what next is to be
tried?" While they lived he wrote behind their backs to arrange for the
education of their children, or to get them other situations if they
seemed unsuitable for the Northern Lights. When he was at a lighthouse
on a Sunday he held prayers and heard the children read. When a keeper
was sick, he lent him his horse and sent him mutton and brandy from the
ship. "The assistant's wife having been this morning confined, there was
sent ashore a bottle of sherry and a few rusks--a practice which I have
always observed in this service," he writes. They dwelt, many of them,
in uninhabited isles or desert forelands, totally cut off from shops.
Many of them were, besides, fallen into a rustic dishabitude of life,
so that even when they visited a city they could scarce be trusted with
their own affairs, as (for example) he who carried home to his children,
thinking they were oranges, a bag of lemons. And my grandfather seems to
have acted, at least in his early years, as a kind of gratuitous agent
for the service. Thus I find him writing to a keeper in 1806, when his
mind was already pre-occupied with arrangements for the Bell Rock: "I am
much afraid I stand very unfavourably with you as a man of promise, as I
was to send several things of which I believe I have more than once got
the memorandum. All I can say is that in this respect you are not
singular. This makes me no better; but really I have been driven about
beyond all example in my past experience, and have been essentially
obliged to neglect my own urgent affairs." No servant of the Northern
Lights came to Edinburgh but he was entertained at Baxter's Place to
breakfast. There, at his own table, my grandfather sat down delightedly
with his broad-spoken, homespun officers. His whole relation to the
service was, in fact, patriarchal; and I believe I may say that
throughout its ranks he was adored. I have spoken with many who knew
him; I was his grandson, and their words may have very well been words
of flattery; but there was one thing that could not be affected, and
that was the look and light that came into their faces at the name of
Robert Stevenson.
In the early part of the century the foreman builder was a young man of
the name of George Peebles, a native of Anstruther. My grandfather had
placed in him a very high degree of confidence, and he was already
designated to be foreman at the Bell Rock, when, on Christmas-day 1806,
on his way home from Orkney, he was lost in the schooner _Traveller_.
The tale of the loss of the _Traveller_ is almost a replica of that of
the _Elizabeth_ of Stromness; like the _Elizabeth_ she came as far as
Kinnaird Head, was then surprised by a storm, driven back to Orkney, and
bilged and sank on the island of Flotta. It seems it was about the dusk
of the day when the ship struck, and many of the crew and passengers
were drowned. About the same hour, my grandfather was in his office at
the writing-table; and the room beginning to darken, he laid down his
pen and fell asleep. In a dream he saw the door open and George Peebles
come in, "reeling to and fro, and staggering like a drunken man," with
water streaming from his head and body to the floor. There it gathered
into a wave which, sweeping forward, submerged my grandfather. Well, no
matter how deep; versions vary; and at last he awoke, and behold it was
a dream! But it may be conceived how profoundly the impression was
written even on the mind of a man averse from such ideas, when the news
came of the wreck on Flotta and the death of George.
George's vouchers and accounts had perished with himself; and it
appeared he was in debt to the Commissioners. But my grandfather wrote
to Orkney twice, collected evidence of his disbursements, and proved him
to be seventy pounds ahead. With this sum, he applied to George's
brothers, and had it apportioned between their mother and themselves. He
approached the Board and got an annuity of £5 bestowed on the widow
Peebles; and we find him writing her a long letter of explanation and
advice, and pressing on her the duty of making a will. That he should
thus act executor was no singular instance. But besides this we are able
to assist at some of the stages of a rather touching experiment: no less
than an attempt to secure Charles Peebles heir to George's favour. He is
despatched, under the character of "a fine young man"; recommended to
gentlemen for "advice, as he's a stranger in your place, and indeed to
this kind of charge, this being his first outset as Foreman"; and for a
long while after, the letter-book, in the midst of that thrilling first
year of the Bell Rock, is encumbered with pages of instruction and
encouragement. The nature of a bill, and the precautions that are to be
observed about discounting it, are expounded at length and with
clearness. "You are not, I hope, neglecting, Charles, to work the
harbour at spring-tides; and see that you pay the greatest attention to
get the well so as to supply the keeper with water, for he is a very
helpless fellow, and so unfond of hard work that I fear he could do ill
to keep himself in water by going to the other side for it."--"With
regard to spirits, Charles, I see very little occasion for it." These
abrupt apostrophes sound to me like the voice of an awakened conscience;
but they would seem to have reverberated in vain in the ears of Charles.
There was trouble in Pladda, his scene of operations; his men ran away
from him, there was at least a talk of calling in the Sheriff. "I fear,"
writes my grandfather, "you have been too indulgent, and I am sorry to
add that men do not answer to be too well treated, a circumstance which
I have experienced, and which you will learn as you go on in business."
I wonder, was not Charles Peebles himself a case in point? Either death,
at least, or disappointment and discharge, must have ended his service
in the Northern Lights; and in later correspondence I look in vain for
any mention of his name--Charles, I mean, not Peebles: for as late as
1839 my grandfather is patiently writing to another of the family: "I am
sorry you took the trouble of applying to me about your son, as it lies
quite out of my way to forward his views in the line of his profession
as a Draper."
III
A professional life of Robert Stevenson has been already given to the
world by his son David, and to that I would refer those interested in
such matters. But my own design, which is to represent the man, would be
very ill carried out if I suffered myself or my reader to forget that he
was, first of all and last of all, an engineer. His chief claim to the
style of a mechanical inventor is on account of the Jib or Balance Crane
of the Bell Rock, which are beautiful contrivances. But the great merit
of this engineer was not in the field of engines. He was above all
things a projector of works in the face of nature, and a modifier of
nature itself. A road to be made, a tower to be built, a harbour to be
constructed, a river to be trained and guided in its channel--these were
the problems with which his mind was continually occupied; and for these
and similar ends he travelled the world for more than half a century,
like an artist, note-book in hand.
He once stood and looked on at the emptying of a certain oil-tube; he
did so watch in hand, and accurately timed the operation; and in so
doing offered the perfect type of his profession. The fact acquired
might never be of use: it was acquired: another link in the world's huge
chain of processes was brought down to figures and placed at the service
of the engineer. "The very term mensuration sounds _engineer-like_," I
find him writing; and in truth what the engineer most properly deals
with is that which can be measured, weighed, and numbered. The time of
any operation in hours and minutes, its cost in pounds, shillings, and
pence, the strain upon a given point in foot-pounds--these are his
conquests, with which he must continually furnish his mind, and which,
after he has acquired them, he must continually apply and exercise. They
must be not only entries in note-books, to be hurriedly consulted; in
the actor's phrase, he must be _stale_ in them; in a word of my
grandfather's, they must be "fixed in the mind like the ten fingers and
ten toes."
These are the certainties of the engineer; so far he finds a solid
footing and clear views. But the province of formulas and constants is
restricted. Even the mechanical engineer comes at last to an end of his
figures, and must stand up, a practical man, face to face with the
discrepancies of nature and the hiatuses of theory. After the machine is
finished, and the steam turned on, the next is to drive it; and
experience and an exquisite sympathy must teach him where a weight
should be applied or a nut loosened. With the civil engineer, more
properly so called (if anything can be proper with this awkward
coinage), the obligation starts with the beginning. He is always the
practical man. The rains, the winds and the waves, the complexity and
the fitfulness of nature, are always before him. He has to deal with the
unpredictable, with those forces (in Smeaton's phrase) that "are subject
to no calculation"; and still he must predict, still calculate them, at
his peril. His work is not yet in being, and he must foresee its
influence: how it shall deflect the tide, exaggerate the waves, dam back
the rain-water, or attract the thunderbolt. He visits a piece of
sea-board: and from the inclination and soil of the beach, from the
weeds and shell-fish, from the configuration of the coast and the depth
of soundings outside, he must deduce what magnitude of waves is to be
looked for. He visits a river, its summer water babbling on shallows;
and he must not only read, in a thousand indications, the measure of
winter freshets, but be able to predict the violence of occasional great
floods. Nay, and more: he must not only consider that which is, but that
which may be. Thus I find my grandfather writing, in a report on the
North Esk Bridge: "A less waterway might have sufficed, but _the valleys
may come to be meliorated by drainage_." One field drained after another
through all that confluence of vales, and we come to a time when they
shall precipitate, by so much a more copious and transient flood, as the
gush of the flowing drain-pipe is superior to the leakage of a peat.
It is plain there is here but a restricted use for formulas. In this
sort of practice, the engineer has need of some transcendental sense.
Smeaton, the pioneer, bade him obey his "feelings"; my father, that
"power of estimating obscure forces which supplies a coefficient of its
own to every rule." The rules must be everywhere indeed; but they must
everywhere be modified by this transcendental coefficient, everywhere
bent to the impression of the trained eye and the _feelings_ of the
engineer. A sentiment of physical laws and of the scale of nature,
which shall have been strong in the beginning and progressively
fortified by observation, must be his guide in the last recourse. I had
the most opportunity to observe my father. He would pass hours on the
beach, brooding over the waves, counting them, noting their least
deflection, noting when they broke. On Tweedside, or by Lyne or Manor,
we have spent together whole afternoons; to me, at the time, extremely
wearisome; to him, as I am now sorry to think, bitterly mortifying. The
river was to me a pretty and various spectacle; I could not see--I could
not be made to see--it otherwise. To my father it was a chequer-board of
lively forces, which he traced from pool to shallow with minute
appreciation and enduring interest. "That bank was being undercut," he
might say; "why? Suppose you were to put a groin out here, would not the
_filum fluminis_ be cast abruptly off across the channel? and where
would it impinge upon the other shore? and what would be the result? Or
suppose you were to blast that boulder, what would happen? Follow
it--use the eyes God has given you--can you not see that a great deal of
land would be reclaimed upon this side?" It was to me like school in
holidays; but to him, until I had worn him out with my invincible
triviality, a delight. Thus he pored over the engineer's voluminous
handy-book of nature; thus must, too, have pored my grandfather and
uncles.
But it is of the essence of this knowledge, or this knack of mind, to be
largely incommunicable. "It cannot be imparted to another," says my
father. The verbal casting-net is thrown in vain over these evanescent,
inferential relations. Hence the insignificance of much engineering
literature. So far as the science can be reduced to formulas or
diagrams, the book is to the point; so far as the art depends on
intimate study of the ways of nature, the author's words will too often
be found vapid. This fact--engineering looks one way, and literature
another--was what my grandfather overlooked. All his life long, his pen
was in his hand, piling up a treasury of knowledge, preparing himself
against all possible contingencies. Scarce anything fell under his
notice but he perceived in it some relation to his work, and chronicled
it in the pages of his journal in his always lucid, but sometimes
inexact and wordy, style. The Travelling Diary (so he called it) was
kept in fascicles of ruled paper, which were at last bound up, rudely
indexed, and put by for future reference. Such volumes as have reached
me contain a surprising medley: the whole details of his employment in
the Northern Lights and his general practice; the whole biography of an
enthusiastic engineer. Much of it is useful and curious; much merely
otiose; and much can only be described as an attempt to impart that
which cannot be imparted in words. Of such are his repeated and heroic
descriptions of reefs; monuments of misdirected literary energy, which
leave upon the mind of the reader no effect but that of a multiplicity
of words and the suggested vignette of a lusty old gentleman scrambling
among tangle. It is to be remembered that he came to engineering while
yet it was in the egg and without a library, and that he saw the bounds
of that profession widen daily. He saw iron ships, steamers, and the
locomotive engine, introduced. He lived to travel from Glasgow to
Edinburgh in the inside of a forenoon, and to remember that he himself
had "often been twelve hours upon the journey, and his grandfather
(Lillie) two days"! The profession was still but in its second
generation, and had already broken down the barriers of time and space.
Who should set a limit to its future encroachments? And hence, with a
kind of sanguine pedantry, he pursued his design of "keeping up with the
day" and posting himself and his family on every mortal subject. Of this
unpractical idealism we shall meet with many instances; there was not a
trade, and scarce an accomplishment, but he thought it should form part
of the outfit of an engineer; and not content with keeping an
encyclopædic diary himself, he would fain have set all his sons to work
continuing and extending it. They were more happily inspired. My
father's engineering pocket-book was not a bulky volume; with its store
of pregnant notes and vital formulas, it served him through life, and
was not yet filled when he came to die. As for Robert Stevenson and the
Travelling Diary, I should be ungrateful to complain, for it has
supplied me with many lively traits for this and subsequent chapters;
but I must still remember much of the period of my study there as a
sojourn in the Valley of the Shadow.
The duty of the engineer is twofold--to design the work, and to see the
work done. We have seen already something of the vociferous thoroughness
of the man, upon the cleaning of lamps and the polishing of reflectors.
In building, in road-making, in the construction of bridges, in every
detail and byway of his employments, he pursued the same ideal.
Perfection (with a capital P and violently underscored) was his design.
A crack for a penknife, the waste of "six-and-thirty shillings," "the
loss of a day or a tide," in each of these he saw and was revolted by
the finger of the sloven; and to spirits intense as his, and immersed in
vital undertakings, the slovenly is the dishonest, and wasted time is
instantly translated into lives endangered. On this consistent idealism
there is but one thing that now and then trenches with a touch of
incongruity, and that is his love of the picturesque. As when he laid
out a road on Hogarth's line of beauty; bade a foreman be careful, in
quarrying, not "to disfigure the island"; or regretted in a report that
"the great stone, called the _Devil in the Hole_, was blasted or broken
down to make road-metal, and for other purposes of the work."
FOOTNOTE:
[10] This is only a probable hypothesis; I have tried to identify my
father's anecdote in my grandfather's diary, and may very well have
been deceived.--R. L. S.
CHAPTER III
THE BUILDING OF THE BELL ROCK
Off the mouths of the Tay and the Forth, thirteen miles from Fifeness,
eleven from Arbroath, and fourteen from the Red Head of Angus, lies the
Inchcape or Bell Rock. It extends to a length of about fourteen hundred
feet, but the part of it discovered at low water to not more than four
hundred and twenty-seven. At a little more than half-flood in fine
weather the seamless ocean joins over the reef, and at high-water
springs it is buried sixteen feet. As the tide goes down, the higher
reaches of the rock are seen to be clothed by _Conferva rupestris_ as by
a sward of grass; upon the more exposed edges, where the currents are
most swift and the breach of the sea heaviest, Baderlock or Henware
flourishes; and the great Tangle grows at the depth of several fathoms
with luxuriance. Before man arrived, and introduced into the silence of
the sea the smoke and clangour of a blacksmith's shop, it was a
favourite resting-place of seals. The crab and lobster haunt in the
crevices; and limpets, mussels, and the white buckie abound.
According to a tradition, a bell had been once hung upon this rock by an
abbot of Arbroath,[11] "and being taken down by a sea-pirate, a year
thereafter he perished upon the same rock, with ship and goods, in the
righteous judgment of God." From the days of the abbot and the
sea-pirate no man had set foot upon the Inchcape, save fishers from the
neighbouring coast, or perhaps--for a moment, before the surges
swallowed them--the unfortunate victims of shipwreck. The fishers
approached the rock with an extreme timidity; but their harvest appears
to have been great, and the adventure no more perilous than lucrative.
In 1800, on the occasion of my grandfather's first landing, and during
the two or three hours which the ebb-tide and the smooth water allowed
them to pass upon its shelves, his crew collected upwards of two
hundredweight of old metal: pieces of a kedge anchor and a cabin stove,
crow-bars, a hinge and lock of a door, a ship's marking-iron, a piece of
a ship's caboose, a soldier's bayonet, a cannon ball, several pieces of
money, a shoe-buckle, and the like. Such were the spoils of the Bell
Rock. But the number of vessels actually lost upon the reef was as
nothing to those that were cast away in fruitless efforts to avoid it.
Placed right in the fairway of two navigations, and one of these the
entrance to the only harbour of refuge between the Downs and the Moray
Firth, it breathed abroad along the whole coast an atmosphere of terror
and perplexity; and no ship sailed that part of the North Sea at night,
but what the ears of those on board would be strained to catch the
roaring of the seas on the Bell Rock.
From 1794 onward, the mind of my grandfather had been exercised with the
idea of a light upon this formidable danger. To build a tower on a sea
rock, eleven miles from shore, and barely uncovered at low water of
neaps, appeared a fascinating enterprise. It was something yet
unattempted, unessayed; and even now, after it has been lighted for more
than eighty years, it is still an exploit that has never been
repeated.[12] My grandfather was, besides, but a young man, of an
experience comparatively restricted, and a reputation confined to
Scotland; and when he prepared his first models, and exhibited them in
Merchants' Hall, he can hardly be acquitted of audacity. John Clerk of
Eldin stood his friend from the beginning, kept the key of the model
room, to which he carried "eminent strangers," and found words of
counsel and encouragement beyond price. "Mr. Clerk had been personally
known to Smeaton, and used occasionally to speak of him to me," says my
grandfather; and again: "I felt regret that I had not the opportunity of
a greater range of practice to fit me for such an undertaking; but I was
fortified by an expression of my friend Mr. Clerk in one of our
conversations. 'This work,' said he, 'is unique, and can be little
forwarded by experience of ordinary masonic operations. In this case
Smeaton's "Narrative" must be the text-book, and energy and perseverance
the pratique.'"
A Bill for the work was introduced into Parliament and lost in the Lords
in 1802-3. John Rennie was afterwards, at my grandfather's suggestion,
called in council, with the style of chief engineer. The precise meaning
attached to these words by any of the parties appears irrecoverable.
Chief engineer should have full authority, full responsibility, and a
proper share of the emoluments; and there were none of these for Rennie.
I find in an appendix a paper which resumes the controversy on this
subject; and it will be enough to say here that Rennie did not design
the Bell Rock, that he did not execute it, and that he was not paid for
it.[13] From so much of the correspondence as has come down to me, the
acquaintance of this man, eleven years his senior, and already famous,
appears to have been both useful and agreeable to Robert Stevenson. It
is amusing to find my grandfather seeking high and low for a brace of
pistols which his colleague had lost by the way between Aberdeen and
Edinburgh; and writing to Messrs. Dollond, "I have not thought it
necessary to trouble Mr. Rennie with this order, but _I beg you will see
to get two minutes of him as he passes your door_"--a proposal
calculated rather from the latitude of Edinburgh than from London, even
in 1807. It is pretty, too, to observe with what affectionate regard
Smeaton was held in mind by his immediate successors. "Poor old fellow,"
writes Rennie to Stevenson, "I hope he will now and then take a peep at
us, and inspire you with fortitude and courage to brave all difficulties
and dangers to accomplish a work which will, if successful, immortalise
you in the annals of fame." The style might be bettered, but the
sentiment is charming.
Smeaton was, indeed, the patron saint of the Bell Rock. Undeterred by
the sinister fate of Winstanley, he had tackled and solved the problem
of the Eddystone; but his solution had not been in all respects perfect.
It remained for my grandfather to outdo him in daring, by applying to a
tidal rock those principles which had been already justified by the
success of the Eddystone, and to perfect the model by more than one
exemplary departure. Smeaton had adopted in his floors the principle of
the arch; each therefore exercised an outward thrust upon the walls,
which must be met and combated by embedded chains. My grandfather's
flooring-stones, on the other hand, were flat, made part of the outer
wall, and were keyed and dovetailed into a central stone, so as to bind
the work together and be positive elements of strength. In 1703
Winstanley still thought it possible to erect his strange pagoda, with
its open gallery, its florid scrolls and candlesticks: like a rich man's
folly for an ornamental water in a park. Smeaton followed; then
Stevenson in his turn corrected such flaws as were left in Smeaton's
design; and with his improvements, it is not too much to say the model
was made perfect. Smeaton and Stevenson had between them evolved and
finished the sea-tower. No subsequent builder has departed in anything
essential from the principles of their design. It remains, and it seems
to us as though it must remain for ever, an ideal attained. Every stone
in the building, it may interest the reader to know, my grandfather had
himself cut out in the model; and the manner in which the courses were
fitted, joggled, trenailed, wedged, and the bond broken, is intricate as
a puzzle and beautiful by ingenuity.
In 1806 a second Bill passed both Houses, and the preliminary works were
at once begun. The same year the Navy had taken a great harvest of
prizes in the North Sea, one of which, a Prussian fishing dogger,
flat-bottomed and rounded at the stem and stern, was purchased to be a
floating lightship, and re-named the _Pharos_. By July 1807 she was
overhauled, rigged for her new purpose, and turned into the lee of the
Isle of May. "It was proposed that the whole party should meet in her
and pass the night; but she rolled from side to side in so extraordinary
a manner, that even the most seahardy fled. It was humorously observed
of this vessel that she was in danger of making a round turn and
appearing with her keel uppermost; and that she would even turn a
halfpenny if laid upon deck." By two o'clock on the morning of the 15th
July this purgatorial vessel was moored by the Bell Rock.
A sloop of forty tons had been in the meantime built at Leith, and named
the _Smeaton_: by the 7th of August my grandfather set sail in her--
"carrying with him Mr. Peter Logan, foreman builder, and five
artificers selected from their having been somewhat accustomed to the
sea, the writer being aware of the distressing trial which the
floating light would necessarily inflict upon landsmen from her
rolling motion. Here he remained till the 10th, and, as the weather
was favourable, a landing was effected daily, when the workmen were
employed in cutting the large seaweed from the sites of the
lighthouse and beacon, which were respectively traced with pickaxes
upon the rock. In the meantime the crew of the _Smeaton_ was employed
in laying down the several sets of moorings within about half a mile
of the rock for the convenience of vessels. The artificers, having,
fortunately, experienced moderate weather, returned to the workyard
of Arbroath with a good report of their treatment afloat; when their
comrades ashore began to feel some anxiety to see a place of which
they had heard so much, and to change the constant operations with
the iron and mallet in the process of hewing for an occasional tide's
work on the rock, which they figured to themselves as a state of
comparative ease and comfort."
I am now for many pages to let my grandfather speak for himself, and
tell in his own words the story of his capital achievement. The tall
quarto of 533 pages from which the following narrative has been dug out
is practically unknown to the general reader, yet good judges have
perceived its merit, and it has been named (with flattering wit) "The
Romance of Stone and Lime" and "The Robinson Crusoe of Civil
Engineering." The tower was but four years in the building; it took
Robert Stevenson, in the midst of his many avocations, no less than
fourteen to prepare the _Account_. The title-page is a solid piece of
literature of upwards of a hundred words; the table of contents runs to
thirteen pages; and the dedication (to that revered monarch, George IV)
must have cost him no little study and correspondence. Walter Scott was
called in council, and offered one miscorrection which still blots the
page. In spite of all this pondering and filing, there remain pages not
easy to construe, and inconsistencies not easy to explain away. I have
sought to make these disappear, and to lighten a little the baggage with
which my grandfather marches; here and there I have rejointed and
rearranged a sentence, always with his own words, and all with a
reverent and faithful hand; and I offer here to the reader the true
Monument of Robert Stevenson with a little of the moss removed from the
inscription, and the Portrait of the artist with some superfluous canvas
cut away.
I
OPERATIONS OF 1807
1807 Sunday, 16th Aug.
Everything being arranged for sailing to the rock on Saturday the 15th,
the vessel might have proceeded on the Sunday; but understanding that
this would not be so agreeable to the artificers it was deferred until
Monday. Here we cannot help observing that the men allotted for the
operations at the rock seemed to enter upon the undertaking with a
degree of consideration which fully marked their opinion as to the
hazardous nature of the undertaking on which they were about to enter.
They went in a body to church on Sunday, and whether it was in the
ordinary course, or designed for the occasion, the writer is not
certain, but the service was, in many respects, suitable to their
circumstances.
Monday, 17th Aug.
The tide happening to fall late in the evening of Monday the 17th, the
party, counting twenty-four in number, embarked on board of the
_Smeaton_ about ten o'clock p.m., and sailed from Arbroath with a gentle
breeze at west. Our ship's colours having been flying all day in
compliment to the commencement of the work, the other vessels in the
harbour also saluted, which made a very gay appearance. A number of the
friends and acquaintances of those on board having been thus collected,
the piers, though at a late hour, were perfectly crowded, and just as
the _Smeaton_ cleared the harbour, all on board united in giving three
hearty cheers, which were returned by those on shore in such good
earnest, that, in the still of the evening, the sound must have been
heard in all parts of the town, reechoing from the walls and lofty
turrets of the venerable Abbey of Aberbrothwick. The writer felt much
satisfaction at the manner of this parting scene, though he must own
that the present rejoicing was, on his part, mingled with occasional
reflections upon the responsibility of his situation, which extended to
the safety of all who should be engaged in this perilous work. With such
sensations he retired to his cabin; but as the artificers were rather
inclined to move about the deck than to remain in their confined berths
below, his repose was transient, and the vessel being small every motion
was necessarily heard. Some who were musically inclined occasionally
sung; but he listened with peculiar pleasure to the sailor at the helm,
who hummed over Dibdin's characteristic air:--
"They say there's a Providence sits up aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack."
Tuesday, 18th Aug.
The weather had been very gentle all night, and, about four in the
morning of the 18th, the _Smeaton_ anchored. Agreeably to an arranged
plan of operations, all hands were called at five o'clock a.m., just as
the highest part of the Bell Rock began to show its sable head among the
light breakers, which occasionally whitened with the foaming sea. The
two boats belonging to the floating light attended the _Smeaton_, to
carry the artificers to the rock, as her boat could only accommodate
about six or eight sitters. Every one was more eager than his neighbour
to leap into the boats, and it required a good deal of management on the
part of the coxswains to get men unaccustomed to a boat to take their
places for rowing and at the same time trimming her properly. The
landing-master and foreman went into one boat, while the writer took
charge of another, and steered it to and from the rock. This became the
more necessary in the early stages of the work, as places could not be
spared for more than two, or at most three, seamen to each boat, who
were always stationed, one at the bow, to use the boat-hook in fending
or pushing off, and the other at the aftermost oar, to give the proper
time in rowing, while the middle oars were double-banked, and rowed by
the artificers.
As the weather was extremely fine, with light airs of wind from the
east, we landed without difficulty upon the central part of the rock at
half-past five, but the water had not yet sufficiently left it for
commencing the work. This interval, however, did not pass unoccupied.
The first and last of all the principal operations at the Bell Rock were
accompanied by three hearty cheers from all hands, and, on occasions
like the present, the steward of the ship attended, when each man was
regaled with a glass of rum. As the water left the rock about six, some
began to bore the holes for the great bats or holdfasts, for fixing the
beams of the Beacon-house, while the smith was fully attended in laying
out the site of his forge, upon a somewhat sheltered spot of the rock,
which also recommended itself from the vicinity of a pool of water for
tempering his irons. These preliminary steps occupied about an hour, and
as nothing further could be done during this tide towards fixing the
forge, the workmen gratified their curiosity by roaming about the rock,
which they investigated with great eagerness till the tide overflowed
it. Those who had been sick picked dulse (_Fucus palmatus_), which they
ate with much seeming appetite; others were more intent upon collecting
limpets for bait, to enjoy the amusement of fishing when they returned
on board of the vessel. Indeed, none came away empty-handed, as
everything found upon the Bell Rock was considered valuable, being
connected with some interesting association. Several coins and numerous
bits of shipwrecked iron, were picked up, of almost every description;
and, in particular, a marking-iron lettered JAMES--a circumstance of
which it was thought proper to give notice to the public, as it might
lead to the knowledge of some unfortunate shipwreck, perhaps unheard of
till this simple occurrence led to the discovery. When the rock began to
be overflowed, the landing-master arranged the crews of the respective
boats, appointing twelve persons to each. According to a rule which the
writer had laid down to himself, he was always the last person who left
the rock.
In a short time the Bell Rock was laid completely under water, and the
weather being extremely fine, the sea was so smooth that its place could
not be pointed out from the appearance of the surface--a circumstance
which sufficiently demonstrates the dangerous nature of this rock, even
during the day, and in the smoothest and calmest state of the sea.
During the interval between the morning and the evening tides, the
artificers were variously employed in fishing and reading; others were
busy in drying and adjusting their wet clothes, and one or two amused
their companions with the violin and German flute.
About seven in the evening the signal bell for landing on the rock was
again rung, when every man was at his quarters. In this service it was
thought more appropriate to use the bell than to _pipe_ to quarters, as
the use of this instrument is less known to the mechanic than the sound
of the bell. The landing, as in the morning, was at the eastern harbour.
During this tide the seaweed was pretty well cleared from the site of
the operations, and also from the tracks leading to the different
landing-places; for walking upon the rugged surface of the Bell Rock,
when covered with seaweed, was found to be extremely difficult and even
dangerous. Every hand that could possibly be occupied was now employed
in assisting the smith to fit up the apparatus for his forge. At 9 p.m.
the boats returned to the tender, after other two hours' work, in the
same order as formerly--perhaps as much gratified with the success that
attended the work of this day as with any other in the whole course of
the operations. Although it could not be said that the fatigues of this
day had been great, yet all on board retired early to rest. The sea
being calm, and no movement on deck, it was pretty generally remarked in
the morning that the bell awakened the greater number on board from
their first sleep; and though this observation was not altogether
applicable to the writer himself, yet he was not a little pleased to
find that thirty people could all at once become so reconciled to a
night's quarters within a few hundred paces of the Bell Rock.
Wednesday, 19th Aug.
Being extremely anxious at this time to get forward with fixing the
smith's forge, on which the progress of the work at present depended,
the writer requested that he might be called at daybreak to learn the
landing-master's opinion of the weather from the appearance of the
rising sun, a criterion by which experienced seamen can generally judge
pretty accurately of the state of the weather for the following day.
About five o'clock, on coming upon deck, the sun's upper limb or disc
had just begun to appear as if rising from the ocean, and in less than a
minute he was seen in the fullest splendour; but after a short interval
he was enveloped in a soft cloudy sky, which was considered emblematical
of fine weather. His rays had not yet sufficiently dispelled the clouds
which hid the land from view, and the Bell Rock being still overflowed,
the whole was one expanse of water. This scene in itself was highly
gratifying; and, when the morning bell was tolled, we were gratified
with the happy forebodings of good weather and the expectation of having
both a morning and an evening tide's work on the rock.
The boat which the writer steered happened to be the last which
approached the rock at this tide; and, in standing up in the stern,
while at some distance, to see how the leading boat entered the creek,
he was astonished to observe something in the form of a human figure, in
a reclining posture, upon one of the ledges of the rock. He immediately
steered the boat through a narrow entrance to the eastern harbour, with
a thousand unpleasant sensations in his mind. He thought a vessel or
boat must have been wrecked upon the rock during the night; and it
seemed probable that the rock might be strewed with dead bodies, a
spectacle which could not fail to deter the artificers from returning so
freely to their work. In the midst of these reveries the boat took the
ground at an improper landing-place but, without waiting to push her
off, he leapt upon the rock, and making his way hastily to the spot
which had privately given him alarm, he had the satisfaction to
ascertain that he had only been deceived by the peculiar situation and
aspect of the smith's anvil and block, which very completely represented
the appearance of a lifeless body upon the rock. The writer carefully
suppressed his feelings, the simple mention of which might have had a
bad effect upon the artificers, and his haste passed for an anxiety to
examine the apparatus of the smith's forge, left in an unfinished state
at evening tide.
In the course of this morning's work two or three apparently distant
peals of thunder were heard, and the atmosphere suddenly became thick
and foggy. But as the _Smeaton_, our present tender, was moored at no
great distance from the rock, the crew on board continued blowing with
a horn, and occasionally fired a musket, so that the boats got to the
ship without difficulty.
Thursday, 20th Aug.
The wind this morning inclined from the north-east, and the sky had a
heavy and cloudy appearance, but the sea was smooth, though there was an
undulating motion on the surface, which indicated easterly winds, and
occasioned a slight surf upon the rock. But the boats found no
difficulty in landing at the western creek at half-past seven, and,
after a good tide's work, left it again about a quarter from eleven. In
the evening the artificers landed at half-past seven, and continued till
half-past eight, having completed the fixing of the smith's forge, his
vice, and a wooden board or bench, which were also batted to a ledge of
the rock, to the great joy of all, under a salute of three hearty
cheers. From an oversight on the part of the smith, who had neglected to
bring his tinder-box and matches from the vessel, the work was prevented
from being continued for at least an hour longer.
The smith's shop was, of course, in _open space_: the large bellows were
carried to and from the rock every tide, for the serviceable condition
of which, together with the tinder-box, fuel, and embers of the former
fire, the smith was held responsible. Those who have been placed in
situations to feel the inconveniency and want of this useful artisan,
will be able to appreciate his value in a case like the present. It
often happened, to our annoyance and disappointment, in the early state
of the work, when the smith was in the middle of a _favourite heat_ in
making some useful article, or in sharpening the tools, after the
flood-tide had obliged the pickmen to strike work, a sea would come
rolling over the rocks, dash out the fire, and endanger his
indispensable implement, the bellows. If the sea was smooth, while the
smith often stood at work knee-deep in water, the tide rose by
imperceptible degrees, first cooling the exterior of the fireplace, or
hearth, and then quietly blackening and extinguishing the fire from
below. The writer has frequently been amused at the perplexing anxiety
of the blacksmith when coaxing his fire and endeavouring to avert the
effects of the rising tide.
Friday, 21st Aug.
Everything connected with the forge being now completed, the artificers
found no want of sharp tools, and the work went forward with great
alacrity and spirit. It was also alleged that the rock had a more
habitable appearance from the volumes of smoke which ascended from the
smith's shop and the busy noise of his anvil, the operations of the
masons, the movements of the boats, and shipping at a distance--all
contributed to give life and activity to the scene. This noise and
traffic had, however, the effect of almost completely banishing the herd
of seals which had hitherto frequented the rock as a resting-place
during the period of low water. The rock seemed to be peculiarly adapted
to their habits, for, excepting two or three days at neap-tides, a part
of it always dries at low water--at least, during the summer season--and
as there was good fishing-ground in the neighbourhood, without a human
being to disturb or molest them, it had become a very favourite
residence of these amphibious animals, the writer having occasionally
counted from fifty to sixty playing about the rock at a time. But when
they came to be disturbed every tide, and their seclusion was broken in
upon by the kindling of great fires, together with the beating of
hammers and picks during low water, after hovering about for a time,
they changed their place, and seldom more than one or two were to be
seen about the rock upon the more detached outlayers which dry
partially, whence they seemed to look with that sort of curiosity which
is observable in these animals when following a boat.
Saturday, 22nd Aug.
Hitherto the artificers had remained on board the _Smeaton_, which was
made fast to one of the mooring buoys at a distance only of about a
quarter of a mile from the rock, and, of course, a very great
conveniency to the work. Being so near, the seamen could never be
mistaken as to the progress of the tide, or state of the sea upon the
rock, nor could the boats be much at a loss to pull on board of the
vessel during fog, or even in very rough weather; as she could be cast
loose from her moorings at pleasure, and brought to the lee side of the
rock. But the _Smeaton_ being only about forty register tons, her
accommodations were extremely limited. It may, therefore, be easily
imagined that an addition of twenty-four persons to her own crew must
have rendered the situation of those on board rather uncomfortable. The
only place for the men's hammocks on board being in the hold, they were
unavoidably much crowded: and if the weather had required the hatches to
be fastened down, so great a number of men could not possibly have been
accommodated. To add to this evil, the _co-boose_ or cooking-place being
upon deck, it would not have been possible to have cooked for so large a
company in the event of bad weather.
The stock of water was now getting short, and some necessaries being
also wanted for the floating light, the _Smeaton_ was despatched for
Arbroath; and the writer, with the artificers, at the same time shifted
their quarters from her to the floating light.
Although the rock barely made its appearance at this period of the tides
till eight o'clock, yet, having now a full mile to row from the floating
light to the rock, instead of about a quarter of a mile from the
moorings of the _Smeaton_, it was necessary to be earlier astir, and to
form different arrangements; breakfast was accordingly served up at
seven o'clock this morning. From the excessive motion of the floating
light, the writer had looked forward rather with anxiety to the removal
of the workmen to this ship. Some among them, who had been
congratulating themselves upon having become sea-hardy while on board
the _Smeaton_, had a complete relapse upon returning to the floating
light. This was the case with the writer. From the spacious and
convenient berthage of the floating light, the exchange to the
artificers was, in this respect, much for the better. The boats were
also commodious, measuring sixteen feet in length on the keel, so that,
in fine weather, their complement of sitters was sixteen persons for
each, with which, however, they were rather crowded, but she could not
stow two boats of larger dimensions. When there was what is called a
breeze of wind, and a swell in the sea, the proper number for each boat
could not, with propriety, be rated at more than twelve persons.
When the tide-bell rung the boats were hoisted out, and two active
seamen were employed to keep them from receiving damage alongside. The
floating light being very buoyant, was so quick in her motions that when
those who were about to step from her gunwale into a boat, placed
themselves upon a cleat or step on the ship's side, with the man or rail
ropes in their hands, they had often to wait for some time till a
favourable opportunity occurred for stepping into the boat. While in
this situation, with the vessel rolling from side to side, watching the
proper time for letting go the man-ropes, it required the greatest
dexterity and presence of mind to leap into the boats. One who was
rather awkward would often wait a considerable period in this position:
at one time his side of the ship would be so depressed that he would
touch the boat to which he belonged, while the next sea would elevate
him so much that he would see his comrades in the boat on the opposite
side of the ship, his friends in the one boat calling to him to "Jump,"
while those in the boat on the other side, as he came again and again
into their view, would jocosely say, "Are you there yet? You seem to
enjoy a swing." In this situation it was common to see a person upon
each side of the ship for a length of time, waiting to quit his hold.
On leaving the rock to-day a trial of seamanship was proposed amongst
the rowers, for by this time the artificers had become tolerably expert
in this exercise. By inadvertency some of the oars provided had been
made of fir instead of ash, and although a considerable stock had been
laid in, the workmen, being at first awkward in the art, were constantly
breaking their oars; indeed it was no uncommon thing to see the broken
blades of a pair of oars floating astern, in the course of a passage
from the rock to the vessel. The men, upon the whole, had but little
work to perform in the course of a day; for though they exerted
themselves extremely hard while on the rock, yet, in the early state of
the operations, this could not be continued for more than three or four
hours at a time, and as their rations were large--consisting of one
pound and a half of beef, one pound of ship biscuit, eight ounces
oatmeal, two ounces barley, two ounces butter, three quarts of small
beer, with vegetables and salt--they got into excellent spirits when
free of sea-sickness. The rowing of the boats against each other became
a favourite amusement, which was rather a fortunate circumstance, as it
must have been attended with much inconvenience had it been found
necessary to employ a sufficient number of sailors for this purpose. The
writer, therefore, encouraged this spirit of emulation, and the speed of
their respective boats became a favourite topic. Premiums for boat-races
were instituted, which were contended for with great eagerness, and the
respective crews kept their stations in the boats with as much precision
as they kept their beds on board of the ship. With these and other
pastimes, when the weather was favourable, the time passed away among
the inmates of the forecastle and waist of the ship. The writer looks
back with interest upon the hours of solitude which he spent in this
lonely ship with his small library.
This being the first Saturday that the artificers were afloat, all hands
were served with a glass of rum and water at night, to drink the
sailors' favourite toast of "Wives and Sweethearts." It was customary,
upon these occasions, for the seamen and artificers to collect in the
galley, when the musical instruments were put in requisition: for,
according to invariable practice, every man must play a tune, sing a
song, or tell a story.
Sunday, 23rd Aug.
Having, on the previous evening, arranged matters with the
landing-master as to the business of the day, the signal was rung for
all hands at half-past seven this morning. In the early state of the
spring-tides the artificers went to the rock before breakfast, but as
the tides fell later in the day, it became necessary to take this meal
before leaving the ship. At eight o'clock all hands were assembled on
the quarter-deck for prayers, a solemnity which was gone through in as
orderly a manner as circumstances would admit. When the weather
permitted, the flags of the ship were hung up as an awning or screen,
forming the quarter-deck into a distinct compartment; the pendant was
also hoisted at the mainmast, and a large ensign flag was displayed over
the stern; and lastly, the ship's companion, or top of the staircase,
was covered with the _flag proper_ of the Lighthouse Service, on which
the Bible was laid. A particular toll of the bell called all hands to
the quarter-deck, when the writer read a chapter of the Bible, and, the
whole ship's company being uncovered, he also read the impressive prayer
composed by the Reverend Dr. Brunton, one of the ministers of Edinburgh.
Upon concluding this service, which was attended with becoming reverence
and attention, all on board retired to their respective berths to
breakfast, and, at half-past nine, the bell again rung for the
artificers to take their stations in their respective boats. Some demur
having been evinced on board about the propriety of working on Sunday,
which had hitherto been touched upon as delicately as possible, all
hands being called aft, the writer, from the quarter-deck, stated
generally the nature of the service, expressing his hopes that every man
would feel himself called upon to consider the erection of a lighthouse
on the Bell Rock, in every point of view, as a work of necessity and
mercy. He knew that scruples had existed with some, and these had,
indeed, been fairly and candidly urged before leaving the shore; but it
was expected that, after having seen the critical nature of the rock,
and the necessity of the measure, every man would now be satisfied of
the propriety of embracing all opportunities of landing on the rock when
the state of the weather would permit. The writer further took them to
witness that it did not proceed from want of respect for the
appointments and established forms of religion that he had himself
adopted the resolution of attending the Bell Rock works on the Sunday;
but, as he hoped, from a conviction that it was his bounden duty, on the
strictest principles of morality. At the same time it was intimated
that, if any were of a different opinion, they should be perfectly at
liberty to hold their sentiments without the imputation of contumacy or
disobedience; the only difference would be in regard to the pay.
Upon stating this much, he stepped into his boat, requesting all who
were so disposed to follow him. The sailors, from their habits, found no
scruple on this subject, and all of the artificers, though a little
tardy, also embarked, excepting four of the masons, who, from the
beginning, mentioned that they would decline working on Sundays. It may
here be noticed that throughout the whole of the operations it was
observable that the men wrought, if possible, with more keenness upon
the Sundays than at other times, from an impression that they were
engaged in a work of imperious necessity, which required every possible
exertion. On returning to the floating light, after finishing the tide's
work, the boats were received by the part of the ship's crew left on
board with the usual attention of handing ropes to the boats and helping
the artificers on board; but the four masons who had absented themselves
from the work did not appear upon deck.
Monday, 24th Aug.
The boats left the floating light at a quarter-past nine o'clock this
morning, and the work began at three-quarters past nine; but as the
neap-tides were approaching the working time at the rock became
gradually shorter, and it was now with difficulty that two and a half
hours' work could be got. But so keenly had the workmen entered into the
spirit of the Beacon-house operations, that they continued to bore the
holes in the rock till some of them were knee-deep in water.
The operations at this time were entirely directed to the erection of
the beacon, in which every man felt an equal interest, as at this
critical period the slightest casualty to any of the boats at the rock
might have been fatal to himself individually, while it was perhaps
peculiar to the writer more immediately to feel for the safety of the
whole. Each log or upright beam of the beacon was to be fixed to the
rock by two strong and massive bats or stanchions of iron. These bats,
for the fixture of the principal and diagonal beams and bracing chains,
required fifty-four holes, each measuring two inches in diameter and
eighteen inches in depth. There had already been so considerable a
progress made in boring and excavating the holes that the writer's hopes
of getting the beacon erected this year began to be more and more
confirmed, although it was now advancing towards what was considered the
latter end of the proper working season at the Bell Rock. The foreman
joiner, Mr. Francis Watt, was accordingly appointed to attend at the
rock to-day, when the necessary levels were taken for the step or seat
of each particular beam of the beacon, that they might be cut to their
respective lengths, to suit the inequalities of the rock; several of the
stanchions were also tried into their places, and other necessary
observations made, to prevent mistakes on the application of the
apparatus, and to facilitate the operations when the beams came to be
set up, which would require to be done in the course of a single tide.
Tuesday, 25th Aug.
We had now experienced an almost unvaried tract of light airs of
easterly wind, with clear weather in the fore-part of the day and fog in
the evenings. To-day, however, it sensibly changed; when the wind came
to the south-west, and blew a fresh breeze. At nine a.m. the bell rung,
and the boats were hoisted out, and though the artificers were now
pretty well accustomed to tripping up and down the sides of the floating
light, yet it required more seamanship this morning than usual. It
therefore afforded some merriment to those who had got fairly seated in
their respective boats to see the difficulties which attended their
companions, and the hesitating manner in which they quitted hold of the
man-ropes in leaving the ship. The passage to the rock was tedious, and
the boats did not reach it till half-past ten.
It being now the period of neap-tides, the water only partially left the
rock, and some of the men who were boring on the lower ledges of the
site of the beacon stood knee-deep in water. The situation of the smith
to-day was particularly disagreeable, but his services were at all times
indispensable. As the tide did not leave the site of the forge, he stood
in the water, and as there was some roughness on the surface it was with
considerable difficulty that, with the assistance of the sailors, he was
enabled to preserve alive his fire; and, while his feet were immersed in
water, his face was not only scorched but continually exposed to volumes
of smoke, accompanied with sparks from the fire, which were occasionally
set up owing to the strength and direction of the wind.
Wednesday, 26th Aug
The wind had shifted this morning to N.N.W., with rain, and was blowing
what sailors call a fresh breeze. To speak, perhaps, somewhat more
intelligibly to the general reader, the wind was such that a
fishing-boat could just carry full sail. But as it was of importance,
specially in the outset of the business, to keep up the spirit of
enterprise for landing on all practicable occasions, the writer, after
consulting with the landing-master, ordered the bell to be rung for
embarking, and at half-past eleven the boats reached the rock, and left
it again at a quarter-past twelve, without, however, being able to do
much work, as the smith could not be set to work from the smallness of
the ebb and the strong breach of sea, which lashed with great force
among the bars of the forge.
Just as we were about to leave the rock the wind shifted to the S.W.,
and, from a fresh gale, it became what seamen term a hard gale, or such
as would have required the fisherman to take in two or three reefs in
his sail. It is a curious fact that the respective tides of ebb and
flood are apparent upon the shore about an hour and a half sooner than
at the distance of three or four miles in the offing. But what seems
chiefly interesting here is that the tides around this small sunken rock
should follow exactly the same laws as on the extensive shores of the
mainland. When the boats left the Bell Rock to-day it was overflowed by
the flood-tide, but the floating light did not swing round to the
flood-tide for more than an hour afterwards. Under this disadvantage the
boats had to struggle with the ebb-tide and a hard gale of wind, so that
it was with the greatest difficulty they reached the floating light. Had
this gale happened in spring-tides when the current was strong we must
have been driven to sea in a very helpless condition.
The boat which the writer steered was considerably behind the other,
one of the masons having unluckily broken his oar. Our prospect of
getting on board, of course, became doubtful, and our situation was
rather perilous, as the boat shipped so much sea that it occupied two of
the artificers to bale and clear her of water. When the oar gave way we
were about half a mile from the ship, but, being fortunately to
windward, we got into the wake of the floating light, at about 250
fathoms astern, just as the landing-master's boat reached the vessel. He
immediately streamed or floated a life-buoy astern, with a line which
was always in readiness, and by means of this useful implement the boat
was towed alongside of the floating light, where, from her rolling
motion, it required no small management to get safely on board, as the
men were worn out with their exertions in pulling from the rock. On the
present occasion the crews of both boats were completely drenched with
spray, and those who sat upon the bottom of the boats to bale them were
sometimes pretty deep in the water before it could be cleared out. After
getting on board, all hands were allowed an extra dram, and, having
shifted and got a warm and comfortable dinner, the affair, it is
believed, was little more thought of.
Thursday, 27th Aug.
The tides were now in that state which sailors term the dead of the
neap, and it was not expected that any part of the rock would be seen
above water to-day; at any rate, it was obvious, from the experience of
yesterday, that no work could be done upon it, and therefore the
artificers were not required to land. The wind was at west, with light
breezes, and fine clear weather; and as it was an object with the writer
to know the actual state of the Bell Rock at neap-tides, he got one of
the boats manned, and, being accompanied by the landing-master, went to
it at a quarter-past twelve. The parts of the rock that appeared above
water being very trifling, were covered by every wave, so that no
landing was made. Upon trying the depth of water with a boat-hook,
particularly on the sites of the lighthouse and beacon, on the former,
at low water, the depth was found to be three feet, and on the central
parts of the latter it was ascertained to be two feet eight inches.
Having made these remarks, the boat returned to the ship at two p.m.,
and the weather being good, the artificers were found amusing themselves
with fishing. The _Smeaton_ came from Arbroath this afternoon, and made
fast to her moorings, having brought letters and newspapers, with
parcels of clean linen, etc., for the workmen, who were also made happy
by the arrival of three of their comrades from the workyard ashore. From
these men they not only received all the news of the workyard, but
seemed themselves to enjoy great pleasure in communicating whatever they
considered to be interesting with regard to the rock. Some also got
letters from their friends at a distance, the postage of which for the
men afloat was always free, so that they corresponded the more readily.
The site of the building having already been carefully traced out with
the pick-axe, the artificers this day commenced the excavation of the
rock for the foundation or first course of the lighthouse. Four men only
were employed at this work, while twelve continued at the site of the
beacon-house, at which every possible opportunity was embraced, till
this essential part of the operations should be completed.
Wednesday 2nd Sept.
The floating light's bell rung this morning at half-past four o'clock,
as a signal for the boats to be got ready, and the landing took place at
half-past five. In passing the _Smeaton_ at her moorings near the rock,
her boat followed with eight additional artificers who had come from
Arbroath with her at last trip, but there being no room for them in the
floating light's boats, they had continued on board. The weather did not
look very promising in the morning, the wind blowing pretty fresh from
W.S.W.: and had it not been that the writer calculated upon having a
vessel so much at command, in all probability he would not have ventured
to land. The _Smeaton_ rode at what sailors call a _salvagee_, with a
cross-head made fast to the floating buoy. This kind of attachment was
found to be more convenient than the mode of passing the hawser through
the ring of the buoy when the vessel was to be made fast. She had then
only to be steered very close to the buoy, when the salvagee was laid
hold of with a boat-hook, and the _bite_ of the hawser thrown over the
cross-head. But the salvagee, by this method, was always left at the
buoy, and was, of course, more liable to chafe and wear than a hawser
passed through the ring, which could be wattled with canvas, and shifted
at pleasure. The salvagee and cross method is, however, much practised;
but the experience of this morning showed it to be very unsuitable for
vessels riding in an exposed situation for any length of time.
Soon after the artificers landed they commenced work; but the Wind
coming to blow hard, the _Smeaton's_ boat and crew, who had brought
their complement of eight men to the rock, went off to examine her
riding ropes, and see that they were in proper order. The boat had no
sooner reached the vessel than she went adrift, carrying the boat along
with her. By the time that she was got round to make a tack towards the
rock, she had drifted at least three miles to leeward, with the praam
boat astern; and, having both the Wind and a tide against her, the
writer perceived, with no little anxiety, that she could not possibly
return to the rock till long after its being overflowed; for, owing to
the anomaly of the tides formerly noticed, the Bell Rock is completely
under water when the ebb abates to the offing.
In this perilous predicament, indeed, he found himself placed between
hope and despair--but certainly the latter was by much the most
predominant feeling of his mind--situate upon a sunken rock in the
middle of the ocean, which, in the progress of the flood-tide, was to be
laid under water to the depth of at least twelve feet in a stormy sea.
There were this morning thirty-two persons in all upon the rock, with
only two boats, whose complement, even in good weather, did not exceed
twenty-four sitters; but to row to the floating light with so much wind,
and in so heavy a sea, a complement of eight men for each boat was as
much as could, with propriety, be attempted, so that, in this way, about
one-half of our number was unprovided for. Under these circumstances,
had the writer ventured to despatch one of the boats in expectation of
either working the _Smeaton_ sooner up towards the rock, or in hopes of
getting her boat brought to our assistance, this must have given an
immediate alarm to the artificers, each of whom would have insisted upon
taking to his own boat, and leaving the eight artificers belonging to
the _Smeaton_ to their chance. Of course a scuffle might have ensued,
and it is hard to say, in the ardour of men contending for life, where
it might have ended. It has even been hinted to the writer that a party
of the _pickmen_ were determined to keep exclusively to their own boat
against all hazards.
The unfortunate circumstance of the _Smeaton_ and her boat having
drifted was, for a considerable time, only known to the writer and to
the landing-master, who removed to the farther point of the rock, where
he kept his eye steadily upon the progress of the vessel. While the
artificers were at work, chiefly in sitting or kneeling postures,
excavating the rock, or boring with the jumpers, and while their
numerous hammers, with the sound of the smith's anvil, continued, the
situation of things did not appear so awful. In this state of suspense,
with almost certain destruction at hand, the water began to rise upon
those who were at work on the lower parts of the sites of the beacon and
lighthouse. From the run of sea upon the rock, the forge fire was also
sooner extinguished this morning than usual, and the volumes of smoke
having ceased, objects in every direction became visible from all parts
of the rock. After having had about three hours' work, the men began,
pretty generally, to make towards their respective boats for their
jackets and stockings, when, to their astonishment, instead of three,
they found only two boats, the third being adrift with the _Smeaton_.
Not a word was uttered by any one, but all appeared to be silently
calculating their numbers, and looking to each other with evident marks
of perplexity depicted in their countenances. The landing-master,
conceiving that blame might be attached to him for allowing the boat to
leave the rock, still kept at a distance. At this critical moment the
author was standing upon an elevated part of Smith's Ledge, where he
endeavoured to mark the progress of the _Smeaton_, not a little
surprised that her crew did not cut the praam adrift, which greatly
retarded her way, and amazed that some effort was not making to bring at
least the boat, and attempt our relief. The workmen looked steadfastly
upon the writer, and turned occasionally towards the vessel, still far
to leeward.[14] All this passed in the most perfect silence, and the
melancholy solemnity of the group made an impression never to be effaced
from his mind.
The writer had all along been considering of various schemes--providing
the men could be kept under command--which might be put in practice for
the general safety, in hopes that the _Smeaton_ might be able to pick up
the boats to leeward, when they were obliged to leave the rock. He was,
accordingly, about to address the artificers on the perilous nature of
their circumstances, and to propose that all hands should unstrip their
upper clothing when the higher parts of the rock were laid under water;
that the seamen should remove every unnecessary weight and encumbrance
from the boats; that a specified number of men should go into each boat,
and that the remainder should hang by the gunwales, while the boats were
to be rowed gently towards the _Smeaton_, as the course to the _Pharos_,
or floating light, lay rather to windward of the rock. But when he
attempted to speak his mouth was so parched that his tongue refused
utterance, and he now learned by experience that the saliva is as
necessary as the tongue itself for speech. He turned to one of the pools
on the rock and lapped a little water, which produced immediate relief.
But what was his happiness, when on rising from this unpleasant
beverage, some one called out, "A boat! a boat!" and, on looking around,
at no great distance, a large boat was seen through the haze making
towards the rock. This at once enlivened and rejoiced every heart. The
timeous visitor proved to be James Spink, the Bell Rock pilot, who had
come express from Arbroath with letters. Spink had for some time seen
the _Smeaton_, and had even supposed, from the state of the weather,
that all hands were on board of her till he approached more nearly and
observed people upon the rock; but not supposing that the assistance of
his boat was necessary to carry the artificers off the rock, he anchored
on the lee-side and began to fish, waiting, as usual, till the letters
were sent for, as the pilot-boat was too large and unwieldy for
approaching the rock when there was any roughness or run of the sea at
the entrance of the landing creeks.
Upon this fortunate change of circumstances, sixteen of the artificers
were sent, at two trips, in one of the boats, with instructions for
Spink to proceed with them to the floating light. This being
accomplished, the remaining sixteen followed in the two boats belonging
to the service of the rock. Every one felt the most perfect happiness at
leaving the Bell Rock this morning, though a very hard and dangerous
passage to the floating light still awaited us, as the wind by this time
had increased to a pretty hard gale, accompanied with a considerable
swell of sea. Every one was as completely drenched in water as if he had
been dragged astern of the boats. The writer, in particular, being at
the helm, found, on getting on board, that his face and ears were
completely coated with a thin film of salt from the sea spray, which
broke constantly over the bows of the boat. After much baling of water
and severe work at the oars, the three boats reached the floating light,
where some new difficulties occurred in getting on board in safety,
owing partly to the exhausted state of the men, and partly to the
violent rolling of the vessel.
As the tide flowed, it was expected that the _Smeaton_ would have got to
windward; but, seeing that all was safe, after tacking for several hours
and making little progress, she bore away for Arbroath, with the
praam-boat. As there was now too much wind for the pilot-boat to return
to Arbroath, she was made fast astern of the floating light, and the
crew remained on board till next day, when the weather moderated. There
can be very little doubt that the appearance of James Spink with his
boat on this critical occasion was the means of preventing the loss of
lives at the rock this morning. When these circumstances, some years
afterwards, came to the knowledge of the Board, a small pension was
ordered to our faithful pilot, then in his seventieth year; and he still
continues to wear the uniform clothes and badge of the Lighthouse
service. Spink is a remarkably strong man, whose _tout ensemble_ is
highly characteristic of a North-country fisherman. He usually dresses
in a _pé-jacket_, cut after a particular fashion, and wears a large,
flat, blue bonnet. A striking likeness of Spink in his pilot-dress, with
the badge or insignia on his left arm which is characteristic of the
boatmen in the service of the Northern Lights, has been taken by Howe,
and is in the writer's possession.
Thursday, 3rd. Sept.
The bell rung this morning at five o'clock, but the writer must
acknowledge, from the circumstances of yesterday, that its sound was
extremely unwelcome. This appears also to have been the feelings of the
artificers, for when they came to be mustered, out of twenty-six, only
eight, besides the foreman and seamen, appeared upon deck to accompany
the writer to the rock. Such are the baneful effects of anything like
misfortune or accident connected with a work of this description. The
use of argument to persuade the men to embark in cases of this kind
would have been out of place, as it is not only discomfort, or even the
risk of the loss of a limb, but life itself that becomes the question.
The boats, notwithstanding the thinness of our ranks, left the vessel at
half-past five. The rough weather of yesterday having proved but a
summer's gale, the wind came to-day in gentle breezes; yet, the
atmosphere being cloudy, it had not a very favourable appearance. The
boats reached the rock at six a.m., and the eight artificers who landed
were employed in clearing out the bat-holes for the beacon-house, and
had a very prosperous tide of four hours' work, being the longest yet
experienced by half an hour.
The boats left the rock again at ten o'clock, and the weather having
cleared up as we drew near the vessel, the eighteen artificers who had
remained on board were observed upon deck, but as the boats approached
they sought their way below, being quite ashamed of their conduct. This
was the only instance of refusal to go to the rock which occurred during
the whole progress of the work, excepting that of the four men who
declined working upon Sunday, a case which the writer did not conceive
to be at all analogous to the present. It may here be mentioned, much to
the credit of these four men, that they stood foremost in embarking for
the rock this morning.
Saturday, 5th Sept.
It was fortunate that a landing was not attempted this evening, for at
eight o'clock the wind shifted to E.S.E., and at ten it had become a
hard gale, when fifty fathoms of the floating light's hempen cable were
veered out. The gale still increasing, the ship rolled and laboured
excessively, and at midnight eighty fathoms of cable were veered out;
while the sea continued to strike the vessel with a degree of force
which had not before been experienced.
Sunday, 6th Sept.
During the last night there was little rest on board of the _Pharos_,
and daylight, though anxiously wished for, brought no relief, as the
gale continued with unabated violence. The sea struck so hard upon the
vessel's bows that it rose in great quantities, or in "green seas," as
the sailors termed it, which were carried by the wind as far aft as the
quarter-deck, and not unfrequently over the stern of the ship
altogether. It fell occasionally so heavily on the skylight of the
writer's cabin, though so far aft as to be within five feet of the helm,
that the glass was broken to pieces before the dead-light could be got
into its place, so that the water poured down in great quantities. In
shutting out the water, the admission of light was prevented, and in the
morning all continued in the most comfortless state of darkness. About
ten o'clock a.m. the wind shifted to N.E., and blew, if possible, harder
than before, and it was accompanied by a much heavier swell of sea. In
the course of the gale, the part of the cable in the hause-hole had been
so often shifted that nearly the whole length of one of her hempen
cables, of 120 fathoms, had been veered out, besides the chain-moorings.
The cable, for its preservation, was also carefully served or wattled
with pieces of canvas round the windlass, and with leather well greased
in the hause-hole. In this state things remained during the whole day,
every sea which struck the vessel--and the seas followed each other in
close succession--causing her to shake, and all on board occasionally to
tremble. At each of these strokes of the sea the rolling and pitching of
the vessel ceased for a time, and her motion was felt as if she had
either broke adrift before the wind or were in the act of sinking; but,
when another sea came, she ranged up against it with great force, and
this became the regular intimation of our being still riding at anchor.
About eleven o'clock, the writer with some difficulty got out of bed,
but, in attempting to dress, he was thrown twice upon the floor at the
opposite end of the cabin. In an undressed state he made shift to get
about half-way up the companion-stairs, with an intention to observe the
state of the sea and of the ship upon deck; but he no sooner looked over
the companion than a heavy sea struck the vessel, which fell on the
quarter-deck, and rushed downstairs in the officers' cabin in so
considerable a quantity that it was found necessary to lift one of the
scuttles in the floor, to let the water into the limbers of the ship, as
it dashed from side to side in such a manner as to run into the lower
tier of beds. Having been foiled in this attempt, and being completely
wetted, he again got below and went to bed. In this state of the weather
the seamen had to move about the necessary or indispensable duties of
the ship with the most cautious use both of hands and feet, while it
required all the art of the landsman to keep within the precincts of his
bed. The writer even found himself so much tossed about that it became
necessary, in some measure, to shut himself in bed, in order to avoid
being thrown upon the floor. Indeed, such was the motion of the ship
that it seemed wholly impracticable to remain in any other than a lying
posture. On deck the most stormy aspect presented itself, while below
all was wet and comfortless.
About two o'clock p.m. a great alarm was given throughout the ship from
the effects of a very heavy sea which struck her, and almost filled the
waist, pouring down into the berths below, through every chink and
crevice of the hatches and skylights. From the motion of the vessel
being thus suddenly deadened or checked, and from the flowing in of the
water above, it is believed there was not an individual on board who did
not think, at the moment, that the vessel had foundered, and was in the
act of sinking. The writer could withstand this no longer, and as soon
as she again began to range to the sea he determined to make another
effort to get upon deck. In the first instance, however, he groped his
way in darkness from his own cabin through the berths of the officers,
where all was quietness. He next entered the galley and other
compartments occupied by the artificers. Here also all was shut up in
darkness, the fire having been drowned out in the early part of the
gale. Several of the artificers were employed in prayer, repeating
psalms and other devotional exercises in a full tone of voice; others
protesting that, if they should fortunately get once more on shore, no
one should ever see them afloat again. With the assistance of the
landing-master, the writer made his way, holding on step by step, among
the numerous impediments which lay in the way. Such was the creaking
noise of the bulkheads or partitions, the dashing of the water, and the
whistling noise of the winds, that it was hardly possible to break in
upon such a confusion of sounds. In one or two instances, anxious and
repeated inquiries were made by the artificers as to the state of things
upon deck, to which the captain made the usual answer, that it could not
blow long in this way, and that we must soon have better weather. The
next berth in succession, moving forward in the ship, was that allotted
for the seamen. Here the scene was considerably different. Having
reached the middle of this darksome berth without its inmates being
aware of any intrusion, the writer had the consolation of remarking
that, although they talked of bad weather and the cross accidents of the
sea, yet the conversation was carried on in that sort of tone and manner
which bespoke an ease and composure of mind highly creditable to them
and pleasing to him. The writer immediately accosted the seamen about
the state of the ship. To these inquiries they replied that the vessel
being light, and having but little hold of the water, no top-rigging,
with excellent ground-tackle, and everything being fresh and new, they
felt perfect confidence in their situation.
It being impossible to open any of the hatches in the fore part of the
ship in communicating with the deck, the watch was changed by passing
through the several berths to the companion-stair leading to the
quarter-deck. The writer, therefore, made the best of his way aft, and,
on a second attempt to look out, he succeeded, and saw indeed an
astonishing sight. The sea or waves appeared to be ten or fifteen feet
in height of unbroken water, and every approaching billow seemed as if
it would overwhelm our vessel, but she continued to rise upon the waves
and to fall between the seas in a very wonderful manner. It seemed to be
only those seas which caught her in the act of rising which struck her
with so much violence and threw such quantities of water aft. On deck
there was only one solitary individual looking out, to give the alarm in
the event of the ship breaking from her moorings. The seaman on watch
continued only two hours; he who kept watch at this time was a tall,
slender man of a black complexion; he had no greatcoat nor over-all of
any kind, but was simply dressed in his ordinary jacket and trousers;
his hat was tied under his chin with a napkin, and he stood aft the
foremast, to which he had lashed himself with a gasket or small rope
round his waist, to prevent his falling upon deck or being washed
overboard. When the writer looked up, he appeared to smile, which
afforded a further symptom of the confidence of the crew in their ship.
This person on watch was as completely wetted as if he had been drawn
through the sea, which was given as a reason for his not putting on a
greatcoat, that he might wet as few of his clothes as possible, and have
a dry shift when he went below. Upon deck everything that was movable
was out of sight, having either been stowed below, previous to the gale,
or been washed overboard. Some trifling parts of the quarter boards were
damaged by the breach of the sea; and one of the boats upon deck was
about one-third full of water, the oyle-hole or drain having been
accidentally stopped up, and part of her gunwale had received
considerable injury. These observations were hastily made, and not
without occasionally shutting the companion, to avoid being wetted by
the successive seas which broke over the bows and fell upon different
parts of the deck according to the impetus with which the waves struck
the vessel. By this time it was about three o'clock in the afternoon,
and the gale, which had now continued with unabated force for
twenty-seven hours, had not the least appearance of going off.
In the dismal prospect of undergoing another night like the last, and
being in imminent hazard of parting from our cable, the writer thought
it necessary to advise with the master and officers of the ship as to
the probable event of the vessel's drifting from her moorings. They
severally gave it as their opinion that we had now every chance of
riding out the gale, which, in all probability, could not continue with
the same fury many hours longer; and that even if she should part from
her anchor, the storm-sails had been laid to hand, and could be bent in
a very short time. They further stated that from the direction of the
wind being N.E., she would sail up the Firth of Forth to Leith Roads.
But if this should appear doubtful, after passing the Island and Light
of May, it might be advisable at once to steer for Tyningham Sands, on
the western side of Dunbar, and there run the vessel ashore. If this
should happen at the time of high-water, or during the ebbing of the
tide, they were of opinion, from the flatness and strength of the
floating light, that no danger would attend her taking the ground, even
with a very heavy sea. The writer, seeing the confidence which these
gentlemen possessed with regard to the situation of things, found
himself as much relieved with this conversation as he had previously
been with the seeming indifference of the forecastle-men, and the smile
of the watch upon deck, though literally lashed to the foremast. From
this time he felt himself almost perfectly at ease; at any rate, he was
entirely resigned to the ultimate result.
About six o'clock in the evening the ship's company was heard moving
upon deck, which on the present occasion was rather the cause of alarm.
The writer accordingly rang his bell to know what was the matter, when
he was informed by the steward that the weather looked considerably
better, and that the men upon deck were endeavouring to ship the
smoke-funnel of the galley that the people might get some meat. This was
a more favourable account than had been anticipated. During the last
twenty-one hours he himself had not only had nothing to eat, but he had
almost never passed a thought on the subject. Upon the mention of a
change of weather, he sent the steward to learn how the artificers felt,
and on his return he stated that they now seemed to be all very happy,
since the cook had begun to light the galley-fire and make preparations
for the suet-pudding of Sunday, which was the only dish to be attempted
for the mess, from the ease with which it could both be cooked and
served up.
The principal change felt upon the ship as the wind abated was her
increased rolling motion, but the pitching was much diminished, and now
hardly any sea came farther aft than the foremast: but she rolled so
extremely hard as frequently to dip and take in water over the gunwales
and rails in the waist. By nine o'clock all hands had been refreshed by
the exertions of the cook and steward, and were happy in the prospect of
the worst of the gale being over. The usual complement of men was also
now set on watch, and more quietness was experienced throughout the
ship. Although the previous night had been a very restless one, it had
not the effect of inducing repose in the writer's berth on the
succeeding night; for having been so much tossed about in bed during the
last thirty hours, he found no easy spot to turn to, and his body was
all sore to the touch, which ill accorded with the unyielding materials
with which his bed-place was surrounded.
Monday, 7th Sept.
This morning, about eight o'clock, the writer was agreeably surprised to
see the scuttle of his cabin skylight removed, and the bright rays of
the sun admitted. Although the ship continued to roll excessively, and
the sea was still running very high, yet the ordinary business on board
seemed to be going forward on deck. It was impossible to steady a
telescope, so as to look minutely at the progress of the waves and trace
their breach upon the Bell Rock; but the height to which the
cross-running waves rose in sprays when they met each other was truly
grand, and the continued roar and noise of the sea was very perceptible
to the ear. To estimate the height of the sprays at forty or fifty feet
would surely be within the mark. Those of the workmen who were not much
afflicted with sea-sickness came upon deck, and the wetness below being
dried up, the cabins were again brought into a habitable state. Every
one seemed to meet as if after a long absence, congratulating his
neighbour upon the return of good weather. Little could be said as to
the comfort of the vessel, but after riding out such a gale, no one felt
the least doubt or hesitation as to the safety and good condition of her
moorings. The master and mate were extremely anxious, however, to heave
in the hempen cable, and see the state of the clinch or iron ring of the
chain-cable. But the vessel rolled at such a rate that the seamen could
not possibly keep their feet at the windlass nor work the handspikes,
though it had been several times attempted since the gale took off.
About twelve noon, however, the vessel's motion was observed to be
considerably less, and the sailors were enabled to walk upon deck with
some degree of freedom. But, to the astonishment of every one, it was
soon discovered that the floating light was adrift! The windlass was
instantly manned, and the men soon gave out that there was no strain
upon the cable. The mizzen sail, which was bent for the occasional
purpose of making the vessel ride more easily to the tide, was
immediately set, and the other sails were also hoisted in a short time,
when, in no small consternation, we bore away about one mile to the
south-westward of the former station, and there let go the best bower
anchor and cable in twenty fathoms water, to ride until the swell of the
sea should fall, when it might be practicable to grapple for the
moorings, and find a better anchorage for the ship.
Tuesday, 15th Sept.
This morning, at five a.m., the bell rung as a signal for landing upon
the rock, a sound which, after a lapse of ten days, it is believed was
welcomed by every one on board. There being a heavy breach of sea at
the eastern creek, we landed, though not without difficulty, on the
western side, every one seeming more eager than another to get upon the
rock; and never did hungry men sit down to a hearty meal with more
appetite than the artificers began to pick the dulse from the rocks.
This marine plant had the effect of reviving the sickly, and seemed to
be no less relished by those who were more hardy.
While the water was ebbing, and the men were roaming in quest of their
favourite morsel, the writer was examining the effects of the storm upon
the forge and loose apparatus left upon the rock. Six large blocks of
granite which had been landed, by way of experiment, on the 1st instant,
were now removed from their places and, by the force of the sea, thrown
over a rising ledge into a hole at the distance of twelve or fifteen
paces from the place on which they had been landed. This was a pretty
good evidence both of the violence of the storm and the agitation of the
sea upon the rock. The safety of the smith's forge was always an object
of essential regard. The ash-pan of the hearth or fireplace, with its
weighty cast-iron back, had been washed from their places of supposed
security; the chains of attachment had been broken, and these ponderous
articles were found at a very considerable distance in a hole on the
western side of the rock; while the tools and picks of the Aberdeen
masons were scattered about in every direction. It is, however,
remarkable that not a single article was ultimately lost.
This being the night on which the floating light was advertised to be
lighted, it was accordingly exhibited, to the great joy of every one.
Wednesday, 16th Sept.
The writer was made happy to-day by the return of the Lighthouse yacht
from a voyage to the Northern Lighthouses. Having immediately removed on
board of this fine vessel of eighty-one tons register, the artificers
gladly followed; for, though they found themselves more pinched for
accommodation on board of the yacht, and still more so in the _Smeaton_,
yet they greatly preferred either of these to the _Pharos_, or floating
light, on account of her rolling motion, though in all respects fitted
up for their conveniency.
The writer called them to the quarter-deck and informed them that,
having been one month afloat, in terms of their agreement they were now
at liberty to return to the workyard at Arbroath if they preferred this
to continuing at the Bell Rock. But they replied that, in the prospect
of soon getting the beacon erected upon the rock, and having made a
change from the floating light, they were now perfectly reconciled to
their situation, and would remain afloat till the end of the working
season.
Thursday, 17th Sept.
The wind was at N.E. this morning, and though there were only light
airs, yet there was a pretty heavy swell coming ashore upon the rock.
The boats landed at half-past seven o'clock a.m., at the creek on the
southern side of the rock, marked Port Hamilton. But as one of the boats
was in the act of entering this creek, the seaman at the bow-oar, who
had just entered the service, having inadvertently expressed some fear
from a heavy sea which came rolling towards the boat, and one of the
artificers having at the same time looked round and missed a stroke with
his oar, such a preponderance was thus given to the rowers upon the
opposite side that when the wave struck the boat it threw her upon a
ledge of shelving rocks, where the water left her, and she having
_kanted_ to seaward, the next wave completely filled her with water.
After making considerable efforts the boat was again got afloat in the
proper track of the creek, so that we landed without any other accident
than a complete ducking. There being no possibility of getting a shift
of clothes, the artificers began with all speed to work, so as to bring
themselves into heat, while the writer and his assistants kept as much
as possible in motion. Having remained more than an hour upon the rock,
the boats left it at half-past nine; and, after getting on board, the
writer recommended to the artificers, as the best mode of getting into a
state of comfort, to strip off their wet clothes and go to bed for an
hour or two. No further inconveniency was felt, and no one seemed to
complain of the affection called "catching cold."
Friday, 18th Sept.
An important occurrence connected with the operations of this season was
the arrival of the _Smeaton_ at four p.m., having in tow the six
principal beams of the beacon-house, together with all the stanchions
and other work on board for fixing it on the rock. The mooring of the
floating light was a great point gained, but in the erection of the
beacon at this late period of the season new difficulties presented
themselves. The success of such an undertaking at any season was
precarious, because a single day of bad weather occurring before the
necessary fixtures could be made might sweep the whole apparatus from
the rock. Notwithstanding these difficulties, the writer had determined
to make the trial, although he could almost have wished, upon looking at
the state of the clouds and the direction of the wind, that the
apparatus for the beacon had been still in the workyard.
Saturday, 19th Sept.
The main beams of the beacon were made up in two separate rafts, fixed
with bars and bolts of iron. One of these rafts, not being immediately
wanted, was left astern of the floating light, and the other was kept in
tow by the _Smeaton_, at the buoy nearest to the rock. The Lighthouse
yacht rode at another buoy with all hands on board that could possibly
be spared out of the floating light. The party of artificers and seamen
which landed on the rock counted altogether forty in number. At
half-past eight o'clock a derrick, or mast of thirty feet in height, was
erected and properly supported with guy-ropes, for suspending the block
for raising the first principal beam of the beacon; and a winch machine
was also bolted down to the rock for working the purchase-tackle.
Upon raising the derrick, all hands on the rock spontaneously gave three
hearty cheers, as a favourable omen of our future exertions in pointing
out more permanently the position of the rock. Even to this single spar
of timber, could it be preserved, a drowning man might lay hold. When
the _Smeaton_ drifted on the 2nd of this month such a spar would have
been sufficient to save us till she could have come to our relief.
Sunday, 20th Sept.
The wind this morning was variable, but the weather continued extremely
favourable for the operations throughout the whole day. At six a.m. the
boats were in motion, and the raft, consisting of four of the six
principal beams of the beacon-house, each measuring about sixteen inches
square, and fifty feet in length, was towed to the rock, where it was
anchored, that it might _ground_ upon it as the water ebbed. The sailors
and artificers, including all hands, to-day counted no fewer than
fifty-two, being perhaps the greatest number of persons ever collected
upon the Bell Rock. It was early in the tide when the boats reached the
rock, and the men worked a considerable time up to their middle in
water, every one being more eager than his neighbour to be useful. Even
the four artificers who had hitherto declined working on Sunday were
to-day most zealous in their exertions. They had indeed become so
convinced of the precarious nature and necessity of the work that they
never afterwards absented themselves from the rock on Sunday when a
landing was practicable.
Having made fast a piece of very good new line, at about two-thirds from
the lower end of one of the beams, the purchase-tackle of the derrick
was hooked into the turns of the line, and it was speedily raised by the
number of men on the rock and the power of the winch tackle. When this
log was lifted to a sufficient height, its foot, or lower end, was
_stepped_ into the spot which had been previously prepared for it. Two
of the great iron stanchions were then set in their respective holes on
each side of the beam, when a rope was passed round them and the beam,
to prevent it from slipping till it could be more permanently fixed. The
derrick, or upright spar used for carrying the tackle to raise the first
beam, was placed in such a position as to become useful for supporting
the upper end of it, which now became, in its turn, the prop of the
tackle for raising the second beam. The whole difficulty of this
operation was in the raising and propping of the first beam, which
became a convenient derrick for raising the second, these again a pair
of shears for lifting the third, and the shears a triangle for raising
the fourth. Having thus got four of the six principal beams set on end,
it required a considerable degree of trouble to get their upper ends to
fit. Here they formed the apex of a cone, and were all together mortised
into a large piece of beechwood, and secured, for the present, with
ropes, in a temporary manner. During the short period of one tide all
that could further be done for their security was to put a single
screw-bolt through the great kneed bats or stanchions on each side of
the beams, and screw the nut home.
In this manner these four principal beams were erected, and left in a
pretty secure state. The men had commenced while there was about two or
three feet of water upon the side of the beacon, and as the sea was
smooth they continued the work equally long during flood-tide. Two of
the boats being left at the rock to take off the joiners, who were
busily employed on the upper parts till two o'clock p.m., this tide's
work may be said to have continued for about seven hours, which was the
longest that had hitherto been got upon the rock by at least three
hours.
When the first boats left the rock with the artificers employed on the
lower part of the work during the flood-tide, the beacon had quite a
novel appearance. The beams erected formed a common base of about
thirty-three feet, meeting at the top, which was about forty-five feet
above the rock, and here half a dozen of the artificers were still at
work. After clearing the rock the boats made a stop, when three hearty
cheers were given, which were returned with equal goodwill by those upon
the beacon, from the personal interest which every one felt in the
prosperity of this work, so intimately connected with his safety.
All hands having returned to their respective ships, they got a shift of
dry clothes and some refreshment. Being Sunday, they were afterwards
convened by signal on board of the Lighthouse yacht, when prayers were
read; for every heart upon this occasion felt gladness, and every mind
was disposed to be thankful for the happy and successful termination of
the operations of this day.
Monday, 21st Sept.
The remaining two principal beams were erected in the course of this
tide, which, with the assistance of those set up yesterday, was found to
be a very simple operation.
Tuesday, 22nd Sept.
The six principal beams of the beacon were thus secured, at least in a
temporary manner, in the course of two tides, or in the short space of
about eleven hours and a half. Such is the progress that may be made
when active hands and willing minds set properly to work in operations
of this kind. Having now got the weighty part of this work over, and
being thereby relieved of the difficulty both of landing and victualling
such a number of men, the _Smeaton_ could now be spared, and she was
accordingly despatched to Arbroath for a supply of water and provisions,
and carried with her six of the artificers who could best be spared.
Wednesday, 23rd Sept.
In going out of the eastern harbour, the boat which the writer steered
shipped a sea, that filled her about one-third with water. She had also
been hid for a short time, by the waves breaking upon the rock, from the
sight of the crew of the preceding boat, who were much alarmed for our
safety, imagining for a time that she had gone down.
The _Smeaton_ returned from Arbroath this afternoon, but there was so
much sea that she could not be made fast to her moorings, and the vessel
was obliged to return to Arbroath without being able either to deliver
the provisions or take the artificers on board. The Lighthouse yacht was
also soon obliged to follow her example, as the sea was breaking heavily
over her bows. After getting two reefs in the mainsail, and the third or
storm-jib set, the wind being S.W., she bent to windward, though blowing
a hard gale, and got into St. Andrews Bay, where we passed the night
under the lee of Fifeness.
Thursday, 24th Sept.
At two o'clock this morning we were in St. Andrews Bay, standing off and
on shore, with strong gales of wind at S.W.; at seven we were off the
entrance of the Tay; at eight stood towards the rock, and at ten passed
to leeward of it, but could not attempt a landing. The beacon, however,
appeared to remain in good order, and by six p.m. the vessel had again
beaten up to St. Andrews Bay, and got into somewhat smoother water for
the night.
Friday, 25th Sept.
At seven o'clock bore away for the Bell Rock, but finding a heavy sea
running on it were unable to land. The writer, however, had the
satisfaction to observe, with his telescope, that everything about the
beacon appeared entire; and although the sea had a most frightful
appearance, yet it was the opinion of every one that, since the erection
of the beacon, the Bell Rock was divested of many of its terrors, and
had it been possible to have got the boats hoisted out and manned, it
might have even been found practicable to land. At six it blew so hard
that it was found necessary to strike the topmast and take in a third
reef of the mainsail, and under this low canvas we soon reached St.
Andrews Bay, and got again under the lee of the land for the night. The
artificers, being sea-hardy, were quite reconciled to their quarters on
board of the Lighthouse yacht; but it is believed that hardly any
consideration would have induced them again to take up their abode in
the floating light.
Saturday, 26th Sept.
At daylight the yacht steered towards the Bell Rock, and at eight a.m.
made fast to her moorings; at ten, all hands, to the amount of thirty,
landed, when the writer had the happiness to find that the beacon had
withstood the violence of the gale and the heavy breach of sea,
everything being found in the same state in which it had been left on
the 21st. The artificers were now enabled to work upon the rock
throughout the whole day, both at low and high water, but it required
the strictest attention to the state of the weather, in case of their
being overtaken with a gale, which might prevent the possibility of
getting them off the rock.
Two somewhat memorable circumstances in the annals of the Bell Rock
attended the operations of this day: one was the removal of Mr. James
Dove, the foreman smith, with his apparatus, from the rock to the upper
part of the beacon, where the forge was now erected on a temporary
platform, laid on the cross beams or upper framing. The other was the
artificers having dined for the first time upon the rock, their dinner
being cooked on board of the yacht, and sent to them by one of the
boats. But what afforded the greatest happiness and relief was the
removal of the large bellows, which had all along been a source of much
trouble and perplexity, by their hampering and incommoding the boat
which carried the smiths and their apparatus.
Saturday, 3rd Oct.
The wind being west to-day, the weather was very favourable for
operations at the rock, and during the morning and evening tides, with
the aid of torchlight, the masons had seven hours' work upon the site of
the building. The smiths and joiners, who landed at half-past six a.m.,
did not leave the rock till a quarter-past eleven p.m., having been at
work, with little intermission, for sixteen hours and three-quarters.
When the water left the rock, they were employed at the lower parts of
the beacon, and as the tide rose or fell, they shifted the place of
their operations. From these exertions, the fixing and securing of the
beacon made rapid advancement, as the men were now landed in the
morning, and remained throughout the day. But, as a sudden change of
weather might have prevented their being taken off at the proper time of
tide, a quantity of bread and water was always kept on the beacon.
During this period of working at the beacon all the day, and often a
great part of the night, the writer was much on board of the tender;
but, while the masons could work on the rock, and frequently also while
it was covered by the tide, he remained on the beacon; especially during
the night, as he made a point of being on the rock to the latest hour,
and was generally the last person who stepped into the boat. He had laid
this down as part of his plan of procedure; and in this way had
acquired, in the course of the first season, a pretty complete knowledge
and experience of what could actually be done at the Bell Rock, under
all circumstances of the weather. By this means also his assistants, and
the artificers and mariners, got into a systematic habit of proceeding
at the commencement of the work, which, it is believed, continued
throughout the whole of the operations.
Sunday, 4th Oct.
The external part of the beacon was now finished, with its supports and
bracing-chains, and whatever else was considered necessary for its
stability, in so far as the season would permit; and although much was
still wanting to complete this fabric, yet it was in such a state that
it could be left without much fear of the consequences of a storm. The
painting of the upper part was nearly finished this afternoon and the
_Smeaton_ had brought off a quantity of brushwood and other articles,
for the purpose of heating or charring the lower part of the principal
beams, before being laid over with successive coats of boiling pitch, to
the height of from eight to twelve feet, or as high as the rise of
spring-tides. A small flagstaff having also been erected to-day, a flag
was displayed for the first time from the beacon, by which its
perspective effect was greatly improved. On this, as on all like
occasions at the Bell Rock, three hearty cheers were given; and the
steward served out a dram of rum to all hands, while the Lighthouse
yacht, _Smeaton_, and floating light, hoisted their colours in
compliment to the erection.
Monday, 5th Oct.
In the afternoon, and just as the tide's work was over, Mr. John Rennie,
engineer, accompanied by his son Mr. George, on their way to the harbour
works of Fraserburgh, in Aberdeenshire, paid a visit to the Bell Rock,
in a boat from Arbroath. It being then too late in the tide for landing,
they remained on board of the Lighthouse yacht all night, when the
writer, who had now been secluded from society for several weeks,
enjoyed much of Mr. Rennie's interesting conversation, both on general
topics, and professionally upon the progress of the Bell Rock works, on
which he was consulted as chief engineer.
Tuesday, 6th Oct.
The artificers landed this morning at nine, after which one of the boats
returned to the ship for the writer and Messrs. Rennie, who, upon
landing, were saluted with a display of the colours from the beacon and
by three cheers from the workmen. Everything was now in a prepared state
for leaving the rock, and giving up the works afloat for this season,
excepting some small articles, which would still occupy the smiths and
joiners for a few days longer. They accordingly shifted on board of the
_Smealon_, while the yacht left the rock for Arbroath, with Messrs.
Rennie, the writer, and the remainder of the artificers. But, before
taking leave, the steward served out a farewell glass, when three hearty
cheers were given, and an earnest wish expressed that everything, in the
spring of 1808, might be found in the same state of good order as it was
now about to be left.
II
OPERATIONS OF 1808
Monday, 29th Feb.
The writer sailed from Arbroath at one a.m. in the Lighthouse yacht. At
seven the floating light was hailed, and all on board found to be well.
The crew were observed to have a very healthy-like appearance, and
looked better than at the close of the works upon the rock. They seemed
only to regret one thing, which was the secession of their cook, Thomas
Elliot--not on account of his professional skill, but for his facetious
and curious manner. Elliot had something peculiar in his history, and
was reported by his comrades to have seen better days. He was, however,
happy with his situation on board of the floating light, and having a
taste for music, dancing, and acting plays, he contributed much to the
amusement of the ship's company in their dreary abode during the winter
months. He had also recommended himself to their notice as a good
shipkeeper for as it did not answer Elliot to go often ashore, he had
always given up his turn of leave to his neighbours. At his own desire
he was at length paid off, when he had a considerable balance of wages
to receive, which he said would be sufficient to carry him to the West
Indies, and he accordingly took leave of the Lighthouse service.
Tuesday, 1st March.
At daybreak the Lighthouse yacht, attended by a boat from the floating
light, again stood towards the Bell Rock. The weather felt extremely
cold this morning, the thermometer being at 34 degrees, with the wind at
east, accompanied by occasional showers of snow, and the marine
barometer indicated 29.80. At half-past seven the sea ran with such
force upon the rock that it seemed doubtful if a landing could be
effected. At half-past eight, when it was fairly above water, the writer
took his place in the floating light's boat with the artificers, while
the yacht's boat followed, according to the general rule of having two
boats afloat in landing expeditions of this kind, that, in case of
accident to one boat, the other might assist. In several unsuccessful
attempts the boats were beat back by the breach of the sea upon the
rock. On the eastern side it separated into two distinct waves, which
came with a sweep round to the western side, where they met; and at the
instance of their confluence the water rose in spray to a considerable
height. Watching what the sailors term a _smooth_, we caught a
favourable opportunity, and in a very dexterous manner the boats were
rowed between the two seas, and made a favourable landing at the western
creek.
At the latter end of last season, as was formerly noticed, the beacon
was painted white, and from the bleaching of the weather and the sprays
of the sea the upper parts were kept clean; but within the range of the
tide the principal beams were observed to be thickly coated with a green
stuff, the _conferva_ of botanists. Notwithstanding the intrusion of
these works, which had formerly banished the numerous seals that played
about the rock, they were now seen in great numbers, having been in an
almost undisturbed state for six months. It had now also, for the first
time, got some inhabitants of the feathered tribe: in particular the
scarth or cormorant, and the large herring-gull, had made the beacon a
resting-place, from its vicinity to their fishing-grounds. About a dozen
of these birds had rested upon the cross-beams, which, in some places,
were coated with their dung; and their flight, as the boats approached,
was a very unlooked-for indication of life and habitation on the Bell
Rock, conveying the momentary idea of the conversion of this fatal rock,
from being a terror to the mariner, into a residence of man and a
safeguard to shipping.
Upon narrowly examining the great iron stanchions with which the beams
were fixed to the rock, the writer had the satisfaction of finding that
there was not the least appearance of working or shifting at any of the
joints or places of connection; and, excepting the loosening of the
bracing-chains, everything was found in the same entire state in which
it had been left in the month of October. This, in the estimation of the
writer, was a matter of no small importance to the future success of the
work. He from that moment saw the practicability and propriety of
fitting up the beacon, not only as a place of refuge in case of accident
to the boats in landing, but as a residence for the artificers during
the working months.
While upon the top of the beacon the writer was reminded by the
landing-master that the sea was running high, and that it would be
necessary to set off while the rock afforded anything like shelter to
the boats, which by this time had been made fast by a long line to the
beacon, and rode with much agitation, each requiring two men with
boat-hooks to keep them from striking each other, or from ranging up
against the beacon. But even under these circumstances the greatest
confidence was felt by every one, from the security afforded by this
temporary erection. For, supposing the wind had suddenly increased to a
gale, and that it had been found unadvisable to go into the boats; or,
supposing they had drifted or sprung a leak from striking upon the
rocks; in any of these possible and not at all improbable cases, those
who might thus have been left upon the rock had now something to lay
hold of, and, though occupying this dreary habitation of the sea-gull
and the cormorant, affording only bread and water, yet _life_ would be
preserved, and the mind would still be supported by the hope of being
ultimately relieved.
Wednesday, 25th May.
On the 25th of May the writer embarked at Arbroath, on board of the _Sir
Joseph Banks_, for the Bell Rock, accompanied by Mr. Logan senior,
foreman builder, with twelve masons, and two smiths, together with
thirteen seamen, including the master, mate, and steward.
Thursday, 26th May.
Mr. James Wilson, now commander of the _Pharos_, floating light, and
landing-master, in the room of Mr. Sinclair, who had left the service,
came into the writer's cabin this morning at six o'clock, and intimated
that there was a good appearance of landing on the rock. Everything
being arranged, both boats proceeded in company, and at eight a.m. they
reached the rock. The lighthouse colours were immediately hoisted upon
the flag-staff of the beacon, a compliment which was duly returned by
the tender and floating light, when three hearty cheers were given, and
a glass of rum was served out to all hands to drink success to the
operations of 1808.
Friday, 27th May.
This morning the wind was at east, blowing a fresh gale, the weather
being hazy, with a considerable breach of sea setting in upon the rock.
The morning bell was therefore rung, in some doubt as to the
practicability of making a landing. After allowing the rock to get fully
up, or to be sufficiently left by the tide, that the boats might have
some shelter from the range of the sea, they proceeded at eight a.m.,
and upon the whole made a pretty good landing; and after two hours and
three-quarters' work returned to the ship in safety.
In the afternoon the wind considerably increased, and, as a pretty heavy
sea was still running, the tender rode very hard, when Mr. Taylor, the
commander, found it necessary to take in the bowsprit, and strike the
fore and main topmasts, that she might ride more easily. After
consulting about the state of the weather, it was resolved to leave the
artificers on board this evening, and carry only the smiths to the rock,
as the sharpening of the irons was rather behind, from their being so
much broken and blunted by the hard and tough nature of the rock, which
became much more compact and hard as the depth of excavation was
increased. Besides avoiding the risk of encumbering the boats with a
number of men who had not yet got the full command of the oar in a
breach of sea, the writer had another motive for leaving them behind. He
wanted to examine the site of the building without interruption, and to
take the comparative levels of the different inequalities of its area;
and as it would have been painful to have seen men standing idle upon
the Bell Rock, where all moved with activity, it was judged better to
leave them on board. The boats landed at half-past seven p.m., and the
landing-master, with the seamen, was employed during this tide in
cutting the seaweeds from the several paths leading to the
landing-places, to render walking more safe, for, from the slippery
state of the surface of the rock, many severe tumbles had taken place.
In the meantime the writer took the necessary levels, and having
carefully examined the site of the building and considered all its
parts, it still appeared to be necessary to excavate to the average
depth of fourteen inches over the whole area of the foundation.
Saturday, 28th May.
The wind still continued from the eastward with a heavy swell; and
to-day it was accompanied with foggy weather and occasional showers of
rain. Notwithstanding this, such was the confidence which the erection
of the beacon had inspired that the boats landed the artificers on the
rock under very unpromising circumstances, at half-past eight, and they
continued at work till half-past eleven, being a period of three hours,
which was considered a great tide's work in the present low state of the
foundation. Three of the masons on board were so afflicted with
sea-sickness that they had not been able to take any food for almost
three days, and they were literally assisted into the boats this morning
by their companions. It was, however, not a little surprising to see how
speedily these men revived upon landing on the rock and eating a little
dulse. Two of them afterwards assisted the sailors in collecting the
chips of stone and carrying them out of the way of the pickmen; but the
third complained of a pain in his head, and was still unable to do
anything. Instead of returning to the tender with the boats, these three
men remained on the beacon all day, and had their victuals sent to them
along with the smiths'. From Mr. Dove, the foreman smith, they had much
sympathy, for he preferred remaining on the beacon at all hazards, to be
himself relieved from the malady of sea-sickness. The wind continuing
high, with a heavy sea, and the tide falling late, it was not judged
proper to land the artificers this evening, but in the twilight the
boats were sent to fetch the people on board who had been left on the
rock.
Sunday, 29th May.
The wind was from the S.W. to-day, and the signal-bell rung, as usual,
about an hour before the period for landing on the rock. The writer was
rather surprised, however, to hear the landing-master repeatedly call,
"All hands for the rock!" and, coming on deck, he was disappointed to
find the seamen only in the boats. Upon inquiry, it appeared that some
misunderstanding had taken place about the wages of the artificers for
Sundays. They had preferred wages for seven days statedly to the former
mode of allowing a day for each tide's work on Sunday, as they did not
like the appearance of working for double or even treble wages on
Sunday, and would rather have it understood that their work on that day
arose more from the urgency of the case than with a view to emolument.
This having been judged creditable to their religious feelings, and
readily adjusted to their wish, the boats proceeded to the rock, and the
work commenced at nine a.m.
Monday, 30th May.
Mr. Francis Watt commenced, with five joiners, to fit up a temporary
platform upon the beacon, about twenty-five feet above the highest part
of the rock. This platform was to be used as the site of the smith's
forge, after the beacon should be fitted up as a barrack; and here also
the mortar was to be mixed and prepared for the building, and it was
accordingly termed the Mortar Gallery.
The landing-master's crew completed the discharging from the _Smeaton_
of her cargo of the cast-iron rails and timber. It must not here be
omitted to notice that the _Smeaton_ took in ballast from the Bell Rock,
consisting of the shivers or chips of stone produced by the workmen in
preparing the site of the building, which were now accumulating in great
quantities on the rock. These the boats loaded, after discharging the
iron. The object in carrying off these chips, besides ballasting the
vessel, was to get them permanently out of the way, as they were apt to
shift about from place to place with every gale of wind; and it often
required a considerable time to clear the foundation a second time of
this rubbish. The circumstance of ballasting a ship at the Bell Rock
afforded great entertainment, especially to the sailors; and it was
perhaps with truth remarked that the _Smeaton_ was the first vessel that
had ever taken on board ballast at the Bell Rock. Mr. Pool, the
commander of this vessel, afterwards acquainted the writer that, when
the ballast was landed upon the quay at Leith, many persons carried away
specimens of it, as part of a cargo from the Bell Rock; when he added,
that such was the interest excited, from the number of specimens carried
away, that some of his friends suggested that he should have sent the
whole to the Cross of Edinburgh, where each piece might have sold for a
penny.
Tuesday, 31st May.
In the evening the boats went to the rock, and brought the joiners and
smiths, and their sickly companions, on board of the tender. These also
brought with them two baskets full of fish, which they had caught at
high-water from the beacon, reporting, at the same time, to their
comrades, that the fish were swimming in such numbers over the rock at
high-water that it was completely hid from their sight, and nothing seen
but the movement of thousands of fish. They were almost exclusively of
the species called the podlie, or young coal-fish. This discovery, made
for the first time to-day by the workmen, was considered fortunate, as
an additional circumstance likely to produce an inclination among the
artificers to take up their residence in the beacon, when it came to be
fitted up as a barrack.
Tuesday, 7th June.
At three o'clock in the morning the ship's bell was rung as the signal
for landing at the rock. When the landing was to be made before
breakfast, it was customary to give each of the artificers and seamen a
dram and a biscuit, and coffee was prepared by the steward for the
cabins. Exactly at four o'clock the whole party landed from three boats,
including one of those belonging to the floating light, with a part of
that ship's crew, which always attended the works in moderate weather.
The landing-master's boat, called the _Seaman_, but more commonly called
the _Lifeboat_, took the lead. The next boat, called the _Mason_, was
generally steered by the writer; while the floating light's boat,
_Pharos_, was under the management of the boatswain of that ship.
Having now so considerable a party of workmen and sailors on the rock,
it may be proper here to notice how their labours were directed.
Preparations having been made last month for the erection of a second
forge upon the beacon, the smiths commenced their operations both upon
the lower and higher platforms. They were employed in sharpening the
picks and irons for the masons, and making bats and other apparatus of
various descriptions connected with the fitting of the railways. The
landing-master's crew were occupied in assisting the millwrights in
laying the railways to hand. Sailors, of all other descriptions of men,
are the most accommodating in the use of their hands. They worked freely
with the boring-irons, and assisted in all the operations of the
railways, acting by turns as boatmen, seamen, and artificers. We had no
such character on the Bell Rock as the common labourer. All the
operations of this department were cheerfully undertaken by the seamen,
who, both on the rock and on shipboard, were the inseparable companions
of every work connected with the erection of the Bell Rock Lighthouse.
It will naturally be supposed that about twenty-five masons, occupied
with their picks in executing and preparing the foundation of the
lighthouse, in the course of a tide of about three hours, would make a
considerable impression upon an area even of forty-two feet in diameter.
But in proportion as the foundation was deepened, the rock was found to
be much more hard and difficult to work, while the baling and pumping of
water became much more troublesome. A joiner was kept almost constantly
employed in fitting the picks to their handles, which, as well as the
points to the irons, were very frequently broken.
The Bell Rock this morning presented by far the most busy and active
appearance it had exhibited since the erection of the principal beams of
the beacon. The surface of the rock was crowded with men, the two forges
flaming, the one above the other, upon the beacon, while the anvils
thundered with the rebounding noise of their wooden supports, and formed
a curious contrast with the occasional clamour of the surges. The wind
was westerly, and the weather being extremely agreeable, so soon after
breakfast as the tide had sufficiently overflowed the rock to float the
boats over it, the smiths, with a number of the artificers, returned to
the beacon, carrying their fishing-tackle along with them. In the course
of the forenoon, the beacon exhibited a still more extraordinary
appearance than the rock had done in the morning. The sea being smooth,
it seemed to be afloat upon the water, with a number of men supporting
themselves in all the variety of attitude and position: while, from the
upper part of this wooden house, the volumes of smoke which ascended
from the forges gave the whole a very curious and fanciful appearance.
In the course of this tide it was observed that a heavy swell was
setting in from the eastward, and the appearance of the sky indicated a
change of weather, while the wind was shifting about. The barometer also
had fallen from 30 in. to 29.6. It was, therefore, judged prudent to
shift the vessel to the S.W. or more distant buoy. Her bowsprit was also
soon afterwards taken in, the topmasts struck, and everything made
_snug_, as seamen term it, for a gale. During the course of the night
the wind increased and shifted to the eastward, when the vessel rolled
very hard, and the sea often broke over her bows with great force.
Wednesday, 8th June.
Although the motion of the tender was much less than that of the
floating light--at least, in regard to the rolling motion--yet she
_sended_, or pitched, much. Being also of a very handsome build, and
what seamen term very _clean aft_, the sea often struck her counter with
such force that the writer, who possessed the aftermost cabin, being
unaccustomed to this new vessel, could not divest himself of uneasiness;
for when her stern fell into the sea, it struck with so much violence as
to be more like the resistance of a rock than the sea. The water, at
the same time, often rushed with great force up the rudder-case, and,
forcing up the valve of the water-closet, the floor of his cabin was at
times laid under water. The gale continued to increase, and the vessel
rolled and pitched in such a manner that the hawser by which the tender
was made fast to the buoy snapped, and she went adrift. In the act of
swinging round to the wind she shipped a very heavy sea, which greatly
alarmed the artificers, who imagined that we had got upon the rock; but
this, from the direction of the wind, was impossible. The writer,
however, sprung upon deck, where he found the sailors busily employed in
rigging out the bowsprit and in setting sail. From the easterly
direction of the wind, it was considered most advisable to steer for the
Firth of Forth, and there wait a change of weather. At two p.m. we
accordingly passed the Isle of May, at six anchored in Leith Roads, and
at eight the writer landed, when he came in upon his friends, who were
not a little surprised at his unexpected appearance, which gave an
instantaneous alarm for the safety of things at the Bell Rock.
Thursday, 9th June.
The wind still continued to blow very hard at E. by N., and the _Sir
Joseph Banks_ rode heavily, and even drifted with both anchors ahead, in
Leith Roads. The artificers did not attempt to leave the ship last
night; but there being upwards of fifty people on board, and the decks
greatly lumbered with the two large boats, they were in a very crowded
and impatient state on board. But to-day they got ashore, and amused
themselves by walking about the streets of Edinburgh, some in very
humble apparel, from having only the worst of their jackets with them,
which, though quite suitable for their work, were hardly fit for public
inspection, being not only tattered, but greatly stained with the red
colour of the rock.
Friday, 10th June.
To-day the wind was at S.E., with light breezes and foggy weather. At
six a.m. the writer again embarked for the Bell Rock, when the vessel
immediately sailed. At eleven p.m., there being no wind, the
kedge-anchor was _let go_ off Anstruther, one of the numerous towns on
the coast of Fife, where we waited the return of the tide.
Saturday, 11th June.
At six a.m. the _Sir Joseph_ got under weigh, and at eleven was again
made fast to the southern buoy at the Bell Rock. Though it was now late
in the tide, the writer, being anxious to ascertain the state of things
after the gale, landed with the artificers to the number of forty-four.
Everything was found in an entire state; but, as the tide was nearly
gone, only half an hour's work had been got when the site of the
building was overflowed. In the evening the boats again landed at nine,
and, after a good tide's work of three hours with torchlight, the work
was left off at midnight. To the distant shipping the appearance of
things under night on the Bell Rock, when the work was going forward,
must have been very remarkable, especially to those who were strangers
to the operations. Mr. John Reid, principal lightkeeper, who also acted
as master of the floating light during the working months at the rock,
described the appearance of the numerous lights situated so low in the
water, when seen at the distance of two or three miles, as putting him
in mind of Milton's description of the fiends in the lower regions,
adding, "for it seems greatly to surpass Will-o'-the-wisp, or any of
those earthly spectres of which we have so often heard."
Monday 13th June.
From the difficulties attending the landing on the rock, owing to the
breach of sea which had for days past been around it, the artificers
showed some backwardness at getting into the boats this morning; but
after a little explanation this was got over. It was always observable
that for some time after anything like danger had occurred at the rock,
the workmen became much more cautious, and on some occasions their
timidity was rather troublesome. It fortunately happened, however, that
along with the writer's assistants and the sailors there were also some
of the artificers themselves who felt no such scruples, and in this way
these difficulties were the more easily surmounted. In matters where
life is in danger it becomes necessary to treat even unfounded
prejudices with tenderness, as an accident, under certain circumstances,
would not only have been particularly painful to those giving
directions, but have proved highly detrimental to the work, especially
in the early stages of its advancement.
At four o'clock fifty-eight persons landed; but the tides being
extremely languid, the water only left the higher parts of the rock, and
no work could be done at the site of the building. A third forge was,
however, put in operation during a short time, for the greater
conveniency of sharpening the picks and irons, and for purposes
connected with the preparations for fixing the railways on the rock. The
weather towards the evening became thick and foggy, and there was hardly
a breath of wind to ruffle the surface of the water. Had it not,
therefore, been for the noise from the anvils of the smiths who had been
left on the beacon throughout the day, which afforded a guide for the
boats, a landing could not have been attempted this evening, especially
with such a company of artificers. This circumstance confirmed the
writer's opinion with regard to the propriety of connecting large bells
to be rung with machinery in the lighthouse, to be tolled day and night
during the continuance of foggy weather.
Thursday, 23rd June.
The boats landed this evening, when the artificers had again two hours'
work. The weather still continuing very thick and foggy, more
difficulty was experienced in getting on board of the vessels to-night
than had occurred on any previous occasion, owing to a light breeze of
wind which carried the sound of the bell, and the other signals made on
board of the vessels, away from the rock. Having fortunately made out
the position of the sloop _Smeaton_ at the N.E. buoy--to which we were
much assisted by the barking of the ship's dog,--we parted with the
_Smeaton's_ boat, when the boats of the tender took a fresh departure
for that vessel, which lay about half a mile to the south-westward. Yet
such is the very deceiving state of the tides, that, although there was
a small binnacle and compass in the landing-master's boat, we had,
nevertheless, passed the _Sir Joseph_ a good way, when, fortunately, one
of the sailors catched the sound of a blowing-horn. The only firearms on
board were a pair of swivels of one-inch calibre; but it is quite
surprising how much the sound is lost in foggy weather, as the report
was heard but at a very short distance. The sound from the explosion of
gunpowder is so instantaneous that the effect of the small guns was not
so good as either the blowing of a horn or the tolling of a bell, which
afforded a more constant and steady direction for the pilot.
Wednesday, 6th July.
Landed on the rock with the three boats belonging to the tender at five
p.m., and began immediately to bale the water out of the foundation-pit
with a number of buckets, while the pumps were also kept in action with
relays of artificers and seamen. The work commenced upon the higher
parts of the foundation as the water left them, but it was now pretty
generally reduced to a level. About twenty men could be conveniently
employed at each pump, and it is quite astonishing in how short a time
so great a body of water could be drawn off. The water in the
foundation-pit at this time measured about two feet in depth, on an area
of forty-two feet in diameter, and yet it was drawn off in the course of
about half an hour. After this the artificers commenced with their picks
and continued at work for two hours and a half, some of the sailors
being at the same time busily employed in clearing the foundation of
chips and in conveying the irons to and from the smiths on the beacon,
where they were sharped. At eight o'clock the sea broke in upon us and
overflowed the foundation-pit, when the boats returned to the tender.
Thursday, 7th July.
The landing-master's bell rung this morning about four o'clock, and at
half-past five, the foundation being cleared, the work commenced on the
site of the building. But from the moment of landing, the squad of
joiners and millwrights was at work upon the higher parts of the rock in
laying the railways, while the anvils of the smith resounded on the
beacon, and such columns of smoke ascended from the forges that they
were often mistaken by strangers at a distance for a ship on fire. After
continuing three hours at work the foundation of the building was again
overflowed, and the boats returned to the ship at half-past eight
o'clock. The masons and pickmen had, at this period, a pretty long day
on board of the tender, but the smiths and joiners were kept constantly
at work upon the beacon, the stability and great conveniency of which
had now been so fully shown that no doubt remained as to the propriety
of fitting it up as a barrack. The workmen were accordingly employed,
during the period of high-water, in making preparations for this
purpose.
The foundation-pit now assumed the appearance of a great platform, and
the late tides had been so favourable that it became apparent that the
first course, consisting of a few irregular and detached stones for
making up certain inequalities in the interior parts of the site of the
building, might be laid in the course of the present spring-tides.
Having been enabled to-day to get the dimensions of the foundation, or
first stone, accurately taken, a mould was made of its figure, when the
writer left the rock, after the tide's work of this morning, in a fast
rowing-boat for Arbroath; and, upon landing, two men were immediately
set to work upon one of the blocks from Mylnefield quarry, which was
prepared in the course of the following day, as the stone-cutters
relieved each other, and worked both night and day, so that it was sent
off in one of the stone-lighters without delay.
Saturday, 9th July.
The site of the foundation-stone was very difficult to work, from its
depth in the rock; but being now nearly prepared, it formed a very
agreeable kind of pastime at high-water for all hands to land the stone
itself upon the rock. The landing-master's crew and artificers
accordingly entered with great spirit into this operation. The stone was
placed upon the deck of the _Hedderwick_ praam-boat, which had just been
brought from Leith, and was decorated with colours for the occasion.
Flags were also displayed from the shipping in the offing, and upon the
beacon. Here the writer took his station with the greater part of the
artificers, who supported themselves in every possible position while
the boats towed the praam from her moorings and brought her immediately
over the site of the building, where her grappling anchors were let go.
The stone was then lifted off the deck by a tackle hooked into a Lewis
bat inserted into it, when it was gently lowered into the water and
grounded on the site of the building, amidst the cheering acclamations
of about sixty persons.
Sunday, 10th July.
At eleven o'clock the foundation-stone was laid to hand. It was of a
square form, containing about twenty cubic feet, and had the figures,
or date, of 1808 simply cut upon it with a chisel. A derrick, or spar of
timber, having been erected at the edge of the hole and guyed with
ropes, the stone was then hooked to the tackle and lowered into its
place, when the writer, attended by his assistants--Mr. Peter Logan, Mr.
Francis Watt, and Mr. James Wilson,--applied the square, the level, and
the mallet, and pronounced the following benediction: "May the Great
Architect of the Universe complete and bless this building," on which
three hearty cheers were given, and success to the future operations was
drunk with the greatest enthusiasm.
Tuesday, 26th July.
The wind being at S.E. this evening, we had a pretty heavy swell of sea
upon the rock, and some difficulty attended our getting off in safety,
as the boats got aground in the creek and were in danger of being upset.
Upon extinguishing the torch-lights, about twelve in number, the
darkness of the night seemed quite horrible; the water being also much
charged with the phosphorescent appearance which is familiar to every
one on shipboard, the waves, as they dashed upon the rock, were in some
degree like so much liquid flame. The scene, upon the whole, was truly
awful!
Wednesday, 27th July.
In leaving the rock this evening everything, after the torches were
extinguished, had the same dismal appearance as last night, but so
perfectly acquainted were the landing-master and his crew with the
position of things at the rock, that comparatively little inconveniency
was experienced on these occasions when the weather was moderate; such
is the effect of habit, even in the most unpleasant situations. If, for
example, it had been proposed to a person accustomed to a city life, at
once to take up his quarters off a sunken reef and land upon it in boats
at all hours of the night, the proposition must have appeared quite
impracticable and extravagant; but this practice coming progressively
upon the artificers, it was ultimately undertaken with the greatest
alacrity. Notwithstanding this, however, it must be acknowledged that it
was not till after much labour and peril, and many an anxious hour, that
the writer is enabled to state that the site of the Bell Rock Lighthouse
is fully prepared for the first entire course of the building.
Friday, 12th Aug.
The artificers landed this morning at half-past ten, and after an hour
and a half's work eight stones were laid, which completed the first
entire course of the building, consisting of 123 blocks, the last of
which was laid with three hearty cheers.
Saturday, 10th Sept.
Landed at nine a.m., and by a quarter-past twelve noon twenty-three
stones had been laid. The works being now somewhat elevated by the lower
courses, we got quit of the very serious inconvenience of pumping water
to clear the foundation-pit. This gave much facility to the operations,
and was noticed with expressions of as much happiness by the artificers
as the seamen had shown when relieved of the continual trouble of
carrying the smith's bellows off the rock prior to the erection of the
beacon.
Wednesday, 21st Sept.
Mr. Thomas Macurich, mate of the _Smeaton_, and James Scott, one of the
crew, a young man about eighteen years of age, immediately went into
their boat to make fast a hawser to the ring in the top of the floating
buoy of the moorings, and were forthwith to proceed to land their cargo,
so much wanted, at the rock. The tides at this period were very strong,
and the mooring-chain, when sweeping the ground, had caught hold of a
rock or piece of wreck by which the chain was so shortened that when the
tide flowed the buoy got almost under water, and little more than the
ring appeared at the surface. When Macurich and Scott were in the act of
making the hawser fast to the ring, the chain got suddenly disentangled
at the bottom, and this large buoy, measuring about seven feet in height
and three feet in diameter at the middle, tapering to both ends, being
what seamen term a _Nun-buoy_, vaulted or sprung up with such force that
it upset the boat, which instantly filled with water. Mr. Macurich, with
much exertion, succeeded in getting hold of the boat's gunwale, still
above the surface of the water, and by this means was saved; but the
young man Scott was unfortunately drowned. He had in all probability
been struck about the head by the ring of the buoy, for although
surrounded with the oars and the thwarts of the boat which floated near
him, yet he seemed entirely to want the power of availing himself of
such assistance, and appeared to be quite insensible, while Pool, the
master of the _Smeaton_. called loudly to him; and before assistance
could be got from the tender, he was carried away by the strength of the
current and disappeared.
The young man Scott was a great favourite in the service, having had
something uncommonly mild and complaisant in his manner; and his loss
was therefore universally regretted. The circumstances of his case were
also peculiarly distressing to his mother, as her husband, who was a
seaman, had for three years past been confined to a French prison, and
the deceased was the chief support of the family. In order in some
measure to make up the loss to the poor woman for the monthly aliment
regularly allowed her by her late son, it was suggested that a younger
boy, a brother of the deceased, might be taken into the service. This
appeared to be rather a delicate proposition, but it was left to the
landing-master to arrange according to circumstances; such was the
resignation, and at the same time the spirit, of the poor woman, that
she readily accepted the proposal, and in a few days the younger Scott
was actually afloat in the place of his brother. On representing this
distressing case to the Board, the Commissioners were pleased to grant
an annuity of £5 to Scott's mother.
The _Smeaton_, not having been made fast to the buoy, had, with the
ebb-tide, drifted to leeward a considerable way eastward of the rock,
and could not, till the return of the flood-tide, be worked up to her
moorings, so that the present tide was lost, notwithstanding all
exertions which had been made both ashore and afloat with this cargo.
The artificers landed at six a.m.; but, as no materials could be got
upon the rock this morning, they were employed in boring trenail holes
and in various other operations, and after four hours' work they
returned on board the tender. When the _Smeaton_ got up to her moorings,
the landing-master's crew immediately began to unload her. There being
too much wind for towing the praams in the usual way, they were warped
to the rock in the most laborious manner by their windlasses, with
successive grapplings and hawsers laid out for this purpose. At six p.m.
the artificers landed, and continued at work till half-past ten, when
the remaining seventeen stones were laid which completed the third
entire course, or fourth of the lighthouse, with which the building
operations were closed for the season.
III
OPERATIONS OF 1809
Wednesday, 24th May.
The last night was the first that the writer had passed in his old
quarters on board of the floating light for about twelve months, when
the weather was so fine and the sea so smooth that even here he felt but
little or no motion, excepting at the turn of the tide, when the vessel
gets into what the seamen term the _trough of the sea_. At six a.m. Mr.
Watt, who conducted the operations of the railways and beacon-house, had
landed with nine artificers. At half-past one p.m. Mr. Peter Logan had
also landed with fifteen masons, and immediately proceeded to set up the
crane. The sheer-crane or apparatus for lifting the stones out of the
praam-boats at the eastern creek had been already erected, and the
railways now formed about two-thirds of an entire circle round the
building: some progress had likewise been made with the reach towards
the western landing-place. The floors being laid, the beacon now assumed
the appearance of a habitation. The _Smeaton_ was at her moorings, with
the _Fernie_ praam-boat astern, for which she was laying down moorings,
and the tender being also at her station, the Bell Rock had again put
on its former busy aspect.
Wednesday, 31st May.
The landing-master's bell, often no very favourite sound, rung at six
this morning; but on this occasion, it is believed, it was gladly
received by all on board, as the welcome signal of the return of better
weather. The masons laid thirteen stones to-day, which the seamen had
landed, together with other building materials. During these twenty-four
hours the wind was from the south, blowing fresh breezes, accompanied
with showers of snow. In the morning the snow showers were so thick that
it was with difficulty the landing-master, who always steered the
leading boat, could make his way to the rock through the drift. But at
the Bell Rock neither snow nor rain, nor fog nor wind, retarded the
progress of the work, if unaccompanied by a heavy swell or breach of the
sea.
The weather during the months of April and May had been uncommonly
boisterous, and so cold that the thermometer seldom exceeded 40º, while
the barometer was generally about 29.50. We had not only hail and sleet,
but the snow on the last day of May lay on the decks and rigging of the
ship to the depth of about three inches; and, although now entering upon
the month of June, the length of the day was the chief indication of
summer. Yet such is the effect of habit, and such was the expertness of
the landing-master's crew, that, even in this description of weather,
seldom a tide's work was lost. Such was the ardour and zeal of the heads
of the several departments at the rock, including Mr. Peter Logan,
foreman builder, Mr. Francis Watt, foreman millwright, and Captain
Wilson, landing-master, that it was on no occasion necessary to address
them, excepting in the way of precaution or restraint. Under these
circumstances, however, the writer not unfrequently felt considerable
anxiety, of which this day's experience will afford an example.
Thursday, 1st June.
This morning, at a quarter-past eight, the artificers were landed as
usual, and, after three hours and three-quarters' work, five stones were
laid, the greater part of this tide having been taken up in completing
the boring and trenailing of the stones formerly laid. At noon the
writer, with the seamen and artificers, proceeded to the tender, leaving
on the beacon the joiners, and several of those who were troubled with
sea-sickness--among whom was Mr. Logan, who remained with Mr.
Watt--counting altogether eleven persons. During the first and middle
parts of these twenty-four hours the wind was from the east, blowing
what the seamen term "fresh breezes"; but in the afternoon it shifted to
E.N.E., accompanied with so heavy a swell of sea that the _Smeaton_ and
tender struck their topmasts, launched in their bolt-sprits, and "made
all snug" for a gale. At four p.m. the _Smeaton_ was obliged to slip
her moorings, and passed the tender, drifting before the wind, with only
the foresail set. In passing, Mr. Pool hailed that he must run for the
Firth of Forth to prevent the vessel from "riding under."
On board of the tender the writer's chief concern was about the eleven
men left upon the beacon. Directions were accordingly given that
everything about the vessel should be put in the best possible state, to
present as little resistance to the wind as possible, that she might
have the better chance of riding out the gale. Among these preparations
the best bower cable was bent, so as to have a second anchor in
readiness in case the mooring-hawser should give way, that every means
might be used for keeping the vessel within sight of the prisoners on
the beacon, and thereby keep them in as good spirits as possible. From
the same motive the boats were kept afloat that they might be less in
fear of the vessel leaving her station. The landing-master had, however,
repeatedly expressed his anxiety for the safety of the boats, and wished
much to have them hoisted on board. At seven p.m. one of the boats, as
he feared, was unluckily filled with sea from a wave breaking into her,
and it was with great difficulty that she could be baled out and got on
board, with the loss of her oars, rudder, and loose thwarts. Such was
the motion of the ship that in taking this boat on board her gunwale was
stove in, and she otherwise received considerable damage. Night
approached, but it was still found quite impossible to go near the rock.
Consulting, therefore, the safety of the second boat, she also was
hoisted on board of the tender.
At this time the cabins of the beacon were only partially covered, and
had neither been provided with bedding nor a proper fireplace, while the
stock of provisions was but slender. In these uncomfortable
circumstances the people on the beacon were left for the night, nor was
the situation of those on board of the tender much better. The rolling
and pitching motion of the ship was excessive; and, excepting to those
who had been accustomed to a residence in the floating light, it seemed
quite intolerable. Nothing was heard but the hissing of the winds and
the creaking of the bulkheads or partitions of the ship; the night was,
therefore, spent in the most unpleasant reflections upon the condition
of the people on the beacon, especially in the prospect of the tender
being driven from her moorings. But, even in such a case, it afforded
some consolation that the stability of the fabric was never doubted, and
that the boats of the floating light were at no great distance, and
ready to render the people on the rock the earliest assistance which the
weather would permit. The writer's cabin being in the sternmost part of
the ship, which had what sailors term a good entry, or was sharp built,
the sea, as before noticed, struck her counter with so much violence
that the water, with a rushing noise, continually forced its way up the
rudder-case, lifted the valve of the water-closet, and overran the cabin
floor. In these circumstances daylight was eagerly looked for, and
hailed with delight, as well by those afloat as by the artificers upon
the rock.
Friday, 2nd June.
In the course of the night the writer held repeated conversations with
the officer on watch, who reported that the weather continued much in
the same state, and that the barometer still indicated 29.20 inches. At
six a.m. the landing-master considered the weather to have somewhat
moderated; and, from certain appearances of the sky, he was of opinion
that a change for the better would soon take place. He accordingly
proposed to attempt a landing at low-water, and either get the people
off the rock, or at least ascertain what state they were in. At nine
a.m. he left the vessel with a boat well manned, carrying with him a
supply of cooked provisions and a tea-kettle full of mulled port wine
for the people on the beacon, who had not had any regular diet for about
thirty hours, while they were exposed during that period, in a great
measure, both to the winds and the sprays of the sea. The boat having
succeeded in landing, she returned at eleven a.m. with the artificers,
who had got off with considerable difficulty, and who were heartily
welcomed by all on board.
Upon inquiry it appeared that three of the stones last laid upon the
building had been partially lifted from their beds by the force of the
sea, and were now held only by the trenails, and that the cast-iron
sheer-crane had again been thrown down and completely broken. With
regard to the beacon, the sea at high-water had lifted part of the
mortar gallery or lowest floor, and washed away all the lime-casks and
other movable articles from it; but the principal parts of this fabric
had sustained no damage. On pressing Messrs. Logan and Watt on the
situation of things in the course of the night, Mr. Logan emphatically
said; "That the beacon had an _ill-faured[15] twist_ when the sea broke
upon it at high-water, but that they were not very apprehensive of
danger." On inquiring as to how they spent the night, it appeared that
they had made shift to keep a small fire burning, and by means of some
old sails defended themselves pretty well from the sea sprays.
It was particularly mentioned that by the exertions of James Glen, one
of the joiners, a number of articles were saved from being washed off
the mortar gallery. Glen was also very useful in keeping up the spirits
of the forlorn party. In the early part of life he had undergone many
curious adventures at sea, which he now recounted somewhat after the
manner of the tales of the "Arabian Nights." When one observed that the
beacon was a most comfortless lodging, Glen would presently introduce
some of his exploits and hardships, in comparison with which the state
of things at the beacon bore an aspect of comfort and happiness. Looking
to their slender stock of provisions, and their perilous and uncertain
chance of speedy relief, he would launch out into an account of one of
his expeditions in the North Sea, when the vessel, being much disabled
in a storm, was driven before the wind with the loss of almost all their
provisions; and the ship being much infested with rats, the crew hunted
these vermin with great eagerness to help their scanty allowance. By
such means Glen had the address to make his companions, in some measure,
satisfied, or at least passive, with regard to their miserable prospects
upon this half-tide rock in the middle of the ocean. This incident is
noticed, more particularly, to show the effects of such a happy turn of
mind, even under the most distressing and ill-fated circumstances.
Saturday, 17th June.
At eight a.m. the artificers and sailors, forty-five in number, landed
on the rock, and after four hours' work seven stones were laid. The
remainder of this tide, from the threatening appearance of the weather,
was occupied in trenailing and making all things as secure as possible.
At twelve noon the rock and building were again overflowed, when the
masons and seamen went on board of the tender, but Mr. Watt, with his
squad of ten men, remained on the beacon throughout the day. As it blew
fresh from the N.W. in the evening, it was found impracticable either to
land the building artificers or to take the artificers off the beacon,
and they were accordingly left there all night, but in circumstances
very different from those of the 1st of this month. The house, being now
in a more complete state, was provided with bedding, and they spent the
night pretty well, though they complained of having been much disturbed
at the time of high-water by the shaking and tremulous motion of their
house and by the plashing noise of the sea upon the mortar gallery. Here
James Glen's versatile powers were again at work in cheering up those
who seemed to be alarmed, and in securing everything as far as possible.
On this occasion he had only to recall to the recollections of some of
them the former night which they had spent on the beacon, the wind and
sea being then much higher, and their habitation in a far less
comfortable state.
The wind still continuing to blow fresh from the N.W., at five p.m. the
writer caused a signal to be made from the tender for the _Smeaton_ and
_Patriot_ to slip their moorings, when they ran for Lunan Bay, an
anchorage on the east side of the Redhead. Those on board of the tender
spent but a very rough night, and perhaps slept less soundly than their
companions on the beacon, especially as the wind was at N.W., which
caused the vessel to ride with her stern towards the Bell Rock; so that,
in the event of anything giving way, she could hardly have escaped being
stranded upon it.
Sunday, 18th June.
The weather having moderated to-day, the wind shifted to the westward.
At a quarter-past nine a.m. the artificers landed from the tender and
had the pleasure to find their friends who had been left on the rock
quite hearty, alleging that the beacon was the preferable quarters of
the two.
Saturday, 24th June.
Mr. Peter Logan, the foreman builder, and his squad, twenty-one in
number, landed this morning at three o'clock, and continued at work four
hours and a quarter, and after laying seventeen stones returned to the
tender. At six a.m. Mr. Francis Watt and his squad of twelve men landed,
and proceeded with their respective operations at the beacon and
railways, and were left on the rock during the whole day without the
necessity of having any communication with the tender, the kitchen of
the beacon-house being now fitted up. It was to-day, also, that Peter
Fortune--a most obliging and well-known character in the Lighthouse
service--was removed from the tender to the beacon as cook and steward,
with a stock of provisions as ample as his limited storeroom would
admit.
When as many stones were built as comprised this day's work, the demand
for mortar was proportionally increased, and the task of the
mortar-makers on these occasions was both laborious and severe. This
operation was chiefly performed by John Watt--a strong, active quarrier
by profession,--who was a perfect character in his way, and extremely
zealous in his department. While the operations of the mortar-makers
continued, the forge upon their gallery was not generally in use; but,
as the working hours of the builders extended with the height of the
building, the forge could not be so long wanted, and then a sad
confusion often ensued upon the circumscribed floor of the mortar
gallery, as the operations of Watt and his assistants trenched greatly
upon those of the smiths. Under these circumstances the boundary of the
smiths was much circumscribed, and they were personally annoyed,
especially in blowy weather, with the dust of the lime in its powdered
state. The mortar-makers, on the other hand, were often not a little
distressed with the heat of the fire and the sparks elicited on the
anvil, and not unaptly complained that they were placed between "the
devil and the deep sea."
Sunday, 25th June.
The work being now about ten feet in height, admitted of a rope-ladder
being distended[16] between the beacon and the building. By this
"Jacob's Ladder," as the seamen termed it, a communication was kept up
with the beacon while the rock was considerably under water. One end of
it being furnished with tackle-blocks, was fixed to the beams of the
beacon, at the level of the mortar gallery, while the further end was
connected with the upper course of the building by means of two Lewis
bats which were lifted from course to course as the work advanced. In
the same manner a rope furnished with a travelling pulley was distended
for the purpose of transporting the mortar-buckets, and other light
articles between the beacon and the building, which also proved a great
conveniency to the work. At this period the rope-ladder and tackle for
the mortar had a descent from the beacon to the building; by and by they
were on a level, and towards the end of the season, when the solid part
had attained its full height, the ascent was from the mortar gallery to
the building.
Friday, 30th June.
The artificers landed on the rock this morning at a quarter-past six,
and remained at work five hours. The cooking apparatus being now in full
operation, all hands had breakfast on the beacon at the usual hour, and
remained there throughout the day. The crane upon the building had to be
raised to-day from the eighth to the ninth course, an operation which
now required all the strength that could be mustered for working the
guy-tackles; for as the top of the crane was at this time about
thirty-five feet above the rock, it became much more unmanageable. While
the beam was in the act of swinging round from one guy to another, a
great strain was suddenly brought upon the opposite tackle, with the end
of which the artificers had very improperly neglected to take a turn
round some stationary object, which would have given them the complete
command of the tackle. Owing to this simple omission, the crane got a
preponderancy to one side, and fell upon the building with a terrible
crash. The surrounding artificers immediately flew in every direction to
get out of its way; but Michael Wishart, the principal builder, having
unluckily stumbled upon one of the uncut trenails, fell upon his back.
His body fortunately got between the movable beam and the upright shaft
of the crane, and was thus saved; but his feet got entangled with the
wheels of the crane and were severely injured. Wishart, being a robust
young man, endured his misfortune with wonderful firmness; he was laid
upon one of the narrow framed beds of the beacon and despatched in a
boat to the tender, where the writer was when this accident happened,
not a little alarmed on missing the crane from the top of the building,
and at the same time seeing a boat rowing towards the vessel with great
speed. When the boat came alongside with poor Wishart, stretched upon a
bed covered with blankets, a moment of great anxiety followed, which
was, however, much relieved when, on stepping into the boat, he was
accosted by Wishart, though in a feeble voice, and with an aspect pale
as death from excessive bleeding. Directions having been immediately
given to the coxswain to apply to Mr. Kennedy at the workyard to procure
the best surgical aid, the boat was sent off without delay to Arbroath.
The writer then landed at the rock, when the crane was in a very short
time got into its place and again put in a working state.
Monday, 3rd July.
The writer having come to Arbroath with the yacht, had an opportunity of
visiting Michael Wishart, the artificer who had met with so severe an
accident at the rock on the 30th ult., and had the pleasure to find him
in a state of recovery. From Dr. Stevenson's account, under whose charge
he had been placed, hopes were entertained that amputation would not be
necessary, as his patient still kept free of fever or any appearance of
mortification; and Wishart expressed a hope that he might, at least, be
ultimately capable of keeping the light at the Bell Rock, as it was not
now likely that he would assist further in building the house.
Saturday, 8th July.
It was remarked to-day, with no small demonstration of joy, that the
tide, being neap, did not, for the first time, overflow the building at
high-water. Flags were accordingly hoisted on the beacon-house and crane
on the top of the building, which were repeated from the floating light,
Lighthouse yacht, tender, _Smeaton, Patriot_, and the two praams. A
salute of three guns was also fired from the yacht at high-water, when,
all the artificers being collected on the top of the building, three
cheers were given in testimony of this important circumstance. A glass
of rum was then served out to all hands on the rock and on board of the
respective ships.
Sunday, 16th July.
Besides laying, boring, trenailing, wedging, and grouting thirty-two
stones, several other operations were proceeded with on the rock at
low-water, when some of the artificers were employed at the railways and
at high-water at the beacon-house. The seamen having prepared a quantity
of tarpaulin or cloth laid over with successive coats of hot tar, the
joiners had just completed the covering of the roof with it. This sort
of covering was lighter and more easily managed than sheet-lead in such
a situation. As a further defence against the weather the whole exterior
of this temporary residence was painted with three coats of white-lead
paint. Between the timber framing of the habitable part of the beacon
the interstices were to be stuffed with moss as a light substance that
would resist dampness and check sifting winds; the whole interior was
then to be lined with green baize cloth, so that both without and within
the cabins were to have a very comfortable appearance.
Although the building artificers generally remained on the rock
throughout the day, and the millwrights, joiners, and smiths, while
their number was considerable, remained also during the night, yet the
tender had hitherto been considered as their night quarters. But the
wind having in the course of the day shifted to the N.W., and as the
passage to the tender, in the boats, was likely to be attended with
difficulty, the whole of the artificers, with Mr. Logan, the foreman,
preferred remaining all night on the beacon, which had of late become
the solitary abode of George Forsyth, a jobbing upholsterer, who had
been employed in lining the beacon-house with cloth and in fitting up
the bedding. Forsyth was a tall, thin, and rather loose-made man, who
had an utter aversion at climbing upon the trap-ladders of the beacon,
but especially at the process of boating, and the motion of the ship,
which he said "was death itself." He therefore pertinaciously insisted
with the landing-master in being left upon the beacon, with a small
black dog as his only companion. The writer, however, felt some delicacy
in leaving a single individual upon the rock, who must have been so very
helpless in case of accident. This fabric had, from the beginning, been
rather intended by the writer to guard against accident from the loss or
damage of a boat, and as a place for making mortar, a smith's shop, and
a store for tools during the working months, than as permanent quarters;
nor was it at all meant to be possessed until the joiner-work was
completely finished, and his own cabin, and that for the foreman, in
readiness, when it was still to be left to the choice of the artificers
to occupy the tender or the beacon. He, however, considered Forsyth's
partiality and confidence in the latter as rather a fortunate
occurrence.
Wednesday, 19th July.
The whole of the artificers, twenty-three in number, now removed of
their own accord from the tender, to lodge in the beacon, together with
Peter Fortune, a person singularly adapted for a residence of this kind,
both from the urbanity of his manners and the versatility of his
talents. Fortune, in his person, was of small stature, and rather
corpulent. Besides being a good Scots cook, he had acted both as groom
and house-servant; he had been a soldier, a sutler, a writer's clerk,
and an apothecary, from which he possessed the art of writing and
suggesting recipes, and had hence, also, perhaps, acquired a turn for
making collections in natural history. But in his practice in surgery on
the Bell Rock, for which he received an annual fee of three guineas, he
is supposed to have been rather partial to the use of the lancet. In
short, Peter was the _factotum_ of the beacon-house, where he ostensibly
acted in the several capacities of cook, steward, surgeon, and barber,
and kept a statement of the rations or expenditure of the provisions
with the strictest integrity.
In the present important state of the building, when it had just
attained the height of sixteen feet, and the upper courses, and
especially the imperfect one, were in the wash of the heaviest seas, an
express boat arrived at the rock with a letter from Mr. Kennedy, of the
workyard, stating that in consequence of the intended expedition to
Walcheren, an embargo had been laid on shipping at all the ports of
Great Britain: that both the _Smeaton_ and _Patriot_ were detained at
Arbroath, and that but for the proper view which Mr. Ramsey, the port
officer, had taken of his orders, neither the express boat nor one which
had been sent with provisions and necessaries for the floating light
would have been permitted to leave the harbour. The writer set off
without delay for Arbroath, and on landing used every possible means
with the official people, but their orders were deemed so peremptory
that even boats were not permitted to sail from any port upon the coast.
In the meantime, the collector of the Customs at Montrose applied to the
Board at Edinburgh, but could, of himself, grant no relief to the Bell
Rock shipping.
At this critical period Mr. Adam Duff, then Sheriff of Forfarshire, now
of the county of Edinburgh, and _ex officio_ one of the Commissioners of
the Northern Lighthouses, happened to be at Arbroath. Mr. Duff took an
immediate interest in representing the circumstances of the case to the
Board of Customs at Edinburgh. But such were the doubts entertained on
the subject that, on having previously received the appeal from the
collector at Montrose, the case had been submitted to the consideration
of the Lords of the Treasury, whose decision was now waited for.
In this state of things the writer felt particularly desirous to get the
thirteenth course finished, that the building might be in a more secure
state in the event of bad weather. An opportunity was therefore embraced
on the 25th, in sailing with provisions for the floating light, to carry
the necessary stones to the rock for this purpose, which were landed and
built on the 26th and 27th. But so closely was the watch kept up that a
Custom-house officer was always placed on board of the _Smeaton_ and
_Patriot_ while they were afloat, till the embargo was especially
removed from the lighthouse vessels. The artificers at the Bell Rock had
been reduced to fifteen, who were regularly supplied with provisions,
along with the crew of the floating light, mainly through the port
officer's liberal interpretation of his orders.
Tuesday, 1st Aug.
There being a considerable swell and breach of sea upon the rock
yesterday, the stones could not be got landed till the day following,
when the wind shifted to the southward and the weather improved. But
to-day no less than seventy-eight blocks of stone were landed, of which
forty were built, which completed the fourteenth and part of the
fifteenth courses. The number of workmen now resident in the
beacon-house were augmented to twenty-four, including the
landing-master's crew from the tender and the boat's crew from the
floating light, who assisted at landing the stones. Those daily at work
upon the rock at this period amounted to forty-six. A cabin had been
laid out for the writer on the beacon, but his apartment had been the
last which was finished, and he had not yet taken possession of it; for
though he generally spent the greater part of the day, at this time,
upon the rock, yet he always slept on board of the tender.
Friday, 11th Aug.
The wind was at S.E. on the 11th, and there was so very heavy a swell of
sea upon the rock that no boat could approach it.
Saturday, 12th Aug.
The gale still continuing from the S.E., the sea broke with great
violence both upon the building and the beacon. The former being
twenty-three feet in height, the upper part of the crane erected on it
having been lifted from course to course as the building advanced, was
now about thirty-six feet above the rock. From observations made on the
rise of the sea by this crane, the artificers were enabled to estimate
its height to be about fifty feet above the rock, while the sprays fell
with a most alarming noise upon their cabins. At low-water, in the
evening, a signal was made from the beacon, at the earnest desire of
some of the artificers, for the boats to come to the rock; and although
this could not be effected without considerable hazard, it was, however,
accomplished, when twelve of their number, being much afraid, applied to
the foreman to be relieved, and went on board of the tender. But the
remaining fourteen continued on the rock, with Mr. Peter Logan, the
foreman builder. Although this rule of allowing an option to every man
either to remain on the rock or return to the tender was strictly
adhered to, yet, as it would have been extremely inconvenient to have
had the men parcelled out in this manner, it became necessary to embrace
the first opportunity of sending those who had left the beacon to the
workyard, with as little appearance of intention as possible, lest it
should hurt their feelings, or prevent others from acting according to
their wishes, either in landing on the rock or remaining on the beacon.
Tuesday, 15th Aug.
The wind had fortunately shifted to the S.W. this morning, and though a
considerable breach was still upon the rock, yet the landing-master's
crew were enabled to get one praam-boat, lightly loaded with five
stones, brought in safety to the western creek; these stones were
immediately laid by the artificers, who gladly embraced the return of
good weather to proceed with their operations. The writer had this day
taken possession of his cabin in the beacon-house. It was small, but
commodious, and was found particularly convenient in coarse and blowing
weather, instead of being obliged to make a passage to the tender in an
open boat at all times, both during the day and the night, which was
often attended with much difficulty and danger.
Saturday, 19th Aug.
For some days past the weather had been occasionally so thick and foggy
that no small difficulty was experienced in going even between the rock
and the tender, though quite at hand. But the floating light's boat lost
her way so far in returning on board that the first land she made, after
rowing all night, was Fifeness, a distance of about fourteen miles. The
weather having cleared in the morning, the crew stood off again for the
floating light, and got on board in a half-famished and much exhausted
state, having been constantly rowing for about sixteen hours.
Sunday, 20th Aug.
The weather being very favourable to-day, fifty-three stones were
landed, and the builders were not a little gratified in having built the
twenty-second course, consisting of fifty-one stones, being the first
course which had been completed in one day. This, as a matter of course,
produced three hearty cheers. At twelve noon prayers were read for the
first time on the Bell Rock; those present, counting thirty, were
crowded into the upper apartment of the beacon, where the writer took a
central position, while two of the artificers, joining hands, supported
the Bible.
Friday, 25th Aug.
To-day the artificers laid forty-five stones, which completed the
twenty-fourth course, reckoning above the first entire one, and the
twenty-sixth above the rock. This finished the solid part of the
building, and terminated the height of the outward casing of granite,
which is thirty-one feet six inches above the rock or site of the
foundation-stone, and about seventeen feet above high water of
spring-tides. Being a particular crisis in the progress of the
lighthouse, the landing and laying of the last stone for the season was
observed with the usual ceremonies.
From observations often made by the writer, in so far as such can be
ascertained, it appears that no wave in the open seas, in an unbroken
state, rises more than from seven to nine feet above the general surface
of the ocean. The Bell Rock Lighthouse may therefore now be considered
at from eight to ten feet above the height of the waves; and, although
the sprays and heavy seas have often been observed, in the present
state of the building, to rise to the height of fifty feet, and fall
with a tremendous noise on the beacon-house, yet such seas were not
likely to make any impression on a mass of solid masonry, containing
about 1400 tons.
Wednesday, 30th Aug.
The whole of the artificers left the rock at mid-day, when the tender
made sail for Arbroath, which she reached about six p.m. The vessel
being decorated with colours, and having fired a salute of three guns on
approaching the harbour, the workyard artificers, with a multitude of
people, assembled at the harbour, when mutual cheering and
congratulations took place between those afloat and those on the quays.
The tender had now, with little exception, been six months on the
station at the Bell Rock, and during the last four months few of the
squad of builders had been ashore. In particular, Mr. Peter Logan, the
foreman, and Mr. Robert Selkirk, principal builder, had never once left
the rock. The artificers, having made good wages during their stay, like
seamen upon a return voyage, were extremely happy, and spent the evening
with much innocent mirth and jollity.
In reflecting upon the state of the matters at the Bell Rock during the
working months, when the writer was much with the artificers, nothing
can equal the happy manner in which these excellent workmen spent their
time. They always went from Arbroath to their arduous task cheering, and
they generally returned in the same hearty state. While at the rock,
between the tides, they amused themselves in reading, fishing, music,
playing cards, draughts, etc., or in sporting with one another. In the
workyard at Arbroath the young men were almost, without exception,
employed in the evening at school, in writing and arithmetic, and not a
few were learning architectural drawing, for which they had every
convenience and facility, and were, in a very obliging manner, assisted
in their studies by Mr. David Logan, clerk of the works. It therefore
affords the most pleasing reflections to look back upon the pursuits of
about sixty individuals who for years conducted themselves, on all
occasions, in a sober and rational manner.
IV
OPERATIONS OF 1810
Thursday, 10th May.
The wind had shifted to-day to W.N.W., when the writer, with
considerable difficulty, was enabled to land upon the rock for the first
time this season, at ten a.m. Upon examining the state of the building,
and apparatus in general, he had the satisfaction to find everything in
good order. The mortar in all the joints was perfectly entire. The
building, now thirty feet in height, was thickly coated with _fuci_ to
the height of about fifteen feet, calculating from the rock; on the
eastern side, indeed, the growth of seaweed was observable to the full
height of thirty feet, and even on the top or upper bed of the last-laid
course, especially towards the eastern side, it had germinated, so as to
render walking upon it somewhat difficult.
The beacon-house was in a perfectly sound state, and apparently just as
it had been left in the month of November. But the tides being neap, the
lower parts, particularly where the beams rested on the rock, could not
now be seen. The floor of the mortar gallery having been already laid
down by Mr. Watt and his men on a former visit, was merely soaked with
the sprays; but the joisting-beams which supported it had, in the course
of the winter, been covered with a fine downy conferva produced by the
range of the sea. They were also a good deal whitened with the mute of
the cormorant and other sea-fowls, which had roosted upon the beacon in
winter. Upon ascending to the apartments, it was found that the motion
of the sea had thrown open the door of the cook-house: this was only
shut with a single latch, that in case of shipwreck at the Bell Rock the
mariner might find ready access to the shelter of this forlorn
habitation, where a supply of provisions was kept; and being within two
miles and a half of the floating light, a signal could readily be
observed, when a boat might be sent to his relief as soon as the weather
permitted. An arrangement for this purpose formed one of the
instructions on board of the floating light, but happily no instance
occurred for putting it in practice. The hearth or fireplace of the
cook-house was built of brick in as secure a manner as possible to
prevent accident from fire; but some of the plaster-work had shaken
loose, from its damp state and the tremulous motion of the beacon in
stormy weather. The writer next ascended to the floor which was occupied
by the cabins of himself and his assistants, which were in tolerably
good order, having only a damp and musty smell. The barrack for the
artificers, over all, was next visited; it had now a very dreary and
deserted appearance when its former thronged state was recollected. In
some parts the water had come through the boarding, and had discoloured
the lining of green cloth, but it was, nevertheless, in a good habitable
condition. While the seamen were employed in landing a stock of
provisions, a few of the artificers set to work with great eagerness to
sweep and clean the several apartments. The exterior of the beacon was,
in the meantime, examined, and found in perfect order. The painting,
though it had a somewhat blanched appearance, adhered firmly both on the
sides and roof, and only two or three panes of glass were broken in the
cupola, which had either been blown out by the force of the wind or
perhaps broken by sea-fowl.
Having on this occasion continued upon the building and beacon a
considerable time after the tide had begun to flow, the artificers were
occupied in removing the forge from the top of the building, to which
the gangway or wooden bridge gave great facility; and, although it
stretched or had a span of forty-two feet, its construction was
extremely simple, while the roadway was perfectly firm and steady. In
returning from this visit to the rock every one was pretty well soused
in spray before reaching the tender at two o'clock p.m., where things
awaited the landing party in as comfortable a way as such a situation
would admit.
Friday, 11th May.
The wind was still easterly, accompanied with rather a heavy swell of
sea for the operations in hand. A landing was, however, made this
morning, when the artificers were immediately employed in scraping the
seaweed off the upper course of the building, in order to apply the
moulds of the first course of the staircase, that the joggle-holes might
be marked off in the upper course of the solid. This was also necessary
previously to the writer's fixing the position of the entrance door,
which was regulated chiefly by the appearance of the growth of the
seaweed on the building, indicating the direction of the heaviest seas,
on the opposite side of which the door was placed. The landing-master's
crew succeeded in towing into the creek on the western side of the rock
the praam-boat with the balance-crane, which had now been on board of
the praam for five days. The several pieces of this machine, having been
conveyed along the railways upon the waggons to a position immediately
under the bridge, were elevated to its level, or thirty feet above the
rock, in the following manner. A chain-tackle was suspended over a
pulley from the cross-beam connecting the tops of the kingposts of the
bridge, which was worked by a winch-machine with wheel, pinion, and
barrel, round which last the chain was wound. This apparatus was placed
on the beacon side of the bridge, at the distance of about twelve feet
from the cross-beam and pulley in the middle of the bridge. Immediately
under the cross-beam a hatch was formed in the roadway of the bridge,
measuring seven feet in length and five feet in breadth, made to shut
with folding boards like a double door, through which stones and other
articles were raised; the folding doors were then let down, and the
stone or load was gently lowered upon a waggon which was wheeled on
railway trucks towards the lighthouse. In this manner the several
castings of the balance-crane were got up to the top of the solid of the
building.
The several apartments of the beacon-house having been cleaned out and
supplied with bedding, a sufficient stock of provisions was put into the
store, when Peter Fortune, formerly noticed, lighted his fire in the
beacon for the first time this season. Sixteen artificers at the same
time mounted to their barrack-room, and all the foremen of the works
also took possession of their cabin, all heartily rejoiced at getting
rid of the trouble of boating and the sickly motion of the tender.
Saturday, 12th May.
The wind was at E.N.E., blowing so fresh, and accompanied with so much
sea, that no stones could be landed to-day. The people on the rock,
however, were busily employed in screwing together the balance-crane,
cutting out the joggle-holes in the upper course, and preparing all
things for commencing the building operations.
Sunday, 13th May.
The weather still continues boisterous, although the barometer has all
the while stood at about 30 inches. Towards evening the wind blew so
fresh at E. by S. that the boats both of the _Smeaton_ and tender were
obliged to be hoisted in, and it was feared that the _Smeaton_ would
have to slip her moorings. The people on the rock were seen busily
employed, and had the balance-crane apparently ready for use, but no
communication could be had with them to-day.
Monday, 14th May.
The wind continued to blow so fresh, and the _Smeaton_ rode so heavily
with her cargo, that at noon a signal was made for her getting under
weigh, when she stood towards Arbroath; and on board of the tender we
are still without any communication with the people on the rock, where
the sea was seen breaking over the top of the building in great sprays,
and raging with much agitation among the beams of the beacon.
Thursday, 17th May.
The wind, in the course of the day, had shifted from north to west; the
sea being also considerably less, a boat landed on the rock at six p.m.,
for the first time since the 11th, with the provisions and water brought
off by the _Patriot_. The inhabitants of the beacon were all well, but
tired above measure for want of employment, as the balance-crane and
apparatus was all in readiness. Under these circumstances they felt no
less desirous of the return of good weather than those afloat, who were
continually tossed with the agitation of the sea. The writer, in
particular, felt himself almost as much fatigued and worn-out as he had
been at any period since the commencement of the work. The very backward
state of the weather at so advanced a period of the season unavoidably
created some alarm, lest he should be overtaken with bad weather at a
late period of the season, with the building operations in an unfinished
state. These apprehensions were, no doubt, rather increased by the
inconveniences of his situation afloat, as the tender rolled and pitched
excessively at times. This being also his first off-set for the season,
every bone of his body felt sore with preserving a sitting posture while
he endeavoured to pass away the time in reading; as for writing, it was
wholly impracticable. He had several times entertained thoughts of
leaving the station for a few days and going into Arbroath with the
tender till the weather should improve; but as the artificers had been
landed on the rock he was averse to this at the commencement of the
season, knowing also that he would be equally uneasy in every situation
till the first cargo was landed: and he therefore resolved to continue
at his post until this should be effected.
Friday, 18th May.
The wind being now N.W., the sea was considerably run down, and this
morning at five o'clock the landing-master's crew, thirteen in number,
left the tender; and having now no detention with the landing of
artificers, they proceeded to unmoor the _Hedderwick_ praam-boat, and
towed her alongside of the _Smeaton_: and in the course of the day
twenty-three blocks of stone, three casks of pozzolano, three of sand,
three of lime, and one of Roman cement, together with three bundles of
trenails and three of wedges, were all landed on the rock and raised to
the top of the building by means of the tackle suspended from the
cross-beam on the middle of the bridge. The stones were then moved along
the bridge on the waggon to the building within reach of the
balance-crane, with which they were laid in their respective places on
the building. The masons immediately thereafter proceeded to bore the
trenail-holes into the course below, and otherwise to complete the one
in hand. When the first stone was to be suspended by the balance-crane,
the bell on the beacon was rung, and all the artificers and seamen were
collected on the building. Three hearty cheers were given while it was
lowered into its place, and the steward served round a glass of rum,
when success was drunk to the further progress of the building.
Sunday, 20th May.
The wind was southerly to-day, but there was much less sea than
yesterday, and the landing-master's crew were enabled to discharge and
land twenty-three pieces of stone and other articles for the work. The
artificers had completed the laying of the twenty-seventh or first
course of the staircase this morning, and in the evening they finished
the boring, trenailing, wedging, and grouting it with mortar. At twelve
o'clock noon the beacon-house bell was rung, and all hands were
collected on the top of the building, where prayers were read for the
first time on the lighthouse, which forcibly struck every one, and had,
upon the whole, a very impressive effect.
From the hazardous situation of the beacon-house with regard to fire,
being composed wholly of timber, there was no small risk from accident:
and on this account one of the most steady of the artificers was
appointed to see that the fire of the cooking-house, and the lights in
general, were carefully extinguished at stated hours.
Monday, 4th June.
This being the birthday of our much-revered Sovereign King George III,
now in the fiftieth year of his reign, the shipping of the Lighthouse
service were this morning decorated with colours according to the taste
of their respective captains. Flags were also hoisted upon the
beacon-house and balance-crane on the top of the building. At twelve
noon a salute was fired from the tender, when the King's health was
drunk, with all the honours, both on the rock and on board of the
shipping.
Tuesday, 5th June.
As the lighthouse advanced in height, the cubical contents of the stones
were less, but they had to be raised to a greater height; and the walls,
being thinner, were less commodious for the necessary machinery and the
artificers employed, which considerably retarded the work. Inconvenience
was also occasionally experienced from the men dropping their coats,
hats, mallets, and other tools, at high-water, which were carried away
by the tide; and the danger to the people themselves was now greatly
increased. Had any of them fallen from the beacon or building at
high-water, while the landing-master's crew were generally engaged with
the craft at a distance, it must have rendered the accident doubly
painful to those on the rock, who at this time had no boat, and
consequently no means of rendering immediate and prompt assistance. In
such cases it would have been too late to have got a boat by signal from
the tender. A small boat, which could be lowered at pleasure, was
therefore suspended by a pair of davits projected from the cook-house,
the keel being about thirty feet from the rock. This boat, with its
tackle, was put under the charge of James Glen, of whose exertions on
the beacon mention has already been made, and who, having in early life
been a seaman, was also very expert in the management of a boat. A
life-buoy was likewise suspended from the bridge, to which a coil of
line two hundred fathoms in length was attached, which could be let out
to a person falling into the water, or to the people in the boat, should
they not be able to work her with the oars.
Thursday, 7th June.
To-day twelve stones were landed on the rock, being the remainder of the
_Patriot's_ cargo; and the artificers built the thirty-ninth course,
consisting of fourteen stones. The Bell Rock works had now a very busy
appearance, as the lighthouse was daily getting more into form. Besides
the artificers and their cook, the writer and his servant were also
lodged on the beacon, counting in all twenty-nine; and at low-water the
landing-master's crew, consisting of from twelve to fifteen seamen,
were employed in transporting the building materials, working the
landing apparatus on the rock, and dragging the stone waggons along the
railways.
Friday, 8th June.
In the course of this day the weather varied much. In the morning it was
calm, in the middle part of the day there were light airs of wind from
the south, and in the evening fresh breezes from the east. The barometer
in the writer's cabin in the beacon-house oscillated from 30 inches to
30.42, and the weather was extremely pleasant. This, in any situation,
forms one of the chief comforts of life; but, as may easily be
conceived, it was doubly so to people stuck, as it were, upon a pinnacle
in the middle of the ocean.
Sunday, 10th June.
One of the praam-boats had been brought to the rock with eleven stones,
notwithstanding the perplexity which attended the getting of those
formerly landed taken up to the building. Mr. Peter Logan, the foreman
builder, interposed and prevented this cargo from being delivered; but
the landing-master's crew were exceedingly averse to this arrangement,
from an idea that "ill luck" would in future attend the praam, her
cargo, and those who navigated her, from thus reversing her voyage. It
may be noticed that this was the first instance of a praam-boat having
been sent from the Bell Rock with any part of her cargo on board, and
was considered so uncommon an occurrence that it became a topic of
conversation among the seamen and artificers.
Tuesday, 12th June.
To-day the stones formerly sent from the rock were safely landed,
notwithstanding the augury of the seamen in consequence of their being
sent away two days before.
Thursday, 14th June.
To-day twenty-seven stones and eleven joggle-pieces were landed, part of
which consisted of the forty-seventh course, forming the storeroom
floor. The builders were at work this morning by four o'clock, in the
hopes of being able to accomplish the laying of the eighteen stones of
this course. But at eight o'clock in the evening they had still two to
lay, and as the stones of this course were very unwieldy, being six feet
in length, they required much precaution and care both in lifting and
laying them. It was only on the writer's suggestion to Mr. Logan that
the artificers were induced to leave off, as they had intended to
complete this floor before going to bed. The two remaining stones were,
however, laid in their places without mortar when the bell on the beacon
was rung, and, all hands being collected on the top of the building,
three hearty cheers were given on covering the first apartment. The
steward then served out a dram to each, when the whole retired to their
barrack much fatigued, but with the anticipation of the most perfect
repose even in the "hurricane-house," amidst the dashing seas on the
Bell Rock.
While the workmen were at breakfast and dinner it was the writer's usual
practice to spend his time on the walls of the building, which,
notwithstanding the narrowness of the track, nevertheless formed his
principal walk when the rock was under water. But this afternoon he had
his writing-desk set upon the storeroom floor, when he wrote to Mrs.
Stevenson--certainly the first letter dated from the Bell Rock
_Lighthouse_--giving a detail of the fortunate progress of the work,
with an assurance that the lighthouse would soon be completed at the
rate at which it now proceeded; and, the _Patriot_ having sailed for
Arbroath in the evening, he felt no small degree of pleasure in
despatching this communication to his family.
The weather still continuing favourable for the operations at the rock,
the work proceeded with much energy, through the exertions both of the
seamen and artificers. For the more speedy and effectual working of the
several tackles in raising the materials as the building advanced in
height, and there being a great extent of railway to attend to, which
required constant repairs, two additional millwrights were added to the
complement on the rock, which, including the writer, now counted
thirty-one in all. So crowded was the men's barrack that the beds were
ranged five tier in height, allowing only about one foot eight inches
for each bed. The artificers commenced this morning at five o'clock,
and, in the course of the day, they laid the forty-eighth and
forty-ninth courses, consisting each of sixteen blocks. From the
favourable state of the weather, and the regular manner in which the
work now proceeded, the artificers had generally from four to seven
extra hours' work, which, including their stated wages of 3s. 4d.,
yielded them from 5s. 4d. to about 6s. 10d. per day besides their board;
even the postage of their letters was paid while they were at the Bell
Rock. In these advantages the foremen also shared, having about double
the pay and amount of premiums of the artificers. The seamen being less
out of their element in the Bell Rock operations than the landsmen,
their premiums consisted in a slump sum payable at the end of the
season, which extended from three to ten guineas.
As the laying of the floors was somewhat tedious, the landing-master and
his crew had got considerably beforehand with the building artificers in
bringing materials faster to the rock than they could be built. The
seamen having, therefore, some spare time, were occasionally employed
during fine weather in dredging or grappling for the several mushroom
anchors and mooring-chains which had been lost in the vicinity of the
Bell Rock during the progress of the work by the breaking loose and
drifting of the floating buoys. To encourage their exertions in this
search, five guineas were offered as a premium for each set they should
find; and, after much patient application, they succeeded to-day in
hooking one of these lost anchors with its chain.
It was a general remark at the Bell Rock, as before noticed, that fish
were never plenty in its neighbourhood excepting in good weather.
Indeed, the seamen used to speculate about the state of the weather from
their success in fishing. When the fish disappeared at the rock, it was
considered a sure indication that a gale was not far off, as the fish
seemed to seek shelter in deeper water from the roughness of the sea
during these changes in the weather. At this time the rock, at
high-water, was completely covered with podlies, or the fry of the
coal-fish, about six or eight inches in length. The artificers sometimes
occupied half an hour after breakfast and dinner in catching these
little fishes, but were more frequently supplied from the boats of the
tender.
Saturday, 16th June.
The landing-master having this day discharged the _Smeaton_ and loaded
the _Hedderwick_ and _Dickie_ praam-boats with nineteen stones, they
were towed to their respective moorings, when Captain Wilson, in
consequence of the heavy swell of sea, came in his boat to the
beacon-house to consult with the writer as to the propriety of venturing
the loaded praam-boats with their cargoes to the rock while so much sea
was running. After some dubiety expressed on the subject, in which the
ardent mind of the landing-master suggested many arguments in favour of
his being able to convey the praams in perfect safety, it was acceded
to. In bad weather, and especially on occasions of difficulty like the
present, Mr. Wilson, who was an extremely active seaman, measuring about
five feet three inches in height, of a robust habit, generally dressed
himself in what he called a _monkey jacket_, made of thick duffle cloth,
with a pair of Dutchman's petticoat trousers, reaching only to his
knees, where they were met with a pair of long water-tight boots; with
this dress, his glazed hat, and his small brass speaking-trumpet in his
hand, he bade defiance to the weather. When he made his appearance in
this most suitable attire for the service, his crew seemed to possess
additional life, never failing to use their utmost exertions when the
captain put on his _storm rigging._ They had this morning commenced
loading the praam-boats at four o'clock, and proceeded to tow them into
the eastern landing-place, which was accomplished with much dexterity,
though not without the risk of being thrown, by the force of the sea, on
certain projecting ledges of the rock. In such a case the loss even of a
single stone would have greatly retarded the work. For the greater
safety in entering the creek it was necessary to put out several warps
and guy-ropes to guide the boats into its narrow and intricate entrance;
and it frequently happened that the sea made a clean breach over the
praams, which not only washed their decks, but completely drenched the
crew in water.
Sunday, 17th June.
It was fortunate, in the present state of the weather, that the fiftieth
course was in a sheltered spot, within the reach of the tackle of the
winch-machine upon the bridge; a few stones were stowed upon the bridge
itself, and the remainder upon the building, which kept the artificers
at work. The stowing of the materials upon the rock was the department
of Alexander Brebner, mason, who spared no pains in attending to the
safety of the stones, and who, in the present state of the work, when
the stones were landed faster than could be built, generally worked till
the water rose to his middle. At one o'clock to-day the bell rung for
prayers, and all hands were collected into the upper barrack-room of the
beacon-house, when the usual service was performed.
The wind blew very hard in the course of last night from N.E., and
to-day the sea ran so high that no boat could approach the rock. During
the dinner-hour, when the writer was going to the top of the building as
usual, but just as he had entered the door and was about to ascend the
ladder, a great noise was heard overhead, and in an instant he was
soused in water from a sea which had most unexpectedly come over the
walls, though now about fifty-eight feet in height. On making his
retreat he found himself completely whitened by the lime, which had
mixed with the water while dashing down through the different floors;
and, as nearly as he could guess, a quantity equal to about a hogshead
had come over the walls, and now streamed out at the door. After having
shifted himself, he again sat down in his cabin, the sea continuing to
run so high that the builders did not resume their operations on the
walls this afternoon. The incident just noticed did not create more
surprise in the mind of the writer than the sublime appearance of the
waves as they rolled majestically over the rock. This scene he greatly
enjoyed while sitting at his cabin window; each wave approached the
beacon like a vast scroll unfolding; and in passing discharged a
quantity of air, which he not only distinctly felt, but was even
sufficient to lift the leaves of a book which lay before him. These
waves might be ten or twelve feet in height, and about 250 feet in
length, their smaller end being towards the north, where the water was
deep, and they were opened or cut through by the interposition of the
building and beacon. The gradual manner in which the sea, upon these
occasions, is observed to become calm or to subside, is a very
remarkable feature of this phenomenon. For example, when a gale is
succeeded by a calm, every third or fourth wave forms one of these great
seas, which occur in spaces of from three to five minutes, as noted by
the writer's watch; but in the course of the next tide they become less
frequent, and take off so as to occur only in ten or fifteen minutes;
and, singular enough, at the third tide after such gales, the writer has
remarked that only one or two of these great waves appear in the course
of the whole tide.
Tuesday, 19th June.
The 19th was a very unpleasant and disagreeable day, both for the seamen
and artificers, as it rained throughout with little intermission from
four a.m. till eleven p.m., accompanied with thunder and lightning,
during which period the work nevertheless continued unremittingly and
the builders laid the fifty-first and fifty-second courses. This state
of weather was no less severe upon the mortar-makers, who required to
temper or prepare the mortar of a thicker or thinner consistency, in
some measure, according to the state of the weather. From the elevated
position of the building, the mortar gallery on the beacon was now much
lower, and the lime-buckets were made to traverse upon a rope distended
between it and the building. On occasions like the present, however,
there was often a difference of opinion between the builders and the
mortar-makers. John Watt, who had the principal charge of the mortar,
was a most active worker, but, being somewhat of an irascible temper,
the builders occasionally amused themselves at his expense: for while he
was eagerly at work with his large iron-shod pestle in the mortar-tub,
they often sent down contradictory orders, some crying, "Make it a
little stiffer, or thicker, John," while others called out to make it
"thinner," to which he generally returned very speedy and sharp replies,
so that these conversations at times were rather amusing.
During wet weather the situation of the artificers on the top of the
building was extremely disagreeable; for although their work did not
require great exertion, yet, as each man had his particular part to
perform, either in working the crane or in laying the stones, it
required the closest application and attention, not only on the part of
Mr. Peter Logan, the foreman, who was constantly on the walls, but also
of the chief workmen. Robert Selkirk, the principal builder, for
example, had every stone to lay in its place. David Cumming, a mason,
had the charge of working the tackle of the balance-weight, and James
Scott, also a mason, took charge of the purchase with which the stones
were laid; while the pointing the joints of the walls with cement was
intrusted to William Reid and William Kennedy, who stood upon a scaffold
suspended over the walls in rather a frightful manner. The least act of
carelessness or inattention on the part of any of these men might have
been fatal, not only to themselves, but also to the surrounding workmen,
especially if any accident had happened to the crane itself, while the
material damage or loss of a single stone would have put an entire stop
to the operations until another could have been brought from Arbroath.
The artificers, having wrought seven and a half hours of extra time
to-day, had 3s. 9d. of extra pay, while the foremen had 7s. 6d. over and
above their stated pay and board. Although, therefore, the work was both
hazardous and fatiguing, yet, the encouragement being considerable, they
were always very cheerful, and perfectly reconciled to the confinement
and other disadvantages of the place.
During fine weather, and while the nights were short, the duty on board
of the floating light was literally nothing but a waiting on, and
therefore one of her boats, with a crew of five men, daily attended the
rock, but always returned to the vessel at night. The carpenter,
however, was one of those who was left on board of the ship, as he also
acted in the capacity of assistant lightkeeper, being, besides, a person
who was apt to feel discontent and to be averse to changing his
quarters, especially to work with the millwrights and joiners at the
rock, who often, for hours together, wrought knee-deep, and not
unfrequently up to the middle, in water. Mr. Watt having about this time
made a requisition for another hand, the carpenter was ordered to attend
the rock in the floating light's boat. This he did with great
reluctance, and found so much fault that he soon got into discredit with
his messmates. On this occasion he left the Lighthouse service, and went
as a sailor in a vessel bound for America--a step which, it is believed,
he soon regretted, as, in the course of things, he would, in all
probability, have accompanied Mr John Reid, the principal lightkeeper of
the floating light, to the Bell Rock Lighthouse as his principal
assistant. The writer had a wish to be of service to this man, as he was
one of those who came off to the floating light in the month of
September 1807, while she was riding at single anchor after the severe
gale of the 7th, at a time when it was hardly possible to make up this
vessel's crew; but the crossness of his manner prevented his reaping the
benefit of such intentions.
Friday, 22nd June.
The building operations had for some time proceeded more slowly, from
the higher parts of the lighthouse requiring much longer time than an
equal tonnage of the lower courses. The duty of the landing-master's
crew had, upon the whole, been easy of late; for though the work was
occasionally irregular, yet the stones being lighter, they were more
speedily lifted from the hold of the stone vessel to the deck of the
praam-boat, and again to the waggons on the railway, after which they
came properly under the charge of the foreman builder. It is, however, a
strange, though not an uncommon, feature in the human character, that,
when people have least to complain of they are most apt to become
dissatisfied, as was now the case with the seamen employed in the Bell
Rock service about their rations of beer. Indeed, ever since the
carpenter of the floating light, formerly noticed, had been brought to
the rock, expressions of discontent had been manifested upon various
occasions. This being represented to the writer, he sent for Captain
Wilson, the landing-master, and Mr. Taylor, commander of the tender,
with whom he talked over the subject. They stated that they considered
the daily allowance of the seamen in every respect ample, and that, the
work being now much lighter than formerly, they had no just ground for
complaint; Mr. Taylor adding that, if those who now complained "were
even to be fed upon soft bread and turkeys, they would not think
themselves right." At twelve noon the work of the landing-master's crew
was completed for the day; but at four o'clock, while the rock was under
water, those on the beacon were surprised by the arrival of a boat from
the tender without any signal having been made from the beacon. It
brought the following note to the writer from the landing-master's
crew:--
_Sir Joseph Banks Tender_
"SIR,--We are informed by our masters that our allowance is to be as
before, and it is not sufficient to serve us, for we have been at
work since four o'clock this morning, and we have come on board to
dinner, and there is no beer for us before to-morrow morning, to
which a sufficient answer is required before we go from the beacon;
and we are, Sir, your most obedient servants."
On reading this, the writer returned a verbal message, intimating
that an answer would be sent on board of the tender, at the same time
ordering the boat instantly to quit the beacon. He then addressed the
following note to the landing-master:--
"_Beacon-house, 22nd June 1810, Five o'clock p.m._
"SIR,--I have just now received a letter purporting to be from the
landing-master's crew and seamen on board of the _Sir Joseph Banks_,
though without either date or signature; in answer to which I enclose
a statement of the daily allowance of provisions for the seamen in
this service, which you will post up in the ship's galley, and at
seven o'clock this evening I will come on board to inquire into this
unexpected and most unnecessary demand for an additional allowance
of beer. In the enclosed you will not find any alteration from the
original statement, fixed in the galley at the beginning of the
season. I have, however, judged this mode of giving your people an
answer preferable to that of conversing with them on the beacon.--I
am, Sir, your most obedient servant,
"ROBERT STEVENSON.
"To CAPTAIN WILSON."
"_Beacon House_, 22_nd June_ 1810.--Schedule of the daily allowance
of provisions to be served out on board of the _Sir Joseph Banks_
tender: '1-1/2 lb. beef; 1 lb. bread; 8 oz. oatmeal; 2 oz. barley; 2
oz. butter; 3 quarts beer; vegetables and salt no stated allowance.
When the seamen are employed in unloading the _Smeaton_ and
_Patriot_, a draught of beer is, as formerly, to be allowed from the
stock of these vessels. Further, in wet and stormy weather, or when
the work commences very early in the morning, or continues till a
late hour at night, a glass of spirits will also be served out to the
crew as heretofore, on the requisition of the landing-master.'
"ROBERT STEVENSON."
On writing this letter and schedule, a signal was made on the beacon for
the landing-master's boat, which immediately came to the rock, and the
schedule was afterwards stuck up in the tender's galley. When sufficient
time had been allowed to the crew to consider of their conduct, a second
signal was made for a boat, and at seven o'clock the writer left the
Bell Rock, after a residence of four successive weeks in the
beacon-house. The first thing which occupied his attention on board of
the tender was to look round upon the lighthouse, which he saw, with
some degree of emotion and surprise, now vying in height with the
beacon-house; for although he had often viewed it from the extremity of
the western railway on the rock, yet the scene, upon the whole, seemed
far more interesting from the tender's moorings at the distance of about
half a mile.
The _Smeaton_ having just arrived at her moorings with a cargo, a signal
was made for Captain Pool to come on board of the tender, that he might
be at hand to remove from the service any of those who might persist in
their discontented conduct. One of the two principal leaders in this
affair, the master of one of the praam-boats, who had also steered the
boat which brought the letter to the beacon, was first called upon deck,
and asked if he had read the statement fixed up in the galley this
afternoon, and whether he was satisfied with it. He replied that he had
read the paper, but was not satisfied, as it held out no alteration on
the allowance, on which he was immediately ordered into the _Smeaton's_
boat. The next man called had but lately entered the service, and, being
also interrogated as to his resolution, he declared himself to be of the
same mind with the praam-master, and was also forthwith ordered into the
boat. The writer, without calling any more of the seamen, went forward
to the gangway, where they were collected and listening to what was
passing upon deck. He addressed them at the hatchway, and stated that
two of their companions had just been dismissed the service and sent on
board of the _Smeaton_ to be conveyed to Arbroath. He therefore wished
each man to consider for himself how far it would be proper, by any
unreasonableness of conduct, to place themselves in a similar situation,
especially as they were aware that it was optional in him either to
dismiss them or send them on board a man-of-war. It might appear that
much inconveniency would be felt at the rock by a change of hands at
this critical period, by checking for a time the progress of a building
so intimately connected with the best interests of navigation; yet this
would be but of a temporary nature, while the injury to themselves might
be irreparable. It was now, therefore, required of any man who, in this
disgraceful manner, chose to leave the service, that he should instantly
make his appearance on deck while the _Smeaton's_ boat was alongside.
But those below having expressed themselves satisfied with their
situation--viz., William Brown, George Gibb, Alexander Scott, John Dick,
Robert Couper, Alexander Shephard, James Grieve, David Carey, William
Pearson, Stuart Eaton, Alexander Lawrence, and John Spink--were
accordingly considered as having returned to their duty. This
disposition to mutiny, which had so strongly manifested itself, being
now happily suppressed, Captain Pool got orders to proceed for Arbroath
Bay, and land the two men he had on board, and to deliver the following
letter at the office of the workyard:--
"_On board of the Tender off the Bell Rock_,
22_nd June_ 1810, _eight o'clock p.m._
"DEAR SIR,--A discontented and mutinous spirit having manifested
itself of late among the landing-master's crew, they struck work
to-day and demanded an additional allowance of beer, and I have found
it necessary to dismiss D----d and M----e, who are now sent on shore
with the _Smeaton_. You will therefore be so good as to pay them
their wages, including this day only. Nothing can be more
unreasonable than the conduct of the seamen on this occasion, as the
landing-master's crew not only had their allowance on board of the
tender, but, in the course of this day, they had drawn no fewer than
twenty-four quart pots of beer from the stock of the _Patriot_ while
unloading her.--I remain, yours truly,
"ROBERT STEVENSON.
"To Mr. LACHLAN KENNEDY,
Bell Rock Office, Arbroath."
On despatching this letter to Mr. Kennedy, the writer returned to the
beacon about nine o'clock, where this afternoon's business had produced
many conjectures, especially when the _Smeaton_ got under weigh, instead
of proceeding to land her cargo. The bell on the beacon being rung, the
artificers were assembled on the bridge, when the affair was explained
to them. He, at the same time, congratulated them upon the first
appearance of mutiny being happily set at rest by the dismissal of its
two principal abettors.
Sunday, 24th June.
At the rock, the landing of the materials and the building operations of
the light-room store went on successfully, and in a way similar to those
of the provision store. To-day it blew fresh breezes; but the seamen
nevertheless landed twenty-eight stones, and the artificers built the
fifty-eighth and fifty-ninth courses. The works were visited by Mr.
Murdoch, junior, from Messrs. Boulton and Watt's works of Soho. He
landed just as the bell rung for prayers, after which the writer enjoyed
much pleasure from his very intelligent conversation; and, having been
almost the only stranger he had seen for some weeks, he parted with him,
after a short interview, with much regret.
Thursday, 28th June.
Last night the wind had shifted to north-east, and, blowing fresh, was
accompanied with a heavy surf upon the rock. Towards high-water it had a
very grand and wonderful appearance. Waves of considerable magnitude
rose as high as the solid or level of the entrance-door, which, being
open to the south-west, was fortunately to the leeward; but on the
windward side the sprays flew like lightning up the sloping sides of the
building; and although the walls were now elevated sixty-four feet above
the rock, and about fifty-two feet from high-water mark, yet the
artificers were nevertheless wetted, and occasionally interrupted, in
their operations on the top of the walls. These appearances were, in a
great measure, new at the Bell Rock, there having till of late been no
building to conduct the seas, or object to compare with them. Although,
from the description of the Eddystone Lighthouse, the mind was prepared
for such effects, yet they were not expected to the present extent in
the summer season; the sea being most awful to-day, whether observed
from the beacon or the building. To windward, the sprays fell from the
height above noticed in the most wonderful cascades, and streamed down
the walls of the building in froth as white as snow. To leeward of the
lighthouse the collision or meeting of the waves produced a pure white
kind of _drift_: it rose about thirty feet in height, like a fine downy
mist, which, in its fall, fell upon the face and hands more like a dry
powder than a liquid substance. The effect of these seas, as they raged
among the beams and dashed upon the higher parts of the beacon, produced
a temporary tremulous motion throughout the whole fabric, which to a
stranger must have been frightful.
Sunday, 1st July.
The writer had now been at the Bell Rock since the latter end of May, or
about six weeks, during four of which he had been a constant inhabitant
of the beacon without having been once off the rock. After witnessing
the laying of the sixty-seventh or second course of the bedroom
apartment, he left the rock with the tender and went ashore, as some
arrangements were to be made for the future conduct of the works at
Arbroath, which were soon to be brought to a close; the landing-master's
crew having, in the meantime, shifted on board of the _Patriot_. In
leaving the rock, the writer kept his eyes fixed upon the lighthouse,
which had recently got into the form of a house, having several tiers or
stories of windows. Nor was he unmindful of his habitation in the
beacon--now far overtopped by the masonry,--where he had spent several
weeks in a kind of active retirement, making practical experiment of the
fewness of the positive wants of man. His cabin measured not more than
four feet three inches in breadth on the floor; and though, from the
oblique direction of the beams of the beacon, it widened towards the
top, yet it did not admit of the full extension of his arms when he
stood on the floor; while its length was little more than sufficient for
suspending a cot-bed during the night, calculated for being triced up to
the roof through the day, which left free room for the admission of
occasional visitants. His folding table was attached with hinges,
immediately under the small window of the apartment, and his books,
barometer, thermometer, portmanteau, and two or three camp-stools,
formed the bulk of his movables. His diet being plain, the paraphernalia
of the table were proportionally simple; though everything had the
appearance of comfort, and even of neatness, the walls being covered
with green cloth formed into panels with red tape, and his bed festooned
with curtains of yellow cotton-stuff. If, in speculating upon the
abstract wants of man in such a state of exclusion, one were reduced to
a single book, the Sacred Volume--whether considered for the striking
diversity of its story, the morality of its doctrine, or the important
truths of its gospel--would have proved by far the greatest treasure.
Monday, 2nd July.
In walking over the workyard at Arbroath this morning, the writer found
that the stones of the course immediately under the cornice were all in
hand, and that a week's work would now finish the whole, while the
intermediate courses lay ready numbered and marked for shipping to the
rock. Among other subjects which had occupied his attention to-day was a
visit from some of the relations of George Dall, a young man who had
been impressed near Dundee in the month of February last; a dispute had
arisen between the magistrates of that burgh and the Regulating Officer
as to his right of impressing Dall, who was _bonâ fide_ one of the
protected seamen in the Bell Rock service. In the meantime, the poor lad
was detained, and ultimately committed to the prison of Dundee, to
remain until the question should be tried before the Court of Session.
His friends were naturally very desirous to have him relieved upon bail.
But, as this was only to be done by the judgment of the Court, all that
could be said was that his pay and allowances should be continued in the
same manner as if he had been upon the sick-list. The circumstances of
Dall's case were briefly these:--He had gone to see some of his friends
in the neighbourhood of Dundee, in winter, while the works were
suspended, having got leave of absence from Mr. Taylor, who commanded
the Bell Rock tender, and had in his possession one of the Protection
Medals. Unfortunately, however, for Dall, the Regulating Officer thought
proper to disregard these documents, as, according to the strict and
literal interpretation of the Admiralty regulations, a seaman does not
stand protected unless he is actually on board of his ship, or in a boat
belonging to her, or has the Admiralty protection in his possession.
This order of the Board, however, cannot be rigidly followed in
practice; and therefore, when the matter is satisfactorily stated to the
Regulating Officer, the impressed man is generally liberated. But in
Dall's case this was peremptorily refused, and he was retained at the
instance of the magistrates. The writer having brought the matter under
the consideration of the Commissioners of the Northern Lighthouses, they
authorised it to be tried on the part of the Lighthouse Board, as one of
extreme hardship. The Court, upon the first hearing, ordered Dall to be
liberated from prison; and the proceedings never went further.
Wednesday, 4th July.
Being now within twelve courses of being ready for building the cornice,
measures were taken for getting the stones of it and the parapet-wall of
the light-room brought from Edinburgh, where, as before noticed, they
had been prepared and were in readiness for shipping. The honour of
conveying the upper part of the lighthouse, and of landing the last
stone of the building on the rock, was considered to belong to Captain
Pool of the _Smeaton_, who had been longer in the service than the
master of the _Patriot_. The _Smeaton_ was, therefore, now partly loaded
with old iron, consisting of broken railways and other lumber which had
been lying about the rock. After landing these at Arbroath, she took on
board James Craw, with his horse and cart, which could now be spared at
the workyard, to be employed in carting the stones from Edinburgh to
Leith. Alexander Davidson and William Kennedy, two careful masons, were
also sent to take charge of the loading of the stones at Greenside, and
stowing them on board of the vessel at Leith. The writer also went on
board, with a view to call at the Bell Rock and to take his passage up
the Firth of Forth. The wind, however, coming to blow very fresh from
the eastward, with thick and foggy weather, it became necessary to reef
the mainsail and set the second jib. When in the act of making a tack
towards the tender, the sailors who worked the head-sheets were, all of
a sudden, alarmed with the sound of the smith's hammer and anvil on the
beacon, and had just time to put the ship about to save her from running
ashore on the north-western point of the rock, marked "James Craw's
Horse." On looking towards the direction from whence the sound came, the
building and beacon-house were seen, with consternation, while the ship
was hailed by those on the rock, who were no less confounded at seeing
the near approach of the _Smeaton_; and, just as the vessel cleared the
danger, the smith and those in the mortar gallery made signs in token of
their happiness at our fortunate escape. From this occurrence the writer
had an experimental proof of the utility of the large bells which were
in preparation to be rung by the machinery of the revolving light; for,
had it not been for the sound of the smith's anvil, the _Smeaton_, in
all probability, would have been wrecked upon the rock. In case the
vessel had struck, those on board might have been safe, having now the
beacon-house as a place of refuge; but the vessel, which was going at a
great velocity, must have suffered severely, and it was more than
probable that the horse would have been drowned, there being no means of
getting him out of the vessel. Of this valuable animal and his master we
shall take an opportunity of saying more in another place.
Thursday, 5th July.
The weather cleared up in the course of the night, but the wind shifted
to the N.E. and blew very fresh. From the force of the wind, being now
the period of spring-tides, a very heavy swell was experienced at the
rock. At two o'clock on the following morning the people on the beacon
were in a state of great alarm about their safety, as the sea had broke
up part of the floor of the mortar gallery, Which was thus cleared of
the lime-casks and other buoyant articles; and, the alarm-bell being
rung, all hands were called to render what assistance was in their
power for the safety of themselves and the materials. At this time some
would willingly have left the beacon and gone into the building; the
sea, however, ran so high that there was no passage along the bridge of
communication, and, when the interior of the lighthouse came to be
examined in the morning, it appeared that great quantities of water had
come over the walls--now eighty feet in height--and had run down through
the several apartments and out at the entrance door.
The upper course of the lighthouse at the workyard of Arbroath was
completed on the 6th, and the whole of the stones were, therefore, now
ready for being shipped to the rock. From the present state of the works
it was impossible that the two squads of artificers at Arbroath and the
Bell Rock could meet together at this period; and as in public works of
this kind, which had continued for a series of years, it is not
customary to allow the men to separate without what is termed a
"finishing-pint," five guineas were for this purpose placed at the
disposal of Mr. David Logan, clerk of works. With this sum the
stone-cutters at Arbroath had a merry meeting in their barrack,
collected their sweethearts and friends, and concluded their labours
with a dance. It was remarked, however, that their happiness on this
occasion was not without alloy. The consideration of parting and leaving
a steady and regular employment, to go in quest of work and mix with
other society, after having been harmoniously lodged for years together
in one large "guildhall or barrack," was rather painful.
Friday, 6th July.
While the writer was at Edinburgh he was fortunate enough to meet with
Mrs. Dickson, only daughter of the late celebrated Mr. Smeaton, whose
works at the Eddystone Lighthouse had been of such essential consequence
to the operations at the Bell Rock. Even her own elegant accomplishments
are identified with her father's work, she having herself made the
drawing of the vignette on the title-page of the "Narrative of the
Eddystone Lighthouse." Every admirer of the works of that singularly
eminent man must also feel an obligation to her for the very
comprehensive and distinct account given of his life, which is attached
to his reports, published, in three volumes quarto, by the Society of
Civil Engineers. Mrs. Dickson, being at this time returning from a tour
to the Hebrides and Western Highlands of Scotland, had heard of the Bell
Rock works, and from their similarity to those of the Eddystone, was
strongly impressed with a desire of visiting the spot. But on inquiring
for the writer at Edinburgh, and finding from him that the upper part of
the lighthouse, consisting of nine courses, might be seen in the
immediate vicinity, and also that one of the vessels, which, in
compliment to her father's memory, had been named the _Smeaton_, might
also now be seen in Leith, she considered herself extremely fortunate;
and having first visited the works at Greenside, she afterwards went to
Leith to see the _Smeaton_, then loading for the Bell Rock. On stepping
on board, Mrs. Dickson seemed to be quite overcome with so many
concurrent circumstances, tending in a peculiar manner to revive and
enliven the memory of her departed father, and, on leaving the vessel,
she would not be restrained from presenting the crew with a piece of
money. The _Smeaton_ had been named spontaneously, from a sense of the
obligation which a public work of the description of the Bell Rock owed
to the labours and abilities of Mr. Smeaton. The writer certainly never
could have anticipated the satisfaction which he this day felt in
witnessing the pleasure it afforded to the only representative of this
great man's family.
Friday, 20th July.
The gale from the N.E. still continued so strong, accompanied with a
heavy sea, that the _Patriot_ could not approach her moorings; although
the tender still kept her station, no landing was made to-day at the
rock. At high-water it was remarked that the spray rose to the height of
about sixty feet upon the building. The _Smeaton_ now lay in Leith
loaded, but, the wind and weather being so unfavourable for her getting
down the Firth, she did not sail till this afternoon. It may be here
proper to notice that the loading of the centre of the light-room floor,
or last principal stone of the building, did not fail, when put on
board, to excite an interest among those connected with the work. When
the stone was laid upon the cart to be conveyed to Leith, the seamen
fixed an ensign-staff and flag into the circular hole in the centre of
the stone, and decorated their own hats, and that of James Craw, the
Bell Rock carter, with ribbons; even his faithful and trusty horse
Brassey was ornamented with bows and streamers of various colours. The
masons also provided themselves with new aprons, and in this manner the
cart was attended in its progress to the ship. When the cart came
opposite the Trinity House of Leith, the officer of that corporation
made his appearance dressed in his uniform, with his staff of office;
and when it reached the harbour, the shipping in the different tiers
where the _Smeaton_ lay hoisted their colours, manifesting by these
trifling ceremonies the interest with which the progress of this work
was regarded by the public, as ultimately tending to afford safety and
protection to the mariner. The wind had fortunately shifted to the S.W.,
and about five o'clock this afternoon the Smeaton reached the Bell Rock.
Friday, 27th July.
The artificers had finished the laying of the balcony course, excepting
the centre-stone of the light-room floor, which, like the centres of the
other floors, could not be laid in its place till after the removal of
the foot and shaft of the balance-crane. During the dinner-hour, when
the men were off work, the writer generally took some exercise by
walking round the walls when the rock was under water; but to-day his
boundary was greatly enlarged, for, instead of the narrow wall as a
path, he felt no small degree of pleasure in walking round the balcony
and passing out and in at the space allotted for the light-room door. In
the labours of this day both the artificers and seamen felt their work
to be extremely easy compared with what it had been for some days past.
Sunday, 29th July.
Captain Wilson and his crew had made preparations for landing the last
stone, and, as may well be supposed, this was a day of great interest at
the Bell Rock. "That it might lose none of its honours," as he expressed
himself, the _Hedderwick_ praam-boat, with which the first stone of the
building had been landed, was appointed also to carry the last. At seven
o'clock this evening the seamen hoisted three flags upon the
_Hedderwick_, when the colours of the _Dickie_ praam-boat, tender,
_Smeaton_, floating light, beacon-house, and lighthouse were also
displayed; and, the weather being remarkably fine, the whole presented a
very gay appearance, and, in connection with the associations excited,
the effect was very pleasing. The praam which carried the stone was
towed by the seamen in gallant style to the rock, and, on its arrival,
cheers were given as a finale to the landing department.
Monday, 30th July.
The ninetieth or last course of the building having been laid to-day,
which brought the masonry to the height of one hundred and two feet six
inches, the lintel of the light-room door, being the finishing-stone of
the exterior walls, was laid with due formality by the writer, who, at
the same time, pronounced the following benediction: "May the Great
Architect of the Universe, under whose blessing this perilous work has
prospered, preserve it as a guide to the mariner."
Friday, 3rd Aug.
At three p.m., the necessary preparations having been made, the
artificers commenced the completing of the floors of the several
apartments, and at seven o'clock the centre-stone of the light-room
floor was laid, which may be held as finishing the masonry of this
important national edifice. After going through the usual ceremonies
observed by the brotherhood on occasions of this kind, the writer,
addressing himself to the artificers and seamen who were present,
briefly alluded to the utility of the undertaking as a monument of the
wealth of British commerce, erected through the spirited measures of the
Commissioners of the Northern Lighthouses by means of the able
assistance of those who now surrounded him. He then took an opportunity
of stating that toward those connected with this arduous work he would
ever retain the most heartfelt regard in all their interests.
Saturday, 4th Aug.
When the bell was rung as usual on the beacon this morning, every one
seemed as if he were at a loss what to make of himself. At this period
the artificers at the rock consisted of eighteen masons, two joiners,
one millwright, one smith, and one mortar-maker, besides Messrs. Peter
Logan and Francis Watt, foremen, counting in all twenty-five; and
matters were arranged for proceeding to Arbroath this afternoon with all
hands. The _Sir Joseph Banks_ tender had by this time been afloat, with
little intermission, for six months, during greater part of which the
artificers had been almost constantly off at the rock, and were now much
in want of necessaries of almost every description. Not a few had lost
different articles of clothing, which had dropped into the sea from the
beacon and building. Some wanted jackets; others, from want of hats,
wore nightcaps; each was, in fact, more or less curtailed in his
wardrobe, and it must be confessed that at best the party were but in a
very tattered condition. This morning was occupied in removing the
artificers and their bedding on board of the tender; and, although their
personal luggage was easily shifted, the boats had, nevertheless, many
articles to remove from the beacon-house, and were consequently employed
in this service till eleven a.m. All hands being collected, and just
ready to embark, as the water had nearly overflowed the rock, the
writer, in taking leave, after alluding to the harmony which had ever
marked the conduct of those employed on the Bell Rock, took occasion to
compliment the great zeal, attention, and abilities of Mr. Peter Logan
and Mr. Francis Watt, foremen; Captain James Wilson, landing-master; and
Captain David Taylor, commander of the tender, who, in their several
departments, had so faithfully discharged the duties assigned to them,
often under circumstances the most difficult and trying. The health of
these gentlemen was drunk with much warmth of feeling by the artificers
and seamen, who severally expressed the satisfaction they had
experienced in acting under them; after which the whole party left the
rock.
In sailing past the floating light, mutual compliments were made by a
display of flags between that vessel and the tender; and at five p.m.
the latter vessel entered the harbour of Arbroath, where the party were
heartily welcomed by a numerous company of spectators, who had collected
to see the artificers arrive after so long an absence from the port. In
the evening the writer invited the foremen and captains of the service,
together with Mr. David Logan, clerk of works at Arbroath, and Mr.
Lachlan Kennedy, engineer's clerk and bookkeeper, and some of their
friends, to the principal inn, where the evening was spent very happily;
and after "His Majesty's Health" and "The Commissioners of the Northern
Lighthouses" had been given, "Stability to the Bell Rock Lighthouse" was
hailed as a standing toast in the Lighthouse service.
Sunday, 5th Aug.
The author has formerly noticed the uniformly decent and orderly
deportment of the artificers who were employed at the Bell Rock
Lighthouse, and to-day, it is believed, they very generally attended
church, no doubt with grateful hearts for the narrow escapes from
personal danger which all of them had more or less experienced during
their residence at the rock.
Tuesday, 14th Aug.
The _Smeaton_ sailed to-day at one p.m., having on board sixteen
artificers, with Mr. Peter Logan, together with a supply of provisions
and necessaries, who left the harbour pleased and happy to find
themselves once more afloat in the Bell Rock service. At seven o'clock
the tender was made fast to her moorings, when the artificers landed on
the rock and took possession of their old quarters in the beacon-house,
with feelings very different from those of 1807, when the works
commenced.
The barometer for some days past had been falling from 29.90, and to-day
it was 29.50, with the wind at N.E., which, in the course of this day,
increased to a strong gale accompanied with a sea which broke with great
violence upon the rock. At twelve noon the tender rode very heavily at
her moorings, when her chain broke at about ten fathoms from the ship's
bows. The kedge-anchor was immediately let go, to hold her till the
floating buoy and broken chain should be got on board. But while this
was in operation the hawser of the kedge was chafed through on the rocky
bottom and parted, when the vessel was again adrift. Most fortunately,
however, she cast off with her head from the rock, and narrowly cleared
it, when she sailed up the Firth of Forth to wait the return of better
weather. The artificers were thus left upon the rock with so heavy a sea
running that it was ascertained to have risen to the height of eighty
feet on the building. Under such perilous circumstances it would be
difficult to describe the feelings of those who, at this time, were
cooped up in the beacon in so forlorn a situation, with the sea not only
raging under them, but occasionally falling from a great height upon the
roof of their temporary lodging, without even the attending vessel in
view to afford the least gleam of hope in the event of any accident. It
is true that they had now the masonry of the lighthouse to resort to,
which, no doubt, lessened the actual danger of their situation; but the
building was still without a roof, and the deadlights, or
storm-shutters, not being yet fitted, the windows of the lower story
were stove in and broken, and at high-water the sea ran in considerable
quantities out at the entrance door.
Thursday, 16th Aug.
The gale continues with unabated violence to-day, and the sprays rise to
a still greater height, having been carried over the masonry the
building, or about ninety feet above the level of the sea. At four
o'clock this morning it was breaking into the cook's berth, when he rang
the alarm-bell, and all hands turned out to attend to their personal
safety. The floor of the smith's, or mortar gallery, was now completely
burst up by the force of the sea, when the whole of the deals and the
remaining articles upon the floor were swept away, such as the cast-iron
mortar-tubs, the iron hearth of the forge, the smith's bellows, and even
his anvil were thrown down upon the rock. Before the tide rose to its
full height to-day some of the artificers passed along the bridge into
the lighthouse, to observe the effects of the sea upon it, and they
reported that they had felt a slight tremulous motion in the building
when great seas struck it in a certain direction, about high-water mark.
On this occasion the sprays were again observed to wet the balcony, and
even to come over the parapet wall into the interior of the light-room.
Thursday, 23rd Aug.
The wind being at W.S.W., and the weather more moderate, both the tender
and the _Smeaton_ got to their moorings on the 23rd, when hands were
employed in transporting the sash-frames from on board of the _Smeaton_
to the rock. In the act of setting up one of these frames upon the
bridge, it was unguardedly suffered to lose its balance, and in saving
it from damage, Captain Wilson met with a severe bruise in the groin, on
the seat of a gun-shot wound received in the early part of his life.
This accident laid him aside for several days.
Monday, 27th Aug.
The sash-frames of the light-room, eight in number, and weighing each
254 pounds, having been got safely up to the top of the building were
ranged on the balcony in the order in which they were numbered for their
places on the top of the parapet-wall; and the balance-crane, that
useful machine having now lifted all the heavier articles, was unscrewed
and lowered, to use the landing-master's phrase, "in mournful silence."
Sunday, 2nd Sept.
The steps of the stair being landed, and all the weightier articles of
the light-room got up to the balcony, the wooden bridge was now to be
removed, as it had a very powerful effect upon the beacon when a heavy
sea struck it, and could not possibly have withstood the storms of a
winter. Everything having been cleared from the bridge, and nothing left
but the two principal beams with their horizontal braces, James Glen, at
high-water, proceeded with a saw to cut through the beams at the end
next the beacon, which likewise disengaged their opposite extremity,
inserted a few inches into the building. The frame was then gently
lowered into the water, and floated off to the _Smeaton_ to be towed to
Arbroath, to be applied as part of the materials in the erection of the
lightkeepers' houses. After the removal of the bridge, the aspect of
things at the rock was much altered. The beacon-house and building had
both a naked look to those accustomed to their former appearance; a
curious optical deception was also remarked, by which the lighthouse
seemed to incline from the perpendicular towards the beacon. The
horizontal rope-ladder before noticed was again stretched to preserve
the communication, and the artificers were once more obliged to practise
the awkward and straddling manner of their passage between them during
1809.
At twelve noon the bell rung for prayers, after which the artificers
went to dinner, when the writer passed along the rope-ladder to the
lighthouse, and went through the several apartments, which were now
cleared of lumber. In the afternoon all hands were summoned to the
interior of the house, when he had the satisfaction of laying the upper
step of the stair, or last stone of the building. This ceremony
concluded with three cheers, the sound of which had a very loud and
strange effect within the walls of the lighthouse. At six o'clock Mr.
Peter Logan and eleven of the artificers embarked with the writer for
Arbroath, leaving Mr. James Glen with the special charge of the beacon
and railways, Mr. Robert Selkirk with the building, with a few
artificers to fit the temporary windows to render the house habitable.
Sunday, 14th Oct.
On returning from his voyage to the Northern Lighthouses, the writer
landed at the Bell Rock on Sunday, the 14th of October, and had the
pleasure to find, from the very favourable state of the weather, that
the artificers had been enabled to make great progress with the
fitting-up of the light-room.
Friday, 19th Oct.
The light-room work had proceeded, as usual, to-day under the direction
of Mr. Dove, assisted in the plumber-work by Mr. John Gibson, and in the
brazier-work by Mr. Joseph Fraser; while Mr. James Slight, with the
joiners, were fitting up the storm-shutters of the windows. In these
several departments the artificers were at work till seven o'clock p.m.,
and it being then dark, Mr. Dove gave orders to drop work in the
light-room; and all hands proceeded from thence to the beacon-house,
when Charles Henderson, smith, and Henry Dickson, brazier, left the work
together. Being both young men, who had been for several weeks upon the
rock, they had become familiar, and even playful, on the most difficult
parts about the beacon and building. This evening they were trying to
outrun each other in descending from the light-room, when Henderson led
the way; but they were in conversation with each other till they came to
the rope-ladder distended between the entrance-door of the lighthouse
and the beacon. Dickson, on reaching the cook-room, was surprised at not
seeing his companion, and inquired hastily for Henderson. Upon which the
cook replied, "Was he before you upon the rope-ladder?" Dickson
answered, "Yes; and I thought I heard something fall." Upon this the
alarm was given, and links were immediately lighted, with which the
artificers descended on the legs of the beacon, as near the surface of
the water as possible, it being then about full tide, and the sea
breaking to a considerable height upon the building, with the wind at
S.S.E. But, after watching till low-water, and searching in every
direction upon the rock, it appeared that poor Henderson must have
unfortunately fallen through the rope-ladder and been washed into the
deep water.
The deceased had passed along this rope-ladder many hundred times, both
by day and night, and the operations in which he was employed being
nearly finished, he was about to leave the rock when this melancholy
catastrophe took place. The unfortunate loss of Henderson cast a deep
gloom upon the minds of all who were at the rock, and it required some
management on the part of those who had charge to induce the people to
remain patiently at their work; as the weather now became more
boisterous, and the nights long, they found their habitation extremely
cheerless, while the winds were howling about their ears, and the waves
lashing with fury against the beams of their insulated habitation.
Tuesday, 23rd Oct.
The wind had shifted in the night to N.W., and blew a fresh gale, while
the sea broke with violence upon the rock. It was found impossible to
land, but the writer, from the boat, hailed Mr. Dove, and directed the
ball to be immediately fixed. The necessary preparations were
accordingly made, while the vessel made short tacks on the southern side
of the rock, in comparatively smooth water. At noon Mr. Dove, assisted
by Mr. James Slight, Mr. Robert Selkirk, Mr. James Glen, and Mr. John
Gibson, plumber, with considerable difficulty, from the boisterous state
of the weather, got the gilded ball screwed on, measuring two feet in
diameter, and forming the principal ventilator at the upper extremity of
the cupola of the lightroom. At Mr. Hamilton's desire, a salute of seven
guns was fired on this occasion, and, all hands being called to the
quarter-deck, "Stability to the Bell Rock Lighthouse" was not forgotten.
Tuesday, 30th Oct.
On reaching the rock it was found that a very heavy sea still ran upon
it; but the writer having been disappointed on two former occasions,
and, as the erection of the house might now be considered complete,
there being nothing wanted externally, excepting some of the
storm-shutters for the defence of the windows, he was the more anxious
at this time to inspect it. Two well-manned boats were therefore ordered
to be in attendance; and, after some difficulty, the wind being at
N.N.E., they got safely into the western creek, though not without
encountering plentiful sprays. It would have been impossible to have
attempted a landing to-day, under any other circumstances than with
boats perfectly adapted to the purpose, and with seamen who knew every
ledge of the rock, and even the length of the sea-weeds at each
particular spot, so as to dip their oars into the water accordingly, and
thereby prevent them from getting entangled. But what was of no less
consequence to the safety of the party, Captain Wilson, who always
steered the boat, had a perfect knowledge of the set of the different
waves, while the crew never shifted their eyes from observing his
motions, and the strictest silence was preserved by every individual
except himself.
On entering the house, the writer had the pleasure to find it in a
somewhat habitable condition, the lower apartments being closed in with
temporary windows, and fitted with proper storm-shutters. The lowest
apartment at the head of the staircase was occupied with water, fuel,
and provisions, put up in a temporary way until the house could be
furnished with proper utensils. The second, or light-room store, was at
present much encumbered with various tools and apparatus for the use of
the workmen. The kitchen immediately over this had, as yet, been
supplied only with a common ship's caboose and plate-iron funnel, while
the necessary cooking utensils had been taken from the beacon. The
bedroom was for the present used as the joiners' workshop, and the
strangers' room, immediately under the light-room, was occupied by the
artificers, the beds being ranged in tiers, as was done in the barrack
of the beacon. The lightroom, though unprovided with its machinery,
being now covered over with the cupola, glazed and painted, had a very
complete and cleanly appearance. The balcony was only as yet fitted with
a temporary rail, consisting of a few iron stanchions, connected with
ropes; and in this state it was necessary to leave it during the winter.
Having gone over the whole of the low-water works on the rock, the
beacon, and lighthouse, and being satisfied that only the most untoward
accident in the landing of the machinery could prevent the exhibition of
the light in the course of the winter, Mr. John Reid, formerly of the
floating light, was now put in charge of the lighthouse as principal
keeper; Mr. James Slight had charge of the operations of the
artificers, while Mr. James Dove and the smiths, having finished the
frame of the light-room, left the rock for the present. With these
arrangements the writer bade adieu to the works for the season. At
eleven a.m. the tide was far advanced; and there being now little or no
shelter for the boats at the rock, they had to be pulled through the
breach of sea, which came on board in great quantities, and it was with
extreme difficulty that they could be kept in the proper direction of
the landing-creek. On this occasion he may be permitted to look back
with gratitude on the many escapes made in the course of this arduous
undertaking, now brought so near to a successful conclusion.
Monday, 5th Nov.
On Monday, the 5th, the yacht again visited the rock, when Mr. Slight
and the artificers returned with her to the workyard, where a number of
things were still to prepare connected with the temporary fitting up of
the accommodation for the lightkeepers. Mr. John Reid and Peter Fortune
were now the only inmates of the house. This was the smallest number of
persons hitherto left in the lighthouse. As four lightkeepers were to be
the complement, it was intended that three should always be at the rock.
Its present inmates, however, could hardly have been better selected for
such a situation; Mr. Reid being a person possessed of the strictest
notions of duty and habits of regularity from long service on board of a
man-of-war, while Mr. Fortune had one of the most happy and contented
dispositions imaginable.
Tuesday, 13th Nov.
From Saturday the 10th till Tuesday the 13th, the wind had been from
N.E. blowing a heavy gale; but to-day, the weather having greatly
moderated, Captain Taylor, who now commanded the _Smeaton_, sailed at
two o'clock a.m. for the Bell Rock. At five the floating light was
hailed and found to be all well. Being a fine moonlight morning, the
seamen were changed from the one ship to the other. At eight, the
_Smeaton_ being off the rock, the boats were manned, and taking a supply
of water, fuel, and other necessaries, landed at the western side, when
Mr. Reid and Mr. Fortune were found in good health and spirits.
Mr. Reid stated that during the late gales, particularly on Friday, the
30th, the wind veering from S.E. to N.E., both he and Mr. Fortune
sensibly felt the house tremble when particular seas struck, about the
time of high-water; the former observing that it was a tremor of that
sort which rather tended to convince him that everything about the
building was sound, and reminded him of the effect produced when a good
log of timber is struck sharply with a mallet; but, with every
confidence in the stability of the building, he nevertheless confessed
that, in so forlorn a situation, they were not insensible to those
emotions which, he emphatically observed, "made a man look back upon his
former life."
Friday, 1st Feb.
The day, long wished for, on which the mariner was to see a light
exhibited on the Bell Rock at length arrived. Captain Wilson, as usual,
hoisted the float's lanterns to the topmast on the evening of the 1st of
February; but the moment that the light appeared on the rock, the crew,
giving three cheers, lowered them, and finally extinguished the lights.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] This is, of course, the tradition commemorated by Southey in
his ballad of "The Inchcape Bell." Whether true or not, it points to
the fact that from the infancy of Scottish navigation, the seafaring
mind had been fully alive to the perils of this reef. Repeated
attempts had been made to mark the place with beacons, but all
efforts were unavailing (one such beacon having been carried away
within eight days of its erection) until Robert Stevenson conceived
and carried out the idea of the stone tower.
[12] The particular event which concentrated Mr. Stevenson's
attention on the problem of the Bell Rock was the memorable gale of
December 1799, when, among many other vessels, H.M.S. _York,_ a
seventy-four-gun ship, went down with all hands on board. Shortly
after this disaster Mr. Stevenson made a careful survey, and
prepared his models for a stone tower, the idea of which was at
first received with pretty general scepticism. Smeaton's Eddystone
tower could not be cited as affording a parallel, for there the rock
is not submerged even at high-water, while the problem of the Bell
Rock was to build a tower of masonry on a sunken reef far distant
from land, covered at every tide to a depth of twelve feet or more,
and having thirty-two fathoms' depth of water within a mile of its
eastern edge.
[13] The grounds for the rejection of the Bill by the House of Lords
in 1802-3 had been that the extent of coast over which dues were
proposed to be levied would be too great. Before going to Parliament
again, the Board of Northern Lights, desiring to obtain support and
corroboration for Mr. Stevenson's views, consulted first Telford,
who was unable to give the matter his attention, and then (on
Stevenson's suggestion) Rennie, who concurred in affirming the
practicability of a stone tower, and supported the Bill when it came
again before Parliament in 1806. Rennie was afterwards appointed by
the Commissioners as advising engineer, whom Stevenson might consult
in cases of emergency. It seems certain that the title of chief
engineer had in this instance no more meaning than the above.
Rennie, in point of fact, proposed certain modifications in
Stevenson's plans, which the latter did not accept; nevertheless
Rennie continued to take a kindly interest in the work, and the two
engineers remained in friendly correspondence during its progress.
The official view taken by the Board as to the quarter in which lay
both the merit and the responsibility of the work may be gathered
from a minute of the Commissioners at their first meeting held after
Stevenson died; in which they record their regret "at the death of
this zealous, faithful, and able officer, _to whom is due the honour
of conceiving and executing the Bell Rock Lighthouse_." The matter
is briefly summed up in the "Life" of Robert Stevenson by his son
David Stevenson (A. & C. Black, 1878), and fully discussed, on the
basis of official facts and figures, by the same writer in a letter
to the _Civil Engineers' and Architects' Journal_, 1862.
[14] "Nothing was said, but I was _looked out of countenance_," he
says in a letter.
[15] Ill-formed--ugly.--[R. L. S.]
[16] This is an incurable illusion of my grandfather's; he always
writes "distended" for "extended." [R. L. S.]
ADDITIONAL MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS
ADDITIONAL MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS
I
RANDOM MEMORIES
I. THE COAST OF FIFE
Many writers have vigorously described the pains of the first day or the
first night at school; to a boy of any enterprise, I believe, they are
more often agreeably exciting. Misery--or at least misery unrelieved--is
confined to another period, to the days of suspense and the "dreadful
looking-for" of departure; when the old life is running to an end, and
the new life, with its new interests, not yet begun; and to the pain of
an imminent parting, there is added the unrest of a state of conscious
pre-existence. The area railings, the beloved shop-window, the smell of
semi-suburban tanpits, the song of the church-bells upon a Sunday, the
thin, high voices of compatriot children in a playing-field--what a
sudden, what an overpowering pathos breathes to him from each familiar
circumstance! The assaults of sorrow come not from within, as it seems
to him, but from without. I was proud and glad to go to school; had I
been let alone, I could have borne up like any hero; but there was
around me, in all my native town, a conspiracy of lamentation: "Poor
little boy, he is going away--unkind little boy, he is going to leave
us"; so the unspoken burthen followed me as I went, with yearning and
reproach. And at length, one melancholy afternoon in the early autumn,
and at a place where it seems to me, looking back, it must be always
autumn and generally Sunday, there came suddenly upon the face of all I
saw--the long empty road, the lines of the tall houses, the church upon
the hill, the woody hillside garden--a look of such a piercing sadness
that my heart died; and seating myself on a door-step, I shed tears of
miserable sympathy. A benevolent cat cumbered me the while with
consolations--we two were alone in all that was visible of the London
Road: two poor waifs who had each tasted sorrow--and she fawned upon the
weeper, and gambolled for his entertainment, watching the effect, it
seemed, with motherly eyes.
For the sake of the cat, God bless her! I confessed at home the story of
my weakness; and so it comes about that I owed a certain journey, and
the reader owes the present paper, to a cat in the London Road. It was
judged, if I had thus brimmed over on the public highway, some change of
scene was (in the medical sense) indicated; my father at the time was
visiting the harbour lights of Scotland; and it was decided that he
should take me along with him around a portion of the shores of Fife; my
first professional tour, my first journey in the complete character of
man, without the help of petticoats.
The Kingdom of Fife (that royal province) may be observed by the curious
on the map, occupying a tongue of land between the firths of Forth and
Tay. It may be continually seen from many parts of Edinburgh (among the
rest, from the windows of my father's house) dying away into the
distance and the easterly _haar_ with one smoky seaside town beyond
another, or in winter printing on the grey heaven some glittering
hill-tops. It has no beauty to recommend it, being a low, sea-salted,
wind-vexed promontory; trees very rare, except (as common on the east
coast) along the dens of rivers; the fields well cultivated, I
understand, but not lovely to the eye. It is of the coast I speak: the
interior may be the garden of Eden. History broods over that part of the
world like the easterly haar. Even on the map, its long row of Gaelic
place-names bear testimony to an old and settled race. Of these little
towns, posted along the shore as close as sedges, each with its bit of
harbour, its old weather-beaten church or public building, its flavour
of decayed prosperity and decaying fish, not one but has its legend,
quaint or tragic: Dunfermline, in whose royal towers the king may be
still observed (in the ballad) drinking the blood-red wine; somnolent
Inverkeithing, once the quarantine of Leith; Aberdour, hard by the
monastic islet of Inchcolm, hard by Donibristle where the "bonny face
was spoiled": Burntisland, where, when Paul Jones was off the coast, the
Reverend Mr. Shirra had a table carried between tide-marks, and publicly
prayed against the rover at the pitch of his voice and his broad lowland
dialect; Kinghorn, where Alexander "brak's neck-bane" and left Scotland
to the English wars; Kirkcaldy, where the witches once prevailed
extremely and sank tall ships and honest mariners in the North Sea;
Dysart, famous--well, famous at least to me for the Dutch ships that lay
in its harbour, painted like toys and with pots of flowers and cages of
song-birds in the cabin-windows, and for one particular Dutch skipper
who would sit all day in slippers on the break of the poop, smoking a
long German pipe; Wemyss (pronounced Weems) with its bat-haunted caves,
where the Chevalier Johnstone, on his flight from Culloden, passed a
night of superstitious terrors; Leven, a bald, quite modern place,
sacred to summer visitors, whence there has gone but yesterday the tall
figure and the white locks of the last Englishman in Delhi, my uncle Dr.
Balfour, who was still walking his hospital rounds, while the troopers
from Meerut clattered and cried "Deen Deen" along the streets of the
imperial city, and Willoughby mustered his handful of heroes at the
magazine, and the nameless brave one in the telegraph office was perhaps
already fingering his last despatch; and just a little beyond Leven,
Largo Law and the smoke of Largo town mounting about its feet, the town
of Alexander Selkirk, better known under the name of Robinson Crusoe.
So on the list might be pursued (only for private reasons, which the
reader will shortly have an opportunity to guess) by St. Monans, and
Pittenweem, and the two Anstruthers, and Cellardyke, and Crail, where
Primate Sharpe was once a humble and innocent country minister: on to
the heel of the land, to Fife Ness, overlooked by a sea-wood of matted
elders and the quaint old mansion of Balcomie, itself overlooking but
the breach or the quiescence of the deep--the Carr Rock beacon rising
close in front, and as night draws in, the star of the Inchcape reef
springing up on the one hand, and the star of the May Island on the
other, and farther off yet a third and a greater on the craggy foreland
of St. Abb's. And but a little way round the corner of the land,
imminent itself above the sea, stands the gem of the province and the
light of mediæval Scotland, St. Andrews, where the great Cardinal Beaton
held garrison against the world, and the second of the name and title
perished (as you may read in Knox's jeering narrative) under the knives
of true-blue Protestants, and to this day (after so many centuries) the
current voice of the professor is not hushed.
Here it was that my first tour of inspection began, early on a bleak
easterly morning. There was a crashing run of sea upon the shore, I
recollect, and my father and the man of the harbour light must sometimes
raise their voices to be audible. Perhaps it is from this circumstance,
that I always imagine St. Andrews to be an ineffectual seat of learning,
and the sound of the east wind and the bursting surf to linger in its
drowsy class-rooms and confound the utterance of the professor, until
teacher and taught are alike drowned in oblivion, and only the sea-gull
beats on the windows and the draught of the sea-air rustles in the pages
of the open lecture. But upon all this, and the romance of St. Andrews
in general, the reader must consult the works of Mr. Andrew Lang; who
has written of it but the other day in his dainty prose and with his
incommunicable humour, and long ago, in one of his best poems, with
grace and local truth and a note of unaffected pathos. Mr. Lang knows
all about the romance, I say, and the educational advantages, but I
doubt if he had turned his attention to the harbour lights; and it may
be news even to him, that in the year 1863 their case was pitiable.
Hanging about with the east wind humming in my teeth, and my hands (I
make no doubt) in my pockets, I looked for the first time upon that
tragi-comedy of the visiting engineer which I have seen so often
re-enacted on a more important stage. Eighty years ago, I find my
grandfather writing: "It is the most painful thing that can occur to me
to have a correspondence of this kind with any of the keepers, and when
I come to the Light House, instead of having the satisfaction to meet
them with approbation and welcome their Family, it is distressing when
one is obliged to put on a most angry countenance and demeanour." This
painful obligation has been hereditary in my race. I have myself, on a
perfectly amateur and unauthorised inspection of Turnberry Point, bent
my brows upon the keeper on the question of storm-panes; and felt a keen
pang of self-reproach, when we went downstairs again and I found he was
making a coffin for his infant child; and then regained my equanimity
with the thought that I had done the man a service, and when the proper
inspector came, he would be readier with his panes. The human race is
perhaps credited with more duplicity than it deserves. The visitation of
a lighthouse at least is a business of the most transparent nature. As
soon as the boat grates on the shore, and the keepers step forward in
their uniformed coats, the very slouch of the fellows' shoulders tells
their story, and the engineer may begin at once to assume his "angry
countenance." Certainly the brass of the handrail will be clouded; and
if the brass be not immaculate, certainly all will be to match--the
reflectors scratched, the spare lamp unready, the storm-panes in the
storehouse. If a light is not rather more than middling good, it will be
radically bad. Mediocrity (except in literature) appears to be
unattainable by man. But of course the unfortunate of St. Andrews was
only an amateur, he was not in the Service, he had no uniform coat, he
was, I believe, a plumber by his trade, and stood (in the mediæval
phrase) quite out of the danger of my father; but he had a painful
interview for all that, and perspired extremely.
From St. Andrews we drove over Magus Muir. My father had announced we
were "to post," and the phrase called up in my hopeful mind visions of
top-boots and the pictures in Rowlandson's "Dance of Death"; but it was
only a jingling cab that came to the inn door, such as I had driven in a
thousand times at the low price of one shilling on the streets of
Edinburgh. Beyond this disappointment, I remember nothing of that drive.
It is a road I have often travelled, and of not one of these journeys do
I remember any single trait. The fact has not been suffered to encroach
on the truth of the imagination. I still see Magus Muir two hundred
years ago: a desert place, quite unenclosed; in the midst, the primate's
carriage fleeing at the gallop; the assassins loose-reined in pursuit,
Burley Balfour, pistol in hand, among the first. No scene of history has
ever written itself so deeply on my mind; not because Balfour, that
questionable zealot, was an ancestral cousin of my own; not because of
the pleadings of the victim and his daughter; not even because of the
live bum-bee that flew out of Sharpe's 'bacco-box, thus clearly
indicating his complicity with Satan; nor merely because, as it was
after all a crime of a fine religious flavour, it figured in Sunday
books and afforded a grateful relief from "Ministering Children" or the
"Memoirs of Mrs. Katherine Winslowe." The figure that always fixed my
attention is that of Hackston of Rathillet, sitting in the saddle with
his cloak about his mouth, and through all that long, bungling,
vociferous hurly-burly, revolving privately a case of conscience. He
would take no hand in the deed, because he had a private spite against
the victim, and "that action" must be sullied with no suggestion of a
worldly motive; on the other hand, "that action" in itself was highly
justified, he had cast in his lot with "the actors," and he must stay
there, inactive, but publicly sharing the responsibility. "You are a
gentleman--you will protect me!" cried the wounded old man, crawling
towards him. "I will never lay a hand on you," said Hackston, and put
his cloak about his mouth. It is an old temptation with me to pluck away
that cloak and see the face--to open that bosom and to read the heart.
With incomplete romances about Hackston, the drawers of my youth were
lumbered. I read him up in every printed book that I could lay my hands
on. I even dug among the Wodrow manuscripts, sitting shame-faced in the
very room where my hero had been tortured two centuries before, and
keenly conscious of my youth in the midst of other and (as I fondly
thought) more gifted students. All was vain: that he had passed a
riotous nonage, that he was a zealot, that he twice displayed (compared
with his grotesque companions) some tincture of soldierly resolution and
even of military common sense, and that he figured memorably in the
scene on Magus Muir, so much and no more could I make out. But whenever
I cast my eyes backward, it is to see him like a landmark on the plains
of history, sitting with his cloak about his mouth, inscrutable. How
small a thing creates an immortality! I do not think he can have been a
man entirely commonplace; but had he not thrown his cloak about his
mouth, or had the witnesses forgot to chronicle the action, he would not
thus have haunted the imagination of my boyhood, and to-day he would
scarce delay me for a paragraph. An incident, at once romantic and
dramatic, which at once awakes the judgment and makes a picture for the
eye, how little do we realise its perdurable power! Perhaps no one does
so but the author, just as none but he appreciates the influence of
jingling words; so that he looks on upon life, with something of a
covert smile, seeing people led by what they fancy to be thoughts and
what are really the accustomed artifices of his own trade, or roused by
what they take to be principles and are really picturesque effects. In a
pleasant book about a school-class club, Colonel Fergusson has recently
told a little anecdote. A "Philosophical Society" was formed by some
Academy boys--among them, Colonel Fergusson himself, Fleeming Jenkin,
and Andrew Wilson, the Christian Buddhist and author of "The Abode of
Snow." Before these learned pundits, one member laid the following
ingenious problem: "What would be the result of putting a pound of
potassium in a pot of porter?" "I should think there would be a number
of interesting bi-products," said a smatterer at my elbow; but for me
the tale itself has a bi-product, and stands as a type of much that is
most human. For this inquirer, who conceived himself to burn with a zeal
entirely chemical, was really immersed in a design of a quite different
nature: unconsciously to his own recently breeched intelligence, he was
engaged in literature. Putting, pound, potassium, pot, porter; initial
p, mediant t--that was his idea, poor little boy! So with politics and
that which excites men in the present, so with history and that which
rouses them in the past: there lie, at the root of what appears, most
serious unsuspected elements.
The triple town of Anstruther Wester, Anstruther Easter, and Cellardyke,
all three Royal Burghs--or two Royal Burghs and a less distinguished
suburb, I forget which--lies continuously along the seaside, and boasts
of either two or three separate parish churches, and either two or three
separate harbours. These ambiguities are painful; but the fact is
(although it argues me uncultured), I am but poorly posted up on
Cellardyke. My business lay in the two Anstruthers. A tricklet of a
stream divides them, spanned by a bridge; and over the bridge at the
time of my knowledge, the celebrated Shell House stood outpost on the
west. This had been the residence of an agreeable eccentric; during his
fond tenancy he had illustrated the outer walls, as high (if I remember
rightly) as the roof, with elaborate patterns and pictures, and
snatches of verse in the vein of _exegi monumentum_; shells and pebbles,
artfully contrasted and conjoined, had been his medium; and I like to
think of him standing back upon the bridge, when all was finished,
drinking in the general effect, and (like Gibbon) already lamenting his
employment.
The same bridge saw another sight in the seventeenth century. Mr.
Thomson, the "curat" of Anstruther Easter, was a man highly obnoxious to
the devout: in the first place, because he was a "curat"; in the second
place, because he was a person of irregular and scandalous life; and in
the third place, because he was generally suspected of dealings with the
Enemy of Man. These three disqualifications, in the popular literature
of the time, go hand in hand; but the end of Mr. Thomson was a thing
quite by itself, and, in the proper phrase, a manifest judgment. He had
been at a friend's house in Anstruther Wester, where (and elsewhere, I
suspect) he had partaken of the bottle; indeed, to put the thing in our
cold modern way, the reverend gentleman was on the brink of _delirium
tremens_. It was a dark night, it seems; a little lassie came carrying a
lantern to fetch the curate home; and away they went down the street of
Anstruther Wester, the lantern swinging a bit in the child's hand, the
barred lustre tossing up and down along the front of slumbering houses,
and Mr. Thomson not altogether steady on his legs nor (to all
appearance) easy in his mind. The pair had reached the middle of the
bridge when (as I conceive the scene) the poor tippler started in some
baseless fear and looked behind him; the child, already shaken by the
minister's strange behaviour, started also; in so doing she would jerk
the lantern; and for the space of a moment the lights and the shadows
would be all confounded. Then it was that to the unhinged toper and the
twittering child, a huge bulk of blackness seemed to sweep down, to pass
them close by as they stood upon the bridge, and to vanish on the
farther side in the general darkness of the night. "Plainly the devil
come for Mr. Thomson!" thought the child. What Mr. Thomson thought
himself, we have no ground of knowledge; but he fell upon his knees in
the midst of the bridge like a man praying. On the rest of the journey
to the manse, history is silent; but when they came to the door, the
poor caitiff, taking the lantern from the child, looked upon her with so
lost a countenance that her little courage died within her, and she fled
home screaming to her parents. Not a soul would venture out; all that
night the minister dwelt alone with his terrors in the manse; and when
the day dawned, and men made bold to go about the streets, they found
the devil had come indeed for Mr. Thomson.
This manse of Anstruther Easter has another and a more cheerful
association. It was early in the morning, about a century before the
days of Mr. Thomson, that his predecessor was called out of bed to
welcome a Grandee of Spain, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, just landed in
the harbour underneath. But sure there was never seen a more decayed
grandee; sure there was never a duke welcomed from a stranger place of
exile. Half-way between Orkney and Shetland there lies a certain isle;
on the one hand the Atlantic, on the other the North Sea, bombard its
pillared cliffs; sore-eyed, short-living, inbred fishers and their
families herd in its few huts; in the graveyard pieces of wreck-wood
stand for monuments; there is nowhere a more inhospitable spot.
_Belle-Isle-en-Mer_--Fair-Isle-at-Sea--that is a name that has always
rung in my mind's ear like music; but the only "Fair Isle" on which I
ever set my foot was this unhomely, rugged turret-top of submarine
sierras. Here, when his ship was broken, my lord Duke joyfully got
ashore; here for long months he and certain of his men were harboured;
and it was from this durance that he landed at last to be welcomed (as
well as such a papist deserved, no doubt) by the godly incumbent of
Anstruther Easter; and after the Fair Isle, what a fine city must that
have appeared! and after the island diet, what a hospitable spot the
minister's table! And yet he must have lived on friendly terms with his
outlandish hosts. For to this day there still survives a relic of the
long winter evenings when the sailors of the great Armada crouched about
the hearths of the Fair-Islanders, the planks of their own lost galleon
perhaps lighting up the scene, and the gale and the surf that beat about
the coast contributing their melancholy voices. All the folk of the
north isles are great artificers of knitting: the Fair-Islanders alone
dye their fabrics in the Spanish manner. To this day, gloves and
nightcaps, innocently decorated, may be seen for sale in the Shetland
warehouse at Edinburgh, or on the Fair Isle itself in the catechist's
house; and to this day, they tell the story of the Duke of Medina
Sidonia's adventure.
It would seem as if the Fair Isle had some attraction for "persons of
quality." When I landed there myself, an elderly gentleman, unshaved,
poorly attired, his shoulders wrapped in a plaid, was seen walking to
and fro, with a book in his hand, upon the beach. He paid no heed to our
arrival, which we thought a strange thing in itself; but when one of the
officers of the _Pharos_, passing narrowly by him, observed his book to
be a Greek Testament, our wonder and interest took a higher flight. The
catechist was cross-examined; he said the gentleman had been put across
some time before in Mr. Bruce of Sumburgh's schooner, the only link
between the Fair Isle and the rest of the world; and that he held
services and was doing "good." So much came glibly enough; but when
pressed a little further, the catechist displayed embarrassment. A
singular diffidence appeared upon his face: "They tell me," said he, in
low tones, "that he's a lord." And a lord he was; a peer of the realm
pacing that inhospitable beach with his Greek Testament, and his plaid
about his shoulders, set upon doing good, as he understood it, worthy
man! And his grandson, a good-looking little boy, much better dressed
than the lordly evangelist, and speaking with a silken English accent
very foreign to the scene, accompanied me for a while in my exploration
of the island. I suppose this little fellow is now my lord, and wonder
how much he remembers of the Fair Isle. Perhaps not much; for he seemed
to accept very quietly his savage situation; and under such guidance, it
is like that this was not his first nor yet his last adventure.
II
RANDOM MEMORIES
II. THE EDUCATION OF AN ENGINEER
Anstruther is a place sacred to the Muse; she inspired (really to a
considerable extent) Tennant's vernacular poem "Anster Fair"; and I have
there waited upon her myself with much devotion. This was when I came as
a young man to glean engineering experience from the building of the
breakwater. What I gleaned, I am sure I do not know; but indeed I had
already my own private determination to be an author; I loved the art of
words and the appearances of life; and _travellers_, and _headers_, and
_rubble_, and _polished ashlar_, and _pierres perdues_, and even the
thrilling question of the _string-course_, interested me only (if they
interested me at all) as properties for some possible romance or as
words to add to my vocabulary. To grow a little catholic is the
compensation of years; youth is one-eyed; and in those days, though I
haunted the breakwater by day, and even loved the place for the sake of
the sunshine, the thrilling seaside air, the wash of waves on the
sea-face, the green glimmer of the divers' helmets far below, and the
musical chinking of the masons, my one genuine pre-occupation lay
elsewhere, and my only industry was in the hours when I was not on duty.
I lodged with a certain Bailie Brown, a carpenter by trade; and there,
as soon as dinner was despatched, in a chamber scented with dry
rose-leaves, drew in my chair to the table and proceeded to pour forth
literature, at such a speed, and with such intimations of early death
and immortality, as I now look back upon with wonder. Then it was that
I wrote "Voces Fidelium," a series of dramatic monologues in verse; then
that I indited the bulk of a covenanting novel--like so many others,
never finished. Late I sat into the night, toiling (as I thought) under
the very dart of death, toiling to leave a memory behind me. I feel
moved to thrust aside the curtain of the years, to hail that poor
feverish idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap "Voces Fidelium" on the
fire before he goes; so clear does he appear before me, sitting there
between his candles in the rose-scented room and the late night; so
ridiculous a picture (to my elderly wisdom) does the fool present! But
he was driven to his bed at last without miraculous intervention; and
the manner of his driving sets the last touch upon this eminently
youthful business. The weather was then so warm that I must keep the
windows open; the night without was populous with moths. As the late
darkness deepened, my literary tapers beaconed forth more brightly;
thicker and thicker came the dusty night-fliers, to gyrate for one
brilliant instant round the flame and fall in agonies upon my paper.
Flesh and blood could not endure the spectacle; to capture immortality
was doubtless a noble enterprise, but not to capture it at such a cost
of suffering; and out would go the candles, and off would I go to bed in
the darkness, raging to think that the blow might fall on the morrow,
and there was "Voces Fidelium" still incomplete. Well, the moths are all
gone, and "Voces Fidelium" along with them; only the fool is still on
hand and practises new follies.
Only one thing in connection with the harbour tempted me, and that was
the diving, an experience I burned to taste of. But this was not to be,
at least in Anstruther; and the subject involves a change of scene to
the sub-arctic town of Wick. You can never have dwelt in a country more
unsightly than that part of Caithness, the land faintly swelling,
faintly falling, not a tree, not a hedgerow, the fields divided by
single slate stones set upon their edge, the wind always singing in your
ears and (down the long road that led nowhere) thrumming in the
telegraph wires. Only as you approached the coast was there anything to
stir the heart. The plateau broke down to the North Sea in formidable
cliffs, the tall out-stacks rose like pillars ringed about with surf,
the coves were over-brimmed with clamorous froth, the sea-birds
screamed, the wind sang in the thyme on the cliff's edge; here and
there, small ancient castles toppled on the brim; here and there, it was
possible to dip into a dell of shelter, where you might lie and tell
yourself you were a little warm, and hear (near at hand) the whin-pods
bursting in the afternoon sun, and (farther off) the rumour of the
turbulent sea. As for Wick itself, it is one of the meanest of man's
towns, and situate certainly on the baldest of God's bays. It lives for
herring, and a strange sight it is to see (of an afternoon) the heights
of Pulteney blackened by seaward-looking fishers, as when a city crowds
to a review--or, as when bees have swarmed, the ground is horrible with
lumps and clusters; and a strange sight, and a beautiful, to see the
fleet put silently out against a rising moon, the sea-line rough as a
wood with sails, and ever and again and one after another, a boat
flitting swiftly by the silver disk. This mass of fishers, this great
fleet of boats, is out of all proportion to the town itself; and the
oars are manned and the nets hauled by immigrants from the Long Island
(as we call the outer Hebrides), who come for that season only, and
depart again, if "the take" be poor, leaving debts behind them. In a bad
year, the end of the herring-fishery is therefore an exciting time;
fights are common, riots often possible; an apple knocked from a child's
hand was once the signal for something like a war; and even when I was
there, a gunboat lay in the bay to assist the authorities. To contrary
interests, it should be observed, the curse of Babel is here added; the
Lews men are Gaelic speakers, those of Caithness have adopted English;
an odd circumstance, if you reflect that both must be largely Norsemen
by descent. I remember seeing one of the strongest instances of this
division: a thing like a Punch-and-Judy box erected on the flat
gravestones of the churchyard; from the hutch or proscenium--I know not
what to call it--an eldritch-looking preacher laying down the law in
Gaelic about some one of the name of _Powl_, whom I at last divined to
be the apostle to the Gentiles; a large congregation of the Lews men
very devoutly listening; and on the outskirts of the crowd, some of the
town's children (to whom the whole affair was Greek and Hebrew)
profanely playing tigg. The same descent, the same country, the same
narrow sect of the same religion, and all these bonds made very largely
nugatory by an accidental difference of dialect!
Into the bay of Wick stretched the dark length of the unfinished
breakwater, in its cage of open staging; the travellers (like frames of
churches) over-plumbing all; and away at the extreme end, the divers
toiling unseen on the foundation. On a platform of loose planks, the
assistants turned their air-mills; a stone might be swinging between
wind and water; underneath the swell ran gaily; and from time to time, a
mailed dragon with a window-glass snout came dripping up the ladder.
Youth is a blessed season after all; my stay at Wick was in the year of
"Voces Fidelium" and the rose-leaf room at Bailie Brown's; and already I
did not care two straws for literary glory. Posthumous ambition perhaps
requires an atmosphere of roses; and the more rugged excitant of Wick
east winds had made another boy of me. To go down in the diving-dress,
that was my absorbing fancy; and with the countenance of a certain
handsome scamp of a diver, Bob Bain by name, I gratified the whim.
It was grey, harsh, easterly weather, the swell ran pretty high, and out
in the open there were "skipper's daughters," when I found myself at
last on the diver's platform, twenty pounds of lead upon each foot and
my whole person swollen with ply and ply of woollen underclothing. One
moment, the salt wind was whistling round my night-capped head; the
next, I was crushed almost double under the weight of the helmet. As
that intolerable burthen was laid upon me, I could have found it in my
heart (only for shame's sake) to cry off from the whole enterprise. But
it was too late. The attendants began to turn the hurdy-gurdy, and the
air to whistle through the tube; some one screwed in the barred window
of the vizor; and I was cut off in a moment from my fellow-men; standing
there in their midst, but quite divorced from intercourse: a creature
deaf and dumb, pathetically looking forth upon them from a climate of
his own. Except that I could move and feel, I was like a man fallen in a
catalepsy. But time was scarce given me to realise my isolation; the
weights were hung upon my back and breast, the signal-rope was thrust
into my unresisting hand; and setting a twenty-pound foot upon the
ladder, I began ponderously to descend.
Some twenty rounds below the platform, twilight fell. Looking up, I saw
a low green heaven mottled with vanishing bells of white; looking
around, except for the weedy spokes and shafts of the ladder, nothing
but a green gloaming, somewhat opaque but very restful and delicious.
Thirty rounds lower, I stepped off on the _pierres perdues_ of the
foundation; a dumb helmeted figure took me by the hand, and made a
gesture (as I read it) of encouragement; and looking in at the
creature's window, I beheld the face of Bain. There we were, hand to
hand and (when it pleased us) eye to eye; and either might have burst
himself with shouting, and not a whisper come to his companion's
hearing. Each, in his own little world of air, stood incommunicably
separate.
Bob had told me ere this a little tale, a five minutes' drama at the
bottom of the sea, which at that moment possibly shot across my mind. He
was down with another, settling a stone of the sea-wall. They had it
well adjusted, Bob gave the signal, the scissors were slipped, the stone
set home; and it was time to turn to something else. But still his
companion remained bowed over the block like a mourner on a tomb, or
only raised himself to make absurd contortions and mysterious signs
unknown to the vocabulary of the diver. There, then, these two stood for
a while, like the dead and the living; till there flashed a fortunate
thought into Bob's mind, and he stooped, peered through the window of
that other world, and beheld the face of its inhabitant wet with
streaming tears. Ah! the man was in pain! And Bob, glancing downward,
saw what was the trouble: the block had been lowered on the foot of that
unfortunate--he was caught alive at the bottom of the sea under fifteen
tons of rock.
That two men should handle a stone so heavy, even swinging in the
scissors, may appear strange to the inexpert. These must bear in mind
the great density of the water of the sea, and the surprising results of
transplantation to that medium. To understand a little what these are,
and how a man's weight, so far from being an encumbrance, is the very
ground of his agility, was the chief lesson of my submarine experience.
The knowledge came upon me by degrees. As I began to go forward with the
hand of my estranged companion, a world of tumbled stones was visible,
pillared with the weedy uprights of the staging: overhead, a flat roof
of green: a little in front, the sea-wall, like an unfinished rampart.
And presently in our upward progress, Bob motioned me to leap upon a
stone; I looked to see if he were possibly in earnest, and he only
signed to me the more imperiously. Now the block stood six feet high; it
would have been quite a leap to me unencumbered; with the breast and
back weights, and the twenty pounds upon each foot, and the staggering
load of the helmet, the thing was out of reason. I laughed aloud in my
tomb; and to prove to Bob how far he was astray, I gave a little impulse
from my toes. Up I soared like a bird, my companion soaring at my side.
As high as to the stone, and then higher, I pursued my impotent and
empty flight. Even when the strong arm of Bob had checked my shoulders,
my heels continued their ascent; so that I blew out side-ways like an
autumn leaf, and must be hauled in, hand over hand, as sailors haul in
the slack of a sail, and propped upon my feet again like an intoxicated
sparrow. Yet a little higher on the foundation, and we began to be
affected by the bottom of the swell, running there like a strong breeze
of wind. Or so I must suppose; for, safe in my cushion of air, I was
conscious of no impact; only swayed idly like a weed, and was now borne
helplessly abroad, and now swiftly--and yet with dream-like
gentleness--impelled against my guide. So does a child's balloon
divagate upon the currents of the air, and touch and slide off again
from every obstacle. So must have ineffectually swung, so resented their
inefficiency, those light crowds that followed the Star of Hades, and
uttered exiguous voices in the land beyond Cocytus.
There was something strangely exasperating, as well as strangely
wearying, in these uncommanded evolutions. It is bitter to return to
infancy, to be supported, and directed, and perpetually set upon your
feet, by the hand of some one else. The air besides, as it is supplied to
you by the busy millers on the platform, closes the eustachian tubes and
keeps the neophyte perpetually swallowing, till his throat is grown so
dry that he can swallow no longer. And for all these reasons--although I
had a fine, dizzy, muddle-headed joy in my surroundings, and longed, and
tried, and always failed, to lay hands on the fish that darted here and
there about me, swift as humming-birds--yet I fancy I was rather relieved
than otherwise when Bain brought me back to the ladder and signed to me
to mount. And there was one more experience before me even then. Of a
sudden, my ascending head passed into the trough of a swell. Out of the
green, I shot at once into a glory of rosy, almost of sanguine light--the
multitudinous seas incarnadined, the heaven above a vault of crimson. And
then the glory faded into the hard, ugly daylight of a Caithness autumn,
with a low sky, a grey sea, and a whistling wind.
Bob Bain had five shillings for his trouble, and I had done what I
desired. It was one of the best things I got from my education as an
engineer: of which, however, as a way of life, I wish to speak with
sympathy. It takes a man into the open air; it keeps him hanging about
harbour-sides, which is the richest form of idling; it carries him to
wild islands; it gives him a taste of the genial dangers of the sea; it
supplies him with dexterities to exercise; it makes demands upon his
ingenuity; it will go far to cure him of any taste (if ever he had one)
for the miserable life of cities. And when it has done so, it carries
him back and shuts him in an office! From the roaring skerry and the wet
thwart of the tossing boat, he passes to the stool and desk, and with a
memory full of ships, and seas, and perilous headlands, and the shining
pharos, he must apply his long-sighted eyes to the pretty niceties of
drawing, or measure his inaccurate mind with several pages of
consecutive figures. He is a wise youth, to be sure, who can balance one
part of genuine life against two parts of drudgery between four walls,
and for the sake of the one, manfully accept the other.
Wick was scarce an eligible place of stay. But how much better it was to
hang in the cold wind upon the pier, to go down with Bob Bain among the
roots of the staging, to be all day in a boat coiling a wet rope and
shouting orders--not always very wise--than to be warm and dry, and
dull, and dead-alive, in the most comfortable office. And Wick itself
had in those days a note of originality. It may have still, but I
misdoubt it much. The old minister of Keiss would not preach, in these
degenerate times, for an hour and a half upon the clock. The gipsies
must be gone from their cavern; where you might see, from the mouth, the
women tending their fire, like Meg Merrilies, and the men sleeping off
their coarse potations; and where in winter gales, the surf would
beleaguer them closely, bursting in their very door. A traveller to-day
upon the Thurso coach would scarce observe a little cloud of smoke among
the moorlands, and be told, quite openly, it marked a private still. He
would not indeed make that journey, for there is now no Thurso coach.
And even if he could, one little thing that happened to me could never
happen to him, or not with the same trenchancy of contrast.
We had been upon the road all evening; the coach-top was crowded with
Lews fishers going home, scarce anything but Gaelic had sounded in my
ears; and our way had lain throughout over a moorish country very
northern to behold. Latish at night, though it was still broad day in
our sub-arctic latitude, we came down upon the shores of the roaring
Pentland Firth, that grave of mariners; on one hand, the cliffs of
Dunnet Head ran seaward; in front was the little bare white town of
Castleton, its streets full of blowing sand; nothing beyond, but the
North Islands, the great deep, and the perennial ice-fields of the Pole.
And here, in the last imaginable place, there sprang up young outlandish
voices and a chatter of some foreign speech; and I saw, pursuing the
coach with its load of Hebridean fishers--as they had pursued
_vetturini_ up the passes of the Apennines or perhaps along the grotto
under Virgil's tomb--two little dark-eyed, white-toothed Italian
vagabonds, of twelve to fourteen years of age, one with a hurdy-gurdy,
the other with a cage of white mice. The coach passed on, and their
small Italian chatter died in the distance; and I was left to marvel how
they had wandered into that country, and how they fared in it, and what
they thought of it, and when (if ever) they should see again the silver
wind-breaks run among the olives, and the stone-pine stand guard upon
Etruscan sepulchres.
Upon any American, the strangeness of this incident is somewhat lost.
For as far back as he goes in his own land, he will find some alien
camping there; the Cornish miner, the French or Mexican half-blood, the
negro in the South, these are deep in the woods and far among the
mountains. But in an old, cold, and rugged country such as mine, the
days of immigration are long at an end; and away up there, which was at
that time far beyond the northernmost extreme of railways, hard upon the
shore of that ill-omened strait of whirlpools, in a land of moors where
no stranger came, unless it should be a sportsman to shoot grouse or an
antiquary to decipher runes, the presence of these small pedestrians
struck the mind as though a bird-of-paradise had risen from the heather
or an albatross come fishing in the bay of Wick. They were as strange to
their surroundings as my lordly evangelist or the old Spanish grandee on
the Fair Isle.
III
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS
The past is all of one texture--whether feigned or suffered--whether
acted out in three dimensions, or only witnessed in that small theatre
of the brain which we keep brightly lighted all night long, after the
jets are down, and darkness and sleep reign undisturbed in the remainder
of the body. There is no distinction on the face of our experiences; one
is vivid indeed, and one dull, and one pleasant, and another agonising
to remember; but which of them is what we call true, and which a dream,
there is not one hair to prove. The past stands on a precarious footing;
another straw split in the field of metaphysic, and behold us robbed of
it. There is scarce a family that can count four generations but lays a
claim to some dormant title or some castle and estate: a claim not
prosecutable in any court of law, but flattering to the fancy and a
great alleviation of idle hours. A man's claim to his own past is yet
less valid. A paper might turn up (in proper story-book fashion) in the
secret drawer of an old ebony secretary, and restore your family to its
ancient honours and reinstate mine in a certain West Indian islet (not
far from St. Kitt's, as beloved tradition hummed in my young ears) which
was once ours, and is now unjustly some one else's, and for that matter
(in the state of the sugar trade) is not worth anything to anybody. I do
not say that these revolutions are likely; only no man can deny that
they are possible; and the past, on the other hand, is lost for ever:
our old days and deeds, our old selves, too, and the very world in which
these scenes were acted, all brought down to the same faint residuum as
a last night's dream, to some incontinuous images, and an echo in the
chambers of the brain. Not an hour, not a mood, not a glance of the eye,
can we revoke; it is all gone, past conjuring. And yet conceive us
robbed of it, conceive that little thread of memory that we trail behind
us broken at the pocket's edge; and in what naked nullity should we be
left! for we only guide ourselves, and only know ourselves, by these
air-painted pictures of the past.
Upon these grounds, there are some among us who claim to have lived
longer and more richly than their neighbours; when they lay asleep they
claim they were still active; and among the treasures of memory that all
men review for their amusement, these count in no second place the
harvests of their dreams. There is one of this kind whom I have in my
eye, and whose case is perhaps unusual enough to be described. He was
from a child an ardent and uncomfortable dreamer. When he had a touch of
fever at night, and the room swelled and shrank, and his clothes,
hanging on a nail, now loomed up instant to the bigness of a church, and
now drew away into a horror of infinite distance and infinite
littleness, the poor soul was very well aware of what must follow, and
struggled hard against the approaches of that slumber which was the
beginning of sorrows. But his struggles were in vain; sooner or later
the night-hag would have him by the throat, and pluck him, strangling
and screaming, from his sleep. His dreams were at times commonplace
enough, at times very strange: at times they were almost formless, he
would be haunted, for instance, by nothing more definite than a certain
hue of brown, which he did not mind in the least while he was awake, but
feared and loathed while he was dreaming; at times, again, they took on
every detail of circumstance, as when once he supposed he must swallow
the populous world, and awoke screaming with the horror of the thought.
The two chief troubles of his very narrow existence--the practical and
everyday trouble of school tasks and the ultimate and airy one of hell
and judgment--were often confounded together into one appalling
nightmare. He seemed to himself to stand before the Great White Throne;
he was called on, poor little devil, to recite some form of words, on
which his destiny depended; his tongue stuck, his memory was blank, hell
gaped for him; and he would awake, clinging to the curtain-rod with his
knees to his chin.
These were extremely poor experiences, on the whole; and at that time of
life my dreamer would have very willingly parted with his power of
dreams. But presently, in the course of his growth, the cries and
physical contortions passed away, seemingly for ever; his visions were
still for the most part miserable, but they were more constantly
supported; and he would awake with no more extreme symptom than a flying
heart, a freezing scalp, cold sweats, and the speechless midnight fear.
His dreams, too, as befitted a mind better stocked with particulars,
became more circumstantial, and had more the air and continuity of life.
The look of the world beginning to take hold on his attention, scenery
came to play a part in his sleeping as well as in his waking thoughts,
so that he would take long, uneventful journeys and see strange towns
and beautiful places as he lay in bed. And, what is more significant, an
odd taste that he had for the Georgian costume and for stories laid in
that period of English history, began to rule the features of his
dreams; so that he masqueraded there in a three-cornered hat, and was
much engaged with Jacobite conspiracy between the hour for bed and that
for breakfast. About the same time, he began to read in his
dreams--tales, for the most part, and for the most part after the manner
of G. P. R. James, but so incredibly more vivid and moving than any
printed book, that he has ever since been malcontent with literature.
And then, while he was yet a student, there came to him a
dream-adventure which he has no anxiety to repeat; he began, that is to
say, to dream in sequence and thus to lead a double life--one of the
day, one of the night--one that he had every reason to believe was the
true one, another that he had no means of proving to be false. I should
have said he studied, or was by way of studying, at Edinburgh College,
which (it may be supposed) was how I came to know him. Well, in his
dream-life he passed a long day in the surgical theatre, his heart in
his mouth, his teeth on edge, seeing monstrous malformations and the
abhorred dexterity of surgeons. In a heavy, rainy, foggy evening he came
forth into the South Bridge, turned up the High Street, and entered the
door of a tall _land_, at the top of which he supposed himself to lodge.
All night long, in his wet clothes, he climbed the stairs, stair after
stair in endless series, and at every second flight a flaring lamp with
a reflector. All night long he brushed by single persons passing
downward--beggarly women of the street, great, weary, muddy labourers,
poor scarecrows of men, pale parodies of women--but all drowsy and weary
like himself, and all single, and all brushing against him as they
passed. In the end, out of a northern window, he would see day beginning
to whiten over the Firth, give up the ascent, turn to descend, and in a
breath be back again upon the streets, in his wet clothes, in the wet,
haggard dawn, trudging to another day of monstrosities and operations.
Time went, quicker in the life of dreams, some seven hours (as near as
he can guess) to one; and it went, besides, more intensely, so that the
gloom of these fancied experiences clouded the day, and he had not
shaken off their shadow ere it was time to lie down and to renew them. I
cannot tell how long it was that he endured this discipline; but it was
long enough to leave a great black blot upon his memory, long enough to
send him, trembling for his reason, to the doors of a certain doctor;
whereupon with a simple draught he was restored to the common lot of
man.
The poor gentleman has since been troubled by nothing of the sort;
indeed, his nights were for some while like other men's, now blank, now
chequered with dreams, and these sometimes charming, sometimes
appalling, but except for an occasional vividness, of no extraordinary
kind. I will just note one of these occasions, ere I pass on to what
makes my dreamer truly interesting. It seemed to him that he was in the
first floor of a rough hill-farm. The room showed some poor efforts at
gentility, a carpet on the floor, a piano, I think, against the wall;
but, for all these refinements, there was no mistaking he was in a
moorland place, among hillside people, and set in miles of heather. He
looked down from the window upon a bare farmyard, that seemed to have
been long disused. A great, uneasy stillness lay upon the world. There
was no sign of the farm-folk or of any live stock, save for an old,
brown, curly dog of the retriever breed, who sat close in against the
wall of the house and seemed to be dozing. Something about this dog
disquieted the dreamer; it was quite a nameless feeling, for the beast
looked right enough--indeed, he was so old and dull and dusty and
broken-down, that he should rather have awakened pity; and yet the
conviction came and grew upon the dreamer that this was no proper dog at
all, but something hellish. A great many dozing summer flies hummed
about the yard; and presently the dog thrust forth his paw, caught a fly
in his open palm, carried it to his mouth like an ape, and looking
suddenly up at the dreamer in the window, winked to him with one eye.
The dream went on, it matters not how it went; it was a good dream as
dreams go; but there was nothing in the sequel worthy of that devilish
brown dog. And the point of interest for me lies partly in that very
fact: that having found so singular an incident, my imperfect dreamer
should prove unable to carry the tale to a fit end and fall back on
indescribable noises and indiscriminate horrors. It would be different
now; he knows his business better!
For, to approach at last the point: This honest fellow had long been in
the custom of setting himself to sleep with tales, and so had his father
before him; but these were irresponsible inventions, told for the
teller's pleasure, with no eye to the crass public or the thwart
reviewer: tales where a thread might be dropped, or one adventure
quitted for another, on fancy's least suggestion. So that the little
people who manage man's internal theatre had not as yet received a very
rigorous training; and played upon their stage like children who should
have slipped into the house and found it empty, rather than like drilled
actors performing a set piece to a huge hall of faces. But presently my
dreamer began to turn his former amusement of story-telling to (what is
called) account; by which I mean that he began to write and sell his
tales. Here was he, and here were the little people who did that part of
his business, in quite new conditions. The stories must now be trimmed
and pared and set upon all-fours, they must run from a beginning to an
end and fit (after a manner) with the laws of life; the pleasure, in one
word, had become a business; and that not only for the dreamer, but for
the little people of his theatre. These understood the change as well as
he. When he lay down to prepare himself for sleep, he no longer sought
amusement, but printable and profitable tales; and after he had dozed
off in his box-seat, his little people continued their evolutions with
the same mercantile designs. All other forms of dream deserted him but
two: he still occasionally reads the most delightful books, he still
visits at times the most delightful places; and it is perhaps worthy of
note that to these same places, and to one in particular, he returns at
intervals of months and years, finding new field-paths, visiting new
neighbours, beholding that happy valley under new effects of noon and
dawn and sunset. But all the rest of the family of visions is quite lost
to him: the common, mangled version of yesterday's affairs, the
raw-head-and-bloody-bones nightmare, rumoured to be the child of toasted
cheese--these and their like are gone; and, for the most part, whether
awake or asleep, he is simply occupied--he or his little people--in
consciously making stories for the market. This dreamer (like many
other persons) has encountered some trifling vicissitudes of fortune.
When the bank begins to send letters and the butcher to linger at the
back gate, he sets to belabouring his brains after a story, for that is
his readiest money-winner; and, behold! at once the little people begin
to bestir themselves in the same quest, and labour all night long, and
all night long set before him truncheons of tales upon their lighted
theatre. No fear of his being frightened now; the flying heart and the
frozen scalp are things bygone; applause, growing applause, growing
interest, growing exultation in his own cleverness (for he takes all the
credit), and at last a jubilant leap to wakefulness, with the cry, "I
have it, that'll do!" upon his lips: with such and similar emotions he
sits at these nocturnal dramas, with such outbreaks, like Claudius in
the play, he scatters the performance in the midst. Often enough the
waking is a disappointment: he has been too deep asleep, as I explain
the thing; drowsiness has gained his little people, they have gone
stumbling and maundering through their parts; and the play, to the
awakened mind, is seen to be a tissue of absurdities. And yet how often
have these sleepless Brownies done him honest service, and given him, as
he sat idly taking his pleasure in the boxes, better tales than he could
fashion for himself.
Here is one, exactly as it came to him. It seemed he was the son of a
very rich and wicked man, the owner of broad acres and a most damnable
temper. The dreamer (and that was the son) had lived much abroad, on
purpose to avoid his parent; and when at length he returned to England,
it was to find him married again to a young wife, who was supposed to
suffer cruelly and to loathe her yoke. Because of this marriage (as the
dreamer indistinctly understood) it was desirable for father and son to
have a meeting; and yet both being proud and both angry, neither would
condescend upon a visit. Meet they did accordingly, in a desolate, sandy
country by the sea; and there they quarrelled, and the son, stung by
some intolerable insult, struck down the father dead. No suspicion was
aroused; the dead man was found and buried, and the dreamer succeeded to
the broad estates, and found himself installed under the same roof with
his father's widow, for whom no provision had been made. These two lived
very much alone, as people may after a bereavement, sat down to table
together, shared the long evenings, and grew daily better friends; until
it seemed to him of a sudden that she was prying about dangerous
matters, that she had conceived a notion of his guilt, that she watched
him and tried him with questions. He drew back from her company as men
draw back from a precipice suddenly discovered; and yet so strong was
the attraction that he would drift again and again into the old
intimacy, and again and again be startled back by some suggestive
question or some inexplicable meaning in her eye. So they lived at cross
purposes, a life full of broken dialogue, challenging glances, and
suppressed passion; until, one day, he saw the woman slipping from the
house in a veil, followed her to the station, followed her in the train
to the seaside country, and out over the sandhills to the very place
where the murder was done. There she began to grope among the bents, he
watching her, flat upon his face; and presently she had something in her
hand--I cannot remember what it was, but it was deadly evidence against
the dreamer--and as she held it up to look at it, perhaps from the shock
of the discovery, her foot slipped, and she hung at some peril on the
brink of the tall sand-wreaths. He had no thought but to spring up and
rescue her; and there they stood face to face, she with that deadly
matter openly in her hand--his very presence on the spot another link of
proof. It was plain she was about to speak, but this was more than he
could bear--he could bear to be lost, but not to talk of it with his
destroyer; and he cut her short with trivial conversation. Arm in arm,
they returned together to the train, talking he knew not what, made the
journey back in the same carriage, sat down to dinner, and passed the
evening in the drawing-room as in the past. But suspense and fear
drummed in the dreamer's bosom. "She has not denounced me yet"--so his
thoughts ran: "when will she denounce me? Will it be to-morrow?" And it
was not to-morrow, nor the next day, nor the next; and their life
settled back on the old terms, only that she seemed kinder than before,
and that, as for him, the burthen of his suspense and wonder grew daily
more unbearable, so that he wasted away like a man with a disease. Once,
indeed, he broke all bounds of decency, seized an occasion when she was
abroad, ransacked her room, and at last, hidden away among her jewels,
found the damning evidence. There he stood, holding this thing, which
was his life, in the hollow of his hand, and marvelling at her
inconsequent behaviour, that she should seek, and keep, and yet not use
it; and then the door opened, and behold herself. So, once more, they
stood, eye to eye, with the evidence between them; and once more she
raised to him a face brimming with some communication; and once more he
shied away from speech and cut her off. But before he left the room,
which he had turned upside down, he laid back his death-warrant where he
had found it; and at that, her face lighted up. The next thing he heard,
she was explaining to her maid, with some ingenious falsehood, the
disorder of her things. Flesh and blood could bear the strain no longer;
and I think it was the next morning (though chronology is always hazy in
the theatre of the mind) that he burst from his reserve. They had been
breakfasting together in one corner of a great, parqueted,
sparely-furnished room of many windows; all the time of the meal she had
tortured him with sly allusions; and no sooner were the servants gone,
and these two protagonists alone together, than he leaped to his feet.
She too sprang up, with a pale face; with a pale face, she heard him as
he raved out his complaint: Why did she torture him so? she knew all,
she knew he was no enemy to her; why did she not denounce him at once?
what signified her whole behaviour? why did she torture him? and yet
again, why did she torture him? And when he had done, she fell upon her
knees, and with outstretched hands: "Do you not understand?" she cried.
"I love you!"
Hereupon, with a pang of wonder and mercantile delight the dreamer
awoke. His mercantile delight was not of long endurance; for it soon
became plain that in this spirited tale there were unmarketable
elements; which is just the reason why you have it here so briefly told.
But his wonder has still kept growing; and I think the reader's will
also, if he consider it ripely. For now he sees why I speak of the
little people as of substantive inventors and performers. To the end
they had kept their secret. I will go bail for the dreamer (having
excellent grounds for valuing his candour) that he had no guess whatever
at the motive of the woman--the hinge of the whole well-invented
plot--until the instant of that highly dramatic declaration. It was not
his tale; it was the little people's! And observe: not only was the
secret kept, the story was told with really guileful craftsmanship. The
conduct of both actors is (in the cant phrase) psychologically correct,
and the emotion aptly graduated up to the surprising climax. I am awake
now, and I know this trade; and yet I cannot better it. I am awake, and
I live by this business; and yet I could not outdo--could not perhaps
equal--that crafty artifice (as of some old, experienced carpenter of
plays, some Dennery or Sardou) by which the same situation is twice
presented and the two actors twice brought face to face over the
evidence, only once it is in her hand, once in his--and these in their
due order, the least dramatic first. The more I think of it, the more I
am moved to press upon the world my question: Who are the Little People?
They are near connections of the dreamer's, beyond doubt; they share in
his financial worries and have an eye to the bank-book; they share
plainly in his training; they have plainly learned like him to build the
scheme of a considerate story and to arrange emotion in progressive
order; only I think they have more talent; and one thing is beyond
doubt, they can tell him a story piece by piece, like a serial, and keep
him all the while in ignorance of where they aim. Who are they, then?
and who is the dreamer?
Well, as regards the dreamer, I can answer that, for he is no less a
person than myself;--as I might have told you from the beginning, only
that the critics murmur over my consistent egotism;--and as I am
positively forced to tell you now, or I could advance but little further
with my story. And for the Little People, what shall I say they are but
just my Brownies, God bless them! who do one-half my work for me while I
am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood, do the rest for me as well,
when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do it for myself. That part
which is done while I am sleeping is the Brownies' part beyond
contention; but that which is done when I am up and about is by no means
necessarily mine, since all goes to show the Brownies have a hand in it
even then. Here is a doubt that much concerns my conscience. For
myself--what I call I, my conscious ego, the denizen of the pineal gland
unless he has changed his residence since Descartes, the man with the
conscience and the variable bank-account, the man with the hat and the
boots, and the privilege of voting and not carrying his candidate at the
general elections--I am sometimes tempted to suppose is no story-teller
at all, but a creature as matter of fact as any cheesemonger or any
cheese, and a realist bemired up to the ears in actuality; so that, by
that account, the whole of my published fiction should be the
single-handed product of some Brownie, some Familiar, some unseen
collaborator, whom I keep locked in a back garret, while I get all the
praise and he but a share (which I cannot prevent him getting) of the
pudding. I am an excellent adviser, something like Molière's servant. I
pull back and I cut down; and I dress the whole in the best words and
sentences that I can find and make; I hold the pen, too; and I do the
sitting at the table, which is about the worst of it; and when all is
done, I make up the manuscript and pay for the registration; so that, on
the whole, I have some claim to share, though not so largely as I do, in
the profits of our common enterprise.
I can but give an instance or so of what part is done sleeping and what
part awake, and leave the reader to share what laurels there are, at his
own nod, between myself and my collaborators; and to do this I will
first take a book that a number of persons have been polite enough to
read, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." I had long been
trying to write a story on this subject, to find a body, a vehicle, for
that strong sense of man's double being which must at times come in upon
and overwhelm the mind of every thinking creature. I had even written
one, "The Travelling Companion," which was returned by an editor on the
plea that it was a work of genius and indecent, and which I burned the
other day on the ground that it was not a work of genius, and that
"Jekyll" had supplanted it. Then came one of those financial
fluctuations to which (with an elegant modesty) I have hitherto referred
in the third person. For two days I went about racking my brains for a
plot of any sort; and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the
window, and a scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for
some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of
his pursuers. All the rest was made awake, and consciously, although I
think I can trace in much of it the manner of my Brownies. The meaning
of the tale is therefore mine, and had long pre-existed in my garden of
Adonis, and tried one body after another in vain; indeed, I do most of
the morality, worse luck! and my Brownies have not a rudiment of what we
call a conscience. Mine, too, is the setting, mine the characters. All
that was given me was the matter of three scenes, and the central idea
of a voluntary change becoming involuntary. Will it be thought
ungenerous, after I have been so liberally ladling out praise to my
unseen collaborators, if I here toss them over, bound hand and foot,
into the arena of the critics? For the business of the powders, which so
many have censured, is, I am relieved to say, not mine at all, but the
Brownies'. Of another tale, in case the reader should have glanced at
it, I may say a word: the not very defensible story of "Olalla." Here
the court, the mother, the mother's niche, Olalla, Olalla's chamber, the
meetings on the stair, the broken window, the ugly scene of the bite,
were all given me in bulk and detail as I have tried to write them; to
this I added only the external scenery (for in my dream I never was
beyond the court), the portrait, the characters of Felipe and the
priest, the moral, such as it is, and the last pages, such as, alas!
they are. And I may even say that in this case the moral itself was
given me; for it arose immediately on a comparison of the mother and the
daughter, and from the hideous trick of atavism in the first. Sometimes
a parabolic sense is still more undeniably present in a dream; sometimes
I cannot but suppose my Brownies have been aping Bunyan, and yet in no
case with what would possibly be called a moral in a tract; never with
the ethical narrowness; conveying hints instead of life's larger
limitations and that sort of sense which we seem to perceive in the
arabesque of time and space.
For the most part, it will be seen, my Brownies are somewhat fantastic,
like their stories hot and hot, full of passion and the picturesque,
alive with animating incident; and they have no prejudice against the
supernatural. But the other day they gave me a surprise, entertaining me
with a love-story, a little April comedy, which I ought certainly to
hand over to the author of "A Chance Acquaintance," for he could write
it as it should be written, and I am sure (although I mean to try) that
I cannot.--But who would have supposed that a Brownie of mine should
invent a tale for Mr. Howells?
IV
BEGGARS
I
In a pleasant, airy, up-hill country, it was my fortune when I was young
to make the acquaintance of a certain beggar. I call him beggar, though
he usually allowed his coat and his shoes (which were open-mouthed,
indeed) to beg for him. He was the wreck of an athletic man, tall,
gaunt, and bronzed; far gone in consumption, with that disquieting smile
of the mortally stricken on his face; but still active afoot, still with
the brisk military carriage, the ready military salute. Three ways led
through this piece of country; and as I was inconstant in my choice, I
believe he must often have awaited me in vain. But often enough, he
caught me; often enough, from some place of ambush by the roadside, he
would spring suddenly forth in the regulation attitude, and launching at
once into his inconsequential talk, fall into step with me upon my
farther course. "A fine morning, sir, though perhaps a trifle inclining
to rain. I hope I see you well, sir. Why, no, sir, I don't feel as
hearty myself as I could wish, but I am keeping about my ordinary. I am
pleased to meet you on the road, sir. I assure you I quite look forward
to one of our little conversations." He loved the sound of his own voice
inordinately, and though (with something too off-hand to call servility)
he would always hasten to agree with anything you said, yet he could
never suffer you to say it to an end. By what transition he slid to his
favourite subject I have no memory; but we had never been long together
on the way before he was dealing, in a very military manner, with the
English poets. "Shelley was a fine poet, sir, though a trifle
atheistical in his opinions. His 'Queen Mab,' sir, is quite an
atheistical work. Scott, sir, is not so poetical a writer. With the
works of Shakespeare I am not so well acquainted, but he was a fine
poet. Keats--John Keats, sir--he was a very fine poet." With such
references, such trivial criticism, such loving parade of his own
knowledge, he would beguile the road, striding forward up-hill, his
staff now clapped to the ribs of his deep, resonant chest, now swinging
in the air with the remembered jauntiness of the private soldier; and
all the while his toes looking out of his boots, and his shirt looking
out of his elbows, and death looking out of his smile, and his big,
crazy frame shaken by accesses of cough.
He would often go the whole way home with me: often to borrow a book,
and that book always a poet. Off he would march, to continue his
mendicant rounds, with the volume slipped into the pocket of his ragged
coat; and although he would sometimes keep it quite a while, yet it came
always back again at last, not much the worse for its travels into
beggardom. And in this way, doubtless, his knowledge grew and his glib,
random criticism took a wider range. But my library was not the first he
had drawn upon: at our first encounter, he was already brimful of
Shelley and the atheistical "Queen Mab," and "Keats--John Keats, sir."
And I have often wondered how he came by these acquirements, just as I
often wondered how he fell to be a beggar. He had served through the
Mutiny--of which (like so many people) he could tell practically nothing
beyond the names of places, and that it was "difficult work, sir," and
very hot, or that so-and-so was "a very fine commander, sir." He was far
too smart a man to have remained a private; in the nature of things, he
must have won his stripes. And yet here he was, without a pension. When
I touched on this problem, he would content himself with diffidently
offering me advice. "A man should be very careful when he is young,
sir. If you'll excuse me saying so, a spirited young gentleman like
yourself, sir, should be very careful. I was perhaps a trifle inclined
to atheistical opinions myself." For (perhaps with a deeper wisdom than
we are inclined in these days to admit) he plainly bracketed agnosticism
with beer and skittles.
Keats--John Keats, sir--and Shelley were his favourite bards. I cannot
remember if I tried him with Rossetti; but I know his taste to a hair,
and if ever I did, he must have doted on that author. What took him was
a richness in the speech; he loved the exotic, the unexpected word; the
moving cadence of a phrase; a vague sense of emotion (about nothing) in
the very letters of the alphabet: the romance of language. His honest
head was very nearly empty, his intellect like a child's; and when he
read his favourite authors, he can almost never have understood what he
was reading. Yet the taste was not only genuine, it was exclusive; I
tried in vain to offer him novels; he would none of them, he cared for
nothing but romantic language that he could not understand. The case may
be commoner than we suppose. I am reminded of a lad who was laid in the
next cot to a friend of mine in a public hospital, and who was no sooner
installed than he sent out (perhaps with his last pence) for a cheap
Shakespeare. My friend pricked up his ears; fell at once in talk with
his new neighbour, and was ready, when the book arrived, to make a
singular discovery. For this lover of great literature understood not
one sentence out of twelve, and his favourite part was that of which he
understood the least--the inimitable, mouth-filling rodomontade of the
ghost in _Hamlet_. It was a bright day in hospital when my friend
expounded the sense of this beloved jargon: a task for which I am
willing to believe my friend was very fit, though I can never regard it
as an easy one. I know indeed a point or two, on which I would gladly
question Mr. Shakespeare, that lover of big words, could he revisit the
glimpses of the moon, or could I myself climb backward to the spacious
days of Elizabeth. But, in the second case, I should most likely
pretermit these questionings, and take my place instead in the pit at
the Blackfriars, to hear the actor in his favourite part, playing up to
Mr. Burbage, and rolling out--as I seem to hear him--with a ponderous
gusto--
"Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd."
What a pleasant chance, if we could go there in a party! and what a
surprise for Mr. Burbage, when the ghost received the honours of the
evening!
As for my old soldier, like Mr. Burbage and Mr. Shakespeare, he is long
since dead; and now lies buried, I suppose, and nameless and quite
forgotten, in some poor city graveyard.--But not for me, you brave
heart, have you been buried! For me, you are still afoot, tasting the
sun and air, and striding southward. By the groves of Comiston and
beside the Hermitage of Braid, by the Hunters' Tryst, and where the
curlews and plovers cry around Fairmilehead, I see and hear you,
stalwartly carrying your deadly sickness, cheerfully discoursing of
uncomprehended poets.
II
The thought of the old soldier recalls that of another tramp, his
counterpart. This was a little, lean, and fiery man, with the eyes of a
dog and the face of a gipsy; whom I found one morning encamped with his
wife and children and his grinder's wheel, beside the burn of Kinnaird.
To this beloved dell I went, at that time, daily; and daily the
knife-grinder and I (for as long as his tent continued pleasantly to
interrupt my little wilderness) sat on two stones, and smoked, and
plucked grass and talked to the tune of the brown water. His children
were mere whelps, they fought and bit among the fern like vermin. His
wife was a mere squaw; I saw her gather brush and tend the kettle, but
she never ventured to address her lord while I was present. The tent
was a mere gipsy hovel, like a sty for pigs. But the grinder himself had
the fine self-sufficiency and grave politeness of the hunter and the
savage; he did me the honours of this dell, which had been mine but the
day before, took me far into the secrets of his life, and used me (I am
proud to remember) as a friend.
Like my old soldier, he was far gone in the national complaint. Unlike
him, he had a vulgar taste in letters; scarce flying higher than the
story papers; probably finding no difference, certainly seeking none,
between Tannahill and Burns; his noblest thoughts, whether of poetry or
music, adequately embodied in that somewhat obvious ditty,
"Will ye gang, lassie, gang
To the braes o' Balquhidder":
--which is indeed apt to echo in the ears of Scottish children, and to
him, in view of his experience, must have found a special directness of
address. But if he had no fine sense of poetry in letters, he felt with
a deep joy the poetry of life. You should have heard him speak of what
he loved; of the tent pitched beside the talking water; of the stars
overhead at night; of the blest return of morning, the peep of day over
the moors, the awaking birds among the birches; how he abhorred the long
winter shut in cities; and with what delight, at the return of the
spring, he once more pitched his camp in the living out-of-doors. But we
were a pair of tramps; and to you, who are doubtless sedentary and a
consistent first-class passenger in life, he would scarce have laid
himself so open;--to you, he might have been content to tell his story
of a ghost--that of a buccaneer with his pistols as he lived--whom he
had once encountered in a seaside cave near Buckie; and that would have
been enough, for that would have shown you the mettle of the man. Here
was a piece of experience solidly and livingly built up in words, here
was a story created, _teres atque rotundus_.
And to think of the old soldier, that lover of the literary bards! He
had visited stranger spots than any seaside cave; encountered men more
terrible than any spirit; done and dared and suffered in that
incredible, unsung epic of the Mutiny War; played his part with the
field force of Delhi, beleaguering and beleaguered; shared in that
enduring, savage anger and contempt of death and decency that, for long
months together, bedevil'd and inspired the army; was hurled to and fro
in the battle-smoke of the assault; was there, perhaps, where Nicholson
fell; was there when the attacking column, with hell upon every side,
found the soldier's enemy--strong drink, and the lives of tens of
thousands trembled in the scale, and the fate of the flag of England
staggered. And of all this he had no more to say than "hot work, sir,"
or "the army suffered a great deal, sir," or, "I believe General Wilson,
sir, was not very highly thought of in the papers." His life was naught
to him, the vivid pages of experience quite blank: in words his pleasure
lay--melodious, agitated words--printed words, about that which he had
never seen and was connatally incapable of comprehending. We have here
two temperaments face to face; both untrained, unsophisticated,
surprised (we may say) in the egg; both boldly charactered:--that of the
artist, the lover and artificer of words; that of the maker, the seeër,
the lover and forger of experience. If the one had a daughter and the
other had a son, and these married, might not some illustrious writer
count descent from the beggar-soldier and the needy knife-grinder?
III
Every one lives by selling something, whatever be his right to it. The
burglar sells at the same time his own skill and courage and my silver
plate (the whole at the most moderate figure) to a Jew receiver. The
bandit sells the traveller an article of prime necessity: that
traveller's life. And as for the old soldier, who stands for central
mark to my capricious figures of eight, he dealt in a specialty; for he
was the only beggar in the world who ever gave me pleasure for my money.
He had learned a school of manners in the barracks and had the sense to
cling to it, accosting strangers with a regimental freedom, thanking
patrons with a merely regimental difference, sparing you at once the
tragedy of his position and the embarrassment of yours. There was not
one hint about him of the beggar's emphasis, the outburst of revolting
gratitude, the rant and cant, the "God bless you, Kind, Kind gentleman,"
which insults the smallness of your alms by disproportionate vehemence,
which is so notably false, which would be so unbearable if it were true.
I am sometimes tempted to suppose this reading of the beggar's part a
survival of the old days when Shakespeare was intoned upon the stage and
mourners keened beside the death-bed; to think that we cannot now accept
these strong emotions unless they be uttered in the just note of life;
nor (save in the pulpit) endure these gross conventions. They wound us,
I am tempted to say, like mockery; the high voice of keening (as it yet
lingers on) strikes in the face of sorrow like a buffet; and the rant
and cant of the staled beggar stirs in us a shudder of disgust. But the
fact disproves these amateur opinions. The beggar lives by his knowledge
of the average man. He knows what he is about when he bandages his head,
and hires and drugs a babe, and poisons life with "Poor Mary Ann" or
"Long, long ago"; he knows what he is about when he loads the critical
ear and sickens the nice conscience with intolerable thanks; they know
what they are about, he and his crew, when they pervade the slums of
cities, ghastly parodies of suffering, hateful parodies of gratitude.
This trade can scarce be called an imposition; it has been so blown upon
with exposures; it flaunts its fraudulence so nakedly. We pay them as we
pay those who show us, in huge exaggeration, the monsters of our
drinking-water; or those who daily predict the fall of Britain. We pay
them for the pain they inflict, pay them, and wince, and hurry on. And
truly there is nothing that can shake the conscience like a beggar's
thanks; and that polity in which such protestations can be purchased for
a shilling, seems no scene for an honest man.
Are there, then, we may be asked, no genuine beggars? And the answer is,
Not one. My old soldier was a humbug like the rest; his ragged boots
were, in the stage phrase, properties; whole boots were given him again
and again, and always gladly accepted; and the next day, there he was on
the road as usual, with toes exposed. His boots were his method; they
were the man's trade; without his boots he would have starved; he did
not live by charity, but by appealing to a gross taste in the public,
which loves the limelight on the actor's face, and the toes out of the
beggar's boots. There is a true poverty, which no one sees: a false and
merely mimetic poverty, which usurps its place and dress, and lives, and
above all drinks, on the fruits of the usurpation. The true poverty does
not go into the streets; the banker may rest assured, he has never put a
penny in its hand. The self-respecting poor beg from each other; never
from the rich. To live in the frock-coated ranks of life, to hear
canting scenes of gratitude rehearsed for twopence, a man might suppose
that giving was a thing gone out of fashion; yet it goes forward on a
scale so great as to fill me with surprise. In the houses of the working
classes, all day long there will be a foot upon the stair; all day long
there will be a knocking at the doors; beggars come, beggars go, without
stint, hardly with intermission, from morning till night; and meanwhile,
in the same city and but a few streets off, the castles of the rich
stand unsummoned. Get the tale of any honest tramp, you will find it was
always the poor who helped him; get the truth from any workman who has
met misfortunes, it was always next door that he would go for help, or
only with such exceptions as are said to prove a rule; look at the
course of the mimetic beggar, it is through the poor quarters that he
trails his passage, showing his bandages to every window, piercing even
to the attics with his nasal song. Here is a remarkable state of things
in our Christian commonwealths, that the poor only should be asked to
give.
IV
There is a pleasant tale of some worthless, phrasing Frenchman, who was
taxed with ingratitude: "_Il faut savoir garder l'indépendance du
coeur_," cried he. I own I feel with him. Gratitude without familiarity,
gratitude otherwise than as a nameless element in a friendship, is a
thing so near to hatred that I do not care to split the difference.
Until I find a man who is pleased to receive obligations, I shall
continue to question the tact of those who are eager to confer them.
What an art it is, to give, even to our nearest friends! and what a test
of manners, to receive! How, upon either side, we smuggle away the
obligation, blushing for each other; how bluff and dull we make the
giver; how hasty, how falsely cheerful, the receiver! And yet an act of
such difficulty and distress between near friends, it is supposed we can
perform to a total stranger and leave the man transfixed with grateful
emotions. The last thing you can do to a man is to burthen him with an
obligation, and it is what we propose to begin with! But let us not be
deceived: unless he is totally degraded to his trade, anger jars in his
inside, and he grates his teeth at our gratuity.
We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and charity. In
real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is
received from the hand of friendship, or it is resented. We are all too
proud to take a naked gift: we must seem to pay it, if in nothing else,
then with the delights of our society. Here, then, is the pitiful fix of
the rich man; here is that needle's eye in which he stuck already in the
days of Christ, and still sticks to-day, firmer, if possible, than ever:
that he has the money and lacks the love which should make his money
acceptable. Here and now, just as of old in Palestine, he has the rich
to dinner, it is with the rich that he takes his pleasure: and when his
turn comes to be charitable, he looks in vain for a recipient. His
friends are not poor, they do not want; the poor are not his friends,
they will not take. To whom is he to give? Where to find--note this
phrase--the Deserving Poor? Charity is (what they call) centralised;
offices are hired; societies founded, with secretaries paid or unpaid:
the hunt of the Deserving Poor goes merrily forward. I think it will
take more than a merely human secretary to disinter that character.
What! a class that is to be in want from no fault of its own, and yet
greedily eager to receive from strangers; and to be quite respectable,
and at the same time quite devoid of self-respect; and play the most
delicate part of friendship, and yet never be seen; and wear the form of
man, and yet fly in the face of all the laws of human nature:--and all
this, in the hope of getting a belly-god Burgess through a needle's eye!
Oh, let him stick, by all means: and let his polity tumble in the dust;
and let his epitaph and all his literature (of which my own works begin
to form no inconsiderable part) be abolished even from the history of
man! For a fool of this monstrosity of dulness, there can be no
salvation: and the fool who looked for the elixir of life was an angel
of reason to the fool who looks for the Deserving Poor!
V
And yet there is one course which the unfortunate gentleman may take. He
may subscribe to pay the taxes. There were the true charity, impartial
and impersonal, cumbering none with obligation, helping all. There were
a destination for loveless gifts; there were the way to reach the pocket
of the deserving poor, and yet save the time of secretaries! But, alas!
there is no colour of romance in such a course; and people nowhere
demand the picturesque so much as in their virtues.
V
THE LANTERN-BEARERS
I
These boys congregated every autumn about a certain easterly
fisher-village, where they tasted in a high degree the glory of
existence. The place was created seemingly on purpose for the diversion
of young gentlemen. A street or two of houses, mostly red and many of
them tiled; a number of fine trees clustered about the manse and the
kirkyard, and turning the chief street into a shady alley; many little
gardens more than usually bright with flowers; nets a-drying, and
fisher-wives scolding in the backward parts; a smell of fish, a genial
smell of seaweed; whiffs of blowing sand at the street-corners; shops
with golf-balls and bottled lollipops; another shop with penny pickwicks
(that remarkable cigar) and the _London Journal_, dear to me for its
startling pictures, and a few novels, dear for their suggestive names:
such, as well as memory serves me, were the ingredients of the town.
These, you are to conceive posted on a spit between two sandy bays, and
sparsely flanked with villas--enough for the boys to lodge in with their
subsidiary parents, not enough (not yet enough) to cocknify the scene: a
haven in the rocks in front: in front of that, a file of grey islets: to
the left, endless links and sand wreaths, a wilderness of hiding-holes,
alive with popping rabbits and soaring gulls: to the right, a range of
seaward crags, one rugged brow beyond another; the ruins of a mighty and
ancient fortress on the brink of one; coves between--now charmed into
sunshine quiet, now whistling with wind and clamorous with bursting
surges; the dens and sheltered hollows redolent of thyme and
southernwood, the air at the cliff's edge brisk and clean and pungent of
the sea--in front of all, the Bass Rock, tilted seaward like a doubtful
bather, the surf ringing it with white, the solan-geese hanging round
its summit like a great and glittering smoke. This choice piece of
seaboard was sacred, besides, to the wrecker; and the Bass, in the eye
of fancy, still flew the colours of King James; and in the ear of fancy
the arches of Tantallon still rang with horse-shoe iron, and echoed to
the commands of Bell-the-Cat.
There was nothing to mar your days, if you were a boy summering in that
part, but the embarrassment of pleasure. You might golf if you wanted;
but I seem to have been better employed. You might secrete yourself in
the Lady's Walk, a certain sunless dingle of elders, all mossed over by
the damp as green as grass, and dotted here and there by the stream-side
with roofless walls, the cold homes of anchorites. To fit themselves for
life, and with a special eye to acquire the art of smoking, it was even
common for the boys to harbour there; and you might have seen a single
penny pickwick, honestly shared in lengths with a blunt knife, bestrew
the glen with these apprentices. Again, you might join our fishing
parties, where we sat perched as thick as solan-geese, a covey of little
anglers, boy and girl, angling over each other's heads, to the much
entanglement of lines and loss of podleys and consequent shrill
recrimination--shrill as the geese themselves. Indeed, had that been
all, you might have done this often; but though fishing be a fine
pastime, the podley is scarce to be regarded as a dainty for the table;
and it was a point of honour that a boy should eat all that he had
taken. Or again, you might climb the Law, where the whale's jawbone
stood landmark in the buzzing wind, and behold the face of many
counties, and the smoke and spires of many towns, and the sails of
distant ships. You might bathe, now in the flaws of fine weather, that
we pathetically call our summer, now in a gale of wind, with the sand
scourging your bare hide, your clothes thrashing abroad from underneath
their guardian stone, the froth of the great breakers casting you
headlong ere it had drowned your knees. Or you might explore the tidal
rocks, above all in the ebb of springs, when the very roots of the hills
were for the nonce discovered; following my leader from one group to
another, groping in slippery tangle for the wreck of ships, wading in
pools after the abominable creatures of the sea, and ever with an eye
cast backward on the march of the tide and the menaced line of your
retreat. And then you might go Crusoeing, a word that covers all
extempore eating in the open air: digging perhaps a house under the
margin of the links, kindling a fire of the sea-ware, and cooking apples
there--if they were truly apples, for I sometimes suppose the merchant
must have played us off with some inferior and quite local fruit,
capable of resolving, in the neighbourhood of fire, into mere sand and
smoke and iodine; or perhaps pushing to Tantallon, you might lunch on
sandwiches and visions in the grassy court, while the wind hummed in the
crumbling turrets; or clambering along the coast, eat geans[17] (the
worst, I must suppose, in Christendom) from an adventurous gean tree
that had taken root under a cliff, where it was shaken with an ague of
east wind, and silvered after gales with salt, and grew so foreign among
its bleak surroundings that to eat of its produce was an adventure in
itself.
There are mingled some dismal memories with so many that were joyous. Of
the fisher-wife, for instance, who had cut her throat at Canty Bay; and
of how I ran with the other children to the top of the Quadrant, and
beheld a posse of silent people escorting a cart, and on the cart, bound
in a chair, her throat bandaged, and the bandage all bloody--horror!--the
fisher-wife herself, who continued thenceforth to hag-ride my thoughts,
and even to-day (as I recall the scene) darkens daylight. She was lodged
in the little old gaol in the chief street; but whether or no she died
there, with a wise terror of the worst, I never inquired. She had been
tippling; it was but a dingy tragedy; and it seems strange and hard that,
after all these years, the poor crazy sinner should be still pilloried on
her cart in the scrap-book of my memory. Nor shall I readily forget a
certain house in the Quadrant where a visitor died, and a dark old woman
continued to dwell alone with the dead body; nor how this old woman
conceived a hatred to myself and one of my cousins, and in the dread hour
of the dusk, as we were clambering on the garden-walls, opened a window
in that house of mortality and cursed us in a shrill voice and with a
marrowy choice of language. It was a pair of very colourless urchins that
fled down the lane from this remarkable experience! But I recall with a
more doubtful sentiment, compounded out of fear and exultation, the coil
of equinoctial tempests; trumpeting squalls, scouring flaws of rain; the
boats with their reefed lugsails scudding for the harbour mouth, where
danger lay, for it was hard to make when the wind had any east in it; the
wives clustered with blowing shawls at the pier-head, where (if fate was
against them) they might see boat and husband and sons--their whole
wealth and their whole family--engulfed under their eyes; and (what I saw
but once) a troop of neighbours forcing such an unfortunate homeward, and
she squalling and battling in their midst, a figure scarcely human, a
tragic Mænad.
These are things that I recall with interest; but what my memory dwells
upon the most, I have been all this while withholding. It was a sport
peculiar to the place, and indeed to a week or so of our two months'
holiday there. Maybe it still flourishes in its native spot; for boys
and their pastimes are swayed by periodic forces inscrutable to man; so
that tops and marbles reappear in their due season, regular like the sun
and moon; and the harmless art of knucklebones has seen the fall of the
Roman empire and the rise of the United States. It may still flourish in
its native spot, but nowhere else, I am persuaded; for I tried myself
to introduce it on Tweedside, and was defeated lamentably; its charm
being quite local, like a country wine that cannot be exported.
The idle manner of it was this:--
Toward the end of September, when school-time was drawing near and the
nights were already black, we would begin to sally from our respective
villas, each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern. The thing was so
well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce of Great Britain; and
the grocers, about the due time, began to garnish their windows with our
particular brand of luminary. We wore them buckled to the waist upon a
cricket belt, and over them, such was the rigour of the game, a buttoned
top-coat. They smelled noisomely of blistered tin; they never burned
aright, though they would always burn our fingers; their use was naught;
the pleasure of them merely fanciful; and yet a boy with a bull's-eye
under his top-coat asked for nothing more. The fishermen used lanterns
about their boats, and it was from them, I suppose, that we had got the
hint; but theirs were not bull's-eyes, nor did we ever play at being
fishermen. The police carried them at their belts, and we had plainly
copied them in that; yet we did not pretend to be policemen. Burglars,
indeed, we may have had some haunting thoughts of; and we had certainly
an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common, and to certain
story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely. But take
it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was substantive; and to be
a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat was good enough for us.
When two of these asses met, there would be an anxious "Have you got
your lantern?" and a gratified "Yes!" That was the shibboleth, and very
needful too; for, as it was the rule to keep our glory contained, none
could recognise a lantern-bearer, unless (like the polecat) by the
smell. Four or five would sometimes climb into the belly of a ten-man
lugger, with nothing but the thwarts above them--for the cabin was
usually locked--or choose out some hollow of the links where the wind
might whistle overhead. There the coats would be unbuttoned and the
bull's-eyes discovered; and in the chequering glimmer, under the huge
windy hall of the night, and cheered by a rich steam of toasting
tinware, these fortunate young gentlemen would crouch together in the
cold sand of the links or on the scaly bilges of the fishing-boat, and
delight themselves with inappropriate talk. Woe is me that I may not
give some specimens--some of their foresights of life, or deep inquiries
into the rudiments of man and nature, these were so fiery and so
innocent, they were so richly silly, so romantically young. But the
talk, at any rate, was but a condiment; and these gatherings themselves
only accidents in the career of the lantern-bearer. The essence of this
bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; the slide shut; the
top-coat buttoned; not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps
or to make your glory public: a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and
all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know
you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the
knowledge.
II
It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid.
It may be contended, rather, that this (somewhat minor) bard in almost
every case survives, and is the spice of life to his possessor. Justice
is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man's
imagination. His life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud;
there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it, in which he dwells
delighted; and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer, he will
have some kind of a bull's-eye at his belt.
It would be hard to pick out a career more cheerless than that of
Dancer, the miser, as he figures in the "Old Bailey Reports," a prey to
the most sordid persecutions, the butt of his neighbourhood, betrayed by
his hired man, his house beleaguered by the impish school-boy, and he
himself grinding and fuming and impotently fleeing to the law against
these pin-pricks. You marvel at first that any one should willingly
prolong a life so destitute of charm and dignity; and then you call to
memory that had he chosen, had he ceased to be a miser, he could have
been freed at once from these trials, and might have built himself a
castle and gone escorted by a squadron. For the love of more recondite
joys, which we cannot estimate, which, it may be, we should envy, the
man had willingly forgone both comfort and consideration. "His mind to
him a kingdom was"; and sure enough, digging into that mind, which seems
at first a dust-heap, we unearth some priceless jewels. For Dancer must
have had the love of power and the disdain of using it, a noble
character in itself; disdain of many pleasures, a chief part of what is
commonly called wisdom; disdain of the inevitable end, that finest trait
of mankind; scorn of men's opinions, another element of virtue; and at
the back of all, a conscience just like yours and mine, whining like a
cur, swindling like a thimble-rigger, but still pointing (there or
thereabout) to some conventional standard. Here were a cabinet portrait
to which Hawthorne perhaps had done justice; and yet not Hawthorne
either, for he was mildly minded, and it lay not in him to create for us
that throb of the miser's pulse, his fretful energy of gusto, his vast
arms of ambition clutching in he knows not what: insatiable, insane, a
god with a muck-rake. Thus, at least, looking in the bosom of the miser,
consideration detects the poet in the full tide of life, with more,
indeed, of the poetic fire than usually goes to epics; and tracing that
mean man about his cold hearth, and to and fro in his discomfortable
house, spies within him a blazing bonfire of delight. And so with
others, who do not live by bread alone, but by some cherished and
perhaps fantastic pleasure; who are meat salesmen to the external eye,
and possibly to themselves are Shakespeares, Napoleons, or Beethovens;
who have not one virtue to rub against another in the field of active
life, and yet perhaps, in the life of contemplation, sit with the
saints. We see them on the street, and we can count their buttons; but
heaven knows in what they pride themselves! heaven knows where they have
set their treasure!
There is one fable that touches very near the quick of life: the fable
of the monk who passed into the woods, heard a bird break into song,
hearkened for a trill or two, and found himself on his return a stranger
at his convent gates; for he had been absent fifty years, and of all his
comrades there survived but one to recognise him. It is not only in the
woods that this enchanter carols, though perhaps he is native there. He
sings in the most doleful places. The miser hears him and chuckles, and
the days are moments. With no more apparatus than an ill-smelling
lantern I have evoked him on the naked links. All life that is not
merely mechanical is spun out of two strands: seeking for that bird and
hearing him. And it is just this that makes life so hard to value, and
the delight of each so incommunicable; and just a knowledge of this, and
a remembrance of those fortunate hours in which the bird has sung to us,
that fills us with such wonder when we turn the pages of the realist.
There, to be sure, we find a picture of life in so far as it consists of
mud and of old iron, cheap desires and cheap fears, that which we are
ashamed to remember and that which we are careless whether we forget;
but of the note of that time-devouring nightingale we hear no news.
The case of these writers of romance is most obscure. They have been
boys and youths; they have lingered outside the window of the beloved,
who was then most probably writing to some one else; they have sat
before a sheet of paper, and felt themselves mere continents of
congested poetry, not one line of which would flow; they have walked
alone in the woods, they have walked in cities under the countless
lamps; they have been to sea, they have hated, they have feared, they
have longed to knife a man, and maybe done it; the wild taste of life
has stung their palate. Or, if you deny them all the rest, one pleasure
at least they have tasted to the full--their books are there to prove
it--the keen pleasure of successful literary composition. And yet they
fill the globe with volumes, whose cleverness inspires me with
despairing admiration, and whose consistent falsity to all I care to
call existence, with despairing wrath. If I had no better hope than to
continue to revolve among the dreary and petty businesses, and to be
moved by the paltry hopes and fears with which they surround and animate
their heroes, I declare I would die now. But there has never an hour of
mine gone quite so dully yet; if it were spent waiting at a railway
junction, I would have some scattering thoughts, I could count some
grains of memory, compared to which the whole of one of these romances
seems but dross.
These writers would retort (if I take them properly) that this was very
true; that it was the same with themselves and other persons of (what
they call) the artistic temperament that in this we were exceptional,
and should apparently be ashamed of ourselves; but that our works must
deal exclusively with (what they call) the average man, who was a
prodigious dull fellow, and quite dead to all but the paltriest
considerations. I accept the issue. We can only know others by
ourselves. The artistic temperament (a plague on the expression!) does
not make us different from our fellow-men, or it would make us incapable
of writing novels; and the average man (a murrain on the word!) is just
like you and me, or he would not be average. It was Whitman who stamped
a kind of Birmingham sacredness upon the latter phrase; but Whitman knew
very well, and showed very nobly, that the average man was full of joys
and full of poetry of his own. And this harping on life's dulness and
man's meanness is a loud profession of incompetence; it is one of two
things: the cry of the blind eye, _I cannot see_, or the complaint of
the dumb tongue, _I cannot utter_. To draw a life without delights is to
prove I have not realised it. To picture a man without some sort of
poetry--well, it goes near to prove my case, for it shows an author may
have little enough. To see Dancer only as a dirty, old, small-minded,
impotently fuming man, in a dirty house, besieged by Harrow boys, and
probably beset by small attorneys, is to show myself as keen an observer
as ... the Harrow boys. But these young gentlemen (with a more becoming
modesty) were content to pluck Dancer by the coat-tails; they did not
suppose they had surprised his secret or could put him living in a book:
and it is there my error would have lain. Or say that in the same
romance--I continue to call these books romances, in the hope of giving
pain--say that in the same romance, which now begins really to take
shape, I should leave to speak of Dancer, and follow instead the Harrow
boys; and say that I came on some such business as that of my
lantern-bearers on the links; and described the boys as very cold, spat
upon by flurries of rain, and drearily surrounded, all of which they
were; and their talk as silly and indecent, which it certainly was. I
might upon these lines, and had I Zola's genius, turn out, in a page or
so, a gem of literary art, render the lantern-light with the touches of
a master, and lay on the indecency with the ungrudging hand of love; and
when all was done, what a triumph would my picture be of shallowness and
dulness! how it would have missed the point! how it would have belied
the boys! To the ear of the stenographer, the talk is merely silly and
indecent; but ask the boys themselves, and they are discussing (as it is
highly proper they should) the possibilities of existence. To the eye of
the observer they are wet and cold and drearily surrounded; but ask
themselves, and they are in the heaven of a recondite pleasure, the
ground of which is an ill-smelling lantern.
III
For, to repeat, the ground of a man's joy is often hard to hit. It may
hinge at times upon a mere accessory, like the lantern; it may reside,
like Dancer's, in the mysterious inwards of psychology. It may consist
with perpetual failure, and find exercise in the continued chase. It has
so little bond with externals (such as the observer scribbles in his
note-book) that it may even touch them not; and the man's true life, for
which he consents to live, lie altogether in the field of fancy. The
clergyman, in his spare hours, may be winning battles, the farmer
sailing ships, the banker reaping triumph in the arts: all leading
another life, plying another trade from that they chose; like the poet's
housebuilder, who, after all, is cased in stone,
"By his fireside, as impotent fancy prompts,
Rebuilds it to his liking."
In such a case the poetry runs underground. The observer (poor soul,
with his documents!) is all abroad. For to look at the man is but to
court deception. We shall see the trunk from which he draws his
nourishment; but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome of
foliage, hummed through by winds and nested in by nightingales. And the
true realism were that of the poets, to climb up after him like a
squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven for which he lives. And
the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find
out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing.
For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the
sense of any action. That is the explanation, that the excuse. To one
who has not the secret of the lanterns, the scene upon the links is
meaningless. And hence the haunting and truly spectral unreality of
realistic books. Hence, when we read the English realists, the
incredulous wonder with which we observe the hero's constancy under the
submerging tide of dulness, and how he bears up with his jibbing
sweetheart, and endures the chatter of idiot girls, and stands by his
whole unfeatured wilderness of an existence, instead of seeking relief
in drink or foreign travel. Hence in the French, in that meat-market of
middle-aged sensuality, the disgusted surprise with which we see the
hero drift sidelong, and practically quite untempted, into every
description of misconduct and dishonour. In each, we miss the personal
poetry, the enchanted atmosphere, that rainbow work of fancy that
clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base; in each, life
falls dead like dough, instead of soaring away like a balloon into the
colours of the sunset; each is true, each inconceivable; for no man
lives in external truth, among salts and acids, but in the warm,
phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the
storied walls.
Of this falsity we have had a recent example from a man who knows far
better--Tolstoi's "Powers of Darkness." Here is a piece full of force
and truth, yet quite untrue. For before Mikita was led into so dire a
situation he was tempted, and temptations are beautiful at least in
part; and a work which dwells on the ugliness of crime and gives no hint
of any loveliness in the temptation, sins against the modesty of life,
and, even when Tolstoi writes it, sinks to melodrama. The peasants are
not understood; they saw their life in fairer colours; even the deaf
girl was clothed in poetry for Mikita, or he had never fallen. And so,
once again, even an Old Bailey melodrama, without some brightness of
poetry and lustre of existence, falls into the inconceivable and ranks
with fairy tales.
IV
In nobler books we are moved with something like the emotions of life;
and this emotion is very variously provoked. We are so moved when Levine
labours on the field, when André sinks beyond emotion, when Richard
Feverel and Lucy Desborough meet beside the river, when Antony, "not
cowardly, puts off his helmet," when Kent has infinite pity on the dying
Lear, when, in Dostoieffsky's "Despised and Rejected," the uncomplaining
hero drains his cup of suffering and virtue. These are notes that please
the great heart of man. Not only love, and the fields, and the bright
face of danger, but sacrifice and death and unmerited suffering humbly
supported, touch in us the vein of the poetic. We love to think of them,
we long to try them, we are humbly hopeful that we may prove heroes
also.
We have heard, perhaps, too much of lesser matters. Here is the door,
here is the open air.
_Itur in antiquam silvam._
FOOTNOTE:
[17] Wild cherries.
LATER ESSAYS
LATER ESSAYS
I
FONTAINEBLEAU
VILLAGE COMMUNITIES OF PAINTERS
I
The charm of Fontainebleau is a thing apart. It is a place that people
love even more than they admire. The vigorous forest air, the silence,
the majestic avenues of highway, the wilderness of tumbled boulders, the
great age and dignity of certain groves--these are but ingredients, they
are not the secret of the philtre. The place is sanative; the air, the
light, the perfumes, and the shapes of things concord in happy harmony.
The artist may be idle and not fear the "blues." He may dally with his
life. Mirth, lyric mirth, and a vivacious classical contentment are of
the very essence of the better kind of art; and these, in that most
smiling forest, he has the chance to learn or to remember. Even on the
plain of Bière, where the Angelus of Millet still tolls upon the ear of
fancy, a larger air, a higher heaven, something ancient and healthy in
the face of nature, purify the mind alike from dulness and hysteria.
There is no place where the young are more gladly conscious of their
youth, or the old better contented with their age.
The fact of its great and special beauty further recommends this country
to the artist. The field was chosen by men in whose blood there still
raced some of the gleeful or solemn exultation of great art--Millet who
loved dignity like Michelangelo, Rousseau whose modern brush was dipped
in the glamour of the ancients. It was chosen before the day of that
strange turn in the history of art, of which we now perceive the
culmination in impressionistic tales and pictures--that voluntary
aversion of the eye from all speciously strong and beautiful
effects--that disinterested love of dulness which has set so many Peter
Bells to paint the river-side primrose. It was then chosen for its
proximity to Paris. And for the same cause, and by the force of
tradition, the painter of to-day continues to inhabit and to paint it.
There is in France scenery incomparable for romance and harmony.
Provence, and the valley of the Rhone from Vienne to Tarascon, are one
succession of masterpieces waiting for the brush. The beauty is not
merely beauty; it tells, besides, a tale to the imagination, and
surprises while it charms. Here you shall see castellated towns that
would befit the scenery of dreamland; streets that glow with colour like
cathedral windows; hills of the most exquisite proportions; flowers of
every precious colour, growing thick like grass. All these, by the grace
of railway travel, are brought to the very door of the modern painter;
yet he does not seek them; he remains faithful to Fontainebleau, to the
eternal bridge of Grez, to the watering-pot cascade in Cernay valley.
Even Fontainebleau was chosen for him; even in Fontainebleau he shrinks
from what is sharply charactered. But one thing, at least, is certain:
whatever he may choose to paint and in whatever manner, it is good for
the artist to dwell among graceful shapes. Fontainebleau, if it be but
quiet scenery, is classically graceful; and though the student may look
for different qualities, this quality, silently present, will educate
his hand and eye.
But, before all its other advantages--charm, loveliness, or proximity to
Paris--comes the great fact that it is already colonised. The
institution of a painters' colony is a work of time and tact. The
population must be conquered. The innkeeper has to be taught, and he
soon learns, the lesson of unlimited credit; he must be taught to
welcome as a favoured guest a young gentleman in a very greasy coat, and
with little baggage beyond a box of colours and a canvas; and he must
learn to preserve his faith in customers who will eat heartily and drink
of the best, borrow money to buy tobacco, and perhaps not pay a stiver
for a year. A colour merchant has next to be attracted. A certain vogue
must be given to the place, lest the painter, most gregarious of
animals, should find himself alone. And no sooner are these first
difficulties overcome than fresh perils spring up upon the other side;
and the bourgeois and the tourist are knocking at the gate. This is the
crucial moment for the colony. If these intruders gain a footing, they
not only banish freedom and amenity; pretty soon, by means of their long
purses, they will have undone the education of the innkeeper; prices
will rise and credit shorten; and the poor painter must fare farther on
and find another hamlet. "Not here, O Apollo!" will become his song.
Thus Trouville and, the other day, St. Raphael were lost to the arts.
Curious and not always edifying are the shifts that the French student
uses to defend his lair; like the cuttlefish, he must sometimes blacken
the waters of his chosen pool; but at such a time and for so practical a
purpose Mrs. Grundy must allow him licence. Where his own purse and
credit are not threatened, he will do the honours of his village
generously. Any artist is made welcome, through whatever medium he may
seek expression; science is respected; even the idler, if he prove, as
he so rarely does, a gentleman, will soon begin to find himself at home.
And when that essentially modern creature, the English or American
girl-student, began to walk calmly into his favourite inns as if into a
drawing-room at home, the French painter owned himself defenceless; he
submitted or he fled. His French respectability, quite as precise as
ours, though covering different provinces of life, recoiled aghast
before the innovation. But the girls were painters; there was nothing to
be done; and Barbizon, when I last saw it and for the time at least,
was practically ceded to the fair invader. Paterfamilias, on the other
hand, the common tourist, the holiday shopman, and the cheap young
gentleman upon the spree, he hounded from his villages with every
circumstance of contumely.
This purely artistic society is excellent for the young artist. The lads
are mostly fools; they hold the latest orthodoxy in its crudeness; they
are at that stage of education, for the most part, when a man is too
much occupied with style to be aware of the necessity for any matter;
and this, above all for the Englishman, is excellent. To work grossly at
the trade, to forget sentiment, to think of his material and nothing
else, is, for a while at least, the king's highway of progress. Here, in
England, too many painters and writers dwell dispersed, unshielded,
among the intelligent bourgeois. These, when they are not merely
indifferent, prate to him about the lofty aims and moral influence of
art. And this is the lad's ruin. For art is, first of all and last of
all, a trade. The love of words and not a desire to publish new
discoveries, the love of form and not a novel reading of historical
events, mark the vocation of the writer and the painter. The arabesque,
properly speaking, and even in literature, is the first fancy of the
artist; he first plays with his material as a child plays with a
kaleidoscope; and he is already in a second stage when he begins to use
his pretty counters for the end of representation. In that, he must
pause long and toil faithfully; that is his apprenticeship; and it is
only the few who will really grow beyond it, and go forward, fully
equipped, to do the business of real art--to give life to abstractions
and significance and charm to facts. In the meanwhile, let him dwell
much among his fellow-craftsmen. They alone can take a serious interest
in the childish tasks and pitiful successes of these years. They alone
can behold with equanimity this fingering of the dumb keyboard, this
polishing of empty sentences, this dull and literal painting of dull and
insignificant subjects. Outsiders will spur him on. They will say, "Why
do you not write a great book? paint a great picture?" If his guardian
angel fail him, they may even persuade him to the attempt, and, ten to
one, his hand is coarsened and his style falsified for life.
And this brings me to a warning. The life of the apprentice to any art
is both unstrained and pleasing; it is strewn with small successes in
the midst of a career of failure, patiently supported; the heaviest
scholar is conscious of a certain progress; and if he come not
appreciably nearer to the art of Shakespeare, grows letter-perfect in
the domain of A-B, ab. But the time comes when a man should cease
prelusory gymnastic, stand up, put a violence upon his will, and, for
better or worse, begin the business of creation. This evil day there is
a tendency continually to postpone: above all with painters. They have
made so many studies that it has become a habit; they make more, the
walls of exhibitions blush with them; and death finds these aged
students still busy with their horn-book. This class of man finds a
congenial home in artist villages; in the slang of the English colony at
Barbizon we used to call them "Snoozers." Continual returns to the city,
the society of men further advanced, the study of great works, a sense
of humour or, if such a thing is to be had, a little religion or
philosophy, are the means of treatment. It will be time enough to think
of curing the malady after it has been caught; for to catch it is the
very thing for which you seek that dream-land of the painters' village.
"Snoozing" is a part of the artistic education; and the rudiments must
be learned stupidly, all else being forgotten, as if they were an object
in themselves.
Lastly, there is something, or there seems to be something, in the very
air of France that communicates the love of style. Precision, clarity,
the cleanly and crafty employment of material, a grace in the handling,
apart from any value in the thought, seem to be acquired by the mere
residence; or, if not acquired, become at least the more appreciated.
The air of Paris is alive with this technical inspiration. And to leave
that airy city and awake next day upon the borders of the forest is but
to change externals. The same spirit of dexterity and finish breathes
from the long alleys and the lofty groves, from the wildernesses that
are still pretty in their confusion, and the great plain that contrives
to be decorative in its emptiness.
II
In spite of its really considerable extent, the forest of Fontainebleau
is hardly anywhere tedious. I know the whole western side of it with
what, I suppose, I may call thoroughness; well enough at least to
testify that there is no square mile without some special character and
charm. Such quarters, for instance, as the Long Rocher, the Bas-Bréau,
and the Reine Blanche might be a hundred miles apart; they have scarce a
point in common beyond the silence of the birds. The two last are really
conterminous; and in both are tall and ancient trees that have outlived
a thousand political vicissitudes. But in the one the great oaks prosper
placidly upon an even floor; they beshadow a great field; and the air
and the light are very free below their stretching boughs. In the other
the trees find difficult footing; castles of white rock lie tumbled one
upon another, the foot slips, the crooked viper slumbers, the moss
clings in the crevice; and above it all the great beech goes spiring and
casting forth her arms, and, with a grace beyond church architecture,
canopies this rugged chaos. Meanwhile, dividing the two cantons, the
broad white causeway of the Paris road runs in an avenue; a road
conceived for pageantry and for triumphal marches, an avenue for an
army; but, its days of glory over, it now lies grilling in the sun
between cool groves, and only at intervals the vehicle of the cruising
tourist is seen far away and faintly audible along its ample sweep. A
little upon one side, and you find a district of sand and birch and
boulder; a little upon the other lies the valley of Apremont, all
juniper and heather; and close beyond that you may walk into a zone of
pine trees. So artfully are the ingredients mingled. Nor must it be
forgotten that, in all this part, you come continually forth upon a
hill-top, and behold the plain, northward and westward, like an
unrefulgent sea; nor that all day long the shadows keep changing; and at
last, to the red fires of sunset, night succeeds, and with the night a
new forest, full of whisper, gloom, and fragrance. There are few things
more renovating than to leave Paris, the lamplit arches of the
Carrousel, and the long alignment of the glittering streets, and to
bathe the senses in this fragrant darkness of the wood.
In this continual variety the mind is kept vividly alive. It is a
changeful place to paint, a stirring place to live in. As fast as your
foot carries you, you pass from scene to scene, each vigorously painted
in the colours of the sun, each endeared by that hereditary spell of
forests on the mind of man, who still remembers and salutes the ancient
refuge of his race.
And yet the forest has been civilised throughout. The most savage
corners bear a name, and have been cherished like antiquities; in the
most remote, Nature has prepared and balanced her effects as if with
conscious art; and man, with his guiding arrows of blue paint, has
countersigned the picture. After your farthest wandering, you are never
surprised to come forth upon the vast avenue of highway, to strike the
centre point of branching alleys, or to find the aqueduct trailing,
thousand-footed, through the brush. It is not a wilderness; it is rather
a preserve. And, fitly enough, the centre of the maze is not a hermit's
cavern. In the midst, a little mirthful town lies sunlit, humming with
the business of pleasure; and the palace, breathing distinction and
peopled by historic names, stands smokeless among gardens.
Perhaps the last attempt at savage life was that of the harmless humbug
who called himself the hermit. In a great tree, close by the highroad,
he had built himself a little cabin after the manner of the Swiss Family
Robinson; thither he mounted at night, by the romantic aid of a rope
ladder; and if dirt be any proof of sincerity, the man was savage as a
Sioux. I had the pleasure of his acquaintance; he appeared grossly
stupid, not in his perfect wits, and interested in nothing but small
change; for that he had a great avidity. In the course of time he proved
to be a chicken-stealer, and vanished from his perch; and perhaps from
the first he was no true votary of forest freedom, but an ingenious,
theatrically-minded beggar, and his cabin in the tree was only
stock-in-trade to beg withal. The choice of his position would seem to
indicate so much; for if in the forest there are no places still to be
discovered, there are many that have been forgotten, and that lie
unvisited. There, to be sure, are the blue arrows waiting to reconduct
you, now blazed upon a tree, now posted in the corner of a rock. But
your security from interruption is complete; you might camp for weeks,
if there were only water, and not a soul suspect your presence; and if I
may suppose the reader to have committed some great crime and come to me
for aid, I think I could still find my way to a small cavern, fitted
with a hearth and chimney, where he might lie perfectly concealed. A
confederate landscape-painter might daily supply him with food; for
water, he would have to make a nightly tramp as far as to the nearest
pond; and at last, when the hue and cry began to blow over, he might get
gently on the train at some side station, work round by a series of
junctions, and be quietly captured at the frontier.
Thus Fontainebleau, although it is truly but a pleasure-ground, and
although, in favourable weather, and in the more celebrated quarters, it
literally buzzes with the tourist, yet has some of the immunities and
offers some of the repose of natural forests. And the solitary, although
he must return at night to his frequented inn, may yet pass the day with
his own thoughts in the companionable silence of the trees. The demands
of the imagination vary; some can be alone in a back garden looked upon
by windows; others, like the ostrich, are content with a solitude that
meets the eye; and others, again, expand in fancy to the very borders of
their desert, and are irritably conscious of a hunter's camp in an
adjacent county. To these last, of course, Fontainebleau will seem but
an extended tea-garden: a Rosherville on a by-day. But to the plain man
it offers solitude: an excellent thing in itself, and a good whet for
company.
III
I was for some time a consistent Barbizonian; _et ego in Arcadia vixi_;
it was a pleasant season; and that noiseless hamlet lying close among
the borders of the wood is for me, as for so many others, a green spot
in memory. The great Millet was just dead, the green shutters of his
modest house were closed; his daughters were in mourning. The date of my
first visit was thus an epoch in the history of art: in a lesser way, it
was an epoch in the history of the Latin Quarter. The _Petit Cénacle_
was dead and buried; Murger and his crew of sponging vagabonds were all
at rest from their expedients; the tradition of their real life was
nearly lost; and the petrified legend of the _Vie de Bohême_ had become
a sort of gospel, and still gave the cue to zealous imitators. But if
the book be written in rose-water, the imitation was still further
expurgated; honesty was the rule; the innkeepers gave, as I have said,
almost unlimited credit; they suffered the seediest painter to depart,
to take all his belongings, and to leave his bill unpaid; and if they
sometimes lost, it was by English and Americans alone. At the same time,
the great influx of Anglo-Saxons had begun to affect the life of the
studious. There had been disputes; and, in one instance at least, the
English and the Americans had made common cause to prevent a cruel
pleasantry. It would be well if nations and races could communicate
their qualities; but in practice when they look upon each other, they
have an eye to nothing but defects. The Anglo-Saxon is essentially
dishonest; the French is devoid by nature of the principle that we call
"Fair Play." The Frenchman marvelled at the scruples of his guest, and,
when that defender of innocence retired overseas and left his bills
unpaid, he marvelled once again; the good and evil were, in his eyes,
part and parcel of the same eccentricity; a shrug expressed his judgment
upon both.
At Barbizon there was no master, no pontiff in the arts. Palizzi bore
rule at Grez--urbane, superior rule--his memory rich in anecdotes of the
great men of yore, his mind fertile in theories; sceptical, composed,
and venerable to the eye; and yet beneath these outworks, all twittering
with Italian superstition, his eye scouting for omens, and the whole
fabric of his manners giving way on the appearance of a hunchback.
Cernay had Pelouse, the admirable, placid Pelouse, smilingly critical of
youth, who, when a full-blown commercial traveller suddenly threw down
his samples, bought a colour-box, and became the master whom we have all
admired. Marlotte, for a central figure, boasted Olivier de Penne. Only
Barbizon, since the death of Millet, was a headless commonwealth. Even
its secondary lights, and those who in my day made the stranger welcome,
have since deserted it. The good Lachèvre has departed, carrying his
household gods; and long before that Gaston Lafenestre was taken from
our midst by an untimely death. He died before he had deserved success;
it may be, he would never have deserved it; but his kind, comely, modest
countenance still haunts the memory of all who knew him. Another--whom I
will not name--has moved farther on, pursuing the strange Odyssey of his
decadence. His days of royal favour had departed even then; but he still
retained, in his narrower life at Barbizon, a certain stamp of conscious
importance, hearty, friendly, filling the room, the occupant of several
chairs; nor had he yet ceased his losing battle, still labouring upon
great canvases that none would buy, still waiting the return of fortune.
But these days also were too good to last; and the former favourite of
two sovereigns fled, if I heard the truth, by night. There was a time
when he was counted a great man, and Millet but a dauber; behold, how
the whirligig of time brings in his revenges! To pity Millet is a piece
of arrogance; if life be hard for such resolute and pious spirits, it is
harder still for us, had we the wit to understand it; but we may pity
his unhappier rival, who, for no apparent merit, was raised to opulence
and momentary fame, and, through no apparent fault, was suffered step by
step to sink again to nothing. No misfortune can exceed the bitterness
of such back-foremost progress, even bravely supported as it was; but to
those also who were taken early from the easel, a regret is due. From
all the young men of this period, one stood out by the vigour of his
promise; he was in the age of fermentation, enamoured of eccentricities.
"_Il faut faire de la peinture nouvelle_," was his watchword; but if
time and experience had continued his education, if he had been granted
health to return from these excursions to the steady and the central, I
must believe that the name of Hills had become famous.
Siron's inn, that excellent artists' barrack, was managed upon easy
principles. At any hour of the night, when you returned from wandering
in the forest, you went to the billiard-room and helped yourself to
liquors, or descended to the cellar and returned laden with beer or
wine. The Sirons were all locked in slumber; there was none to check
your inroads; only at the week's end a computation was made, the gross
sum was divided, and a varying share set down to every lodger's name
under the rubric: _estrats_. Upon the more long-suffering the larger tax
was levied; and your bill lengthened in a direct proportion to the
easiness of your disposition. At any hour of the morning, again, you
could get your coffee or cold milk, and set forth into the forest. The
doves had perhaps wakened you, fluttering into your chamber; and on the
threshold of the inn you were met by the aroma of the forest. Close by
were the great aisles, the mossy boulders, the interminable field of
forest shadow. There you were free to dream and wander. And at noon, and
again at six o'clock, a good meal awaited you on Siron's table. The
whole of your accommodation, set aside that varying item of the
_estrats_, cost you five francs a day; your bill was never offered you
until you asked it; and if you were out of luck's way, you might depart
for where you pleased and leave it pending.
IV
Theoretically, the house was open to all comers; practically, it was a
kind of club. The guests protected themselves, and, in so doing, they
protected Siron. Formal manners being laid aside, essential courtesy was
the more rigidly exacted; the new arrival had to feel the pulse of the
society; and a breach of its undefined observances was promptly
punished. A man might be as plain, as dull, as slovenly, as free of
speech as he desired; but to a touch of presumption or a word of
hectoring these free Barbizonians were as sensitive as a tea-party of
maiden ladies. I have seen people driven forth from Barbizon; it would
be difficult to say in words what they had done, but they deserved their
fate. They had shown themselves unworthy to enjoy these corporate
freedoms; they had pushed themselves; they had "made their head"; they
wanted tact to appreciate the "fine shades" of Barbizonian etiquette.
And, once they were condemned, the process of extrusion was ruthless in
its cruelty; after one evening with the formidable Bodmer, the Bailly of
our commonwealth, the erring stranger was beheld no more; he rose
exceeding early the next day, and the first coach conveyed him from the
scene of his discomfiture. These sentences of banishment were never, in
my knowledge, delivered against an artist; such would, I believe, have
been illegal; but the odd and pleasant fact is this, that they were
never needed. Painters, sculptors, writers, singers, I have seen all of
these in Barbizon; and some were sulky, and some blatant and inane; but
one and all entered at once into the spirit of the association. This
singular society is purely French, a creature of French virtues, and
possibly of French defects. It cannot be imitated by the English. The
roughness, the impatience, the more obvious selfishness, and even the
more ardent friendships of the Anglo-Saxon, speedily dismember such a
commonwealth. But this random gathering of young French painters, with
neither apparatus nor parade of government, yet kept the life of the
place upon a certain footing, insensibly imposed their etiquette upon
the docile, and by caustic speech enforced their edicts against the
unwelcome. To think of it is to wonder the more at the strange failure
of their race upon the larger theatre. This inbred civility--to use the
word in its completest meaning--this natural and facile adjustment of
contending liberties, seems all that is required to make a governable
nation and a just and prosperous country.
Our society, thus purged and guarded, was full of high spirits, of
laughter, and of the initiative of youth. The few elder men who joined
us were still young at heart, and took the key from their companions. We
returned from long stations in the fortifying air, our blood renewed by
the sunshine, our spirits refreshed by the silence of the forest; the
Babel of loud voices sounded good; we fell to eat and play like the
natural man; and in the high inn chamber, panelled with indifferent
pictures and lit by candles guttering in the night air, the talk and
laughter sounded far into the night. It was a good place and a good life
for any naturally-minded youth; better yet for the student of painting,
and perhaps best of all for the student of letters. He, too, was
saturated in this atmosphere of style; he was shut out from the
disturbing currents of the world, he might forget that there existed
other and more pressing interests than that of art. But, in such a
place, it was hardly possible to write; he could not drug his
conscience, like the painter, by the production of listless studies; he
saw himself idle among many who were apparently, and some who were
really, employed; and what with the impulse of increasing health and the
continual provocation of romantic scenes, he became tormented with the
desire to work. He enjoyed a strenuous idleness, full of visions, hearty
meals, long, sweltering walks, mirth among companions; and, still
floating like music through his brain, foresights of great works that
Shakespeare might be proud to have conceived, headless epics, glorious
torsos of dramas, and words that were alive with import. So in youth,
like Moses from the mountain, we have sights of that House Beautiful of
art which we shall never enter. They are dreams and unsubstantial;
visions of style that repose upon no base of human meaning; the last
heart-throbs of that excited amateur who has to die in all of us before
the artist can be born. But they come to us in such a rainbow of glory
that all subsequent achievement appears dull and earthly in comparison.
We were all artists; almost all in the age of illusion, cultivating an
imaginary genius, and walking to the strains of some deceiving Ariel;
small wonder, indeed, if we were happy! But art, of whatever nature, is
a kind mistress; and though these dreams of youth fall by their own
baselessness, others succeed, graver and more substantial; the symptoms
change, the amiable malady endures; and still, at an equal distance, the
House Beautiful shines upon its hill-top.
V
Grez lies out of the forest, down by the bright river. It boasts a mill,
an ancient church, a castle, and a bridge of many sterlings. And the
bridge is a piece of public property; anonymously famous; beaming on the
incurious dilettante from the walls of a hundred exhibitions. I have
seen it in the Salon; I have seen it in the Academy; I have seen it in
the last French Exposition, excellently done by Bloomer; in a
black-and-white by Mr. A. Henley, it once adorned this essay in the
pages of the _Magazine of Art_. Long-suffering bridge! And if you visit
Grez to-morrow, you shall find another generation, camped at the bottom
of Chevillon's garden under their white umbrellas, and doggedly painting
it again.
The bridge taken for granted, Grez is a less inspiring place than
Barbizon. I give it the palm over Cernay. There is something ghastly in
the great empty village square of Cernay, with the inn tables standing
in one corner, as though the stage were set for rustic opera, and in the
early morning all the painters breaking their fast upon white wine under
the windows of the villagers. It is vastly different to awake in Grez,
to go down the green inn-garden, to find the river streaming through the
bridge, and to see the dawn begin across the poplared level. The meals
are laid in the cool arbour, under fluttering leaves. The splash of oars
and bathers, the bathing costumes out to dry, the trim canoes beside the
jetty, tell of a society that has an eye to pleasure. There is
"something to do" at Grez. Perhaps, for that very reason, I can recall
no such enduring ardours, no such glories of exhilaration, as among the
solemn groves and uneventful hours of Barbizon. This "something to do"
is a great enemy to joy; it is a way out of it; you wreak your high
spirits on some cut-and-dry employment, and behold them gone! But Grez
is a merry place after its kind: pretty to see, merry to inhabit. The
course of its pellucid river, whether up or down, is full of gentle
attractions for the navigator: islanded reed-mazes where, in autumn, the
red berries cluster; the mirrored and inverted images of trees; lilies,
and mills, and the foam and thunder of weirs. And of all noble sweeps of
roadway, none is nobler, on a windy dusk, than the highroad to Nemours
between its lines of talking poplar.
But even Grez is changed. The old inn, long shored and trussed and
buttressed, fell at length under the mere weight of years, and the place
as it was is but a fading image in the memory of former guests. They,
indeed, recall the ancient wooden stair; they recall the rainy evening,
the wide hearth, the blaze of the twig fire, and the company that
gathered round the pillar in the kitchen. But the material fabric is now
dust; soon, with the last of its inhabitants, its very memory shall
follow; and they, in their turn, shall suffer the same law, and, both in
name and lineament, vanish from the world of men. "For remembrance of
the old house' sake," as Pepys once quaintly put it, let me tell one
story. When the tide of invasion swept over France, two foreign painters
were left stranded and penniless in Grez; and there, until the war was
over, the Chevillons ungrudgingly harboured them. It was difficult to
obtain supplies; but the two waifs were still welcome to the best, sat
down daily with the family to table, and at the due intervals were
supplied with clean napkins, which they scrupled to employ. Madame
Chevillon observed the fact and reprimanded them. But they stood firm;
eat they must, but having no money they would soil no napkins.
VI
Nemours and Moret, for all they are so picturesque, have been little
visited by painters. They are, indeed, too populous; they have manners
of their own, and might resist the drastic process of colonisation.
Montigny has been somewhat strangely neglected; I never knew it
inhabited but once, when Will H. Low installed himself there with a
barrel of _piquette_, and entertained his friends in a leafy trellis
above the weir, in sight of the green country and to the music of the
falling water. It was a most airy, quaint, and pleasant place of
residence, just too rustic to be stagey; and from my memories of the
place in general, and that garden trellis in particular--at morning,
visited by birds, or at night, when the dew fell and the stars were of
the party--I am inclined to think perhaps too favourably of the future
of Montigny. Chailly-en-Bière has outlived all things, and lies dustily
slumbering in the plain--the cemetery of itself. The great road remains
to testify of its former bustle of postilions and carriage bells; and,
like memorial tablets, there still hang in the inn room the paintings of
a former generation, dead or decorated long ago. In my time, one man
only, greatly daring, dwelt there. From time to time he would walk over
to Barbizon, like a shade revisiting the glimpses of the moon, and after
some communication with flesh and blood return to his austere hermitage.
But even he, when I last revisited the forest, had come to Barbizon for
good, and closed the roll of the Chaillyites. It may revive--but I much
doubt it. Achères and Recloses still wait a pioneer; Bourron is out of
the question, being merely Grez over again, without the river, the
bridge, or the beauty; and of all the possible places on the western
side, Marlotte alone remains to be discussed. I scarcely know Marlotte,
and, very likely for that reason, am not much in love with it. It seems
a glaring and unsightly hamlet. The inn of Mother Antonie is
unattractive; and its more reputable rival, though comfortable enough,
is commonplace. Marlotte has a name; it is famous; if I were the young
painter I would leave it alone in its glory.
VII
These are the words of an old stager; and though time is a good
conservative in forest places, much may be untrue to-day. Many of us
have passed Arcadian days there and moved on, but yet left a portion of
our souls behind us buried in the woods. I would not dig for these
reliquiæ; they are incommunicable treasures that will not enrich the
finder; and yet there may lie, interred below great oaks or scattered
along forest paths, stores of youth's dynamite and dear remembrances.
And as one generation passes on and renovates the field of tillage for
the next, I entertain a fancy that when the young men of to-day go forth
into the forest they shall find the air still vitalised by the spirits
of their predecessors, and, like those "unheard melodies" that are the
sweetest of all, the memory of our laughter shall still haunt the field
of trees. Those merry voices that in woods call the wanderer farther,
those thrilling silences and whispers of the groves, surely in
Fontainebleau they must be vocal of me and my companions? We are not
content to pass away entirely from the scenes of our delight; we would
leave, if but in gratitude, a pillar and a legend.
One generation after another fall like honey-bees upon this memorable
forest, rifle its sweets, pack themselves with vital memories, and when
the theft is consummated depart again into life richer, but poorer also.
The forest, indeed, they have possessed, from that day forward it is
theirs indissolubly, and they will return to walk in it at night in the
fondest of their dreams, and use it for ever in their books and
pictures. Yet when they made their packets, and put up their notes and
sketches, something, it should seem, had been forgotten. A projection of
themselves shall appear to haunt unfriended these scenes of happiness, a
natural child of fancy, begotten and forgotten unawares. Over the whole
field of our wanderings such fetches are still travelling like
indefatigable bagmen; but the imps of Fontainebleau, as of all beloved
spots, are very long of life, and memory is piously unwilling to forget
their orphanage. If anywhere about that wood you meet my airy bantling,
greet him with tenderness. He was a pleasant lad, though now abandoned.
And when it comes to your own turn to quit the forest, may you leave
behind you such another; no Antony or Werther, let us hope, no tearful
whipster, but, as becomes this not uncheerful and most active age in
which we figure, the child of happy hours.
No art, it may be said, was ever perfect, and not many noble, that has
not been mirthfully conceived. And no man, it may be added, was ever
anything but a wet blanket and a cross to his companions who boasted not
a copious spirit of enjoyment. Whether as man or artist, let the youth
make haste to Fontainebleau, and once there let him address himself to
the spirit of the place; he will learn more from exercise than from
studies, although both are necessary; and if he can get into his heart
the gaiety and inspiration of the woods he will have gone far to undo
the evil of his sketches. A spirit once well strung up to the
concert-pitch of the primeval out-of-doors will hardly dare to finish a
study and magniloquently ticket it a picture. The incommunicable thrill
of things, that is the tuning-fork by which we test the flatness of our
art. Here it is that Nature teaches and condemns, and still spurs up to
further effort and new failure. Thus it is that she sets us blushing at
our ignorant and tepid works; and the more we find of these inspiring
shocks the less shall we be apt to love the literal in our productions.
In all sciences and senses the letter kills; and to-day, when cackling
human geese express their ignorant condemnation of all studio pictures,
it is a lesson most useful to be learnt. Let the young painter go to
Fontainebleau, and while he stupefies himself with studies that teach
him the mechanical side of his trade, let him walk in the great air, and
be a servant of mirth, and not pick and botanise, but wait upon the
moods of Nature. So he will learn--or learn not to forget--the poetry of
life and earth, which, when he has acquired his track, will save him
from joyless reproduction.
II
A NOTE ON REALISM
Style is the invariable mark of any master; and for the student who does
not aspire so high as to be numbered with the giants, it is still the
one quality in which he may improve himself at will. Passion, wisdom,
creative force, the power of mystery or colour, are allotted in the hour
of birth, and can be neither learned nor simulated. But the just and
dexterous use of what qualities we have, the proportion of one part to
another and to the whole, the elision of the useless, the accentuation
of the important, and the preservation of a uniform character from end
to end--these, which taken together constitute technical perfection, are
to some degree within the reach of industry and intellectual courage.
What to put in and what to leave out; whether some particular fact be
organically necessary or purely ornamental; whether, if it be purely
ornamental, it may not weaken or obscure the general design; and
finally, whether, if we decide to use it, we should do so grossly and
notably, or in some conventional disguise: are questions of plastic
style continually re-arising. And the sphinx that patrols the highways
of executive art has no more unanswerable riddle to propound.
In literature (from which I must draw my instances) the great change of
the past century has been effected by the admission of detail. It was
inaugurated by the romantic Scott; and at length, by the semi-romantic
Balzac and his more or less wholly unromantic followers, bound like a
duty on the novelist. For some time it signified and expressed a more
ample contemplation of the conditions of man's life; but it has
recently (at least in France) fallen into a merely technical and
decorative stage, which it is, perhaps, still too harsh to call
survival. With a movement of alarm, the wiser or more timid begin to
fall a little back from these extremities; they begin to aspire after a
more naked, narrative articulation; after the succinct, the dignified,
and the poetic; and as a means to this, after a general lightening of
this baggage of detail. After Scott we beheld the starveling
story--once, in the hands of Voltaire, as abstract as a parable--begin
to be pampered upon facts. The introduction of these details developed a
particular ability of hand; and that ability, childishly indulged, has
led to the works that now amaze us on a railway journey. A man of the
unquestionable force of M. Zola spends himself on technical successes.
To afford a popular flavour and attract the mob, he adds a steady
current of what I may be allowed to call the rancid. That is exciting to
the moralist; but what more particularly interests the artist is this
tendency of the extreme of detail, when followed as a principle, to
degenerate into mere _feux-de-joie_ of literary tricking. The other day
even M. Daudet was to be heard babbling of audible colours and visible
sounds.
This odd suicide of one branch of the realists may serve to remind us of
the fact which underlies a very dusty conflict of the critics. All
representative art, which can be said to live, is both realistic and
ideal; and the realism about which we quarrel is a matter purely of
externals. It is no especial cultus of nature and veracity, but a mere
whim of veering fashion, that has made us turn our back upon the larger,
more various, and more romantic art of yore. A photographic exactitude
in dialogue is now the exclusive fashion; but even in the ablest hands
it tells us no more--I think it even tells us less--than Molière,
wielding his artificial medium, has told to us and to all time of
Alceste or Orgon, Dorine or Chrysale. The historical novel is forgotten.
Yet truth to the conditions of man's nature and the conditions of man's
life, the truth of literary art, is free of the ages. It may be told us
in a carpet comedy, in a novel of adventure, or a fairy tale. The scene
may be pitched in London, on the sea-coast of Bohemia, or away on the
mountains of Beulah. And by an odd and luminous accident, if there is
any page of literature calculated to awake the envy of M. Zola, it must
be that "Troilus and Cressida" which Shakespeare, in a spasm of unmanly
anger with the world, grafted on the heroic story of the siege of Troy.
This question of realism, let it then be clearly understood, regards not
in the least degree the fundamental truth, but only the technical
method, of a work of art. Be as ideal or as abstract as you please, you
will be none the less veracious; but if you be weak, you run the risk of
being tedious and inexpressive; and if you be very strong and honest,
you may chance upon a masterpiece.
A work of art is first cloudily conceived in the mind; during the period
of gestation it stands more clearly forward from these swaddling mists,
puts on expressive lineaments, and becomes at length that most
faultless, but also, alas! that incommunicable product of the human
mind, a perfected design. On the approach to execution all is changed.
The artist must now step down, don his working clothes, and become the
artisan. He now resolutely commits his airy conception, his delicate
Ariel, to the touch of matter; he must decide, almost in a breath, the
scale, the style, the spirit, and the particularity of execution of his
whole design.
The engendering idea of some works is stylistic; a technical
pre-occupation stands them instead of some robuster principle of life.
And with these the execution is but play; for the stylistic problem is
resolved beforehand, and all large originality of treatment wilfully
foregone. Such are the verses, intricately designed, which we have
learnt to admire, with a certain smiling admiration, at the hands of Mr.
Lang and Mr. Dobson; such, too, are those canvases where dexterity or
even breadth of plastic style takes the place of pictorial nobility of
design. So, it may be remarked, it was easier to begin to write "Esmond"
than "Vanity Fair," since, in the first, the style was dictated by the
nature of the plan; and Thackeray, a man probably of some indolence of
mind, enjoyed and got good profit of this economy of effort. But the
case is exceptional. Usually in all works of art that have been
conceived from within outwards, and generously nourished from the
author's mind, the moment in which he begins to execute is one of
extreme perplexity and strain. Artists of indifferent energy and an
imperfect devotion to their own ideal make this ungrateful effort once
for all; and, having formed a style, adhere to it through life. But
those of a higher order cannot rest content with a process which, as
they continue to employ it, must infallibly degenerate towards the
academic and the cut-and-dried. Every fresh work in which they embark is
the signal for a fresh engagement of the whole forces of their mind; and
the changing views which accompany the growth of their experience are
marked by still more sweeping alterations in the manner of their art. So
that criticism loves to dwell upon and distinguish the varying periods
of a Raphael, a Shakespeare, or a Beethoven.
It is, then, first of all, at this initial and decisive moment when
execution is begun, and thenceforth only in a less degree, that the
ideal and the real do indeed, like good and evil angels, contend for the
direction of the work. Marble, paint, and language, the pen, the needle,
and the brush, all have their grossnesses, their ineffable impotences,
their hours, if I may so express myself, of insubordination. It is the
work and it is a great part of the delight of any artist to contend with
these unruly tools, and now by brute energy, now by witty expedient, to
drive and coax them to effect his will. Given these means, so laughably
inadequate, and given the interest, the intensity, and the multiplicity
of the actual sensation whose effect he is to render with their aid, the
artist has one main and necessary resource which he must, in every case
and upon any theory, employ. He must, that is, suppress much and omit
more. He must omit what is tedious or irrelevant, and suppress what is
tedious and necessary. But such facts as, in regard to the main design,
subserve a variety of purposes, he will perforce and eagerly retain. And
it is the mark of the very highest order of creative art to be woven
exclusively of such. There, any fact that is registered is contrived a
double or a treble debt to pay, and is at once an ornament in its place
and a pillar in the main design. Nothing would find room in such a
picture that did not serve, at once, to complete the composition, to
accentuate the scheme of colour, to distinguish the planes of distance,
and to strike the note of the selected sentiment; nothing would be
allowed in such a story that did not, at the same time, expedite the
progress of the fable, build up the characters, and strike home the
moral or the philosophical design. But this is unattainable. As a rule,
so far from building the fabric of our works exclusively with these, we
are thrown into a rapture if we think we can muster a dozen or a score
of them, to be the plums of our confection. And hence, in order that the
canvas may be filled or the story proceed from point to point, other
details must be admitted. They must be admitted, alas! upon a doubtful
title; many without marriage robes. Thus any work of art, as it proceeds
towards completion, too often--I had almost written always--loses in
force and poignancy of main design. Our little air is swamped and
dwarfed among hardly relevant orchestration; our little passionate story
drowns in a deep sea of descriptive eloquence or slipshod talk.
But again, we are rather more tempted to admit those particulars which
we know we can describe; and hence those most of all which, having been
described very often, have grown to be conventionally treated in the
practice of our art. These we choose, as the mason chooses the acanthus
to adorn his capital, because they come naturally to the accustomed
hand. The old stock incidents and accessories, tricks of workmanship
and schemes of composition (all being admirably good, or they would long
have been forgotten) haunt and tempt our fancy; offer us ready-made but
not perfectly appropriate solutions for any problem that arises; and
wean us from the study of nature and the uncompromising practice of art.
To struggle, to face nature, to find fresh solutions, and give
expression to facts which have not yet been adequately or not yet
elegantly expressed, is to run a little upon the danger of extreme
self-love. Difficulty sets a high price upon achievement; and the artist
may easily fall into the error of the French naturalists, and consider
any fact as welcome to admission if it be the ground of brilliant
handiwork; or, again, into the error of the modern landscape-painter,
who is apt to think that difficulty overcome and science well displayed
can take the place of what is, after all, the one excuse and breath of
art--charm. A little further, and he will regard charm in the light of
an unworthy sacrifice to prettiness, and the omission of a tedious
passage as an infidelity to art.
We have now the matter of this difference before us. The idealist, his
eye singly fixed upon the greater outlines, loves rather to fill up the
interval with detail of the conventional order, briefly touched, soberly
suppressed in tone, courting neglect. But the realist, with a fine
intemperance, will not suffer the presence of anything so dead as a
convention; he shall have all fiery, all hot-pressed from nature, all
charactered and notable, seizing the eye. The style that befits either
of these extremes, once chosen, brings with it its necessary
disabilities and dangers. The immediate danger of the realist is to
sacrifice the beauty and significance of the whole to local dexterity,
or, in the insane pursuit of completion, to immolate his readers under
facts; but he comes in the last resort, and as his energy declines, to
discard all design, abjure all choice, and, with scientific
thoroughness, steadily to communicate matter which is not worth
learning. The danger of the idealist is, of course, to become merely
null and lose all grip of fact, particularity, or passion.
We talk of bad and good. Everything, indeed, is good which is conceived
with honesty and executed with communicative ardour. But though on
neither side is dogmatism fitting, and though in every case the artist
must decide for himself, and decide afresh and yet afresh for each
succeeding work and new creation; yet one thing may be generally said,
that we of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, breathing as we
do the intellectual atmosphere of our age, are more apt to err upon the
side of realism than to sin in quest of the ideal. Upon that theory it
may be well to watch and correct our own decisions, always holding back
the hand from the least appearance of irrelevant dexterity, and
resolutely fixed to begin no work that is not philosophical, passionate,
dignified, happily mirthful, or at the last and least, romantic in
design.
III
ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE
There is nothing more disenchanting to man than to be shown the springs
and mechanism of any art. All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the
surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness,
and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness
and shocked by the coarseness of the strings and pulleys. In a similar
way, psychology itself, when pushed to any nicety, discovers an
abhorrent baldness, but rather from the fault of our analysis than from
any poverty native to the mind. And perhaps in æsthetics the reason is
the same: those disclosures which seem fatal to the dignity of art seem
so perhaps only in the proportion of our ignorance; and those conscious
and unconscious artifices which it seems unworthy of the serious artist
to employ were yet, if we had the power to trace them to their springs,
indications of a delicacy of the sense finer than we conceive, and hints
of ancient harmonies in nature. This ignorance at least is largely
irremediable. We shall never learn the affinities of beauty, for they
lie too deep in nature and too far back in the mysterious history of
man. The amateur, in consequence, will always grudgingly receive details
of method, which can be stated but can never wholly be explained; nay,
on the principle laid down in Hudibras, that
"Still the less they understand,
The more they admire the sleight-of-hand,"
many are conscious at each new disclosure of a diminution in the ardour
of their pleasure. I must therefore warn that well-known character, the
general reader, that I am here embarked upon a most distasteful
business: taking down the picture from the wall and looking on the back;
and, like the inquiring child, pulling the musical cart to pieces.
1. _Choice of Words_.--The art of literature stands apart from among its
sisters, because the material in which the literary artist works is the
dialect of life; hence, on the one hand, a strange freshness and
immediacy of address to the public mind, which is ready prepared to
understand it; but hence, on the other, a singular limitation. The
sister arts enjoy the use of a plastic and ductile material, like the
modeller's clay; literature alone is condemned to work in mosaic with
finite and quite rigid words. You have seen these blocks, dear to the
nursery: this one a pillar, that a pediment, a third a window or a vase.
It is with blocks of just such arbitrary size and figure that the
literary architect is condemned to design the palace of his art. Nor is
this all; for since these blocks, or words, are the acknowledged
currency of our daily affairs, there are here possible none of those
suppressions by which other arts obtain relief, continuity and vigour;
no hieroglyphic touch, no smoothed impasto, no inscrutable shadow, as in
painting; no blank wall, as in architecture; but every word, phrase,
sentence, and paragraph must move in a logical progression, and convey a
definite conventional import.
Now, the first merit which attracts in the pages of a good writer, or
the talk of a brilliant conversationalist, is the apt choice and
contrast of the words employed. It is, indeed, a strange art to take
these blocks, rudely conceived for the purpose of the market or the bar,
and by tact of application touch them to the finest meanings and
distinctions, restore to them their primal energy, wittily shift them to
another issue, or make of them a drum to rouse the passions. But though
this form of merit is without doubt the most sensible and seizing, it is
far from being equally present in all writers. The effect of words in
Shakespeare, their singular justice, significance, and poetic charm, is
different, indeed, from the effect of words in Addison or Fielding. Or,
to take an example nearer home, the words in Carlyle seem electrified
into an energy of lineament, like the faces of men furiously moved;
whilst the words in Macaulay, apt enough to convey his meaning,
harmonious enough in sound, yet glide from the memory like
undistinguished elements in a general effect. But the first class of
writers have no monopoly of literary merit. There is a sense in which
Addison is superior to Carlyle; a sense in which Cicero is better than
Tacitus, in which Voltaire excels Montaigne: it certainly lies not in
the choice of words; it lies not in the interest or value of the matter;
it lies not in force of intellect, of poetry, or of humour. The three
first are but infants to the three second; and yet each, in a particular
point of literary art, excels his superior in the whole. What is that
point?
2. _The Web_.--Literature, although it stands apart by reason of the
great destiny and general use of its medium in the affairs of men, is
yet an art like other arts. Of these we may distinguish two great
classes: those arts, like sculpture, painting, acting, which are
representative, or, as used to be said very clumsily, imitative; and
those, like architecture, music, and the dance, which are
self-sufficient, and merely presentative. Each class, in right of this
distinction, obeys principles apart; yet both may claim a common ground
of existence, and it may be said with sufficient justice that the motive
and end of any art whatever is to make a pattern; a pattern, it may be,
of colours, of sounds, of changing attitudes, geometrical figures, or
imitative lines; but still a pattern. That is the plane on which these
sisters meet; it is by this that they are arts; and if it be well they
should at times forget their childish origin, addressing their
intelligence to virile tasks, and performing unconsciously that
necessary function of their life, to make a pattern, it is still
imperative that the pattern shall be made.
Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their pattern of
sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and pauses. Communication
may be made in broken words, the business of life be carried on with
substantives alone; but that is not what we call literature; and the
true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning,
involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive
phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment
of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself. In every properly
constructed sentence there should be observed this knot or hitch; so
that (however delicately) we are led to foresee, to expect, and then to
welcome the successive phrases. The pleasure may be heightened by an
element of surprise, as, very grossly, in the common figure of the
antithesis, or, with much greater subtlety, where an antithesis is first
suggested and then deftly evaded. Each phrase, besides, is to be comely
in itself; and between the implication and the evolution of the sentence
there should be a satisfying equipoise of sound; for nothing more often
disappoints the ear than a sentence solemnly and sonorously prepared,
and hastily and weakly finished. Nor should the balance be too striking
and exact, for the one rule is to be infinitely various; to interest, to
disappoint, to surprise, and yet still to gratify; to be ever changing,
as it were, the stitch, and yet still to give the effect of an ingenious
neatness.
The conjurer juggles with two oranges, and our pleasure in beholding him
springs from this, that neither is for an instant overlooked or
sacrificed. So with the writer. His pattern, which is to please the
supersensual ear, is yet addressed, throughout and first of all, to the
demands of logic. Whatever be the obscurities, whatever the intricacies
of the argument, the neatness of the fabric must not suffer, or the
artist has been proved unequal to his design. And, on the other hand, no
form of words must be selected, no knot must be tied among the phrases,
unless knot and word be precisely what is wanted to forward and
illuminate the argument; for to fail in this is to swindle in the game.
The genius of prose rejects the _cheville_ no less emphatically than the
laws of verse; and the _cheville_, I should perhaps explain to some of
my readers, is any meaningless or very watered phrase employed to strike
a balance in the sound. Pattern and argument live in each other; and it
is by the brevity, clearness, charm, or emphasis of the second, that we
judge the strength and fitness of the first.
Style is synthetic; and the artist, seeking, so to speak, a peg to plait
about, takes up at once two or more elements or two or more views of the
subject in hand; combines, implicates, and contrasts them; and while, in
one sense, he was merely seeking an occasion for the necessary knot, he
will be found, in the other, to have greatly enriched the meaning, or to
have transacted the work of two sentences in the space of one. In the
change from the successive shallow statements of the old chronicler to
the dense and luminous flow of highly synthetic narrative, there is
implied a vast amount of both philosophy and wit. The philosophy we
clearly see, recognising in the synthetic writer a far more deep and
stimulating view of life, and a far keener sense of the generation and
affinity of events. The wit we might imagine to be lost; but it is not
so, for it is just that wit, these perpetual nice contrivances, these
difficulties overcome, this double purpose attained, these two oranges
kept simultaneously dancing in the air, that, consciously or not, afford
the reader his delight. Nay, and this wit, so little recognised, is the
necessary organ of that philosophy which we so much admire. That style
is therefore the most perfect, not, as fools say, which is the most
natural, for the most natural is the disjointed babble of the
chronicler; but which attains the highest degree of elegant and pregnant
implication unobtrusively; or if obtrusively, then with the greatest
gain to sense and vigour. Even the derangement of the phrases from their
(so-called) natural order is luminous for the mind; and it is by the
means of such designed reversal that the elements of a judgment may be
most pertinently marshalled, or the stages of a complicated action most
perspicuously bound into one.
The web, then, or the pattern: a web at once sensuous and logical, an
elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of
the art of literature. Books indeed continue to be read, for the
interest of the fact or fable, in which this quality is poorly
represented, but still it will be there. And, on the other hand, how
many do we continue to peruse and reperuse with pleasure whose only
merit is the elegance of texture? I am tempted to mention Cicero; and
since Mr. Anthony Trollope is dead, I will. It is a poor diet for the
mind, a very colourless and toothless "criticism of life"; but we enjoy
the pleasure of a most intricate and dexterous pattern, every stitch a
model at once of elegance and of good sense; and the two oranges, even
if one of them be rotten, kept dancing with inimitable grace.
Up to this moment I have had my eye mainly upon prose; for though in
verse also the implication of the logical texture is a crowning beauty,
yet in verse it may be dispensed with. You would think that here was a
death-blow to all I have been saying; and far from that, it is but a new
illustration of the principle involved. For if the versifier is not
bound to weave a pattern of his own, it is because another pattern has
been formally imposed upon him by the laws of verse. For that is the
essence of a prosody. Verse may be rhythmical; it may be merely
alliterative; it may, like the French, depend wholly on the (quasi)
regular recurrence of the rhyme; or, like the Hebrew, it may consist in
the strangely fanciful device of repeating the same idea. It does not
matter on what principle the law is based, so it be a law. It may be
pure convention; it may have no inherent beauty; all that we have a
right to ask of any prosody is, that it shall lay down a pattern for the
writer, and that what it lays down shall be neither too easy nor too
hard. Hence it comes that it is much easier for men of equal facility to
write fairly pleasing verse than reasonably interesting prose; for in
prose the pattern itself has to be invented, and the difficulties first
created before they can be solved. Hence, again, there follows the
peculiar greatness of the true versifier: such as Shakespeare, Milton,
and Victor Hugo, whom I place beside them as versifier merely, not as
poet. These not only knit and knot the logical texture of the style with
all the dexterity and strength of prose; they not only fill up the
pattern of the verse with infinite variety and sober wit; but they give
us, besides, a rare and special pleasure, by the art, comparable to that
of counterpoint, with which they follow at the same time, and now
contrast, and now combine, the double pattern of the texture and the
verse. Here the sounding line concludes; a little further on, the
well-knit sentence; and yet a little further, and both will reach their
solution on the same ringing syllable. The best that can be offered by
the best writer of prose is to show us the development of the idea and
the stylistic pattern proceed hand in hand, sometimes by an obvious and
triumphant effort, sometimes with a great air of ease and nature. The
writer of verse, by virtue of conquering another difficulty, delights us
with a new series of triumphs. He follows three purposes where his rival
followed only two; and the change is of precisely the same nature as
that from melody to harmony. Or if you prefer to return to the juggler,
behold him now, to the vastly increased enthusiasm of the spectators,
juggling with three oranges instead of two. Thus it is: added
difficulty, added beauty; and the pattern, with every fresh element,
becoming more interesting in itself.
Yet it must not be thought that verse is simply an addition; something
is lost as well as something gained; and there remains plainly
traceable, in comparing the best prose with the best verse, a certain
broad distinction of method in the web. Tight as the versifier may draw
the knot of logic, yet for the ear he still leaves the tissue of the
sentence floating somewhat loose. In prose, the sentence turns upon a
pivot, nicely balanced, and fits into itself with an obtrusive neatness
like a puzzle. The ear remarks and is singly gratified by this return
and balance; while in verse it is all diverted to the measure. To find
comparable passages is hard; for either the versifier is hugely the
superior of the rival, or, if he be not, and still persist in his more
delicate enterprise, he falls to be as widely his inferior. But let us
select them from the pages of the same writer, one who was ambidexter;
let us take, for instance, Rumour's Prologue to the Second Part of
_Henry IV._, a fine flourish of eloquence in Shakespeare's second
manner, and set it side by side with Falstaff's praise of sherris, act
iv., scene 1; or let us compare the beautiful prose spoken throughout by
Rosalind and Orlando, compare, for example, the first speech of all,
Orlando's speech to Adam, with what passage it shall please you to
select--the Seven Ages from the same play, or even such a stave of
nobility as Othello's farewell to war; and still you will be able to
perceive, if you have any ear for that class of music, a certain
superior degree of organisation in the prose; a compacter fitting of the
parts; a balance in the swing and the return as of a throbbing pendulum.
We must not, in things temporal, take from those who have little, the
little that they have; the merits of prose are inferior, but they are
not the same; it is a little kingdom, but an independent.
3. _Rhythm of the Phrase._--Some way back, I used a word which still
awaits an application. Each phrase, I said, was to be comely; but what
is a comely phrase? In all ideal and material points, literature, being
a representative art, must look for analogies to painting and the like;
but in what is technical and executive, being a temporal art, it must
seek for them in music. Each phrase of each sentence, like an air or a
recitative in music, should be so artfully compounded out of long and
short, out of accented and unaccented, as to gratify the sensual ear.
And of this the ear is the sole judge. It is impossible to lay down
laws. Even in our accentual and rhythmic language no analysis can find
the secret of the beauty of a verse; how much less, then, of those
phrases, such as prose is built of, which obey no law but to be lawless
and yet to please? The little that we know of verse (and for my part I
owe it all to my friend Professor Fleeming Jenkin) is, however,
particularly interesting in the present connection. We have been
accustomed to describe the heroic line as five iambic feet, and to be
filled with pain and confusion whenever, as by the conscientious
schoolboy, we have heard our own description put in practice.
"All nìght | the dreàd | less àn | gel ùn | pursùed,"[18]
goes the schoolboy; but though we close our ears, we cling to our
definition, in spite of its proved and naked insufficiency. Mr. Jenkin
was not so easily pleased, and readily discovered that the heroic line
consists of four groups, or, if you prefer the phrase, contains four
pauses:
"All night | the dreadless | angel | unpursued."
Four groups, each practically uttered as one word: the first, in this
case, an iamb; the second, an amphibrachys; the third, a trochee; and
the fourth an amphimacer; and yet our schoolboy, with no other liberty
but that of inflicting pain, had triumphantly scanned it as five iambs.
Perceive, now, this fresh richness of intricacy in the web; this fourth
orange, hitherto unremarked, but still kept flying with the others. What
had seemed to be one thing it now appears is two; and, like some puzzle
in arithmetic, the verse is made at the same time to read in fives and
to read in fours.
But again, four is not necessary. We do not, indeed, find verses in six
groups, because there is not room for six in the ten syllables; and we
do not find verses of two, because one of the main distinctions of verse
from prose resides in the comparative shortness of the group; but it is
even common to find verses of three. Five is the one forbidden number;
because five is the number of the feet; and if five were chosen, the two
patterns would coincide, and that opposition which is the life of verse
would instantly be lost. We have here a clue to the effect of
polysyllables, above all in Latin, where they are so common and make so
brave an architecture in the verse; for the polysyllable is a group of
Nature's making. If but some Roman would return from Hades (Martial, for
choice), and tell me by what conduct of the voice these thundering
verses should be uttered--"_Aut Lacedæmonium Tarentum_," for a case in
point--I feel as if I should enter at last into the full enjoyment of
the best of human verses.
But, again, the five feet are all iambic, or supposed to be; by the mere
count of syllables the four groups cannot be all iambic; as a question
of elegance, I doubt if any one of them requires to be so; and I am
certain that for choice no two of them should scan the same. The
singular beauty of the verse analysed above is due, so far as analysis
can carry us, part, indeed, to the clever repetition of L, D and N, but
part to this variety of scansion in the groups. The groups which, like
the bar in music, break up the verse for utterance, fall uniambically;
and in declaiming a so-called iambic verse, it may so happen that we
never utter one iambic foot. And yet to this neglect of the original
beat there is a limit.
"Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts,"[19]
is, with all its eccentricities, a good heroic line; for though it
scarcely can be said to indicate the beat of the iamb, it certainly
suggests no other measure to the ear. But begin
"Mother Athens, eye of Greece,"
or merely "Mother Athens," and the game is up, for the trochaic beat has
been suggested. The eccentric scansion of the groups is an adornment;
but as soon as the original beat has been forgotten, they cease
implicitly to be eccentric. Variety is what is sought; but if we destroy
the original mould, one of the terms of this variety is lost, and we
fall back on sameness. Thus, both as to the arithmetical measure of the
verse, and the degree of regularity in scansion, we see the laws of
prosody to have one common purpose: to keep alive the opposition of two
schemes simultaneously followed; to keep them notably apart, though
still coincident; and to balance them with such judicial nicety before
the reader, that neither shall be unperceived and neither signally
prevail.
The rule of rhythm in prose is not so intricate. Here, too, we write in
groups, or phrases, as I prefer to call them, for the prose phrase is
greatly longer and is much more nonchalantly uttered than the group in
verse; so that not only is there a greater interval of continuous sound
between the pauses, but, for that very reason, word is linked more
readily to word by a more summary enunciation. Still, the phrase is the
strict analogue of the group, and successive phrases, like successive
groups, must differ openly in length and rhythm. The rule of scansion in
verse is to suggest no measure but the one in hand; in prose, to suggest
no measure at all. Prose must be rhythmical, and it may be as much so as
you will; but it must not be metrical. It may be anything, but it must
not be verse. A single heroic line may very well pass and not disturb
the somewhat larger stride of the prose style; but one following another
will produce an instant impression of poverty, flatness, and
disenchantment. The same lines delivered with the measured utterance of
verse would perhaps seem rich in variety. By the more summary
enunciation proper to prose, as to a more distant vision, these niceties
of difference are lost. A whole verse is uttered as one phrase; and the
ear is soon wearied by a succession of groups identical in length. The
prose writer, in fact, since he is allowed to be so much less
harmonious, is condemned to a perpetually fresh variety of movement on a
larger scale, and must never disappoint the ear by the trot of an
accepted metre. And this obligation is the third orange with which he
has to juggle, the third quality which the prose writer must work into
his pattern of words. It may be thought perhaps that this is a quality
of ease rather than a fresh difficulty; but such is the inherently
rhythmical strain of the English language, that the bad writer--and must
I take for example that admired friend of my boyhood, Captain Reid?--the
inexperienced writer, as Dickens in his earlier attempts to be
impressive, and the jaded writer, as any one may see for himself, all
tend to fall at once into the production of bad blank verse. And here it
may be pertinently asked, Why bad? And I suppose it might be enough to
answer that no man ever made good verse by accident, and that no verse
can ever sound otherwise than trivial when uttered with the delivery of
prose. But we can go beyond such answers. The weak side of verse is the
regularity of the beat, which in itself is decidedly less impressive
than the movement of the nobler prose; and it is just into this weak
side, and this alone, that our careless writer falls. A peculiar density
and mass, consequent on the nearness of the pauses, is one of the chief
good qualities of verse; but this our accidental versifier, still
following after the swift gait and large gestures of prose, does not so
much as aspire to imitate. Lastly, since he remains unconscious that he
is making verse at all, it can never occur to him to extract those
effects of counterpoint and opposition which I have referred to as the
final grace and justification of verse, and, I may add, of blank verse
in particular.
4. _Contents of the Phrase._--Here is a great deal of talk about
rhythm--and naturally; for in our canorous language rhythm is always at
the door. But it must not be forgotten that in some languages this
element is almost, if not quite, extinct, and that in our own it is
probably decaying. The even speech of many educated Americans sounds the
note of danger. I should see it go with something as bitter as despair,
but I should not be desperate. As in verse no element, not even rhythm,
is necessary; so, in prose also, other sorts of beauty will arise and
take the place and play the part of those that we outlive. The beauty of
the expected beat in verse, the beauty in prose of its larger and more
lawless melody, patent as they are to English hearing, are already
silent in the ears of our next neighbours; for in France the oratorical
accent and the pattern of the web have almost or altogether succeeded to
their places; and the French prose writer would be astounded at the
labours of his brother across the Channel, and how a good quarter of his
toil, above all _invita Minerva_, is to avoid writing verse. So
wonderfully far apart have races wandered in spirit, and so hard it is
to understand the literature next door!
Yet French prose is distinctly better than English; and French verse,
above all while Hugo lives, it will not do to place upon one side. What
is more to our purpose, a phrase or a verse in French is easily
distinguishable as comely or uncomely. There is then another element of
comeliness hitherto overlooked in this analysis: the contents of the
phrase. Each phrase in literature is built of sounds, as each phrase in
music consists of notes. One sound suggests, echoes, demands, and
harmonises with another; and the art of rightly using these concordances
is the final art in literature. It used to be a piece of good advice to
all young writers to avoid alliteration; and the advice was sound, in so
far as it prevented daubing. None the less for that, was it abominable
nonsense, and the mere raving of those blindest of the blind who will
not see? The beauty of the contents of a phrase, or of a sentence,
depends implicitly upon alliteration and upon assonance. The vowel
demands to be repeated; the consonant demands to be repeated; and both
cry aloud to be perpetually varied. You may follow the adventures of a
letter through any passage that has particularly pleased you; find it,
perhaps, denied a while, to tantalise the ear; find it fired again at
you in a whole broadside; or find it pass into congenerous sounds, one
liquid or labial melting away into another. And you will find another
and much stranger circumstance. Literature is written by and for two
senses: a sort of internal ear, quick to perceive "unheard melodies";
and the eye, which directs the pen and deciphers the printed phrase.
Well, even as there are rhymes for the eye, so you will find that there
are assonances and alliterations; that where an author is running the
open A, deceived by the eye and our strange English spelling, he will
often show a tenderness for the flat A; and that where he is running a
particular consonant, he will not improbably rejoice to write it down
even when it is mute or bears a different value.
Here, then, we have a fresh pattern--a pattern, to speak grossly, of
letters--which makes the fourth preoccupation of the prose writer, and
the fifth of the versifier. At times it is very delicate and hard to
perceive, and then perhaps most excellent and winning (I say perhaps);
but at times again the elements of this literal melody stand more boldly
forward and usurp the ear. It becomes, therefore, somewhat a matter of
conscience to select examples; and as I cannot very well ask the reader
to help me, I shall do the next best by giving him the reason or the
history of each selection. The two first, one in prose, one in verse, I
chose without previous analysis, simply as engaging passages that had
long re-echoed in my ear.
"I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and
unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks
out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not
without dust and heat."[20] Down to "virtue," the current S and R are
both announced and repeated unobtrusively, and by way of a grace-note
that almost inseparable group PVF is given entire.[21] The next phrase
is a period of repose, almost ugly in itself, both S and R still
audible, and B given as the last fulfilment of PVF. In the next four
phrases, from "that never" down to "run for," the mask is thrown off,
and, but for a slight repetition of the F and V, the whole matter turns,
almost too obtrusively, on S and R; first S coming to the front, and
then R. In the concluding phrase all these favourite letters, and even
the flat A, a timid preference for which is just perceptible, are
discarded at a blow and in a bundle; and to make the break more obvious,
every word ends with a dental, and all but one with T, for which we have
been cautiously prepared since the beginning. The singular dignity of
the first clause, and this hammer-stroke of the last, go far to make the
charm of this exquisite sentence. But it is fair to own that S and R are
used a little coarsely.
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan (KANDL)
A stately pleasure dome decree, (KDLSR)
Where Alph the sacred river ran, (KANDLSR)
Through caverns measureless to man, (KANLSR)
Down to a sunless sea."[22] (NDLS)
Here I have put the analysis of the main group alongside the lines; and
the more it is looked at, the more interesting it will seem. But there
are further niceties. In lines two and four, the current S is most
delicately varied with Z. In line three, the current flat A is twice
varied with the open A, already suggested in line two, and both times
("where" and "sacred") in conjunction with the current R. In the same
line F and V (a harmony in themselves, even when shorn of their comrade
P) are admirably contrasted. And in line four there is a marked
subsidiary M, which again was announced in line two. I stop from
weariness, for more might yet be said.
My next example was recently quoted from Shakespeare as an example of the
poet's colour sense. Now, I do not think literature has anything to do
with colour, or poets anyway the better of such a sense; and I instantly
attacked this passage, since "purple" was the word that had so pleased
the writer of the article, to see if there might not be some literary
reason for its use. It will be seen that I succeeded amply; and I am
bound to say I think the passage exceptional in Shakespeare--exceptional,
indeed, in literature; but it was not I who chose it.
"The BaRge she sat iN, like a BURNished throNe
BURNt ON the water: the POOP was BeateN gold,
PURPle the sails and so PUR*Fumèd that *per
The wiNds were lovesick with them."[23]
It may be asked why I have put the F of perfumèd in capitals; and I
reply, because this change from P to F is the completion of that from B
to P, already so adroitly carried out. Indeed, the whole passage is a
monument of curious ingenuity; and it seems scarce worth while to
indicate the subsidiary S, L and W. In the same article, a second
passage from Shakespeare was quoted, once again as an example of his
colour sense:
"A mole cinque-spotted like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip."[24]
It is very curious, very artificial, and not worth while to analyse at
length: I leave it to the reader. But before I turn my back on
Shakespeare, I should like to quote a passage, for my own pleasure, and
for a very model of every technical art:--
"But in the wind and tempest of her frown, W. P. V. F. (st) (OW)[25]
Distinction with a loud and powerful fan, W. P. F. (st) (OW) L
Puffing at all, winnowes the light away; W. P. F. L
And what hath mass and matter by itself W. F. L. M. A.
Lies rich in virtue and unmingled."[26] V. L. M.
From these delicate and choice writers I turned with some curiosity to a
player of the big drum--Macaulay. I had in hand the two-volume edition,
and I opened at the beginning of the second volume. Here was what I
read:--
"The violence of revolutions is generally proportioned to the degree
of the maladministration which has produced them. It is therefore
not strange that the government of Scotland, having been during many
years greatly more corrupt than the government of England, should
have fallen with a far heavier ruin. The movement against the last
king of the house of Stuart was in England conservative, in Scotland
destructive. The English complained not of the law, but of the
violation of the law."
This was plain-sailing enough; it was our old friend PVF, floated by the
liquids in a body; but as I read on, and turned the page, and still
found PVF with his attendant liquids, I confess my mind misgave me
utterly. This could be no trick of Macaulay's; it must be the nature of
the English tongue. In a kind of despair, I turned half-way through the
volume; and coming upon his lordship dealing with General Cannon, and
fresh from Claverhouse and Killiekrankie, here, with elucidative
spelling, was my reward:--
"Meanwhile the disorders of Kannon's Kamp went on inKreasing. He
Kalled a KOUNCIL of war to Konsider what Kourse it would be advisable
to taKe. But as soon as the Kouncil had met a preliminary Kuestion
was raised. The army was almost eKsKlusively a Highland army. The
recent viKtory had been won eKsKlusively by Highland warriors. Great
chie_f_s who had brought siKs or se_v_en hundred _f_ighting men into
the _f_ield, did not think it _f_air that they should be out_v_oted
by gentlemen _f_rom Ireland and _f_rom the Low Kountries, who bore
indeed King James's Kommission, and were Kalled Kolonels and
Kaptains, but who were Kolonels without regiments and Kaptains
without Kompanies."
A moment of FV in all this world of K's! It was not the English
language, then, that was an instrument of one string, but Macaulay that
was an incomparable dauber.
It was probably from this barbaric love of repeating the same sound,
rather than from any design of clearness, that he acquired his
irritating habit of repeating words; I say the one rather than the
other, because such a trick of the ear is deeper seated and more
original in man than any logical consideration. Few writers, indeed, are
probably conscious of the length to which they push this melody of
letters. One, writing very diligently, and only concerned about the
meaning of his words and the rhythm of his phrases, was struck into
amazement by the eager triumph with which he cancelled one expression
to substitute another. Neither changed the sense; both being
mono-syllables, neither could affect the scansion; and it was only by
looking back on what he had already written that the mystery was solved:
the second word contained an open A, and for nearly half a page he had
been riding that vowel to the death.
In practice, I should add, the ear is not always so exacting; and
ordinary writers, in ordinary moments, content themselves with avoiding
what is harsh, and here and there, upon a rare occasion, buttressing a
phrase, or linking two together, with a patch of assonance or a
momentary jingle of alliteration. To understand how constant is this
preoccupation of good writers, even where its results are least
obtrusive, it is only necessary to turn to the bad. There, indeed, you
will find cacophony supreme, the rattle of incongruous consonants only
relieved by the jaw-breaking hiatus, and whole phrases not to be
articulated by the powers of man.
_Conclusion_.--We may now briefly enumerate the elements of style. We
have, peculiar to the prose writer, the task of keeping his phrases
large, rhythmical and pleasing to the ear, without ever allowing them to
fall into the strictly metrical: peculiar to the versifier, the task of
combining and contrasting his double, treble, and quadruple pattern,
feet and groups, logic and metre--harmonious in diversity: common to
both, the task of artfully combining the prime elements of language into
phrases that shall be musical in the mouth; the task of weaving their
argument into a texture of committed phrases and of rounded periods--but
this particularly binding in the case of prose: and, again common to
both, the task of choosing apt, explicit, and communicative words. We
begin to see now what an intricate affair is any perfect passage; how
many faculties, whether of taste or pure reason, must be held upon the
stretch to make it; and why, when it is made, it should afford us so
complete a pleasure. From the arrangement of according letters, which
is altogether arabesque and sensual, up to the architecture of the
elegant and pregnant sentence, which is a vigorous act of the pure
intellect, there is scarce a faculty in man but has been exercised. We
need not wonder, then, if perfect sentences are rare, and perfect pages
rarer.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Milton.
[19] Milton.
[20] Milton.
[21] As PVF will continue to haunt us through our English examples,
take, by way of comparison, this Latin verse, of which it forms a
chief adornment, and do not hold me answerable for the all too Roman
freedom of the sense: "Hanc volo, quæ facilis, quæ palliolata
vagatur."
[22] Coleridge.
[23] Antony and Cleopatra.
[24] Cymbeline.
[25] The V is in "of."
[26] Troilus and Cressida.
IV
THE MORALITY OF THE PROFESSION OF LETTERS
The profession of letters has been lately debated in the public prints;
and it has been debated, to put the matter mildly, from a point of view
that was calculated to surprise high-minded men, and bring a general
contempt on books and reading. Some time ago, in particular, a lively,
pleasant, popular writer[27] devoted an essay, lively and pleasant like
himself, to a very encouraging view of the profession. We may be glad
that his experience is so cheering, and we may hope that all others, who
deserve it, shall be as handsomely rewarded; but I do not think we need
be at all glad to have this question, so important to the public and
ourselves, debated solely on the ground of money. The salary in any
business under heaven is not the only, nor indeed the first, question.
That you should continue to exist is a matter for your own
consideration; but that your business should be first honest, and second
useful, are points in which honour and morality are concerned. If the
writer to whom I refer succeeds in persuading a number of young persons
to adopt this way of life with an eye set singly on the livelihood, we
must expect them in their works to follow profit only, and we must
expect in consequence, if he will pardon me the epithets, a slovenly,
base, untrue, and empty literature. Of that writer himself I am not
speaking: he is diligent, clean, and pleasing; we all owe him periods of
entertainment, and he has achieved an amiable popularity which he has
adequately deserved. But the truth is, he does not, or did not when he
first embraced it, regard his profession from this purely mercenary
side. He went into it, I shall venture to say, if not with any noble
design, at least in the ardour of a first love; and he enjoyed its
practice long before he paused to calculate the wage. The other day an
author was complimented on a piece of work, good in itself and
exceptionally good for him, and replied in terms unworthy of a
commercial traveller, that as the book was not briskly selling he did
not give a copper farthing for its merit. It must not be supposed that
the person to whom this answer was addressed received it as a profession
of faith; he knew, on the other hand, that it was only a whiff of
irritation; just as we know, when a respectable writer talks of
literature as a way of life, like shoemaking, but not so useful, that he
is only debating one aspect of a question, and is still clearly
conscious of a dozen others more important in themselves and more
central to the matter in hand. But while those who treat literature in
this penny-wise and virtue-foolish spirit are themselves truly in
possession of a better light, it does not follow that the treatment is
decent or improving, whether for themselves or others. To treat all
subjects in the highest, the most honourable, and the pluckiest spirit,
consistent with the fact, is the first duty of a writer. If he be well
paid, as I am glad to hear he is, this duty becomes the more urgent, the
neglect of it the more disgraceful. And perhaps there is no subject on
which a man should speak so gravely as that industry, whatever it may
be, which is the occupation or delight of his life; which is his tool to
earn or serve with; and which, if it be unworthy, stamps himself as a
mere incubus of dumb and greedy bowels on the shoulders of labouring
humanity. On that subject alone even to force the note might lean to
virtue's side. It is to be hoped that a numerous and enterprising
generation of writers will follow and surpass the present one; but it
would be better if the stream were stayed, and the roll of our old,
honest English books were closed, than that esurient bookmakers should
continue and debase a brave tradition, and lower, in their own eyes, a
famous race. Better that our serene temples were deserted than filled
with trafficking and juggling priests.
There are two just reasons for the choice of any way of life: the first
is inbred taste in the chooser; the second some high utility in the
industry selected. Literature, like any other art, is singularly
interesting to the artist; and, in a degree peculiar to itself among the
arts, it is useful to mankind. These are the sufficient justifications
for any young man or woman who adopts it as the business of his life. I
shall not say much about the wages. A writer can live by his writing. If
not so luxuriously as by other trades, then less luxuriously. The nature
of the work he does all day will more affect his happiness than the
quality of his dinner at night. Whatever be your calling, and however
much it brings you in the year, you could still, you know, get more by
cheating. We all suffer ourselves to be too much concerned about a
little poverty; but such considerations should not move us in the choice
of that which is to be the business and justification of so great a
portion of our lives; and like the missionary, the patriot, or the
philosopher, we should all choose that poor and brave career in which we
can do the most and best for mankind. Now Nature, faithfully followed,
proves herself a careful mother. A lad, for some liking to the jingle of
words, betakes himself to letters for his life; by-and-by, when he
learns more gravity, he finds that he has chosen better than he knew;
that if he earns little, he is earning it amply; that if he receives a
small wage, he is in a position to do considerable services; that it is
in his power, in some small measure, to protect the oppressed and to
defend the truth. So kindly is the world arranged, such great profit may
arise from a small degree of human reliance on oneself, and such, in
particular, is the happy star of this trade of writing, that it should
combine pleasure and profit to both parties, and be at once agreeable,
like fiddling, and useful, like good preaching.
This is to speak of literature at its highest; and with the four great
elders who are still spared to our respect and admiration, with Carlyle,
Ruskin, Browning, and Tennyson before us, it would be cowardly to
consider it at first in any lesser aspect. But while we cannot follow
these athletes, while we may none of us, perhaps, be very vigorous, very
original, or very wise, I still contend that, in the humblest sort of
literary work, we have it in our power either to do great harm or great
good. We may seek merely to please; we may seek, having no higher gift,
merely to gratify the idle nine-days' curiosity of our contemporaries;
or we may essay, however feebly, to instruct. In each of these we shall
have to deal with that remarkable art of words which, because it is the
dialect of life, comes home so easily and powerfully to the minds of
men; and since that is so, we contribute, in each of these branches, to
build up the sum of sentiments and appreciations which goes by the name
of Public Opinion or Public Feeling. The total of a nation's reading, in
these days of daily papers, greatly modifies the total of the nation's
speech; and the speech and reading, taken together, form the efficient
educational medium of youth. A good man or woman may keep a youth some
little while in clearer air; but the contemporary atmosphere is
all-powerful in the end on the average of mediocre characters. The
copious Corinthian baseness of the American reporter or the Parisian
_chroniqueur_, both so lightly readable, must exercise an incalculable
influence for ill; they touch upon all subjects, and on all with the
same ungenerous hand; they begin the consideration of all, in young and
unprepared minds, in an unworthy spirit; on all, they supply some
pungency for dull people to quote. The mere body of this ugly matter
overwhelms the rarer utterances of good men; the sneering, the selfish,
and the cowardly are scattered in broad sheets on every table, while the
antidote, in small volumes, lies unread upon the shelf. I have spoken
of the American and the French, not because they are so much baser, but
so much more readable, than the English; their evil is done more
effectively, in America for the masses, in French for the few that care
to read; but with us as with them, the duties of literature are daily
neglected, truth daily perverted and suppressed, and grave subjects
daily degraded in the treatment. The journalist is not reckoned an
important officer; yet judge of the good he might do, the harm he does;
judge of it by one instance only: that when we find two journals on the
reverse sides of politics each, on the same day, openly garbling a piece
of news for the interest of its own party, we smile at the discovery (no
discovery now!) as over a good joke and pardonable stratagem. Lying so
open is scarce lying, it is true; but one of the things that we profess
to teach our young is a respect for truth; and I cannot think this piece
of education will be crowned with any great success, so long as some of
us practise and the rest openly approve of public falsehood.
There are two duties incumbent upon any man who enters on the business
of writing: truth to the fact and a good spirit in the treatment. In
every department of literature, though so low as hardly to deserve the
name, truth to the fact is of importance to the education and comfort of
mankind, and so hard to preserve, that the faithful trying to do so will
lend some dignity to the man who tries it. Our judgments are based upon
two things, first, upon the original preferences of our soul; but,
second, upon the mass of testimony to the nature of God, man, and the
universe which reaches us, in divers manners, from without. For the most
part these divers manners are reducible to one, all that we learn of
past times and much that we learn of our own reaching us through the
medium of books or papers, and even he who cannot read learning from the
same source at second-hand and by the report of him who can. Thus the
sum of the contemporary knowledge or ignorance of good and evil is, in
large measure, the handiwork of those who write. Those who write have to
see that each man's knowledge is, as near as they can make it,
answerable to the facts of life; that he shall not suppose himself an
angel or a monster; nor take this world for a hell; nor be suffered to
imagine that all rights are concentred in his own caste or country, or
all veracities in his own parochial creed. Each man should learn what is
within him, that he may strive to mend; he must be taught what is
without him, that he may be kind to others. It can never be wrong to
tell him the truth; for, in his disputable state, weaving as he goes his
theory of life, steering himself, cheering or reproving others, all
facts are of the first importance to his conduct; and even if a fact
shall discourage or corrupt him, it is still best that he should know
it; for it is in this world as it is, and not in a world made easy by
educational suppressions, that he must win his way to shame or glory. In
one word, it must always be foul to tell what is false; and it can never
be safe to suppress what is true. The very fact that you omit may be the
fact which somebody was wanting, for one man's meat is another man's
poison, and I have known a person who was cheered by the perusal of
"Candide." Every fact is a part of that great puzzle we must set
together; and none that comes directly in a writer's path but has some
nice relations, unperceivable by him, to the totality and bearing of the
subject under hand. Yet there are certain classes of fact eternally more
necessary than others, and it is with these that literature must first
bestir itself. They are not hard to distinguish, nature once more easily
leading us; for the necessary, because the efficacious, facts are those
which are most interesting to the natural mind of man. Those which are
coloured, picturesque, human, and rooted in morality, and those, on the
other hand, which are clear, indisputable, and a part of science, are
alone vital in importance, seizing by their interest, or useful to
communicate. So far as the writer merely narrates, he should
principally tell of these. He should tell of the kind and wholesome and
beautiful elements of our life; he should tell unsparingly of the evil
and sorrow of the present, to move us with instances; he should tell of
wise and good people in the past, to excite us by example; and of these
he should tell soberly and truthfully, not glossing faults, that we may
neither grow discouraged with ourselves nor exacting to our neighbours.
So the body of contemporary literature, ephemeral and feeble in itself,
touches in the minds of men the springs of thought and kindness, and
supports them (for those who will go at all are easily supported) on
their way to what is true and right. And if, in any degree, it does so
now, how much more might it do so if the writers chose! There is not a
life in all the records of the past but, properly studied, might lend a
hint and a help to some contemporary. There is not a juncture in
to-day's affairs but some useful word may yet be said of it. Even the
reporter has an office, and, with clear eyes and honest language, may
unveil injustices and point the way to progress. And for a last word: in
all narration there is only one way to be clever, and that is to be
exact. To be vivid is a secondary quality which must presuppose the
first; for vividly to convey a wrong impression is only to make failure
conspicuous.
But a fact may be viewed on many sides; it may be chronicled with rage,
tears, laughter, indifference, or admiration, and by each of these the
story will be transformed to something else. The newspapers that told of
the return of our representatives from Berlin, even if they had not
differed as to the facts, would have sufficiently differed by their
spirit; so that the one description would have been a second ovation,
and the other a prolonged insult. The subject makes but a trifling part
of any piece of literature, and the view of the writer is itself a fact
more important because less disputable than the others. Now this spirit
in which a subject is regarded, important in all kinds of literary work,
becomes all-important in works of fiction, meditation, or rhapsody; for
there it not only colours but itself chooses the facts; not only
modifies but shapes the work. And hence, over the far larger proportion
of the field of literature, the health or disease of the writer's mind
or momentary humour forms not only the leading feature of his work, but
is, at bottom, the only thing he can communicate to others. In all works
of art, widely speaking, it is first of all the author's attitude that
is narrated, though in the attitude there be implied a whole experience
and a theory of life. An author who has begged the question and reposes
in some narrow faith cannot, if he would, express the whole or even many
of the sides of this various existence; for, his own life being maim,
some of them are not admitted in his theory, and were only dimly and
unwillingly recognised in his experience. Hence the smallness, the
triteness, and the inhumanity in works of merely sectarian religion; and
hence we find equal although unsimilar limitations in works inspired by
the spirit of the flesh or the despicable taste for high society. So
that the first duty of any man who is to write is intellectual.
Designedly or not, he has so far set himself up for a leader of the
minds of men; and he must see that his own mind is kept supple,
charitable, and bright. Everything but prejudice should find a voice
through him; he should see the good in all things; where he has even a
fear that he does not wholly understand, there he should be wholly
silent; and he should recognise from the first that he has only one tool
in his workshop and that tool is sympathy.[28]
The second duty, far harder to define, is moral. There are a thousand
different humours in the mind, and about each of them, when it is
uppermost, some literature tends to be deposited. Is this to be
allowed? Not certainly in every case, and yet perhaps in more than
rigorists would fancy. It were to be desired that all literary work, and
chiefly works of art, issued from sound, human, healthy, and potent
impulses, whether grave or laughing, humorous, romantic, or religious.
Yet it cannot be denied that some valuable books are partially insane;
some, mostly religious, partially inhuman; and very many tainted with
morbidity and impotence. We do not loathe a masterpiece although we gird
against its blemishes. We are not, above all, to look for faults but
merits. There is no book perfect, even in design; but there are many
that will delight, improve, or encourage the reader. On the one hand,
the Hebrew Psalms are the only religious poetry on earth; yet they
contain sallies that savour rankly of the man of blood. On the other
hand, Alfred de Musset had a poisoned and a contorted nature; I am only
quoting that generous and frivolous giant, old Dumas, when I accuse him
of a bad heart; yet, when the impulse under which he wrote was purely
creative, he could give us works like "Carmosine" or "Fantasio," in
which the last note of the romantic comedy seems to have been found
again to touch and please us. When Flaubert wrote "Madame Bovary," I
believe he thought chiefly of a somewhat morbid realism; and behold! the
book turned in his hands into a masterpiece of appalling morality. But
the truth is, when books are conceived under a great stress, with a soul
of nine-fold power nine times heated and electrified by effort, the
conditions of our being are seized with such an ample grasp, that, even
should the main design be trivial or base, some truth and beauty cannot
fail to be expressed. Out of the strong comes forth sweetness; but an
ill thing poorly done is an ill thing top and bottom. And so this can be
no encouragement to knock-knee'd, feeble-wristed scribes, who must take
their business conscientiously or be ashamed to practise it.
Man is imperfect; yet, in his literature, he must express himself and
his own views and preferences; for to do anything else is to do a far
more perilous thing than to risk being immoral: it is to be sure of
being untrue. To ape a sentiment, even a good one, is to travesty a
sentiment; that will not be helpful. To conceal a sentiment, if you are
sure you hold it, is to take a liberty with truth. There is probably no
point of view possible to a sane man but contains some truth and, in the
true connection, might be profitable to the race. I am not afraid of the
truth, if any one could tell it me, but I am afraid of parts of it
impertinently uttered. There is a time to dance and a time to mourn; to
be harsh as well as to be sentimental; to be ascetic as well as to
glorify the appetites; and if a man were to combine all these extremes
into his work, each in its place and proportion, that work would be the
world's masterpiece of morality as well as of art. Partiality is
immorality; for any book is wrong that gives a misleading picture of the
world and life. The trouble is that the weakling must be partial; the
work of one proving dank and depressing; of another, cheap and vulgar;
of a third, epileptically sensual; of a fourth, sourly ascetic. In
literature as in conduct, you can never hope to do exactly right. All
you can do is to make as sure as possible; and for that there is but one
rule. Nothing should be done in a hurry that can be done slowly. It is
no use to write a book and put it by for nine or even ninety years; for
in the writing you will have partly convinced yourself; the delay must
precede any beginning; and if you meditate a work of art, you should
first long roll the subject under the tongue to make sure you like the
flavour, before you brew a volume that shall taste of it from end to
end; or if you propose to enter on the field of controversy, you should
first have thought upon the question under all conditions, in health as
well as in sickness, in sorrow as well as in joy. It is this nearness of
examination necessary for any true and kind writing, that makes the
practice of the art a prolonged and noble education for the writer.
There is plenty to do, plenty to say, or to say over again, in the
meantime. Any literary work which conveys faithful facts or pleasing
impressions is a service to the public. It is even a service to be
thankfully proud of having rendered. The slightest novels are a blessing
to those in distress, not chloroform itself a greater. Our fine old
sea-captain's life was justified when Carlyle soothed his mind with "The
King's Own" or "Newton Forster." To please is to serve; and so far from
its being difficult to instruct while you amuse, it is difficult to do
the one thoroughly without the other. Some part of the writer or his
life will crop out in even a vapid book; and to read a novel that was
conceived with any force is to multiply experience and to exercise the
sympathies. Every article, every piece of verse, every essay, every
_entrefilet_, is destined to pass, however swiftly, through the minds of
some portion of the public, and to colour, however transiently, their
thoughts. When any subject falls to be discussed, some scribbler on a
paper has the invaluable opportunity of beginning its discussion in a
dignified and human spirit; and if there were enough who did so in our
public press neither the public nor the parliament would find it in
their minds to drop to meaner thoughts. The writer has the chance to
stumble, by the way, on something pleasing, something interesting,
something encouraging, were it only to a single reader. He will be
unfortunate, indeed, if he suit no one. He has the chance, besides, to
stumble on something that a dull person shall be able to comprehend; and
for a dull person to have read anything and, for that once, comprehended
it, makes a marking epoch in his education.
Here then is work worth doing and worth trying to do well. And so, if I
were minded to welcome any great accession to our trade, it should not
be from any reason of a higher wage, but because it was a trade which
was useful in a very great and in a very high degree; which every honest
tradesman could make more serviceable to mankind in his single
strength; which was difficult to do well and possible to do better every
year; which called for scrupulous thought on the part of all who
practised it, and hence became a perpetual education to their nobler
natures; and which, pay it as you please, in the large majority of the
best cases will still be underpaid. For surely, at this time of day in
the nineteenth century, there is nothing that an honest man should fear
more timorously than getting and spending more than he deserves.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Mr. James Payn.
[28] A footnote, at least, is due to the admirable example set before
all young writers in the width of literary sympathy displayed by Mr.
Swinburne. He runs forth to welcome merit, whether in Dickens or
Trollope, whether in Villon, Milton, or Pope. This is, in criticism,
the attitude we should all seek to preserve, not only in that, but
in every branch of literary work.
V
BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME
The Editor[29] has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for his
correspondents, the question put appearing at first so innocent, truly
cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance and
review that the writer awakes to find himself engaged upon something in
the nature of autobiography, or, perhaps worse, upon a chapter in the
life of that little, beautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom we
have all lost and mourned, the man we ought to have been, the man we
hoped to be. But when word has been passed (even to an editor), it
should, if possible, be kept; and if sometimes I am wise and say too
little, and sometimes weak and say too much, the blame must lie at the
door of the person who entrapped me.
The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works
of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must
afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which
he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify
the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us
to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience,
not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change--that
monstrous, consuming _ego_ of ours being, for the nonce, struck out. To
be so, they must be reasonably true to the human comedy; and any work
that is so serves the turn of instruction. But the course of our
education is answered best by those poems and romances where we breathe
a magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet generous and pious
characters. Shakespeare has served me best. Few living friends have had
upon me an influence so strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. The last
character, already well beloved in the reading, I had the good fortune
to see, I must think, in an impressionable hour, played by Mrs. Scott
Siddons. Nothing has ever more moved, more delighted, more refreshed me;
nor has the influence quite passed away. Kent's brief speech over the
dying Lear had a great effect upon my mind, and was the burthen of my
reflections for long, so profoundly, so touchingly generous did it
appear in sense, so overpowering in expression. Perhaps my dearest and
best friend outside of Shakespeare is D'Artagnan--the elderly D'Artagnan
of the "Vicomte de Bragelonne." I know not a more human soul, nor, in
his way, a finer; I shall be very sorry for the man who is so much of a
pedant in morals that he cannot learn from the Captain of Musketeers.
Lastly, I must name the "Pilgrim's Progress," a book that breathes of
every beautiful and valuable emotion.
But of works of art little can be said; their influence is profound and
silent, like the influence of nature; they mould by contact; we drink
them up like water, and are bettered, yet know not how. It is in books
more specifically didactic that we can follow out the effect, and
distinguish and weigh and compare. A book which has been very
influential upon me fell early into my hands, and so may stand first,
though I think its influence was only sensible later on, and perhaps
still keeps growing, for it is a book not easily outlived: the "Essais"
of Montaigne. That temperate and genial picture of life is a great gift
to place in the hands of persons of to-day; they will find in these
smiling pages a magazine of heroism and wisdom, all of an antique
strain; they will have their "linen decencies" and excited orthodoxies
fluttered, and will (if they have any gift of reading) perceive that
these have not been fluttered without some excuse and ground of reason;
and (again if they have any gift of reading) they will end by seeing
that this old gentleman was in a dozen ways a finer fellow, and held in
a dozen ways a nobler view of life, than they or their contemporaries.
The next book, in order of time, to influence me was the New Testament,
and in particular the Gospel according to St. Matthew. I believe it
would startle and move any one if they could make a certain effort of
imagination and read it freshly like a book, not droningly and dully
like a portion of the Bible. Any one would then be able to see in it
those truths which we are all courteously supposed to know and all
modestly refrain from applying. But upon this subject it is perhaps
better to be silent.
I come next to Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," a book of singular service,
a book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into space a
thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion, and, having thus
shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong foundation
of all the original and manly virtues. But it is, once more, only a book
for those who have the gift of reading. I will be very frank--I believe
it is so with all good books, except, perhaps, fiction. The average man
lives, and must live, so wholly in convention, that gunpowder charges of
the truth are more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed.
Either he cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the
closer round that little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences which
is the contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets
what is old, and becomes truly blasphemous and indecent himself. New
truth is only useful to supplement the old; rough truth is only wanted
to expand, not to destroy, our civil and often elegant conventions. He
who cannot judge had better stick to fiction and the daily papers. There
he will get little harm, and, in the first at least, some good.
Close upon the back of my discovery of Whitman, I came under the
influence of Herbert Spencer. No more persuasive rabbi exists, and few
better. How much of his vast structure will bear the touch of time, how
much is clay and how much brass, it were too curious to inquire. But his
words, if dry, are always manly and honest; there dwells in his pages a
spirit of highly abstract joy, plucked naked like an algebraic symbol,
but still joyful; and the reader will find there a _caput-mortuum_ of
piety, with little indeed of its loveliness, but with most of its
essentials; and these two qualities make him a wholesome, as his
intellectual vigour makes him a bracing, writer. I should be much of a
hound if I lost my gratitude to Herbert Spencer.
"Goethe's Life," by Lewes, had a great importance for me when it first
fell into my hands--a strange instance of the partiality of man's good
and man's evil. I know no one whom I less admire than Goethe; he seems a
very epitome of the sins of genius, breaking open the doors of private
life, and wantonly wounding friends, in that crowning offence of
"Werther," and in his own character a mere pen-and-ink Napoleon,
conscious of the rights and duties of superior talents as a Spanish
inquisitor was conscious of the rights and duties of his office. And yet
in his fine devotion to his art, in his honest and serviceable
friendship for Schiller, what lessons are contained! Biography, usually
so false to its office, does here for once perform for us some of the
work of fiction, reminding us, that is, of the truly mingled tissue of
man's nature, and how huge faults and shining virtues cohabit and
persevere in the same character. History serves us well to this effect,
but in the originals, not in the pages of the popular epitomiser, who is
bound, by the very nature of his task, to make us feel the difference of
epochs instead of the essential identity of man, and even in the
originals only to those who can recognise their own human virtues and
defects in strange forms, often inverted and under strange names, often
interchanged. Martial is a poet of no good repute, and it gives a man
new thoughts to read his works dispassionately, and find in this
unseemly jester's serious passages the image of a kind, wise, and
self-respecting gentleman. It is customary, I suppose, in reading
Martial, to leave out these pleasant verses; I never heard of them, at
least, until I found them for myself; and this partiality is one among a
thousand things that help to build up our distorted and hysterical
conception of the great Roman empire.
This brings us by a natural transition to a very noble book--the
"Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius. The dispassionate gravity, the noble
forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of others, that are there
expressed and were practised on so great a scale in the life of its
writer, make this book a book quite by itself. No one can read it and
not be moved. Yet it scarcely or rarely appeals to the feelings--those
very mobile, those not very trusty parts of man. Its address lies
further back: its lesson comes more deeply home; when you have read, you
carry away with you a memory of the man himself; it is as though you had
touched a loyal hand, looked into brave eyes, and made a noble friend;
there is another bond on you thenceforward, binding you to life and to
the love of virtue.
Wordsworth should perhaps come next. Every one has been influenced by
Wordsworth, and it is hard to tell precisely how. A certain innocence, a
rugged austerity of joy, a sight of the stars, "the silence that is in
the lonely hills," something of the cold thrill of dawn, cling to his
work and give it a particular address to what is best in us. I do not
know that you learn a lesson; you need not--Mill did not--agree with any
one of his beliefs; and yet the spell is cast. Such are the best
teachers; a dogma learned is only a new error--the old one was perhaps
as good; but a spirit communicated is a perpetual possession. These best
teachers climb beyond teaching to the plane of art; it is themselves,
and what is best in themselves, that they communicate.
I should never forgive myself if I forgot "The Egoist." It is art, if
you like, but it belongs purely to didactic art, and from all the novels
I have read (and I have read thousands) stands in a place by itself.
Here is a Nathan for the modern David; here is a book to send the blood
into men's faces. Satire, the angry picture of human faults, is not
great art; we can all be angry with our neighbour; what we want is to be
shown, not his defects, of which we are too conscious, but his merits,
to which we are too blind. And "The Egoist" is a satire; so much must be
allowed; but it is a satire of a singular quality, which tells you
nothing of that obvious mote, which is engaged from first to last with
that invisible beam. It is yourself that is hunted down; these are your
own faults that are dragged into the day and numbered, with lingering
relish, with cruel cunning and precision. A young friend of Mr.
Meredith's (as I have the story) came to him in an agony. "This is too
bad of you," he cried. "Willoughby is me!" "No, my dear fellow," said
the author, "he is all of us." I have read "The Egoist" five or six
times myself, and I mean to read it again; for I am like the young
friend of the anecdote--I think Willoughby an unmanly but a very
serviceable exposure of myself.
I suppose, when I am done, I shall find that I have forgotten much that
was most influential, as I see already I have forgotten Thoreau, and
Hazlitt, whose paper "On the Spirit of Obligations" was a turning-point
in my life, and Penn, whose little book of aphorisms had a brief but
strong effect on me, and Mitford's "Tales of Old Japan," wherein I
learned for the first time the proper attitude of any rational man to
his country's laws--a secret found, and kept, in the Asiatic islands.
That I should commemorate all is more than I can hope or the editor
could ask. It will be more to the point, after having said so much upon
improving books, to say a word or two about the improvable reader. The
gift of reading, as I have called it, is not very common, nor very
generally understood. It consists, first of all, in a vast intellectual
endowment--a free grace, I find I must call it--by which a man rises to
understand that he is not punctually right, nor those from whom he
differs absolutely wrong. He may hold dogmas; he may hold them
passionately; and he may know that others hold them but coldly, or hold
them differently, or hold them not at all. Well, if he has the gift of
reading, these others will be full of meat for him. They will see the
other side of propositions and the other side of virtues. He need not
change his dogma for that, but he may change his reading of that dogma,
and he must supplement and correct his deductions from it. A human
truth, which is always very much a lie, hides as much of life as it
displays. It is men who hold another truth, or, as it seems to us,
perhaps, a dangerous lie, who can extend our restricted field of
knowledge, and rouse our drowsy consciences. Something that seems quite
new, or that seems insolently false or very dangerous, is the test of a
reader. If he tries to see what it means, what truth excuses it, he has
the gift, and let him read. If he is merely hurt, or offended, or
exclaims upon his author's folly, he had better take to the daily
papers; he will never be a reader.
And here, with the aptest illustrative force, after I have laid down my
part-truth, I must step in with its opposite. For, after all, we are
vessels of a very limited content. Not all men can read all books; it is
only in a chosen few that any man will find his appointed food; and the
fittest lessons are the most palatable, and make themselves welcome to
the mind. A writer learns this early, and it is his chief support; he
goes on unafraid, laying down the law; and he is sure at heart that most
of what he says is demonstrably false, and much of a mingled strain, and
some hurtful, and very little good for service; but he is sure besides
that when his words fall into the hands of any genuine reader, they will
be weighed and winnowed, and only that which suits will be assimilated;
and when they fall into the hands of one who cannot intelligently read,
they come there quite silent and inarticulate, falling upon deaf ears,
and his secret is kept as if he had not written.
FOOTNOTE:
[29] Of _The British Weekly_.
VI
THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW
History is much decried; it is a tissue of errors, we are told, no doubt
correctly; and rival historians expose each other's blunders with
gratification. Yet the worst historian has a clearer view of the period
he studies than the best of us can hope to form of that in which we
live. The obscurest epoch is to-day; and that for a thousand reasons of
inchoate tendency, conflicting report, and sheer mass and multiplicity
of experience; but chiefly, perhaps, by reason of an insidious shifting
of landmarks. Parties and ideas continually move, but not by measurable
marches on a stable course; the political soil itself steals forth by
imperceptible degrees, like a travelling glacier, carrying on its bosom
not only political parties but their flag-posts and cantonments; so that
what appears to be an eternal city founded on hills is but a flying
island of Laputa. It is for this reason in particular that we are all
becoming Socialists without knowing it; by which I would not in the
least refer to the acute case of Mr. Hyndman and his horn-blowing
supporters, sounding their trumps of a Sunday within the walls of our
individualist Jericho--but to the stealthy change that has come over the
spirit of Englishmen and English legislation. A little while ago, and we
were still for liberty; "crowd a few more thousands on the bench of
Government," we seemed to cry; "keep her head direct on liberty, and we
cannot help but come to port." This is over; _laisser faire_ declines in
favour; our legislation grows authoritative, grows philanthropical,
bristles with new duties and new penalties, and casts a spawn of
inspectors, who now begin, note-book in hand, to darken the face of
England. It may be right or wrong, we are not trying that; but one thing
it is beyond doubt: it is Socialism in action, and the strange thing is
that we scarcely know it.
Liberty has served us a long while, and it may be time to seek new
altars. Like all other principles, she has been proved to be
self-exclusive in the long run. She has taken wages besides (like all
other virtues) and dutifully served Mammon; so that many things we were
accustomed to admire as the benefits of freedom and common to all were
truly benefits of wealth, and took their value from our neighbours'
poverty. A few shocks of logic, a few disclosures (in the journalistic
phrase) of what the freedom of manufacturers, landlords, or shipowners
may imply for operatives, tenants or seamen, and we not unnaturally
begin to turn to that other pole of hope, beneficent tyranny. Freedom,
to be desirable, involves kindness, wisdom, and all the virtues of the
free; but the free man as we have seen him in action has been, as of
yore, only the master of many helots; and the slaves are still ill-fed,
ill-clad, ill-taught, ill-housed, insolently treated, and driven to
their mines and workshops by the lash of famine. So much, in other men's
affairs, we have begun to see clearly; we have begun to despair of
virtue in these other men, and from our seat in Parliament begin to
discharge upon them, thick as arrows, the host of our inspectors. The
landlord has long shaken his head over the manufacturer; those who do
business on land have lost all trust in the virtues of the shipowner;
the professions look askance upon the retail traders and have even
started their co-operative stores to ruin them; and from out the
smoke-wreaths of Birmingham a finger has begun to write upon the wall
the condemnation of the landlord. Thus, piece by piece, do we condemn
each other, and yet not perceive the conclusion, that our whole estate
is somewhat damnable. Thus, piece by piece, each acting against his
neighbour, each sawing away the branch on which some other interest is
seated, do we apply in detail our Socialistic remedies, and yet not
perceive that we are all labouring together to bring in Socialism at
large. A tendency so stupid and so selfish is like to prove invincible;
and if Socialism be at all a practicable rule of life, there is every
chance that our grandchildren will see the day and taste the pleasures
of existence in something far liker an ant-heap than any previous human
polity. And this not in the least because of the voice of Mr. Hyndman or
the horns of his followers; but by the mere glacier movement of the
political soil, bearing forward on its bosom, apparently undisturbed,
the proud camps of Whig and Tory. If Mr. Hyndman were a man of keen
humour, which is far from my conception of his character, he might rest
from his troubling and look on: the walls of Jericho begin already to
crumble and dissolve. That great servile war, the Armageddon of money
and numbers, to which we looked forward when young, becomes more and
more unlikely; and we may rather look to see a peaceable and blindfold
evolution, the work of dull men immersed in political tactics and dead
to political results.
The principal scene of this comedy lies, of course, in the House of
Commons; it is there, besides, that the details of this new evolution
(if it proceed) will fall to be decided; so that the state of Parliament
is not only diagnostic of the present but fatefully prophetic of the
future. Well, we all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of
it. We may pardon it some faults, indeed, on the ground of Irish
obstruction--a bitter trial, which it supports with notable good humour.
But the excuse is merely local; it cannot apply to similar bodies in
America and France; and what are we to say of these? President
Cleveland's letter may serve as a picture of the one; a glance at almost
any paper will convince us of the weakness of the other. Decay appears
to have seized on the organ of popular government in every land; and
this just at the moment when we begin to bring to it, as to an oracle of
justice, the whole skein of our private affairs to be unravelled, and
ask it, like a new Messiah, to take upon itself our frailties and play
for us the part that should be played by our own virtues. For that, in
few words, is the case. We cannot trust ourselves to behave with
decency; we cannot trust our consciences; and the remedy proposed is to
elect a round number of our neighbours, pretty much at random, and say
to these: "Be ye our conscience; make laws so wise, and continue from
year to year to administer them so wisely, that they shall save us from
ourselves and make us righteous and happy, world without end. Amen." And
who can look twice at the British Parliament and then seriously bring it
such a task? I am not advancing this as an argument against Socialism;
once again, nothing is further from my mind. There are great truths in
Socialism, or no one, not even Mr. Hyndman, would be found to hold it;
and if it came, and did one-tenth part of what it offers, I for one
should make it welcome. But if it is to come, we may as well have some
notion of what it will be like; and the first thing to grasp is that our
new polity will be designed and administered (to put it courteously)
with something short of inspiration. It will be made, or will grow, in a
human parliament; and the one thing that will not very hugely change is
human nature. The Anarchists think otherwise, from which it is only
plain that they have not carried to the study of history the lamp of
human sympathy.
Given, then, our new polity, with its new waggon-load of laws, what
headmarks must we look for in the life? We chafe a good deal at that
excellent thing, the income-tax, because it brings into our affairs the
prying fingers, and exposes us to the tart words, of the official. The
official, in all degrees, is already something of a terror to many of
us. I would not willingly have to do with even a police-constable in any
other spirit than that of kindness. I still remember in my dreams the
eye-glass of a certain _attaché_ at a certain embassy--an eye-glass that
was a standing indignity to all on whom it looked; and my next most
disagreeable remembrance is of a bracing, Republican postman in the
city of San Francisco. I lived in that city among working folk, and what
my neighbours accepted at the postman's hands--nay, what I took from him
myself--it is still distasteful to recall. The bourgeois, residing in
the upper parts of society, has but few opportunities of tasting this
peculiar bowl; but about the income-tax, as I have said, or perhaps
about a patent, or in the halls of an embassy at the hands of my friend
of the eye-glass, he occasionally sets his lips to it; and he may thus
imagine (if he has that faculty of imagination, without which most
faculties are void) how it tastes to his poorer neighbours who must
drain it to the dregs. In every contact with authority, with their
employer, with the police, with the School Board officer, in the
hospital, or in the workhouse, they have equally the occasion to
appreciate the light-hearted civility of the man in office; and as an
experimentalist in several out-of-the-way provinces of life, I may say
it has but to be felt to be appreciated. Well, this golden age of which
we are speaking will be the golden age of officials. In all our concerns
it will be their beloved duty to meddle, with what tact, with what
obliging words, analogy will aid us to imagine. It is likely these
gentlemen will be periodically elected; they will therefore have their
turn of being underneath, which does not always sweeten men's
conditions. The laws they will have to administer will be no clearer
than those we know to-day, and the body which is to regulate their
administration no wiser than the British Parliament. So that upon all
hands we may look for a form of servitude most galling to the
blood--servitude to many and changing masters, and for all the slights
that accompany the rule of jack-in-office. And if the Socialistic
programme be carried out with the least fulness, we shall have lost a
thing, in most respects not much to be regretted, but as a moderator of
oppression, a thing nearly invaluable--the newspaper. For the
independent journal is a creature of capital and competition; it stands
and falls with millionaires and railway bonds and all the abuses and
glories of to-day; and as soon as the State has fairly taken its bent
to authority and philanthropy, and laid the least touch on private
property, the days of the independent journal are numbered. State
railways may be good things and so may State bakeries; but a State
newspaper will never be a very trenchant critic of the State officials.
But again, these officials would have no sinecure. Crime would perhaps
be less, for some of the motives of crime we may suppose would pass
away. But if Socialism were carried out with any fulness, there would be
more contraventions. We see already new sins springing up like
mustard--School Board sins, factory sins, Merchant Shipping Act
sins--none of which I would be thought to except against in particular,
but all of which, taken together, show us that Socialism can be a hard
master even in the beginning. If it go on to such heights as we hear
proposed and lauded, if it come actually to its ideal of the ant-heap,
ruled with iron justice, the number of new contraventions will be out of
all proportion multiplied. Take the case of work alone. Man is an idle
animal. He is at least as intelligent as the ant; but generations of
advisers have in vain recommended him the ant's example. Of those who
are found truly indefatigable in business, some are misers; some are the
practisers of delightful industries, like gardening; some are students,
artists, inventors, or discoverers, men lured forward by successive
hopes; and the rest are those who live by games of skill or
hazard--financiers, billiard-players, gamblers, and the like. But in
unloved toils, even under the prick of necessity, no man is continually
sedulous. Once eliminate the fear of starvation, once eliminate or bound
the hope of riches, and we shall see plenty of skulking and malingering.
Society will then be something not wholly unlike a cotton plantation in
the old days; with cheerful, careless, demoralised slaves, with elected
overseers, and, instead of the planter, a chaotic popular assembly. If
the blood be purposeful and the soil strong, such a plantation may
succeed, and be, indeed, a busy ant-heap, with full granaries and long
hours of leisure. But even then I think the whip will be in the
overseer's hands, and not in vain. For, when it comes to be a question
of each man doing his own share or the rest doing more, prettiness of
sentiment will be forgotten. To dock the skulker's food is not enough;
many will rather eat haws and starve on petty pilferings than put their
shoulder to the wheel for one hour daily. For such as these, then, the
whip will be in the overseer's hand; and his own sense of justice and
the superintendence of a chaotic popular assembly will be the only
checks on its employment. Now, you may be an industrious man and a good
citizen, and yet not love, nor yet be loved by, Dr. Fell the inspector.
It is admitted by private soldiers that the disfavour of a sergeant is
an evil not to be combated; offend the sergeant, they say, and in a
brief while you will either be disgraced or have deserted. And the
sergeant can no longer appeal to the lash. But if these things go on, we
shall see, or our sons shall see, what it is to have offended an
inspector.
This for the unfortunate. But with the fortunate also, even those whom
the inspector loves, it may not be altogether well. It is concluded that
in such a state of society, supposing it to be financially sound, the
level of comfort will be high. It does not follow: there are strange
depths of idleness in man, a too-easily-got sufficiency, as in the case
of the sago-eaters, often quenching the desire for all besides; and it
is possible that the men of the richest ant-heaps may sink even into
squalor. But suppose they do not; suppose our tricksy instrument of
human nature, when we play upon it this new tune, should respond kindly;
suppose no one to be damped and none exasperated by the new conditions,
the whole enterprise to be financially sound--a vaulting
supposition--and all the inhabitants to dwell together in a golden mean
of comfort: we have yet to ask ourselves if this be what man desire, or
if it be what man will even deign to accept for a continuance. It is
certain that man loves to eat, it is not certain that he loves that only
or that best. He is supposed to love comfort; it is not a love, at
least, that he is faithful to. He is supposed to love happiness; it is
my contention that he rather loves excitement. Danger, enterprise, hope,
the novel, the aleatory, are dearer to man than regular meals. He does
not think so when he is hungry, but he thinks so again as soon as he is
fed; and on the hypothesis of a successful ant-heap, he would never go
hungry. It would be always after dinner in that society, as, in the land
of the Lotos-eaters, it was always afternoon; and food, which, when we
have it not, seems all-important, drops in our esteem, as soon as we
have it, to a mere pre-requisite of living.
That for which man lives is not the same thing for all individuals nor
in all ages; yet it has a common base; what he seeks and what he must
have is that which will seize and hold his attention. Regular meals and
weather-proof lodgings will not do this long. Play in its wide sense, as
the artificial induction of sensation, including all games and all arts,
will, indeed, go far to keep him conscious of himself; but in the end he
wearies for realities. Study or experiment, to some rare natures, is the
unbroken pastime of a life. These are enviable natures; people shut in
the house by sickness often bitterly envy them; but the commoner man
cannot continue to exist upon such altitudes: his feet itch for physical
adventure; his blood boils for physical dangers, pleasures, and
triumphs; his fancy, the looker after new things, cannot continue to
look for them in books and crucibles, but must seek them on the
breathing stage of life. Pinches, buffets, the glow of hope, the shock
of disappointment, furious contention with obstacles: these are the true
elixir for all vital spirits, these are what they seek alike in their
romantic enterprises and their unromantic dissipations. When they are
taken in some pinch closer than the common, they cry, "Catch me here
again!" and sure enough you catch them there again--perhaps before the
week is out. It is as old as "Robinson Crusoe"; as old as man. Our race
has not been strained for all these ages through that sieve of dangers
that we call Natural Selection, to sit down with patience in the tedium
of safety; the voices of its fathers call it forth. Already in our
society as it exists, the bourgeois is too much cottoned about for any
zest in living; he sits in his parlour out of reach of any danger, often
out of reach of any vicissitude but one of health; and there he yawns.
If the people in the next villa took pot-shots at him, he might be
killed indeed, but so long as he escaped he would find his blood
oxygenated and his views of the world brighter. If Mr. Mallock, on his
way to the publishers, should have his skirts pinned to a wall by a
javelin, it would not occur to him--at least for several hours--to ask
if life were worth living; and if such peril were a daily matter, he
would ask it never more; he would have other things to think about, he
would be living indeed--not lying in a box with cotton, safe, but
immeasurably dull. The aleatory, whether it touch life, or fortune, or
renown--whether we explore Africa or only toss for halfpence--that is
what I conceive men to love best, and that is what we are seeking to
exclude from men's existences. Of all forms of the aleatory, that which
most commonly attends our working men--the danger of misery from want of
work--is the least inspiriting: it does not whip the blood, it does not
evoke the glory of contest; it is tragic, but it is passive; and yet, in
so far as it is aleatory, and a peril sensibly touching them, it does
truly season the men's lives. Of those who fail, I do not speak--despair
should be sacred; but to those who even modestly succeed, the changes of
their life bring interest: a job found, a shilling saved, a dainty
earned, all these are wells of pleasure springing afresh for the
successful poor; and it is not from these but from the villa-dweller
that we hear complaints of the unworthiness of life. Much, then, as the
average of the proletariat would gain in this new state of life, they
would also lose a certain something, which would not be missed in the
beginning, but would be missed progressively and progressively lamented.
Soon there would be a looking back: there would be tales of the old
world humming in young men's ears, tales of the tramp and the pedlar,
and the hopeful emigrant. And in the stall-fed life of the successful
ant-heap--with its regular meals, regular duties, regular pleasures, an
even course of life, and fear excluded--the vicissitudes, delights, and
havens of to-day will seem of epic breadth. This may seem a shallow
observation; but the springs by which men are moved lie much on the
surface. Bread, I believe, has always been considered first, but the
circus comes close upon its heels. Bread we suppose to be given amply;
the cry for circuses will be the louder, and if the life of our
descendants be such as we have conceived, there are two beloved
pleasures on which they will be likely to fall back: the pleasures of
intrigue and of sedition.
In all this I have supposed the ant-heap to be financially sound. I am
no economist, only a writer of fiction; but even as such, I know one
thing that bears on the economic question--I know the imperfection of
man's faculty for business. The Anarchists, who count some rugged
elements of common-sense among what seem to me their tragic errors, have
said upon this matter all that I could wish to say, and condemned
beforehand great economical polities. So far it is obvious that they are
right; they may be right also in predicting a period of communal
independence, and they may even be right in thinking that desirable. But
the rise of communes is none the less the end of economic equality, just
when we were told it was beginning. Communes will not be all equal in
extent, nor in quality of soil, nor in growth of population; nor will
the surplus produce of all be equally marketable. It will be the old
story of competing interests, only with a new unit; and, as it appears
to me, a new, inevitable danger. For the merchant and the manufacturer,
in this new world, will be a sovereign commune; it is a sovereign power
that will see its crops undersold, and its manufactures worsted in the
market. And all the more dangerous that the sovereign power should be
small. Great powers are slow to stir; national affronts, even with the
aid of newspapers, filter slowly into popular consciousness; national
losses are so unequally shared, that one part of the population will be
counting its gains while another sits by a cold hearth. But in the
sovereign commune all will be centralised and sensitive. When jealousy
springs up, when (let us say) the commune of Poole has overreached the
commune of Dorchester, irritation will run like quicksilver throughout
the body politic; each man in Dorchester will have to suffer directly in
his diet and his dress; even the secretary, who drafts the official
correspondence, will sit down to his task embittered, as a man who has
dined ill and may expect to dine worse; and thus a business difference
between communes will take on much the same colour as a dispute between
diggers in the lawless West, and will lead as directly to the
arbitrament of blows. So that the establishment of the communal system
will not only reintroduce all the injustices and heart-burnings of
economic inequality, but will, in all human likelihood, inaugurate a
world of hedgerow warfare. Dorchester will march on Poole, Sherborne on
Dorchester, Wimborne on both; the waggons will be fired on as they
follow the highway, the trains wrecked on the lines, the ploughman will
go armed into the field of tillage; and if we have not a return of
ballad literature, the local press at least will celebrate in a high
vein the victory of Cerne Abbas or the reverse of Toller Porcorum. At
least this will not be dull; when I was younger, I could have welcomed
such a world with relief; but it is the New-Old with a vengeance, and
irresistibly suggests the growth of military powers and the foundation
of new empires.
VII
LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO PROPOSES TO EMBRACE THE CAREER OF ART
With the agreeable frankness of youth, you address me on a point of some
practical importance to yourself and (it is even conceivable) of some
gravity to the world: Should you or should you not become an artist? It
is one which you must decide entirely for yourself; all that I can do is
to bring under your notice some of the materials of that decision; and I
will begin, as I shall probably conclude also, by assuring you that all
depends on the vocation.
To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom and of old age. Youth
is wholly experimental. The essence and charm of that unquiet and
delightful epoch is ignorance of self as well as ignorance of life.
These two unknowns the young man brings together again and again, now in
the airiest touch, now with a bitter hug; now with exquisite pleasure,
now with cutting pain; but never with indifference, to which he is a
total stranger, and never with that near kinsman of indifference,
contentment. If he be a youth of dainty senses or a brain easily heated,
the interest of this series of experiments grows upon him out of all
proportion to the pleasure he receives. It is not beauty that he loves,
nor pleasure that he seeks, though he may think so; his design and his
sufficient reward is to verify his own existence and taste the variety
of human fate. To him, before the razor-edge of curiosity is dulled, all
that is not actual living and the hot chase of experience wears a face
of a disgusting dryness difficult to recall in later days; or if there
be any exception--and here destiny steps in--it is in those moments
when, wearied or surfeited of the primary activity of the senses, he
calls up before memory the image of transacted pains and pleasures. Thus
it is that such an one shies from all cut-and-dry professions, and
inclines insensibly toward that career of art which consists only in the
tasting and recording of experience.
This, which is not so much a vocation for art as an impatience of all
other honest trades, frequently exists alone; and, so existing, it will
pass gently away in the course of years. Emphatically, it is not to be
regarded; it is not a vocation, but a temptation; and when your father
the other day so fiercely and (in my view) so properly discouraged your
ambition, he was recalling not improbably some similar passage in his
own experience. For the temptation is perhaps nearly as common as the
vocation is rare. But again we have vocations which are imperfect; we
have men whose minds are bound up, not so much in any art, as in the
general _ars artium_ and common base of all creative work; who will now
dip into painting, and now study counterpoint, and anon will be inditing
a sonnet: all these with equal interest, all often with genuine
knowledge. And of this temper, when it stands alone, I find it difficult
to speak; but I should counsel such an one to take to letters, for in
literature (which drags with so wide a net) all his information may be
found some day useful, and if he should go on as he has begun, and turn
at last into the critic, he will have learned to use the necessary
tools. Lastly we come to those vocations which are at once decisive and
precise; to the men who are born with the love of pigments, the passion
of drawing, the gift of music, or the impulse to create with words, just
as other and perhaps the same men are born with the love of hunting, or
the sea, or horses, or the turning-lathe. These are predestined; if a
man love the labour of any trade, apart from any question of success or
fame, the gods have called him. He may have the general vocation too:
he may have a taste for all the arts, and I think he often has; but the
mark of his calling is this laborious partiality for one, this
inextinguishable zest in its technical successes, and (perhaps above
all) a certain candour of mind, to take his very trifling enterprise
with a gravity that would befit the cares of empire, and to think the
smallest improvement worth accomplishing at any expense of time and
industry. The book, the statue, the sonata, must be gone upon with the
unreasoning good faith and the unflagging spirit of children at their
play. _Is it worth doing?_--when it shall have occurred to any artist to
ask himself that question, it is implicitly answered in the negative. It
does not occur to the child as he plays at being a pirate on the
dining-room sofa, nor to the hunter as he pursues his quarry; and the
candour of the one and the ardour of the other should be united in the
bosom of the artist.
If you recognise in yourself some such decisive taste, there is no room
for hesitation: follow your bent. And observe (lest I should too much
discourage you) that the disposition does not usually burn so brightly
at the first, or rather not so constantly. Habit and practice sharpen
gifts; the necessity of toil grows less disgusting, grows even welcome,
in the course of years; a small taste (if it be only genuine) waxes with
indulgence into an exclusive passion. Enough, just now, if you can look
back over a fair interval, and see that your chosen art has a little
more than held its own among the thronging interests of youth. Time will
do the rest, if devotion help it; and soon your every thought will be
engrossed in that beloved occupation.
But even with devotion, you may remind me, even with unfaltering and
delighted industry, many thousand artists spend their lives, if the
result be regarded, utterly in vain: a thousand artists, and never one
work of art. But the vast mass of mankind are incapable of doing
anything reasonably well, art among the rest. The worthless artist
would not improbably have been a quite incompetent baker. And the
artist, even if he does not amuse the public, amuses himself; so that
there will always be one man the happier for his vigils. This is the
practical side of art: its inexpugnable fortress for the true
practitioner. The direct returns--the wages of the trade--are small, but
the indirect--the wages of the life--are incalculably great. No other
business offers a man his daily bread upon such joyful terms. The
soldier and the explorer have moments of a worthier excitement, but they
are purchased by cruel hardships and periods of tedium that beggar
language. In the life of the artist there need be no hour without its
pleasure. I take the author, with whose career I am best acquainted; and
it is true he works in a rebellious material, and that the act of
writing is cramped and trying both to the eyes and the temper; but
remark him in his study when matter crowds upon him and words are not
wanting--in what a continual series of small successes time flows by;
with what a sense of power, as of one moving mountains, he marshals his
petty characters; with what pleasures, both of the ear and eye, he sees
his airy structure growing on the page; and how he labours in a craft to
which the whole material of his life is tributary, and which opens a
door to all his tastes, his loves, his hatreds, and his convictions, so
that what he writes is only what he longed to utter. He may have enjoyed
many things in this big, tragic playground of the world; but what shall
he have enjoyed more fully than a morning of successful work? Suppose it
ill-paid: the wonder is it should be paid at all. Other men pay, and pay
dearly, for pleasures less desirable.
Nor will the practice of art afford you pleasure only; it affords
besides an admirable training. For the artist works entirely upon
honour. The public knows little or nothing of those merits in the quest
of which you are condemned to spend the bulk of your endeavours. Merits
of design, the merit of first-hand energy, the merit of a certain cheap
accomplishment which a man of the artistic temper easily acquires--these
they can recognise, and these they value. But to those more exquisite
refinements of proficiency and finish, which the artist so ardently
desires and so keenly feels, for which (in the vigorous words of Balzac)
he must toil "like a miner buried in a landslip," for which, day after
day, he recasts and revises and rejects--the gross mass of the public
must be ever blind. To those lost pains, suppose you attain the highest
pitch of merit, posterity may possibly do justice; suppose, as is so
probable, you fail by even a hair's breadth of the highest, rest certain
they shall never be observed. Under the shadow of this cold thought,
alone in his studio, the artist must preserve from day to day his
constancy to the ideal. It is this which makes his life noble; it is by
this that the practice of his craft strengthens and matures his
character; it is for this that even the serious countenance of the great
emperor was turned approvingly (if only for a moment) on the followers
of Apollo, and that sternly gentle voice bade the artist cherish his
art.
And here there fall two warnings to be made. First, if you are to
continue to be a law to yourself, you must beware of the first signs of
laziness. This idealism in honesty can only be supported by perpetual
effort; the standard is easily lowered, the artist who says "_It will
do_," is on the downward path; three or four pot-boilers are enough at
times (above all at wrong times) to falsify a talent, and by the
practice of journalism a man runs the risk of becoming wedded to cheap
finish. This is the danger on the one side; there is not less upon the
other. The consciousness of how much the artist is (and must be) a law
to himself debauches the small heads. Perceiving recondite merits very
hard to attain, making or swallowing artistic formulæ, or perhaps
falling in love with some particular proficiency of his own, many
artists forget the end of all art: to please. It is doubtless tempting
to exclaim against the ignorant bourgeois; yet it should not be
forgotten, it is he who is to pay us, and that (surely on the face of
it) for services that he shall desire to have performed. Here also, if
properly considered, there is a question of transcendental honesty. To
give the public what they do not want, and yet expect to be supported:
we have there a strange pretension, and yet not uncommon, above all with
painters. The first duty in this world is for a man to pay his way; when
that is quite accomplished, he may plunge into what eccentricity he
likes; but emphatically not till then. Till then, he must pay assiduous
court to the bourgeois who carries the purse. And if in the course of
these capitulations he shall falsify his talent, it can never have been
a strong one, and he will have preserved a better thing than
talent--character. Or if he be of a mind so independent that he cannot
stoop to this necessity, one course is yet open: he can desist from art,
and follow some more manly way of life.
I speak of a more manly way of life; it is a point on which I must be
frank. To live by a pleasure is not a high calling; it involves
patronage, however veiled; it numbers the artist, however ambitious,
along with dancing girls and billiard-markers. The French have a
romantic evasion for one employment, and call its practitioners the
Daughters of Joy. The artist is of the same family, he is of the Sons of
Joy, chose his trade to please himself, gains his livelihood by pleasing
others, and has parted with something of the sterner dignity of man.
Journals but a little while ago declaimed against the Tennyson peerage;
and this Son of Joy was blamed for condescension when he followed the
example of Lord Lawrence and Lord Cairns and Lord Clyde. The poet was
more happily inspired; with a better modesty he accepted the honour; and
anonymous journalists have not yet (if I am to believe them) recovered
the vicarious disgrace to their profession. When it comes to their turn,
these gentlemen can do themselves more justice; and I shall be glad to
think of it; for to my barbarian eyesight, even Lord Tennyson looks
somewhat out of place in that assembly. There should be no honours for
the artist; he has already, in the practice of his art, more than his
share of the rewards of life; the honours are pre-empted for other
trades, less agreeable and perhaps more useful.
But the devil in these trades of pleasing is to fail to please. In
ordinary occupations, a man offers to do a certain thing or to produce a
certain article with a merely conventional accomplishment, a design in
which (we may almost say) it is difficult to fail. But the artist steps
forth out of the crowd and proposes to delight: an impudent design, in
which it is impossible to fail without odious circumstances. The poor
Daughter of Joy, carrying her smiles and finery quite unregarded through
the crowd, makes a figure which it is impossible to recall without a
wounding pity. She is the type of the unsuccessful artist. The actor,
the dancer, and the singer must appear like her in person, and drain
publicly the cup of failure. But though the rest of us escape this
crowning bitterness of the pillory, we all court in essence the same
humiliation. We all profess to be able to delight. And how few of us
are! We all pledge ourselves to be able to continue to delight. And the
day will come to each, and even to the most admired, when the ardour
shall have declined and the cunning shall be lost, and he shall sit by
his deserted booth ashamed. Then shall he see himself condemned to do
work for which he blushes to take payment. Then (as if his lot were not
already cruel) he must lie exposed to the gibes of the wreckers of the
press, who earn a little bitter bread by the condemnation of trash which
they have not read, and the praise of excellence which they cannot
understand.
And observe that this seems almost the necessary end at least of
writers. "Les Blancs et les Bleus" (for instance) is of an order of
merit very different from "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne"; and if any
gentleman can bear to spy upon the nakedness of "Castle Dangerous," his
name I think is Ham: let it be enough for the rest of us to read of it
(not without tears) in the pages of Lockhart. Thus in old age, when
occupation and comfort are most needful, the writer must lay aside at
once his pastime and his breadwinner. The painter indeed, if he succeed
at all in engaging the attention of the public, gains great sums and can
stand to his easel until a great age without dishonourable failure. The
writer has the double misfortune to be ill-paid while he can work, and
to be incapable of working when he is old. It is thus a way of life
which conducts directly to a false position.
For the writer (in spite of notorious examples to the contrary) must
look to be ill-paid. Tennyson and Montépin make handsome livelihoods;
but we cannot all hope to be Tennyson, and we do not all perhaps desire
to be Montépin. If you adopt an art to be your trade, weed your mind at
the outset of all desire of money. What you may decently expect, if you
have some talent and much industry, is such an income as a clerk will
earn with a tenth or perhaps a twentieth of your nervous output. Nor
have you the right to look for more; in the wages of the life, not in
the wages of the trade, lies your reward; the work is here the wages. It
will be seen I have little sympathy with the common lamentations of the
artist class. Perhaps they do not remember the hire of the field
labourer; or do they think no parallel will lie? Perhaps they have never
observed what is the retiring allowance of a field officer; or do they
suppose their contributions to the arts of pleasing more important than
the services of a colonel? Perhaps they forget on how little Millet was
content to live; or do they think, because they have less genius, they
stand excused from the display of equal virtues? But upon one point
there should be no dubiety: if a man be not frugal, he has no business
in the arts. If he be not frugal, he steers directly for that last
tragic scene of _le vieux saltimbanque_; if he be not frugal, he will
find it hard to continue to be honest. Some day, when the butcher is
knocking at the door, he may be tempted, he may be obliged, to turn out
and sell a slovenly piece of work. If the obligation shall have arisen
through no wantonness of his own, he is even to be commended; for words
cannot describe how far more necessary it is that a man should support
his family, than that he should attain to--or preserve--distinction in
the arts. But if the pressure comes through his own fault, he has
stolen, and stolen under trust, and stolen (which is the worst of all)
in such a way that no law can reach him.
And now you may perhaps ask me whether--if the débutant artist is to
have no thought of money, and if (as is implied) he is to expect no
honours from the State--he may not at least look forward to the delights
of popularity? Praise, you will tell me, is a savoury dish. And in so
far as you may mean the countenance of other artists, you would put your
finger on one of the most essential and enduring pleasures of the career
of art. But in so far as you should have an eye to the commendations of
the public or the notice of the newspapers, be sure you would but be
cherishing a dream. It is true that in certain esoteric journals the
author (for instance) is duly criticised, and that he is often praised a
great deal more than he deserves, sometimes for qualities which he
prided himself on eschewing, and sometimes by ladies and gentlemen who
have denied themselves the privilege of reading his work. But if a man
be sensitive to this wild praise, we must suppose him equally alive to
that which often accompanies and always follows it--wild ridicule. A man
may have done well for years, and then he may fail; he will hear of his
failure. Or he may have done well for years, and still do well, but the
critics may have tired of praising him, or there may have sprung up some
new idol of the instant, some "dust a little gilt," to whom they now
prefer to offer sacrifice. Here is the obverse and the reverse of that
empty and ugly thing called popularity. Will any man suppose it worth
the gaining?
VIII
PULVIS ET UMBRA
We look for some reward of our endeavours and are disappointed; not
success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our
ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our
virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the
sun. The canting moralist tells us of right and wrong; and we look
abroad, even on the face of our small earth, and find them change with
every climate, and no country where some action is not honoured for a
virtue and none where it is not branded for a vice; and we look in our
experience, and find no vital congruity in the wisest rules, but at the
best a municipal fitness. It is not strange if we are tempted to despair
of good. We ask too much. Our religions and moralities have been trimmed
to flatter us, till they are all emasculate and sentimentalised, and
only please and weaken. Truth is of a rougher strain. In the harsh face
of life, faith can read a bracing gospel. The human race is a thing more
ancient than the ten commandments; and the bones and revolutions of the
Kosmos, in whose joints we are but moss and fungus, more ancient still.
I
Of the Kosmos in the last resort, science reports many doubtful things,
and all of them appalling. There seems no substance to this solid globe
on which we stamp: nothing but symbols and ratios. Symbols and ratios
carry us and bring us forth and beat us down; gravity, that swings the
incommensurable suns and worlds through space, is but a figment varying
inversely as the squares of distances; and the suns and worlds
themselves, imponderable figures of abstraction, NH_{3} and H_{2}O.
Consideration dares not dwell upon this view; that way madness lies;
science carries us into zones of speculation, where there is no
habitable city for the mind of man.
But take the Kosmos with a grosser faith, as our senses give it us. We
behold space sown with rotatory islands, suns and worlds and the shards
and wrecks of systems: some, like the sun, still blazing; some rotting,
like the earth; others, like the moon, stable in desolation. All of
these we take to be made of something we call matter: a thing which no
analysis can help us to conceive; to whose incredible properties no
familiarity can reconcile our minds. This stuff, when not purified by
the lustration of fire, rots uncleanly into something we call life;
seized through all its atoms with a pediculous malady; swelling in
tumours that become independent, sometimes even (by an abhorrent
prodigy) locomotory; one splitting into millions, millions cohering into
one, as the malady proceeds through varying stages. This vital
putrescence of the dust, used as we are to it, yet strikes us with
occasional disgust, and the profusion of worms in a piece of ancient
turf, or the air of a marsh darkened with insects, will sometimes check
our breathing so that we aspire for cleaner places. But none is clean:
the moving sand is infected with lice; the pure spring, where it bursts
out of the mountain, is a mere issue of worms; even in the hard rock the
crystal is forming.
In two main shapes this eruption covers the countenance of the earth:
the animal and the vegetable: one in some degree the inversion of the
other: the second rooted to the spot; the first coming detached out of
its natal mud, and scurrying abroad with the myriad feet of insects or
towering into the heavens on the wings of birds: a thing so
inconceivable that, if it be well considered, the heart stops. To what
passes with the anchored vermin, we have little clue: doubtless they
have their joys and sorrows, their delights and killing agonies: it
appears not how. But of the locomotory, to which we ourselves belong, we
can tell more. These share with us a thousand miracles: the miracles of
sight, of hearing, of the projection of sound, things that bridge space;
the miracles of memory and reason, by which the present is conceived,
and, when it is gone, its image kept living in the brains of man and
brute; the miracle of reproduction, with its imperious desires and
staggering consequences. And to put the last touch upon this mountain
mass of the revolting and the inconceivable, all these prey upon each
other, lives tearing other lives in pieces, cramming them inside
themselves, and by that summary process, growing fat: the vegetarian,
the whale, perhaps the tree, not less than the lion of the desert; for
the vegetarian is only the eater of the dumb.
Meanwhile our rotary island loaded with predatory life, and more
drenched with blood, both animal and vegetable, than ever mutinied ship,
scuds through space with unimaginable speed, and turns alternate cheeks
to the reverberation of a blazing world, ninety million miles away.
II
What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease of the agglutinated
dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing,
feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon
with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his
face; a thing to set children screaming;--and yet looked at nearlier,
known as his fellows know him, how surprising are his attributes! Poor
soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with
desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded,
savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow
lives: who should have blamed him had he been of a piece with his
destiny and a being merely barbarous? And we look and behold him instead
filled with imperfect virtues: infinitely childish, often admirably
valiant, often touchingly kind; sitting down, amidst his momentary life,
to debate of right and wrong and the attributes of the Deity; rising up
to do battle for an egg or die for an idea; singling out his friends and
his mate with cordial affection; bringing forth in pain, rearing with
long-suffering solicitude, his young. To touch the heart of his mystery,
we find in him one thought, strange to the point of lunacy: the thought
of duty; the thought of something owing to himself, to his neighbour, to
his God: an ideal of decency, to which he would rise if it were
possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be possible, he will not
stoop. The design in most men is one of conformity; here and there, in
picked natures, it transcends itself and soars on the other side, arming
martyrs with independence; but in all, in their degrees, it is a bosom
thought:--Not in man alone, for we trace it in dogs and cats whom we
know fairly well, and doubtless some similar point of honour sways the
elephant, the oyster, and the louse, of whom we know so little:--But in
man, at least, it sways with so complete an empire that merely selfish
things come second, even with the selfish: that appetites are starved,
fears are conquered, pains supported; that almost the dullest shrinks
from the reproof of a glance, although it were a child's; and all but
the most cowardly stand amid the risks of war; and the more noble,
having strongly conceived an act as due to their ideal, affront and
embrace death. Strange enough if, with their singular origin and
perverted practice, they think they are to be rewarded in some future
life: stranger still, if they are persuaded of the contrary, and think
this blow, which they solicit, will strike them senseless for eternity.
I shall be reminded what a tragedy of misconception and misconduct man
at large presents: of organised injustice, cowardly violence and
treacherous crime; and of the damning imperfections of the best. They
cannot be too darkly drawn. Man is indeed marked for failure in his
efforts to do right. But where the best consistently miscarry, how
tenfold more remarkable that all should continue to strive: and surely
we should find it both touching and inspiriting, that in a field from
which success is banished, our race should not cease to labour.
If the first view of this creature, stalking in his rotatory isle, be a
thing to shake the courage of the stoutest, on this nearer sight he
startles us with an admiring wonder. It matters not where we look, under
what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what depth of
ignorance, burthened with what erroneous morality; by camp-fires in
Assiniboia, the snow powdering his shoulders, the wind plucking his
blanket, as he sits, passing the ceremonial calumet and uttering his
grave opinions like a Roman senator; in ships at sea, a man inured to
hardship and vile pleasures, his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern and
a bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him, and he, for all that,
simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave
to drown, for others; in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent
millions to mechanical employments, without hope of change in the
future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to his
virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his neighbours, tempted
perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace, perhaps long-suffering with
the drunken wife that ruins him; in India (a woman this time) kneeling
with broken cries and streaming tears, as she drowns her child in the
sacred river; in the brothel, the discard of society, living mainly on
strong drink, fed with affronts, a fool, a thief, the comrade of
thieves, and even here keeping the point of honour and the touch of
pity, often repaying the world's scorn with service, often standing firm
upon a scruple, and at a certain cost, rejecting riches:--everywhere
some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere some decency of thought
and carriage, everywhere the ensign of man's ineffectual goodness:--ah!
if I could show you this! if I could show you these men and women, all
the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error,
under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without
thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still
clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, the
poor jewel of their souls! They may seek to escape, and yet they cannot;
it is not alone their privilege and glory, but their doom; they are
condemned to some nobility; all their lives long, the desire of good is
at their heels, the implacable hunter.
Of all earth's meteors, here at least is the most strange and consoling:
that this ennobled lemur, this hair-crowned bubble of the dust, this
inheritor of a few years and sorrows, should yet deny himself his rare
delights, and add to his frequent pains, and live for an ideal, however
misconceived. Nor can we stop with man. A new doctrine, received with
screams a little while ago by canting moralists, and still not properly
worked into the body of our thoughts, lights us a step farther into the
heart of this rough but noble universe. For nowadays the pride of man
denies in vain his kinship with the original dust. He stands no longer
like a thing apart. Close at his heels we see the dog, prince of another
genus: and in him, too, we see dumbly testified the same cultus of an
unattainable ideal, the same constancy in failure. Does it stop with the
dog? We look at our feet where the ground is blackened with the swarming
ant; a creature so small, so far from us in the hierarchy of brutes,
that we can scarce trace and scarce comprehend his doings; and here
also, in his ordered polities and rigorous justice, we see confessed the
law of duty and the fact of individual sin. Does it stop, then, with the
ant? Rather this desire of welldoing and this doom of frailty run
through all the grades of life: rather is this earth, from the frosty
top of Everest to the next margin of the internal fire, one stage of
ineffectual virtues and one temple of pious tears and perseverance. The
whole creation groaneth and travaileth together. It is the common and
the god-like law of life. The browsers, the biters, the barkers, the
hairy coats of field and forest, the squirrel in the oak, the
thousand-footed creeper in the dust, as they share with us the gift of
life, share with us the love of an ideal: strive like us--like us are
tempted to grow weary of the struggle--to do well; like us receive at
times unmerited refreshment, visitings of support, returns of courage;
and are condemned like us to be crucified between that double law of the
members and the will. Are they like us, I wonder, in the timid hope of
some reward, some sugar with the drug? do they, too, stand aghast at
unrewarded virtues, at the sufferings of those whom, in our partiality,
we take to be just, and the prosperity of such as, in our blindness, we
call wicked? It may be, and yet God knows what they should look for.
Even while they look, even while they repent, the foot of man treads
them by thousands in the dust, the yelping hounds burst upon their
trail, the bullet speeds, the knives are heating in the den of the
vivisectionist; or the dew falls, and the generation of a day is blotted
out. For these are creatures, compared with whom our weakness is
strength, our ignorance wisdom, our brief span eternity.
And as we dwell, we living things, in our isle of terror and under the
imminent hand of death, God forbid it should be man the erected, the
reasoner, the wise in his own eyes--God forbid it should be man that
wearies in welldoing, that despairs of unrewarded effort, or utters the
language of complaint. Let it be enough for faith, that the whole
creation groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy:
Surely not all in vain.
IX
A CHRISTMAS SERMON
By the time this paper appears, I shall have been talking for twelve
months;[30] and it is thought I should take my leave in a formal and
seasonable manner. Valedictory eloquence is rare, and death-bed sayings
have not often hit the mark of the occasion. Charles Second, wit and
sceptic, a man whose life had been one long lesson in human incredulity,
an easy-going comrade, a manoeuvring king--remembered and embodied all
his wit and scepticism along with more than his usual good humour in the
famous "I am afraid, gentlemen, I am an unconscionable time a-dying."
I
An unconscionable time a-dying--there is the picture ("I am afraid,
gentlemen,") of your life and of mine. The sands run out, and the hours
are "numbered and imputed," and the days go by; and when the last of
these finds us, we have been a long time dying, and what else? The very
length is something, if we reach that hour of separation undishonoured;
and to have lived at all is doubtless (in the soldierly expression) to
have served. There is a tale in Tacitus of how the veterans mutinied in
the German wilderness; of how they mobbed Germanicus, clamouring to go
home; and of how, seizing their general's hand, these old, war-worn
exiles passed his finger along their toothless gums. _Sunt lacrymæ
rerum_: this was the most eloquent of the songs of Simeon. And when a
man has lived to a fair age, he bears his marks of service. He may have
never been remarked upon the breach at the head of the army; at least he
shall have lost his teeth on the camp bread.
The idealism of serious people in this age of ours is of a noble
character. It never seems to them that they have served enough; they
have a fine impatience of their virtues. It were perhaps more modest to
be singly thankful that we are no worse. It is not only our enemies,
those desperate characters--it is we ourselves who know not what we
do;--thence springs the glimmering hope that perhaps we do better than
we think: that to scramble through this random business with hands
reasonably clean, to have played the part of a man or woman with some
reasonable fulness, to have often resisted the diabolic, and at the end
to be still resisting it, is for the poor human soldier to have done
right well. To ask to see some fruit of our endeavour is but a
transcendental way of serving for reward; and what we take to be
contempt of self is only greed of hire.
And again if we require so much of ourselves, shall we not require much
of others? If we do not genially judge our own deficiencies, is it not
to be feared we shall be even stern to the trespasses of others? And he
who (looking back upon his own life) can see no more than that he has
been unconscionably long a-dying, will he not be tempted to think his
neighbour unconscionably long of getting hanged? It is probable that
nearly all who think of conduct at all, think of it too much; it is
certain we all think too much of sin. We are not damned for doing wrong,
but for not doing right; Christ would never hear of negative morality;
_thou shall_ was ever His word, with which He superseded _thou shall
not_. To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile
the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a
secret element of gusto. If a thing is wrong for us, we should not dwell
upon the thought of it; or we shall soon dwell upon it with inverted
pleasure. If we cannot drive it from our minds--one thing of two:
either our creed is in the wrong and we must more indulgently remodel
it; or else, if our morality be in the right, we are criminal lunatics
and should place our persons in restraint. A mark of such unwholesomely
divided minds is the passion for interference with others: the Fox
without the Tail was of this breed, but had (if his biographer is to be
trusted) a certain antique civility now out of date. A man may have a
flaw, a weakness, that unfits him for the duties of life, that spoils
his temper, that threatens his integrity, or that betrays him into
cruelty. It has to be conquered; but it must never be suffered to
engross his thoughts. The true duties lie all upon the further side, and
must be attended to with a whole mind so soon as this preliminary
clearing of the decks has been effected. In order that he may be kind
and honest, it may be needful he should become a total abstainer; let
him become so then, and the next day let him forget the circumstance.
Trying to be kind and honest will require all his thoughts; a mortified
appetite is never a wise companion; in so far as he has had to mortify
an appetite, he will still be the worse man; and of such an one a great
deal of cheerfulness will be required in judging life, and a great deal
of humility in judging others.
It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life's endeavour
springs in some degree from dulness. We require higher tasks, because we
do not recognise the height of those we have. Trying to be kind and
honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemen
of our heroic mould; we had rather set ourselves to something bold,
arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress a
heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us,
which is to co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic
fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. There is no
cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled.
To be honest, to be kind--to earn a little and to spend a little less,
to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce
when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few
friends, but these without capitulation--above all, on the same grim
condition, to keep friends with himself--here is a task for all that a
man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would
ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise
to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not
blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we
are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in
every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living
well. Here is a pleasant thought for the year's end or for the end of
life: Only self-deception will be satisfied, and there need be no
despair for the despairer.
II
But Christmas is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to
thoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its associations,
whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man
dissatisfied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. And in the
midst of the winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of the
empty chairs of his beloved, it is well he should be condemned to this
fashion of the smiling face. Noble disappointment, noble self-denial,
are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring
bitterness. It is one thing to enter the kingdom of heaven maim; another
to maim yourself and stay without. And the kingdom of heaven is of the
childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give
pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters and the builders and
the judges, have lived long and done sternly and yet preserved this
lovely character; and among our carpet interests and twopenny concerns,
the shame were indelible if _we_ should lose it. Gentleness and
cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect
duties. And it is the trouble with moral men that they have neither one
nor other. It was the moral man, the Pharisee, whom Christ could not
away with. If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are
wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but
conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and
simpler people.
A strange temptation attends upon man: to keep his eye on pleasures,
even when he will not share in them; to aim all his morals against them.
This very year a lady (singular iconoclast!) proclaimed a crusade
against dolls; and the racy sermon against lust is a feature of the age.
I venture to call such moralists insincere. At any excess or perversion
of a natural appetite, their lyre sounds of itself with relishing
denunciations; but for all displays of the truly diabolic--envy, malice,
the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the backbiter, the
petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family life--their standard is
quite different. These are wrong, they will admit, yet somehow not so
wrong; there is no zeal in their assault on them, no secret element of
gusto warms up the sermon; it is for things not wrong in themselves that
they reserve the choicest of their indignation. A man may naturally
disclaim all moral kinship with the Reverend Mr. Zola or the hobgoblin
old lady of the dolls; for these are gross and naked instances. And yet
in each of us some similar element resides. The sight of a pleasure in
which we cannot or else will not share moves us to a particular
impatience. It may be because we are envious, or because we are sad, or
because we dislike noise and romping--being so refined, or
because--being so philosophic--we have an overweighing sense of life's
gravity: at least, as we go on in years, we are all tempted to frown
upon our neighbour's pleasures. People are nowadays so fond of resisting
temptations; here is one to be resisted. They are fond of self-denial;
here is a propensity that cannot be too peremptorily denied. There is an
idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbours
good. One person I have to make good: myself. But my duty to my
neighbour is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make
him happy--if I may.
III
Happiness and goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in the
relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less proved or
less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our
constitution; we stand buffet among friend and enemies; we may be so
built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness, and so
circumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves
very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease very painful.
Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us. It is not even
its own reward, except for the self-centred and--I had almost said--the
unamiable. No man can pacify his conscience; if quiet be what he want,
he shall do better to let that organ perish from disuse. And to avoid
the penalties of the law, and the minor _capitis diminutio_ of social
ostracism, is an affair of wisdom--of cunning, if you will--and not of
virtue.
In his own life, then, a man is not to expect happiness, only to profit
by it gladly when it shall arise; he is on duty here; he knows not how
or why, and does not need to know; he knows not for what hire, and must
not ask. Somehow or other, though he does not know what goodness is, he
must try to be good; somehow or other, though he cannot tell what will
do it, he must try to give happiness to others. And no doubt there comes
in here a frequent clash of duties. How far is he to make his neighbour
happy? How far must he respect that smiling face, so easy to cloud, so
hard to brighten again? And how far, on the other side, is he bound to
be his brother's keeper and the prophet of his own morality? How far
must he resent evil?
The difficulty is that we have little guidance; Christ's sayings on the
point being hard to reconcile with each other, and (the most of them)
hard to accept. But the truth of His teaching would seem to be this: in
our own person and fortune, we should be ready to accept and to pardon
all; it is _our_ cheek we are to turn, _our_ coat that we are to give
away to the man who has taken _our_ cloak. But when another's face is
buffeted, perhaps a little of the lion will become us best. That we are
to suffer others to be injured, and stand by, is not conceivable, and
surely not desirable. Revenge, says Bacon, is a kind of wild justice;
its judgments at least are delivered by an insane judge; and in our own
quarrel we can see nothing truly and do nothing wisely. But in the
quarrel of our neighbour, let us be more bold. One person's happiness is
as sacred as another's; when we cannot defend both, let us defend one
with a stout heart. It is only in so far as we are doing this, that we
have any right to interfere: the defence of B is our only ground of
action against A. A has as good a right to go to the devil as we to go
to glory; and neither knows what he does.
The truth is that all these interventions and denunciations and militant
mongerings of moral half-truths, though they be sometimes needful,
though they are often enjoyable, do yet belong to an inferior grade of
duties. Ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an arsenal of pious
disguises; this is the playground of inverted lusts. With a little more
patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be
found in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine heady
quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some
denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour's
vices, might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy.
IV
To look back upon the past year, and see how little we have striven, and
to what small purpose; and how often we have been cowardly and hung
back, or temerarious and rushed unwisely in; and how every day and all
day long we have transgressed the law of kindness;--it may seem a
paradox, but in the bitterness of these discoveries a certain
consolation resides. Life is not designed to minister to a man's vanity.
He goes upon his long business most of the time with a hanging head, and
all the time like a blind child. Full of rewards and pleasures as it
is--so that to see the day break or the moon rise, or to meet a friend,
or to hear the dinner-call when he is hungry, fills him with surprising
joys--this world is yet for him no abiding city. Friendships fall
through, health fails, weariness assails him; year after year he must
thumb the hardly varying record of his own weakness and folly. It is a
friendly process of detachment. When the time comes that he should go,
there need be few illusions left about himself. _Here lies one who meant
well, tried a little, failed much:_--surely that may be his epitaph, of
which he need not be ashamed. Nor will he complain at the summons which
calls a defeated soldier from the field: defeated, ay, if he were Paul
or Marcus Aurelius!--but if there is still one inch of fight in his old
spirit, undishonoured. The faith which sustained him in his lifelong
blindness and lifelong disappointment will scarce even be required in
this last formality of laying down his arms. Give him a march with his
old bones; there, out of the glorious sun-coloured earth, out of the day
and the dust and the ecstasy--there goes another Faithful Failure!
From a recent book of verse, where there is more than one such beautiful
and manly poem, I take this memorial piece: it says better than I can,
what I love to think; let it be our parting word:--
"A late lark twitters from the quiet skies;
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, grey city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.
"The smoke ascends
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine, and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night--
Night, with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.
"So be my passing!
My task accomplished and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gathered to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death."[31]
FOOTNOTES:
[30] _i.e._ in the pages of _Scribner's Magazine_ (1888).
[31] From "A Book of Verses," by William Ernest Henley. D. Nutt, 1888.
X
FATHER DAMIEN
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE REVEREND DR. HYDE OF HONOLULU
SYDNEY, _February_ 25, 1890.
Sir,--It may probably occur to you that we have met, and visited, and
conversed; on my side, with interest. You may remember that you have
done me several courtesies, for which I was prepared to be grateful. But
there are duties which come before gratitude, and offences which justly
divide friends, far more acquaintances. Your letter to the Reverend H.
B. Gage is a document which, in my sight, if you had filled me with
bread when I was starving, if you had sat up to nurse my father when he
lay a-dying, would yet absolve me from the bonds of gratitude. You know
enough, doubtless, of the process of canonisation to be aware that, a
hundred years after the death of Damien, there will appear a man charged
with the painful office of the _devil's advocate_. After that noble
brother of mine, and of all frail clay, shall have lain a century at
rest, one shall accuse, one defend him. The circumstance is unusual that
the devil's advocate should be a volunteer, should be a member of a sect
immediately rival, and should make haste to take upon himself his ugly
office ere the bones are cold; unusual, and of a taste which I shall
leave my readers free to qualify; unusual, and to me inspiring. If I
have at all learned the trade of using words to convey truth and to
arouse emotion, you have at last furnished me with a subject. For it is
in the interest of all mankind, and the cause of public decency in
every quarter of the world, not only that Damien should be righted, but
that you and your letter should be displayed at length, in their true
colours, to the public eye.
To do this properly, I must begin by quoting you at large: I shall then
proceed to criticise your utterance from several points of view, divine
and human, in the course of which I shall attempt to draw again, and
with more specification, the character of the dead saint whom it has
pleased you to vilify: so much being done, I shall say farewell to you
for ever.
"HONOLULU, _August_ 2, 1889.
"Rev. H. B. GAGE.
"Dear Brother,--In answer to your inquiries about Father Damien, I
can only reply that we who knew the man are surprised at the
extravagant newspaper laudations, as if he was a most saintly
philanthropist. The simple truth is, he was a coarse, dirty man,
headstrong and bigoted. He was not sent to Molokai, but went there
without orders; did not stay at the leper settlement (before he
became one himself), but circulated freely over the whole island
(less than half the island is devoted to the lepers), and he came
often to Honolulu. He had no hand in the reforms and improvements
inaugurated, which were the work of our Board of Health, as occasion
required and means were provided. He was not a pure man in his
relations with women, and the leprosy of which he died should be
attributed to his vices and carelessness. Others have done much for
the lepers, our own ministers, the government physicians, and so
forth, but never with the Catholic idea of meriting eternal
life.--Yours, etc.,
"C. M. HYDE."[32]
To deal fitly with a letter so extraordinary, I must draw at the outset
on my private knowledge of the signatory and his sect. It may offend
others; scarcely you, who have been so busy to collect, so bold to
publish, gossip on your rivals. And this is perhaps the moment when I
may best explain to you the character of what you are to read: I
conceive you as a man quite beyond and below the reticences of civility:
with what measure you mete, with that shall it be measured you again;
with you, at last, I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to
plunge home. And if in aught that I shall say I should offend others,
your colleagues, whom I respect and remember with affection, I can but
offer them my regret; I am not free, I am inspired by the consideration
of interests far more large; and such pain as can be inflicted by
anything from me must be indeed trifling when compared with the pain
with which they read your letter. It is not the hangman, but the
criminal, that brings dishonour on the house.
You belong, sir, to a sect--I believe my sect, and that in which my
ancestors laboured--which has enjoyed, and partly failed to utilise, an
exceptional advantage in the islands of Hawaii. The first missionaries
came; they found the land already self-purged of its old and bloody
faith; they were embraced, almost on their arrival, with enthusiasm;
what troubles they supported came far more from whites than from
Hawaiians; and to these last they stood (in a rough figure) in the shoes
of God. This is not the place to enter into the degree or causes of
their failure, such as it is. One element alone is pertinent, and must
here be plainly dealt with. In the course of their evangelical calling,
they--or too many of them--grew rich. It may be news to you that the
houses of missionaries are a cause of mocking on the streets of
Honolulu. It will at least be news to you, that when I returned your
civil visit, the driver of my cab commented on the size, the taste, and
the comfort of your home. It would have been news certainly to myself,
had any one told me that afternoon that I should live to drag such
matter into print. But you see, sir, how you degrade better men to your
own level; and it is needful that those who are to judge betwixt you and
me, betwixt Damien and the devil's advocate, should understand your
letter to have been penned in a house which could raise, and that very
justly, the envy and the comments of the passers-by. I think (to employ
a phrase of yours which I admire) it "should be attributed" to you that
you have never visited the scene of Damien's life and death. If you
had, and had recalled it, and looked about your pleasant rooms, even
your pen perhaps would have been stayed.
Your sect (and remember, as far as any sect avows me, it is mine) has
not done ill in a worldly sense in the Hawaiian Kingdom. When calamity
befell their innocent parishioners, when leprosy descended and took root
in the Eight Islands, a _quid pro quo_ was to be looked for. To that
prosperous mission, and to you, as one of its adornments, God had sent
at last an opportunity. I know I am touching here upon a nerve acutely
sensitive. I know that others of your colleagues look back on the
inertia of your Church, and the intrusive and decisive heroism of
Damien, with something almost to be called remorse. I am sure it is so
with yourself; I am persuaded your letter was inspired by a certain
envy, not essentially ignoble, and the one human trait to be espied in
that performance. You were thinking of the lost chance, the past day; of
that which should have been conceived and was not; of the service due
and not rendered. _Time was_, said the voice in your ear, in your
pleasant room, as you sat raging and writing; and if the words written
were base beyond parallel, the rage, I am happy to repeat--it is the
only compliment I shall pay you--the rage was almost virtuous. But, sir,
when we have failed, and another has succeeded; when we have stood by,
and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our charming
mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the
eyes of God, and succours the afflicted, and consoles the dying, and is
himself afflicted in his turn, and dies upon the field of honour--the
battle cannot be retrieved as your unhappy irritation has suggested. It
is a lost battle, and lost for ever. One thing remained to you in your
defeat--some rags of common honour; and these you have made haste to
cast away.
Common honour; not the honour of having done anything right, but the
honour of not having done aught conspicuously foul; the honour of the
inert: that was what remained to you. We are not all expected to be
Damiens; a man may conceive his duty more narrowly, he may love his
comforts better; and none will cast a stone at him for that. But will a
gentleman of your reverend profession allow me an example from the
fields of gallantry? When two gentlemen compete for the favour of a
lady, and the one succeeds and the other is rejected, and (as will
sometimes happen) matter damaging to the successful rival's credit
reaches the ear of the defeated, it is held by plain men of no
pretensions that his mouth is, in the circumstance, almost necessarily
closed. Your Church and Damien's were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do
well: to help, to edify, to set divine examples. You having (in one huge
instance) failed, and Damien succeeded, I marvel it should not have
occurred to you that you were doomed to silence; that when you had been
outstripped in that high rivalry, and sat inglorious in the midst of
your well-being, in your pleasant room--and Damien, crowned with glories
and horrors, toiled and rotted in that pigsty of his under the cliffs of
Kalawao--you, the elect who would not, were the last man on earth to
collect and propagate gossip on the volunteer who would and did.
I think I see you--for I try to see you in the flesh as I write these
sentences--I think I see you leap at the word pigsty, a hyperbolical
expression at the best. "He had no hand in the reforms," he was "a
coarse, dirty man"; these were your own words; and you may think it
possible that I am come to support you with fresh evidence. In a sense,
it is even so. Damien has been too much depicted with a conventional
halo and conventional features; so drawn by men who perhaps had not the
eye to remark or the pen to express the individual; or who perhaps were
only blinded and silenced by generous admiration, such as I partly envy
for myself--such as you, if your soul were enlightened, would envy on
your bended knees. It is the least defect of such a method of
portraiture that it makes the path easy for the devil's advocate, and
leaves for the misuse of the slanderer a considerable field of truth.
For the truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of
the enemy. The world, in your despite, may perhaps owe you something, if
your letter be the means of substituting once for all a credible
likeness for a wax abstraction. For, if that world at all remember you,
on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be named Saint, it will be in
virtue of one work: your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage.
You may ask on what authority I speak. It was my inclement destiny to
become acquainted, not with Damien, but with Dr. Hyde. When I visited
the lazaretto Damien was already in his resting grave. But such
information as I have, I gathered on the spot in conversation with those
who knew him well and long: some indeed who revered his memory; but
others who had sparred and wrangled with him, who beheld him with no
halo, who perhaps regarded him with small respect, and through whose
unprepared and scarcely partial communications the plain, human features
of the man shone on me convincingly. These gave me what knowledge I
possess; and I learnt it in that scene where it could be most completely
and sensitively understood--Kalawao, which you have never visited, about
which you have never so much as endeavoured to inform yourself; for,
brief as your letter is, you have found the means to stumble into that
confession. "_Less than one-half_ of the island," you say, "is devoted
to the lepers." Molokai--"_Molokai ahina_," the "grey," lofty, and most
desolate island--along all its northern side plunges a front of
precipice into a sea of unusual profundity. This range of cliff is, from
east to west, the true end and frontier of the island. Only in one spot
there projects into the ocean a certain triangular and rugged down,
grassy, stony, windy, and rising in the midst into a hill with a dead
crater: the whole bearing to the cliff that overhangs it somewhat the
same relation as a bracket to a wall. With this hint you will now be
able to pick out the leper station on a map; you will be able to judge
how much of Molokai is thus cut off between the surf and precipice,
whether less than a half, or less than a quarter, or a fifth, or a
tenth--or say, a twentieth; and the next time you burst into print you
will be in a position to share with us the issue of your calculations.
I imagine you to be one of those persons who talk with cheerfulness of
that place which oxen and wain-ropes could not drag you to behold. You,
who do not even know its situation on the map, probably denounce
sensational descriptions, stretching your limbs the while in your
pleasant parlour on Beretania Street. When I was pulled ashore there one
early morning, there sat with me in the boat two sisters, bidding
farewell (in humble imitation of Damien) to the lights and joys of human
life. One of these wept silently; I could not withhold myself from
joining her. Had you been there, it is my belief that nature would have
triumphed even in you; and as the boat drew but a little nearer, and you
beheld the stairs crowded with abominable deformations of our common
manhood, and saw yourself landing in the midst of such a population as
only now and then surrounds us in the horror of a nightmare--what a
haggard eye you would have rolled over your reluctant shoulder towards
the house on Beretania Street! Had you gone on; had you found every
fourth face a blot upon the landscape; had you visited the hospital and
seen the butt-ends of human beings lying there almost unrecognisable,
but still breathing, still thinking, still remembering; you would have
understood that life in the lazaretto is an ordeal from which the nerves
of a man's spirit shrink, even as his eye quails under the brightness of
the sun; you would have felt it was (even to-day) a pitiful place to
visit and a hell to dwell in. It is not the fear of possible infection.
That seems a little thing when compared with the pain, the pity, and the
disgust of the visitor's surroundings, and the atmosphere of affliction,
disease, and physical disgrace in which he breathes. I do not think I am
a man more than usually timid; but I never recall the days and nights I
spent upon that island promontory (eight days and seven nights), without
heartfelt thankfulness that I am somewhere else. I find in my diary that
I speak of my stay as a "grinding experience": I have once jotted in the
margin, "_Harrowing_ is the word"; and when the _Mokolii_ bore me at
last towards the outer world, I kept repeating to myself, with a new
conception of their pregnancy, those simple words of the song--
"'Tis the most distressful country that ever yet was seen."
And observe: that which I saw and suffered from was a settlement purged,
bettered, beautified; the new village built, the hospital and the
Bishop-Home excellently arranged; the sisters, the doctor, and the
missionaries, all indefatigable in their noble tasks. It was a different
place when Damien came there, and made his great renunciation, and slept
that first night under a tree amidst his rotting brethren: alone with
pestilence; and looking forward (with what courage, with what pitiful
sinkings of dread, God only knows) to a lifetime of dressing sores and
stumps.
You will say, perhaps, I am too sensitive, that sights as painful abound
in cancer hospitals and are confronted daily by doctors and nurses. I
have long learned to admire and envy the doctors and the nurses. But
there is no cancer hospital so large and populous as Kalawao and
Kalaupapa; and in such a matter every fresh case, like every inch of
length in the pipe of an organ, deepens the note of the impression; for
what daunts the onlooker is that monstrous sum of human suffering by
which he stands surrounded. Lastly, no doctor or nurse is called upon to
enter once for all the doors of that gehenna; they do not say farewell,
they need not abandon hope, on its sad threshold; they but go for a time
to their high calling, and can look forward as they go to relief, to
recreation, and to rest. But Damien shut-to with his own hand the doors
of his own sepulchre.
I shall now extract three passages from my diary at Kalawao.
_A_. "Damien is dead and already somewhat ungratefully remembered in the
field of his labours and sufferings. 'He was a good man, but very
officious,' says one. Another tells me he had fallen (as other priests
so easily do) into something of the ways and habits of thought of a
Kanaka; but he had the wit to recognise the fact, and the good sense to
laugh at" [over] "it. A plain man it seems he was; I cannot find he was
a popular."
_B_. "After Ragsdale's death" [Ragsdale was a famous Luna, or overseer,
of the unruly settlement] "there followed a brief term of office by
Father Damien which served only to publish the weakness of that noble
man. He was rough in his ways, and he had no control. Authority was
relaxed; Damien's life was threatened, and he was soon eager to resign."
_C_. "Of Damien I begin to have an idea. He seems to have been a man of
the peasant class, certainly of the peasant type: shrewd; ignorant and
bigoted, yet with an open mind, and capable of receiving and digesting a
reproof if it were bluntly administered; superbly generous in the least
thing as well as in the greatest, and as ready to give his last shirt
(although not without human grumbling) as he had been to sacrifice his
life; essentially indiscreet and officious, which made him a troublesome
colleague; domineering in all his ways, which made him incurably
unpopular with the Kanakas, but yet destitute of real authority, so that
his boys laughed at him and he must carry out his wishes by the means of
bribes. He learned to have a mania for doctoring; and set up the Kanakas
against the remedies of his regular rivals: perhaps (if anything matter
at all in the treatment of such a disease) the worst thing that he did,
and certainly the easiest. The best and worst of the man appear very
plainly in his dealings with Mr. Chapman's money; he had originally laid
it out" [intended to lay it out] "entirely for the benefit of Catholics,
and even so not wisely; but after a long, plain talk, he admitted his
error fully and revised the list. The sad state of the boys' home is in
part the result of his lack of control; in part, of his own slovenly
ways and false ideas of hygiene. Brother officials used to call it
'Damien's Chinatown.' 'Well,' they would say, 'your Chinatown keeps
growing.' And he would laugh with perfect good-nature, and adhere to his
errors with perfect obstinacy. So much I have gathered of truth about
this plain, noble human brother and father of ours; his imperfections
are the traits of his face, by which we know him for our fellow; his
martyrdom and his example nothing can lessen or annul; and only a person
here on the spot can properly appreciate their greatness."
I have set down these private passages, as you perceive, without
correction; thanks to you, the public has them in their bluntness. They
are almost a list of the man's faults, for it is rather these that I was
seeking: with his virtues, with the heroic profile of his life, I and
the world were already sufficiently acquainted. I was besides a little
suspicious of Catholic testimony; in no ill sense, but merely because
Damien's admirers and disciples were the least likely to be critical. I
know you will be more suspicious still; and the facts set down above
were one and all collected from the lips of Protestants who had opposed
the father in his life. Yet I am strangely deceived, or they build up
the image of a man, with all his weaknesses, essentially heroic, and
alive with rugged honesty, generosity, and mirth.
Take it for what it is, rough private jottings of the worst sides of
Damien's character, collected from the lips of those who had laboured
with and (in your own phrase) "knew the man";--though I question whether
Damien would have said that he knew you. Take it, and observe with
wonder how well you were served by your gossips, how ill by your
intelligence and sympathy; in how many points of fact we are at one, and
how widely our appreciations vary. There is something wrong here;
either with you or me. It is possible, for instance, that you, who seem
to have so many ears in Kalawao, had heard of the affair of Mr.
Chapman's money, and were singly struck by Damien's intended
wrong-doing. I was struck with that also, and set it fairly down; but I
was struck much more by the fact that he had the honesty of mind to be
convinced. I may here tell you that it was a long business; that one of
his colleagues sat with him late into the night, multiplying arguments
and accusations; that the father listened as usual with "perfect
good-nature and perfect obstinacy"; but at the last, when he was
persuaded--"Yes," said he, "I am very much obliged to you; you have done
me a service; it would have been a theft." There are many (not Catholics
merely) who require their heroes and saints to be infallible; to these
the story will be painful; not to the true lovers, patrons, and servants
of mankind.
And I take it, this is a type of our division; that you are one of those
who have an eye for faults and failures; that you take a pleasure to
find and publish them; and that, having found them, you make haste to
forget the overvailing virtues and the real success which had alone
introduced them to your knowledge. It is a dangerous frame of mind. That
you may understand how dangerous, and into what a situation it has
already brought you, we will (if you please) go hand-in-hand through the
different phrases of your letter, and candidly examine each from the
point of view of its truth, its appositeness, and its charity.
Damien was _coarse_.
It is very possible. You make us sorry for the lepers who had only a
coarse old peasant for their friend and father. But you, who were so
refined, why were you not there, to cheer them with the lights of
culture? Or may I remind you that we have some reason to doubt if John
the Baptist were genteel; and in the case of Peter, on whose career you
doubtless dwell approvingly in the pulpit, no doubt at all he was a
"coarse, headstrong" fisherman! Yet even in our Protestant Bibles Peter
is called Saint.
Damien was _dirty_.
He was. Think of the poor lepers annoyed with this dirty comrade! But
the clean Dr. Hyde was at his food in a fine house.
Damien was _headstrong_.
I believe you are right again; and I thank God for his strong head and
heart.
Damien was _bigoted_.
I am not fond of bigots myself, because they are not fond of me. But
what is meant by bigotry, that we should regard it as a blemish in a
priest? Damien believed his own religion with the simplicity of a
peasant or a child; as I would I could suppose that you do. For this, I
wonder at him some way off; and had that been his only character, should
have avoided him in life. But the point of interest in Damien, which has
caused him to be so much talked about and made him at last the subject
of your pen and mine, was that, in him, his bigotry, his intense and
narrow faith, wrought potently for good, and strengthened him to be one
of the world's heroes and exemplars.
Damien _was not sent to Molokai, but went there without orders_.
Is this a misreading? or do you really mean the words for blame? I have
heard Christ, in the pulpits of our Church, held up for imitation on the
ground that His sacrifice was voluntary. Does Dr. Hyde think otherwise?
Damien _did not stay at the settlement, etc_.
It is true he was allowed many indulgences. Am I to understand that you
blame the father for profiting by these, or the officers for granting
them? In either case, it is a mighty Spartan standard to issue from the
house on Beretania Street; and I am convinced you will find yourself
with few supporters.
Damien _had no hand in the reforms, etc_.
I think even you will admit that I have already been frank in my
description of the man I am defending; but before I take you up upon
this head, I will be franker still, and tell you that perhaps nowhere in
the world can a man taste a more pleasurable sense of contrast than when
he passes from Damien's "Chinatown" at Kalawao to the beautiful
Bishop-Home at Kalaupapa. At this point, in my desire to make all fair
for you, I will break my rule and adduce Catholic testimony. Here is a
passage from my diary about my visit to the Chinatown, from which you
will see how it is (even now) regarded by its own officials: "We went
round all the dormitories, refectories, etc.--dark and dingy enough,
with a superficial cleanliness, which he" [Mr. Dutton, the lay brother]
"did not seek to defend. 'It is almost decent,' said he; 'the sisters
will make that all right when we get them here.'" And yet I gathered it
was already better since Damien was dead, and far better than when he
was there alone and had his own (not always excellent) way. I have now
come far enough to meet you on a common ground of fact; and I tell you
that, to a mind not prejudiced by jealousy, all the reforms of the
lazaretto, and even those which he most vigorously opposed, are properly
the work of Damien. They are the evidence of his success; they are what
his heroism provoked from the reluctant and the careless. Many were
before him in the field; Mr. Meyer, for instance, of whose faithful work
we hear too little: there have been many since; and some had more
worldly wisdom, though none had more devotion, than our saint. Before
his day, even you will confess, they had effected little. It was his
part, by one striking act of martyrdom, to direct all men's eyes on that
distressful country. At a blow, and with the price of his life, he made
the place illustrious and public. And that, if you will consider
largely, was the one reform needful; pregnant of all that should
succeed. It brought money; it brought (best individual addition of them
all) the sisters; it brought supervision, for public opinion and public
interest landed with the man at Kalawao. If ever any man brought
reforms, and died to bring them, it was he. There is not a clean cup or
towel in the Bishop-Home, but dirty Damien washed it.
Damien _was not a pure man in his relations with women, etc_.
How do you know that? Is this the nature of the conversation in that
house on Beretania Street which the cabman envied, driving past?--racy
details of the misconduct of the poor peasant priest, toiling under the
cliffs of Molokai?
Many have visited the station before me; they seem not to have heard the
rumour. When I was there I heard many shocking tales, for my informants
were men speaking with the plainness of the laity; and I heard plenty of
complaints of Damien. Why was this never mentioned? and how came it to
you in the retirement of your clerical parlour?
But I must not even seem to deceive you. This scandal, when I read it in
your letter, was not new to me. I had heard it once before; and I must
tell you how. There came to Samoa a man from Honolulu; he in a
public-house on the beach volunteered the statement that Damien had
"contracted the disease from having connection with the female lepers";
and I find a joy in telling you how the report was welcomed in a
public-house. A man sprang to his feet; I am not at liberty to give his
name, but from what I heard I doubt if you would care to have him to
dinner in Beretania Street. "You miserable little ----" (here is a word I
dare not print, it would so shock your ears). "You miserable little ----,"
he cried, "if the story were a thousand times true, can't you see you are
a million times a lower ---- for daring to repeat it?" I wish it could be
told of you that when the report reached you in your house, perhaps after
family worship, you had found in your soul enough holy anger to receive it
with the same expressions; ay, even with that one which I dare not print;
it would not need to have been blotted away, like Uncle Toby's oath, by
the tears of the recording angel; it would have been counted to you for
your brightest righteousness. But you have deliberately chosen the part of
the man from Honolulu, and you have played it with improvements of your
own. The man from Honolulu--miserable, leering creature--communicated the
tale to a rude knot of beach-combing drinkers in a public-house, where (I
will so far agree with your temperance opinions) man is not always at his
noblest; and the man from Honolulu had himself been drinking--drinking, we
may charitably fancy, to excess. It was to your "Dear Brother, the
Reverend H. B. Gage," that you chose to communicate the sickening story;
and the blue ribbon which adorns your portly bosom forbids me to allow you
the extenuating plea that you were drunk when it was done. Your "dear
brother"--a brother indeed--made haste to deliver up your letter (as a
means of grace, perhaps) to the religious papers; where, after many
months, I found and read and wondered at it; and whence I have now
reproduced it for the wonder of others. And you and your dear brother
have, by this cycle of operations, built up a contrast very edifying to
examine in detail. The man whom you would not care to have to dinner, on
the one side; on the other, the Reverend Dr. Hyde and the Reverend H. B.
Gage: the Apia bar-room, the Honolulu manse.
But I fear you scarce appreciate how you appear to your fellow-men; and
to bring it home to you, I will suppose your story to be true. I will
suppose--and God forgive me for supposing it--that Damien faltered and
stumbled in his narrow path of duty; I will suppose that, in the horror
of his isolation, perhaps in the fever of incipient disease, he, who
was doing so much more than he had sworn, failed in the letter of his
priestly oath--he, who was so much a better man than either you or me,
who did what we have never dreamed of daring--he too tasted of our
common frailty. "O, Iago, the pity of it!" The least tender should be
moved to tears; the most incredulous to prayer. And all that you could
do was to pen your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage!
Is it growing at all clear to you what a picture you have drawn of your
own heart? I will try yet once again to make it clearer. You had a
father: suppose this tale were about him, and some informant brought it
to you, proof in hand: I am not making too high an estimate of your
emotional nature when I suppose you would regret the circumstance? that
you would feel the tale of frailty the more keenly since it shamed the
author of your days? and that the last thing you would do would be to
publish it in the religious press? Well, the man who tried to do what
Damien did is my father, and the father of the man in the Apia bar, and
the father of all who love goodness; and he was your father too, if God
had given you grace to see it.
FOOTNOTE:
[32] From the Sydney _Presbyterian_, October 26, 1889.
XI
MY FIRST BOOK--"TREASURE ISLAND"
It was far indeed from being my first book, for I am not a novelist
alone. But I am well aware that my paymaster, the Great Public, regards
what else I have written with indifference, if not aversion; if it call
upon me at all, it calls on me in the familiar and indelible character;
and when I am asked to talk of my first book, no question in the world
but what is meant is my first novel.
Sooner or later, somehow, anyhow, I was bound to write a novel. It seems
vain to ask why. Men are born with various manias: from my earliest
childhood it was mine to make a plaything of imaginary series of events;
and as soon as I was able to write, I became a good friend to the
papermakers. Reams upon reams must have gone to the making of
"Rathillet," "The Pentland Rising,"[33] "The King's Pardon" (otherwise
"Park Whitehead"), "Edward Daven," "A Country Dance," and "A Vendetta in
the West"; and it is consolatory to remember that these reams are now all
ashes, and have been received again into the soil. I have named but a few
of my ill-fated efforts, only such indeed as came to a fair bulk ere they
were desisted from; and even so they cover a long vista of years.
"Rathillet" was attempted before fifteen, "The Vendetta" at twenty-nine,
and the succession of defeats lasted unbroken till I was thirty-one. By
that time I had written little books and little essays and short stories;
and had got patted on the back and paid for them--though not enough to
live upon. I had quite a reputation, I was the successful man; I passed
my days in toil, the futility of which would sometimes make my cheek to
burn--that I should spend a man's energy upon this business, and yet
could not earn a livelihood: and still there shone ahead of me an
unattained ideal: although I had attempted the thing with vigour not less
than ten or twelve times, I had not yet written a novel. All--all my
pretty ones--had gone for a little, and then stopped inexorably like a
schoolboy's watch. I might be compared to a cricketer of many years'
standing who should never have made a run. Anybody can write a short
story--a bad one, I mean--who has industry and paper and time enough; but
not every one may hope to write even a bad novel. It is the length that
kills. The accepted novelist may take his novel up and put it down, spend
days upon it in vain, and write not any more than he makes haste to blot.
Not so the beginner. Human nature has certain rights; instinct--the
instinct of self-preservation--forbids that any man (cheered and
supported by the consciousness of no previous victory) should endure the
miseries of unsuccessful literary toil beyond a period to be measured in
weeks. There must be something for hope to feed upon. The beginner must
have a slant of wind, a lucky vein must be running, he must be in one of
those hours when the words come and the phrases balance of
themselves--_even to begin_. And having begun, what a dread looking
forward is that until the book shall be accomplished! For so long a time
the slant is to continue unchanged, the vein to keep running, for so long
a time you must keep at command the same quality of style: for so long a
time your puppets are to be always vital, always consistent, always
vigorous! I remember I used to look, in those days, upon every
three-volume novel with a sort of veneration, as a feat--not, possibly,
of literature--but at least of physical and moral endurance and the
courage of Ajax.
In the fated year I came to live with my father and mother at Kinnaird,
above Pitlochry. Then I walked on the red moors and by the side of the
golden burn; the rude, pure air of our mountains inspirited, if it did
not inspire, us, and my wife and I projected a joint volume of bogey
stories, for which she wrote "The Shadow on the Bed," and I turned out
"Thrawn Janet" and a first draft of "The Merry Men." I love my native
air, but it does not love me; and the end of this delightful period was
a cold, a fly-blister and a migration by Strathardle and Glenshee to the
Castleton of Braemar. There it blew a good deal and rained in a
proportion; my native air was more unkind than man's ingratitude, and I
must consent to pass a good deal of my time between four walls in a
house lugubriously known as the Late Miss M^cGregor's Cottage. And now
admire the finger of predestination. There was a schoolboy in the Late
Miss M^cGregor's Cottage, home from the holidays, and much in want of
"something craggy to break his mind upon." He had no thought of
literature; it was the art of Raphael that received his fleeting
suffrages; and with the aid of pen and ink and a shilling box of
watercolours, he had soon turned one of the rooms into a
picture-gallery. My more immediate duty towards the gallery was to be
showman; but I would sometimes unbend a little, join the artist (so to
speak) at the easel, and pass the afternoon with him in a generous
emulation, making coloured drawings. On one of these occasions, I made
the map of an island; it was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully
coloured; the shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained
harbours that pleased me like sonnets; and, with the unconsciousness of
the predestined, I ticketed my performance "Treasure Island." I am told
there are people who do not care for maps, and find it hard to believe.
The names, the shapes of the woodlands, the courses of the roads and
rivers, the prehistoric footsteps of man still distinctly traceable up
hill and down dale, the mills and the ruins, the ponds and the ferries,
perhaps the _Standing Stone_ or the _Druidic Circle_ on the heath; here
is an inexhaustible fund of interest for any man with eyes to see or
twopence-worth of imagination to understand with! No child but must
remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal
forest and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies. Somewhat in this
way, as I paused upon my map of "Treasure Island," the future character
of the book began to appear there visibly among imaginary woods; and
their brown faces and bright weapons peeped out upon me from unexpected
quarters, as they passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on
these few square inches of a flat projection. The next thing I knew I
had some papers before me and was writing out a list of chapters. How
often have I done so, and the thing gone on further! But there seemed
elements of success about this enterprise. It was to be a story for
boys: no need of psychology or fine writing; and I had a boy at hand to
be a touchstone. Women were excluded. I was unable to handle a brig
(which the _Hispaniola_ should have been), but I thought I could make
shift to sail her as a schooner without public shame. And then I had an
idea for John Silver from which I promised myself funds of
entertainment: to take an admired friend of mine (whom the reader very
likely knows and admires as much as I do), to deprive him of all his
finer qualities and higher graces of temperament, to leave him with
nothing but his strength, his courage, his quickness, and his
magnificent geniality, and to try to express these in terms of the
culture of a raw tarpaulin. Such psychical surgery is, I think, a common
way of "making character"; perhaps it is, indeed, the only way. We can
put in the quaint figure that spoke a hundred words with us yesterday by
the wayside; but do we know him? Our friend with his infinite variety
and flexibility, we know--but can we put him in? Upon the first, we must
engraft secondary and imaginary qualities, possibly all wrong; from the
second, knife in hand, we must cut away and deduct the needless
arborescence of his nature, but the trunk and the few branches that
remain we may at least be fairly sure of.
On a chill September morning, by the cheek of a brisk fire, and the rain
drumming on the window, I began "The Sea Cook," for that was the
original title. I have begun (and finished) a number of other books, but
I cannot remember to have sat down to one of them with more complacency.
It is not to be wondered at, for stolen waters are proverbially sweet. I
am now upon a painful chapter. No doubt the parrot once belonged to
Robinson Crusoe. No doubt the skeleton is conveyed from Poe. I think
little of these, they are trifles and details; and no man can hope to
have a monopoly of skeletons or make a corner in talking birds. The
stockade, I am told, is from "Masterman Ready." It may be, I care not a
jot. These useful writers had fulfilled the poet's saying: departing,
they had left behind them Footprints on the sands of time, Footprints
which perhaps another--and I was the other! It is my debt to Washington
Irving that exercises my conscience, and justly so, for I believe
plagiarism was rarely carried further. I chanced to pick up the "Tales
of a Traveller" some years ago with a view to an anthology of prose
narrative, and the book flew up and struck me: Billy Bones, his chest,
the company in the parlour, the whole inner spirit, and a good deal of
the material detail of my first chapters--all were there, all were the
property of Washington Irving. But I had no guess of it then as I sat
writing by the fireside, in what seemed the spring-tides of a somewhat
pedestrian inspiration; nor yet day by day, after lunch, as I read aloud
my morning's work to the family. It seemed to me original as sin; it
seemed to belong to me like my right eye. I had counted on one boy, I
found I had two in my audience. My father caught fire at once with all
the romance and childishness of his original nature. His own stories,
that every night of his life he put himself to sleep with, dealt
perpetually with ships, roadside inns, robbers, old sailors, and
commercial travellers before the era of steam. He never finished one of
these romances; the lucky man did not require to finish them! But in
"Treasure Island" he recognised something kindred to his own
imagination; it was _his_ kind of picturesque; and he not only heard
with delight the daily chapter, but set himself acting to collaborate.
When the time came for Billy Bones's chest to be ransacked, he must have
passed the better part of a day preparing, on the back of a legal
envelope, an inventory of its contents, which I exactly followed; and
the name of "Flint's old ship"--the _Walrus_--was given at his
particular request. And now who should come dropping in, _ex machinâ_,
but Dr. Japp, like the disguised prince who is to bring down the curtain
upon peace and happiness in the last act; for he carried in his pocket,
not a horn or a talisman, but a publisher. Even the ruthlessness of a
united family recoiled before the extreme measure of inflicting on our
guest the mutilated members of "The Sea Cook"; at the same time, we
would by no means stop our readings; and accordingly the tale was begun
again at the beginning, and solemnly re-delivered for the benefit of Dr.
Japp. From that moment on, I have thought highly of his critical
faculty; for when he left us he carried away the manuscript in his
portmanteau to submit to his friend (since then my own) Mr. Henderson,
who accepted it for his periodical, _Young Folks_.
Here, then, was everything to keep me up, sympathy, help, and now a
positive engagement. I had chosen besides a very easy style. Compare it
with the almost contemporary "Merry Men"; one reader may prefer the one
style, one the other--'tis an affair of character, perhaps of mood; but
no expert can fail to see that the one is much more difficult, and the
other much easier to maintain. It seems as though a full-grown
experienced man of letters might engage to turn out "Treasure Island" at
so many pages a day, and keep his pipe alight. But alas! this was not
my case. Fifteen days I stuck to it, and turned out fifteen chapters;
and then, in the early paragraphs of the sixteenth, ignominiously lost
hold. My mouth was empty; there was not one word of "Treasure Island" in
my bosom; and here were the proofs of the beginning already waiting me
at the "Hand and Spear"! Then I corrected them, living for the most part
alone, walking on the heath at Weybridge in dewy autumn mornings, a good
deal pleased with what I had done, and more appalled than I can depict
to you in words at what remained for me to do. I was thirty-one; I was
the head of a family; I had lost my health; I had never yet paid my way,
never yet made £200 a year; my father had quite recently bought back and
cancelled a book that was judged a failure: was this to be another and
last fiasco? I was indeed very close on despair; but I shut my mouth
hard, and during the journey to Davos, where I was to pass the winter,
had the resolution to think of other things and bury myself in the
novels of M. du Boisgobey. Arrived at my destination, down I sat one
morning to the unfinished tale; and behold! it flowed from me like
small-talk; and in a second tide of delighted industry, and again at the
rate of a chapter a day, I finished "Treasure Island." It had to be
transcribed almost exactly; my wife was ill; the schoolboy remained
alone of the faithful; and John Addington Symonds (to whom I timidly
mentioned what I was engaged on) looked on me askance. He was at that
time very eager I should write on the characters of Theophrastus: so far
out may be the judgments of the wisest men. But Symonds (to be sure) was
scarce the confidant to go to for sympathy on a boy's story. He was
large-minded; "a full man," if there was one; but the very name of my
enterprise would suggest to him only capitulations of sincerity and
solecisms of style. Well! he was not far wrong.
"Treasure Island"--it was Mr. Henderson who deleted the first title,
"The Sea Cook"--appeared duly in the story paper, where it figured in
the ignoble midst, without woodcuts, and attracted not the least
attention. I did not care. I liked the tale myself, for much the same
reason as my father liked the beginning; it was my kind of picturesque.
I was not a little proud of John Silver, also; and to this day rather
admire that smooth and formidable adventurer. What was infinitely more
exhilarating, I had passed a landmark; I had finished a tale, and
written "The End" upon my manuscript, as I had not done since "The
Pentland Rising," when I was a boy of sixteen not yet at college. In
truth it was so by a set of lucky accidents; had not Dr. Japp come on
his visit, had not the tale flowed from me with singular ease, it must
have been laid aside like its predecessors, and found a circuitous and
unlamented way to the fire. Purists may suggest it would have been
better so. I am not of that mind. The tale seems to have given much
pleasure, and it brought (or was the means of bringing) fire and food
and wine to a deserving family in which I took an interest. I need
scarcely say I mean my own.
But the adventures of "Treasure Island" are not yet quite at an end. I
had written it up to the map. The map was the chief part of my plot. For
instance, I had called an islet "Skeleton Island," not knowing what I
meant, seeking only for the immediate picturesque, and it was to justify
this name that I broke into the gallery of Mr. Poe and stole Flint's
pointer. And in the same way, it was because I had made two harbours
that the _Hispaniola_ was sent on her wanderings with Israel Hands. The
time came when it was decided to republish, and I sent in my manuscript,
and the map along with it, to Messrs. Cassell. The proofs came, they
were corrected, but I heard nothing of the map. I wrote and asked; was
told it had never been received, and sat aghast. It is one thing to draw
a map at random, set a scale in one corner of it at a venture, and write
up a story to the measurements. It is quite another to have to examine a
whole book, make an inventory of all the allusions contained in it, and
with a pair of compasses, painfully design a map to suit the data. I did
it; and the map was drawn again in my father's office, with
embellishments of blowing whales and sailing ships, and my father
himself brought into service a knack he had of various writing, and
elaborately _forged_ the signature of Captain Flint, and the sailing
directions of Billy Bones. But somehow it was never _Treasure Island_ to
me.
I have said the map was the most of the plot. I might almost say it was
the whole. A few reminiscences of Poe, Defoe, and Washington Irving, a
copy of Johnson's "Buccaneers," the name of the Dead Man's Chest from
Kingsley's "At Last," some recollections of canoeing on the high seas,
and the map itself, with its infinite, eloquent suggestion, made up the
whole of my materials. It is, perhaps, not often that a map figures so
largely in a tale, yet it is always important. The author must know his
countryside, whether real or imaginary, like his hand; the distances,
the points of the compass, the place of the sun's rising, the behaviour
of the moon, should all be beyond cavil. And how troublesome the moon
is! I have come to grief over the moon in "Prince Otto," and, so soon as
that was pointed out to me, adopted a precaution which I recommend to
other men--I never write now without an almanac. With an almanac and the
map of the country, and the plan of every house, either actually plotted
on paper or already and immediately apprehended in the mind, a man may
hope to avoid some of the grossest possible blunders. With the map
before him, he will scarce allow the sun to set in the east, as it does
in "The Antiquary." With the almanac at hand, he will scarce allow two
horsemen, journeying on the most urgent affair, to employ six days, from
three of the Monday morning till late in the Saturday night, upon a
journey of, say, ninety or a hundred miles, and before the week is out,
and still on the same nags, to cover fifty in one day, as may be read at
length in the inimitable novel of "Rob Roy." And it is certainly well,
though far from necessary, to avoid such "croppers." But it is my
contention--my superstition, if you like--that who is faithful to his
map, and consults it, and draws from it his inspiration, daily and
hourly, gains positive support, and not mere negative immunity from
accident. The tale has a root there; it grows in that soil; it has a
spine of its own behind the words. Better if the country be real, and he
has walked every foot of it and knows every milestone. But even with
imaginary places, he will do well in the beginning to provide a map; as
he studies it, relations will appear that he had not thought upon; he
will discover obvious, though unsuspected, shortcuts and footprints for
his messengers; and even when a map is not all the plot, as it was in
"Treasure Island," it will be found to be a mine of suggestion.
FOOTNOTE:
[33] _Ne pas confondre_. Not the slim green pamphlet with the imprint
of Andrew Elliot, for which (as I see with amazement from the
book-lists) the gentlemen of England are willing to pay fancy
prices; but its predecessor, a bulky historical romance without a
spark of merit and now deleted from the world.--[R. L. S.]
XII
THE GENESIS OF "THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE"
I was walking one night in the verandah of a small house in which I
lived, outside the hamlet of Saranac. It was winter; the night was very
dark; the air extraordinary clear and cold, and sweet with the purity of
forests. From a good way below, the river was to be heard contending
with ice and boulders: a few lights appeared, scattered unevenly among
the darkness, but so far away as not to lessen the sense of isolation.
For the making of a story here were fine conditions. I was besides moved
with the spirit of emulation, for I had just finished my third or fourth
perusal of "The Phantom Ship." "Come," said I to my engine, "let us make
a tale, a story of many years and countries, of the sea and the land,
savagery, and civilisation; a story that shall have the same large
features, and may be treated in the same summary elliptic method as the
book you have been reading and admiring." I was here brought up with a
reflection exceedingly just in itself, but which, as the sequel shows, I
failed to profit by. I saw that Marryat, not less than Homer, Milton,
and Virgil, profited by the choice of a familiar and legendary subject;
so that he prepared his readers on the very title-page; and this set me
cudgelling my brains, if by any chance I could hit upon some similar
belief to be the centre-piece of my own meditated fiction. In the course
of this vain search there cropped up in my memory a singular case of a
buried and resuscitated fakir, which I had been often told by an uncle
of mine, then lately dead, Inspector-General John Balfour.
On such a fine frosty night, with no wind and the thermometer below
zero, the brain works with much vivacity; and the next moment I had seen
the circumstance transplanted from India and the tropics to the
Adirondack wilderness and the stringent cold of the Canadian border.
Here then, almost before I had begun my story, I had two countries, two
of the ends of the earth involved: and thus though the notion of the
resuscitated man failed entirely on the score of general acceptation, or
even (as I have since found) acceptability, it fitted at once with my
design of a tale of many lands; and this decided me to consider further
of its possibilities. The man who should thus be buried was the first
question: a good man, whose return to life would be hailed by the reader
and the other characters with gladness? This trenched upon the Christian
picture and was dismissed. If the idea, then, was to be of any use at
all for me, I had to create a kind of evil genius to his friends and
family, take him through many disappearances, and make this final
restoration from the pit of death, in the icy American wilderness, the
last and the grimmest of the series. I need not tell my brothers of the
craft that I was now in the most interesting moment of an author's life;
the hours that followed that night upon the balcony, and the following
nights and days, whether walking abroad or lying wakeful in my bed, were
hours of unadulterated joy. My mother, who was then living with me
alone, perhaps had less enjoyment; for, in the absence of my wife, who
is my usual helper in these times of parturition, I must spur her up at
all seasons to hear me relate and try to clarify my unformed fancies.
And while I was groping for the fable and the character required, behold
I found them lying ready and nine years old in my memory. Pease porridge
hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot, nine years old. Was
there ever a more complete justification of the rule of Horace? Here,
thinking of quite other things, I had stumbled on the solution or
perhaps I should rather say (in stagewright phrase) the Curtain or final
Tableau of a story conceived long before on the moors between Pitlochry
and Strathardle, conceived in Highland rain, in the blend of the smell
of heather and bog-plants, and with a mind full of the Athole
correspondence and the memories of the dumlicide Justice. So long ago,
so far away it was, that I had first evoked the faces and the mutual
tragic situation of the men of Durrisdeer.
My story was now world-wide enough: Scotland, India, and America being
all obligatory scenes. But of these India was strange to me except in
books; I had never known any living Indian save a Parsee, a member of my
club in London, equally civilised, and (to all seeing) equally
Occidental with myself. It was plain, thus far, that I should have to
get into India and out of it again upon a foot of fairy lightness; and I
believe this first suggested to me the idea of the Chevalier Burke for a
narrator. It was at first intended that he should be Scottish, and I was
then filled with fears that he might prove only the degraded shadow of
my own Alan Breck. Presently, however, it began to occur to me it would
be like my Master to curry favour with the Prince's Irishmen; and that
an Irish refugee would have a particular reason to find himself in India
with his countryman, the unfortunate Lally. Irish, therefore, I decided
he should be, and then, all of a sudden, I was aware of a tall shadow
across my path, the shadow of Barry Lyndon. No man (in Lord Foppington's
phrase) of a nice morality could go very deep with my Master: in the
original idea of this story conceived in Scotland, this companion had
been besides intended to be worse than the bad elder son with whom (as
it was then meant) he was to visit Scotland; if I took an Irishman, and
a very bad Irishman, in the midst of the eighteenth century, how was I
to evade Barry Lyndon? The wretch besieged me, offering his services; he
gave me excellent references; he proved that he was highly fitted for
the work I had to do; he, or my own evil heart, suggested it was easy to
disguise his ancient livery with a little lace and a few frogs and
buttons, so that Thackeray himself should hardly recognise him. And then
of a sudden there came to me memories of a young Irishman, with whom I
was once intimate, and had spent long nights walking and talking with,
upon a very desolate coast in a bleak autumn: I recalled him as a youth
of an extraordinary moral simplicity--almost vacancy; plastic to any
influence, the creature of his admirations: and putting such a youth in
fancy into the career of a soldier of fortune, it occurred to me that he
would serve my turn as well as Mr. Lyndon, and, in place of entering
into competition with the Master, would afford a slight though a
distinct relief. I know not if I have done him well, though his moral
dissertations always highly entertained me: but I own I have been
surprised to find that he reminded some critics of Barry Lyndon after
all....
XIII
RANDOM MEMORIES: _ROSA QUO LOCORUM_
I
Through what little channels, by what hints and premonitions, the
consciousness of the man's art dawns first upon the child, it should be
not only interesting but instructive to inquire. A matter of curiosity
to-day, it will become the ground of science to-morrow. From the mind of
childhood there is more history and more philosophy to be fished up than
from all the printed volumes in a library. The child is conscious of an
interest, not in literature but in life. A taste for the precise, the
adroit or the comely in the use of words, comes late; but long before
that he has enjoyed in books a delightful dress rehearsal of experience.
He is first conscious of this material--I had almost said this
practical--pre-occupation; it does not follow that it really came the
first. I have some old fogged negatives in my collection that would seem
to imply a prior stage. "The Lord is gone up with a shout, and God with
the sound of a trumpet"--memorial version, I know not where to find the
text--rings still in my ear from my first childhood, and perhaps with
something of my nurse's accent. There was possibly some sort of image
written in my mind by these loud words, but I believe the words
themselves were what I cherished. I had about the same time, and under
the same influence--that of my dear nurse--a favourite author: it is
possible the reader has not heard of him--the Rev. Robert Murray
M'Cheyne. My nurse and I admired his name exceedingly, so that I must
have been taught the love of beautiful sounds before I was breeched; and
I remember two specimens of his muse until this day:--
"Behind the hills of Naphtali
The sun went slowly down,
Leaving on mountain, tower, and tree,
A tinge of golden brown."
There is imagery here, and I set it on one side. The other--it is but a
verse--not only contains no image, but is quite unintelligible even to
my comparatively instructed mind, and I know not even how to spell the
outlandish vocable that charmed me in my childhood:
"Jehovah Tschidkenu is nothing to her ";[34]
I may say, without flippancy, that he was nothing to me either, since I
had no ray of a guess of what he was about; yet the verse, from then to
now, a longer interval than the life of a generation, has continued to
haunt me.
I have said that I should set a passage distinguished by obvious and
pleasing imagery, however faint; for the child thinks much in images,
words are very live to him, phrases that imply a picture eloquent beyond
their value. Rummaging in the dusty pigeon-holes of memory, I came once
upon a graphic version of the famous Psalm, "The Lord is my Shepherd":
and from the places employed in its illustration, which are all in the
immediate neighbourhood of a house then occupied by my father, I am able
to date it before the seventh year of my age, although it was probably
earlier in fact. The "pastures green" were represented by a certain
suburban stubble-field, where I had once walked with my nurse, under an
autumnal sunset, on the banks of the Water of Leith: the place is long
ago built up; no pastures now, no stubble-fields; only a maze of little
streets and smoking chimneys and shrill children. Here, in the fleecy
person of a sheep, I seemed to myself to follow something unseen,
unrealised, and yet benignant; and close by the sheep in which I was
incarnated--as if for greater security--rustled the skirts of my nurse.
"Death's dark vale" was a certain archway in the Warriston Cemetery: a
formidable yet beloved spot, for children love to be afraid,--in measure
as they love all experience of vitality. Here I beheld myself some paces
ahead (seeing myself, I mean, from behind) utterly alone in that uncanny
passage: on the one side of me a rude, knobby shepherd's staff, such as
cheers the heart of the cockney tourist, on the other a rod like a
billiard cue, appeared to accompany my progress: the staff sturdily
upright, the billiard cue inclined confidentially, like one whispering,
towards my ear. I was aware--I will never tell you how--that the
presence of these articles afforded me encouragement. The third and last
of my pictures illustrated the words:--
"My table Thou hast furnishèd
In presence of my foes:
My head Thou dost with oil anoint,
And my cup overflows":
and this was perhaps the most interesting of the series. I saw myself
seated in a kind of open stone summer-house at table; over my shoulder a
hairy, bearded, and robed presence anointed me from an authentic
shoe-horn; the summer-house was part of the green court of a ruin, and
from the far side of the court black and white imps discharged against
me ineffectual arrows. The picture appears arbitrary, but I can trace
every detail to its source, as Mr. Brock analysed the dream of Alan
Armadale. The summer-house and court were muddled together out of
Billings' "Antiquities of Scotland"; the imps conveyed from Bagster's
"Pilgrim's Progress"; the bearded and robed figure from any one of a
thousand Bible pictures; and the shoe-horn was plagiarised from an old
illustrated Bible, where it figured in the hand of Samuel anointing
Saul, and had been pointed out to me as a jest by my father. It was
shown me for a jest, remark; but the serious spirit of infancy adopted
it in earnest. Children are all classics; a bottle would have seemed an
intermediary too trivial--that divine refreshment of whose meaning I had
no guess; and I seized on the idea of that mystic shoe-horn with
delight, even as, a little later, I should have written flagon, chalice,
hanaper, beaker, or any word that might have appealed to me at the
moment as least contaminate with mean associations. In this string of
pictures I believe the gist of the psalm to have consisted; I believe it
had no more to say to me; and the result was consolatory. I would go to
sleep dwelling with restfulness upon these images; they passed before
me, besides, to an appropriate music; for I had already singled out from
that rude psalm the one lovely verse which dwells in the minds of all,
not growing old, not disgraced by its association with long Sunday
tasks, a scarce conscious joy in childhood, in age a companion
thought:--
"In pastures green Thou leadest me,
The quiet waters by."
The remainder of my childish recollections are all of the matter of what
was read to me, and not of any manner in the words. If these pleased me,
it was unconsciously; I listened for news of the great vacant world upon
whose edge I stood; I listened for delightful plots that I might
re-enact in play, and romantic scenes and circumstances that I might
call up before me, with closed eyes, when I was tired of Scotland, and
home and that weary prison of the sick-chamber in which I lay so long in
durance. "Robinson Crusoe"; some of the books of that cheerful,
ingenious, romantic soul, Mayne Reid; and a work rather gruesome and
bloody for a child, but very picturesque, called "Paul Blake"; these are
the three strongest impressions I remember: "The Swiss Family Robinson"
came next, _longo intervallo_. At these I played, conjured up their
scenes, and delighted to hear them rehearsed unto seventy times seven. I
am not sure but what "Paul Blake" came after I could read. It seems
connected with a visit to the country, and an experience unforgettable.
The day had been warm; H---- and I had played together charmingly all
day in a sandy wilderness across the road; then came the evening with a
great flash of colour and a heavenly sweetness in the air. Somehow my
playmate had vanished, or is out of the story, as the sagas say, but I
was sent into the village on an errand; and, taking a book of fairy
tales, went down alone through a fir-wood, reading as I walked. How
often since then has it befallen me to be happy even so; but that was
the first time: the shock of that pleasure I have never since forgot,
and if my mind serves me to the last, I never shall, for it was then
that I knew I loved reading.
II
To pass from hearing literature to reading it is to take a great and
dangerous step. With not a few, I think a large proportion of their
pleasure then comes to an end; "the malady of not marking" overtakes
them; they read thenceforward by the eye alone and hear never again the
chime of fair words or the march of the stately period. _Non ragioniam_
of these. But to all the step is dangerous; it involves coming of age;
it is even a kind of second weaning. In the past all was at the choice
of others; they chose, they digested, they read aloud for us and sang to
their own tune the books of childhood. In the future we are to approach
the silent, inexpressive type alone, like pioneers; and the choice of
what we are to read is in our own hands thenceforward. For instance, in
the passages already adduced, I detect and applaud the ear of my old
nurse; they were of her choice, and she imposed them on my infancy,
reading the works of others as a poet would scarce dare to read his
own; gloating on the rhythm, dwelling with delight on assonances and
alliterations. I know very well my mother must have been all the while
trying to educate my taste upon more secular authors; but the vigour and
the continual opportunities of my nurse triumphed, and after a long
search, I can find in these earliest volumes of my autobiography no
mention of anything but nursery rhymes, the Bible, and Mr. M'Cheyne.
I suppose all children agree in looking back with delight on their
school Readers. We might not now find so much pathos in "Bingen on the
Rhine," "A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers," or in "The
Soldier's Funeral," in the declamation of which I was held to have
surpassed myself. "Robert's voice," said the master on this memorable
occasion, "is not strong, but impressive": an opinion which I was fool
enough to carry home to my father; who roasted me for years in
consequence. I am sure one should not be so deliciously tickled by the
humorous pieces:--
"What, crusty? cries Will in a taking,
Who would not be crusty with half a year's baking?"
I think this quip would leave us cold. The "Isles of Greece" seem rather
tawdry too; but on the "Address to the Ocean," or on "The Dying
Gladiator," "time has writ no wrinkle."
"'Tis the morn, but dim and dark,
Whither flies the silent lark?"--
does the reader recall the moment when his eye first fell upon these
lines in the Fourth Reader; and "surprised with joy, impatient as the
wind," he plunged into the sequel? And there was another piece, this
time in prose, which none can have forgotten; many like me must have
searched Dickens with zeal to find it again, and in its proper context,
and have perhaps been conscious of some inconsiderable measure of
disappointment, that it was only Tom Pinch who drove, in such a pomp of
poetry, to London.
But in the Reader we are still under guides. What a boy turns out for
himself, as he rummages the bookshelves, is the real test and pleasure. My
father's library was a spot of some austerity: the proceedings of learned
societies, some Latin divinity, cyclopædias, physical science, and, above
all, optics, held the chief place upon the shelves, and it was only in
holes and corners that anything really legible existed as by accident. The
"Parent's Assistant," "Rob Roy," "Waverley," and "Guy Mannering," the
"Voyages of Captain Woods Rogers," Fuller's and Bunyan's "Holy Wars," "The
Reflections of Robinson Crusoe," "The Female Bluebeard," G. Sand's "Mare
au Diable"--(how came it in that grave assembly!), Ainsworth's "Tower of
London," and four old volumes of _Punch_--these were the chief exceptions.
In these latter, which made for years the chief of my diet, I very early
fell in love (almost as soon as I could spell) with the Snob Papers. I
knew them almost by heart, particularly the visit to the Pontos; and I
remember my surprise when I found, long afterwards, that they were famous,
and signed with a famous name; to me, as I read and admired them, they
were the works of Mr. Punch. Time and again I tried to read "Rob Roy,"
with whom of course I was acquainted from the "Tales of a Grandfather";
time and again the early part, with Rashleigh and (think of it!) the
adorable Diana, choked me off; and I shall never forget the pleasure and
surprise with which, lying on the floor one summer evening, I struck of a
sudden into the first scene with Andrew Fairservice. "The worthy Dr.
Lightfoot"--"mistrysted with a bogle"--"a wheen green trash"--"Jenny,
lass, I think I ha'e her": from that day to this the phrases have been
unforgotten. I read on, I need scarce say; I came to Glasgow, I bided
tryst on Glasgow Bridge, I met Rob Roy and the Bailie in the Tolbooth, all
with transporting pleasure; and then the clouds gathered once more about
my path; and I dozed and skipped until I stumbled half asleep into the
clachan of Aberfoyle, and the voices of Iverach and Galbraith recalled me
to myself. With that scene and the defeat of Captain Thornton the book
concluded; Helen and her sons shocked even the little schoolboy of nine or
ten with their unreality; I read no more, or I did not grasp what I was
reading; and years elapsed before I consciously met Diana and her father
among the hills, or saw Rashleigh dying in the chair. When I think of that
novel and that evening, I am impatient with all others; they seem but
shadows and impostors; they cannot satisfy the appetite which this
awakened; and I dare be known to think it the best of Sir Walter's by
nearly as much as Sir Walter is the best of novelists. Perhaps Mr. Lang is
right, and our first friends in the land of fiction are always the most
real. And yet I had read before this "Guy Mannering," and some of
"Waverley," with no such delighted sense of truth and humour, and I read
immediately after the greater part of the Waverley Novels, and was never
moved again in the same way or to the same degree. One circumstance is
suspicious: my critical estimate of the Waverley Novels has scarce changed
at all since I was ten. "Rob Roy," "Guy Mannering," and "Redgauntlet"
first; then, a little lower, "The Fortunes of Nigel"; then, after a huge
gulf, "Ivanhoe" and "Anne of Geierstein": the rest nowhere; such was the
verdict of the boy. Since then "The Antiquary," "St. Ronan's Well,"
"Kenilworth," and "The Heart of Midlothian" have gone up in the scale;
perhaps "Ivanhoe" and "Anne of Geierstein" have gone a trifle down; Diana
Vernon has been added to my admirations in that enchanted world of "Rob
Roy"; I think more of the letters in "Redgauntlet" and Peter Peebles, that
dreadful piece of realism, I can now read about with equanimity, interest,
and I had almost said pleasure, while to the childish critic he often
caused unmixed distress. But the rest is the same; I could not finish "The
Pirate" when I was a child, I have never finished it yet; "Peveril of the
Peak" dropped half way through from my schoolboy hands, and though I have
since waded to an end in a kind of wager with myself, the exercise was
quite without enjoyment. There is something disquieting in these
considerations. I still think the visit to Ponto's the best part of the
"Book of Snobs": does that mean that I was right when I was a child, or
does it mean that I have never grown since then, that the child is not the
man's father, but the man? and that I came into the world with all my
faculties complete, and have only learned sinsyne to be more tolerant of
boredom?...
FOOTNOTE:
[34] "Jehovah Tsidkenu," translated in the Authorised Version as "The
Lord our Righteousness" (Jeremiah xxiii. 6 and xxxiii. 16).
XIV
REFLECTIONS AND REMARKS ON HUMAN LIFE
I. JUSTICE AND JUSTIFICATION.--(1) It is the business of this life to
make excuses for others, but none for ourselves. We should be clearly
persuaded of our own misconduct, for that is the part of knowledge in
which we are most apt to be defective. (2) Even justice is no right of a
man's own, but a thing, like the king's tribute, which shall never be
his, but which he should strive to see rendered to another. None was
ever just to me; none ever will be. You may reasonably aspire to be
chief minister or sovereign pontiff: but not to be justly regarded in
your own character and acts. You know too much to be satisfied. For
justice is but an earthly currency, paid to appearances; you may see
another superficially righted; but be sure he has got too little or too
much; and in your own case rest content with what is paid you. It is
more just than you suppose; that your virtues are misunderstood is a
price you pay to keep your meannesses concealed. (3) When you seek to
justify yourself to others, you may be sure you will plead falsely. If
you fail, you have the shame of the failure; if you succeed, you will
have made too much of it, and be unjustly esteemed upon the other side.
(4) You have perhaps only one friend in the world, in whose esteem it is
worth while for you to right yourself. Justification to indifferent
persons is, at best, an impertinent intrusion. Let them think what they
please; they will be the more likely to forgive you in the end. (5) It
is a question hard to be resolved, whether you should at any time
criminate another to defend yourself. I have done it many times, and
always had a troubled conscience for my pains.
II. PARENT AND CHILD.--(1) The love of parents for their children is, of
all natural affections, the most ill-starred. It is not a love for the
person, since it begins before the person has come into the world, and
founds on an imaginary character and looks. Thus it is foredoomed to
disappointment; and because the parent either looks for too much, or at
least for something inappropriate, at his offspring's hands, it is too
often insufficiently repaid. The natural bond, besides, is stronger from
parent to child than from child to parent; and it is the side which
confers benefits, not which receives them, that thinks most of a
relation. (2) What do we owe our parents? No man can _owe_ love; none
can _owe_ obedience. We owe, I think, chiefly pity; for we are the
pledge of their dear and joyful union, we have been the solicitude of
their days and the anxiety of their nights, we have made them, though by
no will of ours, to carry the burthen of our sins, sorrows, and physical
infirmities; and too many of us grow up at length to disappoint the
purpose of their lives and requite their care and piety with cruel
pangs. (3) _Mater Dolorosa_. It is the particular cross of parents that
when the child grows up and becomes himself instead of that pale ideal
they had preconceived, they must accuse their own harshness or
indulgence for this natural result. They have all been like the duck and
hatched swan's eggs, or the other way about; yet they tell themselves
with miserable penitence that the blame lies with them; and had they sat
more closely, the swan would have been a duck, and home-keeping, in
spite of all. (4) A good son, who can fulfil what is expected of him,
has done his work in life. He has to redeem the sins of many, and
restore the world's confidence in children.
III. DIALOGUE ON CHARACTER AND DESTINY BETWEEN TWO PUPPETS.--At the end
of Chapter XXXIII. Count Spada and the General of the Jesuits were left
alone in the pavilion, while the course of the story was turned upon the
doings of the virtuous hero. Profiting by this moment of privacy, the
Jesuit turned with a very warning countenance upon the peer.
"Have a care, my lord," said he, raising a finger. "You are already no
favourite with the author; and for my part, I begin to perceive from a
thousand evidences that the narrative is drawing near a close. Yet a
chapter or two at most, and you will be overtaken by some sudden and
appalling judgment."
"I despise your womanish presentiments," replied Spada, "and count
firmly upon another volume; I see a variety of reasons why my life
should be prolonged to within a few pages of the end; indeed, I permit
myself to expect resurrection in a sequel, or second part. You will
scarce suggest that there can be any end to the newspaper; and you will
certainly never convince me that the author, who cannot be entirely
without sense, would have been at so great pains with my intelligence,
gallant exterior, and happy and natural speech, merely to kick me hither
and thither for two or three paltry chapters and then drop me at the end
like a dumb personage. I know you priests are often infidels in secret.
Pray, do you believe in an author at all?"
"Many do not, I am aware," replied the General softly; "even in the last
chapter we encountered one, the self-righteous David Hume, who goes so
far as to doubt the existence of the newspaper in which our adventures
are now appearing; but it would neither become my cloth, nor do credit
to my great experience, were I to meddle with these dangerous opinions.
My alarm for you is not metaphysical, it is moral in its origin: You
must be aware, my poor friend, that you are a very bad character--the
worst indeed that I have met with in these pages. The author hates you,
Count; and difficult as it may be to connect the idea of
immortality--or, in plain terms, of a sequel--with the paper and
printer's ink of which your humanity is made, it is yet more difficult
to foresee anything but punishment and pain for one who is justly
hateful in the eyes of his creator."
"You take for granted many things that I shall not easily be persuaded
to allow," replied the villain. "Do you really so far deceive yourself
in your imagination as to fancy that the author is a friend to good?
Read; read the book in which you figure; and you will soon disown such
crude vulgarities. Lelio is a good character; yet only two chapters ago
we left him in a fine predicament. His old servant was a model of the
virtues, yet did he not miserably perish in that ambuscade upon the road
to Poitiers? And as for the family of the bankrupt merchant, how is it
possible for greater moral qualities to be alive with more irremediable
misfortunes? And yet you continue to misrepresent an author to yourself,
as a deity devoted to virtue and inimical to vice? Pray, if you have no
pride in your own intellectual credit for yourself, spare at least the
sensibilities of your associates."
"The purposes of the serial story," answered the Priest, "are, doubtless
for some wise reason, hidden from those who act in it. To this
limitation we must bow. But I ask every character to observe narrowly
his own personal relations to the author. There, if nowhere else, we may
glean some hint of his superior designs. Now I am myself a mingled
personage, liable to doubts, to scruples, and to sudden revulsions of
feeling; I reason continually about life, and frequently the result of
my reasoning is to condemn or even to change my action. I am now
convinced, for example, that I did wrong in joining in your plot against
the innocent and most unfortunate Lelio. I told you so, you will
remember, in the chapter which has just been concluded and though I do
not know whether you perceived the ardour and fluency with which I
expressed myself, I am still confident in my own heart that I spoke at
that moment not only with the warm approval, but under the direct
inspiration, of the author of the tale. I know, Spada, I tell you I
_know_, that he loved me as I uttered these words; and yet at other
periods of my career I have been conscious of his indifference and
dislike. You must not seek to reason me from this conviction; for it is
supplied me from higher authority than that of reason, and is indeed a
part of my experience. It may be an illusion that I drove last night
from Saumur; it may be an illusion that we are now in the garden chamber
of the château; it may be an illusion that I am conversing with Count
Spada; you may be an illusion, Count, yourself; but of three things I
will remain eternally persuaded, that the author exists not only in the
newspaper but in my own heart, that he loves me when I do well, and that
he hates and despises me when I do otherwise."
"I too believe in the author," returned the Count. "I believe likewise
in a sequel, written in finer style and probably cast in a still higher
rank of society than the present story; although I am not convinced that
we shall then be conscious of our pre-existence here. So much of your
argument is, therefore, beside the mark; for to a certain point I am as
orthodox as yourself. But where you begin to draw general conclusions
from your own private experience, I must beg pointedly and finally to
differ. You will not have forgotten, I believe, my daring and
single-handed butchery of the five secret witnesses? Nor the sleight of
mind and dexterity of language with which I separated Lelio from the
merchant's family? These were not virtuous actions; and yet, how am I to
tell you? I was conscious of a troubled joy, a glee, a hellish gusto in
my author's bosom, which seemed to renew my vigour with every sentence,
and which has indeed made the first of these passages accepted for a
model of spirited narrative description, and the second for a
masterpiece of wickedness and wit. What result, then, can be drawn from
two experiences so contrary as yours and mine? For my part, I lay it
down as a principle, no author can be moral in a merely human sense.
And, to pursue the argument higher, how can you, for one instant,
suppose the existence of free-will in puppets situated as we are in the
thick of a novel which we do not even understand? And how, without
free-will upon our parts, can you justify blame or approval on that of
the author? We are in his hands; by a stroke of the pen, to speak
reverently, he made us what we are; by a stroke of the pen he can
utterly undo and transmute what he has made. In the very next chapter,
my dear General, you may be shown up for an impostor, or I be stricken
down in the tears of penitence and hurried into the retirement of a
monastery!"
"You use an argument old as mankind, and difficult of answer," said the
Priest. "I cannot justify the free-will of which I am usually conscious;
nor will I ever seek to deny that this consciousness is interrupted.
Sometimes events mount upon me with such swiftness and pressure that my
choice is overwhelmed, and even to myself I seem to obey a will external
to my own; and again I am sometimes so paralysed and impotent between
alternatives that I am tempted to imagine a hesitation on the part of my
author. But I contend, upon the other hand, for a limited free-will in
the sphere of consciousness; and as it is in and by my consciousness
that I exist to myself, I will not go on to inquire whether that
free-will is valid as against the author, the newspaper, or even the
readers of the story. And I contend, further, for a sort of empire or
independence of our own characters when once created, which the author
cannot or at least does not choose to violate. Hence Lelio was conceived
upright, honest, courageous, and headlong; to that first idea all his
acts and speeches must of necessity continue to answer; and the same,
though with such different defects and qualities, applies to you, Count
Spada, and to myself. We must act up to our characters; it is these
characters that the author loves or despises; it is on account of them
that we must suffer or triumph, whether in this work or in a sequel.
Such is my belief."
"It is pure Calvinistic election, my dear sir, and, by your leave, a
very heretical position for a churchman to support," replied the Count.
"Nor can I see how it removes the difficulty. I was not consulted as to
my character; I might have chosen to be Lelio; I might have chosen to be
yourself; I might even have preferred to figure in a different romance,
or not to enter into the world of literature at all. And am I to be
blamed or hated, because some one else wilfully and inhumanely made me
what I am, and has continued ever since to encourage me in what are
called my vices? You may say what you please, my dear sir, but if that
is the case, I had rather be a telegram from the seat of war than a
reasonable and conscious character in a romance; nay, and I have a
perfect right to repudiate, loathe, curse, and utterly condemn the
ruffian who calls himself the author."
"You have, as you say, a perfect right," replied the Jesuit; "and I am
convinced that it will not affect him in the least."
"He shall have one slave the fewer for me," added the Count. "I discard
my allegiance once for all."
"As you please," concluded the other; "but at least be ready, for I
perceive we are about to enter on the scene."
And, indeed, just at that moment, Chapter XXXIV. being completed,
Chapter XXXV., "The Count's Chastisement," began to appear in the
columns of the newspaper.
IV. SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY.--(1) A little society is needful to show a man
his failings; for if he lives entirely by himself, he has no occasion to
fall, and like a soldier in time of peace, becomes both weak and vain.
But a little solitude must be used, or we grow content with current
virtues and forget the ideal. In society we lose scrupulous brightness
of honour; in solitude we lose the courage necessary to face our own
imperfections. (2) As a question of pleasure, after a man has reached a
certain age, I can hardly perceive much room to choose between them:
each is in a way delightful, and each will please best after an
experience of the other. (3) But solitude for its own sake should surely
never be preferred. We are bound by the strongest obligations to busy
ourselves amid the world of men, if it be only to crack jokes. The
finest trait in the character of St. Paul was his readiness to be damned
for the salvation of anybody else. And surely we should all endure a
little weariness to make one face look brighter or one hour go more
pleasantly in this mixed world. (4) It is our business here to speak,
for it is by the tongue that we multiply ourselves most influentially.
To speak kindly, wisely, and pleasantly is the first of duties, the
easiest of duties, and the duty that is most blessed in its performance.
For it is natural, it whiles away life, it spreads intelligence; and it
increases the acquaintance of man with man. (5) It is, besides, a good
investment, for while all other pleasures decay, and even the delight in
nature, Grandfather William is still bent to gossip. (6) Solitude is the
climax of the negative virtues. When we go to bed after a solitary day
we can tell ourselves that we have not been unkind nor dishonest nor
untruthful; and the negative virtues are agreeable to that dangerous
faculty we call the conscience. That they should ever be admitted for a
part of virtue is what I cannot explain. I do not care two straws for
all the _nots_. (7) The positive virtues are imperfect; they are even
ugly in their imperfection: for man's acts, by the necessity of his
being, are coarse and mingled. The kindest, in the course of a day of
active kindnesses, will say some things rudely, and do some things
cruelly; the most honourable, perhaps, trembles at his nearness to a
doubtful act. (8) Hence the solitary recoils from the practice of life,
shocked by its unsightlinesses. But if I could only retain that
superfine and guiding delicacy of the sense that grows in solitude, and
still combine with it that courage of performance which is never abashed
by any failure, but steadily pursues its right and human design in a
scene of imperfection, I might hope to strike in the long-run a conduct
more tender to others and less humiliating to myself.
V. SELFISHNESS AND EGOISM.--An unconscious, easy, selfish person shocks
less, and is more easily loved, than one who is laboriously and
egotistically unselfish. There is at least no fuss about the first; but
the other parades his sacrifices, and so sells his favours too dear.
Selfishness is calm, a force of nature: you might say the trees were
selfish. But egoism is a piece of vanity; it must always take you into
its confidence; it is uneasy, troublesome, seeking; it can do good, but
not handsomely; it is uglier, because less dignified, than selfishness
itself. But here I perhaps exaggerate to myself, because I am the one
more than the other, and feel it like a hook in my mouth, at every step
I take. Do what I will, this seems to spoil all.
VI. RIGHT AND WRONG.--It is the mark of a good action that it appears
inevitable in the retrospect. We should have been cut-throats to do
otherwise. And there's an end. We ought to know distinctly that we are
damned for what we do wrong; but when we have done right, we have only
been gentlemen, after all. There is nothing to make a work about.
VII. DISCIPLINE OF CONSCIENCE.--(1) Never allow your mind to dwell on
your own misconduct: that is ruin. The conscience has morbid
sensibilities; it must be employed but not indulged, like the
imagination or the stomach. (2) Let each stab suffice for the occasion;
to play with this spiritual pain turns to penance; and a person easily
learns to feel good by dallying with the consciousness of having done
wrong. (3) Shut your eyes hard against the recollection of your sins. Do
not be afraid, you will not be able to forget them. (4) You will always
do wrong: you must try to get used to that, my son. It is a small matter
to make a work about, when all the world is in the same case. I meant
when I was a young man to write a great poem; and now I am cobbling
little prose articles and in excellent good spirits, I thank you. So,
too, I meant to lead a life that should keep mounting from the first;
and though I have been repeatedly down again below sea-level, and am
scarce higher than when I started, I am as keen as ever for that
enterprise. Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to
continue to fail, in good spirits. (5) There is but one test of a good
life: that the man shall continue to grow more difficult about his own
behaviour. That is to be good: there is no other virtue attainable. The
virtues we admire in the saint and the hero are the fruits of a happy
constitution. You, for your part, must not think you will ever be a good
man, for these are born and not made. You will have your own reward, if
you keep on growing better than you were--how do I say? if you do not
keep on growing worse. (6) A man is one thing, and must be exercised in
all his faculties. Whatever side of you is neglected, whether it is the
muscles, or the taste for art, or the desire for virtue, that which is
cultivated will suffer in proportion. ---- was greatly tempted, I
remember, to do a very dishonest act, in order that he might pursue his
studies in art. When he consulted me, I advised him not (putting it that
way for once), because his art would suffer. (7) It might be fancied
that if we could only study all sides of our being in an exact
proportion, we should attain wisdom. But in truth a chief part of
education is to exercise one set of faculties _à outrance_--one, since
we have not the time so to practise all; thus the dilettante misses the
kernel of the matter; and the man who has wrung forth the secret of one
part of life knows more about the others than he who has tepidly
circumnavigated all. (8) Thus, one must be your profession, the rest can
only be your delights; and virtue had better be kept for the latter, for
it enters into all, but none enters by necessity into it. You will learn
a great deal of virtue by studying any art; but nothing of any art in
the study of virtue. (9) The study of conduct has to do with grave
problems; not every action should be higgled over; one of the leading
virtues therein is to let oneself alone. But if you make it your chief
employment, you are sure to meddle too much. This is the great error of
those who are called pious. Although the war of virtue be unending
except with life, hostilities are frequently suspended, and the troops
go into winter quarters; but the pious will not profit by these times of
truce; where their conscience can perceive no sin, they will find a sin
in that very innocency; and so they pervert, to their annoyance, those
seasons which God gives to us for repose and a reward. (10) The nearest
approximation to sense in all this matter lies with the Quakers. There
must be no _will_-worship; how much more, no _will_-repentance! The
damnable consequence of set seasons, even for prayer, is to have a man
continually posturing to himself, till his conscience is taught as many
tricks as a pet monkey, and the gravest expressions are left with a
perverted meaning. (11) For my part, I should try to secure some part of
every day for meditation, above all in the early morning and the open
air; but how that time was to be improved I should leave to circumstance
and the inspiration of the hour. Nor if I spent it in whistling or
numbering my footsteps, should I consider it misspent for that. I should
have given my conscience a fair field; when it has anything to say, I
know too well it can speak daggers; therefore, for this time, my hard
taskmaster has given me a holyday, and I may go in again rejoicing to my
breakfast and the human business of the day.
VIII. GRATITUDE TO GOD.--(1) To the gratitude that becomes us in this
life, I can set no limit. Though we steer after a fashion, yet we must
sail according to the winds and currents. After what I have done, what
might I not have done? That I have still the courage to attempt my life,
that I am not now overladen with dishonours, to whom do I owe it but to
the gentle ordering of circumstances in the great design? More has not
been done to me than I can bear; I have been marvellously restrained and
helped; not unto us, O Lord! (2) I cannot forgive God for the suffering
of others; when I look abroad upon His world and behold its cruel
destinies, I turn from Him with disaffection; nor do I conceive that He
will blame me for the impulse. But when I consider my own fates, I grow
conscious of His gentle dealing: I see Him chastise with helpful blows,
I feel His stripes to be caresses; and this knowledge is my comfort that
reconciles me to the world. (3) All those whom I now pity with
indignation, are perhaps not less fatherly dealt with than myself. I do
right to be angry: yet they, perhaps, if they lay aside heat and temper,
and reflect with patience on their lot, may find everywhere, in their
worst trials, the same proofs of a divine affection. (4) While we have
little to try us, we are angry with little; small annoyances do not bear
their justification on their faces; but when we are overtaken by a great
sorrow or perplexity, the greatness of our concern sobers us so that we
see more clearly and think with more consideration. I speak for myself;
nothing grave has yet befallen me but I have been able to reconcile my
mind to its occurrence, and see in it, from my own little and partial
point of view, an evidence of a tender and protecting God. Even the
misconduct into which I have been led has been blessed to my
improvement. If I did not sin, and that so glaringly that my conscience
is convicted on the spot, I do not know what I should become, but I feel
sure I should grow worse. The man of very regular conduct is too often a
prig, if he be not worse--a rabbi. I, for my part, want to be startled
out of my conceits; I want to be put to shame in my own eyes; I want to
feel the bridle in my mouth, and be continually reminded of my own
weakness and the omnipotence of circumstances. (5) If I from my
spy-hole, looking with purblind eyes upon the least part of a fraction
of the universe, yet perceive in my own destiny some broken evidences
of a plan and some signals of an overruling goodness; shall I then be so
mad as to complain that all cannot be deciphered? Shall I not rather
wonder, with infinite and grateful surprise, that in so vast a scheme I
seem to have been able to read, however little, and that that little was
encouraging to faith?
IX. BLAME.--What comes from without and what from within, how much of
conduct proceeds from the spirit or how much from circumstances, what is
the part of choice and what the part of the selection offered, where
personal character begins or where, if anywhere, it escapes at all from
the authority of nature, these are questions of curiosity and eternally
indifferent to right and wrong. Our theory of blame is utterly
sophisticated and untrue to man's experience. We are as much ashamed of
a pimpled face that came to us by natural descent as by one that we have
earned by our excesses, and rightly so; since the two cases, in so much
as they unfit us for the easier sort of pleasing and put an obstacle in
the path of love, are exactly equal in their consequence. We look aside
from the true question. We cannot blame others at all; we can only
punish them; and ourselves we blame indifferently for a deliberate
crime, a thoughtless brusquerie, or an act done without volition in an
ecstasy of madness. We blame ourselves from two considerations: first,
because another has suffered; and second, because, in so far as we have
again done wrong, we can look forward with the less confidence to what
remains of our career. Shall we repent this failure? It is there that
the consciousness of sin most cruelly affects us; it is in view of this
that a man cries out, in exaggeration, that his heart is desperately
wicked and deceitful above all things. We all tacitly subscribe this
judgment: Woe unto him by whom offences shall come! We accept
palliations for our neighbours; we dare not, in sight of our own soul,
accept them for ourselves. We may not be to blame; we may be conscious
of no free will in the matter, of a possession, on the other hand, or
an irresistible tyranny of circumstance,--yet we know, in another sense,
we are to blame for all. Our right to live, to eat, to share in
mankind's pleasures, lies precisely in this: that we must be persuaded
we can on the whole live rather beneficially than hurtfully to others.
Remove this persuasion, and the man has lost his right. That persuasion
is our dearest jewel, to which we must sacrifice the life itself to
which it entitles us. For it is better to be dead than degraded.
X. MARRIAGE.--(1) No considerate man can approach marriage without deep
concern. I, he will think, who have made hitherto so poor a business of
my own life, am now about to embrace the responsibility of another's.
Henceforth, there shall be two to suffer from my faults; and that other
is the one whom I most desire to shield from suffering. In view of our
impotence and folly, it seems an act of presumption to involve another's
destiny with ours. We should hesitate to assume command of an army or a
trading-smack; shall we not hesitate to become surety for the life and
happiness, now and henceforward, of our dearest friend? To be nobody's
enemy but one's own, although it is never possible to any, can least of
all be possible to one who is married. (2) I would not so much fear to
give hostages to fortune, if fortune ruled only in material things; but
fortune, as we call those minor and more inscrutable workings of
providence, rules also in the sphere of conduct. I am not so blind but
that I know I might be a murderer or even a traitor to-morrow; and now,
as if I were not already too feelingly alive to my misdeeds, I must
choose out the one person whom I most desire to please, and make her the
daily witness of my failures, I must give a part in all my dishonours to
the one person who can feel them more keenly than myself. (3) In all our
daring, magnanimous human way of life, I find nothing more bold than
this. To go into battle is but a small thing by comparison. It is the
last act of committal. After that, there is no way left, not even
suicide, but to be a good man. (4) She will help you, let us pray. And
yet she is in the same case; she, too, has daily made shipwreck of her
own happiness and worth; it is with a courage no less irrational than
yours, that she also ventures on this new experiment of life. Two who
have failed severally, now join their fortunes with a wavering hope. (5)
But it is from the boldness of the enterprise that help springs. To take
home to your hearth that living witness whose blame will most affect
you, to eat, to sleep, to live with your most admiring and thence most
exacting judge, is not this to domesticate the living God? Each becomes
a conscience to the other, legible like a clock upon the chimney-piece.
Each offers to his mate a figure of the consequence of human acts. And
while I may still continue by my inconsiderate or violent life to spread
far-reaching havoc throughout man's confederacy, I can do so no more, at
least, in ignorance and levity; one face shall wince before me in the
flesh; I have taken home the sorrows I create to my own hearth and bed;
and though I continue to sin, it must be now with open eyes.
XI. IDLENESS AND INDUSTRY.--I remember a time when I was very idle; and
lived and profited by that humour. I have no idea why I ceased to be so,
yet I scarce believe I have the power to return to it; it is a change of
age. I made consciously a thousand little efforts, but the determination
from which these arose came to me while I slept and in the way of
growth. I have had a thousand skirmishes to keep myself at work upon
particular mornings, and sometimes the affair was hot; but of that great
change of campaign, which decided all this part of my life, and turned
me from one whose business was to shirk into one whose business was to
strive and persevere,--it seems as though all that had been done by some
one else. The life of Goethe affected me; so did that of Balzac; and
some very noble remarks by the latter in a pretty bad book, the
"Cousine Bette." I daresay I could trace some other influences in the
change. All I mean is, I was never conscious of a struggle, nor
registered a vow, nor seemingly had anything personally to do with the
matter. I came about like a well-handled ship. There stood at the wheel
that unknown steersman whom we call God.
XII. COURAGE.--Courage is the principal virtue, for all the others
presuppose it. If you are afraid, you may do anything. Courage is to be
cultivated, and some of the negative virtues may be sacrificed in the
cultivation.
XIII. RESULTS OF ACTION.--The result is the reward of actions, not the
test. The result is a child born; if it be beautiful and healthy, well:
if club-footed or crook-back, perhaps well also. We cannot direct ...
[1878?]
XV
THE IDEAL HOUSE
Two things are necessary in any neighbourhood where we propose to spend
a life: a desert and some living water.
There are many parts of the earth's face which offer the necessary
combination of a certain wildness with a kindly variety. A great
prospect is desirable, but the want may be otherwise supplied; even
greatness can be found on the small scale; for the mind and the eye
measure differently. Bold rocks near hand are more inspiriting than
distant Alps, and the thick fern upon a Surrey heath makes a fine forest
for the imagination, and the dotted yew trees noble mountains. A
Scottish moor with birches and firs grouped here and there upon a knoll,
or one of those rocky sea-side deserts of Provence overgrown with
rosemary and thyme and smoking with aroma, are places where the mind is
never weary. Forests, being more enclosed, are not at first sight so
attractive, but they exercise a spell; they must, however, be
diversified with either heath or rock, and are hardly to be considered
perfect without conifers. Even sand-hills, with their intricate plan,
and their gulls and rabbits, will stand well for the necessary desert.
The house must be within hail of either a little river or the sea. A
great river is more fit for poetry than to adorn a neighbourhood; its
sweep of waters increases the scale of the scenery and the distance of
one notable object from another; and a lively burn gives us, in the
space of a few yards, a greater variety of promontory and islet, of
cascade, shallow goil, and boiling pool, with answerable changes both
of song and colour, than a navigable stream in many hundred miles. The
fish, too, make a more considerable feature of the brook-side, and the
trout plumping in the shadow takes the ear. A stream should, besides, be
narrow enough to cross, or the burn hard by a bridge, or we are at once
shut out of Eden. The quantity of water need be of no concern, for the
mind sets the scale, and can enjoy a Niagara Fall of thirty inches. Let
us approve the singer of
"Shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals."
If the sea is to be our ornamental water, choose an open seaboard with a
heavy beat of surf; one much broken in outline, with small havens and
dwarf headlands; if possible a few islets; and as a first necessity,
rocks reaching out into deep water. Such a rock on a calm day is a
better station than the top of Teneriffe or Chimborazo. In short, both
for the desert and the water, the conjunction of many near and bold
details is bold scenery for the imagination and keeps the mind alive.
Given these two prime luxuries, the nature of the country where we are
to live is, I had almost said, indifferent; after that, inside the
garden, we can construct a country of our own. Several old trees, a
considerable variety of level, several well-grown hedges to divide our
garden into provinces, a good extent of old well-set turf, and thickets
of shrubs and evergreens to be cut into and cleared at the new owner's
pleasure, are the qualities to be sought for in your chosen land.
Nothing is more delightful than a succession of small lawns, opening one
out of the other through tall hedges; these have all the charm of the
old bowling-green repeated, do not require the labour of many trimmers,
and afford a series of changes. You must have much lawn against the
early summer, so as to have a great field of daisies, the year's morning
frost; as you must have a wood of lilacs, to enjoy to the full the
period of their blossoming. Hawthorn is another of the spring's
ingredients; but it is even best to have a rough public lane at one side
of your enclosure which, at the right season, shall become an avenue of
bloom and odour. The old flowers are the best and should grow carelessly
in corners. Indeed, the ideal fortune is to find an old garden, once
very richly cared for, since sunk into neglect, and to tend, not repair,
that neglect; it will thus have a smack of nature and wildness which
skilful dispositions cannot overtake. The gardener should be an idler,
and have a gross partiality to the kitchen plots: an eager or toilful
gardener mis-becomes the garden landscape; a tasteful gardener will be
ever meddling, will keep the borders raw, and take the bloom off nature.
Close adjoining, if you are in the south, an olive-yard, if in the
north, a swarded apple-orchard reaching to the stream, completes your
miniature domain; but this is perhaps best entered through a door in the
high fruit-wall; so that you close the door behind you on your sunny
plots, your hedges and evergreen jungle, when you go down to watch the
apples falling in the pool. It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden
for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves. Nor must the
ear be forgotten: without birds, a garden is a prison-yard. There is a
garden near Marseilles on a steep hill-side, walking by which, upon a
sunny morning, your ear will suddenly be ravished with a burst of small
and very cheerful singing: some score of cages being set out there to
sun the occupants. This is a heavenly surprise to any passer-by; but the
price paid, to keep so many ardent and winged creatures from their
liberty, will make the luxury too dear for any thoughtful
pleasure-lover. There is only one sort of bird that I can tolerate
caged, though even then I think it hard, and that is what is called in
France the Bec-d'Argent. I once had two of these pigmies in captivity;
and in the quiet, bare house upon a silent street where I was then
living, their song, which was not much louder than a bee's, but airily
musical, kept me in a perpetual good humour. I put the cage upon my
table when I worked, carried it with me when I went for meals, and kept
it by my head at night: the first thing in the morning, these
_maestrini_ would pipe up. But these, even if you can pardon their
imprisonment, are for the house. In the garden the wild birds must plant
a colony, a chorus of the lesser warblers that should be almost
deafening, a blackbird in the lilacs, a nightingale down the lane, so
that you must stroll to hear it, and yet a little farther, tree-tops
populous with rooks.
Your house should not command much outlook; it should be set deep and
green, though upon rising ground, or, if possible, crowning a knoll, for
the sake of drainage. Yet it must be open to the east, or you will miss
the sunrise; sunset occurring so much later, you can go up a few steps
and look the other way. A house of more than two stories is a mere
barrack; indeed the ideal is of one story, raised upon cellars. If the
rooms are large, the house may be small: a single room, lofty, spacious,
and lightsome, is more palatial than a castleful of cabinets and
cupboards. Yet size in a house, and some extent and intricacy of
corridor, is certainly delightful to the flesh. The reception room
should be, if possible, a place of many recesses, which are "petty
retiring places for conference"; but it must have one long wall with a
divan: for a day spent upon a divan, among a world of cushions, is as
full of diversion as to travel. The eating-room, in the French mode,
should be _ad hoc_: unfurnished, but with a buffet, the table, necessary
chairs, one or two of Canaletto's etchings, and a tile fire-place for
the winter. In neither of these public places should there be anything
beyond a shelf or two of books; but the passages may be one library from
end to end, and the stair, if there be one, lined with volumes in old
leather, very brightly carpeted, and leading half-way up, and by way of
landing, to a windowed recess with a fire-place; this window, almost
alone in the house, should command a handsome prospect. Husband and wife
must each possess a studio; on the woman's sanctuary I hesitate to
dwell, and turn to the man's. The walls are shelved waist-high for
books, and the top thus forms a continuous table running round the wall.
Above are prints, a large map of the neighbourhood, a Corot and a Claude
or two. The room is very spacious, and the five tables and two chairs
are but as islands. One table is for actual work, one close by for
references in use; one, very large, for MSS. or proofs that wait their
turn; one kept clear for an occasion; and the fifth is the map table,
groaning under a collection of large-scale maps and charts. Of all books
these are the least wearisome to read and the richest in matter; the
course of roads and rivers, the contour lines and the forests in the
maps--the reefs, soundings, anchors, sailing marks and little
pilot-pictures in the charts--and, in both, the bead-roll of names, make
them of all printed matter the most fit to stimulate and satisfy the
fancy. The chair in which you write is very low and easy, and backed
into a corner; at one elbow the fire twinkles; close at the other, if
you are a little inhumane, your cage of silver-bills are twittering into
song.
Joined along by a passage, you may reach the great sunny, glass-roofed,
and tiled gymnasium, at the far end of which, lined with bright marble,
is your plunge and swimming bath, fitted with a capacious boiler.
The whole loft of the house from end to end makes one undivided chamber;
here are set forth tables on which to model imaginary or actual
countries in putty or plaster, with tools and hardy pigments; a
carpenter's bench; and a spared corner for photography, while at the far
end a space is kept clear for playing soldiers. Two boxes contain the
two armies of some five hundred horse and foot; two others the
ammunition of each side, and a fifth the foot-rules and the three
colours of chalk, with which you lay down, or, after a day's play,
refresh the outlines of the country; red or white for the two kinds of
road (according as they are suitable or not for the passage of
ordnance), and blue for the course of the obstructing rivers. Here I
foresee that you may pass much happy time; against a good adversary a
game may well continue for a month; for with armies so considerable
three moves will occupy an hour. It will be found to set an excellent
edge on this diversion if one of the players shall, every day or so,
write a report of the operations in the character of army correspondent.
I have left to the last the little room for winter evenings. This should
be furnished in warm positive colours, and sofas and floor thick with
rich furs. The hearth, where you burn wood of aromatic quality on silver
dogs, tiled round about with Bible pictures; the seats deep and easy; a
single Titian in a gold frame; a white bust or so upon a bracket; a rack
for the journals of the week; a table for the books of the year; and
close in a corner the three shelves full of eternal books that never
weary: Shakespeare, Molière, Montaigne, Lamb, Sterne, De Musset's
comedies (the one volume open at _Carmosine_ and the other at
_Fantasio_); the "Arabian Nights," and kindred stories, in Weber's
solemn volumes; Borrow's "Bible in Spain," the "Pilgrim's Progress,"
"Guy Mannering," and "Rob Roy," "Monte Cristo," and the "Vicomte de
Bragelonne," immortal Boswell sole among biographers, Chaucer, Herrick,
and the "State Trials."
The bedrooms are large, airy, with almost no furniture, floors of
varnished wood, and at the bed-head, in case of insomnia, one shelf of
books of a particular and dippable order, such as "Pepys," the "Paston
Letters," Burt's "Letters from the Highlands," or the "Newgate
Calendar." ...
[1884?]
LAY MORALS
_The following chapters of a projected treatise on Ethics were
drafted at Edinburgh in the spring of 1879. They are unrevised, and
must not be taken as representing, either as to matter or form, their
author's final thoughts; but they contain much that is essentially
characteristic of his mind._
LAY MORALS
CHAPTER I
The problem of education is twofold: first to know, and then to utter.
Every one who lives any semblance of an inner life thinks more nobly and
profoundly than he speaks; and the best of teachers can impart only
broken images of the truth which they perceive. Speech which goes from
one to another between two natures, and, what is worse, between two
experiences, is doubly relative. The speaker buries his meaning; it is
for the hearer to dig it up again; and all speech, written or spoken, is
in a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. Such,
moreover, is the complexity of life, that when we condescend upon
details in our advice, we may be sure we condescend on error; and the
best of education is to throw out some magnanimous hints. No man was
ever so poor that he could express all he has in him by words, looks, or
actions; his true knowledge is eternally incommunicable, for it is a
knowledge of himself; and his best wisdom comes to him by no process of
the mind, but in a supreme self-dictation, which keeps varying from hour
to hour in its dictates with the variation of events and circumstances.
A few men of picked nature, full of faith, courage, and contempt for
others, try earnestly to set forth as much as they can grasp of this
inner law; but the vast majority, when they come to advise the young,
must be content to retail certain doctrines which have been already
retailed to them in their own youth. Every generation has to educate
another which it has brought upon the stage. People who readily accept
the responsibility of parentship, having very different matters in their
eye, are apt to feel rueful when their responsibility falls due. What
are they to tell the child about life and conduct, subjects on which
they have themselves so few and such confused opinions? Indeed, I do not
know; the least said, perhaps, the soonest mended; and yet the child
keeps asking, and the parent must find some words to say in his own
defence. Where does he find them? and what are they when found?
As a matter of experience, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out
of a thousand, he will instil into his wide-eyed brat three bad things;
the terror of public opinion, and, flowing from that as a fountain, the
desire of wealth and applause. Besides these, or what might be deduced
as corollaries from these, he will teach not much else of any effective
value: some dim notions of divinity, perhaps, and book-keeping, and how
to walk through a quadrille.
But, you may tell me, the young people are taught to be Christians. It
may be want of penetration, but I have not yet been able to perceive it.
As an honest man, whatever we teach, and be it good or evil, it is not
the doctrine of Christ. What He taught (and in this He is like all other
teachers worthy of the name) was not a code of rules, but a ruling
spirit; not truths, but a spirit of truth; not views, but a view. What
He showed us was an attitude of mind. Towards the many considerations on
which conduct is built, each man stands in a certain relation. He takes
life on a certain principle. He has a compass in his spirit which points
in a certain direction. It is the attitude, the relation, the point of
the compass, that is the whole body and gist of what he has to teach us;
in this, the details are comprehended; out of this the specific precepts
issue, and by this, and this only, can they be explained and applied.
And thus, to learn aright from any teacher, we must first of all, like a
historical artist, think ourselves into sympathy with his position and,
in the technical phrase, create his character. A historian confronted
with some ambiguous politician, or an actor charged with a part, have
but one pre-occupation; they must search all round and upon every side,
and grope for some central conception which is to explain and justify
the most extreme details; until that is found, the politician is an
enigma, or perhaps a quack, and the part a tissue of fustian sentiment
and big words; but once that is found, all enters into a plan, a human
nature appears, the politician or the stage-king is understood from
point to point, from end to end. This is a degree of trouble which will
be gladly taken by a very humble artist; but not even the terror of
eternal fire can teach a business man to bend his imagination to such
athletic efforts. Yet without this, all is vain; until we understand the
whole, we shall understand none of the parts; and otherwise we have no
more than broken images and scattered words; the meaning remains buried;
and the language in which our prophet speaks to us is a dead language in
our ears.
Take a few of Christ's sayings and compare them with our current
doctrines.
"_Ye cannot_," He says, "_serve God and Mammon_." Cannot? And our whole
system is to teach us how we can!
"_The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the
children of light._" Are they? I had been led to understand the reverse:
that the Christian merchant, for example, prospered exceedingly in his
affairs; that honesty was the best policy; that an author of repute had
written a conclusive treatise "How to make the best of both worlds." Of
both worlds indeed! Which am I to believe then--Christ or the author of
repute?
"_Take no thought for the morrow._" Ask the Successful Merchant;
interrogate your own heart; and you will have to admit that this is not
only a silly but an immoral position. All we believe, all we hope, all
we honour in ourselves or our contemporaries, stands condemned in this
one sentence, or, if you take the other view, condemns the sentence as
unwise and inhumane. We are not then of the "same mind that was in
Christ." We disagree with Christ. Either Christ meant nothing, or else
He or we must be in the wrong. Well says Thoreau, speaking of some texts
from the New Testament, and finding a strange echo of another style
which the reader may recognise: "Let but one of these sentences be
rightly read from any pulpit in the land, and there would not be left
one stone of that meeting-house upon another."
It may be objected that these are what are called "hard sayings"; and
that a man, or an education, may be very sufficiently Christian although
it leave some of these sayings upon one side. But this is a very gross
delusion. Although truth is difficult to state, it is both easy and
agreeable to receive, and the mind runs out to meet it ere the phrase be
done. The universe, in relation to what any man can say of it, is plain,
patent, and staringly comprehensible. In itself, it is a great and
travailing ocean, unsounded, unvoyageable, an eternal mystery to man;
or, let us say, it is a monstrous and impassable mountain, one side of
which, and a few near slopes and foothills, we can dimly study with
these mortal eyes. But what any man can say of it, even in his highest
utterance, must have relation to this little and plain corner, which is
no less visible to us than to him. We are looking on the same map; it
will go hard if we cannot follow the demonstration. The longest and most
abstruse flight of a philosopher becomes clear and shallow, in the flash
of a moment, when we suddenly perceive the aspect and drift of his
intention. The longest argument is but a finger pointed; once we get our
own finger rightly parallel, and we see what the man meant, whether it
be a new star or an old street-lamp. And briefly, if a saying is hard to
understand, it is because we are thinking of something else.
But to be a true disciple is to think of the same things as our
prophet, and to think of different things in the same order. To be of
the same mind with another is to see all things in the same perspective;
it is not to agree in a few indifferent matters near at hand and not
much debated; it is to follow him in his farthest flights, to see the
force of his hyperboles, to stand so exactly in the centre of his vision
that whatever he may express, your eyes will light at once on the
original, that whatever he may see to declare, your mind will at once
accept. You do not belong to the school of any philosopher, because you
agree with him that theft is, on the whole, objectionable, or that the
sun is overhead at noon. It is by the hard sayings that discipleship is
tested. We are all agreed about the middling and indifferent parts of
knowledge and morality; even the most soaring spirits too often take
them tamely upon trust. But the man, the philosopher or the moralist,
does not stand upon these chance adhesions; and the purpose of any
system looks towards those extreme points where it steps valiantly
beyond tradition and returns with some covert hint of things outside.
Then only can you be certain that the words are not words of course, nor
mere echoes of the past; then only are you sure that if he be indicating
anything at all, it is a star and not a street-lamp; then only do you
touch the heart of the mystery; since it was for these that the author
wrote his book.
Now, every now and then, and indeed surprisingly often, Christ finds a
word that transcends all commonplace morality; every now and then He
quits the beaten track to pioneer the unexpressed, and throws out a
pregnant and magnanimous hyperbole; for it is only by some bold poetry
of thought that men can be strung up above the level of everyday
conceptions to take a broader look upon experience or accept some higher
principle of conduct. To a man who is of the same mind that was in
Christ, who stands at some centre not too far from His, and looks at the
world and conduct from some not dissimilar or, at least, not opposing
attitude--or, shortly, to a man who is of Christ's philosophy--every
such saying should come home with a thrill of joy and corroboration; he
should feel each one below his feet as another sure foundation in the
flux of time and chance; each should be another proof that in the
torrent of the years and generations, where doctrines and great
armaments and empires are swept away and swallowed, he stands immovable,
holding by the eternal stars. But, alas! at this juncture of the ages it
is not so with us; on each and every such occasion our whole fellowship
of Christians falls back in disapproving wonder and implicitly denies
the saying. Christians! the farce is impudently broad. Let us stand up
in the sight of heaven and confess. The ethics that we hold are those of
Benjamin Franklin. _Honesty is the best policy_, is perhaps a hard
saying; it is certainly one by which a wise man of these days will not
too curiously direct his steps; but I think it shows a glimmer of
meaning to even our most dimmed intelligences; I think we perceive a
principle behind it; I think, without hyperbole, we are of the same mind
that was in Benjamin Franklin.
CHAPTER II
But, I may be told, we teach the ten commandments, where a world of
morals lies condensed, the very pith and epitome of all ethics and
religion; and a young man with these precepts engraved upon his mind
must follow after profit with some conscience and Christianity of
method. A man cannot go very far astray who neither dishonours his
parents, nor kills, nor commits adultery, nor steals, nor bears false
witness; for these things, rightly thought out, cover a vast field of
duty.
Alas! what is a precept? It is at best an illustration; it is case law
at the best which can be learned by precept. The letter is not only
dead, but killing; the spirit which underlies, and cannot be uttered,
alone is true and helpful. This is trite to sickness; but familiarity
has a cunning disenchantment; in a day or two she can steal all beauty
from the mountain tops; and the most startling words begin to fall dead
upon the ear after several repetitions. If you see a thing too often,
you no longer see it; if you hear a thing too often, you no longer hear
it. Our attention requires to be surprised; and to carry a fort by
assault, or to gain a thoughtful hearing from the ruck of mankind, are
feats of about equal difficulty and must be tried by not dissimilar
means. The whole Bible has thus lost its message for the common run of
hearers; it has become mere words of course; and the parson may bawl
himself scarlet and beat the pulpit like a thing possessed, but his
hearers will continue to nod; they are strangely at peace; they know all
he has to say; ring the old bell as you choose, it is still the old bell
and it cannot startle their composure. And so with this byword about
the letter and the spirit. It is quite true, no doubt; but it has no
meaning in the world to any man of us. Alas! it has just this meaning,
and neither more nor less: that while the spirit is true, the letter is
eternally false.
The shadow of a great oak lies abroad upon the ground at noon, perfect,
clear, and stable like the earth. But let a man set himself to mark out
the boundary with cords and pegs, and were he never so nimble and never
so exact, what with the multiplicity of the leaves and the progression
of the shadow as it flees before the travelling sun, long ere he has
made the circuit the whole figure will have changed. Life may be
compared, not to a single tree, but to a great and complicated forest;
circumstance is more swiftly changing than a shadow, language much more
inexact than the tools of a surveyor; from day to day the trees fall and
are renewed; the very essences are fleeting as we look; and the whole
world of leaves is swinging tempest-tossed among the winds of time. Look
now for your shadows. O man of formulæ, is this a place for you? Have
you fitted the spirit to a single case? Alas, in the cycle of the ages
when shall such another be proposed for the judgment of man? Now when
the sun shines and the winds blow, the wood is filled with an
innumerable multitude of shadows, tumultuously tossed and changing; and
at every gust the whole carpet leaps and becomes new. Can you or your
heart say more?
Look back now, for a moment, on your own brief experience of life; and
although you lived it feelingly in your own person, and had every step
of conduct burned in by pains and joys upon your memory, tell me what
definite lesson does experience hand on from youth to manhood, or from
both to age? The settled tenor which first strikes the eye is but the
shadow of a delusion. This is gone; that never truly was; and you
yourself are altered beyond recognition. Times and men and circumstances
change about your changing character, with a speed of which no earthly
hurricane affords an image. What was the best yesterday, is it still the
best in this changed theatre of a to-morrow? Will your own Past truly
guide you in your own violent and unexpected Future? And if this be
questionable, with what humble, with what hopeless eyes, should we not
watch other men driving beside us on their unknown careers, seeing with
unlike eyes, impelled by different gales, doing and suffering in another
sphere of things?
And as the authentic clue to such a labyrinth and change of scene, do
you offer me these two score words? these five bald prohibitions? For
the moral precepts are no more than five; the first four deal rather
with matters of observance than of conduct; the tenth, _Thou shall not
covet_, stands upon another basis, and shall be spoken of ere long. The
Jews, to whom they were first given, in the course of years began to
find these precepts insufficient; and made an addition of no less than
six hundred and fifty others! They hoped to make a pocket-book of
reference on morals, which should stand to life in some such relation,
say, as Hoyle stands in to the scientific game of whist. The comparison
is just, and condemns the design; for those who play by rule will never
be more than tolerable players; and you and I would like to play our
game in life to the noblest and the most divine advantage. Yet if the
Jews took a petty and huckstering view of conduct, what view do we take
ourselves, who callously leave youth to go forth into the enchanted
forest, full of spells and dire chimeras, with no guidance more complete
than is afforded by these five precepts?
_Honour thy father and thy mother_. Yes, but does that mean to obey? and
if so, how long and how far? _Thou shall not kill_. Yet the very
intention and purport of the prohibition may be best fulfilled by
killing. _Thou shall not commit adultery_. But some of the ugliest
adulteries are committed in the bed of marriage and under the sanction
of religion and law. _Thou shalt not bear false witness_. How? by
speech or by silence also? or even by a smile? _Thou shalt not steal._
Ah, that indeed! But what is _to steal_?
To steal? It is another word to be construed; and who is to be our
guide? The police will give us one construction, leaving the world only
that least minimum of meaning without which society would fall in
pieces; but surely we must take some higher sense than this; surely we
hope more than a bare subsistence for mankind; surely we wish mankind to
prosper and go on from strength to strength, and ourselves to live
rightly in the eye of some more exacting potentate than a policeman. The
approval or the disapproval of the police must be eternally indifferent
to a man who is both valorous and good. There is extreme discomfort, but
no shame, in the condemnation of the law. The law represents that
modicum of morality which can be squeezed out of the ruck of mankind;
but what is that to me, who aim higher and seek to be my own more
stringent judge? I observe with pleasure that no brave man has ever
given a rush for such considerations. The Japanese have a nobler and
more sentimental feeling for this social bond into which we all are born
when we come into the world, and whose comforts and protection we all
indifferently share throughout our lives:--but even to them, no more
than to our Western saints and heroes, does the law of the state
supersede the higher law of duty. Without hesitation and without
remorse, they transgress the stiffest enactments rather than abstain
from doing right. But the accidental superior duty being thus fulfilled,
they at once return in allegiance to the common duty of all citizens;
and hasten to denounce themselves; and value at an equal rate their just
crime and their equally just submission to its punishment.
The evading of the police will not long satisfy an active conscience or
a thoughtful head. But to show you how one or the other may trouble a
man, and what a vast extent of frontier is left unridden by this
invaluable eighth commandment, let me tell you a few pages out of a
young man's life.
He was a friend of mine; a young man like others; generous, flighty, as
variable as youth itself, but always with some high motives and on the
search for higher thoughts of life. I should tell you at once that he
thoroughly agrees with the eighth commandment. But he got hold of some
unsettling works, the New Testament among others, and this loosened his
views of life and led him into many perplexities. As he was the son of a
man in a certain position, and well off, my friend had enjoyed from the
first the advantages of education, nay, he had been kept alive through a
sickly childhood by constant watchfulness, comforts, and change of air;
for all of which he was indebted to his father's wealth.
At college he met other lads more diligent than himself, who followed
the plough in summer-time to pay their college fees in winter; and this
inequality struck him with some force. He was at that age of a
conversible temper, and insatiably curious in the aspects of life; and
he spent much of his time scraping acquaintance with all classes of man-
and woman-kind. In this way he came upon many depressed ambitions, and
many intelligences stunted for want of opportunity; and this also struck
him. He began to perceive that life was a handicap upon strange,
wrong-sided principles; and not, as he had been told, a fair and equal
race. He began to tremble that he himself had been unjustly favoured,
when he saw all the avenues of wealth, and power, and comfort closed
against so many of his superiors and equals, and held unwearyingly open
before so idle, so desultory, and so dissolute a being as himself. There
sat a youth beside him on the college benches who had only one shirt to
his back, and, at intervals sufficiently far apart, must stay at home to
have it washed. It was my friend's principle to stay away as often as he
dared; for I fear he was no friend to learning. But there was something
that came home to him sharply, in this fellow who had to give over
study till his shirt was washed, and the scores of others who had never
an opportunity at all. _If one of these could take his place_, he
thought; and the thought tore away a bandage from his eyes. He was eaten
by the shame of his discoveries, and despised himself as an unworthy
favourite and a creature of the back-stairs of Fortune. He could no
longer see without confusion one of these brave young fellows battling
up-hill against adversity. Had he not filched that fellow's birthright?
At best was he not coldly profiting by the injustice of society, and
greedily devouring stolen goods? The money, indeed, belonged to his
father, who had worked, and thought, and given up his liberty to earn
it; but by what justice could the money belong to my friend, who had, as
yet, done nothing but help to squander it? A more sturdy honesty, joined
to a more even and impartial temperament, would have drawn from these
considerations a new force of industry, that this equivocal position
might be brought as swiftly as possible to an end, and some good
services to mankind justify the appropriation of expense. It was not so
with my friend, who was only unsettled and discouraged, and filled full
of that trumpeting anger with which young men regard injustices in the
first blush of youth; although in a few years they will tamely acquiesce
in their existence, and knowingly profit by their complications. Yet all
this while he suffered many indignant pangs. And once, when he put on
his boots, like any other unripe donkey, to run away from home, it was
his best consolation that he was now, at a single plunge, to free
himself from the responsibility of this wealth that was not his, and to
battle equally against his fellows in the warfare of life.
Some time after this, falling into ill-health, he was sent at great
expense to a more favourable climate; and then I think his perplexities
were thickest. When he thought of all the other young men of singular
promise, upright, good, the prop of families, who must remain at home to
die, and with all their possibilities be lost to life and mankind; and
how he, by one more unmerited favour, was chosen out from all these
others to survive; he felt as if there were no life, no labour, no
devotion of soul and body, that could repay and justify these
partialities. A religious lady, to whom he communicated these
reflections, could see no force in them whatever. "It was God's will,"
said she. But he knew it was by God's will that Joan of Arc was burnt at
Rouen, which cleared neither Bedford nor Bishop Cauchon; and again, by
God's will that Christ was crucified outside Jerusalem, which excused
neither the rancour of the priests nor the timidity of Pilate. He knew,
moreover, that although the possibility of this favour he was now
enjoying issued from his circumstances, its acceptance was the act of
his own will; and he had accepted it greedily, longing for rest and
sunshine. And hence this allegation of God's providence did little to
relieve his scruples. I promise you he had a very troubled mind. And I
would not laugh if I were you, though while he was thus making mountains
out of what you think molehills, he were still (as perhaps he was)
contentedly practising many other things that to you seem black as hell.
Every man is his own judge and mountain-guide through life. There is an
old story of a mote and a beam, apparently not true, but worthy perhaps
of some consideration. I should, if I were you, give some consideration
to these scruples of his, and if I were he, I should do the like by
yours; for it is not unlikely that there may be something under both. In
the meantime you must hear how my invalid acted. Like many invalids, he
supposed that he would die. Now should he die, he saw no means of
repaying this huge loan which, by the hands of his father, mankind had
advanced him for his sickness. In that case it would be lost money. So
he determined that the advance should be as small as possible; and, so
long as he continued to doubt his recovery, lived in an upper room, and
grudged himself all but necessaries. But so soon as he began to perceive
a change for the better, he felt justified in spending more freely, to
speed and brighten his return to health, and trusted in the future to
lend a help to mankind, as mankind, out of its treasury, had lent a help
to him.
I do not say but that my friend was a little too curious and partial in
his view; nor thought too much of himself and too little of his parents;
but I do say that here are some scruples which tormented my friend in
his youth, and still, perhaps, at odd times give him a prick in the
midst of his enjoyments, and which after all have some foundation in
justice, and point, in their confused way, to some honourable honesty
within the reach of man. And at least, is not this an unusual gloss upon
the eighth commandment? And what sort of comfort, guidance, or
illumination did that precept afford my friend throughout these
contentions? "Thou shall not steal." With all my heart! But _am_ I
stealing?
The truly quaint materialism of our view of life disables us from
pursuing any transaction to an end. You can make no one understand that
his bargain is anything more than a bargain, whereas in point of fact it
is a link in the policy of mankind, and either a good or an evil to the
world. We have a sort of blindness which prevents us from seeing
anything but sovereigns. If one man agrees to give another so many
shillings for so many hours' work, and then wilfully gives him a certain
proportion of the price in bad money and only the remainder in good, we
can see with half an eye that this man is a thief. But if the other
spends a certain proportion of the hours in smoking a pipe of tobacco,
and a certain other proportion in looking at the sky, or the clock, or
trying to recall an air, or in meditation on his own past adventures,
and only the remainder in downright work such as he is paid to do, is
he, because the theft is one of time and not of money,--is he any the
less a thief? The one gave a bad shilling, the other an imperfect hour;
but both broke the bargain, and each is a thief. In piecework, which is
what most of us do, the case is none the less plain for being even less
material. If you forge a bad knife, you have wasted some of mankind's
iron, and then, with unrivalled cynicism, you pocket some of mankind's
money for your trouble. Is there any man so blind who cannot see that
this is theft? Again, if you carelessly cultivate a farm, you have been
playing fast and loose with mankind's resources against hunger; there
will be less bread in consequence, and for lack of that bread somebody
will die next winter: a grim consideration. And you must not hope to
shuffle out of blame because you got less money for your less quantity
of bread; for although a theft be partly punished, it is none the less a
theft for that. You took the farm against competitors; there were others
ready to shoulder the responsibility and be answerable for the tale of
loaves; but it was you who took it. By the act you came under a tacit
bargain with mankind to cultivate that farm with your best endeavour;
you were under no superintendence, you were on parole; and you have
broke your bargain, and to all who look closely, and yourself among the
rest if you have moral eyesight, you are a thief. Or take the case of
men of letters. Every piece of work which is not as good as you can make
it, which you have palmed off imperfect, meagrely thought, niggardly in
execution, upon mankind who is your paymaster on parole and in a sense
your pupil, every hasty or slovenly or untrue performance, should rise
up against you in the court of your own heart and condemn you for a
thief. Have you a salary? If you trifle with your health, and so render
yourself less capable for duty, and still touch, and still greedily
pocket the emolument--what are you but a thief? Have you double
accounts? do you by any time-honoured juggle, deceit, or ambiguous
process, gain more from those who deal with you than if you were
bargaining and dealing face to face in front of God?--What are you but a
thief? Lastly, if you fill an office, or produce an article, which, in
your heart of hearts, you think a delusion and a fraud upon mankind,
and still draw your salary and go through the sham manoeuvres of this
office, or still book your profits and keep on flooding the world with
these injurious goods?--though you were old, and bald, and the first at
church, and a baronet, what are you but a thief? These may seem hard
words and mere curiosities of the intellect, in an age when the spirit
of honesty is so sparingly cultivated that all business is conducted
upon lies and so-called customs of the trade, that not a man bestows two
thoughts on the utility or honourableness of his pursuit. I would say
less if I thought less. But looking to my own reason and the right of
things, I can only avow that I am a thief myself, and that I
passionately suspect my neighbours of the same guilt.
Where did you hear that it was easy to be honest? Do you find that in
your Bible? Easy? It is easy to be an ass and follow the multitude like
a blind, besotted bull in a stampede; and that, I am well aware, is what
you and Mrs. Grundy mean by being honest. But it will not bear the
stress of time nor the scrutiny of conscience. Even before the lowest of
all tribunals,--before a court of law, whose business it is, not to keep
men right, or within a thousand miles of right, but to withhold them
from going so tragically wrong that they will pull down the whole
jointed fabric of society by their misdeeds--even before a court of law,
as we begin to see in these last days, our easy view of following at
each other's tails, alike to good and evil, is beginning to be reproved
and punished, and declared no honesty at all, but open theft and
swindling; and simpletons who have gone on through life with a quiet
conscience may learn suddenly, from the lips of a judge, that the custom
of the trade may be a custom of the devil. You thought it was easy to be
honest. Did you think it was easy to be just and kind and truthful? Did
you think the whole duty of aspiring man was as simple as a hornpipe?
and you could walk through life like a gentleman and a hero, with no
more concern than it takes to go to church or to address a circular?
And yet all this time you had the eighth commandment! and, what makes it
richer, you would not have broken it for the world!
The truth is, that these commandments by themselves are of little use in
private judgment. If compression is what you want, you have their whole
spirit compressed into the golden rule; and yet there expressed with
more significance, since the law is there spiritually and not materially
stated. And in truth, four out of these ten commands, from the sixth to
the ninth, are rather legal than ethical. The police-court is their
proper home. A magistrate cannot tell whether you love your neighbour as
yourself, but he can tell more or less whether you have murdered, or
stolen, or committed adultery, or held up your hand and testified to
that which was not; and these things, for rough practical tests, are as
good as can be found. And perhaps, therefore, the best condensation of
the Jewish moral law is in the maxims of the priests, "neminem lædere"
and "suum cuique tribunere." But all this granted, it becomes only the
more plain that they are inadequate in the sphere of personal morality;
that while they tell the magistrate roughly when to punish, they can
never direct an anxious sinner what to do.
Only Polonius, or the like solemn sort of ass, can offer us a succinct
proverb by way of advice, and not burst out blushing in our faces. We
grant them one and all and for all that they are worth; it is something
above and beyond that we desire. Christ was in general a great enemy to
such a way of teaching; we rarely find Him meddling with any of these
plump commands but it was to open them out, and lift His hearers from
the letter to the spirit. For morals are a personal affair; in the war
of righteousness every man fights for his own hand; all the six hundred
precepts of the Mishna cannot shake my private judgment; my magistracy
of myself is an indefeasible charge, and my decisions absolute for the
time and case. The moralist is not a judge of appeal, but an advocate
who pleads at my tribunal. He has to show not the law, but that the law
applies. Can he convince me? then he gains the cause. And thus you find
Christ giving various counsels to varying people, and often jealously
careful to avoid definite precept. Is He asked, for example, to divide a
heritage? He refuses: and the best advice that He will offer is but a
paraphrase of that tenth commandment which figures so strangely among
the rest. _Take heed, and beware of covetousness._ If you complain that
this is vague, I have failed to carry you along with me in my argument.
For no definite precept can be more than an illustration, though its
truth were resplendent like the sun, and it was announced from heaven by
the voice of God. And life is so intricate and changing, that perhaps
not twenty times, or perhaps not twice in the ages, shall we find that
nice consent of circumstances to which alone it can apply.
CHAPTER III
Although the world and life have in a sense become commonplace to our
experience, it is but in an external torpor; the true sentiment slumbers
within us; and we have but to reflect on ourselves or our surroundings
to rekindle our astonishment. No length of habit can blunt our first
surprise. Of the world I have but little to say in this connection; a
few strokes shall suffice. We inhabit a dead ember swimming wide in the
blank of space, dizzily spinning as it swims, and lighted up from
several million miles away by a more horrible hell-fire than was ever
conceived by the theological imagination. Yet the dead ember is a green,
commodious dwelling-place; and the reverberation of this hell-fire
ripens flower and fruit and mildly warms us on summer eves upon the
lawn. Far off on all hands other dead embers, other flaming suns, wheel
and race in the apparent void; the nearest is out of call, the farthest
so far that the heart sickens in the effort to conceive the distance.
Shipwrecked seamen on the deep, though they bestride but the truncheon
of a boom, are safe and near at home compared with mankind on its
bullet. Even to us who have known no other, it seems a strange, if not
an appalling, place of residence.
But far stranger is the resident, man, a creature compact of wonders
that, after centuries of custom, is still wonderful to himself. He
inhabits a body which he is continually outliving, discarding, and
renewing. Food and sleep, by an unknown alchemy, restore his spirits and
the freshness of his countenance. Hair grows on him like grass; his
eyes, his brain, his sinews, thirst for action; he joys to see and touch
and hear, to partake the sun and wind, to sit down and intently ponder
on his astonishing attributes and situation, to rise up and run, to
perform the strange and revolting round of physical functions. The sight
of a flower, the note of a bird, will often move him deeply; yet he
looks unconcerned on the impassable distances and portentous bonfires of
the universe. He comprehends, he designs, he tames nature, rides the
sea, ploughs, climbs the air in a balloon, makes vast inquiries, begins
interminable labours, joins himself into federations and populous
cities, spends his days to deliver the ends of the earth or to benefit
unborn posterity; and yet knows himself for a piece of unsurpassed
fragility and the creature of a few days. His sight, which conducts him,
which takes notice of the farthest stars, which is miraculous in every
way and a thing defying explanation or belief, is yet lodged in a piece
of jelly, and can be extinguished with a touch. His heart, which all
through life so indomitably, so athletically labours, is but a capsule,
and may be stopped with a pin. His whole body, for all its savage
energies, its leaping and its winged desires, may yet be tamed and
conquered by a draught of air or a sprinkling of cold dew. What he calls
death, which is the seeming arrest of everything, and the ruin and
hateful transformation of the visible body, lies in wait for him
outwardly in a thousand accidents, and grows up in secret diseases from
within. He is still learning to be a man when his faculties are already
beginning to decline; he has not yet understood himself or his position
before he inevitably dies. And yet this mad, chimerical creature can
take no thought of his last end, lives as though he were eternal,
plunges with his vulnerable body into the shock of war, and daily
affronts death with unconcern. He cannot take a step without pain or
pleasure. His life is a tissue of sensations, which he distinguishes as
they seem to come more directly from himself or his surroundings. He is
conscious of himself as a joyer or a sufferer, as that which craves,
chooses, and is satisfied; conscious of his surroundings as it were of
an inexhaustible purveyor, the source of aspects, inspirations,
wonders, cruel knocks and transporting caresses. Thus he goes on his
way, stumbling among delights and agonies.
Matter is a far-fetched theory, and materialism is without a root in
man. To him everything is important in the degree to which it moves him.
The telegraph wires and posts, the electricity speeding from clerk to
clerk, the clerks, the glad or sorrowful import of the message, and the
paper on which it is finally brought to him at home, are all equally
facts, all equally exist for man. A word or a thought can wound him as
acutely as a knife of steel. If he thinks he is loved, he will rise up
and glory to himself, although he be in a distant land and short of
necessary bread. Does he think he is not loved?--he may have the woman
at his beck, and there is not a joy for him in all the world. Indeed, if
we are to make any account of this figment of reason, the distinction
between material and immaterial, we shall conclude that the life of each
man as an individual is immaterial, although the continuation and
prospects of mankind as a race turn upon material conditions. The
physical business of each man's body is transacted for him; like a
sybarite, he has attentive valets in his own viscera; he breathes, he
sweats, he digests without an effort, or so much as a consenting
volition; for the most part he even eats, not with a wakeful
consciousness, but as it were between two thoughts. His life is centred
among other and more important considerations; touch him in his honour
or his love, creatures of the imagination which attach him to mankind or
to an individual man or woman; cross him in his piety which connects his
soul with heaven; and he turns from his food, he loathes his breath, and
with a magnanimous emotion cuts the knots of his existence and frees
himself at a blow from the web of pains and pleasures.
It follows that man is twofold at least; that he is not a rounded and
autonomous empire; but that in the same body with him there dwell other
powers, tributary but independent. If I now behold one walking in a
garden curiously coloured and illuminated by the sun, digesting his
food, with elaborate chemistry, breathing, circulating blood, directing
himself by the sight of his eyes, accommodating his body by a thousand
delicate balancings to the wind and the uneven surface of the path, and
all the time, perhaps, with his mind engaged about America, or the
dog-star, or the attributes of God--what am I to say, or how am I to
describe the thing I see? Is that truly a man, in the rigorous meaning
of the word? or is it not a man and something else? What, then, are we
to count the centre-bit and axle of a being so variously compounded? It
is a question much debated. Some read his history in a certain intricacy
of nerve and the success of successive digestions; others find him an
exiled piece of heaven blown upon and determined by the breath of God;
and both schools of theorists will scream like scalded children at a
word of doubt. Yet either of these views, however plausible, is beside
the question; either may be right; and I care not; I ask a more
particular answer, and to a more immediate point. What is the man? There
is Something that was before hunger and that remains behind after a
meal. It may or may not be engaged in any given act or passion, but when
it is, it changes, heightens, and sanctifies. Thus it is not engaged in
lust, where satisfaction ends the chapter; and it is engaged in love,
where no satisfaction can blunt the edge of the desire, and where age,
sickness, or alienation may deface what was desirable without
diminishing the sentiment. This something, which is the man, is a
permanence which abides through the vicissitudes of passion, now
overwhelmed and now triumphant, now unconscious of itself in the
immediate distress of appetite or pain, now rising unclouded above all.
So, to the man, his own central self fades and grows clear again amid
the tumult of the senses, like a revolving Pharos in the night. It is
forgotten; it is hid, it seems, for ever; and yet in the next calm hour
he shall behold himself once more, shining and unmoved among changes
and storm.
Mankind, in the sense of the creeping mass that is born and eats, that
generates and dies, is but the aggregate of the outer and lower sides of
man. This inner consciousness, this lantern alternately obscured and
shining, to and by which the individual exists and must order his
conduct, is something special to himself and not common to the race. His
joys delight, his sorrows wound him, according as _this_ is interested
or indifferent in the affair: according as they arise in an imperial war
or in a broil conducted by the tributary chieftains of the mind. He may
lose all, and _this_ not suffer; he may lose what is materially a
trifle, and _this_ leap in his bosom with a cruel pang. I do not speak
of it to hardened theorists: the living man knows keenly what it is I
mean.
"Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something better and more
divine than the things which cause the various effects, and, as it were,
pull thee by the strings. What is that now in thy mind? is it fear, or
suspicion, or desire, or anything of that kind?" Thus far Marcus
Aurelius, in one of the most notable passages in any book. Here is a
question worthy to be answered. What is in thy mind? What is the
utterance of your inmost self when, in a quiet hour, it can be heard
intelligibly? It is something beyond the compass of your thinking,
inasmuch as it is yourself; but is it not of a higher spirit than you
had dreamed betweenwhiles, and erect above all base considerations? This
soul seems hardly touched with our infirmities; we can find in it
certainly no fear, suspicion, or desire; we are only conscious--and that
as though we read it in the eyes of some one else--of a great and
unqualified readiness. A readiness to what? to pass over and look beyond
the objects of desire and fear, for something else. And this something
else? this something which is apart from desire and fear, to which all
the kingdoms of the world and the immediate death of the body are alike
indifferent and beside the point, and which yet regards conduct--by
what name are we to call it? It may be the love of God; or it may be an
inherited (and certainly well concealed) instinct to preserve self and
propagate the race; I am not, for the moment, averse to either theory;
but it will save time to call it righteousness. By so doing I intend no
subterfuge to beg a question; I am indeed ready, and more than willing,
to accept the rigid consequence, and lay aside, as far as the treachery
of the reason will permit, all former meanings attached to the word
righteousness. What is right is that for which a man's central self is
ever ready to sacrifice immediate or distant interests; what is wrong is
what the central self discards or rejects as incompatible with the fixed
design of righteousness.
To make this admission is to lay aside all hope of definition. That
which is right upon this theory is intimately dictated to each man by
himself, but can never be rigorously set forth in language, and never,
above all, imposed upon another. The conscience has, then, a vision like
that of the eyes, which is incommunicable, and for the most part
illuminates none but its possessor. When many people perceive the same
or any cognate facts, they agree upon a word as symbol; and hence we
have such words as _tree_, _star_, _love_, _honour_, or _death_; hence
also we have this word _right_, which, like the others, we all
understand, most of us understand differently, and none can express
succinctly otherwise. Yet even on the straitest view, we can make some
steps towards comprehension of our own superior thoughts. For it is an
incredible and most bewildering fact that a man, through life, is on
variable terms with himself; he is aware of tiffs and reconciliations;
the intimacy is at times almost suspended, at times it is renewed again
with joy. As we said before, his inner self or soul appears to him by
successive revelations, and is frequently obscured. It is from a study
of these alternations that we can alone hope to discover, even dimly,
what seems right and what seems wrong to this veiled prophet of ourself.
All that is in the man in the larger sense, what we call impression as
well as what we call intuition, so far as my argument looks, we must
accept. It is not wrong to desire food, or exercise, or beautiful
surroundings, or the love of sex, or interest which is the food of the
mind. All these are craved; all these should be craved; to none of these
in itself does the soul demur; where there comes an undeniable want, we
recognise a demand of nature. Yet we know that these natural demands may
be superseded, for the demands which are common to mankind make but a
shadowy consideration in comparison to the demands of the individual
soul. Food is almost the first pre-requisite; and yet a high character
will go without food to the ruin and death of the body rather than gain
it in a manner which the spirit disavows. Pascal laid aside mathematics;
Origen doctored his body with a knife; every day some one is thus
mortifying his dearest interests and desires, and, in Christ's words,
entering maim into the Kingdom of Heaven. This is to supersede the
lesser and less harmonious affections by renunciation; and though by
this ascetic path we may get to heaven, we cannot get thither a whole
and perfect man. But there is another way, to supersede them by
reconciliation, in which the soul and all the faculties and senses
pursue a common route and share in one desire. Thus, man is tormented by
a very imperious physical desire; it spoils his rest, it is not to be
denied; the doctors will tell you, not I, how it is a physical need,
like the want of food or slumber. In the satisfaction of this desire, as
it first appears, the soul sparingly takes part; nay, it oft unsparingly
regrets and disapproves the satisfaction. But let the man learn to love
a woman as far as he is capable of love; and for this random affection
of the body there is substituted a steady determination, a consent of
all his powers and faculties, which supersedes, adopts, and commands the
other. The desire survives, strengthened, perhaps, but taught obedience,
and changed in scope and character. Life is no longer a tale of
betrayals and regrets; for the man now lives as a whole; his
consciousness now moves on uninterrupted like a river; through all the
extremes and ups and downs of passion, he remains approvingly conscious
of himself.
Now to me this seems a type of that rightness which the soul demands. It
demands that we shall not live alternately with our opposing tendencies
in continual see-saw of passion and disgust, but seek some path on which
the tendencies shall no longer oppose, but serve each other to a common
end. It demands that we shall not pursue broken ends, but great and
comprehensive purposes, in which soul and body may unite like notes in a
harmonious chord. That were indeed a way of peace and pleasure, that
were indeed a heaven upon earth. It does not demand, however, or, to
speak in measure, it does not demand of me, that I should starve my
appetites for no purpose under heaven but as a purpose in itself; or, in
a weak despair, pluck out the eye that I have not yet learned to guide
and enjoy with wisdom. The soul demands unity of purpose, not the
dismemberment of man; it seeks to roll up all his strength and
sweetness, all his passion and wisdom, into one, and make of him a
perfect man exulting in perfection. To conclude ascetically is to give
up, and not to solve, the problem. The ascetic and the creeping hog,
although they are at different poles, have equally failed in life. The
one has sacrificed his crew; the other brings back his seamen in a
cock-boat, and has lost the ship. I believe there are not many
sea-captains who would plume themselves on either result as a success.
But if it is righteousness thus to fuse together our divisive impulses
and march with one mind through life, there is plainly one thing more
unrighteous than all others, and one declension which is irretrievable
and draws on the rest. And this is to lose consciousness of oneself. In
the best of times, it is but by flashes, when our whole nature is clear,
strong and conscious, and events conspire to leave us free, that we
enjoy communion with our soul. At the worst, we are so fallen and
passive that we may say shortly we have none. An arctic torpor seizes
upon men. Although built of nerves, and set adrift in a stimulating
world, they develop a tendency to go bodily to sleep; consciousness
becomes engrossed among the reflex and mechanical parts of life; and
soon loses both the will and power to look higher considerations in the
face. This is ruin; this is the last failure in life; this is temporal
damnation; damnation on the spot and without the form of judgment. "What
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and _lose himself_?"
It is to keep a man awake, to keep him alive to his own soul and its
fixed design of righteousness, that the better part of moral and
religious education is directed; not only that of words and doctors, but
the sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all God's scholars till
we die. If, as teachers, we are to say anything to the purpose, we must
say what will remind the pupil of his soul; we must speak that soul's
dialect; we must talk of life and conduct as his soul would have him
think of them. If, from some conformity between us and the pupil, or
perhaps among all men, we do in truth speak in such a dialect and
express such views, beyond question we shall touch in him a spring;
beyond question he will recognise the dialect as one that he himself has
spoken in his better hours; beyond question he will cry, "I had
forgotten, but now I remember; I too have eyes, and I had forgot to use
them! I too have a soul of my own, arrogantly upright, and to that I
will listen and conform." In short, say to him anything that he has once
thought, or been upon the point of thinking, or show him any view of
life that he has once clearly seen, or been upon the point of clearly
seeing; and you have done your part and may leave him to complete the
education for himself.
Now the view taught at the present time seems to me to want greatness;
and the dialect in which alone it can be intelligibly uttered is not the
dialect of my soul. It is a sort of postponement of life; nothing quite
is, but something different is to be; we are to keep our eyes upon the
indirect from the cradle to the grave. We are to regulate our conduct
not by desire, but by a politic eye upon the future; and to value acts
as they will bring us money or good opinion; as they will bring us, in
one word, _profit_. We must be what is called respectable, and offend no
one by our carriage; it will not do to make oneself conspicuous--who
knows? even in virtue? says the Christian parent! And we must be what is
called prudent and make money; not only because it is pleasant to have
money, but because that also is a part of respectability, and we cannot
hope to be received in society without decent possessions. Received in
society! as if that were the kingdom of heaven! There is dear Mr.
So-and-so;--look at him!--so much respected--so much looked up to--quite
the Christian merchant! And we must cut our conduct as strictly as
possible after the pattern of Mr. So-and-so; and lay our whole lives to
make money and be strictly decent. Besides these holy injunctions, which
form by far the greater part of a youth's training in our Christian
homes, there are at least two other doctrines. We are to live just now
as well as we can, but scrape at last into heaven, where we shall be
good. We are to worry through the week in a lay, disreputable way, but,
to make matters square, live a different life on Sunday.
The train of thought we have been following gives us a key to all these
positions, without stepping aside to justify them on their own ground.
It is because we have been disgusted fifty times with physical squalls
and fifty times torn between conflicting impulses, that we teach people
this indirect and tactical procedure in life, and to judge by remote
consequences instead of the immediate face of things. The very desire to
act as our own souls would have us, coupled with a pathetic disbelief in
ourselves, moves us to follow the example of others; perhaps, who knows?
they may be on the right track; and the more our patterns are in number,
the better seems the chance; until, if we be acting in concert with a
whole civilised nation, there are surely a majority of chances that we
must be acting right. And again, how true it is that we can never behave
as we wish in this tormented sphere, and can only aspire to different
and more favourable circumstances, in order to stand out and be
ourselves wholly and rightly! And yet once more, if in the hurry and
pressure of affairs and passions you tend to nod and become drowsy, here
are twenty-four hours of Sunday set apart for you to hold counsel with
your soul and look around you on the possibilities of life.
This is not, of course, all that is to be, or even should be, said for
these doctrines. Only, in the course of this chapter, the reader and I
have agreed upon a few catchwords, and been looking at morals on a
certain system; it was a pity to lose an opportunity of testing the
catchwords, and seeing whether, by this system as well as by others,
current doctrines could show any probable justification. If the
doctrines had come too badly out of the trial, it would have condemned
the system. Our sight of the world is very narrow; the mind but a
pedestrian instrument; there's nothing new under the sun, as Solomon
says, except the man himself; and though that changes the aspect of
everything else, yet he must see the same things as other people, only
from a different side.
And now, having admitted so much, let us turn to criticism.
If you teach a man to keep his eyes upon what others think of him,
unthinkingly to lead the life and hold the principles of the majority of
his contemporaries, you must discredit in his eyes the one authoritative
voice of his own soul. He may be a docile citizen; he will never be a
man. It is ours, on the other hand, to disregard this babble and
chattering of other men better and worse than we are, and to walk
straight before us by what light we have. They may be right; but so,
before heaven, are we. They may know; but we know also, and by that
knowledge we must stand or fall. There is such a thing as loyalty to a
man's own better self; and from those who have not that, God help me,
how am I to look for loyalty to others? The most dull, the most
imbecile, at a certain moment turn round, at a certain point will hear
no further argument, but stand unflinching by their own dumb, irrational
sense of right. It is not only by steel or fire, but through contempt
and blame, that the martyr fulfils the calling of his dear soul. Be glad
if you are not tried by such extremities. But although all the world
ranged themselves in one line to tell you "This is wrong," be you your
own faithful vassal and the ambassador of God--throw down the glove and
answer "This is right." Do you think you are only declaring yourself?
Perhaps in some dim way, like a child who delivers a message not fully
understood, you are opening wider the straits of prejudice and preparing
mankind for some truer and more spiritual grasp of truth; perhaps, as
you stand forth for your own judgment, you are covering a thousand weak
ones with your body; perhaps, by this declaration alone, you have
avoided the guilt of false witness against humanity and the little ones
unborn. It is good, I believe, to be respectable, but much nobler to
respect oneself and utter the voice of God. God, if there be any God,
speaks daily in a new language by the tongues of men; the thoughts and
habits of each fresh generation and each new-coined spirit throw another
light upon the universe and contain another commentary on the printed
Bibles; every scruple, every true dissent, every glimpse of something
new, is a letter of God's alphabet; and though there is a grave
responsibility for all who speak, is there none for those who
unrighteously keep silence and conform? Is not that also to conceal and
cloak God's counsel? And how should we regard the man of science who
suppressed all facts that would not tally with the orthodoxy of the
hour?
Wrong? You are as surely wrong as the sun rose this morning round the
revolving shoulder of the world. Not truth, but truthfulness, is the
good of your endeavour. For when will men receive that first part and
prerequisite of truth, that, by the order of things, by the greatness of
the universe, by the darkness and partiality of man's experience, by the
inviolate secrecy of God, kept close in His most open revelations, every
man is, and to the end of the ages must be, wrong? Wrong to the
universe; wrong to mankind; wrong to God. And yet in another sense, and
that plainer and nearer, every man of men, who wishes truly, must be
right. He is right to himself, and in the measure of his sagacity and
candour. That let him do in all sincerity and zeal, not sparing a
thought for contrary opinions; that, for what it is worth, let him
proclaim. Be not afraid; although he be wrong, so also is the dead,
stuffed Dagon he insults. For the voice of God, whatever it is, is not
that stammering, inept tradition which the people holds. These truths
survive in travesty, swamped in a world of spiritual darkness and
confusion; and what a few comprehend and faithfully hold, the many, in
their dead jargon, repeat, degrade, and misinterpret.
So far of Respectability: what the Covenanters used to call "rank
conformity": the deadliest gag and wet blanket that can be laid on men.
And now of Profit. And this doctrine is perhaps the more redoubtable,
because it harms all sorts of men; not only the heroic and self-reliant,
but the obedient, cowlike squadrons. A man, by this doctrine, looks to
consequences at the second, or third, or fiftieth turn. He chooses his
end, and for that, with wily turns and through a great sea of tedium,
steers this mortal bark. There may be political wisdom in such a view;
but I am persuaded there can spring no great moral zeal. To look thus
obliquely upon life is the very recipe for moral slumber. Our intention
and endeavour should be directed, not on some vague end of money or
applause, which shall come to us by a ricochet in a month or a year, or
twenty years, but on the act itself; not on the approval of others, but
on the rightness of that act. At every instant, at every step in life,
the point has to be decided, our soul has to be saved, heaven has to be
gained or lost. At every step our spirits must applaud, at every step we
must set down the foot and sound the trumpet. "This have I done," we
must say; "right or wrong, this have I done, in unfeigned honour of
intention, as to myself and God." The profit of every act should be
this, that it was right for us to do it. Any other profit than that, if
it involved a kingdom or the woman I love, ought, if I were God's
upright soldier, to leave me untempted.
It is the mark of what we call a righteous decision, that it is made
directly and for its own sake. The whole man, mind and body, having come
to an agreement, tyrannically dictates conduct. There are two
dispositions eternally opposed: that in which we recognise that one
thing is wrong and another right, and that in which, not seeing any
clear distinction, we fall back on the consideration of consequences.
The truth is, by the scope of our present teaching, nothing is thought
very wrong and nothing very right, except a few actions which have the
disadvantage of being disrespectable when found out; the more serious
part of men inclining to think all things _rather wrong_, the more
jovial to suppose them _right enough for practical purposes_. I will
engage my head, they do not find that view in their own hearts; they
have taken it up in a dark despair; they are but troubled sleepers
talking in their sleep. The soul, or my soul at least, thinks very
distinctly upon many points of right and wrong, and often differs flatly
with what is held out as the thought of corporate humanity in the code
of society or the code of law. Am I to suppose myself a monster? I have
only to read books, the Christian Gospels for example, to think myself a
monster no longer; and instead I think the mass of people are merely
speaking in their sleep.
It is a commonplace, enshrined, if I mistake not, even in school
copy-books, that honour is to be sought and not fame. I ask no other
admission; we are to seek honour, upright walking with our own
conscience every hour of the day, and not fame, the consequence, the
far-off reverberation of our footsteps. The walk, not the rumour of the
walk, is what concerns righteousness. Better disrespectable honour than
dishonourable fame. Better useless or seemingly hurtful honour, than
dishonour ruling empires and filling the mouths of thousands. For the
man must walk by what he sees, and leave the issue with God who made him
and taught him by the fortune of his life. You would not dishonour
yourself for money; which is at least tangible; would you do it, then,
for a doubtful forecast in politics, or another person's theory in
morals?
So intricate is the scheme of our affairs, that no man can calculate the
bearing of his own behaviour even on those immediately around him, how
much less upon the world at large or on succeeding generations! To walk
by external prudence and the rule of consequences would require, not a
man, but God. All that we know to guide us in this changing labyrinth is
our soul with its fixed design of righteousness, and a few old precepts
which commend themselves to that. The precepts are vague when we
endeavour to apply them; consequences are more entangled than a wisp of
string, and their confusion is unrestingly in change; we must hold to
what we know and walk by it. We must walk by faith, indeed, and not by
knowledge.
You do not love another because he is wealthy or wise or eminently
respectable: you love him because you love him; that is love, and any
other only a derision and grimace. It should be the same with all our
actions. If we were to conceive a perfect man, it should be one who was
never torn between conflicting impulses, but who, on the absolute
consent of all his parts and faculties, submitted in every action of his
life to a self-dictation as absolute and unreasoned as that which bids
him love one woman and be true to her till death. But we should not
conceive him as sagacious, ascetical, playing off his appetites against
each other, turning the wing of public respectable immorality instead
of riding it directly down, or advancing toward his end through a
thousand sinister compromises and considerations. The one man might be
wily, might be adroit, might be wise, might be respectable, might be
gloriously useful; it is the other man who would be good.
The soul asks honour and not fame; to be upright, not to be successful;
to be good, not prosperous; to be essentially, not outwardly,
respectable. Does your soul ask profit? Does it ask money? Does it ask
the approval of the indifferent herd? I believe not. For my own part, I
want but little money, I hope; and I do not want to be decent at all,
but to be good.
CHAPTER IV
We have spoken of that supreme self-dictation which keeps varying from
hour to hour in its dictates with the variation of events and
circumstances. Now, for us, that is ultimate. It may be founded on some
reasonable process, but it is not a process which we can follow or
comprehend. And moreover the dictation is not continuous, or not
continuous except in very lively and well-living natures; and
betweenwhiles we must brush along without it. Practice is a more
intricate and desperate business than the toughest theorising; life is
an affair of cavalry, where rapid judgment and prompt action are alone
possible and right. As a matter of fact, there is no one so upright but
he is influenced by the world's chatter; and no one so headlong but he
requires to consider consequences and to keep an eye on profit. For the
soul adopts all affections and appetites without exception, and cares
only to combine them for some common purpose which shall interest all.
Now respect for the opinion of others, the study of consequences and the
desire of power and comfort, are all undeniably factors in the nature of
man; and the more undeniably since we find that, in our current
doctrines, they have swallowed up the others and are thought to conclude
in themselves all the worthy parts of man. These, then, must also be
suffered to affect conduct in the practical domain, much or little
according as they are forcibly or feebly present to the mind of each.
Now a man's view of the universe is mostly a view of the civilised
society in which he lives. Other men and women are so much more grossly
and so much more intimately palpable to his perceptions, that they stand
between him and all the rest; they are larger to his eye than the sun,
he hears them more plainly than thunder; with them, by them, and for
them, he must live and die. And hence the laws that affect his
intercourse with his fellow-men, although merely customary and the
creatures of a generation, are more clearly and continually before his
mind than those which bind him into the eternal system of things,
support him in his upright progress on this whirling ball, or keep up
the fire of his bodily life. And hence it is that money stands in the
first rank of considerations and so powerfully affects the choice. For
our society is built with money for mortar; money is present in every
joint of circumstance; it might be named the social atmosphere, since,
in society, it is by that alone men continue to live, and only through
that or chance that they can reach or affect one another. Money gives us
food, shelter, and privacy; it permits us to be clean in person, opens
for us the doors of the theatre, gains us books for study or pleasure,
enables us to help the distresses of others, and puts us above necessity
so that we can choose the best in life. If we love, it enables us to
meet and live with the loved one, or even to prolong her health and
life; if we have scruples, it gives us an opportunity to be honest; if
we have any bright designs, here is what will smooth the way to their
accomplishment. Penury is the worst slavery, and will soon lead to
death.
But money is only a means; it presupposes a man to use it. The rich can
go where he pleases, but perhaps please himself nowhere. He can buy a
library or visit the whole world, but perhaps has neither patience to
read nor intelligence to see. The table may be loaded and the appetite
wanting; the purse may be full and the heart empty. He may have gained
the world and lost himself; and with all his wealth around him, in a
great house and spacious and beautiful demesne, he may live as blank a
life as any tattered ditcher. Without an appetite, without an
aspiration, void of appreciation, bankrupt of desire and hope, there, in
his great house, let him sit and look upon his fingers. It is perhaps a
more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be
born a millionaire. Although neither is to be despised, it is always
better policy to learn an interest than to make a thousand pounds; for
the money will soon be spent, or perhaps you may feel no joy in spending
it; but the interest remains imperishable and ever new. To become a
botanist, a geologist, a social philosopher, an antiquary, or an artist,
is to enlarge one's possessions in the universe by an incalculably
higher degree, and by a far surer sort of property, than to purchase a
farm of many acres. You had perhaps two thousand a year before the
transaction; perhaps you have two thousand five hundred after it. That
represents your gain in the one case. But in the other, you have thrown
down a barrier which concealed significance and beauty. The blind man
has learned to see. The prisoner has opened up a window in his cell and
beholds enchanting prospects; he will never again be a prisoner as he
was; he can watch clouds and changing seasons, ships on the river,
travellers on the road, and the stars at night; happy prisoner! his eyes
have broken gaol! And again he who has learned to love an art or science
has wisely laid up riches against the day of riches; if prosperity come,
he will not enter poor into his inheritance; he will not slumber and
forget himself in the lap of money, or spend his hours in counting idle
treasures, but be up and briskly doing; he will have the true alchemic
touch, which is not that of Midas, but which transmutes dead money into
living delight and satisfaction. _Être et pas avoir_--to be, not to
possess--that is the problem of life. To be wealthy, a rich nature is
the first requisite and money but the second. To be of a quick and
healthy blood, to share in all honourable curiosities, to be rich in
admiration and free from envy, to rejoice greatly in the good of others,
to love with such generosity of heart that your love is still a dear
possession in absence or unkindness--these are the gifts of fortune
which money cannot buy and without which money can buy nothing. For what
can a man possess, or what can he enjoy, except himself? If he enlarge
his nature, it is then that he enlarges his estates. If his nature be
happy and valiant, he will enjoy the universe as if it were his park and
orchard.
But money is not only to be spent; it has also to be earned. It is not
merely a convenience or a necessary in social life; but it is the coin
in which mankind pays his wages to the individual man. And from this
side, the question of money has a very different scope and application.
For no man can be honest who does not work. Service for service. If the
farmer buys corn, and the labourer ploughs and reaps, and the baker
sweats in his hot bakery, plainly you who eat must do something in your
turn. It is not enough to take off your hat, or to thank God upon your
knees for the admirable constitution of society and your own convenient
situation in its upper and more ornamental stories. Neither is it enough
to buy the loaf with a sixpence; for then you are only changing the
point of the inquiry; and you must first have _bought the sixpence_.
Service for service: how have you bought your sixpences? A man of spirit
desires certainty in a thing of such a nature; he must see to it that
there is some reciprocity between him and mankind; that he pays his
expenditure in service; that he has not a lion's share in profit and a
drone's in labour; and is not a sleeping partner and mere costly incubus
on the great mercantile concern of mankind.
Services differ so widely with different gifts, and some are so
inappreciable to external tests, that this is not only a matter for the
private conscience, but one which even there must be leniently and
trustfully considered. For remember how many serve mankind who do no
more than meditate; and how many are precious to their friends for no
more than a sweet and joyous temper. To perform the function of a man
of letters it is not necessary to write; nay, it is perhaps better to be
a living book. So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by
others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is
useless while he has a friend. The true services of life are inestimable
in money, and are never paid. Kind words and caresses, high and wise
thoughts, humane designs, tender behaviour to the weak and suffering,
and all the charities of man's existence, are neither bought nor sold.
Yet the dearest and readiest, if not the most just, criterion of a man's
services, is the wage that mankind pays him, or, briefly, what he earns.
There at least there can be no ambiguity. St. Paul is fully and freely
entitled to his earnings as a tentmaker, and Socrates fully and freely
entitled to his earnings as a sculptor, although the true business of
each was not only something different, but something which remained
unpaid. A man cannot forget that he is not superintended, and serves
mankind on parole. He would like, when challenged by his own conscience,
to reply: "I have done so much work, and no less, with my own hands and
brain, and taken so much profit, and no more, for my own personal
delight." And though St. Paul, if he had possessed a private fortune,
would probably have scorned to waste his time in making tents, yet of
all sacrifices to public opinion none can be more easily pardoned than
that by which a man, already spiritually useful to the world, should
restrict the field of his chief usefulness to perform services more
apparent, and possess a livelihood that neither stupidity nor malice
could call in question. Like all sacrifices to public opinion and mere
external decency, this would certainly be wrong; for the soul should
rest contented with its own approval and indissuadably pursue its own
calling. Yet, so grave and delicate is the question, that a man may well
hesitate before he decides it for himself; he may well fear that he sets
too high a valuation on his own endeavours after good; he may well
condescend upon a humbler duty, where others than himself shall judge
the service and proportion the wage.
And yet it is to this very responsibility that the rich are born. They
can shuffle off the duty on no other; they are their own paymasters on
parole; and must pay themselves fair wages and no more. For I suppose
that in the course of ages, and through reform and civil war and
invasion, mankind was pursuing some other and more general design than
to set one or two Englishmen of the nineteenth century beyond the reach
of needs and duties. Society was scarce put together, and defended with
so much eloquence and blood, for the convenience of two or three
millionaires and a few hundred other persons of wealth and position. It
is plain that if mankind thus acted and suffered during all these
generations, they hoped some benefit, some ease, some well-being, for
themselves and their descendants; that if they supported law and order,
it was to secure fair-play for all; that if they denied themselves in
the present, they must have had some designs upon the future. Now a
great hereditary fortune is a miracle of man's wisdom and mankind's
forbearance; it has not only been amassed and handed down, it has been
suffered to be amassed and handed down; and surely in such a
consideration as this, its possessor should find only a new spur to
activity and honour, that with all this power of service he should not
prove unserviceable, and that this mass of treasure should return in
benefits upon the race. If he had twenty, or thirty, or a hundred
thousand at his banker's, or if all Yorkshire or all California were his
to manage or to sell, he would still be morally penniless, and have the
world to begin like Whittington, until he had found some way of serving
mankind. His wage is physically in his own hand; but, in honour, that
wage must still be earned. He is only steward on parole of what is
called his fortune. He must honourably perform his stewardship. He must
estimate his own services and allow himself a salary in proportion, for
that will be one among his functions. And while he will then be free to
spend that salary, great or little, on his own private pleasures, the
rest of his fortune he but holds and disposes under trust for mankind;
it is not his, because he has not earned it; it cannot be his, because
his services have already been paid; but year by year it is his to
distribute, whether to help individuals whose birthright and outfit have
been swallowed up in his, or to further public works and institutions.
At this rate, short of inspiration, it seems hardly possible to be both
rich and honest; and the millionaire is under a far more continuous
temptation to thieve than the labourer who gets his shilling daily for
despicable toils. Are you surprised? It is even so. And you repeat it
every Sunday in your churches. "It is easier for a camel to pass through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." I
have heard this and similar texts ingeniously explained away and brushed
from the path of the aspiring Christian by the tender Greatheart of the
parish. One excellent clergyman told us that the "eye of a needle" meant
a low, Oriental postern through which camels could not pass till they
were unloaded--which is very likely just; and then went on, bravely
confounding the "kingdom of God" with heaven, the future paradise, to
show that of course no rich person could expect to carry his riches
beyond the grave--which, of course, he could not and never did. Various
greedy sinners of the congregation drank in the comfortable doctrine
with relief. It was worth the while having come to church that Sunday
morning! All was plain. The Bible, as usual, meant nothing in
particular; it was merely an obscure and figurative school-copybook; and
if a man were only respectable, he was a man after God's own heart.
Alas! I fear not. And though this matter of a man's services is one for
his own conscience, there are some cases in which it is difficult to
restrain the mind from judging. Thus I shall be very easily persuaded
that a man has earned his daily bread; and if he has but a friend or two
to whom his company is delightful at heart, I am more than persuaded at
once. But it will be very hard to persuade me that any one has earned an
income of a hundred thousand. What he is to his friends, he still would
be if he were made penniless to-morrow; for as to the courtiers of
luxury and power, I will neither consider them friends, nor indeed
consider them at all. What he does for mankind there are most likely
hundreds who would do the same, as effectually for the race and as
pleasurably to themselves, for the merest fraction of this monstrous
wage. Why it is paid, I am, therefore, unable to conceive, and as the
man pays it himself, out of funds in his detention, I have a certain
backwardness to think him honest.
At least, we have gained a very obvious point: that _what a man spends
upon himself he shall have earned by services to the race_. Thence flows
a principle for the outset of life, which is a little different from
that taught in the present day. I am addressing the middle and the upper
classes; those who have already been fostered and prepared for life at
some expense; those who have some choice before them, and can pick
professions; and above all, those who are what is called independent,
and need do nothing unless pushed by honour or ambition. In this
particular the poor are happy; among them, when a lad comes to his
strength, he must take the work that offers, and can take it with an
easy conscience. But in the richer classes the question is complicated
by the number of opportunities and a variety of considerations. Here,
then, this principle of ours comes in helpfully. The young man has to
seek, not a road to wealth, but an opportunity of service; not money,
but honest work. If he has some strong propensity, some calling of
nature, some overweening interest in any special field of industry,
inquiry, or art, he will do right to obey the impulse; and that for two
reasons: the first external, because there he will render the best
services; the second personal, because a demand of his own nature is to
him without appeal whenever it can be satisfied with the consent of his
other faculties and appetites. If he has no such elective taste, by the
very principle on which he chooses any pursuit at all he must choose the
most honest and serviceable, and not the most highly remunerated. We
have here an external problem, not from or to ourself, but flowing from
the constitution of society; and we have our own soul with its fixed
design of righteousness. All that can be done is to present the problem
in proper terms and leave it to the soul of the individual. Now the
problem to the poor is one of necessity: to earn wherewithal to live,
they must find remunerative labour. But the problem to the rich is one
of honour: having the wherewithal, they must find serviceable labour.
Each has to earn his daily bread: the one, because he has not yet got it
to eat; the other, who has already eaten it, because he has not yet
earned it.
Of course, what is true of bread is true of luxuries and comforts,
whether for the body or the mind. But the consideration of luxuries
leads us to a new aspect of the whole question, and to a second
proposition no less true, and maybe no less startling, than the last.
At the present day, we, of the easier classes, are in a state of surfeit
and disgrace after meat. Plethora has filled us with indifference; and
we are covered from head to foot with the callosities of habitual
opulence. Born into what is called a certain rank, we live, as the
saying is, up to our station. We squander without enjoyment, because our
fathers squandered. We eat of the best, not from delicacy, but from
brazen habit. We do not keenly enjoy or eagerly desire the presence of a
luxury; we are unaccustomed to its absence. And not only do we squander
money from habit, but still more pitifully waste it in ostentation. I
can think of no more melancholy disgrace for a creature who professes
either reason or pleasure for his guide, than to spend the smallest
fraction of his income upon that which he does not desire; and to keep a
carriage in which you do not wish to drive, or a butler of whom you are
afraid, is a pathetic kind of folly. Money, being a means of happiness,
should make both parties happy when it changes hands; rightly disposed,
it should be twice blessed in its employment; and buyer and seller
should alike have their twenty shillings' worth of profit out of every
pound. Benjamin Franklin went through life an altered man, because he
once paid too dearly for a penny whistle. My concern springs usually
from a deeper source, to wit, from having bought a whistle when I did
not want one. I find I regret this, or would regret it if I gave myself
the time, not only on personal but on moral and philanthropical
considerations. For, first, in a world where money is wanting to buy
books for eager students and food and medicine for pining children, and
where a large majority are starved in their most immediate desires, it
is surely base, stupid, and cruel to squander money when I am pushed by
no appetite and enjoy no return of genuine satisfaction. My philanthropy
is wide enough in scope to include myself; and when I have made myself
happy, I have at least one good argument that I have acted rightly; but
where that is not so, and I have bought and not enjoyed, my mouth is
closed, and I conceive that I have robbed the poor. And, second,
anything I buy or use which I do not sincerely want or cannot vividly
enjoy, disturbs the balance of supply and demand, and contributes to
remove industrious hands from the production of what is useful or
pleasurable and to keep them busy upon ropes of sand and things that are
a weariness to the flesh. That extravagance is truly sinful, and a very
silly sin to boot, in which we impoverish mankind and ourselves. It is
another question for each man's heart. He knows if he can enjoy what he
buys and uses; if he cannot, he is a dog in the manger; nay, if he
cannot, I contend he is a thief, for nothing really belongs to a man
which he cannot use. Proprietor is connected with propriety; and that
only is the man's which is proper to his wants and faculties.
A youth, in choosing a career, must not be alarmed by poverty. Want is
a sore thing, but poverty does not imply want. It remains to be seen
whether with half his present income, or a third, he cannot, in the most
generous sense, live as fully as at present. He is a fool who objects to
luxuries; but he is also a fool who does not protest against the waste
of luxuries on those who do not desire and cannot enjoy them. It remains
to be seen, by each man who would live a true life to himself and not a
merely specious life to society, how many luxuries he truly wants and to
how many he merely submits as to a social propriety; and all these last
he will immediately forswear. Let him do this, and he will be surprised
to find how little money it requires to keep him in complete contentment
and activity of mind and senses. Life at any level among the easy
classes is conceived upon a principle of rivalry, where each man and
each household must ape the tastes and emulate the display of others.
One is delicate in eating, another in wine, a third in furniture or
works of art or dress; and I, who care nothing for any of these
refinements, who am perhaps a plain athletic creature and love exercise,
beef, beer, flannel shirts and a camp bed, am yet called upon to
assimilate all these other tastes and make these foreign occasions of
expenditure my own. It may be cynical: I am sure I shall be told it is
selfish; but I will spend my money as I please and for my own intimate
personal gratification, and should count myself a nincompoop indeed to
lay out the colour of a halfpenny on any fancied social decency or duty.
I shall not wear gloves unless my hands are cold, or unless I am born
with a delight in them. Dress is my own affair, and that of one other in
the world; that, in fact, and for an obvious reason, of any woman who
shall chance to be in love with me. I shall lodge where I have a mind.
If I do not ask society to live with me, they must be silent; and even
if I do, they have no further right but to refuse the invitation.
There is a kind of idea abroad that a man must live up to his station,
that his house, his table, and his toilette, shall be in a ratio of
equivalence, and equally imposing to the world. If this is in the Bible,
the passage has eluded my inquiries. If it is not in the Bible, it is
nowhere but in the heart of the fool. Throw aside this fancy. See what
you want, and spend upon that; distinguish what you do not care about,
and spend nothing upon that. There are not many people who can
differentiate wines above a certain and that not at all a high price.
Are you sure you are one of these? Are you sure you prefer cigars at
sixpence each to pipes at some fraction of a farthing? Are you sure you
wish to keep a gig? Do you care about where you sleep, or are you not as
much at your ease in a cheap lodging as in an Elizabethan manor-house?
Do you enjoy fine clothes? It is not possible to answer these questions
without a trial; and there is nothing more obvious to my mind, than that
a man who has not experienced some ups and downs, and been forced to
live more cheaply than in his father's house, has still his education to
begin. Let the experiment be made, and he will find to his surprise that
he has been eating beyond his appetite up to that hour; that the cheap
lodging, the cheap tobacco, the rough country clothes, the plain table,
have not only no power to damp his spirits, but perhaps give him as keen
pleasure in the using as the dainties that he took, betwixt sleep and
waking, in his former callous and somnambulous submission to wealth.
The true Bohemian, a creature lost to view under the imaginary Bohemians
of literature, is exactly described by such a principle of life. The
Bohemian of the novel, who drinks more than is good for him and prefers
anything to work, and wears strange clothes, is for the most part a
respectable Bohemian, respectable in disrespectability, living for the
outside, and an adventurer. But the man I mean lives wholly to himself,
does what he wishes, and not what is thought proper, buys what he wants
for himself and not what is thought proper, works at what he believes he
can do well and not what will bring him in money or favour. You may be
the most respectable of men, and yet a true Bohemian. And the test is
this: a Bohemian, for as poor as he may be, is always open-handed to his
friends; he knows what he can do with money and how he can do without
it, a far rarer and more useful knowledge; he has had less, and
continued to live in some contentment; and hence he cares not to keep
more, and shares his sovereign or his shilling with a friend. The poor,
if they are generous, are Bohemian in virtue of their birth. Do you know
where beggars go? Not to the great houses where people sit dazed among
their thousands, but to the doors of poor men who have seen the world;
and it was the widow who had only two mites, who cast half her fortune
into the treasury.
But a young man who elects to save on dress or on lodging, or who in any
way falls out of the level of expenditure which is common to his level
in society, falls out of society altogether. I suppose the young man to
have chosen his career on honourable principles; he finds his talents
and instincts can be best contented in a certain pursuit; in a certain
industry, he is sure that he is serving mankind with a healthy and
becoming service; and he is not sure that he would be doing so, or doing
so equally well, in any other industry within his reach. Then that is
his true sphere in life; not the one in which he was born to his father,
but the one which is proper to his talents and instincts. And suppose he
does fall out of society, is that a cause of sorrow? Is your heart so
dead that you prefer the recognition of many to the love of a few? Do
you think society loves you? Put it to the proof. Decline in material
expenditure, and you will find they care no more for you than for the
Khan of Tartary. You will lose no friends. If you had any, you will keep
them. Only those who were friends to your coat and equipage will
disappear; the smiling faces will disappear as by enchantment; but the
kind hearts will remain steadfastly kind. Are you so lost, are you so
dead, are you so little sure of your own soul and your own footing upon
solid fact, that you prefer before goodness and happiness the
countenance of sundry diners-out, who will flee from you at a report of
ruin, who will drop you with insult at a shadow of disgrace, who do not
know you and do not care to know you but by sight, and whom you in your
turn neither know nor care to know in a more human manner? Is it not the
principle of society, openly avowed, that friendship must not interfere
with business; which being paraphrased, means simply that a
consideration of money goes before any consideration of affection known
to this cold-blooded gang, that they have not even the honour of
thieves, and will rook their nearest and dearest as readily as a
stranger? I hope I would go as far as most to serve a friend; but I
declare openly I would not put on my hat to do a pleasure to society. I
may starve my appetites and control my temper for the sake of those I
love; but society shall take me as I choose to be, or go without me.
Neither they nor I will lose; for where there is no love, it is both
laborious and unprofitable to associate.
But it is obvious that if it is only right for a man to spend money on
that which he can truly and thoroughly enjoy, the doctrine applies with
equal force to the rich and to the poor, to the man who has amassed many
thousands as well as to the youth precariously beginning life. And it
may be asked, Is not this merely preparing misers, who are not the best
of company? But the principle was this: that which a man has not fairly
earned, and, further, that which he cannot fully enjoy, does not belong
to him, but is a part of mankind's treasure which he holds as steward on
parole. To mankind, then, it must be made profitable; and how this
should be done is, once more, a problem which each man must solve for
himself, and about which none has a right to judge him. Yet there are a
few considerations which are very obvious and may here be stated.
Mankind is not only the whole in general, but every one in particular.
Every man or woman is one of mankind's dear possessions; to his or her
just brain, and kind heart, and active hands, mankind intrusts some of
its hopes for the future; he or she is a possible wellspring of good
acts and source of blessings to the race. This money which you do not
need, which, in a rigid sense, you do not want, may therefore be
returned not only in public benefactions to the race, but in private
kindnesses. Your wife, your children, your friends stand nearest to you,
and should be helped the first. There at least there can be little
imposture, for you know their necessities of your own knowledge. And
consider, if all the world did as you did, and according to their means
extended help in the circle of their affections, there would be no more
crying want in times of plenty and no more cold, mechanical charity
given with a doubt and received with confusion. Would not this simple
rule make a new world out of the old and cruel one which we inhabit?
[_After two more sentences the fragment breaks off._]
PRAYERS
WRITTEN FOR FAMILY USE AT VAILIMA
PRAYERS
WRITTEN FOR FAMILY USE AT VAILIMA
_For Success_
Lord, behold our family here assembled. We thank Thee for this place in
which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us
this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health,
the work, the food, and the bright skies, that make our lives
delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth, and our friendly
helpers in this foreign isle. Let peace abound in our small company.
Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge. Give us grace and strength
to forbear and to persevere. Offenders, give us the grace to accept and
to forgive offenders. Forgetful ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully
the forgetfulness of others. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet
mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it
may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may not, give us the
strength to encounter that which is to come, that we be brave in peril,
constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of
fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to
another. As the clay to the potter, as the windmill to the wind, as
children of their sire, we beseech of Thee this help and mercy for
Christ's sake.
_For Grace_
Grant that we here before Thee may be set free from the fear of
vicissitude and the fear of death, may finish what remains before us of
our course without dishonour to ourselves or hurt to others, and, when
the day comes, may die in peace. Deliver us from fear and favour: from
mean hopes and cheap pleasures. Have mercy on each in his deficiency;
let him be not cast down; support the stumbling on the way, and give at
last rest to the weary.
_At Morning_
The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and
duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter
and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go
blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds
weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the end the gift of
sleep.
_Evening_
We come before Thee, O Lord, in the end of Thy day with thanksgiving.
Our beloved in the far parts of the earth, those who are now beginning
the labours of the day what time we end them, and those with whom the
sun now stands at the point of noon, bless, help, console, and prosper
them.
Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and the hour come
to rest. We resign into Thy hands our sleeping bodies, our cold hearths
and open doors. Give us to awake with smiles, give us to labour smiling.
As the sun returns in the east, so let our patience be renewed with
dawn; as the sun lightens the world, so let our loving-kindness make
bright this house of our habitation.
_Another for Evening_
Lord, receive our supplications for this house, family, and country.
Protect the innocent, restrain the greedy and the treacherous, lead us
out of our tribulation into a quiet land.
Look down upon ourselves and upon our absent dear ones. Help us and
them; prolong our days in peace and honour. Give us health, food, bright
weather, and light hearts. In what we meditate of evil, frustrate our
will; in what of good, further our endeavours. Cause injuries to be
forgot and benefits to be remembered.
Let us lie down without fear and awake and arise with exultation. For
His sake, in whose words we now conclude.
_In Time of Rain_
We thank Thee, Lord, for the glory of the late days and the excellent
face of Thy sun. We thank Thee for good news received. We thank Thee for
the pleasures we have enjoyed and for those we have been able to confer.
And now, when the clouds gather and the rain impends over the forest and
our house, permit us not to be cast down; let us not lose the savour of
past mercies and past pleasures; but, like the voice of a bird singing
in the rain, let grateful memory survive in the hour of darkness. If
there be in front of us any painful duty, strengthen us with the grace
of courage; if any act of mercy, teach us tenderness and patience.
_Another in Time of Rain_
Lord, Thou sendest down rain upon the uncounted millions of the forest,
and givest the trees to drink exceedingly. We are here upon this isle a
few handfuls of men, and how many myriads upon myriads of stalwart
trees! Teach us the lesson of the trees. The sea around us, which this
rain recruits, teems with the race of fish; teach us, Lord, the meaning
of the fishes. Let us see ourselves for what we are, one out of the
countless number of the clans of Thy handiwork. When we would despair,
let us remember that these also please and serve Thee.
_Before a Temporary Separation_
To-day we go forth separate, some of us to pleasure, some of us to
worship, some upon duty. Go with us, our guide and angel; hold Thou
before us in our divided paths the mark of our low calling, still to be
true to what small best we can attain to. Help us in that, our maker,
the dispenser of events--Thou, of the vast designs, in which we blindly
labour, suffer us to be so far constant to ourselves and our beloved.
_For Friends_
For our absent loved ones we implore Thy loving-kindness. Keep them in
life, keep them in growing honour; and for us, grant that we remain
worthy of their love. For Christ's sake, let not our beloved blush for
us, nor we for them. Grant us but that, and grant us courage to endure
lesser ills unshaken, and to accept death, loss, and disappointment as
it were straws upon the tide of life.
_For the Family_
Aid us, if it be Thy will, in our concerns. Have mercy on this land and
innocent people. Help them who this day contend in disappointment with
their frailties. Bless our family, bless our forest house, bless our
island helpers. Thou who hast made for us this place of ease and hope,
accept and inflame our gratitude; help us to repay, in service one to
another, the debt of Thine unmerited benefits and mercies, so that when
the period of our stewardship draws to a conclusion, when the windows
begin to be darkened, when the bond of the family is to be loosed, there
shall be no bitterness of remorse in our farewells.
Help us to look back on the long way that Thou hast brought us, on the
long days in which we have been served not according to our deserts but
our desires; on the pit and the miry clay, the blackness of despair, the
horror of misconduct, from which our feet have been plucked out. For
our sins forgiven or prevented, for our shame unpublished, we bless and
thank Thee, O God. Help us yet again and ever. So order events, so
strengthen our frailty, as that day by day we shall come before Thee
with this song of gratitude, and in the end we be dismissed with honour.
In their weakness and their fear, the vessels of Thy handiwork so pray
to Thee, so praise Thee. Amen.
_Sunday_
We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of many families
and nations gathered together in the peace of this roof, weak men and
women subsisting under the covert of Thy patience. Be patient still;
suffer us yet a while longer;--with our broken purposes of good, with
our idle endeavours against evil, suffer us a while longer to endure,
and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to us our extraordinary
mercies; if the day come when these must be taken, brace us to play the
man under affliction. Be with our friends, be with ourselves. Go with
each of us to rest; if any awake, temper to them the dark hours of
watching; and when the day returns, return to us, our sun and comforter,
and call us up with morning faces and with morning hearts--eager to
labour--eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our portion--and if the
day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure it.
We thank Thee and praise Thee; and in the words of Him to whom this day
is sacred, close our oblation.
_For Self-blame_
Lord, enlighten us to see the beam that is in our own eye, and blind us
to the mote that is in our brother's. Let us feel our offences with our
hands, make them great and bright before us like the sun, make us eat
them and drink them for our diet. Blind us to the offences of our
beloved, cleanse them from our memories, take them out of our mouths for
ever. Let all here before Thee carry and measure with the false
balances of love, and be in their own eyes and in all conjunctures the
most guilty. Help us at the same time with the grace of courage, that we
be none of us cast down when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our
happiness or our integrity: touch us with fire from the altar, that we
may be up and doing to rebuild our city: in the name and by the method
of Him in whose words of prayer we now conclude.
_For Self-forgetfulness_
Lord, the creatures of Thy hand, Thy disinherited children, come before
Thee with their incoherent wishes and regrets: Children we are, children
we shall be, till our mother the earth hath fed upon our bones. Accept
us, correct us, guide us, Thy guilty innocents. Dry our vain tears, wipe
out our vain resentments, help our yet vainer efforts. If there be any
here, sulking as children will, deal with and enlighten him. Make it day
about that person, so that he shall see himself and be ashamed. Make it
heaven about him, Lord, by the only way to heaven, forgetfulness of
self, and make it day about his neighbours, so that they shall help, not
hinder him.
_For Renewal of Joy_
We are evil, O God, and help us to see it and amend. We are good, and
help us to be better. Look down upon Thy servants with a patient eye,
even as Thou sendest sun and rain; look down, call upon the dry bones,
quicken, enliven; re-create in us the soul of service, the spirit of
peace; renew in us the sense of joy.
END OF VOL. XVI
PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.
