Читать книгу Stretton - Henry Kingsley - Страница 14

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This life of the rich English country gentleman would seem wonderfully beautiful. In a well-set, well-ordered, well-trained house of this kind, you get almost all the things which are supposed by ordinary people to make life valuable. To begin with, you get rules of life and conduct, in which you believe, and which are easy to follow: the following of which (such as going to church in the morning and being as respectable as another generally) gives you the prestige of being a respectable person. Next you get an entourage of accumulated beauty and accumulated tradition. No one ever knows of the accumulated art-treasures in any old country house, until a sleepy and tangle-headed housemaid burns it down. There you have enough to eat and drink; all of the best. There you have air, light, exercise. The beauty of horses, the beauty of dogs, the beauty of your grass-lands in spring and of your corn-lands in summer. The beauty of your budding oaks in May, when the soft note of the wood-pigeon tones down the slightly vulgar and too vivid green, and the beauty of intertwining beech-twigs in winter, when the woodcock rises like some swift, dim, noiseless ghost, and you have to concentrate your whole intellect--all that is in you--into that second when you press your trigger, and the pretty innocent bird lies dead, with out-stretched wings, on the dead leaves before you.

Then, again, there was a greater beauty and a greater charm than any of these things in a highly-toned English country-gentleman's house. I mean the relations with servants; the relations between master and man, between mistress and maid. One would be inclined to think that no relations could be much more pleasant than those between a good master and a good servant. These things, like much else, have passed away; one only alludes to this relation in saying that the lives of such lads as the Evanses and the Mordaunts are more to be envied, in many ways, than those of any lads in Europe.

Now we will leave these Evanses and Mordaunts, and go to Camden Town.

That great outcome of one side of British genius is one of the first things which an intelligent foreigner should be taken to see. As an example of the national genius displayed in architecture, I conceive that it is unequalled in Europe, and also in America; and in this opinion I am confirmed, after consultation, by intelligent travellers, who go with me in saying that it is absolutely unique. There is a depth of vulgarity about it with which the Nevskoi Prospect and the Hausmann Boulevards compete but feebly. The Russian and the Frenchman have each made an effort at soulless, characterless vulgarity, but they have failed because they have brought in the element of size or bigness, the only thing which saves Niagara from being one of the ugliest cascades in the world. Now, in Camden Town we have surpassed ourselves. We have had the daring greatness to be little, mean, and low. We have banished all possibility of a man's expressing his character in the shape of his house: that is nothing--have not mere French prefects done the same? But we have done more. Over hundreds of acres we have adopted a style of house-building which is, I believe, actually unique in the history of the world. The will and genius of a nation often--nay, generally--expresses itself in architecture. Nineveh, Paris, San Francisco, St. Petersburg, Pitt Street, Sydney, the Pyramids, are all cases in point. With regard to Axum, of the Ethiopians, and Caracorum, of the Tartars, one has little reliable information, but I have no doubt that they would bear this out, and assist one in rendering the theory arguable, that the genius of a nation generally expresses itself in its houses.

It would be unwise to commit one's-self. With Chatsworth and Buckingham Palace before us, it could not be asserted that the very curious taste for gregarious vulgarity of opinion among the least vulgar, and really the most independent people in the world, has culminated at Camden Town. It is possible to say that, if Arminius were to see Camden Town he would remark, "Here is the genius of the English nation in bricks and mortar. Stone don't pay. You can't get at best more than four per cent. out of fair Ashlar, and you ought never to build under seven."

Yet there are about one million people, of good education, who live in these Philistine ghettos in London, and never grumble. Is there any reader who does not know some family living in one of these artistically abominable terraces--some family shut up, with not too much money, in a hideous brick box--a family which, in spite of its inartistic surroundings, exhibits every form of gentleness and goodness? Any reader who does not know such a family is exceptionally unfortunate.

Some, whose souls are elsewhere, never think of its being inartistic and squalid. Others, the people who habitually eat their hearts, beat against such a prison like caged tigers. Until his grandmother came to him, young Gray never thought of finding fault with the decent, quiet little home he had prepared for her. When she came, he wished she had never come, for he saw at once that she disliked him, and only knew afresh that he disliked her; and now that she had come, she took good care to prove to him, not only that she disliked him, but that she hated Camden Town; and what was still more unfortunate, utterly hated his ways and his works. A glance at him would not be amiss.

I have heard this gentlest, tenderest, and least cruel of men compared to a bloodhound in face, because of a certain solemn and majestic carriage of the head, and a lofty, uplooking, speculative habit of the eyes, which the bloodhound has among dogs, above all other dogs. In mind, Gray certainly resembled the bloodhounds: in this, at least, being nearly the gentlest amid kindest of created beings; here the fancied resemblance ceases. The bloodhound is the stupidest of dogs. Allan Gray had a very noble intellect.

I have described that wild, fierce boy (for he was little else), James Mordaunt, as carrying his head well; Allan Gray carried his as high as ever did James Mordaunt. They both carried them like men ready to strike; and when you consider that, from the utter dissimilarity of their education, their utter divergence in every possible line of thought, these two youths might have had to strike one another, one would have prayed that they should be kept asunder. They were strangely brought together.

In stature, he was singularly tall and well made, though very slight. Even at his present age of thirty, be looked like forty--like a made man. In manner he was extremely precise; silent and courteous; in dress excessively neat.

Seeking about, scarcely guided at all, for a rule of life, he had found a certain very eminent clergyman among the Dissenters who had given him one which suited him so well, that he never departed from it. An entire faith in the verbal inspiration of the Bible; a resolute habit of self-examination and prayer; and an intense desire to do his whole duty towards every one in this world: these were his rules of life, and he followed them well, while Aunt Eleanor disliked him, and called him prig. Though, while she laughed, she said that the world would get on no worse for a few more of the same stamp.

His temper was naturally very quick indeed, but he soon discovered this and tamed it--you will never see it exhibited. The good and noble man who had done so much for him had an intense dislike of art in all forms, and his teaching in this respect had fallen on congenial soil in the case of Allan Gray. What with being naturally short-sighted, and what with having a very intense and practical mind, he was absolutely unable to understand the very word. Religiously, objects of art were strictly forbidden by the second commandment; practically, they were a dead and totally unprofitable loss of money, which might be given to all kinds of good works. He admired his little home in Camden Town as being neat and respectable, and as representing a great deal of sheer hard work and of trust from his employers. In the jewellery which passed under his hands he had taste--but not of his own. As we know, some boys, too stupid to learn their Euclid, actually learn it by heart, and pass examination in that singular way; so Allan Gray had actually learnt by rote what was in good taste and in bad, and was more looked up to as an authority in that matter than any one in the shop.

Such a man brought to such a home his wild old fury of a grandmother; and in his honest, kindly loyalty, laid the whole of his hardly earned home at her feet.

For the first week they got on very well together indeed. He returned promptly from his business, and gave up his whole time to settling her and making her comfortable. It was at the end of the very first week, however, that the first jar occurred.

"As you are now comfortably settled, grandmother," he said at breakfast, "I need not come home so early. Indeed, I shall not be home before eleven."

She merely shrugged her shoulders; but he saw that she did not like it. "I shall go to bed early," she said. "I don't care for looking out on the gas-lamps."

"Can you not read, grandmother?"

"I have not got anything to read. I have read the newspaper, and I have nothing to read besides."

"Have you read the book I gave you?"

"No. It is a religious book, which ought to be read by a religious woman, which I most decidedly am not, and don't mean to be. I'll go to bed and think of the fine old times."

I think all women can be kind when they have given deep pain, even to a man they dislike. She saw such a look of hopeless pain in Allan Gray's face as he left the room to go to his business that she called him back.

"There, you silly lad," she said, "don't mind what I say. You meant kindly by bringing me here, and we shall do very well. I came because I thought it would be a change, and I love change; and, heaven help me, I have got it; it is duller than the other place. Let us bear with one another, boy. I have money, and in a few years it will be yours."

"You do not think I want your money, grandmother? I had not the wildest idea you had any."

"Go to your work," she said, imperiously; and he went.

When he was gone, she said, "I knew that he did not know that I had any. He is quite honest. I wish I had not come. Brick walls for Caradoc; a Methodist, or a pretended one, for my garden of beauties. Allan's Puritan crop and mutton-chop whiskers for Roland's curly bead and Eddy's pretty eyes. Well, I am freer here."

Such was the life to which Allan Gray was condemned. Was it an unbeautiful or an unhappy one? I think that you will say that it was not. That it was a singular contrast to the very beautiful life of the Mordaunts, the Evanses and the Maynards, is most true. Camden Town is not Caradoc, nor Saffron Hill Longmynd; any more than Allan Gray, the toiler, was Roland Evans, handsome and strong, the favourite among favourites of fortune. Yet they were both happy men in their way. Both lived in the future; the one in a future of anticipated triumph; but Allan Gray's future went further than Roland's as yet. Allan's future went deep and far into the next world; his quiet fanaticism was as potent a means of taking him out of himself, as were Roland's dreams of triumphs in the Schools or the Senate. Roland's surroundings were as graceful and as beautiful as those of a Greek. Allan Gray could dispense with them, nay, was even glad to do so, for he called them in his quaint language, "a snare." A man who is perfectly assured that in thirty years he will be walking in the City of the New Jerusalem, as described in the 21st of the Revelation, is not likely to care much about the inartistic squalor of Camden Town, even if he could appreciate it, which Allan Gray could not. The costermonger, against whose barrow this solemn young gentleman walked sometimes, and to whom this solemn "young swell" apologised, did not know that the tall young gentleman was thinking with his whole soul over the beatific vision. The Romish priest for whom Allan sent when he found that a soul was craving, on the verge of death, for the old offices which had given comfort before, little thought that the young man with the face like a bloodhound, who had so courteously handed over the dying man to him, went home to pray that the Scarlet Abomination might cease out of the land.

A most perfect fanatic--a man who was unable to appreciate any form of artistic beauty--a man given up to a business which be hated and despised; and yet who had a flower-garden too; a garden also in which he could see his flowers grow. They were apt to wither and die, certainly; but he had heard that of all flower-gardens.

On this day, when he had first left his grandmother alone, he went first to his place of business, the jeweller's, and dashed at once into the books. The partners came to him once or twice on business, and he gave back their kindly smiles of courtesy and trust as frankly and as honestly as any man could. So he worked away at the dull figures, which were not dull to him, for he had his purpose, until nearly three o'clock in the day, and then uneasily began to hear the carriages pass. "I must go into Vanity Fair soon, I doubt," he said to himself.

He was quite right. A youth came in and said, "If you please, Mr. Gray, Mr. Henry wants you." And Allan, with a sigh, arose and followed.

Mr. Henry was the youngest partner, Allan's old friend: he managed to brush past him. "Allan, my dear," he said, "to the rescue! Father and uncle are both engaged, and here is the Duchess of Cheshire wanting loose opals and sapphires for setting."

"C. 16 and Q. 19," said Allan, in a whisper, and passed on, with his head in the air, for his interview with the Duchess, looking uncommonly like an ideal duke himself. What were principalities and powers to him!

"The stones will be here at once, your grace," he said, calmly. "One of the house has gone for them. May I take the liberty of inquiring whether it is your grace's intention to set the stones together?"

The Duchess said, "I had a design of doing so. I wanted to give my daughter, Lady Alice Barty, a necklace for her wedding. I thought they would look pure and innocent," said the natural woman. "I mean, I thought it would be in good taste," said the artificial one.

Allan bowed, and said, "They will be here directly, your grace." He was back for one instant among the sapphire, the sardonyx, the jasper, and the chalcedony of the New Jerusalem but he had two existences: he was quite ready for her when she said--

"Do you think it will do?"

Now the Duchess of Cheshire was, in her old age, a very religious woman of a certain sect; and a very open-handed woman also, as more than one prophetical expounder of the Revelations well knew. Allan Gray knew it, but would have died sooner than trade on it: nevertheless, he gave this singularly odd answer, which, coming from a shop-manager to a Duchess, must have rather astounded her grace.

"It would scarcely do, your grace, as the taste of the world goes. And, as a general rule, you present to a young lady, on her real entrance into the world, something symbolical."

"Yes," said time old lady; "but sapphire represents the blue of heaven, and the cloud of onyx the troubles on earth." For she had got rambling, too, and was thinking of the time when her son Charley was killed in the duel, and of other disasters since, and forgot that the solemn, imperial gentleman before her was only a shop "manager."

"In the New Jerusalem, your grace," said the shopman, quietly, "which we will pray that the Lady Alice may enter, the gates were twelve pearls: why should not her ladyship have a twelvefold collier of large pearls, with the jewels interspersed? That would be really symbolical, I should fancy, under your grace's approbation, and at least Christian."

The astonished old lady could only say, "Faut de mieu--would the colours be in good taste?"

"They would be in St. John's taste," said Allan, with that curious confidence and audacity which few other sects possess now, and remained silent.

"It is a beautiful idea," said the old lady. "Your house is famous for its good taste. I think I will say yes; I like your idea very much; you are evidently a good young man. Plan out the necklace for me." And she retired to her carriage, and talked all the evening, and for many evenings, of the wonderful young man at Morton's. And Lady Alice Barty wore that necklace on her wedding-day.

Meanwhile, Henry had been waiting with the sapphires and the opals, and seeing the Duchess depart, thought that they had missed an order. "Why, the old lady is gone," he said.

"Have you any exceptionally large pearls?" asked Allan. "What a pity it is that we should have let the Googerat necklace go! I would give anything for those pearls now."

"Hang it! you can have them if you want them. There was no cash produced. She is burst up, and they are in the safe now."

"That is well. Keep the twelve best. I suppose you never heard of Chrysopras?"

"Never," said the partner.

"We must try Giallo Antico," said Allan. "Get me these other stones, and don't disturb me, if you can help it. I will go and design this necklace; it is a large order for our house. Send the artist to me. 'And the street of the city was of pure gold, as it were transparent glass,'--that is, white enamel over gold. Send me the artist."

So the ultra-Protestant actually set to work to symbolise in his trade, in a gold necklace, the very thing which puzzles and awes the most advanced Christians. He was disturbed, if aught could disturb him.

Just before the shop's closing, he was called out again. This time he had to attend to a different kind of people. An evil man was buying jewels for a young girl, and the girl had had jewels bought for her before, and knew their value, and was so particular that Gray had to be called in again. He stood before these two quite quietly, and served them well, and gave them his advice, knowing that he was serving his employers. There were plenty of precedents in the Old Testament, which he read most, but fewer in the New, which he read least. Those two were as nothing to him. A hog comes to your gate, and you throw it an apple; the hog is nothing to you, and they were less than nothing to him.

"Now," he said to the three partners, as soon as the shop was shut, "I am going to walk in my garden."

"Does your garden take much to keep up, Gray?" said the senior partner.

"Well, it would cost more than I could afford, sir, if it were properly kept up."

"Now how much, for instance," said the senior partner--"to keep it going properly, you know--do you think it would cost to keep your garden in order?"

"The whole garden?" asked Allan; "I have only a share of it."

"Say the whole garden, then," said the senior partner.

"Well," said Allan, "I could do something with 400,000 a year, if I had the management of it. As it is, I do what I can."

"We were going to increase your salary," said the senior partner, laughing, "by 100l. a year, but I suppose that would not be much for your garden?"

"Very little," said Allan; and then, remembering himself, added, "you are very kind to me. I thank you deeply. I will make good use of the money which you entrust to me from God."