Walter Besant
All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story
When the tumult had subsided, Harry, to everybody astonishment, laid his hand upon his cousin's shoulder – a gesture of approbation – and looked round the room, and said quietly, but loud enough to be heard by all:
"My cousin, Dick Coppin, can talk. That was a very good speech of his, wasn't it?"
Voices were heard asking if he could better it.
"No," Harry replied, "I can't, I wish I could." He took his place beside the table, and gazed for a few moments at the faces below him. Angela observed that his face was pale, though the carriage of his head was brave. "I wish," he repeated, "that I could. Because, after all these fireworks, it is such a tame thing just to tell you that there wasn't a word of sense in the whole speech."
Here there were signs of wrath, but the general feeling was to let the speaker have his say.
"Do you suppose – any of you – that Dick believes that the Lords go rolling drunk to the House? Of course he doesn't. Do you suppose that he thinks you such fools as to believe it? Of course he doesn't. But then, you see, Dick must have his fireworks. And it was a first-rate speech. Do you suppose he believes the Lords are a worn-out lot? Not he. He knows better. And if any of you feel inclined to think so, go and look at them. You will find them as well set up as most, and better. You can hear some of them in the House of Commons, where you send them, you electors. Wherever there are Englishmen working, fighting, or sporting, there are some of those families among them. As for their corruption, that's fireworks, too. Dick has told you some beautiful stories which he challenged anybody to dispute. I dare say they are all true. What he forgot to tell you is that he has picked out these stories from the last hundred and fifty years, and expects you to believe that they all happened yesterday. Shall we charge you, members of the club, with all the crimes of the Whitechapel Road for a hundred years? If you want to upset the House of Lords, go and do it. But don't do it with lies on your lips, and on false pretences. You know how virtuous and moral you are yourselves. Then just remember that the members of the House of Lords are about as moral as you are, or rather better. Abolish the House of Lords if you like. How much better will you be when it is gone? You can go on abolishing. There is the Church. Get it disestablished. Think how much better you will all be when the churches are pulled down. Yet you couldn't stay away any more then than you do. You want the Land Laws reformed. Get them reformed, and think how much land you will get for yourselves out of that reform.
"Dick Coppin says you have got the power. So you have. He says the last Reform Bill gave it to you. There he makes a mistake. You have always had the power. You have always had all the power there is. It is yours, because you are the people, and what the people want they will have. Your power is your birthright. You are an irresistible giant, who has only to roar in order to get what he wants.
"Well, why don't you roar? Because you don't know what you do want. Because your leaders don't know any more than yourselves; because they go bawling for things which will do you no good, and don't know what it is you do want.
"You think that by making yourselves into clubs and calling yourselves Radicals, you are getting forward. You think that by listening to a chap like my cousin Dick, who's a clever fellow and a devil for fireworks, you somehow improve your own condition. Did you ever ask yourselves what difference the form of government makes? I have been in America where, if anywhere, the people have it their own way. Do you think work is more plentiful, wages better, hours shorter, things cheaper in a republic? Do you think the heels of your boots last any longer? If you do, think so no longer. Whether the House of Lords, or the Church, or the Land Laws stand or fall, that, my friends, makes not the difference of a penny-piece to any single man among us. You who agitate for their destruction are generously giving your time and trouble for things which help no man. And yet there are so many things that can help us.
"It comes of your cursed ignorance" (Harry was warming up) – "I say, your cursed ignorance. You know nothing; you understand nothing of your own country. You do not know how its institutions have grown up; why it is so prosperous; why changes, when they have to be made, should be made slowly and not before they are necessary; nor how you yourselves may climb up, if you will, into a life above you, much happier, much more pleasant. You do not respect the old institutions, because you don't know them; you desire new things because you don't understand the old. Go – learn – make your orators learn, and make them teach you. And then send them to the House of Commons to represent you.
"You think that governments can do everything for you. You fools! has any government ever done anything for you? Has it raised your wages – has it shortened your hours? Can it protect you against rogues and adulterers? Will it ever try to better your position? Never, never, never! – because it cannot. Does any government ask what you want – what you ought to want? No. Can it give you what you want? No.
"Listen. You want clean streets and houses in which decent folks can live. The government has appointed sanitary officers. Yet, look about you! Put your heads in the courts of Whitechapel. What has the sanitary officer done? You want strong and well-built houses. There are government inspectors; yet, look at the lath and plaster houses that a child could kick over. You want honest food – all that you eat and drink is adulterated. How does the government help you there?
"You have the power – all the power there is. You cannot use it, because you don't know how. You expect the government to use your power – to do your work. My friends, I will tell you the secret. Whatever you want done you must do for yourselves! No one else will do it for you. You must agree that such and such shall be done; and then, be very sure, you will get it done.
"In politics you are used as the counters of a game – each side plays with you. Not for you, mind. You get nothing, whichever side is in – you are the pawns.
"It is something, perhaps, to take even so much part in the game; but, as you get nothing but the honor, I am rather surprised at your going on with it. And, if I might advise, it would be that we give that game over, and play one by ourselves, in which there really is something to be got.
"What we must play for is what we want. What we have got to do is, to remember that when we say we will have a thing – nobody can resist us. Have it we must, because we are the masters.
"Now then, what do we want?"
Harry was quite serious by this time, and so were the faces of those who listened – though there was a little angry doubt on some of them. No one replied to the question. Some of the younger men looked as if they might, perhaps, have answered in the words of the sailor – "More rum." But they refrained, and preserved silence.
"What do we want? Has any one of you considered what we do want? Let me tell you a few things. I can't think of many; but I know a few that you ought to put first.
"You want your own local government – what every little country town has, you have not. You want to elect your own aldermen, mayors, guardians, and school-boards – be yourselves – be yourselves. Get that first, and abolish the House of Lords afterward.
"There is your food? You ought to get your beef from America, at threepence a pound, and you are contented to give a shilling. You ought to have your fish at twopence a pound, and you pay whatever they choose to charge you. You drink bad beer, bad spirits, bad tea, bad cocoa, bad coffee, because you don't know that the things are bad and dear; and because you don't understand that you have only got to resolve in order to get all this changed. It is, you see, your cursed ignorance.
"There are your houses! The rich people – having more knowledge than you, and more determination – have found out how to build houses so as to prevent fevers. You live in houses built to catch fever – fever-traps! When you find out what you want, you will refuse to live in such houses. You will refuse to let anybody live in such houses. You will come out of them – you will have them pulled down.
"When it comes to building up better houses, you will remember that paid inspectors are squared by the builders – so that the cement is mud and sand; and the bricks are crumbling clay; and the walls crack, and the floors are shaky. Therefore you will be your own inspectors.
"The Government makes us send our children to boarding schools to be educated. That would be very noble of the Government if they had first considered – which nobody has – what sort of education a working-man wants. As yet they have only got as far as spelling. When a boy can spell they think he is educated. Once it was all kings of Israel – now it is all spelling. Is that what you want? Do you think it matters how you spell, so that you know? Are you contented that your children shall know nothing about this great country – nothing of its wealth and people; nothing of their duties as citizens; nothing of their own trade? Shall they not be taught that theirs is the power – that they can do what they like, and have what they like, if they like?
"Do you resolve that the education of your children shall be real, and it will become real; but don't look to Government to do it or it will continue to be spelling. Find out the thing that you want, and send your own men to the school-boards to get that thing done.
"Another thing that you want is pleasure – men can't do without it. Can Government give you that? They can shut the public-houses at twelve – what more can they do? But you – you do not know how to enjoy yourselves. You don't know what to do. You can't play music, nor sing, nor paint, nor dance – you can do nothing. You get no pleasure out of life, and you won't get it – even by abolishing everything.
"Take that simple question of a holiday. We take ours, like the fools we are, all in droves, by thousands and millions, on bank holidays. Why do we do that? Why do we not insist on having our holidays at different times in the year, without these monstrous crowds which render enjoyment impossible? And why do we not demand – what is granted to every little quill-driving clerk in the city – our fortnight every year with nothing to do, and drawing full pay? That is one of your wants, and you don't know it. The reform of the land laws, my brothers, will not bring you one inch nearer getting this want."
At this point the chairman nodded his head approvingly. Perhaps he had never before realized how all his life he had neglected the substance and swallowed the shadow. The old man sat listening patiently with his head in his hands. Never before had any workman – any one of his own class – spoken like this young fellow, who talked and looked like a swell – though they knew him for what he was. Pleasure! Yes – he had never consisted that life might have its delights. Yet, what delights?
"There is another thing, and the blackest of all." Harry paused a moment: but the men were listening, and now in earnest.
"I mean the treatment of your girls – your sisters and your daughters! Men, you have combined together and made your unions for yourselves – you have forced upon your employers terms which nothing but combination would have compelled them to accept. You are paid twice what you received twenty years ago. You go in broadcloth – you are well fed. You have money in your pocket. But you have clean forgotten the girls.
"Think of the girls.
"They have no protection but a Government act forbidding more than ten hours' work. Who cares for a Government act? It is defied daily. Those who frame these acts know very well that they are powerless to maintain them; because, my friends, the power is with the people – you. If you resolve that an act shall become a law, you make it so. Everything, in the end, is by the people and through the people.
"You have done nothing for your girls – you leave them to the mercies of employers, who have got to cut down expenses to the last farthing. They are paid starvation wages. They are kept in unwholesome rooms. They are bound to the longest hours. They are oppressed with fines. The girls grow up narrow-chested, stooping, consumptive – they are used up wholesale. And what do you do for them. Nothing. There are girls and women in this hall: can any one of them here get up and say that the working-men have raised a finger for them?
"The worst charge any man can bring against you is that you care nothing for your girls.
"Why, it is only the other day that a Dressmakers' Association has been opened among you – you all know where it is. You all know what it tries to do for the girls. Yet, what single man among you has ever had the pluck to stand up for his sisters who are working in it?"
Then Harry stepped right to the edge of the platform and spread out his hands, changing his voice.
"You are good fellows," he said, "and you've given me fair play. There isn't a country in the world, except Ireland, where I could have had this fair play. Don't misunderstand me – I tell you, and I don't think you knew it before, that the time has come when the people should leave off caring much about the Government, or expecting any good thing for themselves from any government; because it can't be done in that way. You must find out for yourselves what you want, and then you must have that done. You must combine for these things as you did for wages, and you will get them. And if you spend half the energy in working for yourselves that you have spent in working for things that do you no good you will be happy indeed.
"Your politics, I say again, will do nothing for you – do you hear – nothing at all; but yours is the power. Let us repeat it again and again – all the power is yours. Try what Government can do. Send Dick Coppin into Parliament – he's a clever chap – and tell him to do what he can for you. He will do nothing. Therefore, work for yourselves, and by yourselves. Make out what you want, and resolve to have it – nobody can prevent you. The world is yours to do what you like with. Here in England, as in America, the working-man is master – provided the working-man knows what he wants. The first thing you want, I reckon, is good lodging. The second, is good food. The third is good drink – good, unadulterated beer, and plenty of it. The fourth is good and sensible education. The fifth is holiday and pleasure; and the last, which is also the first, is justice for our girls. But don't be fools. I have been among you in this club a good many times. It goes to my heart every time I come to see so many clever men and able men wasting their time in grievances which don't hurt them, when they are surrounded by a hundred grievances which they have only to perceive in order to sweep them away.
"I am a Radical, like yourselves; but I am a Social Radical. As for your political jaw, it plays the game of those who use you. Politics is a game of lying accusations and impossible promises. The accusations make you angry – the promises make you hopeful. But you get nothing in the long run; and you never will. Because – promise what they may – it is not laws or measures that will improve our lot; it is by our own resolution that it shall be improved. Hold out your hands and take the things that are offered you – everything is yours if you like to have it. You are in a beautiful garden filled with fruits, if you care to pick them; but you do not. You lie grubbing in the mud, and crying out for what will do you no good. Voices are calling to you – they offer you such a life as was never yet conceived by the lordliest House of Lords – a life full of work, and full of pleasure. But you don't hear – you are deaf. You are blind – you are ignorant."
He stopped; a hoarse shout greeted his peroration. Harry wondered for a moment if this was applause or disapproval. It was the former. Then one man rose and spoke.
"Damn him!" he cried. Yet the phrase was used in no condemnatory spirit; as when a mother addresses her boy as a naughty little rogue-pogue. "Damn him! He shall be our next member."
"No," said Harry, clapping his cousin on the shoulder, "here is your next member; Dick Coppin is your boy. He is clever – he is ambitious. Tell him what you want, and he'll get it for you if any one can. But, O men! find out what you want, and have it. Yours – yours – yours is the power. You are the masters of the world. Leave the humbug of Radicalism, and Liberalism, and Toryism. Let dead politics bury their dead – learn to look after your own interests. You are the kings and lords of humanity. The old kings and lords are no more – they are swept away! They are only shadows of the past. With you are the sceptre and the crown. You sit upon the throne, and when you know how to reign, you shall reign as never yet king was known to reign; but first find out what you want."
He lightly leaped from the platform and stepped down the hall – he had said his say, and was going. The men laughed and shouted – half angry, half pleased, but wholly astonished; and Dick Coppin, with a burning cheek, sat humiliated yet proud of his cousin.
At the door Harry met Miss Kennedy, with Captain Sorensen and Nelly.
"We have heard your speech," said Angela, with brightened eyes and glowing cheeks. "Oh, what did I tell you? You can speak, you can persuade; you can lead. What a career – what a career lies before the man who can persuade and lead!"
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE FIGUREHEADS
It was Sunday morning, after breakfast, and Harry was sitting in the boarding-house common room, silently contemplating his two fellow-boarders, Josephus and Mr. Maliphant. The circle at Bormalack's was greatly broken up. Not to speak of the loss of the illustrious pair, Daniel Fagg had now taken to live entirely among the dressmakers, except in the evenings, when their music and dancing drove him away; in fact, he regarded the place as his own, and had so far forgotten that he took his meals there by invitation as to criticise the dinners, which were always good, although plain, and to find fault with the beer, which came from Messenger's. Miss Kennedy, too, only slept at the boarding-house, though by singular forgetfulness she always paid the landlady every Saturday morning in advance for a week's board and lodging. Therefore Josephus and the old man for the most part sat in the room alone, and were excellent company, because the ill-used junior clerk never wanted to talk with anybody, and the aged carver of figureheads never wanted a listener.
Almost for the first time Harry considered this old man, the rememberer of fag-ends and middle-bits of anecdote, with something more than a passing curiosity and a sense of irritation caused by the incongruity of the creature. You know that whenever you seriously address yourself to the study of a person, however insignificant in appearance, that person assumes an importance equal to any lord. A person, you see, is an individual, or an indivisible thing. Wherefore, let us not despise our neighbor. The ancient Mr. Maliphant was a little, thin old man, with a few gray hairs left, but not many; his face was inwrapped, so to speak, in a pair of very high collars, and he wore a black silk stock, not very rusty, for he had been in the reign of the fourth George a dapper young fellow, and possessed a taste in dress beyond the lights of Limehouse. But this was in his nautical days, and before he developed his natural genius for carving ship's figureheads. He had no teeth left, and their absence greatly shortened the space between nose and chin, which produced an odd effect; he was closely shaven; his face was all covered over like an ocean with innumerable wrinkles, crows-feet, dimples, furrows, valleys, and winding watercourses, which showed like the universal smile of an accurate map. His forehead, when the original thatch was thick, must have been rather low and weak; his eyes were still bright and blue, though they wandered while he talked; when he was silent they had a far-off look; his eyebrows, as often happens with old men, had grown bushy and were joined across the bridge; when his memory failed him, which was frequently the case, they frowned almost as terribly as those of Daniel Fagg; his figure was spare and his legs thin, and he sat on one side of the chair with his feet twisted beneath it; he never did anything, except to smoke one pipe at night; he never took the least notice of anybody; when he talked, he addressed the whole company, not any individual; and he was affected by no man's happiness or suffering. He had lived so long that he had no more sympathy left; the world was nothing more to him; he had no further interest in it; he had gone beyond it and out of it; he was so old that he had not a friend left who knew him when he was young; he lived apart; he was, perforce, a hermit.
Harry remembered, looking upon this survival, that the old man had once betrayed a knowledge of his father and of the early history of the Coppin and Messenger families. He wondered now why he had not tried to get more out of him. It would be a family chronicle of small beer, but there could be nothing, probably, very disagreeable to learn about the career of the late sergeant, his father, nor anything painful about the course of the Coppins. On this Sunday morning, when the old man looked as if the cares of the week were off his mind, his memory should be fresh – clearer than on a week-day.
In the happy family of boarders, none of whom pretended to take the least interest in each other, nobody ever spoke to Mr. Maliphant, and nobody listened when he spoke, except Mrs. Bormalack, who was bound by rules of politeness, or took the least notice of his coming or his going; nobody knew how he lived or what he paid for his board and lodging, or anything else about him. Once, it was certain, he had been in the mercantile marine. Now he had a "yard;" he went to his yard every day; it was rumored that in this yard he carved figureheads all day for large sums of money; he came home in the evening in time for supper; a fragrance, as of rum and water, generally accompanied him at that time; and after a pipe and a little more grog, and a few reminiscences chopped up in bits and addressed to the room at large, the old fellow would retire for the night. A perfectly cheerful and harmless old man, yet not companionable.
"Did you know my father, Mr. Maliphant?" asked Harry, by way of opening up the conversation. "He was a sergeant, you know, in the army."
Mr. Maliphant started and looked bewildered; he had been, in imagination, somewhere off Cape Horn, and he could not get back at a moment's notice. It irritated him to have to leave his old friends.
"Your father, young gentleman?" he asked in a vexed and trembling quaver. "Did I know your father? Pray, sir, how am I to know that you ever had a father?"
"You said, the other day, that you did. Think again. My father, you know, married Caroline Coppin."
"Ay, ay – Caroline Coppin – I remember Caroline Coppin. Oh, yes, sister, she was, to Bob – when Bob was third mate of an East Indiaman; a devil of a fellow was Bob, though but a boy, and if living now, which I must misdoubt, would be but sixty or thereabouts. Everybody, young man, knew Bob Coppin," … here he relapsed into silence. When he spoke again, he carried on aloud the subject of his thoughts – "below he did his duty. Such a man, sir, was Bob Coppin."
"Thank you, Mr. Maliphant. I seem to know Bob quite well from your description. And now he's gone aloft, hasn't he? And when the word comes to pass all hands, there will be Bob with a hitch of his trousers and a kick of the left leg. But about my mother."
"Young gentleman, how am I to know that you were born with a mother? Law, law! One might as well" – Here his voice dropped again, and he finished the sentence with the silent motion of his lips.
"Caroline Coppin, you know; your old friend."
He shook his head.
"No – oh, no! I knew her when she was as high as that table. My young friend, not my old friend, she was. How could she be my old friend? She married Sergeant Goslett, and he went out to India and – and – something happened there. Perhaps he was cast away. As many get cast away in those seas."
"Is that all you can remember about her?"
"I can remember," said the old man, "a wonderful lot of things at times. You mustn't ask any man to remember all at once. Not at his best, you mustn't, and I doubt I am hardly at what you may call my tip-top ripest – yet. Wait a bit, young man; wait a bit. I've been to a many ports and carved figureheads for a many ships, and they got cast away, one after the other, but dear to memory still, and paid for. Like Sergeant Goslett. A handsome man he was, with curly brown hair, like yours, young gentleman. I remember how he sang a song in this very house when Caroline – or was it her sister? – had it, and I forget whether it was Bunker married her sister or after Caroline's baby was born, which was when the child's father was dead. A beautiful evening we had."
Caroline's baby, Harry surmised, was himself.
"Where was Caroline's baby born?" Harry asked.
"Where should he be? Why, o' course, in his mother's own house."
"Why should he be born in his mother's own house? I did not know that his mother had a house."
The old man looked at him with pity.
"Young man," he said, "you know nothing. Your ignorance is shameful."
"But why?"
"Enough said, young gentleman," replied Mr. Maliphant with dignity. "Enough said: youth should not sport with age; it doth not become gray hairs to – to – "
He did not finish the sentence, except to himself, but what he did say was something emphatic and improving, because he shook his head a good deal over it.
Presently he got up and left the room. Harry watched him getting his hat and tying his muffler about his neck. When things were quite adjusted the old man feebly tottered down the steps. Harry took his hat and followed him.
"May I walk with you, sir?" he asked.
"Surely, surely!" Mr. Maliphant was surprised. "It is an unusual thing for me to have a companion. Formerly they came – ah – all the way from Rotherhithe to – to – sing and drink with me."
"Will you take my arm?" Harry asked.
The little old man, who wore black trousers and a dress-coat out of respect of the day, but, although the month was December, no great-coat – in fact he had never worn a great-coat in all his life – was trotting along with steps which showed weakness, but manifest intention. Harry wondered where he meant to go. He took the proffered arm, however, and seemed to get on better for the support.
"Are you going to church, sir," asked Harry, when they came opposite the good old church of Stepney, with its vast acres of dead men, and heard the bells ringing.
"No, young gentleman; no, certainly not. I have more important business to look after."
He quickened his steps, and they left the church behind them.
"Church?" repeated Mr. Maliphant with severity. "When there's property to look after the bells may ring as loud as they please. Church is good for paupers and church-wardens. Where would the property be, do you think, if I were not on the spot everyday to protect it?"
He turned off the High Street into a short street of small houses neither better nor worse than the thousands of houses around: it was a cul-de-sac, and ended in a high brick wall, with a large gateway in the middle, and square stone pillars, and a ponderous pair of wooden gates, iron-bound as if they guarded things of the greatest value. There was also a small wicket beside it, which the old man carefully unlocked and opened, looking round to see that no burglars followed.
Harry saw within a tolerably large yard, in the middle of which was a little house of one room. The house was a most wonderful structure; it was built apparently of packing-cases nailed on four or eight square posts; it was furnished with a door, a window, and a chimney, all complete; it was exactly like a doll's house, only that it was rather larger, being at least six feet high and eight feet square. The house was painted green; the roof was painted red; the door blue; there was also a brass knocker; so that in other respects it was like a doll's house.
"Aha!" cried the old man, rubbing his hands and pointing to the house. "I built it, young man. That is my house, that is; I laid the foundations; I put up the walls; I painted it. And I very well remember when it was. Let me see. Mr. Messenger, who was a younger man than me by four years, married in that year, or lost his son – I forget which" – (his voice lowered, and he went on talking to himself). "Caroline's grandfather went bankrupt in the building trade; or her father perhaps, who afterward made money and left houses. And here I am still. This is my property, young gentleman, and I come here every day to execute orders. Oh! yes" – he looked about him in mild kind of doubt – "I execute orders. Perhaps the orders don't come in so thick as they did. But here I am – ready for work – always ready, and I see my old friends, too, aha! They come as thick as ever, bless you, if the orders don't. Quite a gathering in here some days." Harry shuddered, thinking who these old friends might be. "Sundays and all I come here, and they come too. A merry company!"
The garrulous old man opened the door of the little house. Harry saw that it contained a cupboard with some simple cooking utensils, and a fireplace, where the proprietor began to make a fire, and one chair, and a little table, and a rack with tools; there were also one or two pipes and a tobacco jar.
He looked about the yard. A strange place, indeed! It was adorned, or rather furnished, with great ships' figureheads, carved in wood, standing in rows and circles, some complete, some half-finished, some just begun; so that here was a Lively Peggy with rudimentary features just emerging from her native wood, and here a Saucy Sal of Wapping still clothed in oak up to her waist; and here a Neptune, his crowned head only as yet indicated, though the weather-beaten appearance of his wood showed that the time was long since he was begun; or a Father Thames, his god-like face as yet showing like a blurred dream. Or there were finished and perfect heads, painted and gilded, waiting for the purchaser who never came. They stood, or sat – whichever a head and shoulder can be said to do – with so much pride, each so rejoicing in himself, and so disdainful of his neighbor, in so haughty a silence that they seemed human and belonging to the first circles of Stepney; Harry thought, too, that they eyed him curiously, as if he might be the long-expected ship-owner come to buy a figurehead.
